Some of My Lives by Rosamond Bernier Page B

were building a house in Acapulco. “Come along,” we said. They came.
    Our house wasn’t finished. We rented a house on a point over the sea belonging to Bill Spratling, the American who made Taxco famous again (in colonial times it had been the source for silver) for its silver jewelry, and for its relaxed sexual mores.
    The staff consisted of one copper-colored youth, whose usual uniform was a wisp of chiffon draped around his neck.
    Paul’s room was on the upper floor, where all around there was silence, except for the sound of waves lapping at the rocks. He slept with great balls of wax in his ears and a black mask.
    Swimming and the beach were the main attractions and occupations. By midday, in the blazing sun, Paul would get a particular glint in his eye and say urgently, “I just have to have some hot soup, hot soup now .” Even the most resourceful hostess would find this a difficult request.
    Paul’s father was a dentist who had perfect occlusion. Paul had a comic turn, imitating his father, explosive with rage, his occlusion threatened by a grain of sand in the spinach.
    It seemed a good idea to rent them their own house. We found one in town that belonged to a good-looking American beachcomber who had been married to a silent-screen star (Nancy Carroll), had taught Shakespeare at Princeton, and had settled in Acapulco to enjoy the obliging female population and to start a pearl-diving business. The equipment for the pearl diving lay in a disorderly heap in one corner of the courtyard, nestled under some dusty palm fronds.
    Janie adopted an armadillo and named it Mary Schuster, after a friend of hers. The armadillo has a very small head and a correspondingly small brain. After lunch, Janie would call out, “Now, Mary Schuster, come for your French lesson.”
    Eventually, Janie moved inland to another rented house. Paul went off to Tangier. Janie enjoyed playing the role of a conventional housewife and inviting the local ladies in for tea. The genteel facade was apt to be interrupted by the Indian maid bursting in and screeching, “Is it now time to kill the chicken?”

    Janie enjoyed seducing conventional middle-aged women and producing them like fairground trophies. One who looked like the chairwoman of the local Republican Party was named Helvetia Perkins. Janie brought Mrs. Perkins to our Mexico City apartment.
    I used to bring the favorite animal of my Acapulco menagerie up to Mexico City with me. At this time it was a wily, well-behaved coatimundi. The coati was thoroughly at home in the apartment. But when we went onto the landing to say goodbye to our guests, the coati rushed out. Feeling lost in unfamiliar surroundings, it scrambled up Mrs. Perkins’s skirts, thereby putting its rescuers in an uncomfortable situation.
    On another occasion, in Paris, Janie produced a nicely suited gray-haired lady named Rose who ran a tearoom in Connecticut. “She’s a volcano in bed,” Janie confided.
    Rose was duly introduced to Diana Cooper and various other highlights of the Parisian scene. “Don’t understand your friends,” Rose complained. “They don’t talk about anything.”
    â€œWhat do your friends talk about?” I asked.
    â€œBusiness and sports,” Rose answered.
    By this time, the early 1960s, both Janie and Paul had moved to Tangier, but Janie showed up in Paris now and then, where she was a conscientious explorer of lesbian bars. I was in Paris then running my art magazine, L’ŒIL . She sent a message to my office: “I must see you.”
    We went out to a café. “You are a businesswoman,” Janie said. “Tell me what you think of this business letter.” She had been cabling her bank in Tangier to send her money, but could never get an answer. Her letter:

    Dear Mr. Vivanco [he was the bank manager]
    If I do not receive my money by Tuesday, I will shoot myself.
    Yours sincerely, Jane