Me and Mr Welles by Dorian Bond

Author:Dorian Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

15

DON QUIXOTE

One morning at breakfast in the Hotel Eden, Mr Welles began to ruminate about Don Quixote. I had soldiered through the massive tome by Cervantes while at university. It is strangely intoxicating and very funny. I was fascinated by the idea that Cervantes was an exact contemporary of Shakespeare and actually died on the same day in 1613.

‘My Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are exactly and traditionally drawn from Cervantes, but are nonetheless contemporary. What interests me is the idea of these dated old virtues. And why they still seem to speak to us when, by all logic, they’re so hopelessly irrelevant. That’s why I’ve been obsessed for so long with Don Quixote … he can’t ever be contemporary – that’s really the idea. He never was.’

‘Exactly,’ I concurred. ‘Right from the start, most of his actions are utterly ludicrous but at the same time honourable.’

‘He’s alive somehow, and he’s riding through Spain even now … The anachronism of Don Quixote’s knightly armour in what was Cervantes’ own modern time doesn’t show up very sharply now. I’ve simply translated the anachronism. My film demonstrates that he and Sancho Panza are eternal.’

‘Yes, eternal and global. That human desire to do the right thing despite every setback.’

Mr Welles sat back on the sofa and, taking a new cigar from the box that lay next to him, struck a match and held the flame just below the end of the rolled Cuban tobacco. ‘I can’t remember the name of the goddamned laboratory where my old footage is. It’s ten years since I last looked at it.’

The match flame had now diminished, never having touched the cigar. He shook out the flame and put the disused match into the gigantic hotel ashtray. Sun shone across the curtains of the plush room and all I could hear was his breathing as he lost himself in his own thoughts.

‘I’ll call Ann Rogers,’ I suggested, ‘she might know.’

‘Good idea, boy.’

So I got through to London and the dependable Mrs Rogers came up with the answer. ‘He’s got film material all over Europe,’ she told me, as I stood there watching him now finally actually light his cigar.

‘People say he’s running out of countries to work in. He owes money to laboratories in Madrid, Vienna, Paris, London and Rome. They are happy to wait because they have his negatives so at the end of the day they will be paid. If he ever finishes anything.’

Mrs Rogers sounded exasperated with her boss, but she had the name and address of the lab in Rome. I wrote it down on a piece of hotel stationery.

‘Hang up, hang up!’ he shouted, ‘What’s she talking about? She’s a chatterbox. Has she got the address of the place? Finish.’

Ann Rogers said she’d get off the line, asked me if I was alright, and hung up.

‘God Almighty, that woman can talk for England.’

‘She had the address.’

‘Good, call them and set up an appointment.’

The Don Quixote film, all in black and white, lay in

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