The Biograph Girl by William J Mann

Author:William J Mann [Mann, William J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497667211
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The ship’s doctors pronounced me a complete nervous breakdown. Oh, who knows what that means? All I know is, I couldn’t stop crying, and I hated Harry for taking me to Europe. I was convinced I was going to die. “It’s God punishing me—don’t you see?” I cried, pounding Harry’s chest again and again with my fists. “For lying to the world that I was killed in St. Louis! Now I’m really going to die!”

I passed through the stately dining rooms of the ship like a ghost. Harry would find me wandering down the majestic central staircase, eyes lost, in bare feet and only a flimsy white nightdress, my hand lightly gliding along the banister. Or else I’d be up on the deck, the moonlight in my hair, the wind catching my dress, exposing my calves. He’d wrap his coat around me, gently chastising me for walking off, guiding me back to our suite of rooms and easing me into bed.

“Oh, my poor beautiful little daughter,” Pop Lubin clucked over me, then straightened up to glare at Harry. “But she’ll be all right to film when we get there, won’t she?”

“She’ll be all right,” I heard Harry reply.

He tried to engage me with stories of the places we’d visit. We’d disembark from the Olympic at Cherbourg and board another ship to Gibraltar. From there, we’d take a series of cruises that would take us through the Mediterranean and bring us to Corsica, Rome, Egypt, Cyprus, Turkey, and finally, the Greek islands.

Of all of them, only Santorini produced a glimmer of interest. I read the guidebook from cover to cover, sitting on a chaise on our private promenade deck, wrapped in a blanket. “It says here that someday the volcano off Fira will explode again,” I said to Harry. “That in ancient times it took Atlantis down into the sea.”

He just smiled indulgently. I closed my eyes and imagined the great shudder of the earth, the rumbling sound as the lava pushed its way to the surface. I saw the first spit of fire from the volcano’s mouth, then the great mass of molten rock spilling down the sides, turning the black waters red, claiming everyone on the island for the sovereignity of the sea.

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