Cinderella (That Story)

Abstract

94 MARINA WARNER Cinderella (That Story) • lawyer rang to inform me that my mother had died. I was mentioned in her will, and he needed to discuss matters with me and would come to Mexico City to bring me “my legacy.” I told him I would have nothing to do with it. I considered that story over. But when the call ended, I couldn’t resist looking on the web. I found the notice in a local paper from Lake Geneva: “A mass will be said for the soul of Princess X von X, who departed this life at a clinic near her home on Lake Geneva. No Flowers. Donations to the National Association for the Protection of Children.” Browsing French and German language sites, I then came across a brief report: “Princess X (born Surrey, England, 1922) has died of complications after heart surgery at the Saint Luc clinic, Geneva. She was 85. She married Prince X von X in 1945, in a wedding that seemed to promise , in the post-war wreckage, a new era of youthful confidence, vigor, and beauty. The ragged Cinderella had found her prince; the story of their romance lit up hearts all over a weary world. These hopes, however, were soon crushed as the spirit of revolution took hold and, eventually, deposed the Prince in a coup that cost 37 lives. The royal family—their only child Aurelia was born in 1950—were forced into exile. They wandered throughout Europe seeking support from regimes to whom the Prince was related—at one time his cousins had occupied most of the thrones in Europe—but the regimes’ ideals of national identity and independence meant the Prince’s efforts were in vain. “Five years after losing his throne, Prince X von X died in Rome, under what many considered mysterious circumstances. After his death, his widow the Princess led a wandering life, beloved by gossip columnists and paparazzi. She took up Swiss citizenship in 1965 and settled in a lakeside villa near Geneva. She was a familiar, respected figure, regularly attending church, where the pastor, Father Tomas, remembers her graciousness. ‘She was without doubt our most elegant parishioner,’ he a 95 says. A female member of the congregation adds, ‘Always wearing dark glasses and fur coats from the best Parisian houses of days gone by, she brought to us memories of another era.’” I was always a disappointment to my mother, principally because, from the age of fifteen, I needed glasses and refused to wear dresses or go to the coiffeur. Or, as she put it, sighing with her tiny, sweet, supplicating voice, behave like a girl at all. I left home to go to university—the day I was accepted by distant Edinburgh was the most jubilant of my life. After the storms and fights and horrible rages of my teenage years, I hadn’t seen my mother in the flesh for, it must be, nearly thirty years. Distance and near total silence were the only ways of keeping closed the wounds we’d inflicted on each other. The news of her death was no surprise—she had reached a great age and had always been frail—but still, when the lawyer ended the call, I had to sit down. I drew in a breath and tried not to cry, but my whole throat and heart burned horribly, and I did cry—dry angry tears. The lawyer flew in three days later and told me my mother respected my wish not to be associated with the family, though it distressed her that I had chosen to live under an alias and work so hard and ruin my health in such a dangerous and polluted place as Mexico City. He brought with him a basket, a capacious, strong woven carrier of the sort women traders in West Africa use to transport their merchandise. Very unexpected from someone who preferred Louis Vuitton. “There is nothing of value in it,” the lawyer reassured me. “No family jewels, not that she had any left. Personal papers. Letters, diaries, which your mother kept, it seems, since the beginning until the very end. Love letters.” I flinched. “She told me...