Walking Into the Night Read Free Page A

del Monte. In parentheses: “a total of eighteen bedrooms and twenty bathrooms.” The print is small, so that everything will fit on one page. Kristjan has advised two waiters with poor eyesight to learn the information by heart so they don’t have to squint at it in front of visitors. There are one hundred and fifteen rooms in the main building: fourteen sitting rooms, twenty-six bedrooms, two libraries, thirty fireplaces, a beauty parlor, a barbershop, and a movie theater. The refectory, which is what Hearst calls the dining room, is said to be over three thousand square feet, which Kristjan believes is probably accurate because it takes him about forty seconds to walk the length of the room when he’s not in a hurry. The leaflet makes no mention of the service wing, where the staff live, nor the secure vaults in the cellar, though it’s mentioned that there is a switchboard and telegraph facility in the construction foreman’s office. Kristjan finds the descriptions of the two swimming pools—the indoor bath, which is known as the Roman Pool, and the other, which is named after the sea god Neptune—unnecessarily detailed, but that doesn’t seem to bother the guests, whose appetite for information is insatiable. Kristjan welcomes them on the south stairs and escorts them to the rooms they’ve been assigned while the houseboys bring in their bags. Generally guests arrive ill-equipped for their stay on the hill, especially actors and other movie types from Hollywood. The staff provides them with toiletries, tooth powder and brushes, cologne, combs and razors, perfumes, and all manner of unguents, riding clothes, bathrobes, and bathing suits. It takes about five minutes to fill them in about the place, longer if they’re curious. Some ask if they can keep the information sheet but that’s against the rules. However, they’re always left with the day’s menu and a schedule of mealtimes, along with a short description of the movie to be screened that evening.
    The Chief’s a stickler for rules and order. Many people find him intimidating.
    The leaflet once contained a fairly detailed description of the main building but when Mr. Hearst saw it he had it removed. It’s called Casa Grande. All vistas lead to where it stands at the top of the hill, with the guesthouses clustered in a semicircle a little lower down, like ladies-in-waiting at the feet of their queen. Some say it resembles a gothic cathedral, its chalk walls corpse white, the campaniles towering grandly aloft, as if their peals were intended more for heaven than for us here below on earth.
    Guests have to come to the main building for food and drink as there are no kitchens or refrigerators in the guesthouses. Not even a kettle. The occasional person gets up the nerve to complain about this after a drink or two, though never directly to the Chief. Some would prefer breakfast in bed but the Chief regards this as a waste of time. It’s good for people to have a breath of fresh air in the morning, he feels. To walk here in the dew with the sun sparkling on the sea below and a refreshing breeze blowing off the mountains. It’s good for them. This is no place for lazy-bones, he’s fond of saying.
    Down by the harbor there are warehouses full of antiques and works of art that the Chief has amassed. There are even more warehouses in New York, where people are employed in inventorying and cataloguing the vast quantity of statues, swords, torchères, fireplaces, paintings, tea sets, altarpieces, columns, and vases which Mr. Hearst keeps buying, even though no more can be accommodated here in the houses on the hill. Sometimes he buys whole castles in Spain and Italy and has them demolished stone by stone and strut by strut so they can be loaded on board ship.
    So here I am in this labyrinth, Elisabet dear, he wrote, deciding to put the description of the castle into the envelope with the letter, a bird of passage that has lost its way. I’ll always be a