She also… well, I’m not sure if I told you the reason I went down to Lambaréné to see Schweitzer.
You told me something about having visited a leper clinic in Ethiopia, and that started you thinking about him.
That was part of it, but only a minor part. Helga had told me about Schweitzer. He was a man she admired enormously, and so I read one of his books. It may have been his only book, the story of his early life. Helga said, ‘Why don’t you go down and see him and talk to him?’
So I went. Not that time, but the next time. But it didn’t work out, as I’ve told you.
On other occasions I rented a house on the outskirts of Oaxaca, in Zapotec Indian country in southern Mexico. That’s the place where we spent the most times together. She took me to all the Indian ruins and gave me a crash course not only in pre-Columbian history but in archeology. In fact, it was to Oaxaca that she brought her children to meet me for the first time, although it was done very discreetly. She stayed in a hotel in town with the children. I was in the bungalow and she came to see me there. But she wanted me to meet the kids. She felt that our relationship was important enough that I couldn’t understand her unless I knew her children and how she felt about them.
I went skiing with her once. She taught me. I fell down more times than I cared to, so I never became a real skier. I’ve never been fond of the snow or cold weather, but I went for many walks with her in the mountains. That was in Sun Valley. We kidded around, threw snowballs, and I was able to relax with her more than I had ever in my life with a woman. She reminded me of Ruth Elder. She was very much like Ruth, in the sense that she was interested in many of the same things I was interested in, and if she knew something I didn’t know she wasn’t overbearing or superior about it. In fact her belief, and mine too, is that the basis for any marriage is friendship of equals. Partnership. Sharing of knowledge.
Did you ever discuss with her the possibility of marriage?
It was out of the question. I came to the belief that the success of the relationship was based on the fact that we weren’t married and only saw each other on rare occasions. After I married Jean, I wasn’t free. And Helga was never free. Her husband would never have granted her a divorce. I didn’t mean to imply that she hated her husband. They were friendly, just incompatible. He smoked in bed, which is a disgusting habit – got the ashes all over the sheets, smelled up the house. And he resented her intelligence. He wanted to be in command and feel superior.
Then too, I often felt that she really didn’t want to get divorced, and if I’d suddenly said to her, ‘Helga, get rid of that dumb son of a bitch and marry me,’ she would have run for the hills. Because I would have been twice as difficult a husband as the one she was stuck with, even if I don’t smoke in bed. I’m no bargain in the husband department. Ask Jean.
I don’t have to. I believe you. Did her husband ever suspect that she was seeing you?
He knew that she was seeing somebody but I’m sure she never told him who. The kids found out after a while who I really was – you can’t keep children in the dark for too long a time, they have better noses for ferreting out mysteries than adults do. This wasn’t serious at first but unfortunately the kids were old enough to be, well, I’ll call it thrilled at the idea that Mommy was seeing someone like me – and also, unfortunately, not old enough to keep their mouths shut. They gabbed and the word got around, at least in a limited circle of people. I think finally what kept it from being accepted as the truth was that everybody believed I was a total recluse and incapable of having a real relationship with a female of the species. Sometimes it pays to be a professional eccentric. But I would never have been surprised in those years to pick up a newspaper and see some gossip columnist asking, ‘Who is Howard Hughes’s new secret love?’ or some sort of maudlin romantic crap like that. Thank God, it never happened. Helga herself was a completely discreet woman. She could arrange things on the q.t. almost as well as I could. Women often have that knack. If you care for a woman you call it discreet, if you can’t stand her you call it sly. Most judgments in life depend on where you stand and what mood you’re in when you make them.
Are you still seeing Helga?
If you don’t mind, I’ll save that story for its proper chronological place in this narrative – or maybe I won’t tell you at all. A little mystery has its place in every man’s life, don’t you think?
Cut me a little slack on this one. We’ll see.
29
IN THE TWA case they’d been trying to subpoena me for six months but they hadn’t been able to find me. I know how to vanish, I’ve had decades to practice. For the most part I was playing golf in Hawaii or traveling with Helga, both activities under another name.
We went to Paris. Helga took me to all the art museums and I developed a taste for the Impressionists. I even bought a dozen Monet, Degas, and Renoir oils, not because I thought they’d go up in value, although I suspect they will, but because I really liked them. I decided not to hang them anywhere – I was sure someone would get wind of it and try to steal them – so I wrapped them up in a lot of cardboard and paper and crated them and stored them in a locker I rented in Orange County, California. They’re not even in my name. I arranged for a bank to pay the rental forever, and I padlocked the storage locker, and I have the key. If I died tomorrow, no one would know what lock that key fit, and those paintings would sit there forever.
You’d better do something about that. You could be hit by a bus, and the world would lose a dozen important paintings.
Yes, I will. Remind me, will you?
Anyway, during that period when I was dodging the lawsuit, and Jean and I had separated, Helga and I rented a little house in France, in a village just outside of Aix-en-Provence. I set out to learn French. It’s one of the few things in my life I’ve tried hard to do where I failed miserably. One of the others is to become friendly with French people. They’re charming, and often cultured, but for a man like me they’re Martians. And, although they respect my eccentricity, in other respects they regard me as someone from Pluto.
Meanwhile the flood of subpoenas mounted, demanding my presence in court, and eventually I couldn’t ignore them. From Marseilles I flew back to the States and conferred with my lawyers. It was a dollars and cents proposition in many ways. If I appeared I might be able to win the case, or more probably the judgment against me could have been reduced to ten or twenty million dollars. As it was, I knew that if I didn’t appear it would cost me well over one hundred and forty million.
But at that point I rose to the occasion. I felt I had demeaned myself so much by this enormous involvement with the case, and with the fight for control of the airline, that I couldn’t go any further without destroying myself. There was something in me, thank God, that really fought against this self-destructive process that had been the theme of my whole life, and I clung to that something like a drowning man clings to a plank.
When it came time, when I was subpoenaed, the horror of it finally got to me. I made a vow then that I would not only not go into that court, but never go into any court again in my life, either to defend myself or to attack anyone else.