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all. . . . The Little Lord! I was eleven then and already famous. . . . But the awful time before that! Every morning the same hope when we took the bus to the studios . . . every night the same despair. . . . My mother often cried when we returned home, tired and dusty, to our dirty street. . . . Exhausted, she would puU me along, tears staining the cheap powder on her harried face always hidden behind a black veil... I will never be able to forget that..."
    A vision of my mother rose. There in the dark, damp kitchen of our apartment in the slums of Kingston Road: the peeling wallpaper, the wash hanging above the stove, the bleak yard outside, the room across the hall filled to overflowing with shoes. There a single lightbulb burned for the hunchbacked Polish shoemaker who hammered without ever looking up. I heard everything again: the blaring jazz from many radios, quarrelsome children and adults who beat each other, insulted each other in Polish, English, Czech and Genrian. I could smell everything, the dirt, the grease, the burnt cabbage.
    Sighing, my mother dropped into the old rattan chair and I thought I heard her weak and yet indignant voice: "You should have gotten that part, Peter. You were the best-looking and most talented boy there. But that little fresh kid's mother was making eyes at the producer ... whispered something to him, the pretty, common tramp ... I can't do that with my horrible face . . ."
    Natasha said, "Get up, please."

    I got up, lost in thought of the past. In the storm outside the reflecting window I thought I saw my pale mother, her back bent, her hair dull. I massaged her swollen feet and seemed to hear her: "And still, one day they will discover you . . . and we'll be rich . . . and we'll be happy .. . and I'll never have to clean floors any more . .." —"Yes, mother," I had answered, then, in that damp kitchen, "and we'll find the best doctor, and your face will be again as beautiful as it was."
    Natasha stood before me now. "Put one foot close to the other. Closer. Toe next to toe, heel to heel. Close your eyes." I hesitated. "Don't be afraid, I'll catch you if you should become dizzy. That's good. I'll count to ten now. One . .. two . . . three . . ."
    There I stood with tightly closed eyes. I had the sensation of weightlessness as if I were floating, flying, weightless. And again I heard my mother's voice and saw her standing in the burning hot sand, in the burning sun of the studio grounds. "Nothing again! And nothing again! And tomorrow we have to get out of our apartment!" She sighed deeply. "It's your fault! Only yours! You were sullen at the studio! You glared at Mr. Stevens."
    "That is not true!"
    "And j^ou talk back to me?" She had slapped my face then in 1930, right, left, right, and today, in 1960 I sensed again the burning sting of those thirty-year-old slaps. "There . . . and there . . . and there ... I" Only seconds later to press me sobbing close to her thin body, covered by her sweat-dampened dress. "Oh, God, what did I do? Forgive me, Peter, please forgive me, I am so despondent!"
    Now I became dizzy. I swayed. And once more I saw my mother. The best surgeons in America had treated her. Now the skin of her face was smooth and natural— as long as she did not laugh. She had not laughed in a long time. Her body seemed to have shrunk, her head seemed tiny on the large, white hospital pillow. And once

    more I heard the terrible, almost unintelligible whisper which came from the cancer-ridden throat. "Those crooks, they have made millions from your films . . . now you are too tall for them . .. too adult .. . but wait ... just wait, they'll come for you again ... you'll be famous again ... I know it.. . I've always known ..."
    ". . . seven . . . eight. . . nine . . ."
    I did not sway any more; now I fell into Natasha's arms. I clung to her and cried out, "Hold me! I'm falling."
    Natasha held me. I could smell the fragrance of her hair, her perfume, I was conscious of her