Inventors

Version en Español

A couple of weeks back I wrote a column about Peter Beard (“How I never met Peter Beard”) which received a very warm reception from my readers, coupled with a heap of charming commentary. Probably more due to the man’s persona than my writing skills. I also got a few and unexpected pleasant surprises. A Chilean reader told me she had met the man (the lucky woman. I was pea green with envy) and another, this time a reader in the US, wrote that she knows his daughter Zara. Delicious tidbits of trivia and one more reason to write. This unusual response also told me that people are always very curious about the invented lives of adventurers and artists. And Beard’s life snugly fits that mold.

Romain Gary is another invented life. The definitive version of the invented life. He lived and died under a name he was not born into, his date of birth is a matter of speculation, and the place where he was born changes. Sometimes it’s Wilno, sometimes Moscow, depends on the great man’s whim. Fair to say in those days it was hard to tell Russia from Biolorussia or Lithuania. He is born a poor Jew but claims to also being Christian Orthodox or Catholic. His parents are married but he goes under his mother’s name. Mina Kacew has extraordinary plans for her only son and a blind faith in his exalted destiny. Nothing seems impossible. Living as penniless refugees in Nice, she nevertheless enrolls Romain in an expensive school she cannot afford and enters him in tennis tournaments when he’s never held a racquet in his hand. Small detail. At age thirteen she tells him: “You will be a writer. You will be a diplomat. You will be a hero. You will be famous. You will be loved”.

All these will come to pass.

During the war he joins de Gaulle’s forces in England and flies as a Polish pilot. He writes his first book, “A European Education” in English (he speaks French, Polish and Russian) in longhand, on his lap, while flying missions. After the war he gets the highest decorations and is appointed Consul in Los Angeles. His first literary success (“The Roots of Heaven”) brings fame and fortune but his most endearing book is “Promise at Dawn” which narrates his early life with Mina and holds the key to some of Gary’s secrets. Not all. He goes on to win the Goncourt prize. Twice.

Rich, eccentric, with Slavic traits -he insinuates having Tartar blood- he’s a ladies man. He gets married a second time to beautiful actress Jean Seberg, Otto Preminger’s discovery and fragile protégée. They will have a son. He will write a film scenario for her: “The Birds come to die in Peru”. Wrong film. They divorce. Jean commits suicide in 1979. Possibly. Gary commits suicide in 1980. Definitely. A tragic end that Mina failed to predict but one that fits Romain Gary’s unexpected larger-than-life destiny. Perfectly.