Someone accuses her of playing Greta Garbo. But she's not offended, because she notes that the comparison is legitimate. Greta Garbo too led a severe and retiring life. Greta Garbo too dressed and wore her hair in a severe manner. Greta Garbo too surrounded herself with objects from the past. And until her death Greta Garbo lived not far from where she now lives, in this small circuit of elegant streets in midtown Manhattan.
She told a charming story about being a young writer in New York in the nineteen-sixties. At the time, she recalled, she'd had a chance to interview Greta Garbo—a mutual friend wanted to set it up. But Fallaci admired Garbo's fierce and elegant privacy, and didn't want to pursue the matter. And then one winter evening Fallaci was shopping at the Dover Delicatessen, on Fifty-seventh Street, and Garbo happened to be there:
“You couldn't not recognize her. She was Greta Garbo. She was dressed like Greta Garbo—with the hair, the glasses. And she was choosing chicken with extreme care. She would look at a leg and toss it back, then the breast, and so on. And I felt ashamed of myself that I was observing her. I went in the other aisle, and I remember I got a lot of things, because I wanted her to go out and not go by me.”
It was a rainy night and Fallaci had no umbrella. She recalled that Garbo, on her way out the door, stopped and held it open. “She said, ‘Here, Miss Fallaci.' I looked like a poor, pitiful bird.”
In silence, Garbo accompanied her to the door of her building. "I said 'Thank you, madam, how sweet of you.' And she answered 'You're welcome, Miss Fallaci. Have a good night.'"
Thanks To RubyRed
