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Breathless
By Ariela Bankier
Tags: Alexandre Diego Gary 

PARIS - It was only at age 14, when the beloved nanny who had been like a mother to him was on her deathbed, that Alexandre Diego Gary, the only son of acclaimed writer Romain Gary and actress Jean Seberg, discovered his true age. "All of a sudden Eugenia told me the truth; that I was really a year-and-a-half older than I thought. When I was born, my mother was in the middle of shooting a movie and, according to the contract, she wasn't supposed to give birth then, and her divorce from her first husband wasn't finalized yet either, so they just hid the whole thing," says Gary with a broad smile.

This is just one of many stories in the life Gary lived in the shadow of his famous parents - a life shrouded in secrets, crises and half-truths. Now, almost 30 years after their suicides, Gary has written a brave autobiography, "S. ou L'esperance de vie," published last month in Paris. In it, he reveals the memories that haunted him for years, gnawed away at him and doomed him to a life of depression, alcoholism and self-destruction.

Was it like vomiting up the story from inside you?
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"Almost, yes. I would have used a different word perhaps, but yes, that was the feeling. Like a catharsis."

Gary achieved this catharsis through a meticulous, almost obsessive exposure of the numerous crises he has been through - from his childhood in the shadow of a mentally fragile mother and the literary scandals of his father's career, through his adulthood, in which he continued down the same path of pain and depression, seemingly precisely dictated to him by his parents. But while Gary is unsparing about himself and does not flinch at describing the most unflattering details - such as his night wanderings among Barcelona brothels or a stint in a psychiatric ward brought on by alcoholism - he treads much more carefully when it comes to his parents' dignity, especially that of his mother.

Throughout the book, Gary doesn't mention his parents' names or the names of others, making do with an invented nickname or a first initial, a method he calls the alphabet of the dead. "It was too hard for me to say the full name," he says. "It was easier this way. There were parts that were very difficult for me to write, like the parts about my mother and her death. So I took a deep breath and kept going."

Many biographies have been written about his parents, his father in particular, but in Gary's view, most do not do justice to his mother's memory. "A lot was written about her, with disrespect," he explains. "And the most important thing to me was to preserve the memory of the dead ... There are parts of the book where I could have spoken in a cruder or rougher way, but I didn't want the passages where I talk about my parents to be like that. I wanted to treat them with respect, with decency, and it was very hard. I was constantly wondering, do I have the right to say this? To write this?

"It was particularly hard when it became time to publish the book. For six months, I'd been holding on to it, unable to decide whether I could publish it, and after six months I suddenly realized that I had to publish it immediately. I rushed to the publisher with the revisions to the text and I knew the time had come to let the book out into the world."

Growing up alone

Gary's father, Romain Gary (1914-80), was one of the most prominent and beloved French writers of the 20th century. He was born in Russia to a Jewish family and raised by his mother after his father, whose identity is uncertain, abandoned the family. During World War II, Gary fled from France, became a pilot in the British air force and was awarded the Order of Legion of Honor for his valor in combat. He later became a diplomat and journalist, eventually earning world renown as an author, winner of the Prix Goncourt. He published more than 30 books, some under his real name and others under the pseudonym Emile Ajar, sparking one of the most notorious scandals in the literary world.

In 1962, he married the American actress Jean Seberg and the couple had one child - Alexandre Diego. Seberg, who came from a conservative family of Swedish extraction and was born and raised in Iowa, was considered one of the top actresses in the French New Wave cinema, best known for her role in Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless."

His famous parents' busy lives (his father traveled the world as a reporter for Life magazine while his mother spent most of the year moving from one film set to another) meant that the young Gary grew up practically alone. Only after his nanny died, when he was 14, did his father permit the boy to interrupt him at any time while he was working.

Gary has few memories of his parents. "I wish I had more, but they weren't around most of the time. My mother was filming movies all over the world, and my father was traveling and writing. I have memories of my mother from when they were shooting in Los Angeles or Oregon [where Seberg shot a film with Clint Eastwood; the two had an affair on the set, which was one of the reasons for Seberg's divorce from Romain Gary]. I also remember the family vacations we spent in the house my father built in Majorca, where we were very happy; we swam together and laughed together. Just me and her," Gary recalls.

When Gary contracted rheumatism as a child, it was his nanny, Eugenia, who cared for him during the eight months he was confined to his bed. "It hurt a lot and I wanted to see my mother, but she wasn't there. And then she came back one day with this big and colorful football table. It was a wonderful present, but I would have preferred to have her there," he says without any hint of anger in his voice. "I can't ... I can't think of my mother except with tenderness and sweetness," he explains thoughtfully. "I never look at her pictures, I don't watch her movies. It's too painful. But if I happen to run across a picture of her once in a while, each time I find that she is more and more beautiful.

Although he was Jewish and dealt with Jewish topics and the Holocaust in his writings, Romain Gary did not try to maintain the Jewish heritage at home. "My father was not a devout man, he never spoke with me once about his Judaism or about Russia. He wanted me to be completely French." But on his desk Romain Gary kept a picture of his mother, along with a letter she wrote to him that ended with the words, "Be strong."

"My father didn't know if he was supposed to be strong for himself or against the rest of the world," says the son.

You were a little afraid of your father. Did he expect you to idolize him?

'I invented Ajar for you'

But the phenomenal success of "La vie devant soi" stirred up public interest that would not die down. The book was also awarded the Prix Goncourt, but since a writer is not allowed to win the prize more than once, Gary/Ajar was forced to decline on the advice of his lawyer, who was in on the secret. Of course, this refusal to accept the prize was that much more grist for the rumor mill surrounding the mysterious writer.

"The awful mess that arose in the wake of 'La vie devant soi' tormented my father and me as well. And worst of all was when he said to me, 'I invented Emile Ajar for you,'" says Gary.

Why did he say that?

"I've never been able to figure that out. On the one hand, I was pleased with what happened - I was 14 and I felt that it was a big honor to be one of the few who knew the secret. At first, it was also amusing, because Ajar was the most revered writer at the time, the most popular; everyone was talking about his innovative style. One time my friends were talking about Ajar in front of my father and my father winked at me and said, 'Yes, how I wish I was able to write like him ... ' At the same time, it was terrible. And I've never understood what he meant by that sentence."

The joke soon turned into a nightmare. "This fellow, Pavlovich, took over the character. He gave interviews without permission, he blackmailed my father. I remember the two of them screaming and arguing about it."

Even though things were spinning out of control, Romain Gary didn't give up the game. Instead, he upped the ante by writing (as Ajar) the book "Pseudo," which portrays Emile Ajar as a mental patient who denounces Gary to a psychiatrist (equating him, among other things, with Papa Doc's Haitian death squads) so crudely that Ajar's publisher, who of course was unaware that Gary was really behind it all, asked him to change the most extreme passages. Gary (as Ajar) refused. It wasn't until years later, in 1980, after Gary's death, that the whole truth was revealed in Gary's final and posthumously published book, "Vie et mort d'Emile Ajar" ("Life and Death of Emile Ajar").

Pavlovich did reveal the secret on a French television program, and in 1981 he published a book about his experiences entitled "L'homme que l'on croyait" ("The Man Believed [to be Ajar]"). The stunning revelation gained him worldwide fame, and Pavlovich went on to become a well-known author and editor who published five more books.

Love letter to the lost

Even though his mother's life was just as complicated, if not more so, than his father's, Gary remembers her as an almost ideal figure. "My mother was the total opposite of my father. She was the embodiment of sweetness," he says. "But she had a very hard life. People said she was paranoid because the FBI had files on her. But she wasn't paranoid - they really were monitoring her because of her ties to the Black Panther Party. They wiretapped her phone and poisoned her cats in Los Angeles, to hurt her and shake her up."

The FBI's campaign against the actress, who was known for her leftist views, reached its peak in 1970 when FBI officials spread a rumor that Seberg, then married to Gary and seven months pregnant, was carrying the baby of Hakim Jamal, a Black Panther leader. The accusations were given widespread media coverage in America and caused a major scandal.

"It was the biggest trauma of her life. That's when all her health problems started," says Gary. Seberg was hospitalized with premature labor; her baby girl died two days later. The family blamed the media for bringing on the early labor, while the media claimed that the fetus was harmed by the painkillers Seberg took.

"The dark fairy tales about my mother, the stories that say she was ill and addicted to drugs are very painful for me. My mother was one of the first people to understand that drug addiction is a disease and that addicts need help. She wrote a letter that was published in Liberation entitled "Love letter to the lost" that talked about drug addicts, and after that article there was a lot of misunderstanding about her. All the biographies written about my father portray her in a sick and negative light, but it's important for me to emphasize that my mother never took drugs. I've brought lawsuits many times in relation to this, unsuccessfully, to defend her reputation."

The baby's death did finally unhinge Seberg, who sank into depression. "My father, like a true gentleman, gave the baby his name, even though she wasn't his but the child of a lover, some Mexican revolutionary. At the funeral, they put the baby's body in a glass coffin to put an end to the rumors, so the journalists would see this was not the child of someone from the Black Panthers. Every year after that, on the anniversary of the baby's death, my mother tried to commit suicide."

Gary was just 8 years old at the time, but he vividly remembers the tension in the house. "Eugenia tried to keep me away from what was happening, to protect me. But I could tell that something was going on."

"She was so sensitive to issues like ecology, human rights and animal rights - she was very active on behalf of civil rights for black people. Like Jane Fonda, she wanted to help, and unfortunately she just fell into the arms of this Black Panther."

Again and again, Gary tried, as a child and then as an adolescent, to attract his mother's attention, but failed for the most part. During a family vacation in Majorca, for example, Gary felt jealous of a young man who was wooing his mother. He waited until she was far away and then pushed the suitor, who didn't know how to swim, into the pool. When he saw the man was about to drown, he jumped into the pool to try to save him, but almost drowned himself, until a worker on the estate heard their cries and rescued the two. Another time, Gary poured freezing cold water on a waiter who flirted with his mother in a restaurant.

You tried to protect your mother but, at the same time, you just wanted her to be present in your life and, when she was finally there and not off shooting a movie somewhere, you had to share her with the man of the moment.

"Absolutely, absolutely."

Did she understand these cries for help?

Gary stifles a sad smile. "She wasn't ... she wasn't very open to understanding that. She ... I don't think she really understood. She really needed to be with a man. She couldn't bear to be alone. The choices she made weren't always the best and toward the end of her life, she was with the wrong men; men who ruined her and stole from her everything she had."

When Gary was 17, his mother committed suicide. He was staying with friends in California at the time and learned of her death by chance, from a television report. "We'd been at some remote motel for three days, where there was no television, and during that time, in France, my mother disappeared. My father tried desperately to get hold of me, but there was no way he could find me. When I got back to the city, I happened to turn on the TV and then I saw a small picture of my mother. I remember the volume wasn't on. I just saw her picture and called my father right away and that's how I found out what had happened."

Seberg's body was discovered after an 11-day search, in her car, which was parked not far from her apartment in Paris. A huge quantity of painkillers and alcohol was found in her blood.

How does one deal with something like that?

"You suffer a lot for many years. And the worst thing is that for years, my father warned me this would happen one day - that she would kill herself one day."

That's a harsh thing to say to a child, even if it is true.

Now you're an adult

His mother's death shattered the 17-year-old Gary. But his father's suicide, less than a year later, broke him completely.

"I didn't at all expect that he would die. And when I found out that he didn't just die, but that he killed himself, it was the worst shock of my life, I thought I wouldn't be able to go on," Gary says quietly. Despite his father's lengthy bouts of depression, Gary says he never thought him capable of taking his own life.

"He was depressive, yes, for a whole host of reasons. He read a book about melancholia called 'Black Sun' and he wrote down all kinds of comments about it. I was used to seeing him go through such periods, but I never thought he would commit suicide. Before he died he said, 'I've said all I had to say.' He had the feeling that he was just finished."

Before his death, Romain Gary changed his will to grant his son full emancipation, even though he was still a minor, and to give him the rights to all his writings. "Originally, a friend of his was supposed to look after me, but he changed that. And the awful thing was that he waited ... he waited for my mother to die before he killed himself so as not to leave me alone with her."

In other words, he planned his death for a long time. Even before your mother killed herself?

"Yes."

When did he change his will?

"About eight months before his death. My father always wanted me to be a man, to be an adult. He was always saying things to me like, 'In Russia when a baby was born we'd say that he was already a year old.' He always wanted me to be older than I really was. When I passed the matriculation exam he said, 'Now I've accomplished what I always wanted. Now you're an adult.'"

Why was he so keen for you to be a grown-up?

"Because he wanted to go. And he wanted to know that I was strong enough to deal with life so that he could leave. Two days before he killed himself, he called a family friend and said to her, 'My son is grown now, he's ready.' He didn't realize what a shock his death would be for me."

His father's death put Gary into a terrible state. "I sank into a deep depression and I was haunted by a terrible sense of guilt. When I talked with other people whose parents had committed suicide I discovered they all talk about this feeling, they all ask themselves the awful question: Could I have done something to stop it? I spoke with a psychiatrist and he told me that I had to leave the apartment on Rue du Bac, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I kept telling myself, I'm leaving, I'm not leaving, I'm leaving .... I stayed there for a few years, and I thought about it obsessively. Maybe because leaving the apartment would be like leaving my parents."

Still 'the son of'

To this day, Gary does not keep pictures of his parents at home. "I don't want family pictures in silver frames, like the bourgeois families," he says. "Even without that, my family is present in every moment of my life."

His parents' deaths hurled Gary into a whirlwind of depression and anxiety, which he tried to dull with alcohol and a string of relationships; women he clung to in despair and to whom he devotes a substantial portion of his book. "Aube, for example, was the most significant person in my life at that time," says Gary. "She was a stable pillar in my life and always will be. She saved me."

"My love for Gabriele was based on a sensual passion, and she became an obsession for me. On the one hand, I wasn't able to disconnect from Aube, who had been so important to me, but at the same time, I desired Gabriele." When she left him, he sank once again into a severe depression. He left Paris and moved to Barcelona to get some distance from the object of his love, but his obsession for her did not fade. "I started drinking a lot. The pain I felt when she told me she was leaving me was so great that I started stubbing out lit cigarettes on myself. It hurt less to feel the physical pain. Now, when I look back, I know it was not a healthy relationship; it was neurotic," he says.

Many of his nights in Barcelona were spent roaming the city's most violent districts, dangerous streets teeming with prostitutes and drug dealers. Gary became a regular guest at the local brothels, not as a customer but as a friend. "I was searching for sympathy there, for warmth," he confesses. "I used to go there so often that I really got friendly with the girls. We'd have dinner together before they went out to work. I especially enjoyed trying to make them laugh, to inject a little happiness into their lives, because they were, naturally, quite depressed. It's ironic - the French term for prostitutes is filles de joie. But there's no joy in this line of work."

He assisted a few of the prostitutes financially, especially Josefa, a prostitute he met who raised her 14-year-old daughter alone until the girl was forcibly taken away from her by her late husband's family. Gary gave her money to hire a car and two bodyguards who accompanied her from Barcelona to Seville so she could take her daughter back. "Her story was very difficult, and that's why I helped her. We're still in touch. She works as a maid in a hotel now, and I'm still the guarantor for the rent on her apartment."

One night, during his usual wanderings, Gary came across a blonde woman who drew his attention. He followed her into one of the brothels with a particularly shady reputation. "This awful place on the worst street in Barcelona. The blonde went in there and I went in after her. I ordered the most expensive champagne they had because the rest of the alcohol they sold there was disgusting. I would sit there for entire nights, drinking and drinking and having conversations with my father in my head."

What did you talk about?

"I'd ask him why he left me, mainly," he laughs ruefully. "I stayed in that place a lot and it really pained me to see the girls who worked there, and the madam who used a club to chase away unruly men. And since my mother had taught me when I was very young how to make cocktails, I thought to myself, I'll buy this place and open a bar here. Why not? It was not a very good investment, but I bought it anyway and worked there. At the same time, I started another project, in another, much better area, near the university, a caf? that was also a bookstore and an art gallery."

What he remembers most from running the bar are the many fights he got into. "I needed that. I needed to vent my anger. It made me feel stronger, it gave me self-confidence and helped me attain peace with myself," he says.

In 1999, his depression and drinking led Gary to be hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, at the behest of one of his lovers. But within three days he had fled from the clinic. "It was horrible. There was no personal attention. They just gave us more and more drugs that put me in a daze." One night, Gary woke up in the middle of the night, confused and desperately thirsty. When he couldn't find a water faucet in his room, he drank the water from the toilets. After that, he decided to leave the institution.

Four years later, in 2003, following an incident in a caf?, Gary decided to seek professional help again. "I was sitting in a caf? at six in the morning, after I was unable to sleep, and my whole body was shaking. I was having a terrible anxiety attack and I ordered a gin and tonic to calm down, and then I suddenly realized I couldn't go on like this anymore. I called Aube and a psychologist friend of mine to come help me." This time, he spent several months in the hospital and began a long period of rehabilitation.

Today, seven years later and after lengthy psychotherapy, he is a different person. In January of this year he married for the first time and his first child, a girl, is due in mid-August. "In many ways I'm still 'the son of.' Even now, when I'm being interviewed because of the book, all the articles are about my parents, not me. It's still hard for me to say that I'm a person in my own right, but friends tell me this will change when the baby is born."

Because suddenly you'll be the father of, and not just the son of?

"Exactly."

Do you ever worry that you'll fall into the same family patterns? That you'll repeat your parents' mistakes?

"I want to be a very present father in my daughter's life. To spend as much time as I can with her. To protect her from this literary heritage, from the sadness of my parent's story. I don't want to be absent, like my parents were. As a child, I spent a lot of time with other families, with friends' families, so as not to be alone."

And in what way would you like to emulate your parents?

Gary is quiet for a little while. "You know, I'd like to give my daughter the sense of generosity that I got from my parents," he finally answers. "They were very generous. Both of them." W
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