The Caryatids

“Biserka isn’t doing much,” Inke said.

“We call her ‘Erika’ now,” said Montalban. “She broke her ribs. She’s still in a lot of pain.”

“Your Biserka is up to no good. Biserka has never been any good. She would never hold up her own part of anything.”

“I like to think of my Erika as a troubled girl from a severely disad­vantaged background,” said Montalban. “But, what the heck, yeah, of course you’re right, Inke: Biserka is evil.”

“Why her, John? The other one is the mother of your child.”

“Well, I love them all so very dearly, but… they’re so fierce and ded­icated and selfless and good! They frankly tire me! Biserka considers her­self a cauldron of criminal genius, but since she’s so completely self-absorbed, and so devoid of any interest and empathy for others­—motivated entirely by her resentment and always on the make—well, Bis­erka’s certainly the easiest to manage. There’s something abject about Biserka. I don’t have to negotiate that relationship all the time. Biserka is the one that I fully understand. And she needs me the most. Left alone in a room, Biserka would sting herself to death like a scorpion. She will always need her rescuer. She’ll always need a white knight to save her, she’ll always be in trouble, and she will always depend on me. That’s why I love her the best.”

“To love an evil woman means that you are evil.”

Montalban shrugged. “I like to think of myself as a deeply fallible man who is healthily in touch with his dark side.”

Biserka cast a shovelful of dirt over Radmila’s beautiful shoes. Rad­mila resolutely ignored her.

“Hey, I think I’m getting a blister!” Biserka whined, straightening and sucking at her fingers. “Why don’t we stop all this hard work and let the servants do it?”

“Get out of the way,” said Vera.

Biserka stabbed her shovel into a loose mound of dirt and departed the grave in a huff.

“You shouldn’t have said that to her,” said George mildly:

“Oh, so she has a hard life?” snarled Vera. “I’ve been digging up this island for ten years! Do you smell that fresh air from the hills? I built that fresh air.”

“You thought that was work?” Sonja demanded, incredulous. “Your ten-year vacation on a tropical island? I fought and I suffered! The air was black! The air killed people!”

Radmila was silky. “I hope you don’t expect us to praise you for worm­ing your way into the bowels of a totalitarian regime.”

“Listen to you,” shouted Vera. “You’re famous and rich! Even your daughter is famous and rich.”

“Vera, is it my fault that you missed out on life by dressing up like a skeleton?”

“At least I’m not like her,” shouted Vera, “a soldier’s whore who lifts her skirt for any man with a gun!”

Sonja scowled. “Like a Hollywood actress is the pillar of chastity? I don’t think our dirty skirts are any of your dirty business, Vera.”

“They’re going to kill each other now,” Inke told Montalban. “Those spades can be turned into weapons.”

“Any technology is a weapon. Go and stop them now, Inke.”  

“What, me? I’m a nobody.”

“That’s what I treasure about you. You’re a normal human being, and you’ve even got normal kids. Go and stop them, Inke. You must. We’ve got only a few seconds left. Go intervene, make them more normal. Hurry.”

“You do it.”

“I can’t. Don’t argue with me. Do it, go.” Montalban squeezed her shoulder, gave her a little push.

Inke somehow tottered into the midst of the sisterhood. They’d stopped heaving dirt into the grave and were hefting their shovels to bat­ter and slash.

Everyone in the crowd was silently watching the tableau. Even George was staring at her intervention. Yet George seemed unsurprised to see her jumping into the quarrel. He was even daring to hope for the best.

AFTERWORD The Caryatids: An Interview with Auteur Director Mary Montalban

…

MARY MONTALBAN: So, yes, clearly, the funeral was a great cathartic moment. My grandmother died twenty-six years ago. The death of that oldest clone freed the Caryatids to take on different lives.

ENTERTAINMENT INSIDER: We do know a lot about the Caryatids, but we rarely hear much about your aunt Inke.

MM: Well, no, of course not. Inke’s family, but she’s not in the Family­Firm.

EI: So: What on Earth did Inke do for them?

MM: Inke did something they could never do for themselves. Those of us who know them and love them best—we all know that they’re not in­dividuals. The Caryatids are a matched set—a broken, damaged set. Inke knew that, she sensed it. So—there at the funeral, in public—Inke convinced them that they should exchange their burdens. They could choose to abandon their own roles, and play the roles of the others in­ stead.

EI:Because Radmila was heartbroken. Sonja was defeated. Vera was hiding in some forest…

MM: Yes, they were miserable, but since they weren’t quite human, they did have other options. If they could see beyond despair, they could hold up one another’s burdens instead of breaking under their own.

EI:Cooperating. Like caryatids changing positions as they hold up some building. “Caryatids” being female sculptures that support build­ings on their heads. From ancient Greek architecture.

MM: I can see you’ve been studying.

EI: Caryatids, that’s not exactly a common title for an artwork.

MM: I know—but it all goes back to the ancient Greeks, doesn’t it? The Greeks were the first to write “history.”

EI: Ancient history seems to mean a great deal to your Family-Firm.

MM: It means. everything. It is everything… Those ancient Greeks, they would never give women a vote, but piling a building on a woman’s head, that was classical behavior for them.

EI: So the Caryatids collapsed, and yet, after that…

MM: They were all such capable, energetic, serious-minded women. Doing their impossible jobs in unbearable circumstances. Once they changed positions, they revived.

EI: As long as each clone was doing the impossible job that someone else should be doing, they each felt like they were on holiday.

MM: Well, of course that is part of their mythos: that elegant, neat solu­tion. They rotated their roles, smooth and easy, without ever missing a beat. But that was a neat solution for us, not for them. We who loved them—the various communities who took them in—in many ways, we made them behave in that way. We forced the issue. We all felt much happier when a new Caryatid arrived to save us from the ugly wreck of the old one. People insisted that they could do the impossible. Because we needed the impossible done. Obviously, it was impossible for them to switch roles without our collusion, but we gave them that because we benefited by it. It was our happy ending, not theirs.

EI: Critics say that Sonja was much better at playing Mila Montalban than the actual Mila Montalban.

MM:That’s a cheap shot at a fine actress, but… Well, Mila had no trouble running an