"VIOLETTA"...

I came across this delicate, little clump of violets late last winter and was instantly reminded of another ghost story... a very puzzling one about a very puzzling girl by the name of Violetta (Violet).




My lasting image of Violetta is her crying while sitting in the plush, red and silver vinyl cushioned bench of an old diner in lower Manhattan.  Smoking a clove cigarette between reapplying lipstick and powder, Violetta then deposits another dollar into the wall-o-matic juke box and presses selection 5E four more times... the weepy classic "Don't Cry Out Loud" as her tears fall into her coffee cup.  Violetta then gives out an enormous sigh that could be heard across the river in Jersey, while posing in her reflection of the diner window (like a mirror) as if she was doing a screen test for a film studio.

I have never met another character like "Violetta" in all of my adventures in New York City.  Someone who had so much melo-drama going on constantly, without anything ever really happening.  She was always done up like a modern day version of one of her many idolised "B" actresses such as a very frantic Judith Evelyn, an icy Jan Sterling or her personal favorite... a dark, mysterious Faith Domergue and all of them acting out in any moody 1950s film noir mystery or an episode of the Twilight Zone or Hitchcock.  She had short black hair (but often wore wigs, veils and hats, changing her appearance to great effect), chestnut, brown eyes and a slightly sardonic smile.  "V"'s typical "costume" was to wear many layers of black clothes and always set the "costume" off by wearing something purple, like a lavender scarf, gloves or an amethyst ring or bracelet. She loved the old film noir movies and the femme fatales that starred in them and was constantly referring to and emulating these actresses that most people had never heard of.
     We met the self appointed, mysterious femme fatale of the lower east side back in the day while hanging out in the diners of lower Manhattan that she haunted after hours... and true to her celluloid heroines she was sitting in a booth crying, stirring up her own tempest in a tea cup (sans any movie set or any real film rolling).  She just suddenly became a permanent fixture in the late night scene with us after that... no questions asked.  "V"  became one of those "B" movie queens that would appear out of nowhere, disappear again and then reappear mysteriously for the several years that we hung out together.

Never before or since have I ever met anyone so filled with conflicting contradictions and melo-drama with no foundation to support it or back it up.  Violetta would constantly be avoiding or hiding from a new paramour that we never saw or met,  they were always a shadow that we missed.  Only my former radio partner Rory Dee Koonschwanz (who's impressive track record included being fired by then boss designer Charles James on national television in between a tug of war with Salvadore Dali on the elevator of the St Regis hotel over a giant Sunflower) could compete with "V" in the three Ds...  Delusion, drama and detours.  Only these two could be one and a half hours late to meet you at a coffee shop that was only one half of a block from their apartment because of some unexplainable, urgent incident.  They would chatter, stammer and spin like a frustrated, mynah bird in heat, all over really nothing at all.  Violetta however was the biggest enigma because we never really found out where she lived or where she came from, before she disappeared forever...  after another crying stint at a diner by the Hudson river in the winter of 1994.


  Wandering souls down on the lower east side  

                             
It was a beautiful Autumn day... but not for Violetta it wasn't.  She made it seem as if it was pouring rain out... and only on her.  We were supposed to meet that noon and she told me to wait in front of a certain building on Ludlow street, where she "lived" (yet another mysterious, temporary address).   I arrived on time and the little storm cloud said a quick hello and to wait for her on the stoop,  as she had left her grape colored purse upstairs by mistake.  I started to lose my patience after twenty minutes, the breeze was chilly so I stepped up and pushed the front door... it opened.  Another ten minutes went by so I started to climb the stairs searching for her apartment and whereabouts.  I noticed a door half way open on the third floor so I walked over and peeked into the space.  I heard "V" talking on the telephone so I knew that it was her place... or was it?  The small, dimly lit apartment looked like it was inhabited by a very old lady.  There was a bright yellow Formica and chrome kitchenette and what looked like home made  doilies on the backs of the shiny chairs.   There were overgrown snake plants in 1950 style green rectangular planters in the old, weathered windows, framed by lace curtains.  All of the appliances and chachkas looked like they had been here since the 1950s,  albeit the apartment was immaculate.  I could not imagine that Violetta's home would look like this.  "V" saw me from the hallway, put down the receiver (a bright red rotary phone) and rushed over to me nervously.  She was very upset that I had entered the building and the apartment and she pushed, shoved and rushed me down and out of the building like we were cat burglars...  I was confused as to why she seemed to be afraid to remain in the apartment,  but that was that,  for the time being.  She never asked me to meet her there again.

The months and drama went by as Violetta was forever avoiding secret lovers who were harassing her...  all unseen to us.  There was Roman, Pietro and Luc among many others.  Poor "V" was swirling in a whirlpool of worldly suitors.  We never actually met any of these clandestine romeos and the mini dramas continued like a series of bad B movies being shown in a drive in theater.  We went through many dramas together until one fateful night when Violettas performances came to a mysterious close...  way, way off Broadway.
   The end came just before New Years Eve of 1994 when Violetta called me from yet another diner in downtown Manhattan.  She had just narrowly escaped being forced into an elopement with Francois, a music producer from Paris and was frantic to talk about it.  I swung by the diner on the way to my friends apartment in Battery Park city.  The wind by the river was wicked and unforgiving as I was flung into the old trailer style diner by it with great force.  There was "V" on her throne, overly made up and pancaked to death, smoking a clove cigarette and crying into her signature coffee cup.  She was also singing along to her one selection which she had on repeat play...  the classic tear jerker "Heart breaker".  She looked very Ruth Roman circa "Down 3 Dark Streets" that night and kept adjusting her lilac coloured scarf as she wept softly.  It seemed to be her "pie in the sky", but a very bitter pie made of acidic rhubarb and sour cherries.  She sobbed another tale of melo-drama to me and all I could do was give her a hug and wish her a Happy New Year...   I would never see Violetta again and I still felt like I knew her even less than I did when I met her three years before.   It was like a scene from the classic film "The Lady Vanishes".  She disappeared forever...  but why?

Next Summer Lower East side...

I found myself on Ludlow street seven months or so after Violetta's disappearance.  I looked up and realized I was at the doorstep of the very building that I met her at on that one odd day,  that was supposedly her residence.  I decided to take a chance and ring the doorbell of the apartment number that I remembered from two years before.  There was no response, I tried again.  All of a sudden what appeared to be the superintendent of the old tenement building stepped out to greet me.  He asked who I was looking for.  I responded a young girl named Violetta who had lived there in that apartment at least two years before.  The super told me that the only tenant from that particular apartment was an elderly woman by the name of Mrs Entemann who had lived there for over forty years. She had just gone into a nursing home and the apartment was being readied for the new tenant.  He told me the name of the home where she at now.  I called the next day and Mrs Entemann seemed confused by my questions on the telephone.  I told her that i had been in her apartment with a girl named Violetta several summers before and I described her yellow kitchen set and snake plants. She was flabbergasted as she had no idea who Violetta was.  There was dead silence and I heard her gasp and breath heavy.  She asked me to describe "Violetta" and I did in detail.  Mrs Entemann started to weep.  It seems that she had a great niece who was institutionalized and who would visit her once a month as an out patient.  "Sharma" had been a lonely girl who lost her parents young and lost herself in a world of fantasies and illusions, she could not function in the outside world.  She had gone missing during a fire in the ward back in 1991 that destroyed several buildings and was presumed dead with several other patients.  Mrs Entemann went on to describe Sasha finishing with...  and she loved the color purple.  I dropped the receiver from the payphone that I was calling from on avenue C.   All of a sudden the picture became clear, the made up dramatic scenarios and the imagined Casanovas.  The poor soul was still living in a fantasy world even on the outside of the institution walls that she escaped from.  I was deeply saddened by this tragic revelation...  Where would she go? What would she do?  She was a gentle spirit that just seemed to want to live in a dream, or better yet live a life of fantasy acting out in an endless dream of a series of film noir movie scenes.  Violetta and/or Sharma were now seemingly gone forever, or were they?


Violetta disappeared Winter of 1994.
Last seen in a diner on the lower east side

Copyright February 2017 @ by Fritz Von Ludwigslust
All Rights Reserved.