Only One Truth

Who is Maria?

I was born in Poland just when the Germans were bombing and marching into Warsaw. Their invasion swept away the elegant and gracious life my parents had known. The war spared none of us. I was the daughter of a famous Tibetan doctor of aristocratic lineage and a beautiful Russian mother, one of four children - and the only girl. My twin brother George and I were the last to be born.

The war had ended, but there was no freedom in Poland. We had the misfortune of exchanging one tyrannical invader for another. The only difference was that the Russians pretended to be our friends. It was a time when an imprudent word could cause a man to disappear in the middle of the night and never be heard from again.

So what could I tell people about my background? My father and mother never even mentioned that I was the daughter of Prince Zasogol, the last descendant of Ghengis Khan, as well as the personal physician to Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia, who had even baptized him into the Russian Orthodox faith an affirmation of loyalty to their adopted land.

My father and his great uncle did not look upon their conversion as an abandonment of their Buddhist faith, for Buddhism honors the truth and love in every religion. It wouldn’t be until years later, after I’d moved to Italy, that I learned about their extraordinary lives. My mother encouraged me to pursue dance training at the Warsaw Opera House, where I embarked on a successful career in ballet.

Once I’d won second prize in an international musical competition, I was a celebrity, my future in ballet seemingly assured. But I was growing increasingly restless. I was being oppressed from two different directions: the Communist regime on the outside and my tyrannical mother at home, who overshadowed all my attempts to break free. Actually, I don’t know which of the two was the more onerous, but I have the feeling that my mother won the contest. So, just before I turned twenty, I left Poland and went to live in Italy, never to return.

I was young and beautiful -- and hopelessly naïve – when I arrived in Rome in 1960. And though I had absolutely no idea how to go about selling myself in a job market--such a thing was unknown in Communist Poland--I was full of ambition and talent. No sooner than I could have possibly imagined, I found myself working in the film and TV industry.

This was the era of ‘La Dolce Vita,’ a time when the city had become transformed into Hollywood on the Tiber. In those days, I was working for directors like Fellini and de Sica; at night I was partying in the cafes on the Via Veneto, mingling with stars like Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Maximillian Schell and Roman Polanski. I’d ride through Rome in chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces and wind up at fashionable parties where champagne was free-flowing . The days were so heady with excitement that I barely got any sleep, but of course it didn’t matter.

Little did I know how my life was about to change as I embarked on a journey into the abyss a hole so dark and deep, that even today I cannot see any glimmer of light that would offer me any promise of relief...

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