Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris Page A

vaccinations—even meningitis. I did only yellow fever and tetanus, but she did everything. If a person knows she’s sick, she would not go through all those vaccinations. Audrey led a healthy life, lived in the country, went to bed early. She was very careful. We were not protective enough towards her because she was always so healthy. People didn’t think there was any reason to worry about her.” 120
    At the beginning of October, Cataldi stopped by Audrey’s room in Nairobi’s Intercontinental Hotel to say farewell before she left Africa for her press obligations in Europe. “When I hugged her,” Anna recalls, “I was scared. I had a shiver. She said, ‘War didn’t kill me, and this won’t either.’ But I had the feeling that sooner or later, war kills you. She was so skinny. I felt something was really wrong.”
    In their last conversation there, Cataldi recalls, “She told me what shocked her more than anything was Kismayu, because every child was dead. She said, ‘I have nightmares. I cannot sleep. I’m crying all the time.’ She had seen a lot of terrible things with UNICEF, but she broke in Somalia. I went back in a state of shock myself.” 121 John Isaac, too, felt “it took a heavy toll on somebody as sensitive as Audrey,” adding that “I’m still recovering from Rwanda. I had to go for therapy. I couldn’t function. I was totally stunned.”
    Cataldi claims Audrey’s beloved maid Giovanna “hated UNICEF” for its harmful impact on Audrey’s health. “Andrea Dotti also felt it was UNICEF’s fault in a way,” Cataldi says, “because when Audrey started to look bad, everybody just said, ‘Oh, she looks terrible because she is emotionally stressed.’ Robert once asked me, ‘Do you think I made a mistake in letting her go?’ I told him, ‘You didn’t make her go. She had a need to go. She would have gone even if she had known that she had only a year to go.’ She told me, ‘I have this obsession because of the children.’ ”
    In a dark corner of the New York restaurant where she is recounting those last days, Anna Cataldi kneads her handkerchief and takes a minute to compose herself before concluding:
    â€œI witnessed a human being—the famous Audrey Hepburn—at the moment she had everything she wanted. She finally had the right man. She had a beautiful home. She said, ‘I would like to take a year and enjoy my garden, my house, Robbie, my children.... I worked since I was twelve years old. Now it’s time to rest.”’

    Audrey Hepburn’s drawing of an Ethiopian mother and child, 1990 UNICEF card.
    Doris Brynner expresses a similar view:
    â€œShe certainly did her job. She did get everything a human being could do for UNICEF. It was even more physically exhausting than making movies and much more emotionally involved. Whenever she came back here to Switzerland, all she wanted was to stay at home. She was going to give up the United Nations. She was tired—emotionally and physically drained.” 122
    To Alan Riding of The New York Times Paris bureau, Audrey said, “I decided to do as much as possible in the time that I’m still up to it. Because I’m running out of gas.... I’ve done it on a constant basis because I know I cannot keep it up for long.” 123

AUDREY HEPBURN 1929-1993
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    Our huckleberry friend
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EPILOGUE
    AUDREY HEPBURN’S epilogue is contained in the continuation of her work on behalf of the world’s children. To obtain more information or make contributions, please contact the Audrey Hepburn Hollywood for Children Fund, 4 East 12th Street, New York, N.Y., 10003 (212-243-5264) or the Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund for UNICEF, 3 UNICEF United Nations Plaza (#H6F), New York, N.Y., 10017.

FILMOGRAPHY
    1. NEDERLANDS IN ZEVEN LESSEN [DUTCH IN SEVEN