The secret of success - afternoon napping

National Review, July 10, 1995 by Taki Theodoracopulos

SIR Winston Churchill did it, even during the London blitz. Spanish and Portuguese gentlemen do it, not to mention Italians. Most upper-class Greeks used to do it -- although the practice has stopped because there are no real Greek gentlemen left. Gianni Agnelli, of Fiat fame, does it every day, as did Aristotle Onassis, Charles de Gaulle, Benito Mussolini, the Duke of Alba, Juan Peron, the King of Spain, and Lucky Luciano, among others.

I am referring, of course, to taking a nap in the afternoon -- the siesta, as our Spanish cousins call it, the civility that unites all southern Europeans and South Americans. I do not mean the two-minute cat-nap of the hurried executive in his limo between appointments. I mean the deep, dreamy, and refreshing postprandial sleep. When I was growing up in Greece during the war, even the German officers who had occupied our house fell into the habit. The beauty of sleep in the afternoon is that it makes it possible for one to stay out very late at night, yet go to work early in the morning. This is what my father did all his life. He would nightclub until 4 A.M., be up by 8 and to the office by 9, then sleep from 3 to 6 in the afternoon. Then back to the office and the club. And always feeling fresh. By the time I got to school in America, I was a true believer in the siesta, but life here knocked the habit out of me. As soon as I moved to Paris, however, I rediscovered it. My friend Porfirio Rubirosa, the greatest playboy of all time, husband of both Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton, once told me the secret of a man's success lay in sleeping in the afternoon. Rubi would get up early and work his ponies, have a lengthy lunch with friends, followed more often than not with an assignation, then drive to his house in St. Cloud, just outside Paris, sleep until 7 in the evening, then bathe, dress, and go back into Paris until dawn. The morning he died, July 6, 1965, he was on his way home from New Jimmy's at 6 A.M. when he hit a tree with his Ferrari. As it happened, he had not slept the previous afternoon because he and I were playing polo throughout the day. Body-rhythm experts insist that a short night's sleep and a siesta is the most efficient method of staying awake. The three times in my life that I did well during a tennis tournament, I had done just that. In London clubland, it is no good being a member of Pratt's or the Beefsteak. They have no facilities for a postprandial nap. White's does, as does Brooks's and the Turf. The trouble with London clubs is that one has to suffer male conversation before reaching nirvana. It is considered rather rude to walk in, speak to no one, and then sack out. Londoners who aren't club members, of course, sleep it off in Hyde Park as soon as the temperature goes above freezing. You can see thousands of them in deck chairs sleeping under their newspapers. The French, needless to say, manage to combine the siesta with their traditional adultery. Le cinq a sept means love-making, but is looked upon by the wife as siesta time. French politicians openly keep garconnicres, those romantic one-bedroom apartments near the National Assembly that they use for assignations. I remember once upon a time in Athens when real-estate offices would advertise garconnicres. All my father's friends had one, and some of them were even included in the telephone book in case of emergency. Wives turned a blind eye. The charismatic Fiat chairman, Gianni Agnelli, fabled Casanova, kept a beautiful, round one-room house with swimming pool, Villa Bonna, on top of a Turin hill. Although everyone knew its location, no journalists or photographers ever bothered him there. Siesta time is sacrosanct in the land of pasta. Ironically, Hitler was the only one among the war leaders who didn't have a regular siesta. But I won't go so far as to say that's why he lost the war. The siesta is one good habit Americans can copy from us Europeans. In fact it's time to wake up to the joys of the afternoon nap. Ronald Reagan did it throughout his presidency. Clinton does not. Just look at the results.