Everybody's Autobiography (21 page)

After all it is very simple, we are on the earth and we have to live on it and there is beyond all there is and there is no extending it because after all there it is and here we are, and we are always here and we are always there and any little while is a pleasure, and a pleasure is a pleasure or yes it is a pleasure is a treasure. Any way my aunt Fanny did always count by one and one and she still does and she still can manage to have everything come out the way it should by the simple process of counting one and one. I saw her when I was in Baltimore and she had again won by counting one one one.

So then there was the Keyser counting money and the Stein counting money and they all like to spend money, unless you can really have the pleasure of being a miser there is no pleasure like the spending of money, and it is hard to be a miser, a real miser they are as rare as geniuses it takes the same kind of thing to make one, that is time must not exist for them. There must be a reality that has nothing to do with the passage of time and it is very hard for any one to have that in them, not hard almost impossible, but there is no way of having it unless you have it, I have it and so had Hetty Green, oh yes.

There was no opposition in knowing all the family and the families in Baltimore none at all. How could there be any opposition after all the opposition had been. Leo went to Harvard and I went to visit him. And then I went to Radcliffe. They are foolish in Radcliffe at least it seems so when they send me their printed anything. When I was at Radcliffe it was not Radcliffe it was the Harvard Annex and living in a boarding house was interesting and knowing a whole new lot whom I had never seen before, it is a thing that is so natural and yet is it natural, that you know a whole lot of them that you never knew before. The landlord at the boarding house was funny, he sat at the end of the table and he did not like low lights, he said if they had another light like that he would be in total darkness. He did not say funny things. His wife was a very
good boarding-house keeper, I think he kept an employment agency, we did not know it then but still we must have or perhaps not. Everybody was New England there. I was there for four years.

Well anyway when I wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas for the first time I received really a quantity of fan letters and also for the Four Saints. I was always reading something and I never wrote any fan letter to any one why should I have been so pleased when they wrote to me but I was.

It is natural to believe in superstitions and hand-reading and predictions. I like hand-reading better than predictions, predictions are a little more frightening. Well anyway there was the summer before we went to America and we were not at all certain we were going. There was every reason for not being certain.

Well anyway I am reading and rereading the book I wrote after being in America, The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind and I would not have written it if I had not gone to America and that would have been a pity anybody can know that. So we did go to America but first we spent the summer in Bilignin and it began badly, there was Trac.

Trac was our first Indo-Chinaman and he loved us and we loved him. I imagine that often happens with anything although Nyen who came later was better to be sure he drank, but you cannot have everything.

Francis Rose is now in Indo-China and he has just sent me all the drawings and water colors he has made there and he has made drawings of Indo-China boys he had as servants and he says on the back of them a Chinese boy probably from the island of Hanau went away first day.

Annamite boy sent by the Cochin China government house. He had worked many years with the governor and had been personally sent by the governor's wife. He went as far as Phnen Pararge with me and then I had to send him back knew nothing about clothes. Placed all empty bottles and cigarette tins in cardboard boxes old
empty tubes of tooth paste. He was aged forty and when I returned to Saigon he brought me flowers and asked to be taken back.

Annamite boy stayed a day or two was not bad but knew nothing about being a valet was formerly engineer but smoked opium which makes it impossible to keep them.

Anig boy Mother Tonkinoise traces of Lo Lo in facial construction. Silent and willing but quite untrained could not leave Saigon and could not speak French.

Beri Annamite boy pleasant but lazy from Hui lasted two days.

So Trac was our first Indo-Chinaman since then we have had so many that we can not remember all of them but Trac was the first one. He went to the country with us and we all enjoyed eating the Chinese patty he made which is delicious for a picnic, and a Chinaman even an Indo-Chinaman is always pleasant to have with one and so we had Trac. Carl Van Vechten photographed him and so did the Kiddie but they came early to see us before Trac had left us. It was pleasant beginning the summer in Bilignin.

The other evening Francis Picabia was here with his son Poncho almost twenty-three. Poncho complained that his half and illegitimate brother Lorenzo was going off to be a sailor on a sailing boat, how can he said Poncho confine himself to a boat. After all said Francis Picabia you are confined to the earth and possibly the air how can you like being confined to it. Well anyway more and more we like Bilignin we are not confined to it but we do like it. So Trac began the summer with us but really we knew he would not like it. How could he since there could be phantoms in Bilignin when there was none any more in Indo-China since the war. Anyway coming down and settling in was everything and then Carl came, just for twenty-four hours and he made ninety photographs but he did come and we met him. Trac has never forgotten him naturally we never have but neither has Trac.

Trac was with us in Bilignin the summer before we went to
America, you have to think it over in detail to know whether it is two years ago or a year ago or longer, it might just as well be.

I have time to meditate longer but that does not matter because once again now I am sitting to a portrait painter, I sit and he sits and we do not talk together, I look out over the roofs and sit not very comfortably and he draws to get acquainted with my portrait, it is not that he says it. It is interesting me to do it again. Yes again.

I come back again from America and then a year or so later I am sitting again to a painter.

Trac anybody can remember what Trac is, nobody has seen him lately but that does not matter. Trac is always faithful to his memory, and his memory is being present ever after.

And so Trac went with us to Bilignin and was there with us when Carl Van Vechten came with Mark Lutz or rather when William Rogers came first. William Rogers was the Kiddie who was with us in Nîmes when the war was. We had not seen him again and now we saw him, it was nice seeing him. Later much later when we saw him and his wife in New England and she had set fire to the gas oven in the kitchen he said let it be a lesson to you but this was only what his grandfather would have said when it happened and the Kiddie did really say it. However. We were glad to see him very glad to see him. We always at least I always and then Alice Toklas always well anyway we always tell everything. Anybody can only some do not. We did and we do and so we told the Kiddie everything about going to America and how we could not go. It really was getting very exciting that we could not go, it excited us and it was an exciting thing to tell.

The Kiddie had been with us in Nîmes he had come to Nîmes not because he knew about us, they naturally did not know about us then but he came there because he wanted to see the Pont du Gard that the Romans had built over the river Gardon.

We saw him then every day and he went with us and then he
went away, he wrote to us and we wrote to him until the war was over and then he never wrote again.

Then so many years after when Four Saints the opera was played in Hartford he wrote all about it and all about himself and we were pleased and we told him so and he said he was coming to France and could he come to see us and we said it would give us a great deal of pleasure and it did give us a great deal of pleasure and he came to see us in Paris.

I did not remember what he looked like I never do remember but he did look as he had looked only he looked older. We talked all that evening and we liked him, you never can tell but we did like him naturally he liked us and we talked about everything not anything as it happened but we talked about what we said was everything. We were leaving for Bilignin the next day and he said he would come down. It is always very difficult to know whether you should say up or down, going anywhere, everybody has their own feeling about that. Some Americans who live in Russia were here last night and when they talk about Russia they say he is coming out or going in, they are not going to or from but in or out. Well everything means something even if it is only a habit. My father always used to complain of my brother Leo that a great many things he did were only a habit. Well.

The Kiddie came to Bilignin.

Carl Van Vechten and Mark Lutz had already been. When they were there Carl was mostly photographing but we did tell about going to America and quarreling. Carl did not say anything he never does if you tell him about quarreling, he says if you behave correctly well if you behave correctly not that there is no quarreling but quarreling is not existing, and indeed nobody knows anything about that once it is all over but if you do quarrel then once it is all over only it does go on. Well anyway we had a good time and Mark Lutz was nice to Basket and Pépé, and after Basket had his photograph taken nobody paid any attention but Pépé and
then Pépé had his taken. Basket just now and for the first time is loving a dog and her name is Sugar, perhaps that is why he loves her, he is a poodle and she is an elk hound, and will it be a next time or not, an elk hound is about the same size as a poodle but otherwise there is no resemblance. After January we will know.

So after Carl and Mark were there America was not any nearer or any farther.

And then the Kiddie came otherwise known as William Rogers. I suppose there is something in a name there was Billy the kid, and we had William the Kiddie. All right he came.

After he was there while he was there we took him everywhere. We always had taken him everywhere.

That is when he had been with us in Nîmes during the war, the nineteen fourteen war which was pretty well now forgotten and anyway it was pleasant to have him.

He stayed two days and then he had to take a train. On taking him to the train the tire broke down and it was just outside of Bilignin and so we came back again.

When we were waiting for the next one we told him everything we had not told to him before but now we told him we told him how we were not going, not going to America, and how we had quarreled with Mr. Bradley and he said he could see that it could be arranged and arranged as I wanted it, not as they wanted it. We always believe every one as we listen to them. We believed him. It was pleasant believing him and then he caught the next train.

Trac had been very pleasant all this time Trac the Indo-Chinaman and each one had photographed him as well as us and everything. And now we were alone in the country and nobody was photographing.

Trac did not go out in the evening, that is to say he did not like to go out in the evening because if he did it might be frightening and he began to talk about everything. He naturally always had talked about everything Chinamen always do, but he talked about
just that just then that after all he did not go out in the evening.

To be sure in Belley there was a family the mother was an Indo-Chinese the father a Frenchman, and there were a lot of children. Belley is small but we had never known about them but Trac found them. Even so they were not really a comfort to him so he said and he did not go out in the evening.

And then he began to talk about having a comrade with him. Yes we said. But will he come, well no said Trac he will not not when I tell him how it is about not going out, yes but when there are two of you you can go out we said well anyway said Trac it is very distracting and I do not work well when I am distracted, yes we said but you said you would, yes he said well I will write to my comrade again.

Three days after he announced the comrade was coming. That is fine we said tell him to telegraph the train by which he is leaving and we will go and call for him we said. Yes said Trac here is the letter. Yes we said but this is written by a Frenchwoman she is writing for him, no said Trac that is the comrade, what said we, yes said Trac that is the comrade. Oh no we said not at all, and I said, if I want a Frenchwoman I will choose her, not for me said Trac, no I said no you have to telegraph her off I said, it is too late said Trac she has her ticket, well telegraph it off we said, I have no address says Trac besides she has started. Well I said come on we will meet her and Trac and I went to meet her. We met her. She was the largest fattest Bretonne I have ever seen and dear me. Well there we were. And little by little Trac began to go out of an evening and leave her. He could go out in the evening if he left her behind him. And then he said he thought he would go away altogether and leave her and then he would come back again, not at all, we said if you want to go you will go together. And they did go together but Trac always comes back again and he loves us and we love him.

And so we were without anybody and we have to have somebody.

Two came.

It was funny.

When we had taken Trac another Indo-Chinaman wanted to come. I liked him he looked like a Chinaman and he was sad. Alice Toklas went to telephone for his references. We had already decided about Trac but then when they come you talk to them and think some time you will have them.

The reference was some one whose mother an Englishwoman had had him in the South. He was the best Indo-Chinaman she had ever had and she had had many of them but he left and after he left others of his compatriots said that he was a communist. Well perhaps that might make a difference and perhaps it might not. Well anyway we had taken Trac. I like to keep things so we had kept his address. And now that Trac left we wrote to him that is Alice Toklas did.