Liberation (38 page)

Then Swami talked about grace and was so beautiful, so shining. He told me that he didn't feel he had ever gone through any particular spiritual struggles; Maharaj had made everything easy for him. “All those visions I had, Chris, I
never
felt I had really earned them.” As Swami said this, he positively shone with grace, he was the blessed one, the lucky one, and his luck was adorable. When I left I made an extra long prostration to him, and he said, “Get up now.” Maybe he was a tiny bit embarrassed, feeling that I was worshipping him. So I was, but it wasn't
him
.

This afternoon I have to go into that damned hospital. Amazing, how I hate the prospect. It isn't the prospect of pain. It isn't worry that this thing may prove to be more serious than I expect. It is basically my horror of The Hospital, the frontier post of death. I hate submitting to their rituals, all the more so because I am otherwise in the pink of health.

And then there is the pain of leaving Don, which is also symbolic; because the parting is actually only to be for two nights. But that too is a symbol of death—and he feels it instinctively, as I do. We don't speak of it but we are gentle together; we are more than ever The Animals on an occasion like this.

 

October 1 [Friday]
. I can't use my left hand properly until the splint and bandage have been taken off, which won't be until next Wednesday (October 6) at the earliest. So I'll write this in longhand now and type it up later.

When we got to the California Hospital, I was terribly depressed for a few minutes, because it was just exactly what I had been expecting. The lobby crowded with people waiting and looking as if they'd been waiting hours and hours, with a terrible impassive acceptance of delay and a stolid readiness for suffering. I wanted to send Don away, so that I could resign myself utterly to this death experience. But he wouldn't go; said he was going to see me settled into my room. His gentleness and sweetness made the experience all the more painful, because they made me
feel
, which was exactly what I wanted to stop doing; and yet, what a comfort it was to have him there!

But then, quite quickly, someone appeared to take me up to my room. And I had one all to myself and it was quite cheerful—very quiet, but with a pleasing view of the freeway viaducts in the middle distance and the traffic whizzing silently by behind the closed windows. The nurses were all real professionals, not the kind of stopgap help they had at the Cedars of Lebanon when I was there. The only bad thing was the food. But Don returned after supper bringing a great bag of fruit and we sat up all evening watching
The Best Years of Our Lives
on television.

I had sleeping pills that night and again next morning—the fact that I almost never take them pays off hugely on such occasions, I'm so beautifully easy to sedate. Also I had a calming shot of scopolamine, after which I felt relaxed enough for execution. This was just as well, for I had to wait quite a long time outside the operating theater, lying on my trolley, and then some more time inside, on the table, before Dr. Ashworth showed up. When he did, I laid my left hand on the chopping block, thinking, with dopey humor, of Cranmer and feeling that I was behaving with remarkable grace and style.
¹³⁸
The anesthetist, Dr. Musicant, told me I should have sodium pentothal with gas to follow. As he gave me the shot, he said “goodnight,” which I thought charming. The operation began at 11:50 a.m. and lasted a little over an hour. It is technically described as a “fasciectomy; palm.”

When I became clearly aware of things again, I was back in my room and there was Don, waiting. I felt so happy, seeing him there. I had known that he would be, of course—but at moments like this one you take The Loved One less for granted than usual—it was like returning from a long journey—I saw Don's marvellousness and his presence in my life as the beautiful miracle it always is.

I left the hospital later that same afternoon. Dr. Ashworth had said that I could, if my heart and blood pressure were all right. And they were; I knew that they would be. I felt rather vain of my good physical condition. We had supper at the Fuji Gardens. My hand was in a cast and my arm in a sling.

Not long after my return home, I got a letter from Bill Caskey saying that he was leaving for England from Greece on October 3, and that he might stay several weeks trying to get his photo books published and to arrange a show of his photographs at a gallery. Don at once said that he didn't want to see Billy if we were all in England together. As for me I know that, if he were there, I would have to introduce him around to people who could help him, and that this would establish all sorts of embarrassing links. So on September 28 I called Richard Simon and asked him did he think it was
really
necessary that I should give those interviews in London to help advertise the publication of
Kathleen and Frank
. He said no. So I decided not to go and wrote to Methuen, blaming my decision on the operation. By great good luck, [Richard] Simon
¹³⁹
has had the operation too—and had a much worse time with it than I am having—so he will be able to convince John Cullen at Methuen that this is a legitimate excuse.

On September 29, David Hockney called from London in tears, having just received a letter I wrote him saying how sorry we both were to hear that he and Peter had split up. (I neglected to record this earlier, but Peter had sent us a postcard from Greece saying, “I'm sort of convalescing here as I've left David! I've moved into my studio at 5 Colville Square, W11. I don't know what will happen. It just got too impossible.”) It now seems that Peter hadn't really had the matter out with David—this doesn't surprise me after the things he told me in London last year—and had simply slipped out from under. So poor David had a shock when my letter arrived. Now I've written to Peter begging him to be absolutely frank with David. Haven't heard from either of them yet.

It was also on the 29th that Dr. Ashworth took off my cast and said he was pleased with the condition of the wound. But he has rebandaged the hand and put a metal splint on the little finger. It does seem much better but I get terrific nerve twinges in the palm whenever I make a wrong move. Psychosomatic note: Just before the operation, my right hand became violently “jealous,” because the lazy left hand, which it supports by earning their living, was getting all the attention. So it started an acute attack of arthritis in its thumb—a hundred times worse than any pain I've had from the operation itself!

We have both registered for unemployment insurance. Also, we have had our television put on the cable; a huge improvement.

A very nice visit to Peter and Clytie Alexander on September 30. He wants to trade one of his wax paintings for the drawing Don did of her. I feel Peter really respects Don's work, so I almost love him.

Swami is still not at all well. He leaves for Santa Barbara tomorrow. He will move into a rented house there and rest for at least two months. I saw him last night. He had insisted on going into the shrine that morning and chanting—I think it was because of Durga puja and some intimate memory of Maharaj which was connected with it. When he spoke of Maharaj, it was as if he had seen him only a few moments before; it was
instant
, not the boyhood memories of an old man. I realized, more vividly than I usually can, that, for Swami, Maharaj actually is
present
, quite a lot of the time. He made my eyes fill with tears.

Just before I left, he said in his unaffected childlike way that he was hungrier than he thought, and he phoned the kitchen and asked for a lamburger to be fixed for his supper. What seems childlike is that he never apologizes for showing appetite or otherwise taking pleasure in something “worldly,” as puritans do.

 

October 3.
Yesterday we had to use the heating for the first time this year. The mornings are cold but the weather is warm and beautiful at midday.

Don is terribly depressed about his work. He still hasn't shown any paintings to Irving Blum. However he did show about ten of them to Billy Al Bengston when we had supper there on the 29th, and Billy was quite impressed by them, in his cool way. I keep urging Don to bring things to a climax by showing them to Irving; let's at least know where he stands.

Yesterday I drove the car to the market without paining my hand. So I'm independently mobile again, which is a blessing. As far as I can judge, it is healing; but I get occasional stabbing pains right through the palm.

Doug Walsh came this morning to fix the garbage disposal. I had dropped a screw from the meat grinder into it. The disposal bit one of the teeth out of the screw and cracked itself in doing so, but Doug says it will be all right for a while; it is working again now.

Doug made his trip east but could find out nothing more about his missing daughter. He now takes a grim sulky don't-care attitude, saying that she's either in bad trouble or dead. While he was in a small town in Illinois (maybe it was his home town) the daughter of one of his former buddies was dating a black basketball player from her high school. So Doug's buddy called the boy on the phone and the boy apologized and said he had been telling the girl that there was no future in it; he promised not to see her again. Doug told this story to show how simply and sensibly and nonviolently these things are dealt with in the Midwest!

 

October 7.
Yesterday, Dr. Ashworth took the stitches out of my hand and removed the splint. The little finger is bloated and stiff and there is still a zigzag scar like a W running down from it into the palm. He says I can take the bandages off in two days' time and wash the hand and exercise it.

Last night, while we were having the reading at Vedanta Place, there was a big brush fire up around Montecito. At the end of the reading, Ananda announced publicly that the flames had reached Ladera Lane and that the convent was already evacuated and the temple was in great danger. “All we can do is pray,” she concluded, in her weepy Jewish voice. I was hugely irritated, because she was so obviously just calling attention to herself and her anxiety—she interrupted Asaktananda in the middle of a sentence—and had neglected to mention that there were two fire trucks standing ready to save the buildings—and anyhow as a Vedantist, how dare she pray for them to be saved? Maybe Krishna wants them burnt! Oh dear, how horribly obvious it is that the women are taking over already, now that Swami is out of the way! They think they can boss Asaktananda. They may well be wrong about that; I suspect that they are. But, when the time comes for him to take over, he will have to smack them down hard.

Today we hear that the danger is over, but that the fire was indeed very alarming; even worse than last time.

Much more alarming is the news that Swami doesn't seem to be recovering. He got sick while driving up to Santa Barbara on Saturday and is now in the cottage hospital there.

Two days ago, I got an advance copy of
Kathleen and Frank
. It looks very nice—but some of my writing seems to me terribly sloppy.

Also a letter from [Richard] Simon, saying he's leaving Methuen to start his own business. This is a big blow. Am seriously considering switching to him from Curtis Brown. But I want Don to meet him first and then to talk this over with him. It would be complicated, leaving Curtis Brown after all these years.

An absurd letter from Glenway, enclosing a copy of the “blurb” he wrote for
Kathleen and Frank
and sent to Simon and Schuster. Most of it is really about himself; the rest is faint praise dressed up in verbiage. Don says Glenway is still envious of me and can't bring himself to write anything really favorable. Some extracts:

“It is a little masterpiece of the head and the heart. Nothing little about it, except that Kathleen wrote half.” “The subject matter: As I am a
paysan parvenu
, that is, a farmer's son risen to be a high bohemian, I thought that the concentration of upper middle class life might, so to speak, alienate me. No.”

“The style: The instant one feels any rebelliousness or boredom, the pleasure of his style takes over. How it gleams, in its bright but plain colors. What a lively movement it has, sinewy and at the same time, simple. How amusing it is, like a little friendly green snake.”

 

October 13.
Swami is now about to leave the hospital. He is better.

Dr. Ashworth says that I have healed quicker than any of the three other men on whom he operated, that same day.

 

October 14.
Early this morning, Don had a dream which he described as being “full of love.” He and I were at a film made by Fellini. The film was intended to make you feel “as tall as a skyscraper.” The rest of the audience didn't realize this. Only Don and I did. “We were so happy, we cried.” Fellini came over to us and bent down to peer into our faces; he knew that we were feeling what he wished us to feel and he was pleased.

Also this morning—maybe it was after hearing Don's dream—I dreamt I was up to my waist in the ocean and a tremendous black wave appeared, coming straight toward me. I couldn't escape, except by deliberately waking up. It was a dream about death, but I felt quite relaxed, not frantic.

 

October 21.
Today is the official publication date of
Kathleen and Frank
in England. It is also Jack Isherwood's birthday—I happened to notice this, this morning, while leafing through the book—as I always do for the first few weeks, when a book of mine is just out. (After that, I feel a growing disinclination to open it at all.)

Robin French called to report that Audrey Wood, who works for his writers in New York,
¹⁴⁰
has read our
Meeting by the River
play and likes it very much and is eager to do something about it. Also, a man at the Lincoln Center wants to see the script of
Black Girl
, with a view to possible New York production. And, yesterday, Jim Bridges called us to know if he could try to set up a production deal for a film of
Meeting by the River
with himself as director. So things are humming!