Liberation (74 page)

Reading Byron's letters. How he keeps debunking the very myth of himself which he has created! Right in the midst of the
Childe Harold
craze, he writes, “I am grown within these few months much
fatter
. . . and I can't think of starving myself down to an amatory size.”
¹⁴⁴
Which reminds me that I became truly enormous in New York—all because of those mandatory three meals—the story of Sodom ought to have been about a city of gluttons which was destroyed for the unnatural sin of eating “business lunches.” Even now, I am 153 and ½.

But, in contrast, how beautiful those breakfasts with Kitty, fixed with his own paws and eaten in our snug little double bed! The manager (Mr. Bard) told Don that he regarded it as an honor to have Mr. Isherwood staying here, and he wouldn't charge Don anything extra for the room. But surely, he said, Mr. Isherwood would want a larger double room? Don couldn't very well explain that the larger rooms have two beds. . . . As for the cockroaches, they are everywhere in the hotel—except maybe in Virgil Thomson's apartment, and they are nothing to fuss about. They don't run over you.

 

March 1 [Friday]
. I had supper with Bill Brown and Paul Wonner last night. I suddenly felt like seeing them and they gave me the meal they were anyhow going to eat themselves, which was so heavy that I wonder they're not both as fat as hogs—great lumps of pork and then a rich apple pie. It was quite nice, being with them. I noticed how Bill keeps upstaging Paul, however. When I asked to see Paul's paintings, Bill at once produced his. When I talked to Paul, Bill started playing the piano. Bill's paintings seemed inferior to and imitative of Paul's. Paul calls his paintings illustrations—there is a series supposed to illustrate poems about the moon, and another which is a comic strip, or so he says. They are romantic, often grotesque, enigmatic. Figures are strangely interlocked with each other or with mythological creatures. The landscapes which surround them are in pale fresh colors. I saw that they had been inspired by the Indian paintings on the walls of the apartment. Bill and Paul say that their Indian collection is now worth more than $50,000!

We talked about poetry and quoted bits. But altogether I felt a remoteness. They are already elsewhere; I am out of touch with them. I probably bore them. They don't bore me, but the things which interest me about them—chiefly questions about their relationship—how can two such characters endure to live with each other—can never be even hinted at while they are both present. It's odd to think that I've been to bed with both of them. But then, of course, “I” haven't and “they” haven't. That was three other guys, long long ago.

Don isn't coming back till Tuesday at the earliest. Meanwhile a brush-off letter has arrived from Jim Bridges in Switzerland:

 

I don't want to stand in the way of a production of
A Meeting by the River
this year and since you've gotten together with Ivory and Merchant . . . I think I should step aside and let him direct it. I don't want to be responsible if something should happen and by the time I can get around to making the film the money would not be in India any more. As we all know, the economics of film money is precarious and constantly changing and also studio heads roll with a strange and frequent rhythm. . .

 

I have a feeling that part of this was dictated to Jim by someone else. Irving Lazar? He has been in Europe lately, hasn't returned here yet. Did he double-cross us? It's quite possible. I'm all set to break with him. But all of Don's fury is directed against Jim.

Who could we get to play the brothers—
if
James Ivory likes the script, which I mailed to him yesterday? While we were in New York we saw Michael Moriarty in a terribly dull play about a youth in love with a middle-aged married man,
Find Your Way Home
. I think he is a truly great actor. I mean by that that he can transform himself, without giving an impersonation or using makeup. He could play a hard charming blue-eyed ruthless Watergate conspirator and he could play The Idiot. In this play he seemed so innocent and vulnerable that we could see him as Oliver. But he could easily do Patrick too, if he weren't so young. Because of the dullness of the play, I was in a strangely ambivalent state, sometimes thrilled, sometimes falling asleep. (The same thing happened, for a different reason, while I was visiting Swami Pavitrananda on February 18. When I first came in, he was so full of calm joy, really shining with it, that I
knew
he was a saint and felt quite overwhelmed. But then his very calmness relaxed me so much, after all my frantic running around, that I found myself dozing!)

I should add that we saw Moriarty after the performance (on February 20) and talked to him about
Meeting
, without actually saying that we wanted him. Since then, I have sent him a copy of the novel. And Don has drawn him. Don says he has a French wife, older than he is. This suggests a similarity to Michael York. But actually Moriarty looks much more like Jon Voight; they
could
be brothers. Oh, if only Jon had more fun in him!

Stephen Spender was in New York while we were there. Also David Hockney with a French boyfriend whom he refers to as Yves-Marie from Paris, or rather, Yves-Mar
ee
from Par
ee
.
¹⁴⁵
Yves-Marie is quite attractive and intelligent and nice altogether, but I don't think David is really hooked. For one thing, he really cannot be bothered to learn French properly, so he and Yves-Marie can't communicate beyond a certain point. On February 16, Stephen, David, Yves-Marie and I went across on the ferry to Staten Island. It was David's idea of course, one of his whiz tours. But I was eager to see the new monsters, the World Trade Center's twin towers. They are only one hundred feet higher than the Empire State, but, planted down there near the Battery, they have effectively fucked up the marvellous effect of Manhattan as first seen from the water. The rest of its skyline is now dwarfed and looks out of scale and insignificant. As though this were an island of quite small buildings with just these two giants. I said to Yves-Marie, “American architecture is the architecture of selfishness,” which was playing to the Frog gallery, but he loved it. David was his wonderful breezy self—how uplifting he is! Stephen seemed sly and worried, but he too has amazing vigor. We are very friendly at present, chiefly because of this book I'm writing and the fact that he is helping me with it. I think he is enormously relieved that Wystan is dead and can now be both bitched and honored without one's feeling either indiscreet or envious. Maybe Stephen would like to get me out of the way, too. Meanwhile, I feel that I am promoted to Senior Old Man, an official figure who has to be flattered. Stephen said, “Christopher's the only one of us who hasn't changed at all.”

 

March 8.
My angel got back safe on the evening of the 5th. Mario and his assistant Sue are behaving badly, trying to get him to pay for all sorts of things they had agreed to pay for; so letters have to be written. Nick Wilder has been helping us with his advice. That wretched pair are both dishonest and incompetent. They didn't get Don a single notice from any critic and they didn't sell a single one of his pictures. As Nick says, Mario's treatment of the show was as a social, not an artistic event. As long as there was a big crowd at the opening and Don got interviewed on T.V., he felt that was all Don could possibly expect or want.

It is pouring down rain, in violent storms. I am pounding away at the manuscript of
Wanderings
, which, in this first draft, means chiefly copying out letters and diary extracts; I'm just getting the outline of the narrative, not yet writing the narrative itself. My chief concern is that it will be so awfully long. I fear those two volumes.

Nick Wilder told us that, a week ago, he had a dream. In the dream he felt wonderful and he knew this was because he had given up smoking altogether. Up to that time, Nick had been smoking three packs a day; but, since the dream, he says he has not only stopped smoking but has absolutely no desire to do so. If this continues, it will be next door to a miracle. I see it as a sudden intervention by the Deep Will. It gets impatient and tells Nick to cut it out. This makes sense, because Nick does have heart trouble and may very well be in danger of losing his life. Nick goes right on drinking, however. He said he'd been drunk every night this week. He is a really lovable character.

 

March 14.
Nick Wilder is still off smoking—or was, at any rate, when last heard from on the evening of the 12th, when we went to the opening of Joe Goode's show at the Wilder Gallery. Joe's new work is called
Vandalism
. The pictures are torn in places; the effect is a bit like that of posters which have been exposed to the weather. I like them better than his earlier work.

Afterwards, there was a party at Ceeje's; the upstairs restaurant where Don had his after-opening party on July 12, last year. Joe Goode has another girlfriend now. Mary Agnes appeared briefly, just to show that she didn't mind, but she did. We sat with Billy Bengston and Penny and Robin and Jessie French. Billy gave me a very beautiful rose pink silk scarf he was wearing, and then announced he was going to get drunk, and did, and passed out. It was understood that we were no longer mad at Robin—for having deserted us as an agent without warning us in advance—and Robin has begun to talk vaguely about hiring us for some job at Paramount.

Last night we saw Swami, briefly. He complained that his pulse was too rapid but admitted that the doctor hadn't been able to find anything particularly wrong with him. Almost for the first time, he asked us to leave after only a few minutes, saying that people tired him. I could see that it was a strain on him, just trying to attend to what we said. When Don had said something and then I said something, his head jerked around painfully, like an old animal which is being teased by two people competing for its attention.

Ananda and some of the other nuns take the attitude that this is the beginning of the end; Swami isn't gaining any ground, as they put it. Ananda said, “He's failing.” But Chetanananda—who really cares about Swami, I feel—I mean, really
values
him in a way that the nuns, with their cunty “oh, he's just a cute little boy, inside” attitude, never never could—said, “Swamiji is becoming more and more indrawn.” In other words, Chetanananda sees Swami as preparing himself spiritually for his own
mahasamadhi
, not just passively “failing” physically. Chetanananda answered the questions at the reading, last night. I felt that we were consolidating our relationship; we get along together far more easily than I do with Asaktananda. This morning, on the phone, Chetanananda said to me, with bursts of giggles, “We feel that you belong to us, Chris—you are our very own!”

I talked to Bob Adjemian, who enthused about their last Shiva Ratri, at which the worship had been broken up into a number of small groups in different parts of the temple, instead of taking place in the shrine only. A few people brought their own
lingas
,
¹⁴⁶
as well as bells to ring and other implements for worship. Bob told with some satisfaction that the bells used by Jim Gates and himself had made an ugly noise and had annoyed many of the nuns. I sensed that this was one of those occasions on which the monks had asserted themselves. At the Hollywood Center, the monks are always having to do this because, as latecomers, they are second-class citizens. Nun hating is one of the great dangers there for the young male aspirant. And yet, I envied Bob's utter involvement in this scene. However parochial they may appear to be, they are all going somewhere or trying to.

Abedha volunteered to drive me home, because the devotees from Venice hadn't shown up for the reading, knowing that Swami wouldn't attend it. We talked about his approaching sannyas—he has been there twelve years. Abedha astounded me by saying that he wanted “more than anything” to become a swami, “because then I'll know that they really accept me, they don't want to throw me out.” He said that he had no idea what the others thought of him. I got a frightening glimpse into his utter self-seclusion. I'd always known that he had had black moods, but this confession was so odd and shocking. Did it somehow refer to his Jewishness? As for Abedha, I could tell that our conversation had done him good. And I'm not really worried about him. I feel fairly sure that he'll make it.

Chiefly because of Don, but also because of the work ahead of me and of the health and strength I still feel, I am marvellously happy. I don't think I have ever been so
conscious
of happiness as I am now. That's because I'm aware that my happiness is threatened on every side. I mean, from the material angle, by all the approaching weaknesses of old age. But is it
really
threatened? How strong is the foundation of love and faith beneath it? That's what I'm going to find out, one day soon.

 

March 28.
All this time I have been plodding along.
Wanderings
, as of yesterday, is on its 149th page; I have now reached the period just after Heinz's arrest in 1937. So it looks like I shall reach page 210 by the time we sail for the States. That would be about seventy thousand words. Of course a lot of that would be cut. But, even if it's cut to fifty thousand, I would need at least another hundred thousand for the rest of the book. Can it possibly be done in one volume?

What I'm writing now is entirely worthless, except as notes, quotes, reminders. It's the kind of writing I always do when I'm driving against a great stolid mound of tamas. Rewriting now seems infinitely attractive but I won't let myself begin until the first draft—I mean, up to our sailing for the States—is finished. I have firmly abstained from rereading the first chapter, the only one which is more or less as it should be.