Liberation (81 page)

We had lunch today with Truman Capote. Don thinks he is very sick. But he seemed much more cheerful than last time we saw him. We had been told in New York that he was abandoning his novel. He assured us that part of it will be coming out quite soon in a magazine. Don isn't sure that he's telling the truth. It was nice seeing him, as nearly always. But today, as far too often, there were a lot of other people around.

 

February 19.
Am writing this around ten in the evening. We are sitting up waiting until it's time to go out to a midnight supper at Marti Stevens's house. The supper is late because she is playing in
The Constant Wife
and she will be bringing Ingrid Bergman back with her. Bergman is at present playing her part sitting in a wheelchair, because she has broken her toe (or foot, I'm not sure which). I'm sure the audience loves this; indeed, that it's an added attraction. That's what being a star is all about.

Talking of being a star, old Dub is about to prance in public again. I have been awarded the Brandeis Medal in literature for this year. They want me to go to New York to receive it on April 6, but I am holding out for travel money, in addition to the thousand dollar honorarium.
⁶

Meanwhile, we have practically committed ourselves to taking on a T.V. assignment: Fitzgerald's
The Beautiful and Damned.

I keep plugging on at the book. At present, not joyfully. I feel it is somehow flat—that I'm failing to give it the sparkle of life. One thing that keeps bugging me is that I have covered so much of the material in my fiction and what's left for me to write is just—leftovers.

After the grand lunch with Gore Vidal in 1973 and Don's New York show last year, our anniversary celebration this year lacked public recognition. So we made a virtue of that; spent the evening in bed, watching T.V. and drinking champagne. I really liked it much better that way. I think Don did too. With us, domestic bliss isn't just a phrase; it's an exact description of a mood we often experience.

Larry Holt called me tonight and asked me to collaborate with him on the story of his love affair with the young chief on Maupiti.
⁷
I said yes, I would record it all for him and write it up later. I have often urged Larry to record it and I don't want it to be lost.

A strange dream about Swami—four or five nights ago. Like an idiot I didn't write it down at the time. Now I've forgotten part of it. To begin with, Swami and I were walking in a landscape which was very like the Derbyshire Peak District—say, the pass above Castleton. Green turf over limestone, with grey rocks showing through. A steep smooth rock path, leading downhill. Swami was old as he is now and weak and I was helping him. Suddenly he lost his balance and slipped from me and slid rapidly down the rock path on his bottom into a very small cleft in the rock. I tried to get him out again but couldn't. I knew that he was sitting inside a tiny cave which I was too big to enter.

So I ran down into the neighboring village and began calling to the villagers for help. I was addressing them in Spanish because that most resembled their native language, which was Italian. But they didn't understand me.

The bit I have half forgotten was a sort of X-ray view of Swami inside the tiny cave. My impression is that he was making a terrible fuss and show of panic, but that I knew all the while that this was some sort of deliberate playacting. . . . The explanation which presents itself is that this was a dream about Swami's death, and about the absurdity of our concept of death. Certainly, it wasn't an unhappy dream. But it wasn't particularly joyful, either.

Leslie has just returned from Chicago, but she is staying in a hotel. Michael, who came to dinner last night, said she was terribly touchy and difficult. He doesn't yet quite know what the latest score is.

 

February 27.
Yesterday, having bought a new mike, I tape-recorded the first part of Larry Holt's narrative of his love affair with the son of the chief, on Maupiti. Larry really dictated very clearly and logic ally and I feel pleased to have got some of this down, and eager to get more. He was so moved that he shed tears. Later, he said it was probably bad for him to bring these memories back. But I'm sure he loved doing it.

Before I saw Swami, Anandaprana told me that the doctor had said that Swami is “beginning to fail,” according to all the physical signs. He seemed much as usual, however. He said with his usual, rather satisfied aggressiveness that there was going to be a fight with the Math over Lokeswarananda's coming here. The poor man has got to have a gallbladder operation first, and no doubt that's why they're unwilling to let him travel—quite aside from their general unwillingness to let any of their good men come over here.

Anandaprana had also told me that Swami had another spiritual experience when he was up at Santa Barbara, the other day. So I angled around until he told it to me. This time it was a vision during sleep. He was feeding Holy Mother and he began to weep. “I could have wept myself to death,” he said. “When the doctor examined me, he said, ‘You have had a shock.' It was like a heart attack. . . . When I wish to die, I can die. Whenever I wish. But I don't want to die yet—not until this place is saved.” (By which I suppose he meant, when he has got Lokeswarananda over here.)

He began to talk about the lower samadhi, and how doubts still remain, after you have had it. “Do you still have doubts, Swami?” I asked. “Oh
yes
—well, not doubts, exactly. It's what you call divine discontent. You know, Maharaj used to tell me, ‘What's wrong with you is, you're too contented here. You shouldn't be contented in spiritual life. You should always want more.' Well, now I always want more—
more
.”

Deepti, I am sorry to say, has left. This time, she didn't give anybody the chance to dissuade her. She disappeared, saying goodbye by notes. They don't know where she is. Swami says Bhuma (Cliff Johnson) is “so restless—he keeps going out shopping in Santa Anna—he stays away all day.” And Jim Gates has rather turned against Swami. He went in to see Swami and begged him to at least write a letter to Larry Miller. Swami refused. But even Jim admits that Swami probably misunderstood exactly what Jim was asking him to do, and thought Jim wanted him to write that he'd take Larry back. So Jim is getting restless, too.

 

April 7.
No use apologizing to myself for the huge gap here. The truth is, I am slowing down; I simply cannot get through all the jobs I set myself to do. And so I develop a masochistic attitude toward myself as my own taskmaster.

Don went off to New York on the evening of the 5th and I said to myself that I will accomplish marvels while he's away. But today I have merely puttered, wasting all these hours of precious solitude on a few letters, telephone calls, shoppings, jogging at the gym. Well, anyhow, Don has already accomplished something. He called me last night to say that he had made the speech I wrote for him to the Brandeis people and received the medal. And I could tell that he had been a success. My darling, he had told himself he couldn't do it and he had done it—as usual. It seems that Glenway was almost entirely responsible for my being awarded the medal, as I suspected. And now Don will stay on until the beginning of next week, so as to draw Ingrid Bergman after
The Constant Wife
has opened in New York.

I have said this often before, but I'll say it again: I think this latest period of our life together has been as happy as any happiness I have known in my life. And yet it's not by any means a smooth calm. Now and then Kitty storms, shows his claws, screams furiously about the tiniest trifles. Sometimes I worry about this—for his sake, not mine—but not seriously. This lack of control may get him into some difficulties, especially after I'm dead and he has to vent his nervous fury on others. But it surely is better than being bottled up. The thing I do worry about is the possibility that he'll go deaf. He often seems deaf because he simply doesn't listen when he is absorbed in his thoughts, but such absorption can have psychosomatic consequences and I foresee a time when he will cease
to be able
to hear. I must find the proper moment to speak to him about this. Not easy.

I don't exactly think about Don while he is away. I don't have to. He is with me. He is part of me and I am part of him. Some of the inner rage he feels against me is because of the fact that I am going to leave him. He feels that this is a trick which I shall play on him—have, indeed, already played, by involving us so with each other. Any sign I show of illness, even of fatigue, makes him intensely nervous; he behaves as if it were a kind of bitchery on my part.

Enough of that for today. . . . There are two things I want to put down, and that's all, till next time.

 

April 8.
I didn't put them down because, almost at that moment, Don called from New York. He told me that Lincoln Kirstein has had a massive heart attack. My immediate thought was, will he now feel he wants to make it up with us?

Here are the two things:

Paul Sorel called yesterday, to tell me that the doctor says that Chris Wood's X-ray pictures show that there is cancer in his pelvis. According to Paul, Chris doesn't know this yet. The doctor must think that it will develop slowly because he still says Chris can make the trip to England which he has planned for next month. Meanwhile, Chris has no more pain from his hip and is becoming more and more able to walk around.

A short while ago, Paul felt he had to have a holiday from the strain of looking after Chris, so he arranged to go to the San Francisco Bay area for two days. Other friends promised to look in on Chris during this period. Chris was perfectly agreeable, and indeed everything went off without a hitch. But, when Paul called Peggy [Kiskadden] to tell her what he was about to do, she told him he had no right to go, and she slammed down the receiver. “It was then,” Paul told me, “that I understood for the first time what you have against Peggy.” Paul also told me that he and Peggy had spoken about Don and me, quite recently, and that Peggy had said to him, “How was I to know that he (Don) would stay—the others didn't?” Poor wretched woman, she really is incredible in her arrogance. Her attitude is exactly like that of a government. She is prepared to “recognize” a new regime in a foreign country, but only after a suitable interval and only after the new regime has proved that it is worthy of recognition—as Don has now done by becoming a known and exhibited and praised artist!

Three days ago, Stephen Spender called me from New Orleans. He was there on one of his lecture tours; but the tour doesn't include southern California. He wanted to tell me that he and Ed Mendelson are about to write a life of Wystan—well, not a life, exactly, but a book about Wystan in various aspects—as a poet, a teacher, a Christian, etc.
⁸
He wanted to know if I would help them in this project—by which I think he actually meant, would I endorse it? He is well aware that he is going against Wystan's expressed wish, not to have his life written. But then so am I, on a much smaller scale. I am writing little bits about Wystan in my book. And, I must say, I can't help feeling, wishes or no wishes, it is better if those who knew Wystan write now, instead of leaving it to those who didn't know him, a generation or two later. So I didn't discourage Stephen—not that it would have made any difference if I had.

I then asked Stephen if it was true that he was rewriting
World Within World
—I had heard rumors that he was. He said yes, he was going to enlarge it, expanding the parts about Berlin, etc., and also bringing it up to date. He was very anxious to see the manuscript of my book. I assured him that of course he should see it before it was given to the publishers. In the midst of this conversation, I got a most uneasy feeling that history was repeating itself; Stephen is attempting to scoop my material, as he did back in the thirties. He doesn't even quite know that he is doing this. It's just that he's so competitive.

 

April 9.
Last night I went to Billy Al Bengston's party for the Academy Awards. He had set up T.V. sets in several different rooms. The rooms in Billy's apartment keep changing, because he keeps knocking down and putting in walls and partitions. At present he has a very tall, very narrow door leading into one of the rooms which looks wonderfully sinister.

There was a lottery on the awards. Each entrant had to fill out a form of predictions and it cost you five dollars. Don had done two different ones for the two of us. I hadn't even looked at what he had written. The one he did for me won the lottery easily; no one else came near to the correct answers. So we won $290, as well as getting our $10 back. Such an odd coincidence: Don just received a prize which I had won and now I received one which he had won! My speech much amused the guests, it seems, but alas I can't remember what I said, as Dobbin was somewhat juiced. I do loathe these parties—although I am really beginning to be fond of Billy. I used to feel ill at ease with him. And I like his new work far more than his earlier.

Yesterday, John Preston, the editor of
The Advocate
, called about the piece I wrote for him in lieu of the awful ass-licking interview Don v[o]n Wiedenm[e]n did on me. Preston was very embarrassed and I had to say his lines for him, telling
him
that he didn't really like my piece, thinking it too simpleminded. I urged him to show it to as many people as possible and then make up his mind—assuring him that I wouldn't be offended if he decided not to print it. What I didn't add was that, in that case, I wasn't going to give them another interview, at least certainly not with Wiedenmen.
⁹

As a matter of fact, I feel I want to add to this interview with a paragraph about gay literature and its difficulties. More about this some other time perhaps. Right now I must go out, having spent the whole day working on our “Beautiful and Damned” outline. I fear I shall only just get it finished, if at all, before Don returns on Monday.