Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (25 page)

We began to play softball on the patch of grass above the rocks. The women sat by the fire, putting on more wood, and singing part songs. We swam again, the sun sank into the pines and we put on sweatshirts. The bourbon lowered in the bottles and the mixed smells of woodsmoke and cooking seaweed drifted along the shore. Twilight came and we slipped again into the sea to call out and laugh with those on the shore by the fire. Betsy lit hurricane lanterns and Anna put little pots of butter round the edge of the fireplace, to melt. In the full dark I helped Sonny strip off the canvas tarpaulin. A smell indescribably Biblical and savoury burst out, to sighs and groans of pure animal contentment. Then Oakley began to take off the seaweed and Sonny to serve out the food. Anna showed us how to break and eat a baysfoot with the bare hands, and we settled back to a lazy enjoyment of the greatest eating experience I have ever known. Everything was done to perfection, each part distinctive in its own flavour, but welded by the savour of smoke and seaweed and the steaming juices of the other ingredients into a single, great whole.

There were no lights on the bay, none on the island; only the stars, the lanterns, the firelight on the faces. Thirty days ago we had not known any of these people. What miracle of human alchemy made us now friends, trusting and happy in each other? It was a moment to live for ever.

Three days later Mrs Rounds hurried over to the cottage. I was wanted, long distance, from New York. I went back with her to the big house and picked up the phone. It was Keith Jennison, his voice trembling with emotion. The Literary Guild had chosen
Nightrunners of Bengal
as the book they would distribute to their membership for the month of January 1951. My share of the guaranteed advance on royalties would be over $16,000. And Mr Beecroft of the Guild said that I had written a damned good book.

Chapter Eight

After a few days of euphoria we pulled ourselves together. Now that it looked as though we could not merely live here, but live well, the question of my status was more important than ever. The Immigration people had set no date for the hearing on my application, nor could I be sure of the outcome. Still, worrying would do no good. We returned to our routine of work and exploration.

We met two people who gave us different but profound insights into the country. One was a storekeeper and one was a general. While filling our car at a little store outside Freeport, Maine, the owner asked us where we came from. We told him. He said his family had come from Portugal. Where were we going with the pretty kids? Fishing off Bailey's Island, I said. He stroked his chin, and looked up and down the road. 'Hell,' he said. 'You don't know the water. And you'll have to hire a boat. I got one out there. Hold on a minute.' He locked the pumps, dashed inside, and started loading his own car with hot dogs, rolls, ice-cream and canned beer from his store. Then, beckoning us to follow, he drove off. We had a marvellous day with George Freitas in his boat. He talked of his days running a rum boat during Prohibition, of hard times, of making and losing a couple of fortunes. He showed Martin how to bait a hook, and Susan how to kill a flounder (put its head in your mouth, while it is still on the hook, and bite it sharply behind the eye). He gave the kids cokes and told them jokes. We drank beer and trolled and fished all day, and when we drove back, sun-soaked and drowsy in the evening, he wouldn't take even the drink I tried to buy him, but slapped my shoulders and said, 'Welcome to America'

The general was from South Carolina. His father had been a young Confederate brigadier-general killed at Chancellorsville, and he himself was a classmate of John J. Pershing at West Point. He was now ninety-one years old, brave, courteous, intelligent. He said he hoped we would become American citizens. I said that we were thinking of it, because we believed that the American ideal, that all men are born free and equal, was the only hope of the world, even though we were sadly far from living up to that ideal in the case of the Negroes. The old general leaned forward. 'Yes, but are niggras human?' he asked quietly.

Meeting George Freitas and General Higgins almost on successive days made us realize that without more cooking the contents of the melting-pot might be an indigestible stew.

From Viking came word that they had put my British affairs in the hands of the London firm of Pearn, Pollinger & Higham. After some delay, caused I believe by differing opinions about my book inside the firm, Michael Joseph Ltd agreed to publish
Nightrunners
in the British Commonwealth, and Pollinger's started contract negotiations with them.

At the end of August we returned to South Mountain Road and the warmest greetings from a hundred friends who had heard our news and were almost tearfully glad that, financially at least, we had won our war. I bought my first Brooks Brothers suit, which was of an excessive correctness; and tickets for all Army's home football games, as well as the Army-Navy game; and a new Plymouth convertible (pale green); and swore we would never eat spaghetti again unless we actually wanted to. We threw a party for everyone we knew, and about 120 people came.

Fried chicken was devoured by the bushel and beer by the barrel. Softer sensualities must have been aroused for on prospecting round the back of the house I saw, at the edge of the wood, an upturned and bare male behind covering but not altogether concealing a spread-eagled female body, which also appeared to be bare from the waist down. This at 3 p.m. on a sunny afternoon. They were pumping away in the finest stand of poison ivy on the property, but the damage in all sections had been done, and I said nothing but crept away, reflecting that one must never, never judge by appearances. The man was wearing his Bermuda shorts around his ankles (that was how he was easy to recognize) and affected an appallingly genteel British accent, and Barbara and I had decided he must be a faggot. Far — to the lady's obvious enjoyment — from it.

'You know all those ghastly American jokes about Cholmondeley and Niffles?' I said to Barbara one day.

'Well, I've found a place here we can fire back with. It's on Nantucket, and it's spelled SlASCONSET but pronounced Sconset. Helen Taylor's family owns an island off the coast there.'

Though our accents were not changing our ways of speech and choice of words were. We who had sneered so heartily at 'Paris, France' and 'Manchester, England' were now saying 'Portland, Maine' and 'Fort Wayne, Indiana' with the best; and talking freely of cookies, sweaters, and pies instead of biscuits, jumpers, and tarts.

Some American accents caused us trouble. In Haverstraw I went into a delicatessen and asked for Italian sausages.

'Hearta nartheart?' the old man said. 'I beg your pardon?' I said, baffled.

He repeated his chant, 'Hearta nartheart?' with a questioning inflection. To make his point clear he got out some sausages and showed them to me. One lot was redder than the other, I thought. I understood. One kind must contain heart and the other not. But whose heart? I went out to Barbara in the car and said, 'Do we want heart sausages, or no-heart sausages?'

'Some of each,' she said Napoleonically.

We learned fast, through our taste buds, that what the old ltalian-American meant was 'hot' or 'not-hot' sausages. That R, unpronounced in English — English often got us into trouble. (But in Maine they didn't pronounce it either, and words like Bar Harbor, car, and heart became Ba Habba, Ca', and ha't.)

The Crosbys invited us to the annual grape picking at their vineyards under High Tor;
Life Magazine
were going to attend and would we please all look picturesque; we did, they didn't. The summer birds of the Dells country club winged back to New York; no more would they be seen in bright plumage pecking away at greens and fairways as we drove by on our way to and from New City. The colours showered down in brilliance on to the forests, and in the early mornings pheasants stalked down the misty road and called harshly in the fields.

As they lay in their bedroom one night after some particularly foul misdeed and a correspondingly sharp spanking, I heard Susan sob; 'Sometimes I wish we didn't have Daddy'; and Martin's thoughtful reply, 'Me, too... but if we didn't we'd grow up into awful stinking little children.'

In the Korean War the amphibious landing at Inchon turned the tide in our favour. Three weeks later we crossed the 38th parallel and carried the war to the enemy, to the accompaniment of considerable howling from our left flank. Apart from the ordinary logic of doing to an aggressor at least as much as he has done to you, it is a sheer impossibility to win a war — any war — by a defensive strategy. A war in which the enemy can retreat or prepare behind a sacred frontier will go on for ever. Three weeks later again the Red Chinese entered the war, and since their frontier too was regarded as sacred, a bloody stalemate was ensured. It was a depressing prospect.

The editorial process began on
The Deceivers.
There are three schools of thought on editing. Most British publishers belong to the Smoked MS School. They send manuscripts submitted to them to an outside reader whose judgment they trust. The reader reads the MS, curing it the while in pipe smoke, then sends it back to the publisher, well smoked, with a report to the effect, perhaps, that the MS is worth publishing, though a bit long, and disorganized in patches, and that the chief character is insufficiently developed. The publishers now send the MS back to the author, listing these defects and saying that if the author cares to see what he can do to eliminate them, and resubmit, they will be happy to consider the book again. The author does what he thinks best — works on it, puts it away, submits to another publisher — and sooner or later probably gets published. The resulting book is indubitably his own.

All American publishers belong to one of the other two schools, the Compulsive and the Blood-Sweat-and-Tears. In the Compulsive School, a decision is first made that the MS is publishable, on the basis of its contents and what the editors think they can do to improve them. The author is told that the book will be published if he agrees to make changes suggested by the editorial staff. If he agrees, the compulsive editor tells him not only what he must do but within fairly narrow limits how he must do it. Writers throw a lot of abuse at the Compulsive School, and it is certainly packed with people who, themselves unable to create, live by distorting the creations of others. Still, the writer always has recourse to another publisher, and he is brought up hard against a fact of literary life, that in one aspect a book is a piece of merchandise, and the merchandiser has a right to shape it for sale.

All the same, I consider myself fortunate that Viking stood firmly in the third school. Harold Guinzburg explained their philosophy to me: 'We will publish your work. Through blood, sweat, and tears we will try to see that your books are as good as you can make them; but in the last resort, we publish what you write. No one escapes. We give Steinbeck just as hard a time as we give you.'

Helen Taylor zeroed in on Thuggee... She reminded me that this phrase, that situation, those words, would give a different impression to the American reader than to the British. What was the purpose of so-and-so, his role in the book? I explained (and it was surprising how often the mere attempt at explanation brought the fault to the front). Helen pointed out places where, to her mind, I had not achieved the effect I was striving for. Did I agree? Yes, but now I was baffled. It was easy to see what was wrong... but what would be right? Helen showed her real genius, an ability to understand the writer's intent and the motivation of his characters better than he could himself. She would give me a reasoned and sensible reading of a personality so confused that I had lost track of it, as a parent can lose touch with a loved contrary child through being too close, too involved.

Our arguments were waged with force and fervour. Accusations of stupidity, ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and lack of sympathy (all from me) filled the air. Helen told me a whole chapter was, unfortunately, nonsense. I defended it hotly. Somewhere in the defence Helen cried 'Stop, Jack! Now you
have
explained it... but you don't say that
in the book.'
She was right. It was only necessary to put on paper what had been in my mind — and had stayed there.

Martin comes in as I scribble notes, stares at me seriously for a while, then says, 'Daddy, why don't you work, like other daddies?'

It is a long, hard process, and a writer can lose self-confidence; but with editors of this calibre, who love books and have a deep feeling for writing and writers, it enables the writer to bring out the best he has in him.

Army had a brilliant new young quarter-back, Blaik, and a big, good team. We foresaw great days ahead. Mrs St George was re-elected to Congress and asked us to meet her in Goshen to talk about my Immigration situation, the day after Thanksgiving. A hurricane hit the state that day and at
7
a.m. the Bear Mountain weather station was reporting a wind of over 100 m.p.h. All cars were warned off the roads but we battled through, dodging several fallen trees on U.S. 6, and arrived on time for the appointment. I told Mrs St George that I could not think what was keeping the Immigration people from reaching some decision on my application, and asked her what I should do. She counselled patience, and said she was sure all would be well. We returned through torrential rain to South Mountain Road, and found a big tree down, its upper branches touching the back of the house. I read in the
New York Times
that Justice William 0. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court was planning a trek in the Himalayas for July and August of the following year. These are monsoon months all along the Himalaya except in the extreme north-west, and on the north side of the main chain, which was hard to reach, both physically, and politically. I therefore wrote to the Justice advising him to make weather enquiries from the Indian or Pakistan embassies before committing himself. He replied warmly and we began corresponding about his trip.