Any Woman's Blues (39 page)
Authors: Erica Jong
Tags: #Psychological, #Psychological fiction, #Relationship Addiction, #Romance, #Self-Esteem, #General, #Literary, #Love Stories, #Self-Help, #Personal Growth, #Fiction, #Women
I leave Julian puttering with his score in our hotel room, and I dodge Renzo’s two-o’clock pass with his boat past the terrace of the Gritti. (It astonishes me that I can be so detached. Am I becoming a man—or only a wise woman?)
Alone and elated, I go to look at the Old Master drawings.
Drawings have an immediacy for me that paintings lack. You see the process, the artist’s mind at work. In the line itself, the play of the mind is revealed.
I stop before a Domenico Campagnola drawing of a man threatening a woman under a leafy poplar tree. His flying forelock, her upraised arm, her upraised knee, the struggle between them in the dark crosshatchings of brown pen and ink, might reek of murder or of rough seduction, depending upon your point of view. (Does your eye, for example, catch the glimpse of dagger beneath the summer’s tree? Does he wear no breeches, or has the artist’s line only economized?)
Forever and forever he is about to kill (or kiss) her. Forever and forever this struggling couple is arrested in the moment before male blade pierces female flesh. Love or murder? Mayhem or merging?
Having no answers to these questions, I walk away from the drawing and on to the next. Saint Catherine being beheaded interests me less, as do a
paesaggio
and a cartoon for a Last Supper. I wander past the sketchy Virgins with sketchy Children, the warm-ups for ceiling goddesses, the Abrahams sacrificing Isaacs, the old men, the knights, the Bacchuses—and I come to a Veronese nymph pursued through leafy woodland (with baby dragons underfoot) by a determined satyr (who looks, of course, exactly like my Renzo).
paesaggio
and a cartoon for a Last Supper. I wander past the sketchy Virgins with sketchy Children, the warm-ups for ceiling goddesses, the Abrahams sacrificing Isaacs, the old men, the knights, the Bacchuses—and I come to a Veronese nymph pursued through leafy woodland (with baby dragons underfoot) by a determined satyr (who looks, of course, exactly like my Renzo).
The dance of sex—pursuit, retreat—of nymph and satyr, faun and fauness, has been going on for thousands upon thousands of years. And I am hardly the first to want to capture it on paper. As long as flesh exists, someone will rise from the warmth of the huddle in the cave and struggle to her knees—or his—to scribble pictures—or words—on the wall of the cave, to please—or irk—the gods and goddesses. We go on revealing our hearts in the hope that they will never stop beating. Vain hope! As long as I live, I know I will hold the pen that limns this satyr, this nymph, this dark, bedragoned wood.
And here, limpid and relaxed after love, are a faun and fauness drawn by Tiepolo. He kisses the top of her human brow; she closes slanted eyes in ecstasy. Her hooves are as hairy as his, but she has human breasts and a human heart, and he is melted, for a moment, by The Land of Fuck. The artist has raised her right hand, then scribbled it out, as if not knowing whether or not to give her that power.
In my mind’s eye, I erase these scribblings. I take out my little notebook with the marbled paper cover and quickly draw my version of the Tiepolo scene. My fauness lingers as languidly as his, but the hand she raises wields a drawing pen. As she dreams against her faun’s rough, hairy shoulder, she translates this fleeting scene of lust, of love, for future eyes to see.
I will go home and do a nymph-and-satyr series. I will draw my way back to sanity. Neither the Trobriands with Julian nor Venice with Renzo is the answer. I have my answer.
I hold it in my hand.
afterword by Isadora Wing
I
look back on my life, and all is confusion. My men, my child, my books, my flying lessons, my fears, my counterphobia, my fifteen minutes of fame. My search for serenity. In the middle of my life, I died and then was reborn.
look back on my life, and all is confusion. My men, my child, my books, my flying lessons, my fears, my counterphobia, my fifteen minutes of fame. My search for serenity. In the middle of my life, I died and then was reborn.
At forty-five, you either perish or re-create yourself like a phoenix. I was chosen for the latter course.
What shall I do with this book I left behind, this husk of my old life, of the me I once was, and the other me I once was, heckling her? Is a novel a closed system—or does it open out into the world like a flower radiating fragrance, a flower that does not exist until somebody smells it?
Suppose you opened this book and a computer chip played Bessie Smith singing “Any Woman’s Blues”? Would it convince you of immortality? A novel is a strange loop. Novelist and protagonist constitute a sort of Möbius strip. Novel and reader another Möbius strip. The novelist writes because she foresees her own death. You (reader) read the book when she is dead and bring her back to life. As this book has brought me back to life. As your eyes and heart have brought me back to life (I almost wrote “back to laugh”—which is also true).
Whatever Caryl Fleishmann-Stanger, Ph.D., may or may not have told you about “me” or my “last” novel, I am not dead, but back—I, Isadora White Stollermann Wing, alias Leila Sand, Louise Zandberg, Candida Wong, La Tintoretta, Paola Uccello,
und so weiter.
As another author said on another occasion: reports of my death were an exaggeration.
und so weiter.
As another author said on another occasion: reports of my death were an exaggeration.
Peace and quiet in the South Seas didn’t quite work out. “Sebastian Wanderlust”—alias “Julian Silver”—gave wonderful weekends and gondola trips down the Grand Canal, but he, too, being human, had a hidden agenda. When even paradise failed to cure him of civilization’s afflictions, he, like “Danny Doland,” blamed me for it. We couldn’t salvage our friendship
or
our marriage afterward.
or
our marriage afterward.
Back from paradise, I decided to write only poetry, prayer, meditation, to eliminate “I,” to invent a new form that captures the timelessness of existence, that tries to reach beyond words to the infinite and unchanging realities that pre-dated our brutish appearance on the planet and shall long outlast us.
Thus, whether I am Leila, Isadora, Louise, Caryl, or even someone neither of us knows, is of the sheerest unimportance. All of these are merely masks that cling to my face for a while, then fall away, even as the flesh falls away beneath them. The masks are merely there to facilitate our understanding—since, from infancy onward, we learn best from a humanoid face. But masks they are, and all of wisdom is in knowing that.
Since all I plan to write henceforth is poetry and psalm, you, dear reader, may never read another one of my books—since the most valuable words, in our joke of a literate society, tend to be the least read.
Farewell, then. I have loved our moments together. I have loved making you laugh and making you cry. Often, while writing, I have laughed or cried myself. I truly love you. I truly want to save your lives. And mine.
I will henceforth write only poetry because it is only such that, being out of time, transcends time. If I could write in invisible ink, I would. For we all write in invisible ink anyway, our words flying up to heaven like so many cinders from hell flying toward the face of God, whose radiance vaporizes them.
As Leila, as Louise, even as Isadora, I take my leave of you, asking you to love each other as well as you can, be brave, commune with your God, and try to fight against mendacity wherever it appears—in yourself first of all.
The old fiction writer I was (and still partly am) cannot resist the tropism of finishing off the story for the reader’s satisfaction (and my own), so here goes—a tying up of the loose ends, as in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel. I am too much the good-little-girl novelist to be able to leave my characters dangling.
After “Isadora” ceased to publish (and after her longer and longer sojourns in a Trappist monastery), Caryl Fleishmann-Stanger, Ph.D., became—because nature abhors a vacuum—the “expert” and mouthpiece on her work. She gave seminars, wrote learned papers, sent letters to the
Times Book Review
, appeared at the MLA, and so forth, all in the service of creating an Isadora Wing whom she never knew and who never really existed.
Times Book Review
, appeared at the MLA, and so forth, all in the service of creating an Isadora Wing whom she never knew and who never really existed.
“Sebastian,” or “Julian,” went back to L.A., divorced the present writer by mutual consent, married a sweet young thing, and, complaining that he really wanted to write operas about the vanity of human wishes and spiritual transcendence, went on composing electronic scores for Columbia, Fox, Universal, et alia. He even wrote, produced, and scored a hugely successful movie called
Papua Castaway
(directed, as you remember, by Leonard Nimoy), and thereafter his price per score went to one million. Trapped by his lifestyle and his new wife (who ordered license plates for their twin Ferraris that read: EARNS and SPENDS), he goes on toiling at his synthesizer to this day, an admirable craftsman, thoroughly dismayed by his life.
Papua Castaway
(directed, as you remember, by Leonard Nimoy), and thereafter his price per score went to one million. Trapped by his lifestyle and his new wife (who ordered license plates for their twin Ferraris that read: EARNS and SPENDS), he goes on toiling at his synthesizer to this day, an admirable craftsman, thoroughly dismayed by his life.
“Bean/Dart/Trick” also wound up in area code 213, married to an older actress, dreaming of “Leila/Louise/ Isadora,” his one great love, and taking bit parts in
Rambo V
through
X.
He continues to spread his seed as liberally through southern California as he did through New York and Connecticut, and he curses his karma, his father, his stars, that he had not the guts to give up his Casanova complex for the only woman he ever really loved. But between men and their fathers, intention, after all, is the last thing that matters. “Dart” blames his wife for his lack of success and in retrospect idealizes “Leila” more and more with every passing year.
Rambo V
through
X.
He continues to spread his seed as liberally through southern California as he did through New York and Connecticut, and he curses his karma, his father, his stars, that he had not the guts to give up his Casanova complex for the only woman he ever really loved. But between men and their fathers, intention, after all, is the last thing that matters. “Dart” blames his wife for his lack of success and in retrospect idealizes “Leila” more and more with every passing year.
“Emmie” published her menopause book and made another small fortune, gave the term “menopausal chic” to the
New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations
, and flourished because her heart is pure—though not all
that
pure (since she is, after all, an author). She still loves her married Greek and is happy when he sails into town.
New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations
, and flourished because her heart is pure—though not all
that
pure (since she is, after all, an author). She still loves her married Greek and is happy when he sails into town.
“André” also wound up in area code 213, having sold his gallery, divorced his wife, married a twenty-two-year-old actress, and become an “indie prod” and a health food fanatic. It truly amazes your humble amanuensis that so many of the characters migrated to area code 213, but you know what they say about southern California—everything in the United States that isn’t nailed down eventually slithers there.
And what of the “twins” or “Amanda Ace”—a child so vital she seems doubled, twinned, squared? Following her mother’s disappearance and amazing return, she, at eleven, wrote a book, which became a best-seller.
A Child’s Guide to Life,
it was called, and it told kids of today how to center themselves and be sane, whole, and drug-free in the face of the breakdown of their parents’ crazy, addictive civilization.
A Child’s Guide to Life,
it was called, and it told kids of today how to center themselves and be sane, whole, and drug-free in the face of the breakdown of their parents’ crazy, addictive civilization.
Her literary career temporarily suspended by the advent of puberty, “Mike” and “Ed,” aka “Amanda,” now goes to school like any kid her age but has an agent, a business manager, and a lawyer to sift the offers (for TV shows, films, interviews, investments) that pour in weekly. It remains to be seen whether she will make it through the hormonal derby of adolescence without at least temporarily losing her sense of humor. She is, after all, her mother’s daughter, and between daughters and their mothers, intention, alas, is the last thing that matters.
So now I am home. In Connecticut again. The maples blaze on my hillside as the oranges blaze in the garbage cans of New York. A lozenge of light paints the ceiling of my writing studio. A ghostly harvest moon floats over the hills. I am writing. Bessie is singing. My lovely daughter is here.
For the first time in my life, I have been able to hold on to the feeling of air under my wings. I am flying at last.
I cannot tell you it’s because of a man, or because of a book, or because of the moon. I can only tell you that I have gotten free of the prison of myself and that I move through the world without fear.
It has something to do with sobriety, which has everything to do with freedom. It has something to do with grace.
Connecticut, Venice, New York, California, the South Seas . . . what does it matter, if God is in your heart and every word is a meditation, an act of praise?
I cannot tell you that I arrived here without any detours. For starters, I have to confess that I drank again. But apparently even that was necessary—for it made me realize that I hadn’t really hit bottom, that I was flirting with surrender but hadn’t
really
surrendered. I was
not
entirely ready.
really
surrendered. I was
not
entirely ready.
It was my last married man who triggered my surrender. His name was Marcus. We met at a dinner party in a loft in SoHo—one of those lofts filled with expensive art—Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler—and custom-made furniture. The people were also custom-made. Eurotrash. Debutramps with trust funds. Good jewelry from the Via Condotti and Old Bond Street. Castles on the Rhine and country houses in Orvieto. Azzedine Alaïa shoes. Chanel suits. God bless fashion for keeping us fickle—and trivial, when we long to be deep.
He had silver hair, hazel eyes, a five-o’clock shadow that glimmered. A sweater knitted by some Irish fisherfolk. A tie woven by some Costa Rican hippies. Loafers made of unborn piglet—or Pooh. He was in the art racket—a consultant. Bipondal: New York and London. Very big deal. But he melted my heart by speaking Yiddish.
I was sick of Eurotrash and longing for Brooklyn. He had Brooklyn in his soul. Like Daddy.
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