B007RT1UH4 EBOK (41 page)

Hotel Condal

Palamós, Gerona

Spain

9 August 1950

dear Mother,

I’m really sorry I haven’t written you in a good week now; but I really thought you’d be seeing Margaret extensively and soon, and that you could exchange notes, since I’ve written to her at length trying to make ‘plans’.

Well; two letters from Margaret have made that word plan sound rather silly. But I must say first, again, how fortunate I am in both of you. What she is going through is a hideous difficulty on every hand, a financially, psychologically, and the sense of time passing, but she is magnificent about it. And you. I suppose I’ve know this, but not until recently appreciated it so fully. And to have her letter saying this to me, —I just don’t know anything, what to say to you, what to say to your mother! I have been so touched by all that your mother says and does and her attitude . . . I do love her so much already, can you know that? I do honestly. And think she is magnificent and how lucky you are, and this I, and how exciting it is to have her adored so quickly and genuinely by everybody like Jacob and Kathleen and Emmy (the last two talk and rave about her all the time). Possibly I shouldn’t write all this to you, but I want you to know it, and that I do more all the time appreciate you in the widest senses.

Margaret’s mother (and this must make it all the more difficult for her) is in very bad condition, ‘would be having a nervous breakdown if there were money for it’, and she is right now only concerned for that problem. You may imagine the shock to me, after the letters I’ve written you and her, all these plans for returning to Paris, London, Wales &c., to have a letter from her saying she believes she must get a job. And so right now I’m trying to figure out what best the next step may be, exchanging lengthy correspondence with her about it though she can say nothing really. I’m certainly going to stay here until the beginning of September. Then I can’t tell. I can’t tell whether it would be a good thing for me to come back there and find a job, and work at it until Margaret can work her problem out. I know this sounds strange, it’s the oldest part of the whole thing this business of not wanting to get into the New York race again, and really it’s the last thing I’d want to do. But I cannot have Margaret facing all of this alone. My other possibilities are staying abroad and if possible a job, perhaps in Paris, where I could be prepared fully to marry her when she was free of this present trouble. Or again, what sounds the most cowardly perhaps, to stay here in Spain throughout the winter and finish my work and return with it. I don’t know; But I can’t despair of it all, because of both of you being what you are I know we can work it out. [...]

I’m in good spirits just at the moment because my work is going well, slowly as I knew it would but I think well. It will go well for about six more days, then it won’t. But perhaps you can understand, the best part of it has been coming back to it, after a year of not touching it but worrying about it, to find that upon returning to it that it does retain its life for me, and still asks to be finished.

This is the ideal place for it: a small fishing town on the coast north of Barcelona, with an excellent beach where the sun blazes at noon but the place is not hot, quite cool now at evening. I’m in a hotel with a small room, though the window is large which is most important, and eating well, working until 11:30 when I go down to the beach, then lunch and work again in the afternoon. [...]

How I hope you are well (Margaret says you’re looking splendid, better than she’s ever seen you, I’m so happy to hear that). I’m sorry that so much of this must fall upon you, and say again how much I appreciate you in it. But do not let it interfere with your summer, which I hope so is a good one. One way or another, perhaps we’ll share next summer there in Massapequa, the more I think of it the more I want to and look forward to doing so. But at the moment it’s ten pm, time for dinner here in this country.

with my love,

W.

To Edith Gaddis

Palamós, Gerona

15 August 1950

dear Mother,

Many thanks for your letter, which I had Saturday, but went in to Barcelona Sunday, came back Monday night, Tuesday a holiday. I suppose funniest in this whole thing really is the round of letters we are exchanging, you & I & Margaret: you writing me not to be angry, disappointed; I writing you not to be disappointed if she can’t visit Massapequa immediately, and saying I hope she can see and talk with you honestly & freely, you writing me and saying how glad you are that she can talk with you honestly & freely, she writing me that she hopes it’s all right if she talks with you openly when I’ve just written her that I hope she will . . . well, with such support on all sides we should come through. Heaven knows I appreciate what she’s going through, I’ll wait until I’m green; but feel a bit guilty over not being there to help her; though could I if I were? Certainly the three of us could have been fun together; but how often? No for the moment I think better I sit patiently (if you can imagine that) and work. Now, as her recent letters show no sign of return soon, I may stay in Spain and try to make the best of my time alone; I think my work’s going well, but how can one tell with only one’s self to judge? I don’t know. If I can arrange something through Barney, a perilous undertaking, to make sure of the rooms at palais d’Antin, I’ll hope not to have to waste the time, money & energy going to Paris until I do know that Margaret’s coming. (Though ‘taking it philosophically’ as you say, I can see it stretching out to Christmas. Christmas indeed! Well, it better be done up by Christmas.)

Incidentally please don’t ever say to me again, Maybe it’s a test. About anything.

One thing I can lift from your mind. If we come to Spain everything happens, we find treasures sought after in other lives, other worlds, though perhaps a little late. [...] I’ve so hoped to have a letter soon saying that Margaret had come, or was coming to Massapequa; I know she wants to, & you want to; I just want her to too. (And while she’s there you might give her
Stella Blandish
to read. That should fix her.)

I hardly know what to say about war; certainly it’s more talked of there than here, though Spanish papers follow it well enough; all I miss is the constant chatter, hair-brained opinion and free-flying rumour thank God. But I do believe that there’s not an immediate danger; just as I most firmly believe that the whole thing will happen before 1954. But whatever, I have the modern so-little-time neurosis, and want to settle things with Margaret as soon as we can.

Her letters are splendid; only make me troubled that I can’t flatly
do
anything to ease things for her. And please let me assure you both that I’m not angry, bitter, disappointed, no prospect of cave-man foolishness; mostly I’m overcome by both you and she, how splendid you both are and how fortunate I.

For the moment I guess the most maddening thing is being here alone, when it would be so marvelous with her. But I’m getting work done: Lord, how slow it is with me. And the constant feelings of pleasure at it going well, disgust and depression when I read it and it looks ridiculous, pretentious, sophomoric, imitative, what-have-you. But—from the look of things—I should know by the time I see Margaret again, and the prospect of competitive living appears again, whether it is all worth it, worth finishing. I don’t know, she mentions her sister and brother-in-law’s life, he commuting, they seeing one another for about 3hours a day, both exhausted. Then he plays Golf on Saturdays. And it’s strange and all wrong to read of such a life here in Spain, anywhere in South Europe really, the Mediterranean countries, where life is such a thoroughly family affair (How to win friends and influence people, how to be a chinaman like Lin Yutang and make a lot of money . . .), even though people are poor.

In the north of Spain, here in Catalunia, they don’t drink much, they work hard but there is constantly, as one finds among poor (by American standards) people, this great quality of together-ness, a kind of trust forced upon them, so that they must trust each other, which with pots of money you don’t need to do; and apparently can’t do if you want pots of money. (For Heaven’s sake, don’t mis-read political implications into what I go on about here. It’s only what I see around me, the kindness I have shown me by these people; and contrasting, memories of such things as your purse-snatching incident on the NY subway, which I’ll never forget.)

Well again, how I wish we were all three here, what fun we should have simply walking down to the harbour tonight, through this village. Though I’m not sure you’d bear with the food; for lunch I had five small octupi (squids?), the ink-sacs were fine. The tentacles a little disconcerting.

with my love,

W.

palais d’Antin: WG’s Paris residence in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, in the ninth arrondissement.

Stella Blandish
: presumably
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
(1939), a violent detective novel by British writer James Hadley Chase mentioned on p. 81 of
R.
(Miss Blandish’s first name is never given.) In a letter to me dated 12 June 1983, WG said, “I recall it as being regarded as seminal in the wave of sex/sadism.”

war: the Korean War, which began on 25 June 1950 when North Korean forces invaded South Korea. Two days later, President Truman commanded US air and sea forces to go to South Korea to help defend it from China-backed North Korea, and there were fears that the conflict would escalate into another world war.

(How to win friends [...] money): quoting Connolly again (see note to 4 May 1948). Dale Carnegie’s self-help book
How to Win Friends and Influence People
(1936) is critiqued in
R
(498– 503). WG taught it in later years.

To John and Pauline Napper

[
John Napper (1916–2001) married his second wife Pauline Davidson in 1945. He was a popular society portrait painter before expanding his palette to expressionistic oils, vivid watercolors, and book illustrations. (He did the cover and illustrations for John Gardner’s 1972 novel
The Sunlight Dialogues
while staying with WG in Piermont, NY.) The Nappers met WG in the summer of 1950 on the beach at Palamós; as Pauline Napper later told Crystal Alberts, the beach was almost deserted except for “a solitary figure, a man sitting surrounded by sheets of writing paper which kept shifting in the slight wind and which he was desperately trying to hold down.” When John walked over to help, he “asked him if he was English and Willie replied rather abruptly ‘No, I am American and I am working!’” Later WG came over to “apologize for his abruptness and suggested
[
they
]
meet for a drink later at a café by the harbour” (“Mapping William Gaddis,”
173n55)
. They became lifelong friends.
]

a/c Consulado de los EE. UU.

Junqueras, 18, Barcelona, Spain

7 September 1950

dear John and Pauline,

—menaced by monsters, fancy lights, Risking enchantment . . . We had some balloons over Palamos, causing great excitement among the natives—and I by now unkempt enough to be a member of the local unwashed—we all ran out into the streets, dogs and children, to the point about the lighthouse, where these balloons, three of them, rose higher over the hot evening air above land, then came down in the sea, two did, the other carried a little light in its basket, it just went right on up. And that blazing sky, useless to try to describe it. Do you know that point of land? its view covers the whole harbour and then around to east (to the left). I suppose they were meteorological balloons, but we here prefer any pagan to scientific explanation.