B007RT1UH4 EBOK (46 page)

(Yes, you say, —We will go to Key West after an R. F--------- Christmas. and I can’t read that one word in your letter, Frosting? what is it.) Anyhow, and then Cuba. (But it says, —and will take little nibbles out of my Cuba. OH I see now. Until this reading, I thought it meant you were going to take Tommy and Bruce (‘little nibbles’) to Cuba! Well, you see the state I’m in.

But this line of yours has occurred to me so often in the past weeks, —How can you live in Paris after Spain? And I wonder. Except that everything’s here; the way everything was in New York. And after months in Spain, with never a conversation of any proportions except simplicity and repitition, then the lust to come back to Paris and talk and carry on. I hadn’t expected to stay on here so long this fall. I went back to Spain last summer, stayed and worked, writing, in a marvelous small town on the coast about 60 miles north of Barcelona. But toward late fall I got excited again, came thundering up here, and have since managed one mild collapse after another. Now I may manage to get over to London again, briefly, for the holidays, and then I think back to Sevilla, which of course has grown all out of proportion in my mind, —though my God the days were longer there, there was time to sleep, to eat, hours to work, a nap, and still much of the day and the night left to walk, or stand in inconspicuous idleness and drink mild things, and listen to that wild music which still sets something off in me. I want to go back; I’m really a country boy I’m afraid, and Paris high-life is beyond me.

Only within these last two or three weeks I’ve come to like Paris a great deal. I hadn’t, during a year here, but suddenly I find it a wonderful place. —Though this changes no plans about leaving it. Because the barren-ness of Spain, its refusal to include one, draws me back there, every bit. Never coy.

But this should entertain you. Do you remember the player piano? Well, a few weeks ago I got it out again and looked at it, and liked it, oh yes, and sent it to
Atlantic Monthly
, who have offered to take an excerpt from it, or possibly the whole. Isn’t that wild? and absurd? Otherwise writing gets written by the pound-weight, but is kept hidden and gone over, exhaustively enough to rob it of any quality of spontaneity, and put aside, waiting to be incorporated into a pretentious whole. Though weeks go by, in Paris, with nothing but monkey-business.

Enough of the wrong-size people showed up and draggled the terraces of left-bank cafes summer before last, skulking between tables and looking around every corner for the San Remo, to send me over the Pyrenees last summer. But by now it seems they have all faded away, the nice ones and the pitiful ones, back to New York.

And the weather here, mostly over-cast, or rain, and the newspapers, and all of it seems to point to an end, The End in sight. Waiting for something to Happen. And now someone has lent me his car, apartment, and Indo-chinese house-boy, to fill me with a tonic of absurdity in private circumstances which often enough centre about such problems as a laundry bill. Well, something is going to Happen.

I wish I hadn’t broke that dish,

I wish I was a movie star,

I wish a lot of things,

I wish That life was like the movies are . . .

But I have seen that friend of yours Robin Roberts, of whom you wrote so brightly years ago. She’s singing here, in a small place which I find thoroughly offensive because you have to sit in a reverent silence while the fey young man who runs the place sings, and cannot applaud, must only snap the fingers. So coy I can’t get in the door. I had lunch with her about three months ago, and I hope to see her again, but I only think to look for her in the evening, then she’s in that place. But she’s doing well I think, and happy.

What about those boys? Someone, I can’t think who, had run into Tommy on a New York street, and he was apparently pretty rousing, without a shadow of doubt about anything. Which is fine. For now. And the old captain? with a bloody nose first day of school, that is splendid I think. He is growing Up. Oh it’s fearful, and I feel foolish enough asking you, here, to give them my love.

It wouldn’t mean something to them would it. It shouldn’t either I suppose, because they must be fully occupied in growing up. But what a picture I have in mind, when you say Bruce fights too much. How I’ve always loved (with enough occasional burst of real fury) his truculence, his absolute Refusals, his moments then when he seemed older than any of us.

And Christmas? I hope it is wonderful for all three of you. I can’t quite picture it any more, the last one spent on the road on a trip to Florence, the one before that walking the streets of Madrid, the one before that walking the streets of Panama, the one before that preposterous to remember, those realities most vivid in unreality. But there are a few idlers in London. I don’t want to be here, for ‘parties’.

Please write me again, fuller, about what happened, happens, what is going to happen.

my love to you, and to Tommy, and to Bruce

W.

Spain: cf.
R
: “—Spain . . . , Gwyon said, —the self-continence, [...] to outsiders, it seems to return their love at the moment, but once outside they find themselves shut out forever, their emptiness facing a void, a ragged surface that refuses to admit . . .” (p. 16; cf. also 429).

San Remo: the Greenwich Village bar (formerly on the northwest corner of Bleecker and MacDougal) called the Viareggio in
R.
In the novel, it is described as being filled with “people all mentally and physically the wrong size” (305).

I wish [...] That life was like the movies are: the first stanza of “It May Be Life—” (1926) by A. P. Herbert (1890–1971), British humorist, novelist, and Member of Parliament.

Robin Roberts: a folksinger who later recorded a few albums.

To Edith Gaddis

Paris

3 December 1950

dear Mother,

It seems, as usual, that Christmas is going to appear wild-eyed around the corner, like a drunken old grandfather whom everyone is fond of, but no one quite prepared for ever, in spite of the messages he has sent announcing his imminent arrival.

The newspapers give no hope of spring.

I wrote you, didn’t I? about Dick Wheatland’s poison which has turned temporarily into my meat; that he went home for a medical examination and has been detained, necessitating an executor of sorts (me) here, so that for the moment I’m a lord and master, with a heated apartment, an indo-chinese house-boy, and a yellow sports-car, none of which largess I’m quite prepared to live up to.

And so it may sound slightly lunatic to say that I still plan to get to London for the holidays (because Dick very possibly won’t return until the end of December). I’m now trying to clean up things in the palais d’Antin, seeing what I can do with the accummulation of a year all stacked in this room. I hope to solve them, one way or another, and stay over at Dick’s house within a week, getting myself together to get to London, I’d think still around the 15th though I may stay on here a few days longer, what with a house to live in. Then, still vaguely, I’d hope to stay in England for a month or less, return here and go back to Spain. There to finish my ‘work’, and come on home in May or June. That’s some time off though.

I’ve written Congdon (from whom I had a tepid note), saying I don’t know just what’s going on, offering two ideas for pieces (including that book with the head of AP in Madrid) which he’ll be afraid to take up, and saying that if I sell any part of Player piano he can’t come in and ask for some money. Even 7$50.

Needless perhaps to say, I scramble to the mailbox here daily, hoping to hear something through you from Mr Morton. Something happy. ($$$$ $$$) My teeth are all fixed, and thank you. Now. Have you still the check I sent you? I don’t remember if it was blank, or for 80$; but I’d like to ask if you could cash it for that sum, and include it with the December remittance when you send that to Paris. Because, also needless to say I guess, that end of life has got fairly complicated here recently. And what with clearing up affairs here, getting to London, and Christmas, I’ll need it. Heaven knows what will happen
there
. (Instead of return to Spain in January, I might stay on in England in the country to work, if such a plan seems feasible.) It’s a strange spot to be in, not able to believe really that
Atlantic
will come through, but still in a fearful way half-counting on it, half-expecting a check, and working along on that deceptive basis. Lord, lord, where’s the dollar.

Yesterday we drove out to Malmaison, the summer ‘cottage’ of Napoleon and Josephine, and found it to be a lovely small chateau, and all sorts of embalmed glories of Empire. In the morning I’d bought a ticket and gone to a rehearsal concert of a boy named Sigi Weissenberg, whom I’d met in Panama, now 22yrs old and giving concerts everywhere (a pianist); I saw him later, and as a reward I must meet him now for lunch, and receive—two tickets to the same concert this afternoon. That’s life. I hope to hear from you in a day or two, and then shall write you more at length. Also will let you know when I can hope to ask you to use the London address again.

I saw a lovely pair of ear-rings for Margaret, 17th century, gold, with irregular pearls and emerald quartz stones, when I went back to ask her to hold them for me, they’d been sold. To a Swede. That’s life?

with love, W.

Sigi Weissenberg: Alexis Sigismund Weissenberg (1929–2012) Bulgarian-born Jewish pianist who achieved some fame in the late 1940s, took an extended leave from the stage, then resumed his career in 1966.

To John Napper

Paris

[mid December 1950]

dear John,

I plan to arrive in England around the end of the week, or the beginning of next (20th). I’m not doing very well here in Paris; in fact I’m not getting anywhere at all (words slip slide perish business) (I too). And most of all I look forward to being able to talk with you at length. You’ve been awfully kind to renew your invitation, and I should certainly be delighted to see your mill-pond next week, but only if it remains convenient for you, —at least in the scattter world I live in things which are delightfully convenient one week are ridiculously impossible the next, and so if anything has come up don’t put yourselves to any added difficulty. I hope to be in England for a number of weeks, and we could put any such visit off.