The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  The guesthouse gate is locked tonight, so I’m excused from going out to the Kali puja in the temple, as I’d unwillingly planned to do.

  January 7. Woke with a sore throat to the noise of snake-charmer music over the loudspeakers. But this poor old snake couldn’t rise. However, I did get up at 7:30 and went to look for the new swamis. I met Arup first, near the Leggett House, by the pandal in which the monks have been eating. He was embarrassed and delighted when I prostrated, and hugged me. He is now Swami Anamananda. (Anama means The Nameless One; this is a kind of side-reference to Arup, which means The Formless One.) Arup looks absolutely marvellous in his gerua. The gold flame-color brings out the blue of his eyes and the fairness of his wrinkled skin. He looks very tall and very old and spiritual; the abbot of a monastery, at the least. And it is with the benevolence of an abbot that he raises his hand in blessing, and murmurs, “Bless you,” whenever anyone takes the dust of his feet.

  I walked with him toward the office, and presently Prema came by, in a group of other new-made swamis on their way to beg alms. (You are supposed to do this barefoot, but the real point is not to wear leather on your feet, so Arup was allowed to compromise by wearing rubber sneakers.) I ran out to him and prostrated and he hugged me warmly; the onlookers were much edified, I felt, to see us Westerners playing the game according to their rules.

  Prema is Swami Vidyatmananda. (Vidya is knowledge itself; vidya-atman is the soul of knowledge. To all intents and purposes, Prema could just as well have been called Vidyananda; but some other swami has that name already.)

  Then it was time for Aranyananda, Ranganathananda and Shashi Kanto to leave. Nearly all of the swamis (including Prabhavananda) had been present at the sannyas ceremony during the dead hours of last night. Ranganathananda wanted me to come back to the institute with them and see a documentary film on Vivekananda, but Aranyananda whispered in my ear, “Not worth the candle.” (How typically Indian to use this faded slang!) So I declined. I gave Shashi a great big hug, which surprised and delighted him. I prostrated before Aranyananda and then hugged him. But he was a couple of degrees cooler. He really is quite a cool-blooded creature.

  Later I went in to see Swami. He was being massaged by his attendant, a tall athletic and attractive young swami they called Ramesh. Swami said to me, “You see—I massaged Maharaj, so now I get massage!” Then Prema came in from begging alms, with his cloth full of damp tepid food. Both Swami and I had to take some. I nearly gagged on mine, and I noticed Swami took very little, though he remarked that this food must be very pure!

  Then Gokulananda came in with two of his college boys. Swami began telling the boys they should become monks. “I tried to think lustful thoughts in Maharaj’s presence, and I couldn’t. I tried deliberately. But such an experience will not be possible again until the Lord comes back.” “Run away from home,” he told one of the boys; then, turning to Gokulananda, “Swami, get him a railway ticket to Madras. Otherwise, he will get married to a little girl—” Turning to the boy, with a kind of inspired affectionate teasing tone, “Yes—you will get married, and then you will say, I got married because my mother cried!” Then he added, “Write to me when you join the monastery—not before!”

  Then Gokulananda sent the boys away and started to ask Swami some personal advice. (It was Swami who persuaded him to join the order.) So I went out of the room. Vivekananda’s room was open; a swami was cleaning it. I went in and prostrated and prayed, “Give me devotion to you, give me knowledge of you—even against my will. And be with me in the hour of death.” And I prayed the same for Don. Then I touched my forehead to the bed. I went out on to the balcony where Swami first met Maharaj, and prayed the same prayer. A swami was bathing in the Ganges below, pushing aside the floating water hyacinths before he immersed. . . . Later that day, I brought my beads and touched them to the spot on the floor of the balcony where I guessed Maharaj and Swami must have stood.

  Talked with the countess before lunch, about the bitterness of the masses in this city. At the Great Eastern Hotel you are not supposed to tip; but the management doesn’t pass on the service charge to the help, and they are so mad that they’ll only bring you one shoe, etc.

  She also said that the Parliament of Religions was attended only by rich bored people who had nothing else to do.

  I felt lazy in the afternoon, so I stayed in my room instead of going to Dakshineswar with Al Winslow and Carlson. (Winslow actually put on his trunks and went swimming in the Ganges!) Then I packed and sat with Swami, who was feeling much better. But the doctor want[s] him to have his lungs x-rayed when he gets to Madras.

  Suddenly, it was time to go. I had said all my goodbyes—to Madhavananda sitting listless in a steamer chair; to Yatiswarananda in a half-lit room, too dim to read in, with earsplitting music coming from a nearby loudspeaker so that you had to shout at him; he must have nerves of steel. I talked to Prema, who is very happy about everything. He plans to stay in India for at least a year, as a troubleshooter for the order, getting projects organized, etc. He says Arup says he’ll go back to Hollywood, eat his three meals a day and lead a spiritual life. “Like Elder the pumpkin cutter in the Gospel,”590 Prema commented. He is just as sour and bitchy as ever; it is strange to hear this bitchery proceeding from those austere-looking lips. When he complained that his dhoti keeps slipping and Arup remarked that his doesn’t, Prema said, “Perhaps you have more so and sos to hold it up with.”

  Rather to Prema’s dismay, Swami has ruled that henceforth he must be called Vidya, and Arup Anama. But I doubt if this will stick. Too many people are too used to the old names. (Incidentally, what a very real austerity this name changing is!)

  Krishna volunteered to come with me to the airport. Also Gokulananda, maybe prompted by Swami. There was a big delay, because the kirtan was still going on, and Krishna had left his tape recorder running on the musicians’ platform. We waited for them to stop and they didn’t, so Krishna finally had to remove it in front of the whole audience. But we had gallons of time anyway.

  Then, as we passed the office, Nikhilananda was standing there with a group of swamis. Nikhilananda ordered Gokulananda out of the car and thrust a swami from Singapore into it—all this in Bengali without a word of explanation to Krishna and me. Nikhilananda had also forbidden Al Winslow to come with me as he’d wanted to. I think this was sheer love of bullying, but this was no time to protest.

  When we got out to dreary Dum Dum, I persuaded Krishna and the swami to leave me alone, fairly soon. For some stupid reason, I didn’t hug Krishna on parting. I ought to have—I know he would have liked it. Krishna said, with a grin, “I suppose you’re going to write all night?”

  January 8. We took off from Dum Dum about twenty minutes after midnight. The plane, BOAC, had come from Sydney and there were a lot of Australians on board—large beefy men in white shirts with sleeves rolled to the elbows, as if for cricket; they had brick-red faces, and gave a collective impression of cockney Scottishness. It was deathly cold on board; and, though I had three seats to lie down on, I couldn’t sleep. Because of my cold, the descent at Karachi was horribly painful. The mucus seemed to get into my ears, and I was, and still am[,] rather deaf. They didn’t make us get out of the plane, thank goodness.

  Now we are airborne after another landing, around breakfast time, at Damascus—a city in a desert, and made out of desert. Brown mountains in the background, with some snow. Bracingly cold outside, even in the sunshine. At first, the officials didn’t want me to get out and merely walk around the plane; they wanted us all to go to the transit lounge in a bus, and buy things, I suppose. But it was so wonderful inhaling deep breaths of the thrillingly clean air—the first air since Tokyo—and there was even something exciting about watching the cleaners at work; the modern counterpart of changing horses at an inn. Baggage being lifted down through the trapdoor; shit and dirty water and towels being carted away; fresh food arriving in containers. Two uniformed Britishers, maybe pilots, pulled some kind of a p
lug on a long stem down from the lower surface of the wing. A mechanic then brought them a jar of water which they examined very carefully, like doctors examining urine. It looked beautifully clean however.

  We are scheduled to arrive in Rome at 11:00 a.m., their time. And Gore and Howard will be waiting for me, I hope, like the Two who come to conduct the dying man into his new life. . . .591

  (That’s the end of the diary. I stayed in Rome two nights, with Gore and Howard, at their apartment. On January 10, I flew to New York and stayed with Don at the Hotel Chelsea. On January 23, I flew back to Los Angeles, and have been living at home since. Don stayed on in New York to draw various people, some of them for Glamor magazine.)

  February 11. Don returned home in the evening of the day before yesterday. As Dorothy, who came yesterday, said, “The household is completed.” And we were truly all delighted to see each other. When Don isn’t here, my life simply isn’t very interesting. He creates disturbance, anxiety, tension, and sometimes jealousy and rage; but never for one moment do I feel that our relationship is unimportant. Let me just recognize this fact, and not bother about making good resolutions. He will behave badly; I shall behave badly. That’s par for the course.

  I have had to omit all the things that happened in Rome, New York and since I got back here. Maybe some of them will come back to me. For instance . . .

  There was a minor earthquake while we were away. According to Dorothy, it sounded “like as if the Chinese were coming.”

  Wystan telegraphed me to say A Single Man is “by far the best thing you have done.” To Don, however, he added three criticisms. (1) That George stays far too long in the bathroom. (2) That there is too much made of the homosexuals’ right to be regarded as a minority, in the same category as the Negroes and the Jews. (3) That Wystan was shocked when George thinks that he will “make a new Jim.”

  As far as I can make out, criticism (1) was based on the fact that Wystan never stays long in the bathroom; (2) arose out of Wystan’s feeling that my upholding of the homosexuals was indirectly antiSemitic; (3) meant Wystan refuses to believe that this is my own attitude toward human beings.

  Wystan told Don on another occasion that he thinks I dislike Chester because I am anti-Semitic. Not a word of this to me, of course. His most startling dictum this time was that the only art form truly appropriate to the nineteenth century was opera, and that therefore Verdi and Wagner are greater than Dickens, Tolstoy, Degas, Tennyson, etc.!

  I have frittered away eighteen days since my return (as if I had so many left!); and I still have lots of mail to answer. But now I will get down to work. My first job is to go through my diaries and find all references to Huxley, and then construct my article for the memorial volume.592 This isn’t a waste of time, because this is all research for my own autobiography. Then I want to consider the idea of a short novel based on Prema taking sannyas. More of this later.

  What a wonderful life I have, really! How very seldom do I do any thing I don’t want to do. My only afflictions at present are ill health. Right now, I’m troubled by what may be the remains of my Indian stomach upset. The muscles keep twitching and the gut aches, off and on. I’ll go see Dr. Allen as soon as I have the time.

  Don is busy designing the jacket for the English edition of my novel. The deadline is February 14.

  February 18. They have definitely taken Don’s driver’s license away but Ben Alston thinks he can get it back, after a re-hearing of the case; he is chiefly being punished for not having attended the first hearing.593 Meanwhile I shall have to drive him around, and this is bound to lead to friction. Yesterday, he told me I was behaving too well, because I didn’t get frantic when he kept changing his mind about where he wanted to go.

  Perfect weather, though cold at nights. We have had a very happy time since he got back; but now there are storm clouds. Was he right to have cancelled the Phoenix show? What is he going to do next? How about painting?

  I am skimming through my journals looking for references to Aldous—there aren’t nearly enough of them—before I start my article on him for the memorial volume. This idea of Methuen’s that I shall do a book of bits and pieces is also very stimulating; and it’s the kind of project I can easily work on in the midst of writing a movie script. (Let’s hope I get one to write! Both Burton and The Loved One are still possibilities.)

  March 8. All this time has passed, and yet there is little to report. I have been offered an appointment as a Regents’ Professor on the UCLA campus, which makes me respectable, I suppose, and would bring in $10,000, and would be quite convenient, because I could do it next spring, from this house, with very little sweat. Shall probably accept.

  Nothing from Burton or Tony Richardson about the movies. Have just finished revising the final typescript of Ramakrishna and His Disciples; so it should finally get off to Simon and Schuster and Methuen. Now there is the Huxley article.

  Don still without a license. Yesterday, for the first time, he took a chance and drove to the gym.

  Still this icy wind and brilliant weather. I’m sick of the cold. Also, I have a worryingly prolonged attack of pyloric spasm. Am taking pills for this. If it doesn’t get better, Allen wants to x-ray.

  Last Monday, we bought a T.V. set. It is rather a joy. At least, one can toy with the idea of seeing this or that movie, and you know there is always entertainment if you’re bored stiff.

  March 13. This morning, I read Don some poems of de la Mare. He liked “All Hallowe’en” the best. A bright windy day after yesterday’s rain. Yesterday I saw Dr. Allen again, and convinced him, almost against my own better judgment, that I’m really all right. I don’t know if I really am, but I do know that I want to be. I want to work with Tony Richardson on The Loved One. Part of me at least is full of springtime vitality.

  Letters, manuscripts to read, all sorts of chores. Relations with Don very good; the television helps a lot, in an odd sort of way. It gives us a new vice in common—watching the ends of old films in the middle of the night and thus getting up late, next morning.

  Tony Richardson is scheduled to arrive on Sunday; so then I hope things will start to happen.

  Don has joined the Lyle Fox gym. Still no word about his license.

  March 15. Last night, Don spent the first night out since he has been back. He arrived home late this morning in good spirits, so I hope this is going to help.

  As for me—well, there’s Bart Johnson, sort of. I wish that would work out better, because it would be so damned convenient. Which is probably just why it won’t.

  The day before yesterday, I saw Gerald Heard. He thinks that we are all losing our memories because of the spastic shifts of the magnetic pole. He told me what Chris Wood already told us as a deadly secret—that Margaret Gage is selling her house and thus turning him out. According to Gerald this is a sort of revenge; she feels she has been treated badly and her friends assure her that this is so. They regard her as a great seer, a leader with a spiritual message, and they tell her that she has been too much under the domination of Gerald. She has a new friend who is a psychologist and who encourages her to act like a young girl, although she’s near seventy. In the evenings she wears short ballet skirts. Gerald also believes that Michael did a lot to set Margaret against him—he is so bossy.

  I asked Gerald what he is going to do. He was very vague. “After all,’ he said, “I don’t wish to say this melodramatically, but the fact remains, I am dying.”

  He described himself as being “floored” by A Single Man, which he and Michael have just read. He thinks it is by far my best book. “Now, obviously, you can write anything.” So he advises me to deal with awe. Cites Outward Bound,594 and Chesterton’s play Magic.

  Last Wednesday, when I was up at Vedanta Place, Usha remarked that someone had been into the bookshop and asked for a guidebook to the temples of India. So I said, why didn’t they stock a guidebook to India? And Swami grinned and said, “No, Chris—I will not deliberately send anyone to his death.�
�� He is full of such cracks at present and behind them you feel a real resentment; he keeps declaring that he will never never return there. That he couldn’t meditate at all while he was there, etc. And yet he also tells how he went to meditate in the shrine of the Holy Mother at Dakshineswar and was aware that the image was alive!

  March 29 [Sunday]. Here we are at Easter. Well, at least I’ve worked all day; my traditional celebration. The outline for The Loved One. I’ve been on payroll since last Wednesday, March 25, and it certainly is fun. Tony Richardson won’t be here much longer, however. He goes back to England soon and then returns to direct, in a couple of months.

  Don still hasn’t got his license back. They took it away from him and sent it to Sacramento, and of course he drives, nearly every day, so the worst may be expected. No use dwelling on that.

  Nothing more I want to say now.

  My next chore: the article on Huxley. I just finished reading through my diaries to find all the references to him. It’s rather shocking, how seldom we met.

  This morning I dreamt that Igor was dead. But the corpse could talk. This dream was somehow reassuring.

  May 26. Don left yesterday at noon, by plane for London. He’ll stay there four or five days, then join Lee Garlington and his friend in Egypt.595 From there they’ll go to Greece, Austria and elsewhere. This is Don’s “birthday present” for his thirtieth birthday. He said he wanted to do it “with my blessing.”

  When we got to the airport, the entrance to the plane was guarded by two cops. I said to myself “a bomb” but didn’t say so to Don lest it should worry him. Now we hear that two of the Beatles were on board and the authorities were terribly afraid of a mob demonstration.