Jubilee Hitchhiker

by William Hjortsberg

  At 11:30, F. Dumont, a reporter for Elle magazine, arrived to spend another hour probing into Brautigan’s headache. He again behaved impolitely, and she received only discourteous answers to her questions. Lunch and the opportunity for drink couldn’t come soon enough for Richard. At the end of Mlle. Dumont’s “interview,” Jean-François Fogel arrived to guide Brautigan to his first glass of Calvados.

  Fogel, an essayist and journalist, worked for Le Point, a weekly news magazine founded in 1972 and modeled on Time and Newsweek. Christine Ferrand had quoted his comparison of Richard to Boris Vian in her Livres-Hebdo article. Brautigan took an umbrella when he left the hotel. It had rained hard in Paris before Richard’s arrival, but not a drop fell during his stay. It paid to be prepared.

  Fogel escorted the author to a neighborhood restaurant, pour le dejéuner. Brautigan didn’t have much of an appetite but drank numerous full glasses of Calvados. They discussed French literature and Richard’s own writing. Fogel observed that Brautigan had used the word “death” 114 times in So the Wind. Richard asked for someone to take him to Père-Lachaise Cemetery, saying he “wanted to breathe the air there.”

  Surprised that “our necropolis is known even in Montana,” Fogel agreed to be his guide. “One can’t refuse a stranger who has read Jules Laforgue,” he thought. When they left the restaurant, Brautigan bought a bottle of apple brandy to go.

  At more than 118 acres, Père-Lachaise was the largest cemetery in Paris. Named for the father-confessor to King Louis XIV, the graveyard was too distant from the city to be considered fashionable when it opened in 1804. As a publicity stunt, the administrators arranged, with much hoopla, to have the bodies of Molière and La Fontaine moved to Père-Lachaise. Sealing the deal, they reinterred the “purported remains” of fabled medieval lovers Héloïse and Abélard in their exclusive boneyard in 1817.

  Since then, Père-Lachaise had been the burial ground for the illustrious. Unlike Forest Lawn and Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, where the famous corpses are mainly show biz greats, the tombs at Père-Lachaise contain a wide spectrum of notables, everyone from Chopin, Modigliani, Marcel Proust, Balzac, and the executed Marshal Michel Ney (unless he escaped to America and is really buried in Cleveland) to Gertrude Stein, Isadora Duncan, Rossini, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and Edith Piaf (the much-beloved Parisian “little sparrow”).

  When a taxi dropped Brautigan and Fogel off at the gate to Père-Lachaise, the cemetery caretaker took one look at the long-haired forty-eight-year-old wearing bell-bottom jeans. Assuming him to be “a retarded hippie,” he said, “You come for Jim Morrison?”

  Richard climbed onto his high horse with the exaggerated dignity of the very drunk. “I don’t want to see where my friend is buried. I seek the grave of Apollinaire,” he replied with regal hauteur.

  After getting lost under the tree-shaded avenues of Père-Lachaise, Brautigan amused himself poking through the cemetery’s garbage bins with the tip of his hotel umbrella. Richard had “always been fascinated with what a society throws away.” The next year he wrote, “Garbage and trash are pages of history just as valid in their own way as generals and kings.” After examining the trash in Père-Lachaise, Brautigan observed, “The future of death is unlimited.” Richard walked between the graves, picking up dried flowers, plastic bottles, and discarded newspapers. Fogel watched in amusement when Brautigan abandoned sanitation and started chasing stray cats, “wishing them good afternoon in Japanese.” Other visitors looked on with disapproval as an inebriated American ran shouting through the sanctuary.

  Richard ignored them. He spoke loudly about French poet Robert Desnos and about Maiakov-sky, the Soviet “futurist” whose disillusionment with Stalin had led to sympathy with the Russian exile community in Paris before he shot himself to death in 1930. When Fogel suggested he tone it down, Brautigan complained of jet lag, saying, “I haven’t completely arrived yet. My kidneys are still in the Rockies. My skin in Kansas City and my hair is in the Atlantic Ocean.”

  As they found their way to Apollinaire’s monument, Richard took note of the many graves covered by only a simple embossed metal covering. Guillaume Apollinaire, who died in the influenza pandemic of 1918 after suffering a serious head wound on the front in World War I, lay under a rough-hewn menhir designed by Picasso. Stanzas from the poet’s work (he invented the word “surrealism” to describe his 1917 play Les Mamelles de Tirésias) were carved onto the granite slab sealing his tomb. Fogel provided an impromptu translation.

  On their way out of Père-Lachaise, Brautigan rapped his knuckles on a metal grave covering and said, “I was wrong. The future of death is le zinc.” Richard knew almost no French, but in his brief stay in Paris he’d already learned the colloquial term for a bar top.

  Brautigan showed up dead drunk for dinner at Marc Chénetier’s apartment. Things went downhill from there. Everyone on the small guest list, all friends of Marc, was offended by Richard. The next morning things only got worse. Brautigan couldn’t face another interview. Bernard Le Saux from Les Nouvelles littéraires arrived at the Hôtel d’Isly for his 11:00 am Thursday morning appointment. Richard refused to answer the phone when he called from the lobby.

  The interview had been arranged by Brautigan’s French agent. Bernard Le Saux was a distinguished journalist, and the Literary News, founded by Larousse in 1922, remained an influential publication sixty years later. Offended, Le Saux left a note on a page torn from a notebook of graph paper. He hoped “to be able to see you for the interview either this afternoon at what ever hour you like or, if you prefer, saturday.” He left two phone numbers. Richard never responded.

  While Richard hid in his room, far off in San Francisco, Bruce Conner stopped at Vesuvio and asked Henri Lenoir to let him into Brautigan’s office upstairs. Conner wanted to borrow a couple pieces of art he’d given Richard, planning to include them in an upcoming MOCA “prosthetic exhibition.” Brautigan had failed to inform Lenoir about this as promised. Henri knew Bruce and trusted him enough to unlock the office door. Conner signed a handwritten receipt for the drawing and collage he took.

  Across the pond, Brautigan remained in terrible shape. All his physical training, hours pedaling on Marian Hjortsberg’s Exercycle, gone to waste. Four days of nonstop drinking flushed weeks of sobriety down the drain in a torrent of Calvados. Richard didn’t emerge from his hotel room that day, hunkering down with a couple bottles and refusing to answer the phone. Messages piled up down at the front desk. Michelle Lapautre was furious. She felt responsible. Christian Bourgois had financed Brautigan’s entire trip, and her client’s bad behavior was like a slap in his face. Lapautre expected to do business with the publisher in the future and was angry that Richard had tainted the relationship.

  Friday went a little better. Marc Chénetier arrived at the Hôtel d’Isly at ten in the morning with a TV film crew. They set up in room H6, getting shots of Richard and close-ups of French editions of his recently published books. This was not complicated work, taking less than an hour. Chénetier had planned to meet Brautigan for lunch at noon. Marc had mentioned a manuscript he wanted Richard to read but neglected to bring it. He said he’d have it with him when he returned in an hour. Brautigan asked him to also bring a bottle of vinegar.

  At 12:00 pm, when Chénetier returned to the hotel, Richard was nowhere to be found. If he was still in his room, he refused to open the door or answer the phone. Marc left the manuscript and the vinegar at the front desk, scribbling a quick note on d’Isly stationery, saying, “May see you tonight at the reception.” Brautigan’s whereabouts during the afternoon remained a mystery. Wherever he went, Calvados stayed close at hand. The Luxembourg Garden was within walking distance of Richard’s hotel, and he went there to escape the demands of his fame.

  The second largest park in Paris, le Jardin du Luxembourg was built in 1612 by Marie de Médicis, widow of Henry IV, as a private playground for her new home, le Palais du Luxembourg. She planted two thousand elm trees in the park. Spring ca
me late to Paris in 1983, and the elms had only started to bud when Brautigan wandered beneath them. He brought along the borrowed umbrella, using it “to prod and turn about fresh garbage.” Lost in his imagination, Richard amused himself in solitude.

  Somehow, Brautigan made it to the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme on the Boulevard Raspail by 7:00 pm Friday in time for his reading. Afterward, at the reception following Richard’s presentation, his wish came true. He was introduced to the film director Jean-Jacques Beineix. Like Brautigan, Beineix was known as something of a recluse who allowed few interviews. Their conversation didn’t last long. A private moment, two artists exchanging ideas and observations. This brief moment provided the high point of Richard’s visit to Paris.

  On Saturday, Brautigan’s last day in France, he found his way to the Grand Palais de Champs-Elysées, where the third annual Salon du livres took place. Built for the Universal Exposition of 1900, an era before electricity was sufficient to illuminate such large spaces, the Grand Palais was the last of the vast glass-roofed exhibition halls modeled on London’s Crystal Palace. The beaux arts structure provided a splendid temporary temple for the world of literature.

  Booksellers from France and around the world had erected a vast maze of booths, displaying their latest publications along miles of shelving arranged under the arching glass ceiling. Numerous authors sat in their publishers’ booths, waiting to sign books and chat with readers. For Brautigan the place felt like a sepulcher. A week of steady drinking had taken a severe toll. The Bourgoises were not pleased with his appearance. This was no way to publicize a new book.

  Photographer Louis Monier stopped by the Christian Bourgois éditeur booth while making his rounds as a freelance. The ghoulish pictures he took of Richard portray a cadaver recently clawed up out of a grave in search of human flesh. Unless he had packed several identical blue denim work shirts, the zombie author appeared not to have changed clothes since arriving in Paris. Monier’s photos appeared in both Le Point and Le Magazine Littéraire. Jean-Baptiste Baronian headed his article/interview in the latter publication “Loufoque Brautigan?” (Crackpot Brautigan?). It told the whole story. The accompanying photograph spoke a thousand times louder than any words.

  Richard left France the next day, Sunday, April 17, departing for Japan from Paris-Orly on Korean Airlines after a quick farewell drink at an airport bar. It was a grueling ten-thousand-mile trip with long stops in Frankfurt, Cairo, and Aden. Brautigan suffered a twelve-hour layover in Karachi, Pakistan, and two more three-hour stops in Bangkok and Manila before the final eighteen-hundred-mile leg to Tokyo. Richard arrived in Japan four days after the grand opening ceremony for Tokyo Disneyland, an attraction Brautigan, despite his appetite for the mundane, would never visit.

  Richard had planned a detour to Munich to see Günter Ohnemus, his German translator. Ohnemus had contacted Brautigan previously with an offer from West German Playboy to write an article on the plight of young German models living in Tokyo. Thin attractive European women deemed not beautiful enough for successful modeling careers at home were shipped off to sashay down Japanese runways. Ohnemus sent a letter of introduction to Montana, but it got lost in the mail. A second letter was on its way to Tokyo.

  Boiling over with frustration after Brautigan’s departure, Michelle Lapautre phoned Helen Brann in New York. “You didn’t tell me Richard Brautigan was crazy,” she fumed.

  “What do you mean?” Helen sounded confused.

  “He is the most paranoid person I’ve ever met in my life. He never took a sober breath the entire time he was here.”

  “Michelle, you’re kidding,” Brann said, “because he was fine when he was here.”

  Lapautre remained outraged. “I have to tell you, he offended the press, he offended his publisher. He behaved like a madman. And he drank brandy morning, noon, and night.” The French agent caught her breath. “I’m just telling you this because I thought you should know.” Helen Brann had no reply.

  The day after Brautigan returned to Japan, an ocean away in L.A., the Ridley Scott production (now called Legend and housed in offices at the 20th Century Fox lot) fell apart due to internal bickering among the principal players. Unexpectedly out of a job, Gatz Hjortsberg started arranging studio pitch meetings. Six days later, he was offered work by Thom Mount, head of production at Universal. Gatz had his choice of two projects, a David Giler film consisting of only the title “Spartacus in Space” or a rewrite of The Hawkline Monster, now slated to be directed by Mike Haller. Greed encouraged him to do both at once. Common sense prevailed, and he signed on for the Hawkline rewrite.

  In Japan, back at the Keio Plaza, it took Brautigan ten days to recover from the jet lag he suffered after the long flight from Paris. He went to bed every night at 10:30 pm and woke up again three hours later, unable to fall back to sleep. To kill time during the dark hours before dawn, Richard wrote what he called “long senseless endless” letters. He not yet rented a typewriter, so these midnight missives were all handwritten. Early in the morning of April 21, overlooking the Tokyo night from the thirty-seventh floor, Brautigan scratched out a letter to Helen Brann in response to a telegram she’d sent about further delays in Hal Ashby’s Hawkline film project. He mentioned how good it was to see her in New York. “That extra parting hug you gave me meant so much to me. I will always remember it.”

  In his exhausted state, Richard “thought a lot about emptiness.” Sitting at the bar in The Cradle on his second night in town, Brautigan told two Japanese friends “about arriving at complete emptiness. To become the void yet still be alive.” Time had started running out for Richard and he knew it. Even at a discount, the bill for his expensive suite at the Keio Plaza was paid with borrowed money. Brautigan had no real income. No one wanted his most recent book. Only his art sustained him. He stared into total emptiness.

  Jet lag didn’t stop Richard from getting back to work. He liked to write at a sidewalk café. Brautigan had a favorite stationery store in Tokyo, “dark and comfortable [. . .] like a tidy warm shadow.” He bought a green notebook and a few pens before heading to a table at the café. Twilight remained Richard’s “favorite part of the day.” Even at midday, twilight haunted his mind. A title nagged the back corners of his imagination: “The Complete Absence of Twilight.” Brautigan wrote it down in his new notebook and started in. “I just bought this green notebook at a little stationary [sic] store that I always buy my writing material here in Tokyo.”

  Richard stopped after the first sentence. He didn’t know where to go next, so he left off and began a new story, “American Airports and Tokyo Escalators.” Brautigan had no concept of writer’s block, a favorite cop-out of the second-rate. When the immediate well of inspiration ran dry, he drilled a new shaft deeper into his subconscious. Marriages failed, friends disappointed, money ran out, love turned sour, but Richard’s art never deserted him. Alone, exhausted, running out of time and capital, Brautigan still found space to write. When all else was lost, writing became his final salvation.

  At 4:00 am on the morning of the twenty-third, Richard, the jet-lagged insomniac, sat waiting for the Tokyo dawn (“I like this time of day”) and started a letter to Barry Hannah on tissue-paper-thin sheets of Keio Plaza stationery, first writing the recipient’s name and address on an envelope as always. Brautigan had begun reading A Tennis Handsome while his plane to Tokyo sat on the tarmac in Bangkok for three hours. Richard’s only other recorded memory of this trip was watching a young soldier at the Karachi airport affectionately rub the barrel of his submachine gun against his cheek.

  Brautigan considered this a symbol, “a premonition of where I have been led step to step to this place.” The place he referred to was the void. Richard wasn’t afraid of peering over the edge into the abyss. “My god-damned personal life is not important,” he wrote in his notebook. “It will always be around until I’m dead. I don’t believe in afterwards so I think death will pretty much close down my personal life. Bring an end to it. And the
pleasures will even out like a placid stillness suddenly settling over a wind-ruffled pond.”

  Brautigan mentioned none of this in his letter to Barry Hannah. He detailed his morning schedule, drinking coffee at 4:00 am, going down for a “little breakfast” when the sun came up at 5:00. After eating, Richard liked to wander about the Keio Plaza, a hotel so huge that he compared it to a city-state. “It’s fun to watch the hotel wake up.” At 6:00 am, an English-language newspaper slid under the door of room 3705. After reading it and checking the yen/dollar exchange rate, Brautigan went grocery shopping for “milk and juice and snacks.” Richard had a refrigerator and a hot plate in his room, so preparing simple meals was no problem.

  After a page and a half, Brautigan set the letter aside and went to his favorite sidewalk café to write in his notebook. At 7:30 pm he closed up shop and headed for The Cradle. Nobody was there at that early hour. Richard sat at the bar, sipping brandy as he continued writing. Around nine, he had something to eat. By 10:30 the joint was jumping. Interesting people began to arrive. Brautigan gulped his brandy as the conversation grew more interesting. Brautigan didn’t get to sleep until eight on Sunday morning.

  Aside from a “two hour get-up,” Richard slept for seventeen and a half hours. He climbed out of bed at 3:30 am on the twenty-fifth. By four in the morning, he was drinking coffee, watching the rosy fingers of dawn and completing his letter to Barry Hannah. He didn’t have much to say aside from describing the mundane details of life in Tokyo. At four handwritten pages, it became one of the longest letters he’d ever written. Brautigan never mailed it. He kept the letter among his papers for the rest of his life.