Landscape With Traveler

by Barry Gifford

  In a way, though, mine is as close to an ideal existence as any I could imagine for myself. I do believe I’ve always maintained an attitude of calm that often seems to engender a feeling of security in those close to me. I think that’s what attracted Ada and why she came to live with me. I believe that such calm is what I’ve always longed to find in others and so unconsciously adopted a way of being I held to be the ideal until such sensibility was so established that I became the person I most wanted to meet.

  35

  After

  a

  Couple

  of

  Years

  After Ada had been living with me for a couple of years we moved to the eyrie on Riverside Drive in which I still reside. At that time, too, I left my hospital job and went to work for Sylvia Fowler at her rare-book shop.

  Fowler’s Book Shop, when I worked there, was on Carmine Street in the Village. Sylvia has since moved to a larger, modern location on Seventh Avenue, but then Fowler’s was a tiny hole-in-the-wall, crowded to the ceiling with dusty books on all sides, an old wood stove stuck in the middle of the leaning piles, and a couple of cats as dusty as the books. The toilet, which was down an often icy brick-floored rear passageway that resembled Riis’s photograph of Robbers’ Roost, was permanently occupied by a rat the size of a small fox terrier, which, of course, the cats avoided at all costs, as did the majority of customers, who were very few anyway. Most of the business was conducted through the mails and on the telephone.

  In fact, most people who walked into Fowler’s off the street, unless they were local (and therefore known by us) writers or collectors, were treated with less than the usual degree of fanfare a potential customer is ordinarily accorded by proprietors. Mac Greene, a painter from Philadelphia, once described Sylvia’s shop to a friend as “the only book shop where you have to get down on your knees and beg them to sell you a book”—even at the wild sums that books are worth these days. Though to quote another famous bookseller: “I never said a book was worth a dime—I just tell you the price.”

  But I don’t really think I’d go quite so far as Mac. I think of the old Fowler’s rather as a quaint and pleasantly private place. The “real” world stopped at the door—outside. Sylvia herself had a tendency to intimidate people on first meeting. She’s mellowed quite a bit since then, but she never appeared to be very accessible. With her great fright-wig of silver hair, horn-rims, cigarette holder, and strident voice, those who did not know her well tended to keep their distance and deal with me. Sylvia, of course, knew this, and liked it that way. It was just as well to let Francis be the “nice” one, she felt, leaving her to deal with the most important aspects of the business and the big collectors.

  She was a marvelous businesswoman, still is for that matter, and, Mac Greene’s and my exaggerations notwithstanding, exceedingly fair in her dealings. She was softhearted under it all and often loaned money she never expected to see again to indigent poets, gave them more than the worth of the manuscripts they offered her for sale, and forgave them when they stole from her.

  36

  I

  Began

  to

  Correspond

  with

  Jim

  It was while I was working for Sylvia Fowler that I began to correspond with Jim. He was then living in Oregon and wrote to Fowler’s in the hope of obtaining a book that had been long out of print. As I recall it took quite some time to locate a satisfactory copy and in the course of our exchange about price and so on we discovered that we shared a number of interests, most notably our mutual admiration of the Japanese classics.

  Within a few months our correspondence accelerated to the point of writing to one another practically every day. It was truly extraordinary, this almost instantaneous intimacy, the totally free and detailed manner in which we told each other the stories of our lives and exchanged varieties of information. Once Jim wrote that he “watched” me answering his letters. I know what he meant. I was reminded of the writers who used to type up those little twelfth-carbon jerk-off stories that circulated before pornography became more or less legal. I could easily visualize them behind their typewriters, knocking out, as Rimbaud says, “without grammar and spelling,” fantasies so revealingly innocent and anatomically ignorant, as when they say something like “his balls were completely emptied of their delicious nectar now and were quite small.”

  After a while I found myself beginning to idealize Jim and his wife, Jean, and their little son, their living up in the woods, struggling to support themselves. Jim had grown up in Chicago, so living in the wilderness was a different kind of life for him, and his being a poet added to the attraction he held for me. I kept thinking how wonderful it was for a child to be born to him and Jean. They seemed to me, in crowded, noisy New York, like a wonderful bit of perfection, all happy and shining like a Salem cigarette ad! I wondered if anybody forty or so years before who saw my young father and mother and little me, all tender and beautiful and hopeful, might have had similar thoughts.

  37

  Jim’s

  Early

  Letters

  Were

  Truly

  Astonishing

  Jim’s early letters to me were truly astonishing. Never had I thought it possible so completely to “know” another person without ever having met him, and I was filled with happy expectations when, a few months after Ada had returned to Greece, Jim came to visit me for the first time.

  I suppose it’s always a bit of a shock finally to meet someone with whom you’ve been corresponding or of whom you’ve had intimate knowledge of one sort or another for a considerable period beforehand, and it was, it seemed to me, like that for Jim. Not that I wasn’t somewhat nervous and apprehensive as well, but Jim’s distance surprised me. At first I actually supposed that he disliked me, but I relaxed and decided this uncomfortable stage would pass.

  To be sure there were friends of mine who suspected Jim of “hustling” me, for the airfare to New York at first—he didn’t have the money at the moment so I sent it to him—and whatever else he could after that. Jim later told me there were friends of his who assumed I was merely a lecherous old queen trying to get Jim to stay with me so that I could seduce him. Happily, both suspicions proved false, as Jim repaid me soon after returning to the West Coast, and, though I found Jim quite attractive, sex was not my objective.

  But this whole homo/hetero bit is just a further extension of what I mean about opening up and living what one feels. It would seem that maybe the division between men and women had gone as far as it could possibly go, so in their need for walls “they” had to divide homosexuals and heterosexuals. It’s a pity. There is such beauty in everyone that it seems proper to enjoy it. I remember reading an interview with James Dean years ago, who, when asked—rather rudely, I thought—whether it was true that he was bisexual, said with a smile that he had no intention of going through life with one hand tied behind his back.

  This isn’t really a plea for total sensualism, but I find that most straight men and women (though not so much as men) are really afraid to look at another person of their own sex and even visually appreciate his beauty. There are, of course, certain socially acceptable outlets for this feeling—for instance, it’s perfectly all right for any man to think and to say that this or that movie actor is very handsome, but he has to keep silent if he sees a man even more handsome on the street. According to Francis Reeves, a happy, healthy, open-minded, curious bisexuality is the natural state of man. Why doesn’t the world just relax!

  I was aware, as I say, of this distance on Jim’s part, and I couldn’t understand why things should be any different between us in person than they had been in our correspondence. The feeling did gradually pass, though a certain tentativeness remained, not really disappearing, I felt, until my visit the following year to Jim and Jean’s home in San Francisco, where they h
ad moved.

  The first time he came to New York, however, we did have some good times. It was a feeling-out period, but our mutual likes conquered any temporary doubts about whether or not we were really even intellectually compatible. Jim enjoyed my favorite little restaurants—especially the ropa vieja at a Cuban-Chinese place near my house—and I took him around to the best secondhand bookstores. We did the usual things people do, went to a couple of movies, etc., but mostly we stayed at home in the evenings and talked.

  At first we must each have wondered what the other “wanted” from the relationship, though I should think it’s fairly obvious we both wanted a friend. (Who can say what a friend is?!) But when I felt a distrust (or dislike) on his part, I’d close up and hold back and just stay neutral, hoping it would reassure him, but realizing at the same time that it might make him feel that I distrusted or disliked him! Straight guys can be as prissy as virgins.

  I admit that my knowledge of friendship is mainly theoretical, but I don’t feel at all unique in that. I wonder at times if my idea about it isn’t too absolute. Nevertheless, I can’t change it. Champagne comes from Champagne, goddamnit! On the other hand, I’m not so romantic as to believe that friendship “just happens.” I’m sure that, just like marriage, it has to be worked at with a lot of effort and goodwill.

  I do think that Jim was expecting me to be somewhat of a teacher for him, an old hand if not a kind of father figure, and was surprised to find me more of a contemporary—albeit a rather “other-worldly” one. And I suppose, too, that I, with my brother-fetish, really hoped he would be that sought-after sibling with whom I could share things without the fear of being importunate, prepossessing, or rejected. I like to think we’ve each given the other at least some of what we needed. And life continues, does it not?

  38

  I

  Flew

  Out

  to

  the

  West

  Coast

  The February following Jim’s first visit to me (in October) I flew out to the West Coast to see him. Since I’d never been in San Francisco before, he showed me around some, as I had done for him in New York, but again our most significant time together was in the evenings, when we sat in the kitchen and talked.

  Jim was alternately comfortable and uncomfortable in his role as husband, father, and provider. His mother had been married several times, and early on he had determined not to create a family situation of his own. Now that he’d gone and done exactly what he’d not intended, he feared for the security of his family.

  Not that this was so unusual, but Jim had never stayed very long in one place, he was used to moving around and doing different jobs. Though he was still in his mid-twenties he had lived for three years in England, spent a year or so working as a merchant seaman, traveled through most of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa, and South America, as well as most of the United States. He was working, that time I visited him, as a driver out of the San Francisco produce market, a tough job but one he enjoyed, despite his having to be up before dawn in order to load up the truck in a freezing warehouse. However, he was getting restive, he admitted, he was ready for a change. Something was about to happen, he felt, but he didn’t know what.

  Not being very good at giving advice, I didn’t make any suggestions. Jim’s attitude and my own were similar in that it was difficult for either of us to trust another person. Having each been injured in our own way before, we were reluctant to open ourselves and thereby risk being hurt again.

  39

  I

  Had

  to

  Make

  a

  Decision

  of

  My

  Own

  It was shortly after my return from San Francisco that I had to make a decision of my own. My “ex-husband” Ilya came to see me, having recently returned from his latest round-the-world trip—he’d spent New Year’s Eve by the light of the full moon in the ruins of the great temple at Karnak—and made me a proposition.

  Ilya was about to move to a gorgeous new house thirty or forty minutes up the Hudson and wanted me to move into the apartment he’d also recently bought in Gramercy Park. From all this it might appear that Ilya had suddenly come into a lot of money, but it was only continuing evidence of his lucky knack of always landing feet first. He’d come back to New York broke and found a job tailor-made for him with a luxury-class travel agency. Ilya may not have been very good as a businessman, but if there was one thing he knew, it was the world (geographically speaking). He also knew how to pamper appetites for luxury—he simply arranged for his clients to do all the things he’d dreamed all his life of doing himself and could never afford. Now, of course, he was doing them also, free of charge. His apartment was all but given to him by a millionaire client who no longer used it, as a token of her gratitude for the trips he arranged for her every year, and the house was a similar deal—all on a salary of twenty or thirty thou! My share of the maintenance of the Gramercy Park flat would have come to only about a hundred dollars a month. However, he, of course, would have wanted to be able to use the apartment, too, on nights when he’d be working late in the city and didn’t feel like driving back up the river, or when there was a blizzard, or anything. It was a nice apartment and could, I suppose, have easily housed the two of us even if we both lived there all the time. And certainly the difference between a hundred dollars a month and the two hundred fifty I was then paying for where I am was a tempting consideration.

  It was late when I finally got to sleep that night, but I decided I’d never really feel comfortable asking people (like Jim, for instance) to come and stay for a while, that I’d be, in fact, selling my beautiful privacy that I love so much (not to mention my view of the river) for a very cheap price even so. So I refused. Almost immediately I’d made it I was very happy with the decision. It would have been different if I hadn’t been able to manage the rent where I was, or if I’d still had tender feelings for him, or . . . lots of things. In any case, the temptation turned out to be not more than briefly interesting.

  After I’d made my decision I had another cup of coffee and another glass of sherry and a cigarette and put on a record—Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.” “I have become lost to the world . . . I live alone in my heaven, in my love . . . in my love . . . in my song.” A song I dearly love anyway, but which was scarily appropriate in the circumstances. And then I went happily to bed.

  I had lunch with Ilya the next day, and he seemed to understand why I had to decline his very nice offer. Afterward we walked out into the most gorgeous snowfall. We said good-bye and I walked up Fifty-Sixth Street toward Broadway feeling very warm and happy and content. Had it been raining or even hailing rather than snowing I should probably have felt quite the same.

  40

  I

  Knew

  Something

  was

  Amiss

  By the following summer I knew something was amiss with Jim. I hadn’t heard much from him in the interim, and when I had it was no more than a mysterious postcard or hastily scribbled note. As it turned out, he had fallen in love with another woman, and it occasioned what became an extremely difficult time for him, and, to the small extent I became involved, for me as well.

  Jim left his wife and went to live with his new lady. What ensued, as I say, was a difficult period. During the next two years he moved back and forth between Jean and Laura several times, and except for a three-week visit with me in New York, our contact was erratic.

  If I had pretended to be either pleased or indifferent about Jim’s domestic situation I’d have had to be less than honest. On the other hand, I couldn’t very well pretend any disapproval or such like either. It was his business, to be sure, and it was a situation in no way foreign or new to me. That such things seem just a little silly to me at this stage of my
life, however, alters not a whit their seeming urgency when I, too, was experiencing them. Though in the end they mattered little, they change a lot of things nonetheless. But time alone does that.

  When Jim was in New York during that time he was distinctly uncomfortable. He was using the visit in an attempt to gain perspective on the situation and to separate himself from both women. I was glad to provide him a temporary haven, but he was terribly confused and guilt-ridden about having “abandoned” his family. He was convinced, too, that though I was sympathetic in general, I was disappointed in him personally.

  I tried to explain how silly that was, how foolish he was to entertain the notion that I would allow myself the luxury of disapproving of what anyone else does and, secondly, doubly foolish to care a fig if I should do anything so silly. Disapproval, I explained, is simply not a valid reaction, at least so far as other people’s emotional knots are concerned.

  I do disapprove of lying, I suppose, but not from any moral point of view. It’s just so wasteful and destructive. If I had anything at all to tell Jim it was just that—that he was lying. That he was lying to Jean and Laura (and me) was only incidental to the fact that he was lying to himself (not that he was doing it deliberately). He refused, when he was staying with me, to accept that suggestion, but it became evident to him not long after when he resolved the matter by going to live by himself for several months.

  There are always all kinds of reasons for self-deception, but in the end none of them is very good. Facing up to how one really feels saves lots of time and what is usually called “heartache.” I realize that one is not born conscious of these things, but I believe Jim has learned them now for good, if he’ll swallow it.

  At his age I would not have accepted this kind of pronouncement from anyone, which is doubtless a valid reaction since one can never really know or accept such things simply on faith. At best they are to be believed because one trusts the person who says so, but somehow it’s difficult to believe that they can apply to oneself. Until they do.