The Journals of John Cheever

by John Cheever

  •

  The sad day is followed by an emphatic morning, and all my anxieties about drink and unrequited love and other masks of death are gone, as if my prayers had been answered. So I wander around the dining room restating the fact that any image of the Divinity will involve me in a taxi accident and a delay on my way to the airport where I would have boarded a plane that will crash, killing everyone aboard; that it is His hand that maketh me to stumble and thus avoid the adder; that it is He who led me safely by the hornets’ nest before they could swarm and sting me to death. One is dealing with a mystery, and it is the depth of this mystery that accounts for the crudeness of those images that overlook our prayers: those old beavers with golden hats, those sappy angels, those grave and stupid apostles and prophets.

  •

  Up the river to Yaddo for the first time in many years without the company of alcohol. I remember promising myself that I would not take my flask into the toilet until Hudson. I remember, on the wall of some seminary, a large representation of Christ nailed to the cross. I remember (I was coming south early in the spring) a baggage cart on some platform, heaped with bundles of green palm leaves for the coming Sunday. Those were pleasant times, and so are these. When I was a boy I thought as a boy. The duck blinds, I see, are gone. A ruined house and a ruined castle are appealing, not at all like derelicts but, as the light pours through the gutter windows, like some graceful spinoff of our passion for building. The river is rough, but I can’t find evidence of a wind strong enough for this, and I guess it could be a tide rip. I think of bridges I may be too frightened to cross, of my fear of through-ways, but all of this is remote. My only unease is over the intensely intellectual nature of my pleasure. Alcohol at least gave me the illusion of being grounded. I count now on cutting and splitting wood, swimming in cool water, orgasms, and perhaps gluttony. I may simply mean a good appetite. In Albany, I lack identity because I have no credit card, but I don’t hurl myself into this sort of crisis. At the bus stop I drink iced tea and admire the restoration of a building across the street. On the bus I sit beside a sleepy drunk, but my nose must have lost its keenness because I can’t smell alcohol. He has been fucking all day, he says, an is going to rent a building and fill it with pinball machines to fleece the young.

  So here. There are flowers from A., and presents. If he loved me as I love him he would always be there; he would have met me in Albany; spent an afternoon hanging around the bus stop. We meet in the back of the house as I go in for dinner. We kiss. I’m getting cheeks these days from everyone. After dinner we walk around the lakes. When I put my arm around him he seems both heavier and taller. I ask if he will be my lover, and he refuses, both kindly and politely. I have no response, certainly no pain. I enjoy his company and would enjoy his skin, but I miss neither. I could be unpleasant. I could call him a bore. Any unpleasantness at all here would be wicked. I shall ask him for little or nothing, but I shall not say so. Someone says that one of the members here is a sex goddess. I am wakeful and think that I can seize this opportunity. In the morning I look forward to seeing A. and the goddess in that order. I will kiss A., most lightheartedly, hold his hand at breakfast; kiss the goddess, and slip my hand around her waist. But how can this man, genuinely male and solid, kiss another man with such tenderness and pleasure, and plan to love the young woman with the long hair? It seems quite possible without any loss. I just don’t happen to have been invented by an advertising agency. The message is: Praise be to thee, Oh Lord, of Thine own have we given Thee.

  •

  Halfway through the meeting I have a deep seizure of melancholy. Looking out of the window, I admire a maple that has begun to turn and think how like a rose it is—some enormous rose tree. I long to be out of the yellow plush chair and the other constraints of the afternoon. I also long, or I might, for A., although I would not cross the street to see him. And then I see that it is not he whom I love but someone in my remote past, in my emotional substructure, whom I loved. My brother, I suppose. I would have destroyed most of my lasting relationships for his sake. I sometimes find his company distasteful, but I remember, in Iowa—sometimes in bed with a lover—enduring the deepest longing for him; perhaps the deepest longing for something unlikely or something of the past. After the meeting I pass a football with J. and P. I go to the cocktail party wearing a sweater. These are all stabs at the past, but why should I worry, since I think them successful? “Yo are pale,” says J., and I am suddenly tired. My toothache and my cold become serious. I am sick. I have wanted the other side of the medal, and now I have it. I have it through most of Sunday, when I have a fever and am slightly delirious. I remember what I want, no more. Pieces I used to play on the piano, friendships of all sorts. I stagger a little when I walk, and this is the darkness that I sought. At its worst it is regressive. My father will come home, not—as I’ve written—with a new fishing lure, but with a new marionette theatre. That’s what I really wanted. And I think of my family—mostly my brother and sometimes my mother. We are in a group photograph—me usually on the far right or in the background, usually holding a glass. We seem printed in some color other than the rest of the group, but we do not have the intelligence to understand this, and thus we will always be a little ungainly, a little foolish, and at times intensely unhappy. So, past my fever, I wake again with nothing to say, really, but a thanksgiving.

  •

  There is a letter from A. I have been convinced that I love him; I must have written him a hundred love letters; I have anticipated his company, enjoyed his conversation intensely, and have experienced much excitement about his career. He is not my lover, and the fact that I have been rebuffed may have much, much more to do with my feelings than I can comprehend. In short, he does not seem to appreciate my enormous charm, my power, my et cetera. At times, indeed, he seems quite indifferent to my gifts and my management of them. What a dilemma! And I, perhaps, through loving him, have given him character and intelligence, which he does not in any way want to possess. I do not know what his sexual partners are like, but I guess they are quite beautiful and muscular. I cannot imagine any consummation. I find the substance of his letter offensive and the writing rather giddy. He seems determined to present himself at times as an offensive homosexual, and I do not understand why he does this. He may be repeating some scene with his father. I don’t think his behavior really deserves this much investigation, though. He may simply be performing his role.

  On his first afternoon, he is aboard a beautiful yacht; on his first night, he is at a homosexual movie. My only feeling is one of doubt, knowing when the New York planes hit the Coast. It doesn’t really matter, but why should he want to alienate me; why should he wan me to imagine him swinging his ass around, an ass I can’t have? And why should I ever have experienced love for such a silly man? Are all my loves this unwise? And so I shall not be mean.

  •

  So we go up the rocky road to where I summered so happily for so many years. I know the place very well, I know every hummock on the lawn, I sidestep down the steep, wet hill to the house where I was a lover, a husband, a father, a mountain climber, a heavy drinker, and seem to have suffered no losses at all. I am terribly cold. We go down to the house, which is one of the shabbiest places in which I have ever spent any time. The washbasin and bath are built for midgets. The rugs and the furniture have missed their date at the municipal dump. The shade on the one lamp is smashed and burned and still wound with cellophane. The cobwebs are thick, and when the rain begins the roof leaks. It leaks into a tin full of seashells that Josie Herbst gave to my daughter years ago. She painted a pretty pheasant on the lid and on the side asked, “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?” The past redeems much of this shabbiness—my beloved dog Cassiopeia chewed the holes in the rug—and I am not particularly interested in shabbiness, but the house seems comical, considering the love it inspires. The front room is small, dark, useless, and wet from the leaking roof. A wretched light burns in the small bedroom. T
he unpainted wallboards (shingle nails are driven through) have the gleam of silk, the depth of water; the electric diagram is black with white porcelain insulators where the cords touch wood; the sound of rain on the roof is amplified; and there will be the morning.

  I light a fire in the kitchen stove and in the dining room—all things that give me pleasure. S. cooks me a pleasant breakfast. Outside it rains and rains. B. gives us a few orders, and I split kindling while Federico cuts small wood with a hacksaw. We joke about having received our orders. Look, look. I am cutting kindling. My son is cutting wood with a hacksaw. Look, look. We are good boys. We are not bad boys. We may get an extra serving of eggs goldenrod at lunch. This is all quite true, quite ridiculous, and for me, laughing with my son, quite wonderful. I am happy to see a tubful of kindling. I stop at the car and get a box of crackers. Mary calls from the porch, “If you wish some cheese with your crackers there is some.”

  •

  On the day we leave, I wake before dawn. The morning star is so bright that, seeing it through the trees, I mistake it for the moon. All the stars are shining. I light the stove, eat a big breakfast, and presently we start. The clouds have lifted, Cardigan Mountain can be seen, and the hills are a phenomenon of light. So we go down the once narrow roads in the first of the light. There is smoke from the chimneys—wood smoke, which is much less direct than the jets of smoke or vapor you get from other heating plants. Wood smoke spreads on the wind, flattens in the rain, and is, of course, fragrant. Here are signs and ruins of the contrition of the past: a beautiful barn, a beautiful church that is now an insurance office. There are more signs of vagrancy than anything else; but you said this before. The spread of the country reminds one of some Biblical promise, although it holds no true promise. But it is beautiful and heartening. “SEE THE DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS,” says a sign. “OPEN WEEKDAYS FROM NINE TO FIVE. CHILDREN HALF-PRICE.” And above the sign one sees the Laurentians, clearly scored by the glacier into forms that are a little like waves. There are high, green pastures, bright-blue duck ponds, fire-colored hills, colonies of trailers, and the Housatonic and the Connecticut rivers. “I have to piss,” I say, as we enter Hartford. “That’s too bad,” says Mary. “I will piss in the thermos,” say I, lightly. “You will not piss in my thermos,” says Mary. “I am about to piss in your thermos,” say I, unfastening my trousers and taking out my cock. “Don’t you dare piss in my thermos,” says Mary. We are in the thick of the Hartford traffic. I empty cold tea out of a jar and piss in the jar. I am very relaxed and happy. I have to piss once more. Back here, I walk the dogs, light a fire, eat heavily, and have briefly the illusion that I’ve gained height. I watch some TV that I think rather clever and go very early and happily to bed.

  •

  So, I’ve come through that much of the darkness. I think, not pretentiously I hope, of the old quotation from Plato, “Let us consider that the soul of man is immortal, able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil.” What else would one say? I come into town too fast for a mooring at A.A. and do not stay for the double feature. It helps, and I am perhaps most uneasy about getting back on the sauce.

  So the book falls into place, rather like “The Country Husband,” and what did that amount to? Some compliments and a three-hundred-dollar prize; not enough to feed the dogs. There are the usual stones in my way. I must move all the manuscripts this afternoon. Neither the vacuum cleaner nor the dishwasher will function, but the splendid thing about working happily is that it leaves me with very little energy for bitterness, anger, impatience, and long indictments. When you are working well everyone will want to clean the floor under the chair where you sit, and long-winded gossips will call on the telephone every ten minutes.

  So it goes through the leaves. Then, mercifully, we skip the scene on the water tower. A simple, declarative statement. So through the school, the parting. It is then that we have the examination of his love. Then the cuckold, the dungeon, the night before the cardinal was expected Jody returns. I think I can type it out and be done with it tomorrow.

  Even if I don’t finish until the end of next week, it doesn’t really matter.

  •

  I think I cannot accept the simplified moral that breaking sexual taboos leaves you open to every other sort of accusation. I am cold. Mary is cleaning the rugs. Oaths rise up the stairwell. I should go to Dom’s for the snow tires and the radiator checkup. I must borrow a bicycle pump and steal a valve cap. I could spade the tomatoes and transplant the peonies. Reading old journals, I find a few set pieces and some proof of my own virtue. One would like to act impetuously, but one has been photographed, one has been discussed, and the dross of the looking-glass is part of my craft. I cannot completely escape—Oh, look, look at the horny, tireless, clean man! I can only pray for the right mixture. I think of the cardinal, but with no great urgency. How marvellous it would be to finish this in the spring, by which I mean before the bank account runs out. By which I mean God’s willingness. This, it seems, will not be my last book, and so some portentousness has slipped out of the room.

  •

  So the holiday, the snow, the cold, the brightness. I have a mild stomach unease. I think of the holly tree in Hanover—probably th largest holly in the Northeast and very probably planted by some English settler. I think I can remember its darkness, and I do remember that some florist attacked it with a hacksaw and stripped the lower branches. Did I go around to the neighboring florists to see if I could find signs of our tree? I doubt it. I do remember training horse brier around the tree so it could not easily be found. I do remember imagining a letter from my mother, received by me in the Army, urging me to come home at once and protect the holly tree. This was a crib from “The Late George Apley.” It is less adventurous than I would like. There is the height and the darkness of the tree. And I remember a letter from my father: “Do not underestimate the importance of anniversaries—Christmas, birthdays, and so forth. They are of the greatest importance to you and the people you live with.” And for Farragut in prison there is the broad and bitter irony of celebrating the equinox; the mysteriousness of the world we live in; the magnanimity of God, who gave us his son, condemned to a cruel and a lingering death for our sins at the instant of his humble birth in a manger; and the healthy and preposterous concept of the family. There are the photographs that were taken in September. The blasphemy of the prison is no greater. The sense of all the world wrapping, unwrapping, decorating; the green tree strung with jewels and burned; the gasping sound of resinous needles exploding in the heat; a memory of the blackbirds in the autumn pulled through space.

  •

  In reading old journals with Farragut’s letters in mind, I come on the fact that, for nearly three years, I wrote A. love letters and received flirtatious letters from A. I think I will destroy these pages of the journal. I cannot arrive at any satisfactory recollection of this passionate love. The recollection of any infatuation is bound to seem mysterious, but I would like to go further than to exclaim about my self-deception. During this time I seldom saw him. He had in his favor the fact that he was outstandingly gifted, and, I thought, comely. He wrote continually about his homosexuality. What troubles me seems to be aesthetic. How did this long-waisted man come to take such a dominating position in my pastoral landscape? Here were the trees, the grass, the dry stone wall, and the stream that might contain trout. What is this curious figure doing here? I was lonely—a fact that I can state easily enough, althoug I am absolutely incapable of imagining a loneliness powerful enough to grant him a commanding place in this scene. They say that people born under my constellation are truly halved. Here, again, one comes to aesthetics. No one is half a man. I find this unacceptable. I was cruelly torn when I left my brother, cruelly torn when R. left me. I was torn, but not bisected. I had quite enough steam to go on. Why, then, should I have so needed A.? I need him no more; I rather dislike the thought of seeing him again; but one always says this about a love affair that is unrequited and has been f
orgotten. And then, thinking of opportunities, I remember that while feeling complete with L., I could at certain hours of the day—dusk, of course—feel, even with her in my arms, a profound longing for A., who would appear long-waisted and quite ridiculous in comparison. Is contempt at the bottom of this longing—must I, for a total erotic gratification, embrace someone who is naked and contemptible? If this is true I find it unacceptable. I find it truly unacceptable.

  •

  So, the heaviest snowfall in many years. How pleasant to be sober. Mary seems troubled, but then I always counter by saying that I, too, am troubled. She does not speak to me all day, except to ask for the salt. But it doesn’t really matter, or it matters that there is someone else in this house. And I wouldn’t want a wife who was sitting in my lap all the time, who denied me the considerable privacy I need. So she watches TV in the kitchen. I watch TV in the attic. I think she is deeply troubled, but I am successful in not mentioning this to my daughter, and I think it will pass.

  And about that little snow-buried town where I once spent a winter and the men used to get together in the bar and talk about their wives; one of them explained to me that when you’re dealing with crazies you have to understand that they don’t like it, either. For instance, if you get a crazy who is very contrary and you tell her she is not going to be murdered, well, then she will insist on being murdered. I mean she loves life—the trees and the buildings and the men and the women and the dogs and the birds—but if you tell her that she can’t be murdered she will insist on it. You have to understand this. And more about that little bar.