Jay to Bee

by Janet Frame

  How one gazes and gazes at the faces and their ‘pathetic histories’.

  Did Jo arrive? How is her anagrammatic skill? Up to scratch?

  Cockles warmed at your letter, B I think I am most of the time—perhaps always—at Live Oak Inn. I seem to have left myself there—I’m sure if you search the garden you’ll find those brown bread shoes. I feel like a lizard that has lost its tail or the tail that has lost its lizard. I’m looking forward to having ten mountain lions (did I say ten or have I upped the number since I last dreamed?)

  I like what you say about the silence escaping as if from a puncture. I hope you’re now suitably inflated? The puncture mended with that stuff which my father used to call—‘the solution’—only now I remember it and think how strange it was: he would be wanting to mend a puncture in car or bike and he would cry out, ‘Where’s the solution? Has anyone seen the solution?’

  Stars for you.

  In Wax-Eye City today the wax-eyes ride their twigs home to honey,

  make their honey cry

  a green and rust posse wearing their white-eye badge

  trailing down all householders branded for generosity.

  They twitter out the wintry siege.

  Meanwhile

  back in the ranch-house bush

  the flowers brew their spring liquor, the recipe

  handed

  down

  and down.

  When it is matured

  the wax-eyes will resign their office, turn in their city habits

  and leave town.

  A little fancy.

  Stars for sherrifs or is it sheriffs.

  I wish I were there in Santa Barbara

  among the live oaks growing.

  My battery has run out so I’ll say goodmorning, a sour honey-full good morning and all kinds of possible, impossible, pure, impure, straight, narrow, crooked, curved love to

  BPN

  from Jay

  who thinking of you loses her middle & becomes Joy.

  (Don’t mind my battery)

  82. Dunedin July

  Dear B,

  Hello. So nice to have your letter this morning—and oh I hope your silence has been restored and your surcingles readjusted, darned, in the places where they were punctured, with matching fuzz and your cell relined with honey-quiet. (‘Give me my scallop-shell of quiet.’); and all in order and the studio work proceeding, and miseries exchanged, for variety. Was it Penelope (whom I used to call Penny Lope) who used to unravel her day’s weaving each night? People do unravel one’s woven self and there must be a place and time for it to be rewoven. I find that a little work (a thimbleful) is magic, like a whole body of weavers arriving. And other things help. Well. Thus speaketh I. So I hope even the tiniest torn stitch, even the ravaged invisible mending, has been made like new on each surcingle. And then, of course, the next round of people, seeing your polish and sparkle, will say, B where did you get those brandnew surcingles? What do you want for them?

  B ‘They’re not for sale.’

  People. ‘Here, I’ll give you this for them.’

  B (anguished, impulsive) ‘Take them.’

  Later: B surcingle-less, Paul pallless, Ned nedless, will huddle shivering around the fake fire.

  B, P, N: Never again.

  Stars

  This morning I got up early and put on the Hérodiade and Wolf side of your tape, through the record player. It was lovely, just the right light outside for it—the Hérodiade matched the light. There was a storm yesterday, the first winter storm, with the wind screaming around the house and the rain lashing (lash lash) against the south windows, and this morning the sky was clear. Yesterday I nearly phoned you for comfort—I passed by the telephone and I thought, What will I say? I’ll say I just happened to be passing by the telephone. Later in the day while the storm still raged I went to visit my dying aunt, and noted how much nearer she was to the water’s edge. Most of her feathers have been plucked out, though. But this morning’s light was so lovely, as if a sickness had passed over the world and now it was cured. And now the hills are warm green and blue (if that is possible?) with a haze of gold, and the hills are hollowed purple. The sun is out, the light is lemon-coloured.

  My guest has gone for the day to visit her husband’s parents who live by a wonderful beach about ten miles away. Gran is in her late eighties and Grandad is ninety-one. He is a wonderful old man who on his ninetieth birthday had reprinted a book which he wrote about the first World War where he was conscripted as a young man and objecting on conscientious grounds, was sent to the front in Europe, and put with others in the fighting lines, and, still refusing to fight, was nailed to a cross on the battlefield. It almost overwhelms one to think of the continuity of mind in a family. Grandad’s book was called We Shall Not Cease. His son, brought up under the shadow of this cross, has now gone, as I told you, to live in a religious community in a place in New Zealand called Jerusalem. And it is his son and daughter who are suffering the teenage nightmare.

  Sad that you didn’t see Jo but good that she sounded fine.

  Nice of Eva Marie to try to persuade producers to read F. in the Water (otherwise known as Faces in the W.) Unfortunately the contract I made with that book gave my N.Z. publisher world rights—though I think he’s lost them now because he hasn’t reprinted. It did mean, though, that F. in the W. which was translated in several languages (where it never sold, though) didn’t make for me the money it would have made if my publisher had not more or less ‘owned’ it. It was robbery, bare-bottomed robbery, much more subtle than bare-faced. I think I told you that there’s a movement (move move) to get me a Distinguished (i.e. Displaced) Person’s Pension but these things are not given out unless one is, say, fifty or sixty or a hundred, and I have some years to wait before I’m fifty, though it’s surprising (as they say) how the time does pass and before you know it there you are, isn’t it extraordinary, and how the seasons are changing, and I do think they ought to hang or birch those types that abound, bring back the gallows is what I say . . . they say, they say . . . Still, even Proust, no traveller on the cliché line, admitted that time passed.

  Dominique (the French girl—a chicken—poule? or is it that old hen?) read the ‘slow, the happy’ and her translation agreed exactly with yours . . . I did not quite get from her ‘the tender alternative’—but it is what we (you mostly, you are ¾ plus ½ plus ¾ plus ⅔ me)—said it was—she dreams she will be met by handsome gentlemen of former times—though she knows she won’t—still, for a moment she considers the tender alternative. I shall be seeing Dominique again and I will record her reading?

  I like the idea of Grimms Tales being made into a stage play. Why has it been so long? I have a gory two little books of Fairy Stories (so-called) which we used to study in French; chockfull of people eating people and people unravelling people and the unravelled people spending a life-time trying to reknit or people emptying people and the emptied people trying with a thimble to fill themselves up again.

  I dream of being in that little hill-house or valley-house

  or motorway-house (I and my mountain lions nine,

  I human, they leonine.)

  with you live oaks (seen growing), each with a little cell where the emptied, unravelled, honeyless people refill, reknit, make honey, for in spite of the fact that kin-people share honey and switch identities and sweaters (ravelled and unravelled) when you die you do not switch deaths.

  She said.She said.

  I have to go out shopping now & I will post this.

  Love to B P N

  from the sensuous

  woman who signs

  herself

  J

  83. Dunedin July 20 (handwritten)

  Morning. Woke. Peed. Brought in milk & newspaper. Put on coffee. Stirred up fire, put manuka logs on fire, buttered a slice of home-made bread, sat by fire with preliminary breakfast & newspaper, read, drank, ate, slowly woke, thought of you (not in that order). Went to study, switched
on heater, sat in armchair, put pen to paper . . .

  My guest who leaves on Friday is still asleep. She has been out for almost every meal, with friends who, when I know them too, have asked me & I’ve declined. Tonight she (it was meant to be we, but I think I’ve had my ration of people) will go to dinner with the people whose cat heard the word vet. (Even now Ngeru is probably the centre of attention in some alley as he describes ‘the night I heard the word vet’.) This afternoon Charles Brasch is coming up for a cup of tea between his Russian lectures. He has had the ’flu but he is so eager to see Jacquie whom he has known, with her husband, for many many years.

  The wax-eyes, seeing me in my study, have begun clamouring for breakfast. I have just given them yesterday’s left-over Vimax (a sort of porridge with wheat germ, vitamins etc. etc. oatmeal etc.) sprinkled with raw sugar which they love.

  So you have tits in your tree! How extraordinary! There was a time when, here, we used to be able to listen to the sound of cocks in the early morning! And people always kept a few cocks in their garden, but that practice is dying out or has been banned in the cities. You are still allowed to have a noisy cock in the country.

  I had a letter from Charles Neider to say his project in Ross Island has been approved & he’s coming to New Zealand sometime in November.

  The wax-eyes twitter, twitter outside. They have almost finished their breakfast.

  Having a guest has been a valuable ‘experience’ for me. The only eccentricity I have so far discovered in myself (apart from the ones I know about) is a tendency to ‘make sure’ all the electric plugs have been unplugged and switched off at night. I fear my guest has said she likes being here so much she would like to stay for ever (you have that continuing problem with me!) She said she would like to come to live here with me.

  How valuable my solitude & silence seem! My guest is very pleasant & more or less goes her own way but I am looking forward to her going & she is wise enough to know it & understand it. I have moved my record-player into the sitting-room so she can listen to it & my study is like death without it & I did not realise the music had so been absorbed into the very walls of the study. The room is alive with it, as a past experience, but while the phonograph is in the sittingroom it is death in here, the whole room so yearns for it. How pathetically fallacious can one be!

  You & Paul & Ned were so wonderful to have had me stay for so long (to me, so short!) in a place where you and Paul & Ned could not entirely be sealed off! I think each needs to be ‘sealed off’ & then all merge in one common room for waking or one common bed for sleeping; but the ‘sealing’ off, the solitude, retreat, the denial of the senses of everything except one’s self is necessary. I mean one’s self & what is beyond. It is a poor human failing to have to rely on physical environment—doors, private facilities—to ‘seal oneself off’. One should be able to do it at any time regardless of place. Does meditation, practised, do this?

  It is night now, only ten o’clock & I am lying in bed far from, denied, the sweet touch of a tendril; I’m listening to the Beethoven Concert from Bonn, writing this & thinking of my three live oaks in their carnivorous-planted Steinwayed home, their peanut-buttered and carnationed (I mean geraniumed) patio beneath the finched eaves and the titted tree . . . I’m homesick.

  My guest is out for dinner. I couldn’t face it, after a morning of baking an apricot pie and my special brand of ginger cookies, not to mention my meat balls. This afternoon Charles B came up, bringing his usual bunch of anemones, blue and purple and red. He sat by the fire with Jacquie and talked about news from the North. As he was going out the gate I reminded him of the Rilke poem about the anemone—‘Flower-muscle . . .’ Blumen I said & to my surprise he quoted it in German. Then he raised his hat to us in a gentlemanly way and went up the road to catch the bus home.

  It is now 12 midnight. Beyond all sight of a tendril I shall soon turn off my light and sleep & dream of the Wild West.

  Art thou real, art thou Ernest?

  No, I’m Bill and this is Paul

  and Ned to whom thou, Jay, returnest

  when thy housèd masters call.

  Thou shalt come with mountain lions

  (few require such pageantry)

  thou’st a laundry maid who irons

  hard by finchèd eave and titted trees.

  Now it is morning again. Woke . . . etc. (But I can’t write a nice journal intime about morning functions because mine are so paltry. I like reading yours!) The wax-eyes are not yet awake; my guest sleeps (& is rather depressed at the thought of facing sick, really sick, son and post-natal daughter & 2-yr old & job & so on).

  Plod on with thy work! (Work for the Knight is coming!) I shall do likewise when my guest goes. Actually there’s enough room here for her or a guest to live independently as I use only two rooms on one side of the passage. (That is put in to show you that if any of you (Ned, say, with his valise and his paw-passport all in black and white) wants to visit me before I can get to your part of the world, you can be sealed off at will!) Supposing you came soon to withdraw from noise-pollution (i.e. to exchange pollutions!) Fortunately I don’t have to wear ear-plugs here—that may be necessary if I’m here in summer when all windows are opened & radio & tvs blare forth.

  When my guest goes I’ll plod on with my book (‘scarcely begun, a few words picked, the rest dead’) & get it done before the end of the year. It was she who suggested her stay here & it’s been hanging over me, but now it’s nearly over & it gave me a chance to get out of my usually selfish ways & do something for someone else, for a change.

  How gladly I will sink again into my selfish ways!!!

  I’ve sent you, for anyone who wants to wear it, a cap knitted from left-over wool (from the multi-coloured scarf) & a copy of my German edition of The Lagoon & the Landfall with the remainder of Frank’s interview.

  Wax-eyes call.

  Vita? Vita Nuova?

  I can’t really imagine myself teaching, probably because my images are stereotyped & include a huge room with seas, ships, anchors, of faces & I stammering, unable to complete a sentence.

  But individual students . . ..

  Perhaps I could advertise . . .

  Writer gives lessons—Do You, Have a Restless Urge? A restless urge for Strophe (always available) or perhaps Sestina (weekends only) Anaphora? Arsis (quite complicated). Is your rhythm sufficiently sprung?

  Seriously, I don’t think I have the confidence (in my present setting) to suppose I could teach anyone anything. Perhaps a course on The Sentence (I could do with one myself).

  Stars like kisses or snow-stakes to prevent drifts.

  And now goodbye, goodbye, (‘we all nodded at him’)

  and tendril-love to

  B, aimed & arrowed love

  to P, no-nonsense

  love in black-and-white to N

  As for Carnie & Black Steinway—well, such goings-on!

  84. Dunedin July 27

  Dear live oaks, my friends, Hello,

  Another crazy letter from me away in the Antipodes. I’ve just had a bath. ‘Steaming, warm’ I put finger to key as I sit in my study after a tolerable day’s work. Yesterday the temperature was well into the sixties, the day was so heavenly that I could not face it, away down here, and hid from it by staying inside but oh it was a warm sweet day, full of sweet air, and the blossoms are out now. Today the mild northwest wind changed to southwest, smelling of snow, and I shivered, and wore my MacDowell clothes, and round about noon I traipsed into town, paid a quick visit to my dying aunt (a few minutes). In spite of my know-it-all attitude to death, I’ve never had direct access before to a person so clearly dying, and I’m surprised to find how natural it all is, and how natural and simple one feels, watching it. I’m not a demonstrative person, particularly with people I’ve never really known, yet I’m surprised to find that now I can’t exchange light chatter with my aunt, touch takes over where the words are lost and I find myself sitting there stroking the old dear’s white hair
and taking her hand, for about five minutes. All she says is, ‘It’s nice to see you,’ when I arrive, and ‘Come and see me again’ when I leave.

  My guest has gone. You use the word ‘eroded’, B, when you were writing about having too many people around? Well, I felt distinctly nibbled-at, and very defenceless. My guest was quiet, softly-spoken, but, alas, I felt quieter and totally without any willpower. In short, I became what everyone used to say my mother was—a doormat . . . Enough of that.

  . . . When are you coming to visit me? . . . Just after my guest went I had a visit from the kitty—the first I’d seen of him/her (I didn’t look) for fifteen days, He/she was meowing at the door, and came in, visiting, played and purred and snuggled and then went to wherever it lives.

  I hope that you are both having a fruitfuk period of work—excuse the typing error but it is an error. Like so many Mortal Enemies, mine turns out to be what I did not expect and I have to start it all over again—

  I’d done more than I thought. According to plan it should have been finished next month; and I might even make it still, now I’ve cleared a bit of rubble away. I suppose it’s like painting out? In fact—this gives me an idea!

  My homesickness does not lessen. I thought of phoning—several times—instead, I imagined I phoned, and this is what happened.

  J:

  Hello, Hello. I just happened to be passing by the telephone and I thought I’d call you.