by Janet Frame
87. Dunedin August 4
Dear B, P, N,
Morning. Woke etc. Thought about the three live oaks I saw once growing in Santa Barbara,
‘And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and have placed it in sight in my room;
It is not needed to remind me of my own dear friends
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them . . . )’
So much for Antipodean greeting but while things are Whitmanesque (?)b I’ll tell you that when I went to my gate to collect my morning milk and newspaper I looked at the lilac twig I planted near the front door (the gnarled old fuchsia hedge will have to move over or expand into ruder health), and it has a tiny green shoot. It was already in bud when I picked it to transplant but, so far, none of the buds have developed in any of the four twigs I planted in various parts of the garden. What confidence it shows now! Inheriting Whitman and Eliot how could it show anything else? They do not bloom, though, for about five years after they have been transplanted. It is only two years ago that this plant, which my aunt was given seven years ago and which has spread to become a big bush, had lilac flowers.
From Walt Whitman’s poem ‘I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing’. Frame often refers to B, P and N as her ‘live-oaks’.
Excuse this rhapsodising (sort of) about lilac. It sends me, babe, as much as that bit of Madeleine cake sent Proust. Well, it is Spring, and the air is full of sweet smells—wattle and japonica and cherry and plum blossoms, and the wax-eyes have departed in a hurry.
I’ve moved my furniture around again! The sunshine in my studio was too much. The house next door, which is very very close, prevents me from getting the sun until about noon (except for about an hour’s early shining in the front windows) and from then on until sunset it fills the studio, bathroom, and lavatory, shining through the kitchen and down the passage and out the front door. Later in the season, when it moves farther south it shines in the late afternoon and evening in the sitting-room. I’ve moved to the smaller front room. Diagram guaranteed to bore:
Page two of my exceedingly Non-letter.
I have just finished a morning’s work, getting involved with my characters, and am going to post this and at the same time look in on the old swan for two minutes to see if the water has claimed her—actually, it hasn’t yet, for I always phone to find out because much as I talk boldly about death I do not want to walk into the hospital and find a corpse. I had thought she might die this week as it is the anniversary of her husband’s death (my father’s brother), and though she’s too far gone, perhaps, to realise this consciously, it might be in her bones somewhere, to communicate with her. I think the fallout of all kinds of experiences, like DDT, settles in people’s bones and skin and flesh. My experience equivalent of Strontium 90 is at danger level!
Also when I go to post this non-letter I must go to library to consult a German dictionary; or splash and buy myself one. I have a letter this morning, entirely in German, and I’m ashamed of my inability to read it.
A sentence such as
‘Herausgeber und Verlag bitten Sie hiermit um Erlaubnis zum Abdruck dieser Erzahlung.’
says something about a publisher but my frivolity makes it say that Herausgeber has bitten the hermit.
I’m afraid I’m terribly much longing to be among you, with you, by you, and all prepositions my three live oaks. And the Steinway!
I hope you’re both still uttering beautiful paintings as live oaks ‘utter (joyously) dark green leaves’. I know you are. The paintings I have—your two, B, and the catalogue ones of you and P., but in particular the originals, change marvellously with the changing light, I suppose because they secrete light, themselves, at least you have so composed them that they are bodies of light.
I hope that doesn’t sound too fancy.
Here is a line or two I wrote about Paul’s self-portrait in the sky, the idea of which rather haunts me.
Now while our gaze is fixed we try not to cower
under the static heavy sky whose clouds
have become engineering equipment. Stars gong, of brass.
Trapdoors slide open to reveal the colourless eye
claiming its earthly reflection, the hand uselessly
grasping air, picking space-blossoms at the sky-window.
The machine set in motion reveals now limbs, heart, face
– so far away feet that are not wings and cannot fly—
a self suffering the responsibility of a whole sky.
The consolation is that paintings have power to arrest all.
That loiters within their bounday [. . .].
That’s just an impromptu sort of verse, using the wrong words, and so on. And now end of page and accumulations of love
88. Dunedin August 5
Hello Everyone,
Bang goes my resolution not to write every day but it’s my only way of being with you, which I’d like to be, but then I’d be quiet as a house-mouse and not speak much, and only be happy to know you were around somewhere, being yourselves.
The days are long and blue now, the kind of days that one thinks one knew in childhood, when one is revisited by raptures of discovery: I remembered yesterday my first encounter with a nasturtium flower and leaf, the feel, smell, wetness etc., and it was somewhat offputting to recall that so many of these rapturous discoveries were made when I first learned ‘the facts of life’ from a little girl I knew, and her big brothers. I wonder now where the rapture really lay, that was associated with geraniums and nasturtiums and ice-plant. It doesn’t really matter, though, (I should have a quote from Rilke here—he’s said everything) it only emphasis the completeness of the pattern.
What does one do if one is an old swan and goes to the wrong water? I think this is what my aunt has done, for now she’s retreated inland, no doubt looking for the ‘right’ water—I’d forgotten that dying is so much like living. Old aunt Hannah (did I tell you that was her name?) was endearing yesterday. She’s been semi-conscious for two weeks but yesterday she spoke to me, and when I asked if I would read her a letter which came for her she answered proudly, I’ll read it myself. Where are my glasses? I found her glasses and fitted them over her nose and ears, opened the letter and held it in front of her (her head has no support now, like that of a small baby) while she gazed ahead, still with her eyes closed.
–Are you reading it? I asked.
–Of course I am, she replied, still with her eyes closed.
I read her the letter then, while making it seem that it was she who was reading it, and when I had finished I asked,
–Have you read it all now?
–Yes, she said. –It’s nice to get a letter.
–Shall I put your glasses away?
–Yes. I won’t need them now I’ve read my letter.
I put her glasses away, and put the letter back in its envelope, and I asked her if there was anything she wanted.
She really has retreated (briefly, I suppose, for she is dying) from the water! She began to describe, with relish, how nice it would be to eat a raw ripe firm tomato cut up with ‘a little onion’.
Well. That is the saga of my aunt. It reminds me that we used to say a rhyme in speech-training which went,
‘Swim, swan, swim.’
(Also in the speech-training exercises appeared a relevant line: ‘Monday is laundering morning’. And another of the many ‘moral’ ones: ‘Difficulties, perplexities, obstacles, all are sent to test our grit. Do not blame Destiny for your Defeat; instead blame idle days and wasted opportunities.’)
Strong stuff.
I had a little private amusement yesterday translating my German letter. It was much more vivid if taken literally. Someone just wants to put a story in an anthology. The anthologist ‘beats his breast with sabres and has bridled your story, with impertinence, for detailed demolition.’ ‘Yours, with many friendly shudder
s.’
Very nice.
Stars now, for time passed, while I return to my new book, called Critical Condition? Resting Quietly? Danger List?
THURSDAYHIROSHIMA DAY.
Afternoon again, work plodded along with but fearfully commonplace in my usual bogging-down. Thoughts of the live oaks and their joyous uttering of green and blue and purple and red paintings.
And two visitors in my solitude:
Yesterday kitty came to see me again. I think he-she-it (I haven’t looked) lives next door but yesterday it came in and played and washed and slept on the spare bed in the sun and I thought guiltily of being accused of ‘alienating affections’ but I need not have worried, for as soon as the sound of the next-door car was heard arriving home, Kitty vanished. So you realise that when you and Paul are out Ned’s day becomes one long wait for your return. He watches and watches—he’s also on guard—but the sound of you returning and he instantly relaxes and is off duty. I used to watch him, his ears alert, his paws stiff, his eyes fixed on the gate. He was waiting to ward off strangers too, animal and human-animal, I suppose. Yesterday Kitty became very fierce with this-is-my-territory attitude when another kitty, the same age and colour, only fluffier, decided it wanted to visit too. First kitty shooed it away and then returned to sit on the stairs in the sun, flipping an occasional paw at bees in the koromiko blossom which grows beside the stairs, and making silent jaw-rehearsal at the birds.
This morning I had another visitor—Jim, the husband of my recent guest, Jacquie. He was unexpectedly in Dunedin to visit his old old father (the one who was nailed to a cross on the battlefield in the First World War) who is in hospital with pneumonia, suddenly, after a bout of ’flu. I had a rich couple of hours in which Jim recited from memory some long long poems he had written, said a long prayer, aloud, for me, and told me something about his life in Jerusalem—a settlement in the wilds of the North Island, beside the Wanganui River. The Sisters of Compassion (Jim is a devout Roman Catholic convert) have given him an old cottage to live in, and Jim is rather worried that the Sisters of Compassion may not quite understand the kind of life that goes on in the cottage—he uses it as a kind of refuge, and anyone who wants to, may go there—‘and what will the Sisters of Compassion think,’ says Jim, ‘if they catch sight of a naked man knocking at my door?’ It was a refreshing visit, full of his usual eloquence (he preached the first Roman Catholic Sermon in Christchurch’s Anglican Cathedral!) but I shan’t accept his invitation to go to live there, in Jerusalem! too many people coming and going! in too many senses! It sounds like a bright spot, and he acts as a kind of a guru for the distressed nonconforming in a strictly conforming country and (what is important, though he doesn’t think it is important any more) he writes his poems.
After his visit I went to see my aunt, to take her two small firm ripe tomatoes—but, alas, or hurrah, she has found water again and is toying with the idea of having a swim! I’m reminded of the terrifying occasion when I first learned to swim. The teacher (who looked like a cow whale) simply pushed me into the water, and I shall never forget the panic and struggle. No swan, I!
I am making what those who write of migrating birds describe as ‘intention movements’. I’m in earnest about not making this country my home, and I’ve got some forms from the U.S. Embassy to find what I must fill in to go to stay there for an indefinite period—it’s all rather formidable. I must a. prove that I can keep myself. b. have an address to go to. c. give evidence (for this kind of visa) that I have ‘outstanding ability in one of the arts’. Very formidable. Especially when I can’t even identify myself!
Therefore I play my two Requiems, bathing myself in unearthliness; and I try to remember some of the lines of the poem which Jim said to me this morning, and all I can remember is
‘O star that I do not believe in,
send forth your tendril of light . . .’
Well I can’t remember it but it is the same idea I had when I was thinking of Paul’s painting—of his climbing down the beanstalk, except in this poem the climb was upwards—the picture had not yet been painted, so to speak.
Stars, for up there. We are rich in stars here and in the morning they seem to flee towards the ocean.
I’m afraid I am very lonely for you, and I want so much to be with you and Paul and Ned, and I imagine I am there—perhaps I should not confess these things for I have to go down down deep to get them—and I might meet Pluto on the way, and be whisked to the Underground Streams—but perhaps I will have a small crushed pomegranate seed in my hand, to give me six months light. Excuse the confusion of myths . . .
I’m enclosing some photos I took one day when I went to look at the sea. And a photo that I tried to take of your painting, B, and got, instead, for some strange reason, a photo of my front door and passage! I can’t find your paintings anywhere, though I focused on it. It might be a case of telling the truth ‘slant’, once more.
By the way will you paint the door of your studio? Among your landscapes near the studio? I’ll stop this letter before I launch into a poor man’s woman’s Rupert Brooke.
[in margin: Rimbaud is in encyclopedia between Rilke and rime (‘deposits of white ice crystals’)]
89. Dunedin August 8
Ah dear B,
Your letter just came and immediately I am restored—I love it, and I love the little drawings. Sitting there with my large Mortal Enemy within, I look decidedly egg-bound, and for the life of me I can’t think of the remedy—I think it is a diet of greens, chiefly sow thistle, chickweed, grass, and plenty of bran mash in the evenings. (When we were children we used to wrap the hens in pieces of old blanket, put them to bed, and give them enemas of straw! But this was not a cure for egg-binding, it was in lieu of dolls!)
Eggs, eggs, eggs. Did I tell you that one of the painters at Yaddo described how he kept getting a boiled egg for lunch, and nothing he said could change it, so he stored them in a drawer in his bedroom and when he left Yaddo he left a drawerful of eggs!
Sunny today again. Up early, to work. The birds have begun their dawn chorus now, and the days are lighter, earlier, and the lilac transplants are showing more tips of green, and there are many primroses in bloom. The old grandfather cabbages still lean, unpicked, though (of course) their hearts have been removed long ago, so long ago that they have forgotten they had hearts and their joy is their thick stem and rubbery coarse leaves and their ability to stand against the south winds that blow more fiercely in my garden as my neighbour cuts the hedge to barely three feet high, when I long for a high hedge that will enable me to lurk in the garden. The daffodils are coming up in the grass. I have worked one hour in the garden since I came back here!
I am visiting here only, I feel. I have not even unpacked the masses of manuscripts in the room downstairs—chiefly poems and stories that no-one but myself has ever seen, that I would not think of offering for publication, yet which a quirk of vanity or possessiveness or something prevents me from destroying.
You ask what happened to the French lady. Immediately I feel guilty because I have not been in touch with her again and I know she is rather homesick and I have all her family photos, full of long-long-legged children standing with poodles beside ancient stone walls and an ancient low farm-house, in Mauriac country.
A visit from kitty last night. What an affectionate kitty it is. It’s quite small but I think it is pregnant—they must start early these days—as there’s a low-slung bulge within. I will record its purr.
asterisks
The Stevens story is sad. No apologies needed for telling about it. If such a thing happened to people I knew, I suppose, because of its haunting, it would eventually become a kind of story, a kind of mirror. Painting and music are more mysterious—the mirror is turned to face the wall. I don’t know what I’m trying to say—almost everything I say is dictated by images—I just had an image of myself, haunted, writing a story in broad daylight; and of a painter or composer in a dark room with a mirror (the only
source of light) turned to face the wall. How does one know it’s a mirror? Because one sees the light in one’s mind.
I really don’t know what I’m trying to say. Which is a good enough reason for saying it?
the thin moon in the sky.
Carnie’s goings-on are certainly indelicate and immodest, especially if as a result, Steinway goes out of tune. It looks like a symptom to me. That trip abroad (was it in a yawl or a junk or a schooner? I forget) might have introduced Carnie to undesirable or desirable practices. Confinement in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew has been known to bring about Tendrillia, and there have been many severe cases. Plants in the Botanical Gardens at Kew are indulged in all their whims (for instance The Chalk Garden made especially for plants which thrive in chalky soil). Sleeping quarters often leave much to be desired, or nothing to be desired. To quote from the Handbook of the R.B.G. at Kew, ‘Thus the Dandelion and Thistle Family, which comprises more than 13,000 species, is represented by a selection occupying 29 beds, while smaller families often share one bed’. No doubt Carnie visited his relatives the Nepenthes and the Sarracenias (who knows how much time he spent with Cousin Insectie?) He may even have called upon the Darlingtonias. He will have come to know a wide range of habits. He will have lived among the Succulents and the Aroids and he may have visited Magnolia in her bed, or Luculia Gratissima, who is part of the South-West Plot.
I should think that as long as he makes music with the Steinway, he should be encouraged; otherwise it might be a good idea to let him spend several hours a day in the garden. Introduce him to Petunia. Remember, though, that he must be indulged—after all he is carnivorous, and unless his attention is diverted he may strike at any time, and what he has seen in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew will have made him wiser (and sadder). And no-one, not even Steinway, ever died of Tendrillia.
Just keep Carnie gently in his place, respecting his appetites and there should be no further scene such as you describe, with Steinway. And if that should not be so, and there are many many more, then B and P and N (and Steinway) must accept Carnie as he is, as the Travelled Plant who has lived among the Succulents and the Aroids, has known strange beds and stranger plots.
