So Long, Marianne
Page 17
In his letter to Marianne, Leonard explains that:
… I was able at last to be what I must be, a singer, a man who owns nothing. I was able to give to over a thousand people the love that I have never been able to place, the ungreedy love which I know can warm the universe. I know now what I must train myself for. I must work, I must be celibate, I must be selfless.
I hope we can repair the painful spaces where uncertainties have led us. I hope you can lead yourself out of despair and I hope I can help you …81
Leonard is in the process of setting himself free. The letter he writes to Marianne echoes what Axel used to tell her when they were first together: he will lend a hand, but Marianne must help herself. The difference is that Leonard and Marianne no longer have a permanent relationship. She decides that the best she can do for herself and her child is to return to Hydra; perhaps she’ll find a future for herself there. Montreal is too lonely without Leonard.
* * *
To Marianne Cohen
February 23, 1967
Darling,
I sang in New York for the first time last night, at a huge benefit concert. Every singer you’ve ever heard of was there performing.
Judy Collins introduced me to the audience, over 3000 people, and they seemed to know who I was, mostly because of “Suzanne.” I stepped up to the mike, hit a chord on my guitar, found the instrument had gone completely out of tune, tried to tune it, couldn’t get more than a croak out of my throat, managed four lines of “Suzanne,” my voice unbelievably flat, then I broke off and said simply, “sorry, I just can’t make it,” and walked off the stage, my fingers like rubber bands, the people baffled and my career in music dying among the coughs of the people backstage. Judy went out and did some more songs while I stood numbly in the wings while a curious happiness seemed to overtake me: I had failed, I had really failed, there is something so beautiful about total failure, it really made me drunk. I found myself walking on stage again and I managed to squeeze “Stranger song” out of my throat. I hardly got the words out, the throat and the guitar broke down completely several times, but I finished somehow and I thought I’ll just commit suicide. Nobody really knew what to do or say. I think that someone took my hand and led me off, the triumphant in my shame, and I think I heard some people shout Bravo or maybe they were just clearing their throats. Everybody back stage very sorry for me and they couldn’t believe how happy I was, how relieved I was that it had all come to nothing, that I had never been so free. However the 13 year olds apparently liked it — I’m doing an interview with the Hit Parader, and for all I know a cult may grow around this disaster.
This damn hotel, loneliness, isolation, insomnia, the secular triumph that always just misses me — it’s all made me calm and curiously happy, it’s all mine at last, it’s my kingdom.
I should be there in a month or so to see what I can do with another book. I hope you’re feeling good, little friend of my life, I love it when you’re happy. Axel’s card was beautiful, hug him from me.
Goodnight darling,
Leonard82
MILITARY JUNTA
In April 1967 a cabal of colonels seized control of Greece, overthrowing the government and establishing rule by the military junta. Leonard was in America, where he’d been for some time, when the coup d’état took place, while Marianne was staying at a hotel in Athens, along with friends from Hydra. Following several days of unrest, news of the regime change was announced over the Greek radio. The band of Hydra friends was informed at the hotel’s reception desk. Hearing shots outside, they ran up the fire stairs to the roof to see what was going on. From their vantage point at the top of the hotel in Syntagma Square, in the heart of the city, they looked down on streets empty of people but swarming with tanks. More shots were fired. Marianne was struck by the perilousness of the situation and wondered what would happen next.
They holed up in the hotel for three days before venturing out to Piraeus to board the ferry home. When they got off the boat at Hydra, they were instructed to register at the police station. There were three times as many policemen as usual on the island. Rather than lazing in the spring sunshine over a glass of retsina or a Greek coffee at the port, people did their errands and darted silently home again through the oppressive atmosphere.
Under the dictatorship, all foreigners were required to have a residence permit and had to prove that they weren’t employed in Greece and that the money they lived on came from abroad. Marianne obtained a red slip of paper from the bank stating that the funds in her account came from outside the country and delivered it to the police. Hunting rifles and knives — anything that resembled a weapon — had to be relinquished to the authorities. Marianne handed in an old bayonet and its sheath that belonged to Leonard. When she was called on the carpet at the police station, she had with her Axel Joachim and some other children she was looking after. It was a drawn-out affair and the children cavorted and couldn’t sit still. To bring it to an end, Marianne pulled “a Greek one,” wailing for all she was worth while the tears streamed down her face — exactly as she had done when she’d studied the role of Hedvig in The Wild Duck. The men couldn’t bear female hysterics and asked her to take the children and leave.
The persistent flow of threats issued by the police and the general air of menace subdued and constrained the social life of the foreigners on Hydra. They had once been on relaxed, friendly terms with the police, often sharing a carafe of retsina at a taverna with them. Now the expatriates were stopped on their way to or from the port and constantly found notices on their doors directing them to report to the station at such and such a time. New arrivals had to register with the police and officers in plain-clothes strolled the streets and sat at café tables to spy on them. One day while Marianne was at the port a young man who had just come from Athens sat at one of the other café tables. He was loud and jovial and took no notice of Marianne’s attempts to signal that he was being observed by a policeman. By the time the young man got back to his hotel the police had searched his room. Without the benefit of a lawyer, he was convicted of possessing narcotics. He was sent to prison on the island of Aegina, the first stop on the ferry from Athens to Hydra. The place was notorious for its short rations and bad treatment of prisoners.
Strict censoring was introduced in the country. Many Left-leaning politicians and union people were arrested; thousands of Greeks were tortured. In league with his prime minister, the king attempted to muster a counter-coup later that year but it was a fiasco and he was forced to flee to Italy with his family.
Far from troubled Greece, Leonard was often touring as his singing and songwriting career took wing. He and Marianne kept in touch by letter and telegram. In April 1967, the same month that the military junta seized power in Greece, Leonard wrote several letters to Marianne at brief intervals:
April 9
Darling,
We need to be with each other this minute, nothing to say, but I want to be talking to you now, so this letter, another part of our mysterious enduring love.
I put steel strings on my guitar, that’s like changing from underwear to armour, that’s New York City. Given up plans for sainthood, revolution, redemptive visions, music mastery, just the ageing man with a notebook, happiest when alone in a Puerto Rican restaurant, coffee and Spanish juke-box, and I’ve crossed the equator of my very cold heart and I’m a human again, a second here and there.
… Someone in Hollywood wants to buy Suzanne. Buffy Ste Marie doing Stranger and a new song. Nico, Andy Warhol’s star, recording a new song called The Jewels in Your Shoulder. Offers from Expo, Newport Folk Festival, a tour in the Fall of forty American colleges, this last thing involves too much to even think about. Very anxious to write a book before it starts.
Tell me about Axel. Give him my blessings and love. I can’t help thinking that a New York slum is the best place for him, or if not that, a farm.
&
nbsp; Such beautiful music on the radio. I want to put away my guitar and just listen to the way they sing and the way they talk. Talked to an old man last night in the cafeteria, 67 years old, merchant seaman, told me he had 500 dollars in his pocket. He said, “Many a true word has passed through these false teeth.”
Walking through the city, insisting that no one follow, feeling either black or golden, dead to lust, tired of ambition, a lazy student of my own pain, happy about the occasional sun, thin and dressing very shabbily, hair out of control, feeling good tonight as I write my perfect friend.
The radio says it’s almost morning, the hotel window doesn’t connect with the sky so I’m never sure. How is Sophia? I’d love to hear that you and Axel and Sophia are strong and happy.
Isn’t it curious and warm to grow old in each other’s life?
All my love,
Leonard83
April 12, 1967
Seven o’ clock in the morning, the news says it’s 29 degrees, cold when I crossed the street for a morning strawberry milkshake, thinking about changing the steel strings back to the old softer ones, smoking Turkish cigarettes, the crysanthemums I bought myself some weeks ago, mauve, rust and yellow, are dry and fragile, and something in me rests every time I look at them, it’s good to be at my desk so early in the day with you and words on my mind, I put on a shirt and tie this morning and a string of Indian bells around my neck, I don’t think I ever wrote a tune, I just found some tunes that were already there, I keep a candle burning all the time in my room, a tall green candle in a glass, dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus, Patron Saint of Impossible Causes … well, good morning darling, something about the thought of you is so sweet, even our old battle cries seem like bells.84
SUMMERHILL
Axel Joachim sprang barefoot from house to house along with his playmates, who came from countries all over the world. A young German visiting the island took the boy up to the cloister on the mountain and taught him to play the flute. Axel Joachim had stars in his eyes when he came back in the afternoon. He said that he now carried not only Jesus in his heart but Buddha as well. Later, when he wanted to know how babies came into being, Marianne began by putting a sheet of paper on the kitchen table and drawing a little boy and girl, explaining that they were inside the womb of their mother. Axel Joachim listened carefully before he took the pen out of her hand and leaned across the table. Drawing a line from the heads of the two figures, he extended the line across the table and as far as he could reach up the whitewashed wall. When his mother asked what he’d drawn, Axel Joachim explained that it was the children’s antennae to God.
At seven, Axel Joachim was now of school age. While the three children of George and Charmian went to the local school, along with the Greek children, the daughters of Marianne and Leonard’s friend Demetri Gassoumis went to Summerhill, a boarding school in Suffolk, England. Many of the school’s teachers had visited Hydra and had social connections there. Summerhill was a phenomenon in the 1960s and its controversial educational principles were even being talked about in Norway. The institution’s founder, Alexander Sutherland Neill, was of the radical opinion that the school should adapt to the pupil, rather than the other way around. Like many others, Marianne believed that Summerhill was a good alternative to conventional schooling or the kind of education her son would get on Hydra. Physically his father’s spirit and image, the boy had always had a good head on his shoulders and was a quick learner. He spoke three languages fluently and was experienced in meeting people from all over the world. Marianne was convinced that Summerhill was the right choice for her son and by the time Leonard came back to Hydra in the summer of 1967, they’d been notified that Axel Joachim had been admitted.
One morning they looked out the window at the new telephone lines strung in front of their house. Leonard had settled on Hydra with the notion that he’d traded the modern world for a simpler, more authentic kind of life. He used to look out at the blooming almond tree while he wrote. Now the cables that criss-crossed the view were like a symbol that modernity had, inexorably, reached them. Birds alighted like musical notes on the new lines. Marianne made a cup of cacao for Leonard, who’d been ill, and lifted the guitar down from the wall for him. He strummed it and said, “Like a bird on the wire.”
Leonard took Axel Joachim to England for his first day of school at the end of the summer. “I’m coming back soon, Mummy,” promised the little boy as he departed in his blue jeans and denim jacket. Marianne swallowed the lump in her throat as she watched her son padding off hand in hand with Leonard.
Leonard, who had travelled onward from England to New York, reassured Marianne that all was well with her son. The boy had shed a few tears on the plane from Athens, but when Leonard had parted with Axel Joachim at the school, he was sitting happily in a treehouse in the company of Athene, Demetri’s eldest daughter, who was about his age, and a couple of other children. Marianne was not to worry: Leonard believed Axel would be fine at Summerhill. He had paid for the first semester and the school would buy pyjamas and anything else Axel Joachim lacked and would add the expenses to their account.
But Axel wasn’t happy at Summerhill. Written in his crooked, childish hand, his letters to his mother told her that that he missed her, he didn’t have many friends, the bigger boys were rough on him. He asked her to send presents that he could dole out to his schoolmates so they wouldn’t bother him. Axel Joachim also wrote to Leonard, who was staying on Bleecker Street in New York:
Dear Leonard,
I miss you. On the way back from New York to Greece come and see me if you can stay in England. Come and pick me up. I hope to go back in the same plane with you. It’s warm and nice here. Sometimes it is cold. Can I travel with a little wooden suitcase which I am making in woodwork? It has got a lock on it. And I want an answer to this letter.
Love and kisses xxxxx Axel85
Marianne’s heart sank when she read Axel Joachim’s letters, but she hoped that with time he would find his feet. She made trips to London so she could see him during day and weekend visits. The first time she visited Summerhill, she had an appointment with the headmaster and founder. She sat on a swing in the garden and swung back and forth while she waited until it was time for the meeting. When she entered the office in the venerable old brick building, Neill wondered if it had been her swinging under the tree outside.
“Yes,” Marianne replied.
“I thought it was one of the pupils,” he rejoined, making Marianne feel like a child.
During these visits Axel Joachim didn’t say much about how he was faring, and Marianne didn’t realize how strongly the boy wanted to leave the school. There were many gifted children at Summerhill and she was convinced it was the best option for her son. She would later suffer a deep sense of guilt for having sent him away instead of protecting him and providing him with a more stable upbringing.
FAREWELL TO GEORGE AND CHARMAIN
There had been many changes in the social scene on Hydra since Marianne had first arrived in December 1957. Marianne was one of the few who remained of the core of foreign permanent residents on the island. The people who passed through Hydra were on manifold life journeys and the friends were used to letting each other go.
George Johnston was now gravely ill. Fourteen years after he and Charmian left Australia, the couple decided to return to their homeland. The Johnstons had been pioneers among the foreigners and Marianne had watched their three children grow up. She had also witnessed their ruination over the years.
In 1969, two years after the Johnstons left Hydra for good, Charmian killed herself. It was the eve of the publication of her husband’s novel, Clean Straw for Nothing. The book partly concerned the infidelities of the protagonist’s wife, a character recognizable as Charmian. In his biography, Charmian and George, Max Brown quotes the note Charmian left behind for her husband: “Darling, Sorry about this. I can’t stand being hated
— and you hated me so much today — I am opting out and you can play it any way you wish from now on. I am sure you will have a most successful and distinguished career.”86 One year later George succumbed to tuberculosis.
In the autumn of 1967 Leonard was in a studio in New York recording his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, which would be in the stores in December. Leonard wrote to Marianne that it was going well in the studio and they often worked through the night and into the morning hours. But he didn’t know what he should write to her anymore — everything was too little or too much.87
An unpublished poem he composed that year expresses much of what he felt for Marianne:
The Poetry Place
This is for you
it is my full heart
it is the book I meant to read you
when we were old
Now I am a shadow
I am restless as an empire
You are the woman
who released me
I saw you watching the moon
you did not hesitate
to love me with it
I saw you honouring the wind-flowers
caught in the rocks
you loved me with them
At night I saw you dance alone
on the small wet pebbles
of the shoreline
and you welcomed me into the circle
more than a guest
All this happened