The Tender Hour of Twilight

by Richard Seaver

  She looked at me strangely. “How could I?” she said. “He’s in Montparnasse.”

  “So,” I insisted, “that’s not exactly at the other end of the world.”

  “Cemetery,” she said. “Montparnasse cemetery.”

  Only then did I realize the money given was not a modest avuncular gift but an inheritance of some substance. My estimation for the young lady, already considerable, increased even more.

  The technicians appeared ready, to judge by their sudden lack of movement, which a minute before had been frenetic, and the actors took their places before five full-length mikes. In addition to Delphine and me, there were a few people, none of whom we knew. But no Beckett. I was sorely disappointed, for I badly wanted to meet him. Maybe he was simply a little late. In retrospect, that was one of the most outlandish thoughts ever to cross my mind. For when finally we did meet, and in all subsequent encounters, you could set your watch by his arrival. The most punctual man I had ever known. I learned painfully how much he judged tardiness a cardinal sin, for, a year and a half later, when we were to meet at a café in Montparnasse to go over my draft translation of one of his stories, I was a few minutes late. He was seated at a table in the back, a short glass of beer called bock set primly before him, clearly untouched, his only sign of irritation the beat of his long, already slightly arthritic fingers in a noticeably loud tattoo on the tabletop. Not a word of reproach. Never. From then over the next almost forty years, whenever we met, I made sure I arrived several minutes before the appointed hour.

  “Do you think he’s coming?” I whispered to Delphine.

  She glanced around the room and shrugged.

  Our answer came almost immediately as Monsieur Blin made an announcement.

  “Monsieur Beckett had hoped to be here but has sent word that he cannot come. In his note he says that since he knows little or nothing about the theater, he thought his presence would in any event be superfluous.”

  That settled that.

  We had been told upon arrival that only a segment of the play was to be recorded, and in all fairness one couldn’t judge the whole from only a part, but what we heard was so extraordinary that we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For me, having read his stories and novels, it was not unknown territory. But this was different, even more spare than the prose. Before the recording began, Blin had announced the setting: a barren stage, with a rock in the foreground and a tree, equally barren, right rear.

  At the end of the broadcast, Delphine and I emerged into the bone-chilling gray of late-afternoon Paris.

  “What did you think?” Delphine asked as she sipped her hot tea on the indoor terrace of the place into which we had slipped to get warm.

  “I’m fascinated but frustrated,” I said. “How can I get my hand on the whole play?”

  “You can’t,” she said. “Blin says Beckett and he are still working on it.”

  “But I assume Minuit will publish it,” I said.

  “After it’s put on,” she said. “Not before.”

  “Any idea when that will be?”

  She shrugged.

  * * *

  I glanced across the square and saw by the church clock, in which one could surely trust, that it was well past nine. My God! Miserable cur that I was, I had left Patrick alone for well over an hour. Surely by now he was long gone. I paid and walked quickly back to the rue du Sabot, where I opened the door not to emptiness but to Patrick, fast asleep in Big Bear’s torture chair. Utterly and completely in repose—how it was possible on that chair I still can’t fathom—my precious pages lying primly beside him. He opened one bloodshot eye.

  “Smashing,” he said. “It’s really excellent.”

  He struggled to his feet. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m sure your piece will make people want to read Beckett.”

  “I hope so,” I said, picking up my pages. Patrick had more than returned the favor; his marginalia, I could see, were pointed and intelligent. One way to tell true friends is by their critical comments: false friends put down or procrastinate; real friends are always constructive, even when they’re critical.

  5

  From Dublin to Galway

  DESPITE MY GROWING OBSESSION with the elusive Irishman named Beckett, I was still deeply involved with another writer from the Old Sod, Mr. Joyce himself. The more I learned about him, the more I delved into his complex past, the more I felt that perhaps, after all, Mr. Beckett was on the right track. Same purity. Same absolute dedication to his art and—here I could relate to some degree—same impecuniosity. In his earlier years, Joyce had often been on the edge of bankruptcy, bailed out by his younger, far more practical brother Stanislaus, but even as he was nearing forty, Joyce was constantly hard-pressed to pay his many creditors. At one point things were so bad that Joyce’s young son, Giorgio, happening upon his uncle Stanislaus one day in the streets of Trieste, testily informed him that he, and the rest of the family, had gone hungry that day. At which point Stanislaus, who generally disapproved of James’s lifestyle, arranged to have a stipend in his hands next day. In his diary of the time, Stanislaus noted: “I have saved James and Nora six times from starvation.” Not that poverty is a necessary virtue, but ranking money as low as possible in the list of one’s priorities struck me in those bygone days as the basis for any serious artistic endeavor. As soon as that profound thought crossed my mind, a dozen examples of the contrary arrived to refute it. Ah, how hard it is to have a profound thought that sticks!

  I had accumulated two or three hundred pages of notes, salient facts, and jottings of a manuscript about Joyce, not sure where it was going, but so fascinated by both the man and his work that I couldn’t get enough. His Portrait of the Artist, which I knew had been badly received upon its publication, was to me a small gem. As for Ulysses, a masterpiece—no other word would do—which I had read and reread, each time rewarded further.

  Joyce’s sisters were alive and well in Dublin. Why didn’t I write and ask if I could talk with them about my subject? Some precious insights might be gleaned there. Two of them at least, Eva and Eileen, had spent time with their brother in Trieste, where Joyce had lived for a dozen years prior to World War I.

  Why Trieste? Having made up his mind to leave Ireland for fairer shores and having responded to news of an opening to teach English in Ravenna, Joyce had convinced pretty, auburn-haired Nora Barnacle to share his life abroad. He arrived almost penniless, to find the teaching post had been filled. But, he learned, there was an opening at the Berlitz School in Trieste, which he was quick to seize.

  One of the addresses was a nunnery, and knowing Joyce’s uncompromising hatred of the Church, I was sure I’d never hear from that lady. To my great surprise, however, both responded: Eileen was warm, her sister perfunctory, but what the hell. The idea of hearing firsthand from Joyce family members set my heart beating fast.

  The following morning I set out to find the two ladies. First, the nunnery, a neat redbrick building whose windowed flower boxes were a riot of color but whose imposing large black door looked forbidding. I pulled the cord and heard a tinkle within, and the door was opened by a starchly coiffed lady, who looked at me sternly, no, with scarcely concealed distrust. I announced myself (meself?) and the purpose of my visit. The level of distrust increased measurably. “And is she expecting you?” I confessed she was, and with a further withering glance she turned and disappeared, leaving the door slightly ajar. A minute or so later, a similarly clad lady arrived—“diminutive” is the word that came to mind—to fill the lower-half void of the now-open door. I reminded her of my letter and hers in reply. She frowned. Yes, she had a vague memory. Could I ask her a few questions about her brother James? No reaction. Had she indeed been with him in Trieste? A nod. “I didn’t stay long,” she said. I asked if I might come inside, for I felt awkward here on the top step. There were four steps up to the convent, if that is what it was called here. I have always had a problem with steps. I never knew whether to count the top step
as one, or whether it was the stoop and didn’t count at all. In which case there were three. No matter. She shook her head. “All right then … I understand,” assuming the likes of me were not allowed into the outer sanctum, much less the inner. “Were you living with your brother and his wife?” “She wasn’t his wife,” she said in barely a whisper. Then: “I’ve nothing further to add.” With which she stepped back and closed the door, I must say in all fairness, gently.

  Well, Seaver, what did you expect?

  * * *

  Refreshed and revitalized from my morning’s rebuff by a visit to a nearby pub, I set out to find sister Eileen. Again the three steps up—or was it four?—this time to a large green door, blessed with a large brass knocker. This time the door opened to a lady, small and wizened, but whose warm smile and twinkling blue eyes made me feel immediately at home. She led me into her parlor, which looked out onto the street, offered me tea, and settled down in a flowered easy chair across from me. First, she wanted to know my interest in her brother, and when I said, quite simply, I thought him the greatest writer of our time and was hoping to do a thesis on him and his work, she visibly relaxed.

  For the next hour and a half Eileen talked of him, eloquently and lovingly, from his early years at Belvedere school, where he first embraced, almost fanatically, the Church, before he as fiercely repudiated it; their life in Dublin, a close family of ten children—four boys and six girls, whom (the latter) Jim, the eldest, referred to as “my twenty-three sisters”; her years in Trieste living with his family before World War II. Seven years younger than James, she was, she felt, the closest to him in many ways. Not as close as Stanny, she added, but theirs was a relationship of sibling rivalry. Dared I ask her about Nora, about their relationship? From what I had heard, she was totally disinterested in his work. “That’s true,” she said. “Nora was a simple lady, with little schooling. But James loved her, of that I am sure. Lost without her.”

  Did the name Beckett mean anything to her?

  “Samuel Beckett? Of course. One of Jim’s disciples. Came to Paris in the twenties, I believe, an exchange student from Trinity to the École Normale. Friend of Tom McGreevy’s. Jim liked him, thought he had talent, though from all I’ve heard he’s been totally unsuccessful as a writer. Jim read his Murphy, published just before the war, I believe, and thought it showed talent. It seemed to him, however, that Beckett was too much under his influence; he’d have to get out from under it to find his own voice.

  “But there was a problem between them. Jim’s daughter, Lucia, a most talented but troubled young lady, was quite taken with Beckett and assumed he came to the flat so often especially to see her. Fact was, he came to see my brother, but she was besotted, and Beckett’s lack of response to her obvious overtures worsened her depression. So at one point, as I recall, Jim had to suggest that he keep away, which wounded Beckett deeply.”

  “I’d heard tell,” I said, “that at one point he was your brother’s secretary. Is that true?”

  “Absolutely not. Jim had dozens of people around him all the time—he was very gregarious, y’know, though those who didn’t know him apparently pictured him alone in his ivory tower—and Beckett was one. Remember, Jim, who’d always had eye trouble, was almost blind in those Paris years and needed help to transcribe his thoughts and writing. Read aloud to him. Run errands for him.” She laughed. “He was good at that.”

  For the next three weeks I trekked—if that is the word, for I had no wagon or oxen, only wrestler-sturdy legs—across Ireland, opting for the back roads and byways, though even on the larger routes few cars or trucks broke my silence. At times it was as if I were alone in the world, with only birdsongs and bleatings to remind me I wasn’t. Those I met were unfailingly pleasant, greeting me often with a tip of the hat or a “God bless!”

  Ah, yes, the clouds. If there is one word that memory calls to mind of my Irish cross-island journey, it was “WET.” It rained virtually every day, sometimes only a damning mist, but often a downpour. At times the sun struggled through, though not enough to dry me off. Every fourth or fifth day I’d give in and take refuge at a B&B, to take a warm bath, dry my clothes, and eat a hearty meal. I’d awake refreshed and ready to press on. One morning as I was leaving my room, a young man exiting his across the corridor greeted me cordially with “It’s a smashing day! Absolutely smashing!” By which I assumed the tide had turned, the sun was out in full force, and my journey would not be further marred by the endless sloshing sound in my weary boots. Peeking out, however, I wondered if my neighbor was of sound mind, for to me it looked its usual gray—though a tad lighter than normal—but no sight of the sun. At breakfast I asked him why he thought the day was “smashing.” “Look outside,” he said, “don’t you see? It’s only a drizzle!”

  It was only years later, when I read Flann O’Brien’s Gaelic romp, The Poor Mouth, that I realized the full extent of the Irish weather problem: when the hapless hero of the novel wants to dry off, he simply jumps into the western sea!

  6

  Financing a Magazine

  OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS I saw Alex, Christopher, and Jane almost daily, with Patrick joining us on the weekends.

  There were immediate practical issues to face. Arthur Fogg Lougee, Jane’s father, our Maecenas, had underwritten Merlin, but, it turned out, only the first issue. As a businessman and (even local) banker, he was willing to launch the ship, but it was his firm opinion that once it set sail, it should pay for itself. Arthur had asked and been told what the print run of the first issue would be: three thousand copies. And the distribution? A thousand for France, mostly for the Left Bank kiosks and the half a dozen bookstores catering to English-language tourists; a thousand to England; and the last third to the States, that is to him. What he planned to do with his thousand copies was anyone’s guess: Inundate the local Limerick bookstore? Sell them in the lobby of the bank? Give them as a gift to new customers? Sit and wait for the subscriptions to roll in? In any event, if he could sell out his copies, whose American cover price was sixty cents, he would have virtually recovered his investment. And if France and England performed even half as well, voilà, the magazine would be returning a tidy profit. Excellent business, as seen from the rocky shoreline of northern New England circa 1952.

  The only problem with his arithmetic was that the chances of selling out were nil, of unloading half of them slim, and even a quarter unlikely. More, Alex and Jane had been steadily eating into Papa Lougee’s largesse, what with the Hôtel Verneuil a heady fifty dollars a month and the prices of food and wine inevitably inching up, not to mention Alex’s new obsession with pinball machines, which had lately sprung up in postwar Paris, a cultural gift from the West, precursor, alas, to many more.

  “Stimulates the brain,” Alex would explain if anyone, including Jane, dared question. “Relaxes and stimulates. I have some of my most creative ideas watching that little bouncing ball wend its way down the piste.”

  “How can that mindless machine inspire you?” Patrick said. He actually looked hurt.

  “It does, old man, believe me it does,” Alex said, his eyes on the wildly blinking lights, his hands nervously working the flippers. “The fact it’s mindless is the whole point: leaves the brain free to soar.” With which he would turn and break into a broad bad-boy grin that few could resist.

  But while the brain was soaring, we had to strategize about our upcoming approach to the Imprimerie Mazarine, which had printed the first issue. Jane’s father had paid for that first issue up front. Cash on the barrelhead.

  Alex could charm most people out of their skins, but printers, I knew, were a no-nonsense breed. And we, let’s not forget, were sales étrangers, “filthy furriners,” whose bona fides were at best suspect. Approaching a new, unknown printer at this late stage struck me as folly, especially with the absentee month of August looming. So, dressed in our business best, which was dubious if you probed—frayed here, soup or wine spotted there (I speak of the males of the spe
cies; Jane was resplendent in a white dress bursting with sunflowers)—but which, for a short visit, at eleven in the morning, almost reeked of respectability, Alex, Jane, Christopher, and I paid a visit to 35, rue Mazarine, where we were cordially received by Monsieur Louis Lebon. Though the patron, he was dressed for the press, his well-endowed body covered from torso to toe with a sturdy blue canvas coverall. His hands were ink stained, and he bore dark smudges on both cheeks as well as on chin and forehead.

  “Excuse me, messieurs, dame,” he apologized, “let me wash up before we talk.” He repaired to the washbasin at the far side of the room and scrubbed himself vigorously till he looked almost cherubic. Coming back to his desk, he shook hands all around—another Gallic custom without which nothing can begin—then sat down across from us and smiled benignly. A man of middle years, I judged, he was, once scrubbed, rather handsome, with sharply sculpted features, the most salient of which was an aquiline nose that, for prominence and curvature, rivaled that of Alex himself.

  In the background the muted, rhythmic thunder of the printing presses made normal conversation difficult, so our voices were obliged to increase a dozen decibels, if I have my logarithm straight.

  “Your first issue was a success?”

  We all nodded, in deceptive unison. So far we had collected perhaps a couple of hundred dollars from issue number 1, virtually all from sales through the English Bookshop on the rue de Seine and the Librairie Mistral, plus a dozen or two well-intentioned subscriptions, including one astonishing Life Subscriber who had sent us a check for fifty dollars together with a letter wishing us a long and healthy life. No news from Limerick, Maine, on American sales, but we were hardly in a position to badger our benefactor. As for England, sales there had been confided to one A. L. Robertson, stationed not in London but, of all unlikely places, on the Isle of Man. Set tidily in the Irish Sea halfway between Northern Ireland and England, the Isle of Man struck me as one of the less enlightened business choices of mid-century, if sales success was a factor. When I mentioned this to Trocchi, he became immediately defensive. “Robertson is first-class,” he declared, “completely committed to art and culture. That’s what we sorely need, Dick. People who believe. If we give Merlin over to your normal big distributor, it will be lost in the shuffle, believe me.” I believed. But when I asked if, so far, he—we—had received any report on sales, he seemed almost hurt that I should raise the question. “He’s just received the first issue,” he said.