Also among us was John Crowe Ransom, whom I had heard once lecturing at Ward-Belmont. I was delighted that someone had sent him my novel, and that he had read it and sought me out to compliment me on it.
Ransom was formidable in a way one was liable to miss, it was so quiet and understated. To look at him, a well-brushed man of medium height, you would have thought him a high school principal, or some longtime academic dean in a minor college. Flying high in those days as a great poet and a commanding voice among American critics, he showed nothing of the arrogant manner he might have acquired. His lecture, though hardly enthralling, came with the starch of real authority, while Stark Young, though scarcely arrogant either, had a theatrical bent, and his came over to us as a thrilling performance.
That afternoon Ella gave her reception. It was in especial honor of Stark Young, but the other festival guests were invited, and so was I.
Such an afternoon could never come again. We came in small groups up the steps to her white two-story Victorian house on Fifth Street. We were swept at once into the greetings, the good feelings, the murmurous talk.
William Faulkner, while he had declined to attend any of the program, had accepted his old friend’s invitation and had actually appeared. Dressed in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, he stood in one corner silently throughout, smoking a pipe, holding a glass, but drinking nothing. He was a small, handsome man, his graying hair youthfully thick, his mustache a becoming touch. What he most resembled was a portrait, an introspective study of himself.
That day he neither moved nor spoke to anyone, and most everybody was wise enough not to try speaking to him. I have always wondered at the irony of it—a man so taciturn, so devoid of the gregarious nature native to Southerners, moving onto the world stage. Was he ever mistaken as typical of what we normally are? Stark Young remarked on his behavior later. “He hides behind a wall of silence,” he said. “I hide behind a wall of words.”
Hiding or not, Mr. Stark that day was everywhere, glorying in his success at reaching an audience in such high style, loving the occasion to find old Oxford acquaintances and discover new ones. He was a drinker, too, but a good talker, and moved through various groups as if on a well-orchestrated stage. He singled me out more than once. Ella always spoke later of the many references to our meeting in his letters to her. And I had every reason to rejoice that he liked me.
He wrote; he kept in touch with all I did. Once when I was in New York, he came into the city from his home outside to take me to lunch. He chose the Gripsholm, a Swedish restaurant on the East Side. He did all this much in the Jamesian manner of cultivating a “young person of talent,” a distant relative, a “young woman of good family,” a fellow Mississippian, a friend of Ella Somerville’s. But more than all this, I felt his genuine interest in me, his admiration for my writing, his feeling that I was a discovery of his. (Good luck again.) I welcomed his feelings with all the warmth I knew how to show.
It was Stark Young who, as a young man in London, had told a close friend of Henry James that he would like to read James’s work but did not know how to begin. As Mr. Stark himself remarked in his memoir The Pavillion, any Southerner would have known his real meaning: that he had no notion at the time of beginning at all. But the lady appealed to H.J. himself, who wrote in some detail to the “young man from Texas.” (Stark Young was only briefly in Texas.) James wrote out a list of his favored novels and the order in which they should be read. He promised “the dear young man from Texas” another list of the shorter works. “You shall have your little tarts when you have eaten your roast beef and potatoes.” All this was done with typical Jamesian kindness and real affection for a questioning youth. They both understood courtesy, and I think of courtesy when I remember Mr. Stark.
In the afterglow of favorable attention to my novel, I was ready to find an even more expanding world. I never dreamed of leaving my roots, and the world that Oxford had generously made accessible to me was something to cherish and return to.
Still, my feelings nagged. They whispered that the South drew one continually inward toward its motherly bosom. This inwardness of regard has been for Eudora Welty and many others a wondrous source. But for me it just didn’t work that way. I did not want to deny, discard, leave behind, or denigrate any of my upbringing. But I had to recognize that I had a seeking nature, something that related me to others of my kin—to my mother’s brothers far-flung in military service, not the least to my father’s brother, the long-lost Willie, who had set out to discover—what?
Two years before, my dear friend Carolyn Pugh, who wrote me steadily, had gotten an appointment to go to Europe to work in the American team at the Nuremberg trials. She had been employed in Washington and had learned of the chance to apply for secretarial work in the cadres who were needed as assistants in that process. Also a seeker, more courageous than I, she had prepared herself as best she might, and set out by boat with others who were to work for the American team in Germany. Her letters were filled with details of her adventures. She not only experienced Germany with all its postwar difficulties but also had visited Paris, Switzerland, and Italy.
My friend Edward McGehee was now in Paris, working on a novel and meeting many of the writers and others who felt Europe was opening up to them once more. It was certainly cheap, with the dollar at advantage against foreign currencies.
I had made a little money on my book, which had gone into a second printing, and I had, as usual, saved up a little from my teaching. It seemed the moment for a real leap across the ocean was at hand. I searched out ways and means. As summer came nearer my head was full of plans.
21
THE MAGIC SUMMER
BACK then you crossed the ocean by boat. I booked to leave from New Orleans in June 1949 on a French Line freighter, a lend-lease boat. These were prewar ships, still in use in the postwar era. This one was named the Wisconsin, ludicrously pronounced in the French manner, “Le Vis-cõ-si.” It had come from Tampico, sailed the hundred miles or so upriver to New Orleans to take on cargo and passengers, and was headed, we were told, to Le Havre, via Havana.
Certainly by the time it had reached New Orleans it had accumulated a few assorted characters, one a burly red-faced man, named Charbonneau, big as a bear, who walked with a limp and leered at all the women. Another outstanding specimen was an Italian, Fulco, who got on in New Orleans, along with the main lot of passengers, including me.
Fulco at once wanted to scoop me up and go into New Orleans while the boat took on cargo. But I elected to spend a hideous night on deck with the others, for the cabins were hot as ovens. The deck, though cooler, caught a slow rain of black flakes of soot. When we finally began to move, late the next afternoon, we all took a bath, scrubbed off, and got to look at each other for the first time.
There were teachers on sabbatical, a threesome of a Nashville mother and two sons bound to see Europe, a young man returning home to Paris after studying international law at Tulane, an American woman and her son, she titled La Marchesa, her husband being the Italian consul in New Orleans. Many other wisps and shreds of humanity were among us, a total of perhaps thirty or forty, with others about to join us in Havana.
Fulco, not one to give up easily, could be counted on to follow me down corridors, lurk around corners, pop up for every stroll around the deck.
Years later, the marchesa, who resumed my acquaintance at intervals through the years, told me I should have written Ship of Fools. Certainly Katherine Anne Porter’s novel held many parallels of that time at sea.
In Havana sightseeing was permitted, but perspiring taxi drivers, whom we employed to drive us to “places of historic interest,” went lurching through streets crammed with other Cubans, who all seemed to be yelling at once, and took us where they were supposed to—the palatial rum factories. Here we were led through the various smelly distilling processes, tunneled among rows of molasses-colored barrels, and wound up in a cool dusky basement at a long wooden table. We
were served small glasses of sweet liqueurs, flavored variously with pineapple, banana, coconut, and mango. The next step—ho, ho, ho—was to sell us lots and lots of rum. We came staggering out into the broiling sun, laden with bottles, sweating from the syrupy drinks, and wanting nothing but ice water in the shade.
From Havana harbor, leaning over the ship’s rail, we watched the boys who swam in the oily waters, calling up to us for money. They dove for the coins we flipped, coming up with the gleam of dimes and quarters, sometimes in their teeth. They wore G-strings, had rags tied around their heads and were sleek as seals. Within the boat lounges, the French officers in their starched white uniforms were sharing wine and socializing with the Cuban officers, also dazzling in white. A good many Cubans piled on as passengers that afternoon, carrying stacks of rumba records, which they immediately put on the loudspeakers. I remember the rest of the voyage for the taste of rum and the beat of rumba music.
The Cubans kept pretty much to themselves. One dour couple sat constantly on deck without speaking to each other. The story went that each was married to someone else but had lusted after the other for years; finally they made their dash for freedom and true love. The look on their faces was one not of guilt or even regret but of pure sullen boredom.
It was a long voyage, taking eighteen days from the time we left New Orleans until we would dock, not at Le Havre, neither at Antwerp, as we were later told, but at Bordeaux. The wireless office had to send one message after another for us as plans changed, but to go in the office was chancy, as the proper French teacher from Newcomb had found a handsome Spaniard and they were often there together, locked in strenuous embrace.
Meanwhile, gossip abounded. Charbonneau, the shady bear from Tampico, was now supposed to be a murderer, certain to be “put in irons” the minute we reached France. Fulco was going back not to see about property confiscated during the war but to a rendezvous with Lucky Luciano. I was supposed to be sexually involved with a mild little French professor from Tennessee. The marchesa got drunk on rum at one of the evening parties and tangoed about the deck with a broom. We all got tired of everything.
An American woman named Amber who had got on in Havana on impulse—she had been at the beach with her husband and friends when someone mentioned a boat had docked—was not to be restrained one minute longer from going ashore. She was from New York, an example of what she called “the nightclub set,” and had come aboard wearing an orange beach robe over a bathing suit. She also had thrown one or two things in a small valise—a low-cut black evening dress and one evening slipper (she said she must have dropped its mate while packing). She was not unfriendly and told us a good deal about her debut, her various face-lifts, her three or four husbands, interspersed with lovers, her favorite late-night clubs.
But we finally reached port and now were leaning over the deck watching the river flow past the Bordeaux harbor, red sunset streaming on the water, the city lying low beyond, and all the mysteries of a new land waiting our discovery. Orders were to stay aboard and disembark the next morning, but we soon learned that Amber had slipped off the boat with Charbonneau. We were all astounded at the pairing, never guessing they knew each other. The marchesa remarked that there was a shoe for every sock. She said it was a French expression. They were both caught, detained, and hustled back to the ship.
When Fulco got word the next morning that the French had come aboard, he immediately ran to the deck with his arms out, crying “Couchez avec moi!” Whether they would have slept with him or not, when he found he was running toward a number of astonished French customs officers instead of welcoming girls, he came to a dead halt and slunk away.
In Paris I at once found Edward McGehee, who had reserved a room for me in his Left Bank hotel. Most things seemed rundown from the war years, and the hotel no less, but it was friendly and comfortable and had a silky gray cat, who visited all the guests’ rooms.
I was invited at once with Edward to Sunday brunch with Saul Bellow and his wife, Anita, and their little son. I liked them. Saul was living that year on a Guggenheim Fellowship; he had been encouraged by Red Warren, who had admired his little-known early novels. Augie March was yet to come, along with Henderson and Herzog, and the fine string of others that followed.
Saul seemed very much at ease with himself and his talent and in charge of his European experience. He knew what he was looking for, what he wanted Europe to provide. Caring and observant, and certainly attractive, he had a strange quality of both being present, participating in the moment, and standing aside to observe, not only those present and what was happening, but himself as well. He had the writer’s habit, to be both watcher and participant at the same time, to a marked degree. Later, I felt the same gift—and it must be a gift—emerge in his work. This is me, Augie (or Herzog, or Henderson). Come, let’s look at me. Let’s see what I’m up to.
Anita deferred to him. His place at the head of the table set him in command without debate. He had already been in Paris a good while. He confided on another occasion that he was thinking of leaving France for a more colorful society, which he felt Italy might provide.
If I had been given to thinking in such terms, I might have foreseen that though Southern writing had been ascendant in American literature for several decades, the Jewish writers were going to take precedence soon. The Bellows had several literary Jewish friends there in Paris and spoke of others. But I could never make much of groupings; to do so seems to obscure the real question, whether the work—Russian, Greek, or Mexican; found in a bottle or composed by space aliens—has real merit.
At any rate, Saul was no longer bowled over by Paris and perhaps had never been. But I was ready to be impressed and enchanted. The next day Edward and I took a city bus together. Whizzing past the Etoile, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries, the Louvre, left me stunned with excitement. When the Arc de Triomphe loomed before us down the Champs-Élysées I burst into tears. Were these things actually there?
I insisted on going up the Tour Eiffel. As we waited for an elevator to the second stage, a stocky workman was being led down gently by two officers. His face was swollen, purplish in color; he was groping along as though blind. Someone explained that he had been working very high up, but his safety belt had slipped. He had fallen only to the next balcony, but the close call had terrorized him. I was half-sick to think of that chunky little laborer, way up high, letting go to fall toward the city below. I thought maybe people after torture might look a little like that.
Why so long in Paris when my goal was Germany, where my friend Carolyn was awaiting my visit? That country was still being governed by its conquerors, and special permits were needed, allowing visits for a specified time. True, I was not especially panting to get on the road, and at the embassy, which I visited immediately, I was not terribly disappointed to learn that though they had my papers, I would have a few days’ wait. Why? I didn’t ask. Nobody in her right mind would have objected to lingering in Paris. I went out and bought an elegant umbrella with a curved handle in amber-colored Lucite. I kept it proudly for years.
Signs of the recent occupation were everywhere, in the strange wooden shoes the poorer women wore, and the bizarre wood-burning cars chugging past. Many people rode bicycles. Paper tablecloths were common in small restaurants. The day’s menu, like the bill, was scribbled out between the plates. Things were cheap until it came to the real fashion items like my umbrella. I also bought paperback copies of Henry Miller, banned in the United States, from bookshops along the Seine, and a bottle of Femme.
Notre Dame … Versailles … Chartres. I can’t remember if Edward was always with me. While not the kind, as they said in those days, to have girlfriends, he was a good companion nonetheless. He seemed to take real pleasure in seeing these many sights once more. I think, more than anything else, he was homesick. The accent the Bellows found amusing filled up his thirsty ears. He introduced me to artichokes and onion soup, rose and Pernod. We talked about Vanderbilt people, thoug
h not so much about writing, and I judged his was not going well.
My permit was cleared, but not before the Bellows organized a Sunday picnic in the Bois de Fontainebleau. Edward and I were along, also their little boy, and a couple named Kaplan, perhaps others, I forget. We bought sausage, wine, cheese, and pastries at the various shops, and spread everything out on the wonderfully spacious boulders among the little twisted trees. After lunch Saul and Kaplan, wearing French berets, put up music stands, took out recorders, and opened their sheet music. Bach fugues, piped softly, filled the air.
In the twilight we drove back into Paris. I had the reassuring feel of a return home after any Sunday picnic at some nearby lake or sandbar down home—a little weary, scratching an insect bite, thinking ahead to bath and bed, noting the evening sky, while a tired little boy slept pressed against one arm. But here were the great Parisian boulevards swinging us toward the heart of the city, and along a path in the Bois de Boulogne a young woman, erect in a black riding habit, was trotting a glossy chestnut mare.
Germany lay ahead, reached by night train to Frankfurt. Carolyn had been employed in Nuremberg until the trials finished and now was working in another office in Bad Nauheim, a well-known German spa in the prewar days, now the seat of government for the American sector of Germany. Tom Brown, whom she had met since coming and was now seeing, had also been moved from Nuremberg. He had been a translator at the trials, and had been reassigned to work with American radio broadcasts following the transition period from military rule to rule by the State Department.
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