The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  JOURNAL • DECEMBER 29, 1961 • san francisco The constant clang and tinkle and crash of trolley cars. This was a big part of the sound of Manhattan when I was young…. Cary Grant called. (Sounds like Mary Astor's “diary”!) What a flirt.60

  JANUARY 1, 1962 • SAN FRANCISCO

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank

  I came in at 3:30 a.m. from a pleasant breakfast party given by two boys whose names I do not know, having gone there from that party from which I called you. I think I probably behaved badly over the telephone. I am deeply and truly sorry—but suddenly the world seemed to collapse when I heard your voice, and I wanted so tumultuously to be with you—holding you and being held—that I became utterly undone with selfishness and I guess jealousy. I was angry, thinking that if you were not spending the New Year with Maebelle what reason then not to be here with me? Ah, well—I am a fool. So please forgive me if I sounded awful and upset you. Now I am all right. Hearing your voice undid me and then did me all up again. These last weeks have truly revealed the depths and intensities of my feeling. I thought that I knew, but I didn't know as fully as I do now.

  When I came in, the lobby looked like the beginning of the last act of any Viennese operetta: everywhere the floors deep under confetti and mashed-up party hats and favors; three passed-out belles of many balls, with shoes flung off, dresses torn, one sodden man trying to shepherd them; a table with a big apple pie and coffeepot on it for the many Oriental domestics cleaning. What an opening chorus they would make, commenting in supernal Oriental ways upon the mores and customs of Occidentals. From the wide-open elevators cascaded Viennese waltzes.

  The foghorns give cries of pain and longing (really like a brace of kine in heat) in the bay. At eight every morning a sound like a demon lover wailing for his mate shatters the thick, impenetrable air—and again at noon. A curious, unlovable city.

  JOURNAL • February 5, 1962 • new York city Arnold Weissberger had a birthday party at his mother's apartment for Stravinsky, celebrating (all year long) his eightieth. This “relationship”—Arnold and Stravinsky's—must be rooted in Arnold's legal representation of the “Master.”61 I want to remember Alger Hiss,62 Rita Hayworth, Ethel Merman, Noël Coward, [actress] Cathleen Nesbitt, [writer] Cleveland Amory, Paul Scofield, etc. All of them there. Arnold said: “Rita Hayworth, I want you to meet Alger Hiss.” Mrs. Weissberger tried to get Virgil [Thomson] to play “Happy Birthday” on the piano while a moppet bore in a cake. This was all frustrated by Virgil. The cake was finally borne in after Stravinsky left. It was infinitesimal, surmounted by a huge blue plastic “80,” and sat abandoned on a little wall table. Rita Hayworth and Alger Hiss and Ethel Merman never got to sing “Happy Birthday” to Stravinsky. This aged, very small gnome seems obsessed with himself and his importance, always having his eye on the main chance.

  FEBRUARY 7, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  The doctor says that Gray was born with some sort of bone missing from the bottom of his spine, and that now (because of growing older) this has a bad effect. Gray is in pain all of the time. The doctor does not recommend surgery, but also says that this could be necessary later. Now Gray will probably have to wear some contraption and do exercises. This has thrown Gray into an even more depressed state. He has been in a state ever since we came home [from the West Coast], and rightly so, because this house and this city are filthy. This house is too much with which to cope. The pain is mostly on Gray's left part. This makes it all worse: That is his drawing hand. Now for some good news: Mlle gave me an unasked-for raise—a basic $10,000 a year [salary]. So that is a help. I have enough money for us to come [to Spain in April].

  JOURNAL • February 15, 1962 Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet opened. Mercutio's death was one of the great staging masterpieces. Always in the text, but nobody has ever done it that way. Franco has little ear for English verse, but this does not matter, since his stage sense is genius. At the Strasbergs' party afterward for Franco, it was wonderful when Franco said to Marilyn Monroe as she teetered away: “And come see the show!” He never understood why this is so funny.63 Marilyn Monroe: “I can't remember anything—even words.” Once she's finished with lines or “words” she doesn't remember them ever again. She with her small, compact, very pink-tipped (surely rouged) bosoms plain to see through the black lace of the short, skimpy black dress. She is part child, empty-headed, narcissistic—always looking into a wide-awake looking glass deep inside—a sleepwalker, utterly defenseless and appealing. Gray and Wanda Toscanini twisted. “Do you do the Twist?” I asked Marilyn Monroe. “I do the Twister,” she murmured, smiling and twitching at her inner image. “I put something else in it. Jack Cole did the dances.” “For No Business Like Show Business,” I said. “Oh, I don't remember.” “That's when you picked the boy's chin up, as you were dancing, and said, ‘What's your name, honey?' “ “I did?” She was delighted. Then the Hollywood good-bad, all-little-girl-and-as-wise-as-Eve face clouded, like a summer's day suddenly gone sunless and dull: “I don't remember…. I don't remember anything—even words.” Later, before leaving, “Marlon, Marlon … Macbeth.” She was being told that she should play Lady Macbeth. The machinations of the Strasbergs, wanting to use Franco, and Franco wanting to use them. It's a classic farce played by the Yiddish “Art” Theatre and the Commedia dell'Arte.64

  MARCH 17, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • madrid

  I lunched with Dame Rebecca [West] today. Alone, she seems to have a passion for me. It was like lunching with the most brilliant gossip column in the world—everything from hating George Bernard Shaw to the sex life of the Askews—staggering.65

  We sail on the SS Atlantic, April 4. No cabin was available on anything— even tugs—because the whole world seems to be going to the Holy Land for Easter and Passover, etc. This American export ship is chartered by some Yiddish organization and our agent managed to get this first-class cabin ($350 each)—very posh. But Gray will apparently be the only non-Jew on board. We plan to ride up the gangplank on piggies. Of course, immediately after leaving Ambrose Light [New York Harbor's edge], the SS Atlantic will doubtless reveal that it is the SS Exodus. We are busy making our crepe-paper gypsy costumes and arranging to hire tambourines, so we can work our way through Espagna. Do we get to go to the fair in Seville? Do we learn the fandango? Shall I have time to have a dinner jacket made in Madrid? Are you a snunc [sic]?

  JOURNAL • april 6, 1962 • ss ATLANTIC EN ROUTE TO ALGECIRAS, SPAIN On the fourth we sailed. Here I sit, having eaten my breakfast, feeling the ship, like a tamed beast heaving and breathing not too far below the floor. I have not been in so extensive and deep a Yiddish atmosphere for about thirty-five years. As I was in the bathroom, a burst of hymn-singing from some sort of public room adjoining our cabin, and there we were, caught between that and the Jews (they were at early morning services in wonderful silver-collared taleisim) across the gangway. I laughed a lot—such a religious voyage.

  APRIL 8, 1962 Very windy, but balmy, making me think of flying fish. Two nights past—horror! We sailed into a gale such as no one of the crew had ever experienced in these lanes. Poor Puss was terrified. He cast himself on the floor, seeming to find some sparse comfort there. Sometimes he said: “Shouldn't we get dressed?” For he seemed to think that we should take to the lifeboats at once. I tried not to giggle. I feigned sickness to distract him, but although I did feel odd, I couldn't even by sticking my finger down my throat bring up any sign of seasickness. The next night was a nightmare. I hope never to spend another like it. By yesterday evening, comparatively calm. Puss continues in the berth, but does not seem to be sleeping too much.

  A sea voyage is always filled with sound—not a moment of stillness, not a soundless second. I stood out in the damp balminess, savoring the sea, the chrysoprase-colored wake, the sea-horse manes racing, the sea-witch sprays riding, the gray, opaque skies, and everywhere tumult—the ship's power, the ship's little creakings and quak
ings—people talking and calling one to the other—the tidal winds—the sea itself, roaring and screeching and crashing. Now, sitting in the glass of the sunroom—a typewriter, footsteps, voices, a chair skittering on the floor—and always the sound of shuddering.

  NOTE: Leo and Gray met Richard to celebrate his fiftieth birthday with a tour of Spain and Provence. Richard hired a car and drove. They were joined during the trip by Howard Rothschild and for some days by Peter Wilson with his friend Harry Wright.

  JOURNAL • april 24, 1962 • málaga, spain On Easter Sunday, in Seville, we went out to Italica—many wildflowers and a large amphitheater ruin, masses of fallen stones and trippers hallooing to one another midst them, while the daily life of the nearby olive orchards went on, with only moments of looking at the “foreigners.” I sat on a “ruin” while Peter and Harry and Gray went to look at the mosaics and a room. Ruins (save beautiful ones, like Ostia) depress me; flowers and brilliant sunlight, naturally, do not. While sitting, feeling like Winckelmann in a line drawing or a Rex Whistler bookplate or tailpiece,66 [actress] Mildred Natwick came up and we exchanged pleasantries. Then my chums appeared and off we went.

  Peter, Howard, and I trudged off to the bullring in a late afternoon of sunlight so dazzling that there was a coruscating blackness in the air. The mobs quite orderly. The girls in creamy white mantillas, draped over high combs, which are rooted in red or pink carnations. The pageantry and color of the opening procession. None of it alleviates the brutishness of the event. I loathed it—not emotionally, but with a heavy, dead coldness. Little art (at least in this fight) and no sport whatsoever. What sport could there be when the beast is actually murdered? I sat with Howard, and he says in all the three or four times he has been it has always been this way.

  MAY 11, 1962 • BARCELONA St. Ponce's Day, with a great street fair, stretching the full length of the Calle del Hospital, eddying into all small squares and into the plaza fronting the church. Everything orderly. St. Ponce ladies (rock-crevassed faces and twinkly eyes) cheerfully selling all sorts of herbs, honey, and honeyed fruits, also containers in which to carry away the frutas. Some of the Ponce ladies had glitter and sequins on their aprons. The procession headed by gigantes [giant puppets] in periwigs and a snaggletoothed witch. Then dancers doing a wand-against-wand dance, their costumes out of antiquity. Roman? Carthaginian? Little red-and-white embroidered skirts over continuations. A boy's band—later these serenaded the dignitaries (including a woman in a straw high hat. She obviously always had her official face on and never had fun). The serenade was “Never on Sunday.”

  MAY 27, 1962 • SS CRISTOFORO COLOMBO EN ROUTE TO NAPLES On boat, in a sumptuous cabin. I must scribble, or I shall be so melancholy that I shan't be able to hide it. I have been so close to tears (and have overflowed), but I try to think consoling thoughts, such as: We will all be together very soon; Richard will be all right; Naples tomorrow! But my heart (or whatever we have within which cannot be fooled into a lie) is flooded—brimming over—inconsolable. I see that white handkerchief waving until its factuality is obliterated by space, by time, by inevitability. And so this becomes memory—and aches worse than any physical pain ever does or can. Now the loudspeaker is blaring safety instructions, and so on we go. But this has been the most glorious voyage ever, and part of the joy has been being together—all three of us, so closely, all of the time. At lunch today we sat outside and ate, watching the “freaks” of fashion— both males and females. Now I will finish Dead Souls.

  JUNE 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  Coming through customs, I was suddenly greeted by shouts and cheers from an official who said, “Leo, why didn't you tell me you were coming in, I would have arranged everything!” (or some such I-have-a-crush-on-you dialogue). I didn't know the creature, but made signs of pleasure and recognition, so he scribbled some strange symbols on our landing things and told us to give them to the head customs man and all would be well. We did this, and Gray's declaration was immediately signed, but since I had so many boxes, bundles, baskets, bales, etc., I had to open some. He put his nose into the carpet and sniffed and sniffed. “Why do you do that?” I wanted to know. “To smell the age,” said he. “Can't it be faked?” asked I. “Sure,” said he. “You spray it.” Gray and I looked at one another with wild surmise. Then he signed it all, and I found a huge longshoreman who came to put it all on a [hand] truck. When he discovered that we were going to 94th Street, he said he was born on 108th. I said that I was born on 107th. He practically kissed me. We discovered that we had both seen movies at the Garlic Opera House when we were little boys.67 He found us the biggest taxicab in New York. He and the driver put all of the things (sixteen!!) in the cab.

  But before this, I was traipsing behind the longshoreman and the truck, Gray walking behind me—when suddenly I realized there was no Gray. Turning, I saw Pussum in the midst of a flying wedge of customs officials, being pushed and shoved toward a little shack. “Hey!” I screeched. “He belongs to me!” They vanished into the shack, behind a glass door. I could see moving shadows. In about fifteen minutes a wild-eyed Pussum emerged—furious. It seems that as he was about to pass through the gate, a Negro stationed there said, “What you got in your raincoat?” Gray said, “Kleenex, other such things…” The Negro said, “We'll see about that. Take everything out.” The first thing Gray took out was one of those little cellophane bags of saffron we bought in Barcelona. “What's this?” shouted the Negro. “Saffron,” said Puss, and instantly he realized that the Negro did not know what saffron was, thinking it “dope.” “You come with us,” said the Negro, and Puss was then hustled into the shack where the Negro proceeded to grab his coat, in which he also discovered one of those ampoules of ammonia, the one Puss carried all those weeks, in case I fainted. The Negro was triumphant. “Well—here's something!” he shouted. So, a lot of other men surrounded Puss, while the Negro felt in Puss's pockets—even his pants! “Why don't you break it open and smell,” Puss demanded. But the Negro was keeping it for evidence, I guess. Just when things were getting to Puss having to strip to the buff, a writhing craven was thrust through the door. He had been found trying to smuggle a gun. So they dropped Puss, told him to get dressed and out, and he did, falling into my arms in a fury. Now he is known as the Saffron Smuggler. The taxi man was especially nice. He would not permit me to touch a thing. And finally after we were in the house, Puss revealed that the taxi man said “what a nice rabbi” I was.

  JUNE 9, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london forwarded to nice

  I have been reading the ex-Duchess of Westminster [Loelia Ponsonby Lind-say]'s memoirs and here are Alice and Salzburg and Dr. Kommer68 and Eleonora and all of that world into which I so innocently and avidly stumbled because of a white evening dress in a motion picture and an insane Hungarian kissing me after a union meeting, while the creature I truly loved was being fugitive far, far south. How clearly one sees in retrospect. At fifty, I will write all about my life—as much of the truth as possible.

  Puss came in and exclaimed over the gala candle lights [in the next yard]. I said that we had had many such events. He said that he has always told me that he would “even” help me have a party if I cleaned up the basement. How very safe he is. He never seems to realize that to clean it all up would take longer than eight weeks—that is, if I were to do it the way I should. Cleaning up the basement means picking through forty-eight years. I do not know whether I could bear that—I love my loves so deeply—you, Eleonora…. Ah, well— I was one to want the impossible, and sometimes I have had it given to me. I began life that way: No one believed that I could be made to live and live I did.69 (Although sometimes I do wonder whether we are the living or the “ghosts”? Don't you, at times, suddenly think that we may be ghosts and that those we feel are here, or think are ghosts, are the “real” ones, who must, then, think of us as ghosts?)

  JULY 8, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  T
O RICHARD HUNTER • oslo

  Did I tell you that Marlene is moving all of the Rivas [her daughter's family] to Switzerland and Italy for four years? They have rented their house to some art dealer (male) for $10,000 a year on a four-year lease! His houseguest is to be Van Johnson, so we all know about that tenant. Oh, yes, my movie-idol admirer [Cary Grant] rang me up this week. He was passing through, and he said would I be here in two weeks because he would return. I laughed merrily, and said that life was simple when conducted over telephones and telegrams. So, he laughed even more merrily. He said that he wasn't planning to be Professor Higgins opposite Audrey Hepburn. He does have the charm he seems to have on the silver screen, and I do get amused with this strange little flirtation. I guess it's fun because it seems almost so safe—also it's fun because he does it so well.

  AUGUST 5, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • copenhagen

  We are melancholy because of Marilyn Monroe's death. We doted on her— and it does seem that the Strasbergs are to blame in part, for it was apparent that this girl couldn't take all of that “intellectualizing.” She should have been left alone. So what we always felt about her was, alas, true—so near the edge. This suicide seems to add pathétique stature to her. I see her, gay and sad and wide-eyed—like a sort of depraved child—looking at St. Peter and God, and those two finding her irresistible as we all did. What has happened to her has happened to the world. Everything has been overmechanized, over intel-lectualized, carried beyond its natural capacity.