The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  Middle-aged male crisis: So many marriages end because they have become “a duty” and someone is found who is untrammeled, even undisciplined, who is “fun” and returns one to youth and not caring in the sense of not caring for anything save the passion of this released moment. Wise women sit this out and find a renewed husband—repentant, somewhat worn, and, for a time, obligated.

  APRIL 23, 1982 Is what I feel real lust, or the memory of past desire?

  First view of Anaïs Nin: dancing with Lucia Cristofanetti21 (so full of the future, full of narcissistic self-love, even self-lust). Everything Anaïs did, her every concern was, according to Anaïs, high drama, sometimes tinged with charming comedy. That is how she saw her life. I saw it as a perpetual silent movie as exaggerated as any performance Pola Negri or Theda Bara ever bestowed upon her anguished fans. That first view of Anaïs dancing showed me the diarist in movement, self-absorbed, almost lost to her vigilance, her constant role as observer, The Keeper of the Diary almost engulfed by her own formal movements in this improvised parlor performance. Later—much later—she told me that her “refuges were writing and movement.” And we had between us a chain which bound us as tightly as ship to shore.

  MAY 14, 1982

  AGE

  This morning, I dropped Syke's Evelyn Waugh, the book slipping out of my hand onto my bedroom floor. I lowered myself to pick up the book: I could not right myself. I went down on one knee. Even more impossible to right myself. Pushing Waugh before me, I tried to lift myself by leaning on Mr. Bear [the coat stand]. He wobbled. What to do? On both knees, pushing Waugh ahead, trying to make no sound (I didn't want Puss to hear me), I crept, an ancient child, out of my bedroom, across two thresholds, onto the tile floor of the bathroom, where by clutching the bathtub rim I was able, using not the impoverished muscles of my body, but the determination of my spirit, to raise myself and, seating myself on the loo, retrieve Waugh from the floor. At which moment I breathed faintness away, breathed a thin vigor in, and saw clearly the grim face of age staring back from the looking glass on the basin wall. Resilience … is that what sees one through? Suddenly I am bone tired—from coping with neurotics.

  THE NIGHT SIDE OF THE GODS

  Volodya [Vladimir Horowitz] so much resembles Petrouchka. The two very tall, bearded young men—slender, moody-alert, obviously “guardians”—being followed by Volodya moving automaton-like, jerked along on invisible strings, his features set in a semblance of a smile, his eyes very large and staring ahead save for a slight twitch, which could have been a side-glance. Wanda [Horowitz] following—a moving dark force, put-out, permanently furious, scornful, as suspicious as a Greek or a deaf-mute, a Royal not receiving the Royal Treatment she deems her due. This little, mad world moved out of Mortimer's [restaurant]—a blackness on a brightness.

  On the blower, Nicholas Lawford: “I am in a state of shock. I rang up Lincoln Kirstein and asked him to tell me anything about Horst, and he replied— so sweetly and gently and nicely—that he couldn't tell me anything about Horst because Horst was a psychotic liar and he, Lincoln, had tried to kill him once. I feel absolutely sick—is Lincoln mad?” I had to tell Nicholas that Lincoln is mad. Lincoln has done good and been celebrated and has been mad— sometimes violently—for years—even put away. When I talked to Nancy Lassalle this morning and said that I'd heard that Lincoln had come back much “improved” from London, she said, “Yes, but he's still not really well.”22 Nicholas, without realizing, told me that Lincoln is definitely unwell. I could not tell Nicholas that the Times had canceled a piece on Lincoln because he had “assaulted” (the word Mina used) their reporter or photographer.

  How can I find a way to write about all of this sans hurting everyone? I must find the deeper significance. Lincoln is a powerful example of a man who benefits society while being a monster.

  MAY 22, 1982 I began my travels in America (meaning outside of New York, New England, Philadelphia) in the war years, when I went lecturing.23 Long train rides into places with names heard later in [Latouche's cantata] Ballad for Americans and read, early in my life, in history books: Zanesville—I pictured the little girl running to the well and so saving her settlement from a fiery, Indian death. Altoona—I thought, and even said, how necessary a little bombing (as London was being bombed) was for us in our fat lives. We would never feel the necessity for everlasting peace unless we experienced true devastation, brutality. This view was not a popular view in Dayton, Ohio, where my lecture was delayed while a decision was made about whether colored (not black in those war-for-freedom days) were to be permitted to sit in the hall along with the whites. During these years, I went to museums, department stores, bookshops, people's houses, and I learned about hotel living and train travel, which I loved. I was not only exploring America, I was exploring Christian America.

  MAY 23, 1982 Mina told me that her cook, going to market [in Connecticut] at about 6:30 a.m., found Lincoln wandering near his parked car in an obscure country road. Lincoln explained that the car had broken down while he was going to early mass. Lincoln told Cook that this was a secret and that he frequently went to mass. Years ago, during a breakdown, Lincoln talked of converting. Mina expostulated, telling him how awful for a Jew to do this and, until Cook told her, never heard of this again. He is, of course, in his “high” state again.

  NOTE: Leo and Gray left for Europe on June 20, this time for seven weeks, beginning in London, finishing in Paris, with nearly a month in Venice between.

  JOURNAL • june 29, 1982 • london Yesterday, through wrath-of-God storms and peaceable kingdoms (the Chatsworth approach) to lunch with the Devon-shires— Debo and Andrew.24 She leads; he is childlike and nervously sweet. Her voice, her personality, is deeper, more positive, more earthborn than Andrew's. Among highborns, the female is frequently more “manly” than the male. Andrew is wispy, very “dear,” very “boy.” She is Mitford fun. And here is the key to Lesley [Blanch] and [her friend the painter] Eden [Box]'s manner of talking: “He's brill!” “Darling Self” “Pass the butts [butter].” The Mitfords— their talk, their mean wit, their exuberance, their deprecations. When [the duchess's sister] Diana Mosley saw the Yellow Room she said: “Rather like a railway waiting room.” The Sargent [of Lady Evelyn Cavendish] splendid—a daytime perpendicular rather than the grand evening Wyndham girls. The duke shows his toys—and such toys!—and is humorous about glorious possession. “What is the difference between envy and jealousy?” Such talk of Tur-genev and Tolstoy and Powell. The duke has a shelf of disasters: Titanic, Lusitania, Black Hole of Calcutta. (“Is there a good book about the San Francisco earthquake?”) He stutters with deference and self-protectiveness. She, when asked what she does all day, produces on a blue sheet a schedule for one day that looks (but more orderly) like my engagement book for a Manhattan week. Then while at table she gets Puss to sing popular songs, Cole Porter, etc., she joining in. Last summer Puss went cabaret with the Duc de Valmarana; this summer with the Duchess of Devonshire. Next summer…

  JULY 1, 1982 Pammy Harlech with Judy (Brittain) to tea—Judy's profuse, heavy-with-waves, Edwardian blond hair down, making her a beauty of serious and noble vintage. Pammy now early middle-aged, hilarious, shrewd, and her voice, accent, and laugh so like Allene and Georgia that, if I were in another room, I would think her aunt or mother here.25

  Pammy found, tucked behind a photo of herself that she gave Harlech when first married, a photo of Mrs. Onassis, cut from a newspaper. He'd had a heavily publicized go-around with Mrs. O. “I told him that I didn't care,” chortled Pam. “She's so stupid!” Then she did a fine-lined takeoff on concussed Jackie, murmuring almost inaudibly and gaping with huge invitational eyes into one's eyes—all application and devotion. A lovely, joyful, sharp-edged tea.

  JULY 5, 1982 • VENICE Venice is more home than New York or London because I here feel closer to my Ela, Rut, Maestro, etc., past. Here I have no holes. My dead died elsewhere, leaving their long-ago youths alive here. And my living still live here. In M
anhattan, my dead are restless dead, and now in London Penelope has joined that ever-increasing horde. Also, Venice is for me a distilled Proustian world, microcosmic—titled, a foundation of servants long in service, everyone knowing everything about everyone.

  JULY 8, 1982 Wanda's jealousy of Wally [Castelbarco] makes her the “blackhearted” sister. Wally is always the beauty, the happy one, the one men adored, who married brilliantly, whom their father (Maestro) loved. Wanda married Horowitz and was detested by her father for it. Also Horowitz didn't love her, since he wanted men.

  JULY 13, 1982 When very young, we were made to leave our families, leave “the company,” and go to bed early, leaving behind a “bath” of jollity, gaiety, banter, or argument, “fun,” possibilities, as we went to bed. Now I find that I am slowly retracing that painful terrain. Last night, when the others went to the piazza to watch the [soccer World Cup] victory celebrations, I went with Puss up to my room, the cries and cheers and clappings and music left behind. I could, as when I was a child, hear the gaiety off in the distance … and once again I felt deprived, a little desolation. So, we inevitably circle and circle and circle until we come, seemingly, full circle. And is it in that moment, in that place, when the true, the great adventure begins? I think we experience two great adventures, two births—into life, into death.

  JULY 15, 1982 • VENICE

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • vassalboro, maine

  Today the Redentore bridge is being built—with a regular Manhattan hubbub, but more operatic—under our windows. Tonight is the Fenice's first Don Quichotte (Massenet). Wally (Toscanini) and Emanuela [her daughter], the Duchess d'Acquarone, are in residence. Wally's enchanting house is hidden behind a wall, bowered in wisteria, jasmine, gardenia bushes, trumpet vines— a garden, a pergola, a little orchard, a low-lying, lovely, very operetta house, beautiful northern-Italian early Victorian furniture—a surcease. And Wally, at eighty-four, lovely to look at—a sweet, sweet smile, quiet unlike that Turandot, Wanda. Wally always says, “Oh, Leo, Eleonora's friend …”

  I guess one reason I like Venice is that I can't go anywhere without encountering Venetian chums. This is such a family place—very like when I was very young in Harlem—and I couldn't go anywhere without a relation or family friend stopping me. Now that I am old I appreciate that. Also, yesterday—as I was being hoisted by helping hands onto a vaporetto, I was so reminded of my mother never venturing out without the protection of relatives. I have become, in that respect, so like her—and so like my horrible grandfather (but, of course, I am a dear) with bevies of creatures always surrounding me to get advice or talk things over…. Such self-revelations!

  JOURNAL • july 21, 1982 If I were writing a novel, I could say it all candidly, disguising the names, the places… but in an autobiography? How much of the deep truth, how much of the darkest, most luminous secret places of my heart, my very being, can I reveal?

  JULY 26, 1982 I find that I must try to put myself in the position of other men. In this, I am similar to [male] writers who write women. When I write a man, I wonder if I really know how he feels. I know how my kind of man feels, as much as it is possible for one person to know about another's feelings, to fish up from the common well similarities, consanguinities. I think that, in writing letters, my kind of man is at his most feminine, he most takes on the qualities of women he admires in life and in fiction.

  AUGUST 3, 1982 • PARIS Elie de Rothschild really looks like a baron.26 The Rothschild Jewish nose has become, with time and breeding, aquiline, a mark of racé [distinction]—not race.

  AUGUST 4, 1982 The world closes in: In this morning's International Herald Tribune, Cathleen Nesbitt is dead. All that early beauty, mature wit, laughing drama, that delight she gave to so very many, that pillar of fortitude which comforted, that symbol of survival… gone—now, indeed, legend. I see her in flashes, as one does, sudden illuminations: pink bed jacket in the bamboo bed in our “spare” room … coping with her poor arthritic, burned hand in a little, perfect, Central Park West flat… making a smiling entrance at the Van Vech-tens', when she was triumphing in Gigi, in The Cocktail Party… clutching my hand as we left May Seymour's funeral,27 and she said, “You know, darling, I wake up in the morning and look around and I say, ‘Still here, Cathleen?' “… and Cathleen is, and Cathleen isn't… but, of course, I hear her sniffing away with Lynnie [Fontanne] in Genesee [Depot, Wisconsin], as they redo There Shall Be No Night.

  AUGUST 5, 1982 Certain mothers do not want their sons to be interested in girls: These mothers, wanting their sons for themselves, wanting to hear their friends extol: “He does everything for his mother! He thinks only of his mother!” will, consciously or subconsciously, condone any relationship with a male. I know of one who came to America to place her son “somewhere where he will be homosexual”! The sequel: I think that my mother (and Maebelle) were and are more pleased at how we are than if we were married.

  AUGUST 6, 1982 I have such a strong sense of the allée Proust—the darkening under the trees before the lamps go on, a sort of icing of lingering gray daylight. I can feel little Marcel there—hungry for Gilberte, as I can see him looking for Madame Swann in the Bois. All of Proust seems so close—and is, of course: Proust encountering Madame de Greffulhe in the [rue] Boissy d'Anglas…

  So I come to Lucien Vogel in the rue Saint-Florentin, and how he kept Rut's letters in the right side of his desk with plans for their house in Mar-rakech, and how she was lost—utterly lost—when he died. What became of those letters?

  So to Ela, on her last swift voyage, before the Nazis entered Paris. She rushed to the Invalides to say good-bye to Napoleon, and to Lanvin for the brown, changeable taffeta robe-de-style, paid for by Noël, who still had the flat on Place Vendôme, which Denyse [Harari] (who is coming to a farewell dinner tonight) has now. The circle again.

  AUGUST 21, 1982 • EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK I wonder if one can suffer “little” breakdowns, similar to “little” strokes, almost or actually invisible to those who surround us, even those who are with us most intimately? I feel that I have sometimes suffered such little nervous breakdowns, perhaps even as recently as yesterday, when I suddenly questioned: Have I ever really belonged to any world or group? This feeling of alienation. Recognizing it, I can control it.

  AUGUST 22, 1982 I want to write my resentment at having to inch myself precariously off toilet seats, my anger at having to scheme my way or be helped off simple steps, my fury at even trying to stand or walk easily across a small surface…. I hate not being free to go walk by myself. I am grateful to have the loving help of Puss, but I do miss my own unaided locomotion. My knees have betrayed me.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1982 • NEW YORK CITY The first day of ridding out books. A man came from Strand [bookseller].

  I found a photo of Marlene, embedded in trunks and fur, embarking on the Liberté, and later I was told, confidentially, that she had cabled Alex [Liber-man], asking for money—desperate. He sent some. This is heartbreaking … even if she did live as though millions would go on for forever. She was prodigally generous.

  SEPTEMBER 11, 1982 Parting with things—how one clutches while trying to let go. Mina said, “I never expected to be eighty-six.” Improbable. I am sixty-eight and I resent my physical restraints, restraints of age and health. I have returned to childhood when my not being able to button or tie brought reproaches, screams of rage, sometimes slaps. I sat endlessly trying. No avail. I could not, until I was about nine or ten. Could this present infirmity—my deteriorating muscles—even then have conditioned my abilities? I wonder whether this is rooted in my awesome [very difficult] birth? But the baby in snapshots seems cheerful, healthy. That little child has a look to the future. He is suffused with cheerfulness in his carriage, in his mother's arms. A mystery.

  SEPTEMBER 18, 1982 La Nuit de Varennes [Ettore Scola's film] is an extraordinary invention, superbly cast, with Hanna Schygulla the unforgettable presence, somehow gathering regret for the departed loveliness of a way of life sacr
ificed to the “new” world of brutishness and consumerism. “There is a new show, with the audience on the stage.” A movie about departed glory and politesse and gentility and dignity—a beautiful world [now] peopled by airport populations. Hanna should play the Marschallin [in Oer Rosenkavalier].

  Judy Krantz, a yenta who has made good in today's world. “What color should the next heroine's hair be? My next one's set in New York City. I'm going back to my classic formula: Scruples.”28 Judy tries to direct everything. The yentas and yachnas and carpetbaggers inherit the Earth. Where recently hairdressers reigned, dressmakers queen it. We must always remember that Leonard, Marie Antoinette's hairdresser, helped to hinder the royal escape.

  As we left Tiffany yesterday, after looking at Puss's table (“A Pre-Hibernation Tea for Bears—Grizzly Delights”),29 we encountered Dorle Soria, and I asked her had she read Meneghini's book. “Yes—in Italian. It was amusing … and sad.” I said, “I found a letter in which she was so bitter against him.” Dorle: “She hated him—but then Maria turned against everybody.” Me: “But never against us.” D: “We surrounded her with love. We never preferred another soprano. If you had ever praised another soprano …”

  SEPTEMBER 27, 1982 Deep in the treasure of Sylvia Townsend Warner's letters.30 Cornucopia is cliché. The image is a purse, but a purse of iridescent sheen and indefinable size, not vast but deep, such direct talk from her to me, or any other reader. “I can tell you for your comfort that the only house I can never be dislodged from was our lovely Frankfort Manor, where we lived for two years and then were forced to be sensible about. I can still turn its doorhandles and remember where the squeak came in the passages.” That is how I feel about 1453. I have never left it. I trudge up the slightly swaying, yelping stairs. I sit in the chair next to the long parlor's fireplace, in the comforting dark, the full weight of the house above me, comforting me while the Lexington Avenue subway clatters and rumbles under the house.