The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  NOVEMBER 24, 1986 • LONDON Last night, Doris and Charles Saatchi gave a dinner for us at Caprice, inviting Min Hogg, John Mortimer, and the Steve Martins.1 Victoria [Tennant] is more ravishing than her mother [the ballerina Baronova] when young, and much brighter, and Puss says that Victoria knows a lot and is politically aware. He took a violent distaste for our host, thinking him malevolent, evil, empty, utterly commercial, show-off, and know-nothing. The host said to Puss that he [Saatchi] was a vacuum cleaner, “sucking everything in.” Pointing to his closely cropped, dark hair, Charles Saatchi said that in galleries he is never recognized by dealers: “They never think that I am anybody, and that helps.” Puss's impression included that the host really knows no past. Doris does.

  When I got them all to play that old game “Who Did I Want to Be and When?” the host said promptly, “Howard Hughes,” which seemed to fill Doris with a cold horror. She said, “Catherine de Medici,” and I said to her, “Endless ice cream.” She said, “Those two Rubens panels.” Min said, “Palla-dio—very young, before the whole career.” John Mortimer: “Marco Polo.” Steve Martin: “Picasso!” Victoria: “Mrs. Patrick Campbell.” To which Steve Martin said, “Who's that?” and his wife explained with anecdotes, very well told with smiling, blond goodness, rather like a having-lived-in-the-world Des-demona.

  Actually we had several casts for Othello, with Doris and Victoria alternating as Desdemona, Min as the lady-in-waiting, Mr. Saatchi and Mr. Martin alternating as Othello and Iago, Mr. Mortimer as the not-lover, Cassio … and the rest of us as everyone else, including a storm at sea. In Othello each character is a patsy.

  NOVEMBER 30, 1986 This morning Pam [Harlech] rang to say that Cary Grant had dropped dead of a heart attack, somewhere in Ohio, where he was making “a personal appearance.” Cary always had a brown-eyed kindness for me, an instinctive understanding of problems. I was always a little shocked by his four-letter words, studding the soft flow of his Anglo-American diction. Frequently, he seemed at odds with his life—as if he had had it all and what was the use of going on with the habitual—a kind of uncomplaining, organic discontent.

  NOTE: Leo had a kidney stone attack that, for the second time in three years, put him into a London hospital.

  JOURNAL • December 7, 1986 I have been in Devonshire Hospital since Wednesday [December 2] and have suffered miracles, also great kindness from friends and strangers—the gaiety, amiability, and interest of the nurses here. The drama is: New York said my kidney wasn't worth worrying about—done for—kaput. London says: It's a good kidney—alive, salvageable! The horror is: Loss of faith in New York—except Bill Cahan, who has been marvelous.

  [Actress] Pat Hodge said that she knows a woman who shared her gynecologist. That woman said that the gyno had also been Mrs. Simpson's, and that Mrs. Simpson's sexual power over the king [Edward VIII] had been her power to “make a matchstick feel like a cigar.” With a band on it? Did Mrs. Simpson collect cigar bands? Line dishes with them?

  DECEMBER 8, 1986 Listening to BBC classical today—nothing hackneyed, nothing packaged. At home everything is packaged, like the vegetables in our supermarkets, all fitting in-between commercials, “news,” etc., all in “time-slots.” This is quintessentially the American way of life.

  This Reagan shame [the Iran-Contra affair]—I know of no term sufficiently obscene with which to pin down what has happened. The shame of our nation, in which almost all share, since the American people voted this emptiness to the top. This man was shallow, a second-rate actor, utterly dependent on superficial Irish charm—the kind the morning milkman or letter carrier or any man in the streets has. He was destined to be used by strong, self-seeking, unscrupulous men wanting power not for state, but for self. The man may be honest, but he is stupid, which in his position of highest power is criminal. He is also an actor, and so must, like a vampire, be nourished on adulation. That he has been, by a people besotted by screen images, a people so debauched by unreality, fed to them as reality, that his healthy, smiling, good-fellow self, the splendidly nourished vampire, flourished. He was always the man the people wanted to see. They did not specially want to hear him: They needed this smiling, honest-faced, bonhomie fellow—no matter what gaffes, what messes he made, no matter what irritations or excesses. Now that the vampire's nourishment is in decline, now that the actor's ego is less and less lovingly stroked, what happens? Does the actor become a costume? And is that costume, empty of its life, hung on a hook in some storeroom, waiting to become alive again when another “star” is born?

  DECEMBER 10, 1986 To the Bethnal Green Museum [of Childhood] this morning, since I am told that I must exercise, and this museum is an enchantment. The dollhouses no longer harbor domestic tragedies. Some five years ago, all of the butlers were fallen into drunken stupors, the mistresses pitching downstairs, the maids tipsy-angled. Now they're stolid, proper, prim. This is the world of Ivy Compton-Burnett, with its malevolence suspected, but still unre-vealed. The houses are superb, and today were decked for Christmas.

  DECEMBER 21, 1986 • NEW YORK CITY I am crying because I can bear it. The women I have loved—Momma, Ela, Penelope, Nora—gave out a warmth, which immediately embraced and protected me. This is true of Puss and Richard, the only two men I have ever really, abidingly loved. Richard's “flame” is more temperate. Puss's is the most intense of anyone I have ever known, is of the greatest loves known, the love we find in the greatest of novels: Anna Karenina, Isolde … overwhelming, consuming all—the lover and the loved one. The final desolation comes with the realization that life is like fiction.

  DECEMBER 25, 1986 Lincoln Kirstein's attack on Manet is really an attack on Mina.2

  A respite for Nora—Herbert brought her home yesterday, and she instantly revived—looking at everything, loving all, and her doggies, loving her house. So revived is she that she was able to talk to us about an hour ago! This is, I am sure, a respite … but, at least, Nora and Herbert have this Christmas, so precious to them, together. Her voice was hers, but ragged with everything she has been through. Nora was loving, instantly caring.

  DECEMBER 31, 1986 Herbert on the blower: “She has no pain. She's just very quiet. Every morning, I ask her how she is and she says, ‘Fine …' It's her spirit.” We all know the inevitable—even Nora knows, I suspect. So little time, so little time …

  I must note the Van Gogh exhibit—his last year and a half. Can only madness and a technique so sound and a vision so steady, so inspired, make this glory? The great winds blow through these paintings and drawings. Genius is inadequate to explain it. Van Gogh is beyond genius. Even with my eyes dimmed, I saw this glory beyond our understanding—save by acceptance without questioning. These paintings, drawings, of these last months of Van Gogh's life are inexplicable facts like trees, clouds, flowers, butterflies, waterfalls, storms, God—not the God of the Bible, but the Universal Being—neither Vengeance nor Forgiveness—Being. This last year and a half of Van Gogh's is Being. We have had, in this dreadful year, several miracles: this vision of Van Gogh, my miracle in the Devonshire Hospital. And what is a miracle, but another name for faith and hope?

  JANUARY 1, 1987 Betty [Comden]'s annual party was a triumph of spirit. No longer in her big house, she gathered her chums into her small apartment, an eyrie. The annual event now a tribute to her spirit and her chums' love of her. Lennie [Bernstein] was there with a huge belly and Shirley [Bernstein] was unchanged—just more so.3 Ruth Elizabeth Ford came up to me and poured out. She told me what I had meant to her all of these years and how sad she was that life had moved us in different directions. This was honest and generous and loving of her. I have always loved Ruth Elizabeth, but I haven't always liked her. In her “heyday” she trampled less-fortunates as she climbed, even clawed her way to some imagined top—a top that wasn't there. Now that she is in severe times, the true Ruth Elizabeth is visible. She was always a loving heart, but self-aggrandizement—yes—ambition, almost assassinated that loving heart. She became a taker rather than a g
iver. Many kissing chums— [actress] Marian Seldes: “I now live only a block away.” That was her way of telling me that she has moved in with Garson Kanin [director and screenwriter], taking [the late] Ruth Gordon's place. Such a curious development. All the gritty-voiced “girls”: Elaine Steinbeck [John's widow], Eileen Heckart [actress]. A thick soup of survivors and everyone chunked together. Said someone: “How would we know that we're still here, if we didn't come to Betty's on New Year's Day?”

  JANUARY 4, 1987 With the help of Antony Tudor (who taught her how to use her neurosis and her humor) and Jerry Robbins (who discovered a useful monster in her [in The Cage]) Nora Kaye became America's, and then the world's, Greatest Dramatic Ballerina. But the straight-talking, never-phony Nora was always there. I recall standing in the stage-left wings of the old Metropolitan Opera house—a packed night. The ballet is Antony's Pillar of Fire [1942]. Onstage, Nora sits on the steps of her family house, twitching at the collar of her pale dress. The music swells; the golden scenic curtain unfurls; the stage light is shadowy-rosy where it spills into the orchestra. Nora is all brooding, all suffering. One arm rises, in an unforgettable gesture to her brooding, neurotic face. From backstage came the rhythmic, persistent pounding of someone using the rosin box, and from the great dramatic ballerina's mouth—while three thousand people swooned at her theatrical power—came: “If that fuckin' ballerina doesn't stop I'll break her ankles!” Out front, they never knew. We marveled at the artistry, the control, the fact of being Nora Kaye.

  JANUARY 20, 1987 At least four calls yesterday from Marlene. These grew successively repetitious: about how overwhelmed she was at the tributes in the Council of Fashion Designers of America program: “That I am delighted is the understatement of the year!”4 This went on in the early a.m., with side trips into Maria and her four sons. Gradually, as the day and evening extended itself, the content of Marlene's calls intensified about her four grandchildren and about how she didn't want anyone of her family to represent her at the [National Society of Film] Critics awards. This went on, with little variation, for a very long time. To divert her, I said: “Wasn't Kate Hepburn's poem a wonderful tribute?” And she said that Kate Hepburn was indeed wonderful, that Kate and she are in constant correspondence and telephone talk, that Kate was a “wonderful old man.” Then she returned to her family and how she was responsible for Maria and had to send her money constantly, because “that's the way I brought her up” etc., etc. Finally I caused the connection to break and felt guilty, but I think that during the late day calls she had had too much to drink. While Marlene was asking for Misha Baryshnikov's telephone number, to thank him [for accepting her fashion award], he called to ask for hers— so finally they palavered. Marlene to me: “I'm in love! I'm in love! At my age to fall in love!” “What,” I asked, “has age to do with it?”

  FEBRUARY 4, 1987 When Diana Cooper was asked how she felt being ninety, she answered: “Posthumous.”

  FEBRUARY 7, 1987 At lunch at [fashion designer] Mary McFadden's hive of industry, high up in the [garment] market, chomping on jicama and talking kidneys to Mary, my throat suddenly clamped up, my eyes bulged, my voice departed, and with my voice, I, too, almost went—but somehow I survived—to hear the table at which I sat battle on about “whether you want to know if your passion was being unfaithful to you or would you prefer not to know?” [Humorist] Fran Lebowitz, who sat to my right, murmured, “Ye gods, I don't know anybody who has sex anymore. They don't seem to know what's going on in the world.” Then she and I fell to talking about a Vanity Fair feature on AIDS, both of us feeling that it was exploitation rather than an attempt to help to educate. The others continued to rattle on about jealousy, sex, fidelity—all of that hollow, and now in the context of this plague “so old-fashioned,” Fran said.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1987 Diana Vreeland on the blower: “I think that we'll have a telephone relationship. I have three or four of those, and I find them most satisfactory.”

  Marlene: “I cut it all out of newspapers. I know it all. Don't think I don't know it all. I know what's going on all over the world…. I never slept with all those people they said I did. You can love somebody and not even touch them, sleep with them. I love you. I never slept with you. I loved Hemingway. He loved me. We never slept with one another.”

  FEBRUARY 9, 1987 Gore on the blower from Rome: “We've been around the world … Morocco … highland, lowland … Bangkok … all the places where there was sex! sex! sex! And, alas, because of the plague, we've become voyeurs.” When I reminded him of his afternoon in the St. Regis, years and years ago, with Noël and P [Graham Payn], he cried out, “How did you know about that?” Me: “You told me.” G: “I never told you. I never told anyone!” Me: “You climbed five flights of stairs and told me.” G: “Well… I probably did, because I knew that you would tell Troosey, and I wanted him to know.” Gore, even now that Little T (Marge) has been dead these years, continues to want “Troosey to know.” We never talk that he doesn't get Little T into the conversation and always on a note—a wild, exulting note—triumphant in his own survival! The jealousy festers.

  Prick Up Your Ears—the film is brilliantly cast. I was not moved at Joe Orton's rise and bang up (unintended pun—rotten of me), but this is a wonderfully made film.5I sat thinking of T, and how his life was a déchéance, wondering if that self-destruction in Joe Orton and in Truman had been there even when each of them was in the womb, and how Nina [Capote] did herself in with drink and finally a last desperate self-annihilating act, and how T did himself in with annihilation (phony) and drink and drugs, as much self-annihilation as his mother's.

  FEBRUARY 22, 1987 A “visit” to Memorial Hospital—a smooth-faced young woman, the technician, received us. She was wonderfully expert and indefati-gably kind (I resented being immediately called “Leo”). She took four phials of blood, painlessly. Then she trundled me up to the X-ray place, Puss trotting along carrying all the clothes. As we went along the brightly lighted, Kunst-hung corridors, she, in her lilting, young, pleasing voice regaled us with her love of England. She said, in the same quiet, affectionate rhythm, “Oh, I can't wait to go to Whitby. They have the most wonderful Dracula towers there…. Bram Stoker…” “Yes,” I said unthinkingly, “that's where he lived, and the graveyard where Mina walked in the beginning of the book … that's there….” Suddenly, I thought: I shouldn't be telling her this—the four phials of my blood! She'll know that I know! We trundled on and up. When she deposited me, she said, “I'll need two more phials when you come on Tuesday.” Then she went away. Puss and I were silent for a time. Then I said, “She looks awfully young to have been here seventeen years.” Puss said, “They always look young, even when they are five hundred years old.” What better place for a vampire than Memorial Hospital? Such a good gem of a plot for a Steve Martin movie.

  Paloma [Picasso] is grave-seeming. Actually, not grave but composed. People who don't know her are surprised at how genuine she is. She breaks into a ravishing smile and frequently into deep chimes of laughter. She really has the grave look of her father's painting of the woman with what looks like pillows on her head, an earlyish painting, after the Cubist period—not abstract, not the Blue period. She has perfect composure, a loving heart, and a capacity for hard work. Paloma is a person of character, owing more to the northern Spanish genes of her father than to those of her French mother. She walks like a Spanish woman, in one piece. Her elegance is Spanish. Perhaps not as austere, but nonetheless, Spanish. She is Northern Latin, a combination of mountain snow and hot winter sun—irresistible. Her shadow was painted by de Chirico long before she was born.

  Herbert says Nora, expected to die any minute early last week, was entirely herself, witty, loving, “adorable—and she looked so wonderful!” on Friday, when he took her to the hospital. The doctor said, “She has been living almost nine months longer than we expected.” This is her love of life, her tremendous zest for living, her joy in living that keeps her going.

  NOTE: Leo went into the
hospital for lithotripsy, a procedure to pulverize kidney stones.

  JOURNAL • february 25, 1987 Met at the hospital by Bobby the Vampire on arrival. This time, she covered her traces by hurting a bit when she took her rationed blood. We understand one another, playing our parts well in our intimate comédie inhúmame or, rather, comédie rouge et noir. I have been pricked, patted, punched, punctured, prodded, pounced on, paddled, pummeled—not yet pilfered. I have been medically made much of by brigades of doctors and platoons of nurses. When Dr. Freiman appeared, I told him, at last, about the shooting pains (mostly at night) in my right ankle, and this led to his finding an edema and that led to a scurry and flurry of doctors, and that led to a postponement of my kidney-stone operation, and here I am, with a needle in my left arm, hooked up to an antibiotic feeder, my right foot on pillows, and now all will be well-attended to and the operation some days off.

  FEBRUARY 28, 1987 The edema almost completely healed. Puss, at last, off to the Osborne for necessary refurbishings. Puss is utterly dog-faithful and watchful. I am such a lucky man. This tiny room is embowered with floral tributes, fruit offerings, etc. I sent about ten of them to the AIDS patients.

  These have been fraught political times. When The Emptiness at the Top [Reagan] testified that he “could not remember [events related to Iran-Contra],” I was immediately reminded of Johnny Gielgud, whispering to me, when we went back[stage] closing night of Edward Albee's Tiny Alice: “What was this all about? I never knew what this was all about.” His Emptiness never knew.