Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  A couple of weeks ago at a party I met one of his ex-wives. Can you imagine going to a party where you run into one of your beau’s ex-wives, but that happens all the time in New York, which in many ways is a very close little world, especially among the artsy and writer types. The ex-wife is also a writer and a bit of a mess from what I could see. Lewis practically ignored me at this party while he talked to “Peggy” who was having some kind of emotional trouble. Seeing her psychiatrist and all that. And drinking buckets as far as I could tell. You should have seen the look she gave me across the room. It was as if I was this little backwoods peasant from the forests of Canada. Oh, I’m sorry to go on like this, but I wanted to explain why I have been so preoccupied.

  Maybe getting away from New York will be good for us. When Lewis and I are alone everything is usually fine. The thing is I’m still very much in love with him. Right from the start I could see all his faults, his grumpiness, his snobby attitude, his short temper and so on. But I have always been prepared to take a person as they are. You have to take the bad with the good, don’t you?

  Anyway, you get the general idea, so enough of this. We’ll have fun on our holiday, don’t you worry. We’re sailing on the eighteenth and you are going to be here on the fifteenth, that’s a Wednesday. Clara, could you do me a favour? Wednesday is a workday for me, and I’m always a little nervous before the broadcast, so could you find your way to the taxi stand at Penn Station and just give the driver my address? It’s only a few blocks away. Make sure you have a little American money, but it’s only a forty-cent cab ride. If the train is late and I’m not here when you arrive, just ring the superintendent’s buzzer and Mr. Shulman will let you in. I have told him all about you, so don’t worry about being left out on the street. Just make yourself at home. Put your feet up and turn on the radio. At three o’clock there is a really good program!!!

  It’s the American holiday weekend and this afternoon Lewis and I are going to friends of his out in New Jersey. Some place called Sea Bright. I like the sound of it anyway, and it will get us out of the city and the heat. It’s hot as Hades down here, so be prepared.

  Love, Nora

  P.S. Yesterday Evelyn reminded me to pass along her good wishes. She is looking forward to seeing you again and is planning a little party for us. Ciao! That’s Italian for “cheerio” or “see ya,” according to His Lordship who is busy these days with his dictionaries and phrase books.

  Saturday, July 11

  This has been the hottest week on record in Ontario according to today’s Herald. It was 100 degrees in the driveway today. Thirty people in Toronto have died from this heat and hundreds are sleeping in the parks. What must New York be like? In her letter Nora says it’s “hot as Hades” but doesn’t elaborate. She is too busy chronicling the woes of life with Mr. Mills. It doesn’t bode well for a holiday. I don’t care to be around quarrelsome lovers with their sulks and tears and recuperative embraces. All that emotional theatre can be wearing to an onlooker. Nothing I can do about it, of course. A book left on the veranda last night with a note from Marion wishing me a safe and happy journey. She is off to Sparrow Lake first thing in the morning.

  The book is called Death in Venice and in her note Marion hopes “it will be a good read on the ocean.” She must have bought it in a second-hand bookstore in Toronto. It has no wrapper and it feels unread; the pages are stiff; it smells a little musty as though years ago its owner, perhaps one day after Christmas, started the book and then, disappointed by the absence of blood and corpses (What the hell! This isn’t a mystery book.), put it aside and forgot about it. So it became part of a rich man’s library, and then was sold finally to one of those shops along Queen Street. Marion was no doubt taken by the title and thought it was a crime novel. A good read on the ocean. In fact, the book is anything but a mild crime novel and I read it at a sitting this afternoon. It’s a brilliant story about an artist in crisis. An aging writer, vaguely dissatisfied with the course of his life and the demands of his art, journeys to Venice for a holiday and falls in love with a beautiful boy. The entire experience, unconsummated and unheralded, enthralls, bewilders and destroys him. An extraordinary book. Thank you, Marion. Mann’s observations on those of us who live alone seem accurate to me. He writes,

  The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.

  Wednesday, July 15 (New York)

  From about midnight we moved through heavy rain, but everything had cleared up by the time I arrived at Penn Station. The morning was fresh and cool, and tired though I was, I felt exuberant as I looked out the taxi window at the streets of New York, cleansed and glistening in the sunlight. I was thinking, of course, of how different everything is this year from last, when I had arrived feeling so burdened and perplexed, frightened for my life in fact. Nora was here when I arrived, but she is now at work and I am sitting by the window on this glorious summer afternoon, watching the people pass below on Thirty-third Street, listening to the honk and blare of the cars and trucks, the muffled racket of the elevated train on Third Avenue.

  Directly below me a smartly dressed light-skinned Negro couple are having some kind of disagreement, the man putting forth his position with gestures, ingratiating himself with the lady. There is a kind of rakish glamour to this pair, the man in his suit and straw hat, his two-toned shoes, and the pretty woman in her flowered dress, the long hair straightened and gleaming with oil. As he helps her into a taxi I catch at least a little of his predicament as he raises his voice in mild exasperation. “Don’t you understand, woman? I got to get back my equilibrium.” What a good phrase! Get back my equilibrium.

  Thursday, July 16

  Met Lewis Mills tonight. The three of us had dinner in a fancy restaurant near the park, and Mills met us there, rising from the table as we entered. He was friendly enough, holding onto my hand perhaps a little too long as Nora introduced us.

  “Ah, our travelling companion, the sister I’ve heard so much about.”

  A mild satirical tone in his voice. Mockery, even kindly meant, is probably second nature to him. He’s an intellectual bruiser, one of life’s critics, charming and convivial when things are going his way, abrasive and difficult when crossed. I think I could see a little of all that in him tonight. He fussed over Nora in his mildly critical style.

  “Are you going to have the oysters again, sweetie? You raved about them the other night.”

  Had Nora gone a little overboard in her enthusiasm for the oysters “the other night”? And was he now reminding her with the use of that verb?

  Mills is a stolid handsome man with a perfectly round bald head. There is a no-nonsense air and look about him. He is used to having his way with women and that can have its appeal, I suppose. Perhaps it’s what attracts Nora whose taste in men usually runs towards the matinee idol. No point in appearing like a total bumpkin, so I asked about the elections in November. “Would Roosevelt win again?”

  “In a landslide,” said Mills, who just last month attended the Republican convention in Cleveland and didn’t think much of either Mr. Landon, or his vice-presidential choice, a wealthy Chicago newspaperman. “The Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot,” said Mills. “They can’t read the mood of the country. They pay too much attention to the big shots in their party and not enough to the little guy on the street. The little guy loves FDR.”

  He asked me many questions about Canada and the King government. He’s a very well informed man, intelligent and imaginative, and despite his sometimes overb
earing manner, I found myself liking him. When we got back to the apartment, Nora showed me L.M.’s magazine article on radio. She wasn’t happy with it.

  “Lewis thinks we should be listening to highbrow stuff all the time, but ordinary people deserve to be entertained too. Not everyone likes the opera or lectures on dead writers.”

  Nora was tired and out of sorts tonight and I didn’t argue with her. After she went to bed I read Mills’s piece. Entitled “The Demotic Voice,” it is highly critical of programs like “The House on Chestnut Street.” Mills grudgingly admits that such programs employ “gifted people and a great deal of craft goes into even the most banal offering.” But he objects to radio’s simplified view of life and laments the increasing commercialization of popular culture. No wonder poor Nora didn’t think much of it.

  Friday, July 17 (6:30 p.m.)

  Went shopping with Nora this afternoon after her program. The big department stores like Macy’s and Gimbels are very busy and there is such a quantity of goods on display. Little evidence of hard times in Manhattan! Went to a big bookstore on Fifth Avenue and bought cheap but good copies of Keats’s letters, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a collection of Heine’s poetry and A Brief History of Modern Italy. Nora bought a copy of Gone With the Wind, the Civil War novel that, according to her, “everyone in New York is reading.” It would certainly appear so judging from the bookstore windows which are filled with copies. Tonight a party for Nora at Evelyn’s.

  Saturday, July 18 (1:30 a.m.)

  difficulty sleeping, so have got up to sit by the window. The big city seems to be settling down for the night. A police siren now and then, but only faint traffic noise from the avenues nearby. L.M. is picking us up at noon, and in twelve hours we’ll be aboard the ship.

  A party tonight at Evelyn’s and she greeted me with a great hug and kisses. I was looking forward to a conversation with her, but she was preoccupied with her “friend” the dancer June who drank too much and became ill. She’s young, only twenty or so. Very tall and blonde and beautiful. Striking might be a suitable cliché to describe her. E. spent most of the evening with her in the bathroom. Or so it seemed to me. The young woman is from Texas, and before she got drunk I had a little talk with her, but for the life of me, I could scarcely understand a word she said. She might just as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue. The people at the party were lively and open, but I am so awkward at these things, while Nora moves through the crowd with such ease. I did, however, enjoy meeting some of these people. Graydon Lott is a sweet and gentle man and Vivian Rhodes, who plays the mischievous and careless Effie, is in fact a rather bookish woman who is married to a professor of classics at Columbia University. He sat in a corner all evening drinking soda water and I believe that he, along with Mr. Lott and I, were the only non-drinkers in the crowd. Everyone was talking about the Civil War book with the room divided between those who had read it and those who were now doing so. “Don’t, don’t tell me what happens.” At midnight Evelyn brought out a cake in the shape of a boat with “Bon Voyage, Nora” on the icing. Nora gave a fine little thank-you speech. How at home she is among these friendly and likeable Americans! I confess to a pang of jealousy as I watched her cutting the cake. To have so many people wishing you happiness surely counts for something. In the taxi back to the apartment, I asked why L.M. had not come along to the party.

  “He would have been there if I’d asked him,” she said. “He would have enjoyed standing around and sneering at all of us. That’s why I didn’t ask him.”

  Even allowing that she was a little tight, I was shocked at the bitterness in her voice.

  Saturday, July 18 (Genoa Princess, 5:30 p.m.)

  A rich glowing afternoon on the Hudson River. It’s exhilarating to be moving on water. My little room (cabin) is quite comfortable and has a small round window (porthole) overlooking the water. Without it, I would feel a bit smothered in this space. L.M. and Nora next door. L.M. is busy reading newspapers; he brought a stack of them aboard the ship. Civil war has broken out in Spain, and L.M. is devouring any news he can find on this. Nora and I went for a walk around the upper deck (promenading) and she told me that she can’t get a word out of L.M. because he is so absorbed in this Spanish business. After our walk, we had tea and biscuits in the lounge. Dinner will not be served until eight o’clock, a nuisance to a rustic like myself who is used to earlier meals. I shall have to fill up on biscuits. The ship is American, but the crew is mostly Italian, and the stewards make a fuss over the female passengers. They are handsome young fellows in their fancy getup, helpful and flirtatious, proud as peacocks. Several women in the lounge reading GWTW.

  Sunday, July 19 (7:00 a.m.)

  Awakened an hour ago and stared out my little window at the sea. When I went on deck it was deserted, except for an elderly man dressed all in white. He was briskly walking about, stopping now and then to fan his arms like propellers, or sink to his knees and rise again several times. He looked a little angry doing this, which I thought a pity on such a lovely morning with the sunlight sparkling on the sea. Nothing now but water and sky as we move between them.

  (4:30 p.m.)

  Spent an hour in the lounge this afternoon with L.M. Nora was off playing shuffleboard. She has befriended some wealthy young Americans of Italian descent, a playful group it seems. L.M. came into the lounge and, after looking around in his surly manner, came over and sat down with his newspapers. Ordered a large gin drink from the steward. In his shirt and tie and linen suit he looked flushed and distended. I wondered if his bowels might not be doing their job. Pleasant enough however. Nodded at my book of Keats’s letters as if they were an agreeable companion to a schoolteacher’s sea journey. Appraised me with his shrewd, intelligent eyes. He is excited over the outbreak of war in Spain. Called it a “fight between Church and the Communists. And the Church will win,” he exclaimed. “Franco will get all the help he needs from Germany and Italy.”

  I played the innocent female, mildly distressed by the situation. “Do you think we’ll be in any danger? Don’t we have to go right by Spain, so to speak?”

  An indulgent smile. L.M. likes to be asked questions. “We do, indeed, Miss Callan. Or, I hope I can call you Clara. Yes, we have to sail right past Spain at Gibraltar. Your grasp of geography is a good deal sounder than your sister’s. This morning Nora had Spain situated a little too far to the north. Around Belgium, I think.”

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating, Mr. Mills.”

  Another smile. “Perhaps a little. And it’s Lewis. Please! We’re on a trip together, Clara.”

  Always that hint of sexual playfulness in his voice. Yet he looked hot and ill at ease in the wicker chair, fanning himself with his Panama hat and sipping his gin. It seemed as if he hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with me or perhaps with many things. I wondered if he had been to Europe before.

  “Not since the war,” he said and then after a while, “There will be no danger. After all, we’re flying the American flag. Both sides will leave us alone. The last thing either wants is an international incident involving the U.S.A. We Americans are still very much a question mark to Europeans. They still don’t know which side we’ll throw our support behind.”

  I asked him about his plans in Italy.

  “I’d like to see how that country is working under Mussolini,” he said. “God knows they’ve had time now. If you can believe what you read, he’s done some great stuff. So, I’d like to know whether Europe’s future is in Fascism or Communism. I’d like to get some kind of handle on that. Certainly, Fascism has lots of friends and not just in Italy or Germany or Spain. There is more support for Fascism in France and England than most people think. By most people, I’m referring to Americans. So, I’d like to see how it has affected everyday life. I’m going to be talking to people who have lived in Italy for several years: writers, painters, a few professors. I’d like to interview Santayana, the philosopher. He lives in Rome these days and I think he would have some inter
esting things to say about it all. He’s an old man now, but apparently still very alert. But I don’t know if I can get to him. I didn’t get an answer to my letter. I’d also like to talk to Pound, the poet.”

  I enjoyed listening to L.M. and as he talked he seemed to relax. Perhaps he had unloosened a button or two or maybe it was the gin. He ordered another and talked about how Europeans are more interested in politics than most Americans.

  “It’s closer to their lives. And they had the war to deal with. I imagine there are many who are scared to death of another one and will do anything to avoid it. A lot of the older people don’t want to go through that again and Hitler knows it. That’s why he got his way in the Rhineland and he’s not finished either.”

  Another drink was placed before him. “What do you remember of the war, Clara? You would have been just a kid.”

  “Oh, soldiers in the village. Farm boys coming back from army camp all spruced up in their uniforms with their boots polished and their hair cut. I used to play the piano at school concerts and war bond evenings. ‘The Minstrel Boy,’ ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning.’”

  L.M. seemed delighted with these images. I looked out the window of the lounge. The day had clouded over.

  “You Canadians,” he said, “had it much tougher than we did. You really took it on the chin over there.” He paused for more gin. “I was in it, you know. Not as a combatant. I was against the war on principle, but I joined the Ambulance Corps and got over to France in the summer of 1918. I was twenty-eight years old. I’m still not sure why I did that.” In fact, he did look rather bewildered by the memory. “Saw some terrible things, Clara. Not as bad as being shot at, but bad enough. That’s why I don’t think there will be another war. Not a big one anyway. A lot of people over there don’t want to go through all that again. Of course, it’s more complicated now. There’s this whole business with the Jews in Germany. I’d like to find out more about that, but the Germans have been stonewalling me. They want to give me the tourist’s tour, I guess. They’ve had some problems with American journalists. They’ve kicked one or two out of the country so I don’t know how far I’ll get. Once I get these pieces written, I’d like to gather them into a book, maybe for next spring. I’ve already done some things, a piece on radio entertainment, you know, Nora’s world. Another on the radio priest Coughlin and one on the labour leader, John L. Lewis. Covered the Republican and Democratic conventions last month. I thought all this could make an interesting book. Call it The Temper of the Times or something like that. What do you think?”