Aldous is finishing the revision of his novel. The sun on the terrace is almost hotter than you can bear to sit in. The long view down the desert slope—the Joshua tree with its rigid gestures, and the cactus like a disconnected section of plumbing. The dark buttes, sterile and volcanic, rising out of the green desert floor. And, far, far beyond the horizon, the whole range of the High Sierras, snow covered and piled high with ominous clouds. It’s the kind of spring day on which you feel that perhaps you will live forever. Everything seems eternally alive—the joyful blue sky, the fat sly thievish cats, the two big bounding dogs, the thorny locust tree infested with little birds. Maria is in the kitchen, cooking wildly, with everything boiling over. The blue-eyed Texan handyman, in his big hat and western belt slung low around his hips, moves easily around, attending to his chores, as though he had a hundred years to spare before supper. The cattle—Herefords and Holsteins and Shorthorns—are cropping in the bush. There is no sign of the war, except the olive-drab army trucks, moving almost invisibly through the landscape, along the road below the house.
I’m staying in Matthew’s room. (He was invalided out of the army and is now about to get a job in the reading department at Warner Brothers.) The walls are covered with relief maps of Chile, Peru, Argentina and Brazil and a plan of the LZ–130.184 There are white droppings on the desk, made by a bird that got down the chimney. Over the fireplace is a “family portrait”: an eighteenth-century American primitive which the Huxleys picked up in a junk store. Matthew’s books: the Smithsonian Scientific Series, Chandler’s Introduction to [Human] Parasitology, Robin’s La Pensée grecque,185 Wolcott’s Animal Biology, Bloch’s Le Marquis de Sade, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (from which I learn today’s piece of useless information—that Catamitus is the Latin name for Ganymede). In the closet are his uniforms. He has cut off the Medical Corps insignia and pinned them up on the door.
February 18. This evening, Swami asked me to read aloud a speech by Gandhi, which is reprinted in the Vedanta Kesari, the magazine of the Ramakrishna Mission published in Calcutta. There was also an article about Krishna, saying that he “gladdened the cows.” Which reminds me of a story Kolisch told at supper. A man dies. The widow goes to a medium, who tells her, “I see your husband in a beautiful meadow—mountains all around—a blue sky.” “Oh, darling—” says the widow, “I’m so glad you’re happy!” And the husband’s voice answers: “Happy? Hell! I’m a cow in Montana!”
The Thoms are here—just back from visiting Rich at the San Diego marine base. He’ll go overseas soon. He is the camp eccentric; everybody knows and likes him.
Perhaps the only thing that would ever reconcile me entirely to this place would be having someone here I could talk to as I talk to Denny; someone who, at the same time, was convinced of the necessity for this way of life and absolutely determined to stay. But that’s a daydream. And, meanwhile, I’ve simply got to strike my own roots. After all, what’s the alternative? But the body doesn’t reason. It wants to get out and break all the rules. For a weekend, for a single night, it would trade eternity—until next morning, when a hangover transforms it into the nastiest little puritan of them all. This is called “suffering human joys and sorrows.” What filthy, sentimental, lying rubbish.
February 28. Swami has been sick. Now he’s recovered. He sits on the sofa and we forget him. We play, unmindful like children, in the completely uninteresting certainty of their father’s love. If we cut our fingers, we’ll remember and run to him at once. It isn’t a relationship, because there’s no element of surprise, no possibility of change. He could not cease to care for us. Our demand on him is total and quite merciless. Of course he is and will be there—now, tomorrow, whenever we decide we want him.
Last night, I was walking home from the Marmont after seeing John van Druten, and it struck me so strongly how very misleading it is to think of oneself as getting better or worse. How can the ego improve? It can’t. It can only wear thin, and let more of the light through. Then, again, I must remember that growth isn’t continuous: there are certain to be violent ups and downs. Quite an ordinary person may have moments at which he thinks and feels and acts like a near saint. The sun shines occasionally, even in Iceland. And when it does, it’s the same sun as one sees in Arabia always. It’s only the weather that’s individual.
When the sun shines—ah, what joy! Walking in the street, saying mentally to all the people: “Please help yourselves, dispose of me, take anything you want, just ask.” Oh God, make me into a public convenience.
Roger Spencer came to me yesterday evening, and began, “I think one ought to be frank about these things—” (Oh, oh, I said to myself—here it comes. What have I done now?) “While I was meditating,” he continued, “I realized how much I like you.” Needless to say, I felt vain and pleased; although I know perfectly well—considering the way I’ve often behaved to him—that it was Roger’s triumph, not mine.
March 11. A week ago, I went down with the Huxleys again, and Aldous and I worked out a story for the movies, based on a real character, an old man who lives in the Mojave Desert and has the power to heal animals. It seems quite good and we are going to try and sell it.
(We never succeeded. Nobody liked the story—least of all, James Geller, who’d been practically prepared to buy it sight unseen: he was the story editor at Warner’s, and one of Aldous’s warmest admirers. Either they thought it was goody-goody, or that it was superstitious, or both. Nevertheless, I still think it really had something.)
Denny has just taken an apartment down in Santa Monica Canyon, at 137 Entrada Drive. I cycled down to visit him yesterday, stayed the night and returned this morning. His landlady is a Mrs. Eamons, who is nearly blind and very old. They are fighting already. She wanders in and out of the apartment, complaining about the holes he is making in the walls and the damage he’s done to her furniture. She has a son of forty who drinks. She beats him and he yells for mercy. Denny is now starting to study medicine at UCLA.
March 13. Cold, grey and sad, after last week’s hot sunshine, with a few tears of rain. Today I first met Heinz, twelve years ago. I’ve just heard from Bill Roerick, who’s now in England, that Bruce (see April 4, last year) is missing in action. I don’t know why I mind so much. I mind for Tommy.
Where are you, Heinz? You are so near me, still. Even for your sake alone, without any other reason, I ought to be kinder, more understanding than I am. Perhaps Bruce is a prisoner, and you’re guarding him. …
A few days after this entry, I started to fall in love, with someone whom I’ll call X. There is a reason for this, other than mere discretion; because, as far as I was concerned, X. wasn’t a human being at all but simply a state of mind. Unrequited love is valuable in literature, but in life it bores me—especially my own. And the X. situation (which persisted throughout the year) was particularly idiotic, because I never had any real intention of doing anything about it: even if X. had returned my feelings, I would never have left Ivar Avenue on that account. My “love” for X. was, in fact, nothing but sentimental obstinacy—quite cruel and calculating under the sugar coating. Such crazes hit most of us from time to time. They are like the common cold—incurable but temporary—and deserve no more consideration. The X. situation was a particularly violent craze, chiefly because I indulged it, and even gratified it, as they say, physically. The other person involved behaved, from first to last, with extraordinary decency and generosity, for which, now that the craze is over and we are friends, I hope I shall never stop being grateful. I shall have to refer to X. from time to time in this diary, but I do so unwillingly and without any masochistic pleasure.
March 27. Down for ten days at John van Druten’s ranch, at Thermal, near Indio. I’m returning to Hollywood next Friday. Much too much sex talk since I’ve been here, but I expected that. In sane moments, I am very happy to be without sex—oh, much more than happy, utterly thankful. The way I am living is “the only way I can do anything now,” and it includes writing. In fact,
it makes writing possible, with a new sense of responsibility. I am slowly roughing out the first draft of Prater Violet. (Johnny is amazed because I sometimes don’t work more than twenty minutes a day.) It’s wrong—the way it is—but that doesn’t matter. Gradually, gradually, the muscles of the invention become more flexible. I just have to keep on at it. It’s my karma yoga.
London was badly bombed, yesterday. People are suffering, all over the world. Let me never forget them. Let me never harden my heart. Let me never sentimentalize, either. Hardness and sentimentality both hinder awareness. If I can’t think of Ramakrishna, let me at least remember Bruce.
A glorious morning, with the breeze sending fluff from the cottonwood trees floating out high over the garden. The brown hills—enormous piles of volcanic refuse—pushing down into the flat, fertile valley of carrots, onions, grapefruit, dates, alfalfa and corn. Called the Coachella Valley, because the soil is full of tiny shells—this land used to be at the bottom of the sea. You can still see the stone fish traps made by the Indians, high up the slope of the mountain. The ducks on the reservoir. The drone of a high bomber. The three male date palms in the corner of the grove. (How to pollinate dates: The sour smelling male date blossom, within its fibrous, swordlike spathes, is shaken through a sieve to collect the pollen. Then the pollen is dabbed on bits of cotton, which are tied up inside the female date flowers. If you leave the process to nature, a certain amount of pollen will be carried around by the wind, but not enough for all the trees.) A car drives by, raising great clouds of sweet smelling dust, which for some reason reminds me of the dust of China, although it isn’t blowing off the grave mounds. Mexican nationals are imported as ranch workers, owing to the labor shortage. They are known as “dry” Mexicans and “wet” Mexicans. The “wet” ones—those who have entered the U.S. illegally—are so called because they are supposed to have swum the Rio Grande. The bumpy “washboard” back roads leading into the Indian reservation, where there are weird natural clearings, like lawns, in the mesquite and sage bushes. You seldom see a house there, and never an Indian.
Yesterday, we drove up into the mountains. Johnny has bought a cabin in the forest above Idyllwild, to come to in the hot weather. There was a big fire there, a few months ago. It travelled so quickly that the rodeo rider and his wife, who live next door, had to grab their child and run. But Johnny’s cabin wasn’t burnt, because it had stone foundations. All the trees, including the great sugar pine above the house, are scarred and blackened by the flames. The fire even got into the well, burnt the wooden supports and caused the windlass to fall down the shaft, making it useless. This little settlement of cabins is squalid as any slum, because of the dumps and the litter of building materials all around. I don’t like the place at all. Even by daylight, it is spooky. There is a moment in the afternoon when the light changes and the woods become suddenly unfriendly. Something says, “We’d advise you to start home now. Visitors are not welcome here.”
April 1. Got home last night, to find that (1) Swami has directed that we all do at least three hours in the shrine daily, and one day of individual vigil a month, (2) Sudhira has to have an operation for colonic ulcer, and (3) Johnny Latham crashed near San Franciso, at the start of a flight to the Pacific; his spine is hurt and he’s still unconscious; Kolisch is attending him, and Shanta and Amiya are with him.
(“Shanta”—Mrs. Latham—was a pudgy, rather drab elderly woman who came regularly to Ivar Avenue. She was a widow, and owned an apartment house, and lived off its rents. Her son Johnny was a grown-up man of around thirty, but she treated him as a little boy, talked about him continually, and had directed every movement of his life until he entered the army. He was a radio operator, and often flew back and forth between San Francisco and the various Pacific bases. A nice boy, large and dumb and friendly.)
It’s so pleasant to be back, and feel that the family is pleased to see me. “We missed you, Chris,” Sarada tells me, in a tone of naive surprise. And last night, as soon as vespers were over, Web went to the shrine, took a rose from it, and gave it to me. I was so touched, I didn’t know what to do or say.
Lunch with the Huxleys, at the Farmer’s Market: they love it there, despite the crowds, the jostling, the discomfort and the noise. I suppose, after the quietness of the desert, it seems gay and exciting. A perfect stranger admired my bicycle, but scolded me quite severely for scratching some of the varnish off against a metal post.
Brecht wants me to translate his version of The Circle of Chalk.186 I’m in a dither; there seems so much to do, in all departments. The thought of sex hovers in the background, like potential panic amongst the audience in a theater where there is no fire escape. And yet—I wouldn’t take John van Druten’s life if you paid me the gross earnings of The Voice of the Turtle. The misery of owning that ranch, of having all those responsibilities, of being called long distance by Gertrude Lawrence! Not that I didn’t enjoy being down there. As a matter of fact, Johnny and Carter, either separately or together, always put me entirely at my ease. The nicest thing they said to me was, “We can’t imagine you ever putting on an act.” If they only knew!
April 2. While we were at breakfast, Kolisch telephoned to say that Johnny Latham died yesterday. He never regained consciousness. If he had lived, his brain would have been permanently affected. (Or is that what they always say on such occasions?)
This evening, Shanta and Amiya returned. I avoided seeing them. Madhabi and some of the others made a great theatrical fuss, hovering around, as they came up the steps, and leading them into the temple, where the doors were already standing open and the candles lighted. It was disgusting but very natural: curiosity, largely. None of us are nearly so sorry for Shanta as we pretend, but only Sudhira dares admit this. Swami alone can rise to such occasions, because he is genuinely capable of love, without ulterior motives. To him it is quite simple—a mother has lost her son. His ego is not in any way involved.
Eight other boys were killed in that plane. At least one person must be suffering for each, as Shanta suffers. And the wreck wasn’t a headline, barely a news item, the sort of thing which happens every day—a piece of carelessness. Utterly insignificant beside the advertised losses in Russia, Italy, the Pacific and the big air raids. Remember that.
April 3. Shanta, at breakfast, was rather wonderful. She made a real effort to put us all at our ease—and soon we were talking and laughing fairly naturally. But the worst time for her will come much later—when people imagine you’ve forgotten, and then are bored and a little indignant because they find you haven’t.
Brecht came, and spent an hour trying to get me to say I’d do his play. He is an expert wheedler, and I nearly gave way; but I didn’t like him so much when our interview was over. He is utterly ruthless, opportunistic and selfish. I don’t believe he’d waste five moments on anyone who wasn’t in a position to do him a favor. Also, he couldn’t help showing his scorn and impatience of all my other non-Brecht obligations which came between him and my consent.
This evening after vespers, Sudhira, Amiya, Sarada and I went down to the funeral parlor, to look at Johnny Latham’s corpse. It was lying in what looked like a cheap hotel sitting room, with a standard lamp, an ugly little couch and some crude framed paintings of flowers. Johnny, in his sergeant’s uniform, was quite unrecognizable—no neck, great pads of flesh around the collar, the lips pouting in a slightly sarcastic smile; he looked fifteen years older. They’d rouged his cheeks and lips and covered a scar on his forehead with orange makeup. Amiya and Sudhira were furious. Sarada was afraid to touch Johnny’s hand, but she finally did: it was soft and cold, like jelly. From the neighboring chapel, we heard a woman singing the Schubert Ave Maria. Johnny, who had seemed so near to us in the shrine room, obviously wasn’t within miles of this lifelike dummy stranger. Sarada became more and more daring. She pretended to faint, and, when I accused her of showing off, actually threw herself on the carpet, to demonstrate how she could do a theatrical fall. At length, when Sudhir
a was about to yank Johnny clear out of the casket, the mortician came in, very pleasant and businesslike. There was nothing to be done, he told us. The embalming fluid often has this fattening effect after an autopsy—and anyhow, he politely insinuated, the local firm up north had made a poor job of it. With the aid of a husky young assistant, he lifted the heavy rigid body a little; but the jowls wouldn’t fall back into place, they were as hard as wax. So we asked them to close the casket and screw it down before the service tomorrow: Shanta mustn’t see him like this. We returned home in a slightly hysterical mood, full of private jokes about the incident, which puzzled the others at supper—they didn’t know where we’d been.
April 4. Johnny’s funeral, at the mortician’s. The curtains of the chapel (it’s really more like a theater) parted, to reveal the casket banked with flowers and Swami, looking incredibly beautiful, seated beside it in his yellow robe: he reminded me of Gauguin’s The Spirit of the Dead, Watching. An army chaplain read two psalms, very badly, with a horrible drawl: he pronounced womb “wewmbe.” Swami read well, but the Nivedita selections are so badly arranged.187 The only thing that really moved me was the expression on the faces of the coffin bearers—Johnny’s air force friends. They were thinking to themselves, “Who’s next?”
April 6. This morning, Mrs. Sabato (the stout, beautiful wife of the Italian character-actor, Alfredo Sabato) arrived in tears, because there was a snake on the terrace steps, attacking a lizard. It wasn’t that Mrs. Sabato was sorry for the lizard; she was simply frightened of the snake. I shooed the two of them into the jasmine, but Mrs. Sabato went right on crying for an hour. Merely to have seen the snake had ruined her day. Sudhira, who is equally neurotic about lizards, but not in the least frightened of snakes, said she’d like to give the snake a medal. She’s leaving for her operation tomorrow.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 54
