Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  April 8. Sudhira was operated this morning, at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Alfredo Sabato drove Swami and me over to see her, this afternoon. She was moaning, only half conscious. She said miserably: “I know I’ll find it was just a dream. You aren’t here, really.”

  Did another little chore for Vedanta today: fixed up the most sentimental parts of the funeral prayers in Nivedita’s book,188 so they’ll be less awful for a funeral Swami has to assist at next Tuesday—his fourth in the last two months.

  April 9. High wind this morning. The upruffled leaves of the cottonwood, seen through the temple window, reminded me of poplars, I suppose—because suddenly, and so poignantly, I remembered springtime in Germany, the lilac, and the old farmhouses down by the Mohriner See, and Heinz in his magenta sweater, waiting for me at the station. “Gone with the wind,” I kept repeating to myself, “gone with the wind.” Until the phrase dissociated itself from David Selznick and seemed quite beautiful.

  April 13. Down to Santa Monica yesterday, to see Denny. I missed the ten o’clock bus home, so slept on Denny’s sofa, under the giant Picasso of the girl reading, which belongs to him and Peter Watson.189 He has had it shipped out here from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The girl has a violet face, two noses, hands like bird’s wings and a crown of poisonous looking flowers. I think it was she who gave me a nightmare—extraordinarily coherent and vivid—about Nazi Germany. (I needn’t describe this here, because I used it, with only one tiny addition, in Prater Violet.)

  Some Santa Monica notes: Early morning fog. The rocks of the breakwater, the pier, the dotted line of fishing boats in the harbor are very black and precise, but they only serve to heighten the immensity and mystery of the hazy ocean and sky. Like a statement about God.

  Sign at Sam’s hot-dog stand: “The California Bank does not serve food. Sam the Greek does not cash checks.”

  Early morning. A very black Negro driving a black truck at tremendous speed, like the last fragment of the night hurrying away before the rising sun.

  I am reading a book about God in a coffee shop. The waitress thinks it’s a crime story and asks, “Have you caught him yet?” I answer, “No—unfortunately.”

  The astonishing American talent for ignoring the radio. Denny has it. He turns it on full blast and then carries on a shouted conversation about some serious philosophical subject.

  Some of our favorite catchphrases: “Famed in song and story.” “All ghoul and a yard wide.” “Quoi qu’il soit qu’il soit.” (Dog French for “Be that as it may.”) “As far as the eye can see.” “Der sogenannte. … besteht aus zwei Teilen, und zwar, der Vorderteil und der Hinterteil.”190 (This was supposed to parody a German professor lecturing.) “Dans la plus grande manière.” (Dog French for “In the biggest way.”) And all kinds of expressions borrowed and sometimes inverted from Gerald Heard: “Some of us who care a little less for this thing.” “Appalling instantaneity,” etc. etc.

  Notice in Doc Law’s Friendship Bar in the Canyon: “Dine in a nautical atmosphere. Open during blackouts and all clear. In case of direct hit we close immediately. Latitude 34.1. North. Longitude 118.30. West. Course straight ahead.”

  There’s an advertisement you see everywhere nowadays: “When you think of furs, think of Fink.” So I composed this song, to the tune of Beethoven’s Minuet:

  If you want a mink that doesn’t stink,

  And will not shrink,

  Just think of Fink.

  We’ve a lovely coat that looks like seal,

  What it really is we won’t reveal.

  If you think that’s polar bear,

  What do we care? It’s your affair.

  And even if our ermine ties

  Are made of mice—well, they’re just as nice.

  Back home on the bus. The rest of the day was bad. Sudhira came home from the hospital and I was rather horrid to her, because she’d allowed Alfredo to read one of my stories. The rationalization for this was that, a day or two ago, Swami said to Madhabi in my presence: “Why do you read novels? All books that do not give the word of God are just a trash.” So I worked this up into a sulk, the usual kind—that I’m not “understood” here, that Swami hates art, and that this is what keeps all my friends away from Ivar Avenue, etc. Actually—don’t I know it all too well?—I’m merely sulking because I want to run off and play around X. I worked off some spite at the committee meeting of the Vedanta Society by announcing that I’d resign from being president this year.

  April 14. Swami, sitting on the temple steps this morning, asked me so sweetly why I’d resigned from the committee. I put it that I dislike taking any official position here because I want to feel free to walk out at a moment’s notice. Swami accepted this as though it were the whole truth—and, as usual, his love and utter lack of egotism melted me completely. I suppose that’s what Brahmananda did to you: you felt he was more on “your” side than you were yourself. “I’m thinking of nothing but your own good”: only a saint can honestly say that.

  Took Sudhira to the doctor. Told her about X. I had to talk about it to someone. The X. pains are bad, this evening. Every mental area has its sore spots. If I happen to think of Australia, or Santa Monica Pier, or the art school, or a certain kind of tweed, I involuntarily mutter, “Ouch.” It’s like stubbing a sore toe. And every bit of it is in my own mind! Oh Shankara—if I could only learn your lesson!

  April 17. My day of silence. Eight hours in the shrine. Boredom. Blankness. Storms of resentment—against Asit, against India, against being given a Sanskrit name (extraordinary how violently I react against this—because I know Swami won’t ever insist on it, if he sees that I really mind). “Decided” not to become a monk, and to tell Swami so tomorrow (doubt if I shall) but to stay here, at any rate, till Brahmananda’s next birthday. Where would I go after that? I don’t know. Just “out.” Sex, of course. But it’s much much more than that. I have to explore every corner of the cage, before I can assure myself that it’s as big as the universe.

  But now that the storm has died down, I feel a kind of cleanness and relief.

  April 18. Talked to Swami after breakfast and told him about yesterday. I forget already just exactly what he said—it was the way he said it that matters. No, it didn’t make any difference if I left this place: it would always be my home. God wasn’t specially here. Acts aren’t important in themselves. It’s no good promising not to do things. “That’s your Christian training,” said Swami smiling; and he added, “can you imagine me as a Christian monk? I would never have been a monk if I hadn’t met Brahmananda.”

  One things seems clear. I must stay here for the present. I must try at least to complete another year.

  Al Clifton visited us, from the San Francisco Center. Poor boy, he looked so sick. His father has just died. Al brought with him an atmosphere of jnana yoga, fog and salad—the very smell of Webster Street. Sudhira sent a message that he should come in and say hello to her in bed. Al was quite shocked, and terribly shy of entering her bedroom. He seems to expect that the demons of lust would swoop down and devour him on the spot.

  April 24. Am in bed. The day before yesterday, while seeing For Whom the Bell Tolls with Sudhira (who is up and about again) I developed a pile. I called Peggy and suggested that Bill Kiskadden should come down and cut it open for me—thinking, in the kindness of my heart, that this would be a nice treat for him, since he never gets any surgery to do in the army. So Bill came, with his little knife. It hurt like hell. I yelled clear around the block, and immediately knew I’d gotten a black mark for doing it. Bill is a spartan.

  However, the pain—or rather, the discomfort: it’s nothing more—is a great relief, because, for the moment, it takes the sting out of the X. situation. You can’t be in love when you have a sore behind.

  May 14. Last Monday, the 8th, we had a puja for Buddha’s birthday. Afterwards, Sudhira called me to eat outside with her on the terrace, and she told me: “It seems this whole thing may be malignant. Bill Daniels calle
d Mark Rabwin about it. They want to cut me open and look. I’m not going to let them. I’ll just clear out and disappear.”

  At first, I didn’t understand what she meant. And when she went on to explain, I just felt numb. It appears that Daniels, who operated on her, suspected that some of the tissue he removed might be cancerous. So he consulted with Rabwin, who is one of the best surgeons in town and a very old friend of Sudhira’s: they used to be lovers. Rabwin and Daniels were being very cagey, but Sudhira said she could get the truth out of Rabwin eventually; he knows her too well to be able to lie to her. If it is cancer, Sudhira will go away some place where she isn’t known and kill herself with an overdose of morphia. She has it by her all the time.

  In the evening, I suddenly realized that this is all true, that it could really happen. To have to say goodbye—as I did to Heinz—but knowing for certain that I’d never see her again. I pictured her turning away and walking down the temple steps, in her grey coat and skirt … I’d rather face anything else—even to stand by her deathbed. I started to cry. And she said, “Darling, I’d no idea you’d take it like this … I’m so sorry.”

  Tuesday was awful. I kept bursting into tears, uncontrollably, at odd moments. I don’t think anyone else noticed. I went into the shrine room and tried to say, “Master, let me have it instead of her”—but I couldn’t. I was scared. I could only say, “Your will be done, and help us to accept it.”

  Then Sudhira talked to Mark Rabwin on the phone. It isn’t certain. They’re just suspicious. She’s to have X-ray treatment. My fear jumps at any ray of hope. I daren’t believe it till I must.

  Oh Thursday, Aldous came up to town and we talked about our movie story. I went to the dentist, who pulled two big back teeth. My mouth has been in a mess ever since, and the tonsil swollen. On Friday, Aldous and I lunched with Wolfgang Reinhardt, and discussed The Miracle: maybe we shall work on it. Today I drove with the Huxleys to Ojai, to hear Krishnamurti speak in the famous oak grove. He is really very nice. Such a modest, slim, white-haired, boyish figure standing in the sunny shadows. He obviously hates lecturing: he seemed terribly nervous and embarrassed, and winced visibly when people interrupted with questions. An extraordinary assortment of people go to hear him—C.O. boys from work camps, schoolteachers, apparently normal businessmen, small children, rich ladies, movie actors, farmers. And there are a few Theosophists of the old guard—bearded, smocked and sandalled—who sit regarding Krishnamurti with a kind of reproachful curiosity, because they firmly believe that, one day, he will announce his return to the movement and make a great historic speech in favor of Mrs. Besant.

  Afterwards, Maria, Aldous and I went to lunch with Iris Tree and her friend Allan Harkness. Iris must be well over forty, but she still wears a blonde pageboy bob, and the flowing blue clothes which combine a suggestion of cultism with the gypsy artiness of her Augustus John girlhood. She is very gay and sympathetic. The house is dirty and untidy beyond belief, and there is a beautiful white police dog which bites the neighbors. Gay and vague, Iris brewed us some coffee, which tasted of bitter aloes. Maria took a sip of it and her face contracted with horror, but she recovered immediately and exclaimed, with a girlish little cry of delight, “Aldous—remember! Naples! Doesn’t it take one back?” She contrived to suggest that Iris had made the coffee taste Neapolitan deliberately, as a kind of charming nostalgic surprise. I think this was one of the most tactful performances I have ever witnessed in my life. But Aldous didn’t play up very well. And Iris spoilt it altogether by agreeing, in her deep beautiful voice: “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” And laughing her giddy, delighted laugh.

  Allan Harkness is Ojai’s answer to Gerald Heard. In fact, he’s not unlike Gerald, with his beard and his red nose and long mild goat-face. He’s a devoted Heardian, with a little anthroposophy thrown in. He and Iris have a small group of actors here, and plan to perform the plays Iris will write. Several of them have been pupils of Michael Chekhov.191

  Such lovely spring weather. The hills are streaked with patches of mustard weed. In the distance, it looks like sunshine.

  Sudhira goes down to the hospital every afternoon, to nurse Helene Sabato, who has just had an operation. Sudhira herself will have more treatment later. Without anything particular having been said or discovered, the menace seems to have lifted a little. Perhaps it is simply that she herself is no longer so worried about it, now that she has something to do. The other day, while she was with Helene, a nurse came into the room and whispered that they were in a fix: a woman had been brought in dying, and there was no bed for her—they’d wheeled her into one of the waiting rooms and screened it off, and now the staff was so short-handed that there was no nurse to spare—would Sudhira go and be with her for a while, so she wouldn’t have to die alone? Of course, Sudhira was delighted. She went and sat with the woman, who took about twenty minutes to die. No chaplain appeared, so Sudhira repeated her mantram all the time. “And just before she died,” Sudhira added, “she opened her eyes and gave me such a funny look; as though the whole thing was a huge joke between us two.”

  June 7. First news coming in about the D-Day invasion of France. I keep wondering if Heinz is alive, and if he’s fighting there; and what has happened to Pete Martinez, whom I last heard of over in England.

  Sudhira went down to stay with the Sabatos, when Helene left the hospital. Yesterday she [Sudhira] fainted, and now she’s to be examined again. Everybody knows. Alfredo told Swami, who very secretively made it obvious to the whole family what is the matter. The funny thing is, he doesn’t seem in the least worried. Can he possibly know? But I mustn’t catch Sudhira’s superstition.

  I ache with loneliness. Looking out toward the ocean and the distant tower of the bank in Santa Monica, I think, “X. is there.” I feel almost as if I had created X. myself, out of the blue sky and the water and the golden light. In a way, I suppose I have.

  Vernon has now definitely suggested that he shall come West and live with or near me, and paint, and study with Swami—though he doesn’t want to join up at Ivar Avenue, at any rate for the present. I need him badly—or someone like him; but a lot of the old suspicion remains. Can he really have changed as much as his letters suggest? Well—perhaps it’s worth trying.

  June 8. Grey, rainy weather. Terrible X. jitters, producing the most squalid, hard, insensitive state of egotism. I try to pray for all those boys fighting each other on the French beachheads, and I can’t feel anything. I can’t care. I can’t even feel for Sudhira, at the moment. I just sit in the shrine room rehearsing speeches to X.

  Just after writing the above, I went into the living room, and Swami said smiling, “You are worried about something, Chris.” I mentioned Sudhira, Vernon, the invasion—but not X. However, as always, I began to feel calmer.

  June 9. Ben’s graduation day at Harvard Military Academy. The X-ray treatments seem to have arrested the arthritis, although it’s too soon to say definitely yet. A little section of his spine is stiff, but not enough to make the slightest difference. In fact, thanks to the corrective exercises he has been doing, he can actually raise his legs much higher than most boys of his age.

  Peggy, Judge Bok (here on a visit) and I attended the graduation exercises. Ben looked very slender and almost handsome in his uniform: thank God, he already has a 4-F from the draft board, and with any luck the war will be over before the doctor can be quite certain about his back. The usual inspirational speeches. While the boys were parading, a right turn was ordered, and one cadet made a left turn and marched proudly off by himself. Sure as hell, it was Derek. Peggy was terribly embarrassed and didn’t talk about anything else as long as we were together; trying to cover her shame with little jokes.

  Just to keep me in my place, she told me that Bill Kiskadden had said that his cutting open my pile “couldn’t possibly have hurt much.” So that makes me a neurotic sissy.

  With Denny to see Sudhira in bed at the Sabatos’. She’s obviously very sick. Denny and Sudhira made a terrif
ic click. When he came into the room, he exclaimed, “Why—you’re beautiful!” They’d never met before.

  June 12. 11:00 a.m. Have just finished three hours in the shrine, had breakfast, read my mail. Putnam’s won’t publish our Gita translation, even as distributors. A letter from my brother Richard. I never can make out if they have been in any air raids or had any other unpleasant experiences. Both he and M. in their letters stick to gossip about the neighbors, and the war is mentioned as little as possible. Felix Greene did tell me that a bomb had once fallen somewhere in the neighborhood, but he didn’t seem to know if it was near our home.

  (Which reminds me how, quite early in the war, M. developed an absolute phobia about war secrecy. She even cut the word “war” out of her letters altogether. Once, when she and Richard were paying a brief visit to London, she wrote: “Last Sunday, we went to N.’s wedding, at —. Owing to the political situation, there was a large hole in the roof of the church …”)

  My sit was uneventful, lots of japam, avoided thinking much about X., or worrying, or feeling mad at anyone. I yawned a great deal, and the salt from the tears has dried under my eyes. A dull grey morning. Have just smoked a cigarette, which I didn’t mean to.

  2:00 p.m. Have just finished the worship. Found I’d forgotten most of the ritual, but muddled through somehow. It’s very distasteful to me, just now. And I hate the thought of all pujas. With one exception: on the morning of Vivekananda’s birthday puja, Sister personally serves him his coffee in the shrine room—two cups—and a cigarette, which she lights and leaves burning on an ashtray. Meanwhile, somebody reads the Katha Upanishad aloud; because it was his favorite. This little ceremony still seems to me charming and “right”—chiefly because it’s based on a real relationship: Sister is commemorating her actual friendship with him while he was alive. If only all ritual could be like that; with a personal significance.