Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  Meanwhile, her own doctor who had been called was sewing Annemarie’s wrist and she was clutching me with her good hand.

  “If you have any pity, and I’m sure you do, I would let this girl be free in the hands of her own physician, who will do better. Since he is German and speaks her language he will treat her with kindness and understanding.”

  I must say her doctor gave me a strange and malicious look because he had no idea what had really happened or who I was.

  Freddy said to me, “Go home, darling.”

  As I went out the door Annemarie followed me. “Thank you, my liebling,” she said and she kissed me. It was the first and last time we ever kissed each other.

  Much later Freddy told me that the officers had to drag her downstairs as she held desperately to every banister. I couldn’t have stood that.

  Once she was in Bellevue she was the kindest and most cooperative of patients. She saw to the needs of the other patients and encouraged them, but she wrote me that she could not live a hospital life, and therefore decided to leave America and go to Lisbon. After that she did not know what she was going to do. She eventually joined the Free French and worked with de Gaulle’s forces in the Congo where a statue of her was made by a native. John La Touche, who was a mutual friend, mentioned that statue and said he wished he could have taken it home to me, but the natives had worshipped it as a sort of tribal deity.

  To my great relief she wrote she was going to return by way of Lisbon to Switzerland. There she hoped to work and live in a little peasant’s house her father had bought for her, which she always considered as home. We’d exchanged many letters and she was always speaking of new travels, involved in the war as she was, and I was always hoping to God that she would stay home and work. All the letters of the last few years had been clear, completely rational and there was no trace of any taint of morphine. Indeed, I don’t think she could have gotten it even if she had wanted to. Although she had experienced many horrible times, which she would refer to me, such as when she wrote from the Congo: “I have seen an old ugly woman who has killed and eaten her husband,” she must have been completely cured of her addiction. Her letters were powerful and poetic.

  “When I came up the Congo from Leopoldville, seven days on a small river boat, I got very frightened looking day and night at the jungle, it is just like an ocean of green, walls of green on both sides of the stream, green all around, and no open space, no horizon. Then I stayed some twelve days in a river post, where among the forty whites there were very few not hopelessly drinking—they didn’t react any more. Then I had some two hundred miles through the jungle in order to reach Molanda, and here I found a wide area cleared, planted, inhabited by only two whites. I got a big straw covered house all to myself, and at once I learned to react against this dreary, tired depression, in spite of the climate, in spite of loneliness, in spite of all,—it is like a stream of pride, and like learning the very first and simple rules of life.”

  From Switzerland she wrote the last of her many beautiful letters.

  “Thank you forever. Should I return, I shall with your permission, translate ‘Reflections in a Golden Eye.’ Carson, remember our moments of understanding, and how much I loved you. Don’t forget the terrific obligation of work, be never seduced, write, and darling, take care of yourself, as I will. (I wrote, in Sils, a few pages only, you would like them,) and never forget, please, what has touched us deeply.

  Your Annemarie, with all my loving affection.”

  I think there was a dichotomy in her relation; one part of her wanted to serve in the war as a correspondent, and another part wished equally to go on with her poetry and live at her home in Sils Maria.

  It was about this time that I had a telegram from Klaus Mann that Annemarie’s bicycle had plunged over a ravine and she was knocked unconscious. She died in a hospital in Zurich without regaining consciousness.

  I was living at Yaddo completely alone in a small cottage, and I was free to grieve and remember. I have talked much of her morphine addiction which was for some years dreadfully important to her, but I want to add that even in spite of that most crippling handicap, she became a doctor of philosophy at the University of Zurich, and at a time of crisis, she was always ready and willing to do even more than her part. I don’t know of a friend whom I loved more, and was more grieved by her sudden death.

  I was still working on Member of the Wedding when with a sudden voltage I remembered the hunchback and the giantess. There was a strong impulse to write that story, suspending Member of the Wedding, so I went back to Georgia to write “The Ballad of the Sad Café.” It was a torrid summer and I remember the sweat pouring off my face as I typed, worried that I’d broken faith with Member of the Wedding, to write this short novel. When I finished the story I jerked it out of the typewriter and handed it to my parents. I walked for several miles while they read, and when I’d come back I could see from their faces that they’d liked it. It was always my father’s favorite work.

  Fall had finally come after the grueling heat, and I would walk to a hill near my house and pick up pecans and put them in my leather jacket. The family looked forward to fruit-cake baking days which was a great occasion in my family as Mother would bake about a dozen enormous ones and send them to relatives.

  It must have been about this time when a fire completely demolished our home. I was reading Dostoevsky in bed when I heard a crackling sound. I thought it was my brother playing with his friends and so I said, “Pipe down Brother, I can’t even read.”

  Then the ceiling of my bedroom began to smoke and cinders fell down. I hopped out of bed and ran next door sounding the alarm. Nobody ever knew how it started except Lucille, who was our maid, and who might have put some trash in the stove before she went home.

  For three or four months we were homeless and lived in an apartment in the city. Then the old house was rebuilt, and by then we were sick of apartments and were glad to get home.

  In spite of the interruptions of the fire I was able to send my manuscript of “Ballad of the Sad Café” to the publisher, and it was included by Martha Foley in The Best Short Stories of 1944.

  I have used the word “illumination” several times. This might be misleading, because there were so many frightful times when I was totally “un-illuminated,” and feared that I could never write again. This fear is one of the horrors of an author’s life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation?

  I once wrote a story about a writer who could not write anymore, and my friend Tennessee Williams said, “How could you dare write that story, it’s the most terrifying work I have ever read.”

  I was pretty well sunk while I was writing it, and was thoroughly glad when it was finished. If my patient readers will bear with me, let me recount the illuminations as they happened to me: in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, after years of frustration, I was walking up and down a rug, when suddenly I realized that Singer was a deaf-mute. In Member of the Wedding, I had rushed out in the street because of the sudden fire alarm that Thanksgiving afternoon, and the wintry air after the heavy dinner had somehow, I don’t know how, illuminated my heart. Clock Without Hands was more orderly and I had even written several pages of outline to guide me, so that there were one thousand illuminations instead of just one. Reflections in a Golden Eye came quite at random when my husband had said there was a Peeping Tom at the base nearby. At that time I was nursing Reeves with an infected foot, and when I went to the market I was so sleepy that I fell asleep leaning on the counter. The market man took me back home. “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud,” came after a long period of sickness in which I’d actually picked up a stone, looked at a tree and suddenly the magic illumination came. I will not write more about illuminations because they are so mysterious and because I don’t understand them any more than my readers do. I’m just fascinated by them. I cannot explain them, I can only say that for me they come after months or years of struggling with a boo
k, and there are more months and years following the illuminations until the work is completed.

  I have been asked if I realize the quality of my work while I’m doing it. I would say that I’m so busy working that I’m no judge until it’s finished. Then I have a fairly good idea, but of course, the critics might have quite opposite notions. I never read my reviews. If they’re good they might give me the big-head, and if they are unfavorable I would be depressed. So why bother? Of course, friends filter in information that gives me a fairly accurate idea of what is taking place.

  I have also been asked how I know that I have reached the end of a book. Since I usually write the ending long before the final chapters are anywhere nearly done, this gives me no trouble. In Clock Without Hands I wrote the last paragraph first, but in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter I followed more or less in chronological order.

  To come back to the “non-illuminations,” the soul is flattened out, and one does not even dare to hope. At times like this I’ve tried praying but even prayers do not seem to help me. I remember the fallow times of other authors and try to draw comfort from them.

  I want to be able to write whether in sickness or in health, for indeed, my health depends almost completely on my writing.

  This has been a time of waiting for me. The doctors have all decided that my crippled leg must be amputated. They cannot do it right away because the hospitals are so full, and I must wait for my own team of doctors at Harkness Pavilion. So in the nights of glare I just cuss out the doctors for making me wait, and cuss out my leg for hurting so. I have read Sarah Bern­hardt and her superb gallantry and courage have comforted me. They are going to chop off the leg so I can have more mobility and can get from the bed to the wheel-chair more easily. I’ve already made out a round of travels. First, to my doctor’s home, Dr. Mary Mercer, with my faithful Ida Reeder who always accompanies me. Since I had such a grand time at Mr. John Huston’s estate in Ireland this spring of 1967, and since he’s invited me to come whenever I like, I am planning to visit him again as soon as my leg is healed. I just plan trips in my mind, and every single person whom I’ve broached about staying with them has been most welcoming. So after three years in bed, I will be able to travel again.

  All the time during World War II, Reeves’s letters were constantly harping on marriage. I was still reluctant about remarriage, although the subject was always uppermost in our letters. I think if I had just had a friendly, non-possessive relationship with Reeves, his life would not have ended in such disaster. But he was most determined to possess me. For instance, I was going to take a trip to England because my doctor said I needed a holiday, so I boarded a ship, but the first day out I saw someone, out of the corner of my eye, that looked a little bit like Reeves, and since I thought I was alone on the ship, I dismissed it and thought Reeves has really run me crazy this time so I’ll have to go to an analyst when I get to London. The same apparition occurred on the second and on the third day there was a letter saying that he was on the boat, and that he was going to jump overboard unless I would reconcile with him. These threats and emotional blackmail became a daily pattern. If I wouldn’t take him back he would kill himself; the same refrain. I was hesitant to give a curt and truthful answer. I was always so afraid he would actually fulfill his threats, which in the end he did. I had to handle him like a spoiled brat, conceding to everything, so that the dignity of our marriage was quickly being destroyed.

  I thought very much about Reeves; first, he was the product of a broken home, but he even played on that for my sympathy. Another thing, not one of the McCullers family was honest. When I let his mother use my house in Nyack, when we were abroad, she took all of my lilies of the valley. A bed that was more than a century old. She also helped herself to all my bulbs, and gave them all to her daughter. I guess Reeves came by his dishonesty honestly.

  Being with Reeves spoiled all my pleasures on board, although I loved boats. When I got to London I finally persuaded him to go back home and stop following me. He went back and stayed with my mother.

  When in London I met the wife of my publisher who was an analyst, and she proposed to cure me within six months. I would have listened to anybody with such a proposition, and I was hypnotized at St. George’s Hospital for reasons that were not too clear to me. Tennessee joined me in London and he felt the whole idea of hypnosis was highly irregular, but I was willing to give anything a try. Unfortunately, my doctor was a manic depressive and later committed suicide. My health was neither helped nor hurt by the experience.

  While in London I wrote the long poem, “The Dual Angel,” and I met my dear friend David Garnett and his family. Also, I became friendly with Dame Edith Sitwell, and it was a friendship that would last until her death. I went to lunch every day with her at the Sesame Club to which she belonged. There also I met many prominent people, such as David Gascoyne and, of course, Sir Osbert Sitwell.

  After a while I got very homesick for my mother, and Tennessee put me on the plane. I especially remember the stars on that flight and my bewilderment about what to do with Reeves.

  No sooner had I returned home than Reeves started again about marriage. I don’t know why I felt I owed such devotion to him. Perhaps it was simply because he was the only man I had ever kissed, and the awful tyranny of pity. I knew he was not faithful to me sexually, but that did not matter to me, nor am I an especially maternal woman. As I started to say before, we might have been far far happier as casual friends. But that’s not the way it happened. For some reason, certainly against my will, we became deeply involved with each other again and before I really knew what had happened, we were remarried.

  Restless as always, Reeves wanted to go back to Europe. I mentioned that he should take a job at home, but that made him more eager to leave than ever. So in 1946 we went to Paris.

  First we stayed with Edita and Ira Morris at their splendid château near Paris. I tried to write, but somehow I did not feel very well and nothing I wrote seemed to satisfy me. Then one day I noticed that my lateral vision was affected. Immediately I sensed what it was, a second of those terrifying strokes. I went to the hospital in Paris and the doctor confirmed it. They said it was a very peculiar case, because they never heard of a person having strokes at my age. The vision was never restored. After a short stay in the hospital, I decided I wanted my own home in France.

  The property was the most beautiful piece of land I’ve ever seen. It was called “L’Ancien Presbytère,” and was the place where the former curé used to live. An old stone house overlooking the small cathedral. The orchard had plums, pears, peaches, figs, greengage plums, and even small walnut trees which rattle in the wind. The house even had central heating of a sort, as an American had restored it and had lived there. We had a very good French couple to look after the household and a gardener. There was a fireplace in every room and our dogs, we had five boxers at the time, loved to doze before the fire, between swift sorties to investigate other smells from Madame Joffer’s kitchen. In true French fashion, the Joffers fed us enormously. First soup, then a soufflé, then meat and salad, and a fruit dessert. I’ve tried to find the recipe for Madame Joffer’s vegetable soup, the world over, but without success. It was a small house, but Reeves and I had separate bedrooms and there was a guest room.

  At this time Reeves said he was writing a book, which delighted me, so I built him a studio in one of the dépendances. Every day he would go faithfully “to work” in his studio. I realized he was always rather tight at lunch, but didn’t wonder too narrowly until I also realized that his studio was right over the wine and liquor cellar, which meant he only had to walk down a flight of stairs and bring up a jug whenever he wanted to. There was a further disappointment. I must say that in all of his talk of wanting to be a writer, I never saw one single line he’d ever written except his letters. Reeves’ temper became more violent, and one night I felt his hands around my neck and I knew he was going to choke me. I bit him on his thumb with such violence that the bloo
d spurted out and he let me go. The disappointment and the dreadfulness of those days might well have caused the last and final stroke from which I suffered.

  I left L’Ancien Presbytère for a few days to recover my balance and to visit my old friends, Richard and Ellen Wright, in Paris and while there, alone in the house, this final stroke happened. I was just going to the bathroom when I fell on the floor. At first it seemed to me that the left side of my body was dead. I could feel the skin clammy and cold with my right hand. I screamed, but no one answered, no one was there. I lay on the floor, helpless, from about eight in the evening all through the night until dawn, when finally my screams were heard. I was rushed to the American Hospital where my good friend Bob Myers took care of me. After a short stay, I was flown home and went to the Neurological Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. This was in 1947, and the effects of that stroke have never left me.

  Mother, bless her heart, felt that steak would cure my stroke, so I had steak for lunch, steak for dinner, and even sometimes steak for breakfast. Finally, a doctor explained to her that diet had nothing to do with my strokes.

  “It’s all so queer,” Mother said. “Just so queer. Before Carson left for Paris, she was running upstairs, she worked up in the attic room, and I could hear her bounding up and chasing down for lunch, and I’m sure too much activity—she would go for long walks also—was part of the cause of her illness, but then who knows? But then Paris, where I hear they have wine three times a day, might have contributed. But then, I don’t know.”

  Mother didn’t know and neither did the doctors at the Neurological Institute know.

  Finally, they discovered that I had a rheumatic heart condition as a child, and indeed too much running around put a strain on my heart so that it caused embolisms. Lying in the bed, completely paralyzed on my left side, unable to walk or use my left hand, I began to brood, and there were many times of nightmare glare.