Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  Later in the morning, Don and I went down to Klosters on foot, to enjoy the exercise and the intoxicating pre-pollution air. We took a walk with Salka before lunch—she is still surprisingly active—and watched people setting out on a langlauf, which is skiing on the more-or-less flat. (Peter has decreed that, when we next come to Klosters, I shall be sent on a langlauf while he teaches Don to ski. In Switzerland, if you can’t manage a langlauf you are ready for burial.)

  After lunch, it was time for our ascent. Although I had quite made up my mind to go through with this, I mentioned my proneness to vertigo, chiefly to give Peter the pleasure of feeling that he was putting me through a test of my manhood. No day in the life of a Hemingway devotee is complete without one. However, Peter decided that, as a concession to my weakness and advanced age, we should definitely go up the Gotschnagrad on the cable car rather than the ski lift to another peak. Even the cable car gave me a breathless moment but I really enjoyed its vast upward swoop and the exciting joggling with which it passes the towers. (The downward swoop, as I found later, is far more breathtaking, but by then my nerve was stronger.) The upper snowfield and its view over a vast havoc of mountaintops and gorges, and the whiteness of the snowshine—that was beautiful beyond description. And I was so full of joy to be seeing it with Don. We rejoiced together in the wonder of the light, after London’s dank dim days. The snow itself was so dry that you could plunge your leg into it and brush it off again without getting the least bit wet.

  Then Peter left us to return on the car while he skied down to Klosters. He makes this (I believe) quite dangerous run nearly every afternoon, by way of a short constitutional. He arrived at the inn which was our rendezvous only a few minutes after we did.

  While it was still light, Peter drove us up to Davos, an uninteresting hotel-village, with scenery inferior to that of Klosters and a heavy odor of Swissrichness. He pointed out to us the clinic which is the original of Mann’s Zauberberg sanitarium. I was disappointed because I’d imagined (quite arbitrarily) that it would be perched on the edge of a precipice with a tremendous view below and snow peaks above.

  We had supper at a restaurant which is halfway between Davos and Klosters, called the Landhaus Lantet, as the guests of Count and Countess de Chandon, champagne aristocracy.57 The Count had beautiful manners and a sulky blonde mistress named Susie—or was Susie the mistress of the Countess? Anyhow it was all highly Frog and civilized and suave and I had to fight off an acute attack of Francophobia all evening. Meanwhile, Peter chattered and Salka looked a bit dazed and deaf and Don, as always, did his charming social best to pretend to be entertained.

  February 13. Since the dollar was still on the skids in Europe, Peter decided that we’d better change our great bundles of remaining expense-account pounds back into dollars while they were still so cheap. So we followed him on a paperchase around the Klosters banks; it was necessary to visit several, no one bank had nearly enough. We stuffed the money into our pockets as we ran back and forth across the street—it was getting late. I imagined that people were laughing at us, mad Yanks in a rush to buy back their unwanted dough. Salka came to the station and said goodbye with the tears of an old woman whose every parting from friends may be her last. Actually I do hope to see her again, because we are both eager to visit Klosters in summertime.

  We started at 10:40, got to Zürich at 1:00, took off by Alitalia plane at 2:25, landed at Rome airport at 3:45. Luckily we didn’t have to drive through Rome to reach Gavin Lambert’s villa. It’s on a side street called the Via Lugari, off the Appian Way. One might say that it is in the Campagna—some sheep were wandering about in the drizzle—but that part of the Campagna is being encroached upon by buildings and billboards. No doubt it was more romantically isolated when it was new. Its rust-red walls, within a courtyard, still suggest the romantic melancholy of a nineteenth-century watercolor. Our driver (after treating us to a positively surrealistic display of recklessness) exclaimed on arrival: “It’s a paradise!” Gavin, emerging from the house in a caftan, seemed amused by his enthusiasm; and when we later complimented him on the elegance of the interior said, in his inimitable tone of campy surprise: “Oh, do you think so?” We didn’t really think so. The library had a certain old-world air of meditative calm, but most of the rooms seemed merely cold and empty. We were given a big naked bedroom with beds too small for it and a bathroom which was out of order. (There were two others which did work, however.) Of course, the wet weather did nothing to brighten one’s spirits. I got the impression that Gavin had stranded himself here, neither in nor properly out of the city, in a situation which—if you didn’t keep reminding yourself that this was Roman—was merely suburban and dull. Gavin must have felt as we did. Anyhow, he told us he was leaving very shortly to take another look at Tangier and perhaps find a place to stay there.

  Gavin lives with a very handsome big Yugoslav lover whose first name is George, or rather, Georges, since his only other language is French. Gavin is very proud of Georges and of their affair but, at the same time, characteristically, he kept giving us the impression that Georges is lazy, passive, fatalistic. Georges is having trouble with his passport; it must be renewed almost at once, otherwise he will have to return to Yugoslavia. Renewing the passport is one of the things he has been passive about.

  Georges had been to the dentist, so decided to stay at home. Gavin drove us into Rome to have supper at a restaurant, the Bolognese, on the Piazza del Pop[o]lo. This was an extraordinarily happy choice, because it was the restaurant Don most warmly remembered from our stay in Rome in 1955. He had often said to me since[,] how he looked forward to going back there and eating their delicious risotto with peas. So the risotto was ordered—but, alas, it was a huge disappointment.

  The inner city wasn’t a disappointment, what we saw of it— fantastic glimpses of buildings and columns and arches in all their authority of fame and history. At night they are as improbable as designs for a vast imaginary theater which, you think, could never actually be constructed. But the traffic makes any drive miserable. Seeing all those cars converge from a relatively broad street into one of the narrow alleys, you know in advance what a madden-ingly long wait is in store for you. The Italians must have a totally different attitude to this kind of frustration; otherwise they would all ride bicycles or horses or reintroduce sedan chairs.

  February 14. It rained in the morning but stopped later. We drove into Rome with Gavin. Gore Vidal had invited us to lunch. We went up to his apartment first, for drinks. Howard Aust[e]n was there too, amidst dogs. They showed us pictures of a spectacular hillside villa they have just bought at Ravello. Gore talked about his nearly finished historical novel; the central character is Aaron Burr. Gore claimed to have “debunked our founding fathers”; he also indulged in the usual anti-Capote anecdotes. He took us to lunch at Passetto’s, unshowy but very grand. When I told him that today was Don’s and my twentieth anniversary, he ordered Dom Pérignon. Afterwards, he showed us the inside of the nearby Pantheon, which, oddly enough, Don and I neglected to visit in 1955. It really is overwhelming. Don thought it the most impressive building he had ever seen in his life. Then Gavin left us and we wandered around the streets, windowshopping. We had been into Bulgari’s that morning, trying to find a chain like the one Truman Capote had bought there, a few years earlier. They told us that they no longer make that kind. But we returned in the afternoon and asked to be shown bracelets, and finally chose one which both of us liked enormously—pale gold with heavy links which looked rather like the links of a bicycle chain,. When it was time for supper, we met Gavin and Georges at Nino’s. Georges and I managed to converse in French. . . . I have written all this down with deliberate flatness, not knowing how to convey the day’s essential quality; it was a strangely joyful anniversary, simply because we were both of us happy that we had met each other and that we were still together.

  February 15. We left Rome by Alitalia plane at 9:05 a.m. On the way to the airport, I had noticed a Russian
Aeroflot poster, announcing that you could fly from Rome to Moscow and thence across Siberia to Tokyo, in fifteen hours. That would also be approximately the time span of our flight today. Crossing the Alps, we got a perfect view of the Matterhorn; I had never seen it before. We arrived in London at 10:20 a.m, where we collected our baggage and took off by Pan Am plane at 1:20. We got to Los Angeles at 4:10 p.m, Pacific Time. The flight was one of the most boring I’ve known. Judge Roy Bean on the screen. Having given up our first-class tickets in order to pay for the Klosters–Rome side trip, we had to endure tourist class and its swarming children. And never has the Canadian wilderness looked more dreary tha[n] it did that afternoon. I wish it could at least have been Siberia, to make a bit of a change.

  As a postscript to this record, here is Richard’s comment on my visit to Wyberslegh, in a letter I received about two weeks after my return home:

  Your visit was terribly short but much better than nothing, and if it wasn’t perhaps quite all it could have been it was entirely my fault, and it shan’t happen again. Sometimes I think when it is a case of one’s nearest and dearest who one only sees occasionally one is apt to feel a little nervous, specially when they are famous. It was very nice of you to travel up to Stockport to see me. . . .

  No. 63 does seem ideally planned, don’t you think, as regards the central heating, there is something positively exotic about it. But it makes me feel very remiss that poor Mum never enjoyed such luxury at Wyberslegh. . . . Of course No. 63 hasn’t the charm of Wyberslegh and it would be ridiculous to compare them—so near and yet so far apart. However it has got a lot of individuality for a brand new residence, don’t you think. M. would have liked it I think somewhere else but as a modern dwelling so close to Wyberslegh, never.

  February 23. Last night we went to a farewell party given by the Laughlins. They have already sold their Bel Air house and are going to live in France. Leslie looked so charming, in a very feminine flouncy soft grey dress. She told Don, “I thought of you when I put it on,” meaning that she knew he’d like it, which he did.

  Jack and Jim were there; Jim has now begun rehearsals of Streetcar. He is very pleased with Voight and Faye Dunaway58 but worried about the play and about whether Tennessee will like his direction. David Hockney was there too—without Celia, with whom he’s now living in a house at Malibu; she had decided to spend the evening at home. I had a talk alone with him out on the terrace, from which I gathered that David (apparently) isn’t having sex with Celia and that (certainly) he is still carrying a torch for Peter. I had to be careful not to say too much about our meeting with Eric Boman; David is very jealous of him.

  The day before yesterday (21st) there was an earthquake centered near Oxnard; 5.75 on the Richter Scale. When it happened, at 6:46 in the morning, Don and I were both in the front bathroom weighing ourselves. (I seem to have lost some of the extra weight I am sure I was carrying while I was in England; am now down to around 150.) At first there was the usual mild unalarming jarring. Then, suddenly, the house seemed to be rocking about on a bed of tapioca pudding; it was the same horrid feeling we’d had during the 1971 quake, though less intense. Don said, “Oh dear—”

  Later that day, I went up to Vedanta Place and talked to Vidyatmananda, who had been staying at the monastery during his short visit to Los Angeles. (He left yesterday, to go back to Gretz, after a stopover in Boston.) It was seven years since we’d last met. He didn’t look any older, only heavier and much healthier; he is nearly sixty. The healthy look was no doubt due to farmwork. They have what he describes as a commune there, including a guest-house for people wanting to make a retreat and a fully functioning farm. The guests all have to pitch in and help milk cows, etc. And there are several young brahmacharis of various nationalities; some of them cute, no doubt. I could just see Vidya bustling around, supervising everything. (Larry Holt’s friend Tom had described him as “regal.” Don, who saw him later in the evening, and who is quite favorably disposed toward him, nevertheless thought that he made a bad first impression; prissy, sour and unctuous. I noticed that his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace whenever he spoke disapprovingly (but with an evident obsessive interest) about sexy films, books, etc.)

  Still and all, I felt a great deal of affection throughout our talk, on both sides. He made a point of speaking of himself to me as Prema, not Vidya—seemingly because he wanted to get back to the atmosphere of our earlier relationship. On the whole, he appears to be happy at Gretz, although he is still having hard work with the French language. He still writes out his lectures in French, then gets someone to correct the French, then memorizes it. He said he had no plans to return to the States. He would rather die in India than here. He described, with obvious satisfaction, a recent visit to India during which he had had a red-carpet welcome everywhere—as if contrasting this with his rejection by the Los Angeles and Chicago centers.

  He asked me if I regretted growing older, admitting that he did. And he told me that he thought I was the luckiest person he had ever known—there was a slight hint of reproof in this remark, I thought.

  Swami was visibly upset by Vidya’s presence in the house. And he was eager to be told exactly what we had talked about; I suppose he expected that Vidya would have said something against him or the Hollywood Center as a whole. Swami even brought up the old accusation that Vidya had been indirectly responsible for giving him the heart attack which he had had soon after hearing the news that Vidya had been conspiring with Gambhirananda in Belur Math, to undermine his influence and take away his authority to give sannyas to American nuns!

  His final interview with Vidya had apparently been quite friendly. Vidya had asked Swami if he was still angry and Swami had replied that, “The guru in me was never angry with you, only the man—if the guru had been angry, then nothing in the three worlds could have saved you.” This reply startled and shocked me for a moment, until Swami explained that “the guru in me” wasn’t himself at all, it was Satchitananda.59 He added, “I never feel that it is I who am initiating a disciple, it is The Lord.”

  During the interview, he had discovered that Vidya wasn’t repeating the mantras which he had been given on taking sannyas; he ought to have been using them every day. Vidya had to confess that he couldn’t remember them. He had written them down and put the paper away in a box. Swami told him that this was like buying airplane tickets and then locking them up instead of using them to go flying. So he coached Vidya in the mantras, and this had made him dizzy.

  Later, not referring to Vidya, he said that his body had become “very subtle” and that it therefore always made him dizzy to be with people who were insincere and untruthful.

  After supper, when we were about to leave Swami’s room for the reading in the temple, Swami remained sitting in his chair instead of getting up and letting Krishna help him on with his coat. Then he roused himself, saying, “I was daydreaming.” I asked him what he had been thinking about. “About Maharaj—that’s my daydreaming.”

  He also remarked about Vidya that his face showed he had suffered a great deal.

  Mother Hubble60 died at last, a few days ago, aged 102.

  Robin French has heard from Ken Tynan, sending us his love and saying how much he likes our play and deeply regretting that he can’t get his colleagues on the National Theatre board interested in it.

  Since getting back from Europe, I’ve had a bad cold; now it has turned into a cough.

  March 4. Beautiful weather but am feeling depressed. Chiefly because Don has had ulcerlike pains for the past three weeks, if not more. He went to Allen, who seemed unimpressed. Now he says he wants to find another doctor, one he can feel more at ease with. We have heard of someone, through Evelyn Hooker, but Don still hesitates to go, because he doesn’t want to be x-rayed. Besides this, he is still much worried about his forthcoming show. How will he ever get people to come to the opening party? Shall he show paintings as well as drawings? He thinks not. I think yes. And then, last night, having supper at Nellie
Carroll’s, Michael Laughlin held forth, as he frequently does, on the probability of galloping inflation. He himself is about to take off for France to join Leslie forever, and he advises us all to take our money and put it into Swiss francs and a Swiss bank. This kind of talk makes us both nervous, Don particularly.

  Another reason for depression is that the Screen Writers are almost certainly going to declare a strike against the studios, when they meet tomorrow evening, and this will mean that we shall have to picket, I don’t know how often. Jim Bridges, being a “hyphenate,” a writer-director, has been threatened with exclusion from his own cutting room if the strike comes; the studio says that someone else will finish the work on The Paper Chase. Meanwhile, he is in a state of exhaustion because of long gabby rehearsals with the Streetcar company. He claims that Jon Voight talked for four hours yesterday without stopping. We both think Jim overplays his role of exhausted artist, however. Yesterday, just before supper started, he left the table to lie down—and then let Nellie feed him.

  On the other side of the picture, such a happy glimpse of Jim Gates and Abedha (Tony Eckstein) cooking something for the Shiva Ratri celebration, the day before yesterday. They were beaming with joy. How that kind of happiness gladdens my heart. I had a nice long visit with Swami too, much of it in silence; me in Swami’s presence, Swami in Maharaj’s. No depression can exist in that atmosphere, no anxiety, no sorrow.

  March 8. On March 5, the sun set behind the headland for the first time. On March 6, the writers’ strike was declared.61 We went to the vespers of the Ramakrishna puja. Never have I felt less spiritual. Swami was dizzy and weak; he had initiated someone that morning. But I felt his affection for Don, when we went to see him afterwards.

  Yesterday, Don had to picket Universal Studios. But, luckily, the woman in charge of his picketing group owned one of his drawings and knew all about him, and she said that she didn’t feel he need do any more picketing, since screenwriting wasn’t his real profession. So we’re hoping that she will be able to persuade the strike committee to agree with her. As for me, I’ll have to wait until I’m called and then figure out what the best policy is for strike dodging. Picketing is a really grim stint—three hours on end!