An extract from a letter I got early this month, asking me to subscribe to an organization called Theater in the Street. How can such a truly noble cause be made to sound so funny? “Millions of dollars are being spent to find a solution to the strife in our cities. Yet it costs only three dollars to bring an evening of live entertainment to a child in a ghetto street. Instead of a night shattered by sounds of breaking glass, sirens and gunshots, this child could hear the plays of Molière and Chekhov.”
March 29. On the morning of the 26th, when we got out of bed, and went out on the deck, there lay a beautiful four-masted schooner at anchor in the bay. Her flag (seen through the binoculars) looked foreign but you couldn’t be sure, it was flapping about. Don said, “At last—our ship’s come in!”
About an hour later the phone rang and it was Robin French, to say that a man named Sidney Beckerman865 was about to buy the film rights of Cabaret for Tony Harvey to direct and that they wanted me to work on it and quite agreed to my having Don as a collaborator!
So now plans are altered or rather, dissolved. Don won’t at any rate leave until Tony Harvey goes back to England, so we can talk about the film.
At present the whole thing seems too good to be true, because Tony is charming and our sort of person and he wants to get right away from the stage musical and shoot the picture on location in Germany. The only question is, will Beckerman back out at the last moment as Cinerama did? He must surely know about this copyright business,866 so we hope he won’t suddenly raise that as an excuse.
(Yesterday all day long and today until a couple of hours ago, there was a thick sea-fog; now the schooner has gone.)
Other good news: it looks as if our play will get a tryout at the Mark Taper, maybe in May. Ed Parone likes it very much. He wanted to direct it himself but Jim thinks he will give way about this. Also despite the bad notices, Black Girl is doing quite good business and the audiences are very enthusiastic.
Don is painting well and life with him is at its best. And Swami, when I saw him yesterday, was absolutely radiant. He filled me with joy.
April 5. Have just finished dusting my desk as a symbolic preparation for Easter tomorrow and because the desk was so dirty.
The Cabaret deal is still up in the air. Tony has gone off to San Francisco for the weekend and Mr. Beckerman’s lawyers are still wrangling with Hal Prince over the number of songs which the musical will have to have in it. Also, we are not quite sure that Beckerman loves us or that Tony loves us either—enough, that is, to go to bat for us with Beckerman.
Forgot to mention that we went to see The Lion in Winter and really quite hated it. The picture stank literally; that is, the theater did; someone had thrown a stink bomb into it—a terrorist, it is believed, from the strikers against the Herald-Examiner; a protest because the film was advertised in the Herald-Examiner. Our clothes stank of it when we came out and indeed I had the same pants on when we went to see Tony Harvey next morning and they didn’t lose the smell until I’d sat in the hot sun on his patio.
The earthquake scare is still very much on. Good Friday passed without incident—although there was quite a strong quake out at sea off the Mexican coast, which was felt on shore. The Los Angeles Times had a headline: Mystics shaken up—not State—the “mystics” being the people who had foretold the quake would be on the 4th. But actually the whole month will have to go by before the various dates set have all been proved false.
April 6. We heard this morning that Rex Evans died last Thursday, of a heart attack. One of the last things he did was to send a notice to the Los Angeles Times about Don’s drawing of Wystan being bought by the National Portrait Gallery. It was in the Calendar, last week. Don didn’t know this until he spoke to Jim Weatherford867 this morning. I talked to Jim too. He says he’s going to keep the gallery on, at least for the time being. I had the impression that it hasn’t hit him yet. They were together twenty years.
On the 3rd we took Vera Stravinsky and Bob to see Black Girl. Igor of course couldn’t come. And yet they are planning on taking him to New York soon! And Bob says he is composing all the time. I find it very disconcerting, being with him now, and I realize how much I used to depend on him in conversation. Now he is mostly silent, and stares at me with just a faint suggestion of suspicion. And I don’t know what to say.
Bob and Vera told us how Mirandi Levy always used to call Igor “Pussycat” and how he’d always disliked it, and how this time, just as she was about to leave for Europe, she called him Pussycat and he said sharply, “Don’t call me that!” and she was terribly shocked and asked, “What am I to call you?” And Igor said, “Either Maestro or Mr. Stravinsky.” Vera had taken Igor to task for this later and he had been sorry, but it was awfully good for Mirandi, just the same.
Today has been cold and windy but beautiful, after the rain last night. To celebrate Easter, I have: tried to make a verse translation of an extraordinarily uninspiring poem written by Swamiji in Sanskrit (this for Swami, of course), worked on Kathleen and Frank, written a letter to a professor named Horst Jarka about an essay he did on “British Writers and the Austria of the Thirties” (this means Stephen, John Lehmann and me), cut my corns (and incidentally cut my leg with the razor blade) and sewn a button on the cuff of my green shirt. Had intended to restart the isometric exercises and write to tell Robin Maugham no, no, no, I will not and cannot see a film in his treatment of The Second Window.868 But no time for this.
When I’m reading aloud in the temple I find myself (after I’ve finished reading and Swami is answering questions) looking from him to the shrine and back again to him and sort of creating a prayer triangle: calling upon them both to make me love God. It is very exciting and real, calling silently on Swami for his help in the presence of the shrine. Because his whole spiritual capital is invested right there, and Maharaj is there and so how can Swami refuse? I feel I am blackmailing him, in a good way. But why can’t I ever tell him this?
April 7. This morning, in the middle of breakfast, there was a sudden nervous twinge in the palm of my hand and I touched the place with the fingers of my other hand, and there was a lump. It is down in the fleshy part of the palm of my left hand, right below the little finger and in line with the cyst on its middle joint. My first reaction was a sick panic, as though I’d been bitten by a snake. Mustn’t this mean that the cyst is malignant and that the malignancy is spreading? What was shocking was its being so suddenly and instantaneously there. (Of course I may well not have noticed it before; it was the twinge which informed me.) Dr. Allen isn’t in his office today; must wait till tomorrow. Now of course I begin to think more calmly and sensibly. If Dr. Allen wasn’t disturbed by the first cyst, how can this one be something serious? But what I hate is the waiting, and the X rays, tests, etc. Don, as always on such occasions, is an angel of sweetness—which in a way makes the situation more painful, because I can see that he’s a bit alarmed, too.
We have just been to see Gerald. Today he hardly spoke at all and regarded us with a stare, as though dazed. Michael rattled on about Atlantis, the Abominable Snowman; topics in books they are listening to.
April 10. Dr. Allen said he thought the lump in my palm is the beginning of a Dupuytren’s Contracture; it isn’t malignant and can be treated by X rays or surgery. He doesn’t think it’s connected with the cyst. I’m to go to a hand surgeon (or whatever you call them) and have it examined. Hands, says Allen, are “like watches,” very complicated, and hand surgery is far more delicate than heart surgery.
Yesterday evening, Swami asked me about a quotation from All’s Well That Ends Well (Act I, Scene iii, 230–33):
Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.
Swami is convinced that this refers to the Gayatri mantra: “May we meditate on the effulgent Light of him who is worshipful . . . etc.”869 Because the Sanskrit word used also means the sun. I find i
t very hard to believe that Shakespeare knew about this, but will look it up.
April 12. Poor Jo, she was all set to go to Rio yesterday—actually it was I who suggested it, and it was a good idea. Jo was thrilled and she arranged it all, including getting Alice Gowland to go with her. And then, on the evening of the 10th, Alice called the trip off because of some work she has to do!
Dorothy came to clean house yesterday and asked about Jo. Dorothy had had a very sinister dream about her: Dorothy was down in Coronado—we lived down there and she had been working for us and was just coming away from our house, and crossing by a bridge over a river which ran out to the ocean. The river was in flood and obviously very dangerous. Just as Dorothy reached the middle of the bridge, Jo came floating down the river clinging desperately to a large log. She was being washed out to sea. Dorothy yelled for us to come and help but she couldn’t make us hear.
An expression of Dorothy’s I never heard before: “I was up late watching television last night, oh I was real late, I sat there till they’d tied up the last dog.”
Jim has gone to join Jack in New York, to be there when Jack’s opera is tried out for the Met. So no news about a possible performance of our play at the Mark Taper. And no word from Tony Harvey about the Cabaret film. So Don has decided to leave on the 15th and just come back early if he has to. When he gets there, he can go and stay at the Harewoods’ place in the country and draw them while he’s in the house, Buckle says. [Don’s friend] is back from Peru. As for Tony Richardson and Australia, we’ve heard nothing more.
Today I finished chapter 6 of Kathleen and Frank—more than thirty-five days to a chapter!
April 20. Don left for England at noon on the 17th. When we woke up that morning he said, “Pan Am will have the taking of me up!” (He loves Melville’s “Billy in the Darbies.”)870 On the way to the airport, he said, “If anything happens, you’ll know I have my beads with me all the time.”
I had supper that night with Jim Bridges. He described the drastic scenes of emotion in New York between Virgil Thomson and Jack, after the opera had been successfully auditioned for the Met. Virgil told Jack, “You’ve given me a live baby.” They both wept. Virgil also told Jack that he is a great poet. Jim says he’s never jealous of Jack’s success.
On the 18th, I had a visit from a wonderful pair, they seemed more like angels or Venusians than eighteen-year-old Californians: Peter Schneider and Jim Gates. Peter is little, curly-headed and probably Jewish. He’s a magician, really performs at parties and on the stage; he has a card: “Esmereldo the Mediocre Magician.” He said, “I’m making magic now.” Jim is tall and skinny and blond, with a thin blond mustache; he studies Vedanta and has been up to see Swami. When I showed him the D.H. Lawrence candlestick871 they bowed down before it, mockingly. They give imitations of me, Alan Watts and others in imaginary dialogues. One could hardly call them fans; their admiration seems boundless but the axe is hanging over your head every instant and they are watching you like doctors. Peter’s father is a psychologist. Peter said, “Up to a few years ago he was my best friend, but I can’t stand his arrogance any more,” and Jim agreed, “Yes, he’s the most arrogant man I ever met.” Nevertheless, they are both staying with him, and I talked to him on the phone as he was going to drive them over to see me and wanted directions. He told me, “I’m a colleague of yours”; he teaches at Cal. State.
Impossible to decide if they are “lovers.” The word seems impertinent, anyhow. Their relationship, like everything else about them, seems extraterrestrial. I want to go and watch Peter perform, at some hippie theater in Venice, next Saturday. Then maybe I’ll see his father.
Saw Swami yesterday. He told me how Krishna said that he gave liberation easily but was niggardly about giving devotion. This seemed like a telepathic answer to me, for I’ve felt more and more dull and dead when I try to meditate. I always ask for devotion and never feel a spark of it. And yet—it’s so strange, but I am not in the least bothered by this; because then I think, I’ve got Swami, and how can anything really bad happen to me as long as I’m under his protection? I know it can’t. Here, in this life, everything seems fogged in solid; but when I think of life after death I suddenly realize that I really do have faith, a great deal of it!
Supper with Chris Wood. He told me that Paul Sorel has suddenly become absorbed in teaching a mentally retarded child how to read. It makes him so happy, Chris says, that the boy’s face lights up whenever he comes into the room.
May 1. Well, the Cabaret film is on. We stand to win at least ten thousand dollars, for a treatment; then, if that’s accepted, ninety thousand for the screenplay; then, if the picture is made, a bonus of twenty-five thousand if we’re the sole credited authors and of ten thousand if we share the credit!
Tony Harvey is going away on Tuesday, leaving us unbugged, thank God, to work on the treatment. Don will either return next Tuesday or Thursday.
Yesterday I saw the hand doctor, Dr. Ashworth; he says it is a contracture and that the “cyst” (which isn’t one) is part of it. These conditions are found chiefly among northern races, British and Scandanavian, never in Asia. They are associated with epilepsy and diabetes in some cases but no link has been discovered. They are never malignant. If mine gets worse he’ll operate and will be able to cure it; but often they arrest themselves for years. Many patients, he says, don’t come in until their hands are half clenched! The clinic looked more like a palmist’s, with these doctors sitting and gazing into the outspread hands of their patients.
Peter Schneider and Jim Gates came up to Vedanta Place last night and I drove them back. Peter was a bit suspicious and hostile; Jim was beaming with devotion for Swami. But they really both are sweet and so amusing. They now behave as if they had known me for years. They only became distant and embarrassed when we ran into Peter’s father while getting something to eat afterwards. He and I talked father talk, but I kept catching Jim’s eye. The boys told me that they feel a difference between themselves and other people of their age because they no longer feel “cool,” that is, detached, objectively amused. At their house on the Sherman Canal there is a shed where they meditate; at least Jim does.
May 5. It’s bitterly cold and Doug Walsh872 has never shown up to fix the electric control on the heater, so am freezing. Dorothy is sick and a much younger friend of hers, Mrs. Marie Jackson has come over to clean the house; she seems very nice. Am rather worried about Dorothy; on the phone she sounded so depressed and even a bit scared, as if she didn’t expect to get better. However she cheered up when we talked about Jo. I told her that Jo’s Siamese has had six kittens and how Jo spends hours watching the cat feeding them. (Bill Brown told me how Jo had said to the cat in his presence: “You’re the only thing I love in the whole world!” Which Bill had taken a bit personally, after all he and Paul have done to make her feel wanted!) So Dorothy said, “It sort of takes the place of that other”; I loved Ben being referred to as “that other.” And then I told her [I think] that Jo is still hoping to get Ben back. Dorothy said that she didn’t believe Ben would ever go back to Jo, because it wasn’t really Dee who had taken Ben away from Jo, he must have wanted to leave her anyway. “He must have been thinking far back how he could dump her.”
Have just seen Gerald. He had another stroke about two weeks ago and has now been fitted with a catheter. Michael says this is really a good thing because Gerald doesn’t wake up (and thus doesn’t wake Michael up) in the night to pee. Gerald was cheerful and quite articulate; we talked a lot about volcanoes.
(Which reminds me that there was an earthquake in California in April. It happened on April 29, during the afternoon, on the north shore of the Salton Sea. A lot of windows were broken in Indio. The shock was quite considerable (six on the Richter Scale, I think) and it was felt in Las Vegas; and the girls in the French office in Beverly Hills were quite scared, the building rocked so. The extraordinary thing is, I didn’t feel it at all down here; I had just come in from jogging on San Vicente with
Jim Bridges.)
Haven’t seen Peter Schneider and Jim Gates since I took them to Black Girl on May 1. I suppose they won’t call me, they are waiting for me to call them. And now I’m embarrassed to because I want to; I would love to see them. There is something strangely delightful in being with them. I find I haven’t recorded our visit to the so-called theater in Venice, The Walrus. It’s really a dance hall, part of what must once have been a very big apartment in an old building in the hippie section of Washington Boulevard. All sorts of people come, all ages, black and white, and they dance and there is a light show. Everybody dances, it seems, in the way he or she feels; there is no question of “knowing how to” and in this sense it is like the kingdom of heaven, everyone is equal and happy. Quite young boys flutter around like moths, flickering their arms; and old women do a sort of hula; and young couples perform various rituals. Cop cars are cruising below and two narcotics squad plainclothesmen came upstairs and mingled with the dancers; they looked disarmingly benevolent. But Peter didn’t perform after all. He felt the atmosphere wasn’t right for his magic, the audience wasn’t in the mood for it. And I think his instinct was correct. Anyhow we hung around there for about four hours, and Jim gave me a letter, saying, “We know so much about you, I think you should know something about me.” From the letter I infer that Peter is definitely not queer and that Jim isn’t in love with him. But the funny thing is, I haven’t had one moment alone with Jim since then to ask him all the questions which arise from the letter. The evening was most enjoyable (though Peter was sulky and morose) as far as I was concerned—this was on April 26. One thing which Peter and Jim said to me that night I remember because it flattered me: “You’re not like a writer.” They meant that I seemed to them to have a life apart from writing. Their little house is in a part of Venice I’ve never visited before, with very steeply arched bridges over the canals, which are surprisingly clean and have ducks swimming on them. At the back of their lot, near the canal bank, is the shed where they meditate; it is much tidier and cleaner than their house, with mats spread on the floor and a little shrine with a picture of Ramakrishna. They have a girlfriend whom they jokingly decided to both of them marry, calling themselves “Schnates.” Her name is Allyn [Nelson], she was there when I visited them. I thought she was pregnant but it turned out that she just had a huge stomach. The boys thought this wildly funny when I told them.