[...]
This morning I arrived at Philadelphia at 10 — and was once again driven through lovely countryside on the way to the University. Memories of you abound here. I saw Bryn Mawr, that girls’ college where you went, and Coindreau450 and Seizener spoke to me about you — it’s odd finding oneself on your trail like this. I feel I’m on the home slope now, but I’ll have two marvellous weeks at N.Y., I think. I’ll have no regrets at leaving, in a sense, since this journey has more or less worn itself out. The main thing is to come back here, and now I know that’s going to happen, I’m thinking about seeing you again, my love, which overwhelms me. Write to me quickly that you’re expecting me. And do keep me my fortnight just for me. I kiss you with all my love.
Your Beaver
Hotel Brevoort
Fifth Av. at Eighth Street
New York 3
Wednesday [30th April 1947]
My love, my sweet little one
How happy I’ve been feeling since Monday. There was a long letter from you, all tender, and with a glow of warmth I felt how I’d soon be back with you. There’s a place in your heart waiting for me in Paris, and that makes leaving easy — even delightful. So it’s true, my love, in ten days you’ll be there, I’ll touch you, I’ll speak to you — I’m in raptures. You see, more than the Liberation, more than my journey to New York, it’s you every time who are the most astonishing experience in my life, and the strongest and the deepest and the truest. My love, I’m so happy to feel you close at hand that it radiates across New York. This imminent departure doesn’t destroy N.Y. — quite the contrary. Never has N.Y. seemed so marvellous to me, and the fact of leaving it is a sufficient occupation, giving full meaning to every walk and every look. Add that the spring is warm and tender, and that to cap it all I’m really raking in the dollars and am beginning to buy some lovely things. The new circumstance is that since Monday, instead of the tormented nights I always used to have, I’ve been sleeping like an angel, with that sense of justification that your presence gives me.
When did I last write? From Philadelphia, I think. I gave my lecture there on Thursday evening, then caught a train at about 11. I fell asleep at once and by 8 in the morning was in Boston. The same charming spinster lady who’d taken me round a week earlier was waiting for me with a car, and she took me for a big trip northwards to Cape Ann, Marblehead, Rockport and lots of old New England villages. She was as joyful as a child and I too was very happy. Then I went back to the hotel, to work on an article called ‘An Existentialist Looks at America’ for the N.Y. Times. It’s terribly hard on them — but so what? I think the country has grown worse over the past year and the atmosphere’s becoming unbreathable — if I stayed I’d become a Communist. The students from Harvard and Yale speak of war with Russia in resigned, positive tones that send a chill down your spine. I saw them on the Saturday, First, I finished off the article in the morning. Then lunch at the Alliance Française, with the old ladies you know and that imbecile Benouville, the dreadful Moringe, and Chambon the Boston consul, who by some miracle is a decent man, utterly disappointed — as a Catholic — by American Catholicism. Lecture: I spoke about you, which I enjoyed. Cocktail party with some students. Dinner at Gurvitch’s — I like him.451 He was in seventh heaven at being able to give vent to a hatred of 7 years’ standing, and told me shattering stories about American anti-Semitism. At 10 a group of students came to collect me and we went out drinking in the evil haunts of Boston (!! as my mother would say) till 3 in the morning. That’s when I got the creeps. There’s a real ‘red scare’, and people no longer dare to be liberal because they get labelled as Communists. ‘We have to get business jobs’, they explained to me, ‘and if we’re suspected of being reds, that’s bad for us. What can we do?’ Posed in this way, the question obviously has no solution. The most depressing part of it is that they were well-intentioned kids. The next day in the morning I caught the plane, which bounced me about dreadfully all the way to N.Y. What a joy to see N.Y. again! I’m also savouring my solitude, since it was really agreeable having S., but what freedom to find myself alone after these past two months of almost constant presence!
[...]
I’m going to spend another ten good days. First, between now and Sunday I’m finishing off my articles. After that it will be glorious freedom. And then you, my love. Cable to the Brevoort, to let me know where you’ll be meeting me. I advise the Louisiane. Fix up a good return for me. I love you so much, o yourself, my love.
Your happy Beaver
[New York]
Thursday 8 May [1947]
My love
I was really shattered when I found your cable. It seems so close — you, and Paris — and I could have seen you on Sunday. Now I’ll have to wait another week. But it’s you who’ve requested it. I found the idea of returning earlier than you wanted so unbearable, that on Saturday it made me quite ill when I couldn’t exchange my seat. But on Monday I grovelled to everybody so successfully that by Tuesday it had all been fixed. So I’ll be at the Gare des Invalides at about 10.30 on Sunday 18th. Send another cable to confirm. It made me ill because, of course, it’s a wrench for me too to be returning, and I really do want to feel completely calm and free of problems in Paris, at least during the first days. I beg of you, my love, fix everything nicely so that we can be on our own for a long time, and nothing spoils the happiness of’being back with you. I can’t write to you properly, because I’ve been too overwrought for the past week. I’ve been sleeping 4 hours a night, not eating, and drinking like a fish. All the same, I’m going to try and provide you with the dry bones of a diary, since I know that it will come to life for you. I last wrote on Wednesday, I think.
That evening, an inept evening out with Millie and the Days, who give me the creeps, in an avant-garde night club with hot jazz designed for whites, which I can no longer stand because of all it implies in terms of blacks and whites. On Thursday I made a recording and worked on some articles. In the evening, Bernie Wolfe452 took me to smoke marijuana in the apartment of a marvellous black dancer, with a party of homosexuals and lesbians. They were all ‘high’, as they say, and I was told that with one cigarette I would be too; but I smoked six, inhaling all the smoke, without anything happening. In a fury I drank more than half a bottle of whisky, which didn’t make me drunk but certainly made me merry. I must say their eyes were popping out of their heads. Certainly, too, I found myself at 4 in the morning in front of the hotel engaged in kissing B. W. with all the pathos of my imminent departure. And the pathos was still there when I woke up, because I care for him a lot. I whiled away Friday working on urgent articles. I saw Bernie again at 5, and spent the evening with the people from Partisan Review, who didn’t leave me until 2. It was Saturday morning and a dark rainy day when I had your letter and a dreadful ‘breakdown’, which kept me in tears all day — an anguish I just couldn’t manage to cast off. I went to see Open City453 — which is a beautiful film — but that didn’t help me. I arrived all puffy-eyed at Charley Harrison’s place,454 where he’d cooked me a marvellous dinner. There was Bernie and Richard Wright and their wives. They were all angelic to me and R. Wright was marvellous — as he can be when he really relaxes, which hardly ever happens. I like him more and more: he’s as surprising as Genet, in his own way. In short, we went to see dawn break over the East River and I went to bed at 8 in the morning. I dawdled around in bed — and after that in Greenwich Village, which won my heart on that damp Sunday afternoon with children playing ball in the streets. I feel as much at home here as at St-Germain-des-Prés: you meet people in the street, pay neighbourly calls, stroll about, sit in Washington Square to read or watch — it’s incredibly pleasing. I drank an insipid cup of tea with students and teachers from Columbia, then an evening with Miró and the Certes couple at Gerassi’s place, where he put me in a frightful rage by reproaching me in the name of N.Y. ‘liberals’ with keeping company only with Trotskyists — which is absurd seeing that neither Wright nor Wolfe
nor anybody else is a Trotskyist, they’re simply not Stalinists. Even so, again went to bed at past 2 o’clock against a background of whisky. On Monday I had a nice lunch with the Wrights, then worked; after that, lecture in English to 600 people, followed’ by a discussion. Then at 11 Bernie W., and a long night lasting till 5 in a charming Greenwich bar with ‘No Music’ — but with whisky. He told me about his life in Mexico, during the three years when he was Trotsky’s secretary, and about his whole youth as a Jewish kid — it fascinated me, I felt I was really reaching America.
On Tuesday I left by train and bus to visit the Hares. I spent a charming, restful evening with Jacqueline, who was terribly nice and whom I really like. At last I slept. At 11 in the morning the Sweeneys and Duchamp turned up in a car stinking of gasolene. We had lunch at Tanguy’s place,455 then took tea with an old lady who owns The Bride Stripped Bare . . .’456 At 7 I met up with Bernie W., who was taking me to dinner at the house of some homosexuals from Kiev, with Harold Rosenberg457 who’s a very intelligent guy, an art critic and former Marxist, with whom I argued about politics and philosophy till I was half-dead from exhaustion and exasperation (it’s hateful in English) — the situation here really does get you down. After that, in an attempt to raise my spirits again, I stayed on in a Greenwich bar with B.W. till 4 in the morning. We continued the discussion amiably, but it was going round in circles all the same. This morning, an avalanche of telephone calls. At 1 I went with B.W. and his girl to see some very interesting ballet rehearsals, then I did some shopping and finished off my last article. In half an hour I’m having dinner with Wright and the local equivalent of our Société des Gens de Lettres,458 then I’m speaking at their meeting. Tomorrow: evening out in Harlem with Wright, Wolfe and their wives. On Saturday I’m leaving by plane for Chicago for three days, to provide me with a change of mood. The guy I liked there459 has been entreating me for two months to go back, and I think it’ll be nice. Then I’ll return for three days and leave on the Saturday. There. What’s new is that for the first time I feel myself in America, I belong — because of the neighbourhood where I’m living, and the people to whom I’ve become close. Oh, I hate this country, and like the people who suffer from it, and would be appalled if I had to stay here — yet leaving it is having a strange impression on me. I’ve told you all this in a higgledy-piggledy way. Overall, of course, as you realize, I’m very happy. But so wrought up that once, when I was sleeping dreamlessly and relaxed and with a sense of peace, it woke me up in astonishment and almost in fear. My love, I know I’ll be happy this Sunday when I see you again. I love you.
Your Beaver
I’m rolling in money and have already bought a magnificent white coat.
Tell that swine Bost I’m ridiculously glad to be seeing him again, and think about him far more than he deserves.
1948
Hotel Colon
Merida — Yucatan — Mexico
Thursday 27 May [1948]
Write from now on to
Guatemala, Poste Restante460
My dear little soul, my heart. It was fantastic, you know, leaving New Orleans yesterday at 8 and disembarking at noon in the heart of Merida: you really do leap straight from one world into another.
[...]
Now it’s 1 and I’m off to lunch. At 4 we’re leaving in a tourist car for Chichen-Itza, which is an old, dead Maya town which looks astounding from photos: pyramids, tombs, temples. We’ll stay a day or two. Then more ruins, a bull fight here on Sunday, and by next Wednesday I think we’ll have seen Yucatan (what can be seen, since it’s very hard to visit) and we’ll go on to Guatemala, 2 hours by air.
I’m in a real muddle here with all these languages. I try Spanish, which I remember a bit, but then when I talk to A. I lapse into French. Or, on the contrary, feeling I ought to be talking to him in an exotic tongue, I talk Spanish to him. I mix everything up.
About the last two days at N.O. there’s little to tell, but it was very agreeable: tramway rides, taxi rides, walks, boxing matches, burlesque shows, whiskies, little bars. And a sumptuous meal at Antoine’s. A.’s eyes opened wide — he’d had no idea cooking like that even existed. And the place is incredibly pleasant, I wonder how I could have missed it the first time. No wire from you, but perhaps you never went to London. I’m hoping for a letter here in three or four days. Go on working well, my little one. Fix up a nice summer for us — I’ll be glad to be working again, like in Abisko.461 Think a bit about your Beaver, tell yourself your Beaver’s as happy as can be — and will be still happier when back with you again. I haven’t abandoned you, my little ally, my heart. I kiss you with all my soul.
Your charming Beaver
Hotel de Cortes
Av. Hidalgo numero 85
Mexico
Wednesday 16 June [1948]
My most dear little one. I’ve done and seen so many things since Saturday that I haven’t had time to write and am quite dazed.
[...]
We’ll come back on Sunday for the bull fight. I’m hoping for a letter then, but that poste restante where they stick the names up tells me nothing useful. I wrote to Gerassi, telling him to book me a seat for 13 July, or failing that the 14th or 15th. I’m beginning to have an immense desire to see you again, o yourself, my life, but at the same time it distresses me to be beginning to lean towards separation, because when I leave you I don’t leave you, but with A[lgren] presence is all. The thing is, the idea of leaving — my desire to leave — calls the days I’m living through into question. I’m explaining this badly, but it’s just to tell you
I’m beginning to feel strange inside.462
Goodbye, o yourself, my life, my soul. In less than a month we’ll be together again. Write to me here, then: Hotel de Cortes, Mme de B.463 I was asked whether it was the U.N. that had sent me here, and at Maheu’s name464 the manager’s face lit up. I’ll write as soon as I get back, on Sunday.
Goodbye, my love.
Your charming Beaver
1950
[Chicago]
Wednesday [early July 1950]
O yourself, my dear life. I was really moved when I saw you vanish in your little grey suit, and for a long while wanted nothing in the world except to see you again some day — which will happen, so everything’s all right. The journey was perfect. I was sitting beside a Jew from Mexico who was reading The Second Sex,465 and made conversation with him as far as Shannon. After that I slept, without the least fear. Gander was fogbound, so we came down at Sydney, Nova Scotia — the scenery’s like Newfoundland and it’s extremely pretty. At New York I found the Gerassis — Stépha had just come out of hospital. Gerassi asserted — and Algren and the newspapers confirmed it — that there was absolutely no question of a war,466 so in that respect everything was going well. On Monday it was frightfully rainy in New York. I walked through the rain to Aubry’s office, but he’d received no instructions from Gallimard (the secretaries hadn’t, I mean). Aubry himself was travelling and will get back late. Could Cau perhaps see what the situation is? — I’ve written to Claude.467 Then at the Guild they told me you hadn’t got a penny left — which is all the same to me personally, since I didn’t need the coat. I did the errand for Michelle.468 Fernand has shown me some good canvases, but bored me with his idiotic philosophical arguments. I left on Monday afternoon for Chicago. Arrived at 8.30. It didn’t take me 24 hours to see things had changed — exactly as I’d predicted to you, that night when I kept you up so late. I asked Algren yesterday evening what the matter was, and he explained. It’s just what I felt from his letters, and from the rhythm of our affair: he’s very glad to see me, but with the resigned idea that I’m coming only to leave — that we’ll never have anything more than these arrivals and departures — which has given him a detachment bordering on indifference. I think these are the last months we’ll ever spend together. He says, moreover, that he’s incapable of ever loving a woman again. I’ll tell you all about it later. I’m still pretty upset. But then I knew th
is affair had to end, and soon. It has died from within, because Algren realized that it was already dead, ossified. We’re not leaving for Lake Michigan until the beginning of August.469 I’m not too sorry, because I love Chicago. It’s possible, once the shock and the explanations have been cleared away, that I’ll spend three very good months here — I even believe so. At any rate don’t worry about me, since I know that in three months we’ll be together again; and that you’re my life; and that I can’t regret this affair being dead, since its death was implied in the life I’ve chosen — which you give me.
Goodbye, my dear little one. Do write. Extract yourself as best you can from your own troubles.470
Your charming Beaver
(Address as letter 26 January 1947)