I’ll tell you the rest later. I’m in a hurry — I got up early to finish off the letter before the postman came. Do write, little one. My heart is always with you.
Your charming Beaver
[Gary, Indiana]
Friday [2 September 1950]
My most dear little one. I’d like lots of addresses if you go travelling.
Will this letter be forwarded? I do hope so. The one I received from you this morning wasn’t too cheerful. I think the Dolores business is still weighing on you, and that you’re a bit worried concerning Michelle. How impatient I am for us to be together again, at Cagnes or elsewhere, working peacefully and seeing only one another. I don’t think this last month’s going to be much fun. The weather has turned grey and I have too. Sorokine’s visit was pretty disastrous, without it being her fault — unless you say it’s her fault to be what she is. The fact is that Algren deeply and radically disliked her. Yet, on the Sunday and Monday afternoons they talked nicely, telling each other stories. And she tried hard to be discreet, did the washing up and cooking with me, etc. In spite of that, on the Tuesday A. didn’t open his mouth all day and on Wednesday morning he informed me darkly that he was going off to Chicago for a few days. I said it was I who’d go off there with Sorokine. Luckily, Oreste had been imploring her for several days by letter and telephone to join him in Boston, so when I filled her in on the situation she said she’d rush off to Boston at once, then come back by car with Oreste and meet me next week in Chicago, where we’d spend a few days on our own. She was quite aware that the situation wasn’t pleasant for anybody. Besides, she says her affair with Ivan has so knocked her out that she has become indifferent to everything. I think she really did go off with no regrets, especially since she could see I was pretty upset about things turning out that way — and that it wasn’t my fault. I was upset, because for the first time in my life I had a real grudge against Algren. He has two excuses: first, he knew (I’d told him so too often myself, perhaps) that I too found Sorokine a burden; secondly, nice as she is, I suppose she is hard to put up with. For example, on the Sunday evening when A.’s friends came, she spoke only to me and left abruptly in the middle of the evening, making it clear she was bored. He says he felt she was so frozen, so distant, so shut up in herself, that he was always embarrassed to be there. All right. But he should have discussed the problem with me, instead of ill-temperedly announcing a decision which forced me into a decision of my own. Actually, he’s aware that he behaved strangely, since he has never been so attentive and talkative and considerate as since Sorokine’s departure. As for me, I’m in two minds. Just as you used to be delighted to find Dolores at fault, if something destroys my feelings for Algren in a sense I’m delighted too. But introducing resentment into this affair really does mean signing its death warrant. In connection with this, I was thinking how we can accept a person’s faults lovingly so long as they seem like a given, through which — against which — freedom is sought and found. But as soon as we feel people are complicit with their faults, we may still excuse them but we no longer love them. I’ve always known A. was selfish and — like Dolores’s avarice — thought of this as a defence against a difficult life: a wish to save oneself first. But this business has revealed his selfishness to me as a choice — which was being renewed for no valid reason — and something in me suddenly collapsed.
I’ll tell you how things develop, but I’d be surprised if the old affection could revive. In a sense, I’m glad the situation has been resolved. Being caught between Sorokine and Algren was wearing, and for these days to have any meaning I need to work. But I’d like to be sure she’s having a good time now, poor creature, and I’d like to be really nice to her in Chicago. She so wants to be interested in other people, to be nice and not quarrel with anybody any more. And she is nice in her own way — but so stunted, so congealed inside. Ivan seems unbearable, judging by the letters from him she showed me — utterly corrupted by Hollywood.
Yes, my little one, do write — I need your letters. I’d asked you for two tubes of Corydrane and a box of ear plugs. So will you please send them by air, as quickly as possible? I hope you’ll have a pleasant trip with Michelle, with some work and no intruders. I can’t wait for us both to be happy again. I kiss you with all my soul.
Your charming Beaver
Envelope:
M. Sartre
Grand Hôtel
Sainte-Maxime (Var)
Alexandria Hotel
Rush and Ohio Streets
Chicago 11
Saturday [10 September 1950]
My most dear little one
I haven’t had a letter this week — but through my own fault, because I left on Tuesday for Chicago with Sarbakhane. She turned up by car from Boston — with Oreste and Jacques — and entreated me to come and spend the evening with them that very day. So I rolled up by train at 8 p.m. and we had quite a good evening out, first at a good French restaurant, then at that black nightclub where I once saw a one-legged dancer.483 I was delighted to see Chicago again, after my long retreat of over a month. We saw the dawn and sunrise over the lake and it was really very beautiful. But that Oreste, though he does actually have some good points and is quite nice, is horribly stingy. He thought I was going to pay for the whole evening and was awfully disappointed when I reimbursed him only half. I thought it was crazy: for him to come and look me up, with the idea that I should make conversation with them, show them the city — and also maintain all three of them. Especially since S. asked me to pay her trips to Boston and Los Angeles, her upkeep here, etc. and I don’t have a penny left of the money I was keeping privately to buy a few things for myself. So I let them go off in their magnificent Buick hanging their heads. Oreste’s relations with Sorokine are not, I think, wonderful. Left alone with me, he complained about her a great deal — and always for the same reason: she wants to sleep with him and he doesn’t. I tried discreetly after that to tell S. to give up sexual relations with him, but she’s as stubborn as a mule. She was very nice actually during those few days, as she can be when you’re utterly at her disposal and do everything she wants. She’s distressed and annoyed because Algren didn’t like her. She realizes there’s something not quite right in her relations with people, but she’s obviously incurable. We had lovely clear weather and went for all kinds of outings — on foot, by boat, in taxis, on buses. It was pleasant for me, because for the first time I was in Chicago on my own and I was finally finding my bearings, the city was taking shape, and I felt rather as though it belonged to me. I know it well. It was pleasant but a bit disappointing, because lots of unsituated places — places from my past, whose earthly existence had remained very vague and mysterious to me — now found a banal location in the streets of the city. Chicago became real and lost its enchanted character.
We went to the cinema — nothing very good. I finally read Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles. It’s less bad than Algren had told me (he hates that book and is the only person to have given it a foul review, which has actually earned him some abuse), but it’s far from being very good — and from our standpoint is quite without interest. It’s not Africa at all, but a journey through Africa as seen by some American snobs, with a rubbishy story of adultery and an extravagant ending. There are descriptions of buses, hotels, food, and the tourist aspect of the towns — nothing else. I also bought Mary McCarthy’s Oasis, which is a dreadfully boring book.
This morning I’m meeting up with Algren and going off again to Gary. He has been so nice that my resentment has more or less dissipated. But I’m still in a strange state. I long passionately to be in Paris. This conjugal life I lead here is especially absurd because it implies eternity: the days are agreeable in the perspective of an indefinite repetition — which is, however, simultaneously rejected by circumstances and by my own heart. A journey somewhere wouldn’t have had this absurd side.
My little one, I hope Algren will have brought me your letter. Otherwise I’m sending this to That L
ady’s. My only unalloyed happiness is to think of the moment when I’ll be with you again — it’s coming closer. I kiss you with all my soul.
Your charming Beaver
Here’s your Sunday letter — one has been missed out in the meantime — and I have your address. You’ve done very, very well with respect to Dolores. I’ve had my fill of people screwing us about. See you soon, my dear love.
(Address as letter 2 September 1950)
[Gary, Indiana]
Monday [late September 1950]
My most dear little one. Just a note, since my letter will precede me only by a few hours. I ought to be in Paris at 3 in the afternoon — i.e. at the Invalides at about 4, I suppose — on Monday 2 October: ring and find out the exact time. It’s pointless having a Slota,484 I’d really rather walk round Paris and above all be with you. How good it will be, to be together again! I’m quite radiant with joy and consumed by impatience. This last period has been very pleasant, to a great extent because I’m so happy to be seeing you again. Last night there was a fantastic eclipse of the moon and now, in a dazzling sky, the moon’s veiled by an orange dawn. It was incredibly lovely on the lake.
I think — I hope — that I’ll leave here entirely serene, with the idea that after all things are probably best this way. At any rate, I’ll arrive in Paris in raptures at finally beginning our happy old age. Goodbye, my dear little one — in a week you’ll be returned to me just as you were when I left you. I kiss you with all my soul.
Your charming Beaver
Can you warn my concierge485 — by phone, perhaps — that she should tidy things up for my return? If you forget, it’s of no importance.
1951
Hotel Lincoln
The House of Hospitality’
44th to 45th Streets at Eighth Avenue
New York, 19 N.Y.
[September 1951]486
Yes, of course, now that I’m in New York sitting in front of a whisky and writing to you I feel very good. And I like the idea of a long, peaceful month in the country — it’s moving around so much that was making me sick.487
I was prepared not to find the journey agreeable — and it really wasn’t. Everything was fine as far as Shannon, where I bumped into Sidney Bechet who was travelling at the same time as me by T. W. A. — he looked quite lonely. The air hostess was that former pupil of mine whom I’d encountered on the way to Nice (or coming back?) with you, and who was so scared of planes — do you remember? And the captain was the same one who flew us from Dakar to Casa: he knows you and your mother and gave me endless greetings for both of you. I was on familiar territory. But after Shannon — in spite of three Belladenal tablets — I couldn’t get to sleep for more than quarter of an hour at a time, and was pretty much overcome by dread as long as we were over the ocean. We were going directly to Montreal (a scheduled stop-off where passengers were getting out), because Gander was impracticable. That made 13 hrs, including 9 over the ocean, and we were at only 2,000 m. because of the storms, which were still worse higher up. They were quite vigorous enough as it was. We were shaken about somewhat the whole time — and a great deal at moments — and had to make such detours that skipping the landing at Gander didn’t gain us anything in timetable terms. The night lasted till noon (Paris time), it was long, and we felt terribly lost between sky and water in the grey-black dawn. I started to live again once we were over Labrador, and in broad daylight. Then the last four hours to Montreal were charming. The stewardess admitted to me that she’d been scared too, and to distract me she told me about lots of accidents. The story of the two Paris-Saigon ones is odd. The first accident’s simply explained, because the airfield merges quite naturally into the sandbanks alongside it and at night — with sandstorms into the bargain — nothing’s easier than to make a mistake. The second, however, was apparently psychological: the pilot was an intellectual — someone who thought too much. He thought all the time — something which won’t happen to me! He’d begun a good landing when, just to be on the safe side, he decided to fly over the field one more time and shouted to the flight engineer to raise the undercarriage. But the engineer, who was expecting to be told to open the landing-flaps, did so and the plane dived into the sand. At least that’s what people presume. In both cases the passengers could almost touch bottom, but in the darkness and panic they [turned] their backs to the coast. So — greatly cheered by this conversation — I landed at Montreal, which struck me as a dreadful place though the weather was fine and cool there, quite worthy of Iceland. What I saw of Canada — from the coast to Montreal — is monotonous and beautiful in the same style as Newfoundland: lakes and endless pine forests. After that, there was only an hour and a half left — a mere outing. I was astonished on arriving because they asked me hardly any questions, either on my political ideas or on my financial resources — you might have thought you were entering a free country. It was close and damp, but that kind of weather suits New York. The driver took a magnificent route along the coast, entering New York by a big tunnel leading to the Battery, and from there all along the Hudson embankment: it’s the whole of New York in a few minutes and is never disappointing. There was a helicopter touching down on a roof and it was all so teeming, teeming — one always forgets how vibrant it is.
No Sorokine at the hotel,488 and no boat due next day (i.e. today) — she must have been delayed by the storms. Her cheque is worthless without her, but luckily my 50 dollars were more than enough. I ate in a drugstore, then went for a walk and located the cinemas I’d go to in the evening. Deciding to get some rest by taking a nap, I went up to my room at 4 and slept until this morning at 8. I just broke off to phone Algren — who’ll expect me in Chicago at 8 p.m. — with the same indifference as if he’d been a travel-agency clerk. And while drawing the blind I saw the splendour of New York in lights — I was on the 23rd floor and the view was fantastic. But all that really went by in a dream. This morning I did errands, went to the hairdresser’s, had a sumptuous lunch at the cafè Arnold (chosen in your honour), and am beginning to feel very well, though still a bit sleepy. It’s very hot and stormy, which is tiring, but New York is more magnificent than ever. What a city! And how pleasant relations with people are! How easy everything is — even crossing the street! I’ve bought an enormous volume of science-fiction stories, which I’ll bring back with me. Now I’m off to catch my plane. Two and a half hours’ flying, it’s just like taking a suburban train. I’ll write again soon from Chicago or Gary. You write too, little soul of mine. I thought about you all the time in that horrible plane — and again today, in this New York you loved so much — not in bad terms either. Have a good time, write nice things, and don’t get too fat. I’ve slimmed so much I needed new notches in my belt before I could fasten it. Give Michelle lots of greetings. I kiss you with all my Beaver’s heart.
Your charming Beaver
[Gary, Indiana]
Wednesday [late September 1951]
My dear little yourself. It’s already a week since I last wrote, the time has flown. I wanted to finish the little chore on Sade,489 and finally the last word has been written and I’m sending it off by the same post as this letter. I’ve still heard nothing from you, but I imagine a letter will arrive at any moment. Let me tell you at once I’m leading an excellent life here. First, Algren’s in an angelic mood — just as in his best periods. And then I’m nicely installed in a room of my own, with all the leisure needed to work. So, given that you aren’t with me, I can’t see where I could be better off than here. I left New York just after writing to you: 3 hours flying time, without a bump, with a magnificent twilight and sunset over the great lakes Erie and Michigan, and that really sensational arrival at Chicago. The only irritation was the fact that my neighbour began making conversation. He was a physics teacher from the University of Notre-Dame, where that dreadful Guineau teaches, and he wanted me to explain existentialism to him — and to give him my address. I had to be rude in order to get rid of him. I arrived at Algren’s at abou
t 8, we had dinner in a pleasant Italian restaurant, then we went to hear Billie Holiday — who’s fat and ill and hasn’t any voice left at all, and who’s singing in a crummy dive. We stayed in Chicago for only one day. Algren’s little apartment is completely empty, and as uncomfortable and gloomy as could be. We went walking near the lake, the weather was marvellous, and in the evening we saw The Member of the Wedding based on the Carson McCullers novel — it’s a very bad play. We went straight from the theatre to the train and came here. When we arrived, at about 2 in the morning, I found a cable: Sarbakhane, announcing her arrival for a half-day visit. So she showed up early on Friday morning, with all the money she owed me, and I had to insist on leaving her with 50 dollars, which she’ll send me later. Algren couldn’t get over it and, though he doesn’t quite like to admit it, found her very nice and agreeable this time. She’d been caught in that same huge storm that buffeted my plane, which delayed her by three days. As soon as she arrived she jumped into the train, and got out at Gary just to see me for a few hours. I took her to the lake shore — the beach was all sunny and absolutely deserted — then accompanied her by bus to Gary, where I put her on her train. There were a few friends of Algren’s on Saturday evening — and again on Sunday evening — but not for long, and the rest of the time is utterly peaceful. The time passes terribly quickly, though I get up early. I work for a good 6 hours a day — and there are lots of books I’m trying to read — but the weather’s so fine we always go out somewhere in the afternoon or evening, Algren has hundreds of stories to tell, and above all there’s that accursed television. I think I’ll learn to stop paying any attention to it, but for the first few days it’s fascinating having all those films and concerts and puppet-shows in one’s home. It’s almost always bad — yesterday there was an appalling old Charles Boyer/Jean Arthur film — but I allow myself to be trapped. Well, I shan’t read a quarter of what I’d like to, but for working it’s perfect and won’t be a wasted month. I’m hoping to finish the ‘big’ Sade between now and the end of the month, then I’ll get back to the novel.