Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (10 page)

In the shack at Anderson Creek, where we were lucky to have a toilet, we had
to do without music for a spell since we had no radio or phonograph. This didn’t prevent
Gilbert Neiman, another writer and a bosom friend, from hearing music. Music from
our
place, I mean. In the beginning, everyone who goes to live at Anderson Creek hears things.
Some hear Beethoven symphonies, some hear military bands, some hear voices, some hear wails
and shrieks. Particularly those who live near the canyon creek, which is the source of these
eerie, disturbing sounds. Gilbert and his wife and daughter occupied the big house which was
once Varda’s. (Varda had converted the living room into a ballroom. It would also have made a
wonderful billiard parlor.) But, as I was saying, Gilbert insisted that the “music” came from
our
house, which was a good hundred yards away. It came mostly at night, which he
resented, because he was a poor sleeper. He was also a bad drinker, but I won’t go into that.
When I would question him about the music, what kind of music, he would answer: “It’s that
Varèse record.” Whether he meant “Ionization,” “Density 21.5,” “Octandre” or “Intégrales,” I
never knew. “You know,” he would say, “it’s the one with Chinese blocks, sleigh bells,
tambourine, gongs, chains and all that crap.” Gilbert had good taste in music, adored Mozart,
and in moments of repose and serenity enjoyed listening to Varèse. In every place they lived,
and they always seemed to choose a quaint dump to live it, there were albums of records
galore. At Bunker Hill (Los Angeles), which is almost as weird a place as Milwaukee, they
often had little to eat but they always had music. In the little green house in Beverly Glen
(just outside Hollywood), Gilbert would rub himself down with olive oil and hide behind the
bushes in back of the house to take a sun bath, the music going full blast—Shostakovich,
Gaspard de la Nuit
, Beethoven quartets, Vivaldi, flamenco, Cantor Rosenblatt, and
so
on. Often the neighbors begged him to turn it down a little. When he
worked on his book—in the garage—the music was always playing. (He would begin at midnight and
finish at dawn.)

The book he had written at Beverly Glen, called
There’s a Tyrant in Every
Country,
*
was accepted and published during his early days at Big Sur. It was a honey of
a book, too, though the neighbors were much divided about its merits. Myself, I’ve never read
a better novel about Mexico. At any rate, Gilbert was now on a second book,
The
Underworld
. It was during this period, when he had begun to work days instead of
nights, that the music—the phantom music—began to disturb him greatly. Of course he was also
drinking. He would begin cold sober and finish quite otherwise. Returning to normal, he would
become—I can think of no more apt word for it—
delicious
.

Sober, Gilbert walked like an Indian—noiselessly, tirelessly, and on the balls
of his feet. Drunk, he fell into a weaving motion, like a man in a trance, or a sleepwalker
who skirts precipices, stumbles, teeters, totters, yet never goes over. In this condition his
talk matched his walk. He literally wove his way through a subject—Leopardi, for instance, or
the Tantras, or Paul Valéry—taking the most dangerous detours, hurdling impossible barriers,
retracing his steps with infallible accuracy, falling, picking himself up, resort-to pantomime
when out of breath or at a loss for the right words…. He could come back to the exact place
where he had left off—at the beginning of what was meant to be a parenthesis—an hour, two
hours, later. Come back, I mean, to the phrase which he had left dangling in mid-air, and
complete it. Now and then, in these flights, he would pause and, forgetting that we were
hanging on his words, do a spot of meditation. He had acquired the habit, in Colorado, of
being on the alert for messages. The messages were always from “Mamma Kali,” as he called her.
Sometimes Mamma Kali appeared to him in person, just as he was about
to
take a forkful of peas, and then he would go into a trance, the fork halfway to his lips, and
gaze at the beloved one adoringly.

This was the grotesque side of Gilbert—by no means his least charming side.
Another side represented the eternal student. He had specialized in the Romance languages and
was thoroughly at home in French, Spanish and Italian. His translations from the
French—Valéry, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Fernandez—were superb. He was the first to
translate Lorca’s plays in this country. With
Blood Wedding
he started the vogue for
Lorca’s plays. He also translated Ramon Sender, perhaps the greatest novelist of Lorca’s
generation. The thing about Gilbert’s translations was that he not only revealed his deep
knowledge of Spanish and French but, what is more important, his most excellent knowledge of
English. Though I don’t believe he made any published translations from the Italian, the
writer he often talked to me about was Giacomo Leopardi. It was hard to say which one he
talked about with more fervor—Leopardi or the Duse. He could also talk about Charlie Chaplin
and John Gilbert—particularly the latter’s performance in
Flesh and the Devil
—with
touching eloquence.

I should remark here that Gilbert had begun his career as a juvenile actor, in
Colorado, I believe. Or perhaps it was in Kansas. He hated Kansas like poison. One could never
tell, when he referred to that state, whether he had been born and raised there in this
incarnation or a previous one. The actor in him was strong, and even in the Anderson Creek
days, there were traces of the showman in his deportment. They would appear when he was
sobering up and his voice returning, when he donned his shepherd’s plaid suit, pomaded his
hair, faintly perfumed his breast-pocket handkerchief, polished his shoes, flexed his muscles
and took to strutting the imaginary boards of the imaginary billiard parlor where he would
while away an imaginary hour or two with Paderewski. Getting back into form, he would usually
begin an unfinished discourse on the unique merits of Céline, Dostoevsky or Wassermann. If he
felt slightly vitriolic, he would put André Gide through a bath of sulphur and ammonia. But
I’m getting off the track….

The music!
One night, about two in the morning,
the door of our shack was thrown open with a bang and, before I knew what was happening, I
felt a hand gripping my throat, squeezing it viciously. I knew damned well I wasn’t dreaming.
Then a voice, a boozy voice which I recognized instantly, and which sounded maudlin and
terrifying, shouted in my ear: “Where’s that damned gadget?”

“What gadget?” I gurgled, struggling to release the grip around my throat.

“The radio! Where are you hiding it?”

With this he let go his grip and began dismantling the place. I sprang out of
bed and tried to pacify him.

“You know I have no radio,” I shouted. “What’s the matter with you? What’s
eating you?”

He ignored me, went on pushing things aside, tearing at the walls with furious
talons, upsetting chinaware and pots and pans. Finding nothing, he soon relented, though still
furious, still cursing and swearing. I thought he had gone out of his mind.

“What is it, Gilbert? What’s happened?” I was holding him by the arm.

“What is it?”
he yelled, and I could feel his glare even through the
darkness.
“What is it?
Come on out here!” He grabbed my arm and started dragging
me.

After we had gone a few yards in the direction of his house he stopped
suddenly, and gripping me like a demon, he shouted:
“Now!
Now do you hear?”

“Hear what?” I said innocently.

“The music!
It’s the same tune all the time. “Its driving me
crazy.”

“Maybe it’s coming from
your
place,” said I, though I knew damned
well it was coming from inside him.

“So you know where it is,” said Gilbert, accelerating his pace and dragging me
along like a dead horse. Under his breath he mumbled something about my “cunning” ways.

When we got to his house he dropped to his knees and began
sniffing around, just like a dog, in the bushes and under the porch. To humor him, I also
got down on all fours, to search for the concealed gadget that was giving out Beethoven’s
Fifth
. After we had crawled around the house and under it as far as we could, we
lay on our backs and looked up at the stars.

“It’s stopped,” said Gilbert. “Did you notice?”

“You’re crazy,” I said. “It never stops.”

“Tell me honestly,” he said, in a conciliating tone of voice, “where did you
hide it?”

“I never hid anything,” I said. “It’s there … in the stream. Can’t you hear
it?”

He turned over on one side, cupped his ear, straining every nerve to hear.

“I don’t hear a thing,” he said.

“That’s strange,” said I.
“Listen!
It’s Smetana now. You know the one
…
Out of My Life
. It’s as clear as can be, every note.”

He turned over on the other side and again he cupped his ear. He held this
position for a few moments then rolled over on his back, smiling the smile of an angel. He
gave a little laugh, then said:

“I know now … I was dreaming. I was dreaming that I was the conductor of an
orchestra….”

I cut him short. “But how do you explain the other times?”

“Drink,” he said. “I drink too much.”

“No you don’t,” I replied, “I hear it just the same as you. Only I know where
it comes from.”

“Where?” said Gilbert.

“I told you … from the stream.”

“You mean someone has hidden it in the creek?”

“Exactly,” I said.

I allowed a due pause, then added: “Do you know who?”

“No,” he said.

“God!”

He began to laugh like a madman.

“God!” he yelled
“God!”
Then louder and louder.
“God, God, God, God, God! Can you beat that?”

He was now convulsed with laughter. I had to shake him to make him listen to
me.

“Gilbert,” I said, just as gently as could be, “if you don’t mind, I’m going
back to bed. You go down by the creek and look for it. It’s under a mossy rock on the left
hand side near the bridge. Don’t tell anybody, will you?”

I stood up and shook hands with him.

“Remember,” I said, “not a soul!”

He put his fingers to his lips and went Shhhh! Shhhh!

Everything unusual, be it said, originates at Anderson Creek. Because of the
“artists,” most likely. If a stray cow is mysteriously killed and butchered, some one from
Anderson Creek did the job. If a passing motorist kills a deer on the highway, he always
brings it to some poor artist at Anderson Creek, never to Mr. Brown or Mr. Roosevelt. If an
old shack is demolished overnight, for its doors and windowpanes, it must have been one of the
Anderson Creek gang who did it. If there are moonlight bathing parties at the sulphur
baths—
mixed
parties—it’s that Anderson Creek bunch again. Anything that’s borrowed,
lost, stolen or used to better purpose can be traced to Anderson Creek. That’s the legend, at
least. As one of the natives remarked in my presence one day—“They’re just a bunch of
morphodites!”

Just the same, it was at Anderson Creek that the first flying saucer made its
appearance in Big Sur. The chap who told me the story said it happened early one morning. In
shape it was more like a dirigible than the lamp-shade variety. It hovered close to shore,
plainly visible, took off and returned two more times. Shortly after this two more sightings,
one at dawn, another at twilight, were made by people staying at the sulphur baths. Then one
day my friend Walker Winslow woke me up out of a sound sleep to witness a strange phenomenon
just above the horizon, looking
seaward. We observed the strange activity
of what seemed like twin stars gyrating about an invisible pivot for about twenty minutes,
after which the light grew too strong and it faded out. But it was reported—as a saucer
phenomenon—next day by the government station along the coast. Soon thereafter a number of
friends reported saucers, lights that followed their cars, and so on. None of them were drunks
or dope fiends. Some of them were, or had been, downright sceptics about “this saucer
business.” One of the most vivid accounts was given by Eric Barker, then living at the Hunt
Ranch near the Little Sur. In broad daylight, about four in the afternoon, he saw six small
disks flying above his head at a brisk but not phenomenal speed. They were going out to sea.
Eric swore that they were not buzzards, balloons or meteorites. Moreover, he is definitely not
the type that “sees things.” A few weeks later a visitor from Carmel was witness to a similar
phenomenon. She was so moved by the sight that she became almost hysterical. Tom Sawyer and
Dorothy Weston reported lights dancing in front of their car on the way home from Monterey one
night. The performance continued for over five minutes and was repeated subsequently. Ephraim
Doner, whose two feet are definitely planted in the earth, was escorted for over five miles by
mysterious brilliant-colored lights one evening on leaving our home. His wife and daughter
were with him and corroborated his words.

It was also at Anderson Creek that Gerhart Muench used to practice—on an old
upright that Emil White had borrowed from someone. Now and then Gerhart gave us a concert, on
this same “distempered” clavichord. Motorists would occasionally pull up short in front of
Emil’s cabin to listen to Gerhart practise. When Gerhart was broke and discouraged, often in a
suicidal mood, I would urge him (seriously) to move the piano out, put it alongside the road,
and do his stuff. I had a notion that if he would do it often enough some impresario would
happen along and offer him a concert tour. (Gerhart is known all over Europe for his piano
concerts.) But Gerhart never fell for the idea. Certainly it would
have
been vulgar and showy, but Americans dote on that sort of thing. Think of the publicity he
might have had, had some enterprising soul discovered him sitting by the roadside hammering
his way through Scriabin’s ten sonatas!