Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (25 page)

The gulf between knowledge and truth is infinite. Parents talk a lot about
truth but seldom bother to deal in it. It’s much simpler to dispense ready-made knowledge.
More expedient too, for truth demands patience, endless, endless patience. The happiest
expedient of all is to bundle kids off to school just as soon as they can stand the strain.
There they not only get “learning,” which is a crude substitute for knowledge, but
discipline.

I’ve said a number of times, and I say it again—as a boy I led a happy life. A
very happy life. I only remember being “disciplined” once, and that was at my mother’s
bidding. Evidently I had misbehaved the whole day, to the point of exasperation. When my
father came home from work that evening he was informed that he was to give me a sound
thrashing. I could see from the expression my father assumed that he wasn’t overjoyed to
perform this humiliating task. I felt sorry for him. When therefore he took off his leather
slipper and whacked me with it, I pretended that it hurt and I bawled just as loud as I could.
I hoped that would make him feel better. He was not a man to mete out punishment to anyone,
let alone his own son. And so I collaborated to the best of my ability.

In the eyes of the neighbors here I don’t rate very high as a father. For one
thing, I don’t “lower the boom” often enough. I have a reputation for being too lenient, too
indulgent. Now and then, when I’ve lost my temper, I
have
clobbered the kids. When
they pushed me too far, as we say. When this happens I immediately feel repentant and I try to
forget the incident as quickly as possible. I never harbor any feelings of guilt, nor do I
promise myself that I will be more strict with them in future—so as to
avoid a recurrence of these disgraceful scenes. The child lives in the moment, and I do
my best to follow his example.

When I particularly loathe myself is when I catch myself saying: “If you don’t
watch out you’re going to catch it again!” I feel that a threat is worse than a blow. The
healthier children are, the more bounce they have, the more frequent are the threats hurled at
them. Normal, healthy children are natural-born hell-raisers. They were not made for the life
we offer them, we who have given up the ghost, who conform every step of the way. Well-behaved
children may be a delight to live with but they rarely make outstanding men and women. I make
exception where the parents are themselves unusual, where they have created an atmosphere of
harmony through the everyday practice of goodness, kindness and understanding. But how many
homes radiate this kind of atmosphere? In the Western world the home is a battleground where
husband fights wife, brother fights sister, and parents fight the children. The din is only
drowned by the radio, which echoes the same situation, only on a bigger, more brutal, more
perverted, more despicable scale. And if it isn’t drowned that way, it’s drowned in alcohol.
Such is “home” for the child of today. In the civilized world, at any rate.

Acting the doting father, I was the boy who remembered the wonderful, riotous
times he had doing all the things he was not supposed to do. I cannot recall ever being
seriously unhappy until the pangs of
Weltschmerz
set in.

As a father I’ve also been somewhat of a mother, because not having a job like
other honest citizens—writing is only a pastime!—I was always within earshot, always within
reach, when the kids got out of hand. As a father who was also unhappily married, I had often
to act as arbiter when there should have been no need for an arbiter. Whatever decisions I
made, they were wrong, and they were subsequently used against me. At least, so it seemed to
me.

One of the minor aspects of this tragicomic dilemma was the fact
that my wife believed that she was protecting
me
. Protecting me,
I mean to say, from the annoyances which children are prone to inflict upon fathers who have
nothing more important to do than write books. Since she did everything by the book, and to
the extreme, the protection she was offering me usually worked more harm than good. Or so I
regarded it. (I know I didn’t always see straight!)

Anyway, it went something like this…. No matter what happened, they were not
to disturb me at work. If they fell and hurt themselves, they were not to make a fuss about
it. If they had to weep or scream, they were to do it out of earshot. (It never occurred to
her, I suppose, that I would have felt much better if they had come and wept on my shoulder.)
Whatever it was they wanted, they were to wait until I was ready to give them my attention.
If, in spite of all injunctions, they knocked at my studio door—and they did, of course!—they
were made to feel that they were guilty of committing a small crime. And, if I were foolish
enough to open the door and give them a moment’s attention, then I was abetting the crime.
Worse, I was guilty of sabotage. If I took a breather, and profited by it to see what the kids
were up to, then I was guilty of encouraging them to expect things of me which they had no
right to expect.

By midafternoon I usually had but one thought—to get as far away from the
house as possible, and take the kids with me. Often we would return home exhausted. And when
children get exhausted they are not the most amenable creatures in the world.

It was an endless circle.
Punkt!

When the separation came about I made a forlorn and desperate effort to be a
father
and
mother. The girl had just started school, but the boy, her junior by three
years, was too young to attend school. What he needed was a nurse or a governess. Now and then
a neighbor—and here I think especially of that kind soul, Dorothy Herbert—came and lent a
hand. In a short time I realized that there was nothing to do but to entrust the boy to his
mother’s
care, which I did, with the understanding that she would return
him to me as soon as I found someone capable of providing him with the proper care and
attention.

Shortly thereafter an attractive-looking woman knocked at the door and said
she had been told that I was looking for someone to take care of my children. She had two
children of her own, about the same age as ours, and she had separated from her husband. All
she wanted was room and board in exchange for her services. As she expressed it, she didn’t
care what was demanded of her, if only she might live in Big Sur.

Her arrival coincided with the arrival of my wife and boy, who had come to
celebrate the girl’s birthday. What a stroke of fortune, I thought, as I explained the
situation. To my astonishment my wife agreed that the young woman seemed suitable for the
task, and after a few tears, consented to leave the boy in my care.

It was a hectic day. From miles around the kids had come to celebrate and
jubilate. Some of them brought their parents along.

I forgot to say that a few days previous to this event my friend Walker
Winslow had installed himself in the studio above. He had driven all the way from Topeka with
his left hand, having cracked his right shoulder blade some weeks before. Knowing of my
plight, Walker had volunteered his services as cook and part-time “governess,” hoping, no
doubt, that he would find a few hours a day in which to work in peace and quiet. (He had
received a commission from a big publisher to do a book on the founder of the Menninger
Foundation, where he had been staying.
*
) He also looked forward, no doubt, to
repeating the pleasant experiences we had shared while at Anderson Creek.

In the course of the merrymaking the young woman, Ivy was her name, discreetly
withdrew from sight. She was shy and somewhat embarrassed, knowing no one present and having
no particular role to fill. Strolling about by her lonesome she ran into Walker.

As Walker related it to me afterwards, Ivy was on the
point of leaving then and there. She was depressed, confused, and thoroughly ill at ease.
However, after a cup of coffee and a quiet chat in the studio, he had succeeded in restoring
her self-confidence. Walker is easy to talk to, and women particularly find him very
understanding, very comforting.

Later that day he took me aside to explain that I might have difficulties with
Ivy, that she was emotionally disturbed because of her own unhappy life, and somewhat
intimidated by the responsibility she was assuming. The situation was aggravated, for her, by
the fact that she would be obliged to leave her own two children in her husband’s care.

“I felt I ought to tell you this,” he said. Then he added: “But I think she
deserves a tryout. She means well, I know that.”

Walker was of the opinion that if the arrangement didn’t work out well he and
I should be able to look after the children. I could take care of Tony in the morning and he
in the afternoon. He would do all the cooking and the dish-washing too. But it would be better
if Ivy proved equal to the task.

Ivy lasted just about twelve hours. She quit cold, giving as her reason that
my kids were “impossible.” My wife, of course, had already left and I was in no hurry to
inform her of the turn of events. Walker had to drive Ivy and her two youngsters to town and
rush home to prepare the evening meal.

After dinner we had a short talk. “Are you sure you want to keep the children
now?” he asked. I told him I felt up to it, if he would carry out his end of the bargain.

The very next day the fun began. To devote a whole morning to a three-year-old
boy full of piss and vinegar is a job for someone with six hands and three pairs of legs. No
matter what we decided to play, the jig lasted only a few minutes. Every toy in the place had
been taken out, used, and thrown aside in less than an hour. If I suggested that we go for a
walk he was too tired. There was an old tricycle he liked to ride, but before the morning was
out a
wheel had come off and, though I sweated blood, I simply could not
make it stay on again. I tried playing ball but his co-ordination wasn’t good enough; I almost
had to stand on top of him and put the ball in his hands. I got out his building blocks
too—several bushel baskets full—and tried, as they say, to have him do something
“constructive,” but his interest in this pastime lay exclusively in kicking the house, or the
bridge, apart after I had built it. That was fun! I tied all his choo-choo cars together,
added a few tin cans and other noise-makers to them, and ran about like a zany while he sat
and watched me. This bored the shit out of him in no time.

At intervals Walker showed up to see how we were making out. Finally—it
couldn’t have been later than ten o’clock, if that late—he said: “Go up and work a while. I’ll
take over. You need a break.”

More to recover myself than to work, I reluctantly obeyed. There I sat, in my
den, poring over the pages I had just finished, but too dead to squeeze out another line. What
I wanted, early as it was, was a nap! I could hear Tony shouting and screaming, shrieking and
wailing. Poor Walker!

When Val arrived, after school, the difficulties increased. It was nothing but
fight, fight, fight. Even if it were nothing more than a rock which one of them had picked up,
the other one immediately claimed it.
It’s mine, I saw it first! You did not! I did too
see it first. Caca pipi head, caca pipi head!
(Their favorite expression.) It now
demanded the full time of the two of us to handle the situation. By dinnertime we were always
pooped out.

It was the same old story every day. No improvements, no progress. An absolute
standstill. Walker, being an early riser, managed to get some work done before breakfast. He
was up at five, regular as a clock. After he had made himself a pot of strong coffee he would
sit down to the machine. When he wrote, he wrote fast. He did everything fast. As for me, I
would remain in bed till the last horn, hoping to store up an extra supply of nervous energy.
(I
didn’t know, in those days, about “rose hips,” nor about calcium and
phosphorus tablets, nor about tiger’s milk.) As for getting any writing done, I dismissed the
idea once and for all. Even a writer has first of all to be, and to feel like, a human being.
My problem was—to survive. Always I nourished the illusion that someone would turn up to
rescue me, someone who loved children and knew how to handle them. Whatever I needed usually
came my way, when sorely pressed. Why not the perfect governess? In my dreams I always
pictured my savior in the guise of a Hindu, Javanese or Mexican, a woman of the people,
simple, not too intelligent, but definitely possessed of that one great prerequisite:
patience
.

Evenings, after the kids had been put to bed, poor Walker would endeavor to
engage me in talk. It was hopeless. I had only one thought in mind—to get to bed as soon as
possible. Every day I would say to myself: “It can’t go on this way forever.
Courage
,
you poor imbecile!” Every night, on climbing into bed, I would repeat: “Another day! Patience,
patience!”

One day, after he had been to town to fetch supplies, Walker quietly announced
that he had looked up Ivy. “Just wanted to see how she was getting along.” I thought it was
very kind of Walker to do that. Just like him, of course. The sort of man who looks after
every one who is in trouble. And always getting himself into trouble.

What I didn’t know, until after the next trip to town, was that he and Ivy had
become close friends. Or, as he put it: “Ivy seems to have a yen for me.” In the interim Ivy’s
problems had taken a new twist. Having no means of support, she had been obliged to surrender
her children to her husband. She was supposed to be quite cut up about this.

I had made the mistake of telling Walker that I never wanted to see Ivy again.
She had left me in the lurch after a half-hearted effort and, like the elephant, I found it
hard to forgive her. If her own children were well behaved, I said, it was only because their
mother was a cold, ruthless bitch.