Steinbeck (32 page)

I'm lying down to write this. It is the only way to keep from dripping on it. I shan't be here very long before I move on. Just please keep writing to London and I'll be back there probably in three weeks. This is a very crucial time. But the nearer you get to a battle front, the less news you hear. You probably know much more than I do. I'm not even going out to dinner tonight. I'll sit here and write to you and rest my stomach. Hadn't had any fruit since I left New York and of course here it is wonderful.

It's coming on to get dark and it will cool off then some. Down in the desert it was full moon and Arabs howl at the moon—a high howl that goes on for hours and sounds a little like coyotes. If you can imagine sitting in a garden and hearing American swing played on a phonograph over the background of howling Arabs, you have something.

Damned if those senators didn't arrive here about the same time as I. By now they are fighting among themselves and they are reducing American prestige to an all time low which is very, very low. We must be inspired to have made so many mistakes. Some of the reporters over here are viciously resentful of me and some are very kind. But every once in a while one of them goes out of his way to tell me how much my stuff stinks. I think they are probably right. I get very tired of it.

 

 

August 19 [1943]

My darling:

It is almost impossible to keep clean here. The water is cold and dribbles and the soap doesn't seem to take hold. I think I am getting dirtier and dirtier but it isn't quite so noticeable since my complexion is getting darker and darker every day.

I have with me a camera man and an enlisted man and we have been jogging about the country seeing a great deal and taking some pictures. Yesterday I traveled through country that looked just like that stretch between Moss Landing and Monterey, with sand dunes and then the sea. The sea was the same blue as in Monterey and it made me very terribly homesick. And I wondered what has happened to the little house and how every one is.

I am still looking for Bill Dekker [Steinbeck's brother-in-law, married to his younger sister Mary] and still haven't found him. But I will in time.

I wonder what this being apart has done for us. To you, for instance, has it made you think our thing was good or do you suspect it? It has made me think it is exceptionally good and desirable. You said in one letter that you would probably have changed your whole way of life. I hope not so radically that we cannot get back to the good thing it seemed to me. The good nights with the fire going. This winter I must have the little fairy stove connected so that when we go to bed the coals can be glowing. I wonder whether you found a maid at all. I think you will agree with me from now on that we need one. I hate to wash dishes and always will. I did too damned much of it when I was a kid. And I don't like to sweep and all stuff like that. But we will try to get someone who comes in for the day rather than an in-sleeper, that is of course as long as we have an apartment.

Goodbye my darling. I would give something very large to be able to hear from you, but I don't know any way to accomplish it.

Keep good and patient for just a little while now.

 

August 24 [1943]

Darling:

I hope you will answer my cable because I am pretty worried about you. Six weeks it is now since I have heard.

My dear, I am very tired of being without you, very tired indeed. We shan't do this again but it was necessary this once. I get sudden fits of jealousy too that are baseless and useless but seem to come on without warning.

I think the heat is making me a little dingy. It seems to me that I cannot remember much of anything. The series of bad dreams continues. But I think everyone is having them, at least dreams that go on and on. I'm getting to the point where I half way believe that I dreamed you.

 

August 25 [1943]

Dear:

Last night I went with the naval officers to a monastery in the country and in a huge dark church, the brothers were at evening prayer singing Gregorian music with only two little candles burning in the great place. I stood in the choir loft and looked down on this thing and it was very wonderful, the sound bellied up with great fullness. Afterwards we talked to the brothers and they are all nationalities. One was from Massachusetts and another a German and a third a Hollander and some French. And they were very quiet. Staying in the monastery were a few officers who have worked too hard or been under too great a nerve strain and they are there in that very quiet place just getting rest that can't be got any place else. They listen to the music and sleep and it does them a great deal of good.

It really isn't so very bad. The great trouble is the one you know, the loneliness. That I can't dissemble or disassociate. I remember best the coffee in the morning and the music at night and the dictionary sessions and the painting of chairs and where shall we eat tonight. Let's have a whale of a big Christmas and not only string popcorn but also string cranberries and also whatever tinsel we can find. Let's have a really Christmas. There won't be very much to buy for presents but we'll get some things and we'll have a goose if you can find one, a great fine goose that falls apart if you speak above a whisper. I've thought and thought and it does seem that the corner in front of the lower bathroom door is the best place for the tree. It is very funny in this heat to think of a fine cannel coal fire but I do think of it. And maybe it will be snowing. You get to dwelling on these things.

There is a theme that is beating in on me and it is the theme of Africa. It is a very strange place. It looks so like California and it is a place that has never been a nation and only a kind of a piece of loot for four thousand years and probably more. All of the time I am conscious of the many kinds of soldiers who have tramped over these roads but always to raid and to loot. You rarely find a man who says I am Algierian. He is French or Arab or German but never African. And yet the place has such charm and such beauty in some ways that people come back again and again to it. I know I would like to bring you here when there is peace again.

 

August 28 [1943]

Darling:

Your cable of worry about Mary was just forwarded to me from London. Bill was reported missing on July 17. I just got the flash and the report must have gone to Mary. Poor dear. I don't know what to do. I have asked for any supplementary information and have been unable to get any. You see it is forbidden to send a personal cable and a letter will take so long to reach her that it will be lost news. The report is simply missing in action and nothing more.

I would feel much better about everything if I knew you were all right and well and steadfast. I have been turned toward you like a compass the whole time. And I will get another letter off to you as soon as I can.

 

love to you my dear

 

I had only finished that when I had another report on Bill. About a week after the invasion of Sicily, he went out with troops and did not return and that is all that is known. He had just been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was decorated in absentia. His commanding officer will write to Mary and give her all the information available. There is no evidence that he was killed. He simply did not come back. And that is absolutely all anyone knows so far. I would like you to use your own judgement about telephoning Mary. Perhaps she would like to come now to stay with you. I wish I were nearer to help her if there were anything in the world I could do. There have been many amazing returns from impossible situations.

Mary will do what she has to do. I am sure that she has been prepared for this shock for many months. Help her all you can, dear. I wish I could. She knows at least that Bill wanted it this way. He was not a very happy man and he had not found what he wanted and he was looking for it. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was it all along.

You may tell Mary for me I believe Bill very much alive. I do not believe Bill is dead.

 

[After the Salerno landing]
September 20 [1943]

Gwyn darling:

Well we're clear of it—at least nearly.

I'm gay today—maybe because I'm still alive but more I think because I've been as far away from you as I am going and now I'm starting back—slowly, perhaps, but always in that direction. And it makes me very happy. Because I've done the things I had to do and I don't think any inner compulsion will make me do them again.

You should see my costume—ragged dirty khaki shirt and trousers, canvas rope soled shoes bought in an Italian town —no hat or cap, nothing but a helmet. As soon as I get to a base I'm going to throw it all away and start fresh.

[Italy]
September 22 [1943]

Darling:

That last was written on a ship and now I am back at a base —still a little deaf but extremely happy

Because

There was a packet of letters from you all through July and one in August and the V mail one from Sept. I. I got in touch with Bill's general and he is going to get me a full report and if it is anything good I'll cable. I cabled the office today to call you and tell you I was out of it and safe.

I can't tell you how much the letters meant. I lined them up and went to bed—the first bed I'd been in in three weeks and I spent an evening with them. They were two months old but that didn't matter, they were you. And now from having nothing to talk about, I have lots.

I've had a charmed life these last three weeks or someone had me in prayers or something. There was one tough night when you were with me all the time. I wonder if you knew it. It was the 14th and really a rough time. But I haven't a scratch and my ears are coming back so I can hear quite well again.

I don't let myself think about time. I would go wacky. This marriage is something strong in me beyond belief. I'm burned black and my hair is cropped—quarter of an inch long for very good reasons and generally I'm a flea bitten, mosquito bitten, scratched up mess. The only white part of me is under my ring. I've never had it off not once since I left home—not even to wash my hands.

 

[London]
[Fall 1943]

My darling—

I got you a present today and I hope it goes with this letter. Open the box very carefully because it is glass. They are 18th century English glasses—between 1760-70. Called cotton white twist glass. They are very rare fine specimens and the art of making them has been lost. They shine like diamonds and look wonderful with silver on a dark table. Candle light makes them wonderful. Nearly all of them are collector's pieces but we will drink wine out of them.

You say you feel cut off and not part of me. I surely feel you are part of me all the time.

 

Darling I miss you so badly.

I see all these thousands of lonely soldiers here and they are going through the same thing. There's a kind of walk they have in London, an apathetic shuffle. They're looking for something. They'll say it's a girl—any girl, but it isn't that at all.

The whores line the streets in the black out. They have umbrellas for when it is wet. Many of them are refugees. Some have little flashlights and as you pass they turn it on their own faces, on and off, quickly. When there is no light the soldier lights a cigarette and in that way gets a quick look at his love. Then they go into the park or in a door way. It's the saddest damned thing. And venereal disease is way up—terribly up. But there's something about these poor drab little things soliciting in the rain. Well, anyway, that's what these soldiers think they are looking for.

I have two bets that the German war will be over in December. This is based on no knowledge at all and I am laughed at loudly. With my record of intuition I suppose I couldn't find a better way of prolonging the war.

love to you.
J.

[New York]
December 13, 1943

Dear Toby:

It has suddenly turned quite cold here but no snow yet. We've both had colds but not bad ones and the flu has become epidemic. Also I have a symptom or two that you will probably recognize. Sudden blank brain—not knowing who or where I am. They only last a few seconds, and are followed by a blinding headache which lasts a few seconds and then all right.

We're going to leave here on the IIth of Jan. but will be back in a couple of months or sooner. I'm going to try to get some perspective on the war by going away from it. I don't understand it now.

Had a letter from Ed [Ricketts]—who seems to be doing well. Heaven knows when we'll get out there but probably next fall. Probably everything will be changed by then. There is a curious sense of change going on. Kind of a rumble. No one seems to notice it but it has an ominous sound to me and I think hell is stirring.