The Journals of John Cheever (Vintage International) (11 page)

•

Pain in the chest. Rowed with Mary about lingering glances; very depressed; practically insane. A call from Quincy to say that Mother is very sick. Emotional hurly-burly; some tears. Got a room on the Owl for Boston. The atmosphere of all such places seems to me to be the atmosphere of erotic misdemeanor. This may be a subjective projection. Rainy dawn in Boston; rainy Sunday morning. The unregenerate slums of Boston on a dark day. How lasting they seem; unassailable. Found mother very withered now, weary (she says of life). Her wits and her hearing are sharp. “I shout at Mrs. Bacon and she doesn’t mind. Other people don’t like to have me shout at them. She was talking on the telephone—she was telling someone about her cardiograms. I shouted at her, ‘Nobody wants to hear about your cardiograms.’ She didn’t seem to mind.” Old and feeble and alone and helpless as she is, I still seem to lay at her feet the sense of a tragic misunderstanding. “He’s a
regular
boy,” she says of someone and I still flinch. Home on the 1:00 and up the banks of the Hudson after dark to this warm and comfortable house. I have my troubles, but they do not seem to be insupportable. I would not like to be the kind of writer through whose work one sees the leakage of some noisome semisecret.

•

Mother died on the 22nd, and I do not note this any more than I note the walls of the chalice full of wine. The A.s’ antic house. This strong emotion as we follow a path to the grave. Norwell covered with old snow.

•

The train yards at Harmon on an overcast day. I wonder, Has my life become so ingrown that I cannot travel—but I can. A reproduction of a Cézanne on the train coach. A couple returning from a visit to New York: “On Wednesday afternoon we saw ‘Bus Stop.’ On Thursday morning we went to Radio City. Then we had lunch on the top of the Empire State Building. Thursday night we saw ‘Tiger at the Gates.’ We saw CinemaScope Friday afternoon,” etc. Farther north, snow on the ground. It lies sparsely and like powdered sugar on a winter-killed landscape, bitter as gall—and I think I do not want to make such notes, to write for the sake of writing. I want to celebrate, praise the Lord, discover and restate man’s freedom, although my vision is far from clear. I think of love’s two aspects: all that is gold and splendid, even the dust under the bed, and that other creation of soiled underwear and sidelong glances; both being a part of my nature. Met by a gentlewoman and an old friend, and off to the baths. White matchboard cubicles, a stained tub. Reading the
Herald Tribune
in a hot room. An old man with a towel around his middle massages my bum with sandsoap. The last days of Rome. But what, then, is this body that can be enflamed with fruitless desire when a stranger rubs witch hazel between my toes? The most I can do is to make a joke, and not a sad joke. Whiskey and talk and, later, thunder, lightning, the end of the skiing here. When I was younger I was delighted to lie on this bed, dreaming of what I would have—a good wife and lively children but now the mind seems stained with desire, and I travel through some erotic purgatory wondering, Is this a lack of character, of will, a misunderstanding of the meaning o
discipline, infantilism, sickness? These are no more than the trials of a lewd and a gentle nature. There are worse. Oh, how I long for what I have known; that healthy sense of self—aging, composed, industrious and unbeautiful. Where are my dear children? Where is Marcie?

•

On our knees in church (even in the cathedral) we are face-to-face with the bare facts of our humanity. We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual. The door at our back creaks open and we wonder, Who has just come in? Arthur? Charlie? Henry Penrose? Who is the boy in the plaid shirt? When was he confirmed? Why is the lady in the first pew crying? And even as the service rises to the great poetry of Bread and Wine we continue our observations. We see that the acolytes’ red plush cushion is nailed to the oak floor of the chancel and that the altar cloth is embroidered with tulips. And then for a moment a knowledge of His magnificence and man’s giftedness draws together, in at least a promise of ecstasy, all these bare and disparate facts.

•

Up to the West Branch with A.S. Very cold, the ground frozen. Some ice in the brook. The saplings very red, like a cardinal’s wing, but not much cheer or color. No fish, not even a strike. But the pleasure of wading this stream, although I dream of a stream with more fish in it. And the great pleasure I take in A.’s company. I have always felt that this would someday be revealed to me as a union of mysteriously broken hearts, like so many of my friendships, but there has never been a grain of evidence. It is as light, as solid, and pleasant and clear as any friendship I have ever known. And for all my woolgathering and troublemaking I cannot find a hint of darkness or sordidness in it.

•

Thinking, while fishing, and remembering the night, that love produces its own restraints and governments and that a man whose passion
are powerful and requited is usually clean-mouthed. And it may be only the emotionally frigid who can be called lecherous. Whatever we may intend, the act of love is not friendly. We may laugh and joke and talk familiarly about what is going on, but before we are done we will have a blinding vision. Today, a good one, when I feel my age, my gifts and limitations. I feel contented and strong.

•

Scarborough-Portsmouth-Friendship. The preposterousness of the congratulatory letters I write myself. Feeling sleepy, dreary maybe; going into a liquor store for a pint of whiskey for the trip, I meet the image that represents the point of breakdown. A greasy, amorous, or so I think, clerk. The proneness to see the morbid potential in every situation. The bridge will plunge its passengers into the river and the youth under the street lamp will murder me.

•

The limited point of view of a driver who seems to mine, not swoop, through the parkways at seventy m.p.h., unable to see the country, garlanded and spread with such an open hand, and sees only that they have passed through the country of red clay into the country of black dirt, counts the bridges and smells the sea.

   Proceeding two by two through what seems to be a run-down or even whory neighborhood—Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, and a brace of expensive dogs, we seem preposterous.

The evening light on this coast is the most beautiful that I have ever seen. The light is raked as it is in the mountains, and twilight is like the exciting gloom before a thunderstorm. The greens are bright and deep—we say “an unearthly light,” meaning, I guess, a light that isn’t solar. This crumbling and lovely coast.

•

I continue to write myself congratulatory letters, choose the Wapshots for a book-club selection, beam and bow as I accept prizes, ribbons, and awards of all kinds, and refuse to contemplate any weaknesses that I know the book to have, such as Leander’s financial arrangement with Honora.

•

And coming here this morning, out of idleness and habit, I am face-to-face with the fact that this is, at times, a kind of retirement from the excellence of life. Any search for truth or beauty is perilous and this is a common peril. There is a world of difference between taking out a sailboat and filling in the pages of a journal and I would like to bring these worlds together. Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil—not the strength to choose between the two—and sometimes it seems that we inadvertently do as much to corrupt our readers as to cheer them. Writing is allied with many splendid things—faith, inquisitiveness, and ecstasy—and with many bad things—diddling, drawing dirty pictures on the walls of public toilets, retiring from the ballgame to pick your nose in solitude. But it is, like most gifts, a paradox, and I will play my cards close to my vest and trust in the Lord.

   Took a secret slug of whiskey at eleven on Independence Day. Two straightforward Martinis at noon. Took Mary out to Sand Island in the outboard. Drank gin-and-tonic, ate crabmeat sandwiches, made love in a cove above the sea, the grass very scratchy and me not wanting to be implicated in pagan matters and thinking that these are our gifts as surely as the gifts of piety. We struck a bargain. I could have my way if I would take her around Long Island, everything lying in this thunderstorm light, the island fields a blazing green, etc. Found our way through Friendship Gut and delighted to see the village unfold on the hills as we came through the rocks. Drank Martinis on the grass and very much at peace with the world. Birds singing, the raked sunlight, the noble clouds in the sky.

•

Brilliant, overcast weather, not warm, the light past the low clouds gleaming like a sword, steel, unkind, anyhow. Studied Italian, thinking now and then of that country as the seat of moral depravity.
Che cose desidera?
Ah ha. Took Ben for a ride after supper, but he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to run the boat. He only wanted to play with his friends. Ate too much dinner, perhaps, and had a tic or quaver in my gut which I basted with whiskey. Drove Susie to church and so didn’t go myself. A gray sky, the air fresh, cold, and salt-smelling. Standing on the porch I pray to understand the transports and infirmities of my
flesh; not to be spared the pain of sickness and hurt but to understand it; and to be spared the pain of what I think of as moral uncleanliness. And if my prayers mean so much, I think, Why don’t I go to the Methodist church? I do not and wonder if I am irresolute. I think of those whose lives are a compromise with their burden of wild dreams, lewd fancies and discontents; of D., his eyes bugged out as if he sat on a tent peg and with his uncommonly stupid and pretentious wife; and I think of A., who has followed his capricious cod over hill and dale and looks, as a result, very weathered and sometimes silly. D. might be admirable. The whole thing breaks down to the fact that I don’t have enough substance myself, much of the time, to make collected judgments.

•

The city seems strange or unattractive and I am depressed. It is quite possible that my equilibrium is such a touchy piece of machinery that I only waste time in trying to control it. But this slip of a youth, I wonder, carrying groceries across Park Avenue, is he taking them home to his wife or is he an international whore. In short, I do not have that which I so often have—a strength of heart and bowel, a pleasant sense of self-esteem which is the point of view from which I certainly reach the most practical, happy, and charitable judgments on strangers. I go to see “Moby Dick,” which has some wonderful stuff in it and many clichés. Dissolve from a dramatic scene to waves breaking over the bow. I think of poor Jim Agee, who would have done better. I eat a sandwich at Reuben’s and think I see an old schoolmate in the next booth. A party of middle-aged couples comes in—all of them sun-black—all of the ladies wearing jewels and furs, their hair and their dresses cut with much thought, but there seems to be some discrepancy between this outlay and their appeal, at least to my senses. I may be depressed. In front of the hotel I see a slender woman with bare shoulders and bare heels, but she does not please me. I think she is not as pretty as the girl in the Waldeboro laundromat. I go to bed with a bottle of beer, but I cannot sleep and I don’t know why. I cannot blame it all on Mrs. Loins’ spectres and so I make a tedious review of my sexual autobiography. It all adds up to the fact that I have received most generously a force of life that gives proportion to all this trivia. I read the abridgment of a bad novel an
turn on the TV at 2
A.M.
and am bid good night by a minister. I read the abridgment of another bad novel—my bones, my eyes, and my head are tired and I cannot sleep. I read the abridgment of another novel and go to sleep. It must be four o’clock. In the morning the air is stale. I say my prayers at St. Thomas, eat breakfast at Longchamps, and come back here.

•

Since I seem to weigh, on the streets, step by step, minute by minute, some idea of beauty, I might try to state or restate this here. By beauty I never mean anything that is not close to sensual. In these beauties, I recognize clearly forces that appear triumphant and forces that seem destructive. The sea is fair and blue but if my boat should capsize I will drown. The stranger’s cheek is fair and round, but if I caress it I will end up in the police station. But these anxieties seem to stand in a realm where the light is dim; they do not seem to rise from our deepest nature. On the other hand, the sea is fair and blue and a pleasure to sail upon and my love’s cheek is round and soft, and if I caress it I will be rewarded with inestimable riches. It is this contest that I do not understand; that conflicts with an instinctive feeling that life flows or should flow like the waters in a stream.

•

O fall. This summer’s places—Friendship, where the bedsheets smelled of kerosene; the Hotel Madison, the lovely house at Tree Tops, the Hotel Dauphin; I am most comfortable here, feel most productive, most enjoy waking at night and hearing the wind change its quarter and seeing the dark sky through a hole in the trees. And going into town yesterday, the fishermen along the banks of the river. Their seasonal appearance. In the early spring, the early birds with scarves and hats and then as the summer comes on they seem to bloom; they are joined by their girls, their wives and children; they undress, they drink beer, they spread out on the banks of the river like the flowers in an unweeded garden and they scatter, all but the most hardy, when the first cold winds begin to blow. And then the last of them—hats, scarves, their noses cherry-red. And also the relationship between these fishermen and swimmers, the overdressed and the undressed, the sober and the beer drinkers.

•

Up to Saratoga. Very hot here. Smell of burning rubber in the valley. Some French Canadians on the train. A not young woman with brilliants in her hair. I smoke in the toilet and look out at the Hudson River, which seems broad, handsome, and sad, and with the leaves falling I think that I will not see my country for another year. I buy some coffee and drink whiskey out of the empty paper cup. I go up to the diner and lunch with a pleasant Swiss who is travelling in this country for the first time. Outside the window we see hardscrabble fields, abandoned garages, a gas station, its unused tanks wrapped in burlap. I point out to him the monumental ruin of an old mill along the banks of the river, but he seems perplexed; unimpressed. I go from the station to the spa and take a Turkish bath, which seems a good idea since my anxieties about the masseur seem unfounded and in general if you pursue these things the truth turns out to be cheering. As I waited on the porch for a taxi, a thunderstorm broke. The smell of rain as it is blown in on a porch where you sit. I am taken by P. through the house, which looks very pleasant to me, to a large room with a view of the lawn, fountain, and Vermont mountains. I wander around in fact, memory, and purpose. It is not in me to settle down in a businesslike way with some galleys. I talk with Harvey Swados and leaving the house run into Saul B. I drink cocktails at E.’s with Dick Eberhart, whose plain, healthy, and unshadowed mind amazes me, and with M., who is a first-class gossip. At dinner I am conscious of being in the same room with Saul. We speak after dinner and I am delighted by his presence. He is about my size, I guess, his hair quite gray, and I think I feel here that sometime tragic fineness of skin, that tragic vitality. His nose is a little long, his eyes have (I think) the cheerful glint of lewdness, and I notice his hands and that his voice is light. It has no deep notes. So we take a walk and I have nothing to say but I remember my other passionate friendships on this road—R. and F.—but I have no way of judging my feelings. I cast around for some precedent of two writers with similar aims who are strongly drawn to one another. I do not have it in me to wish him bad luck: I do not have it in me to be his acolyte. Today all this seems foolish.