The Journals of John Cheever (Vintage International) (40 page)

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On the screen four naked men appeared to be doing something to one another, although the scene was so badly lit that you couldn’t be sure. Then the light increased, and there was no doubt about what was going on. A stranger seated on my right put his hand—accidentally, it seemed—on my knee, and I got up gracefully and moved to another part of the theatre. I wanted to avoid encouragement and scorn. On the screen the four naked men had paired off, and the scene appeared to be shot through the opening of a man’s trousers. I thought then, but without nostalgia, of the movie theatres of my youth. In the small town where I grew up there was only one. It was called the Alhambra. It was not palatial, but there was a golden proscenium arch, and some plaster wreaths on the ceiling. My favorite movie was called “The Fourth Alarm.” I saw it first one Tuesday after school and stayed on for the evening show. My parents were alarmed when I didn’t come home for supper. On Wednesday I played hooky, went to the one-o’clock show, and was able to see the picture twice and get home in time for supper. I went to school on Thursday, but I went to the theatre as soon as school closed, and sat partway through the evening show. My parents must have called the police, because a patrolman came into the theatre and made me go home. I was scolded and I believe I cried. I was forbidden to go to the theatre on Friday, but I spent all day Saturday there, and on Saturday the picture ended its run. The picture was about the substitution of automobiles for horse-drawn fire engines. In some fictitious city there were four fire companies. Three of the teams had been replaced by engines, and the miserable horses had been sold to brutes. One team remained, but its days were numbered, and the men and the horses were very sad. Then suddenly there was a great fire in the city. One saw the first engine, the second, and the third race off to the conflagration. Back at the horse-drawn company things were even sadder. The men sat around the firehouse in an atmosphere of dejection. Then the fourth alarm rang—it was their summons—and they sprang into action, harnessed the team, and galloped across the city. They put out the fire, saved the city, and were given an amnesty by the mayor.
I would open my Lifesavers and wait for it to start all over again. It seemed that I couldn’t get enough; but I could get enough of what was going on among the naked men, and I got up and left.

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Yesterday my older son was married. I rang the church bell.

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Veterans Day. The paper reports an unusual number of patriotic demonstrations, but the
Times
is noncommittal. I wish I could understand those men and women who feel Communism to be an acute threat to their way of life, their spirit. People who favor the war in Asia drive with their headlights on. Between here and Harmon half the cars have their lights burning. I find something menacing in this mute and anonymous means of communication. One takes a stand—makes a threat—but the face is never seen, and nothing, of course, is said. So we pass one another’s dark lights and lights that burn—taking sides in a bloody war.

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In
Esquire
, a piece on the New Homosexuality. I don’t know what to make of it. The claim is that once guilt is overcome the eccentricities of the old-fashioned homosexual will be overcome. Men who love men will be manly and responsible citizens. They claim that an androgynous life can be completely happy, but I have never seen this. Drugs seem very important. The old-fashioned faggot with his dry Martinis is a goner, forgotten. There is something wonderful about being one’s own man. This is not the part of a man that was written by one’s father; it is a question of essence, self-esteem. The fact that I am fifty-eight years old may have something to do with my attitude, my lack of understanding. There may not be such a thing as a normal man, but there is something very close to it.

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Into town on the 4:40. Night falls on the river. At Grand Central, crowds of commuters wait at the gates. They do not seem undone by death. They seem to be a reasonable, clean, and useful population, a little urgent and a little tired, but I think it would be a fatuous mistak
to compare them to the population of Limbo. I walk the streets. Anxiety and perhaps
The New York Times
have built up in my mind a feeling that the city is sinister and dangerous, but tonight the couples that I see on their way to a restaurant or the theatre seem very happy. On Sixth Avenue there are two stores where you can buy colored photographs of naked men and women, displaying their genitals. One can see as much in many Italian cathedrals. It rains. The sound, the voice of New York for me is the sound of taxi horns reverberating off walls. It is not a sad sound, but it is far from cheerful.

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What I think of as “the maldispositions” continues. This is the longest stretch I can recall. It began in Majorca early in July, and now, with snow expected, continues. Slammed doors, venomous remarks, a general attitude of revulsion and contempt. I think frequently of S., although this could be just another dream girl. She sleeps. She is beautiful. There is a wide hem to her nightgown. She is fragrant, graceful, intelligent. She wakes. Is it raining? Yes. Your hair is wet. I went out and closed the car windows. I kiss her and laugh. Did you get terribly wet? Not terribly. I dried myself off with a towel. I can’t hear the waves. There aren’t any. It’s calm. It usually is in the rain. I’m going back to sleep. Good night, my love. Good night.

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My older son seems seriously to have switched his allegiance from me to his father-in-law. This is no cause for feeling, merely something to be observed.

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I board the 2:20. As we go through the tunnel the lights in the car flicker and go out. We make our way into the daylight, but the train seems to move haltingly. The uptown slums are being demolished—have been in this process for fourteen years. I am the sort of man who would regret the rats, broken toilets, and fire hazards of a cold-water tenement because its cabbalistic lintels were supported by rams’ heads, scrolls, platforms, and other inventions. But the rectangular tenements that replace them have not a trace of invention. Their bleakness is absolute. No man has ever dreamed of a city of such monotonous severit,
and there must be some bond between our houses and our dreams. The train makes its halting way as far as Hastings, where it seems to die. All the lights go out. The conductor and the engineer not only refuse to explain what has happened, they are rude. The train shows no signs of life at all; the lights, the ticking and kissing sounds are all gone. It is too dark to read, and the woman across the aisle from me shuts her paperback copy of “Grand Hotel.” Our situation is mysterious, and our response seems to be complete passivity. I think of striking up a conversation, but there is no likely companion around. Would it be different in another country? I think not. I leave the haunted train and, with some other passengers, take a cab. An old man laments the death of the railroads. The trains break down regularly. How wonderful they were ten years ago: speedy, luxurious. Now the equipment is obsolete, the roadbeds are dangerous, the staff is surly.…

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And look at poor W.B. in his liquor store shaped like a dark hallway, selling what he knows will be, six times out of ten, a means of death. He knows the symptoms as well as any doctor: the deepening flush, then a bleacher sunburn; the shaking hands; the desperate telephone calls—“Hey, Walt, could you have the taxi rush over a quart of gin? I don’t happen to have any money in the apartment, but you know I’m always good for it.” They were in many cases intelligent, courageous, and gallant, but they were headed straight for the cold-turkey ward of the county hospital.

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Bill Faversham stepped into the bathroom to brush his teeth and found his wife, Martha, in the tub, but she had closed the shower curtains and was invisible. Bill, in a mood that was much more light-hearted than lewd, opened the curtains for a look at her breasts. They were, in a sense, his breasts; he had worshipped them, kissed them, clothed them, and taken them around the world. He parted the curtain innocently, as one might go to a window to see the sky. She gave him a look of pain that was withering, and sank deeper into the water so that nothing could be seen. He turned back to the washbasin. Cheerfulness was obviously his best target, and he banged away at this, knocking down a few of the travelling ducks; but a blow had been deal,
and dealt at an area of his spirit that was already lacerated. He went down to the living room, not so much wounded or angry as astonished at the traumatic and reverberative nature of his experience. He had no coherent memory for ecstasy or pain, but an acute experience of either was a sudden revelation of the sum of his memory. The present seemed like some modest, lighted table at which four people played Russian bank, but beyond them was some dark and cavernous backstage, hung with sandbags and the scenery for yesterday’s garden and tomorrow’s forest. The present claimed to be supreme, but the truth seemed to lie somewhere between the lighted card table and the cavernous wilderness.

The only light in the living room was the moon. The night was cold and so was the room. It was, or seemed to him, a cluttered room. Any taste for simplicity that Martha may have had seemed to have vanished as she approached her fifties, and every surface was covered with porcelain lions, sets of luster, pots of china flowers, agate paperweights, etc. It made him feel a stranger there. Then he decided to change his name. He had done this before. He was not Bill Faversham. Bill Faversham was flying over the Urals in an Aeroflot 707, a frightened little man sneaking drinks of vodka from a flask concealed in his jacket. He was Tom Brown, Farmer Brown’s oldest son, a natural man, a little stupid perhaps, but a free spirit, genuinely loving. He was not Bill Faversham nor was this his house; it was merely a place he had stepped into to get out of the cold. He had no investment in the porcelain lions; he had no investment in the withering look of pain Martha had given him. I am Tom Brown, and this is a strange place where I have come in to spend the night.

The discovery, it seemed, of something invincible in himself, clean, free, and strong, was so strenuous that he threw out his arms and braced his back. “I do not live here,” he said happily, ecstatically. “I do not live here, I do not live here, and my name is Tom Brown.” Then he loped up the stairs, parted the shower curtain again, kissed his wife’s breasts, and went to bed.

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The contemptuous silence goes on for another day. We drive to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Mary says nothing. I joke and talk with my son. Our jokes may be childish and banal, and I may be drunk, but this would hardly account for her formidable silence. The restauran
is crowded, and I am pleased at the sight of families eating good food. They are mostly families, large tables of parents, children, and grandchildren. Mary does not speak throughout the meal. Since I observe the others, I wonder what the others would make of us. My son’s face is cheerful, his color is high. I may seem loud and drunk, but what would they make of this haughty woman who does not speak during the four-course dinner? She is thought to be good-looking—sometimes beautiful. Her clothing is fashionable and expensive. Why is it that she will not speak to her husband, will not answer his questions, will not even look in his direction? She serves herself and her son. She pointedly does not serve her husband. He asks to be served, and if he is to be faulted this is it. She pushes the serving dish in his direction, looking away. She manages to make this simple gesture contemptuous. Have you ever seen people like that in a restaurant? I mean, have you ever seen a man and his wife come into a restaurant and the wife not speak a word during the whole meal? She doesn’t seem dreamy, or angry, or even sad, and he seems not to mind terribly. He talks and jokes with the children. But have you ever seen anything like that?

She is silent on the trip home. I am angry, and I don’t understand. Sometimes I think I am being provoked to physical cruelty. Her father once beat her cruelly, and I sometimes think she drifts back to this scene. She does not treat all men with contempt. I saw her kissing D. in the pantry a week ago. I think these flirtations—whatever—may be some part of the wish to humiliate and destroy; but I may be wrong. Anyhow, we return and she settles down to read the bound galleys of a book sent to me (I claim) by a friend. I think of taking the book out of her hand and tossing it into the brook. It is, after all, mine. However, this is not, even drunkenly, my kind of thing. I watch TV with Federico. When there is something funny I call her attention to it, but there is no response. Since I think anger despicable, I decide to make a stab at mending my fences with a kiss. I get neither the lip nor the cheek. What I get is a feeling of revulsion as shocking as a charge of electricity.

I may imagine all of this, of course, but I come away from my attempted kiss with the feeling that I have brushed not against madness but against obsceneness, wickedness, malice, and evil. I am shaken. I fall asleep, and wake when she enters the bedroom. “Did you finish the book?” I ask. “Yes.” The reply is nearly inaudible. “Did you like it?” She replies to this by closing the door and running her bath. These ar
small matters, very small, really, and yet I cannot sleep. I go naked to the dining room and sit in the dark, as I have done a hundred times before. I cannot take a Seconal. I seem allergic to sleeping drugs. I drink a little whiskey and think about mountains, streams, the back streets of Rome. I sit in the dark until two or later and, feeling drowsy, go back to sleep.

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Assuming that there is some sort of absolution in recording the most tedious and mistaken conduct, I will set down that the following took place. The morning was unpleasant, and the few words spoken were wounding. “Won’t you at least let him finish a sentence?” That kind of thing. I drink. That is a great help. It seems, in fact, to be the only way I have of remaining relaxed. I am left alone after lunch, and I wander through the rooms thinking how happy I am to be free of a censorious presence. I will go to the B.s’ for cocktails. I will play games with A. But then I think I will do none of this. I am tired; I am tired of these dreary social occupations. I am a man, a free man: I will drive into New York, I will take a hotel room, I will screw H., and take S. to the big dancing party. Pow. This is partly genuine enthusiasm, partly gin. I sit in the yellow chair with a drink, seeming to be the object of the attentions of two forces—stamina and inertia—represented by two presences as subtle as the representation of good and evil in some comic strip. I will go, I will liberate myself, I will relish life! I have another drink to steel my nerves for the drive. It is late afternoon, and the snow on the lawns has begun to turn from gold to blue.