The Journals of John Cheever (Vintage International) (7 page)

This house, with its long living room looking north and south so that there are only a few days in the year when the sun enters it, with its pretentious and inefficient equipment, with its jumbled memories, dark and often cold, depresses me and seems to challenge the health I have enjoyed. It is perhaps the closeness of our life here and the dullness we run into when we try to vary it. These habits, these days, like ol
clothes. Yesterday a day of brilliant light, acoustical brilliance—the ringing of wheels on rails from distant trains sounded clearly. Sinus pains. Drove Ben up the hill to see the sunset, the clear darkness, the hills, the distant lights, the dyed clouds, the lavender-and-lemon-colored sky.

•

Some brief reassessment might be in order. This role was always volatile; but it’s difficult to recall. There was the accumulation of things over two years, self-protests, bad book reviews, a feeling of having grown away from the lamentable influence of my mother, a decrease in the fear of loneliness, and a conviction that most of the conflicts in my disposition are guises of emotional ignorance that I inherited from my parents. I was made so happy that there seemed, in my thinking, to be a trace of hysteria. In the middle of this, the Saul Bellow book had on my mind the power of shock. My identification with it was so deep that I could not judge it sensibly, and there is a grain of legitimate identification here. Then there was sickness, weakness, and the exhaustion I felt when I finished Mrs. Wapshot. There was a sick, rainy day in New York when Lexington Avenue seemed like a catacomb. There are my very legitimate troubles with
The New Yorker
. What it adds up to is that I have never felt so strong and so happy and feared hysteria so deeply. I think that a few days in the mountains would solve all these problems, but I cannot go. And what it adds up to also is that in making such a profound change in the attitudes of my mind, the body may be laggard. I do not have the sweetness of some of the people in question and it is an insupportable strain to aim for it; but I have my own sweetness and I see no reason why coming on this in the forty-first year of my life should undermine my health.

•

Waiting at the R.s’ for Susie to finish her French lesson, with Ben. A northwest wind and a winter twilight, a moon already bright before dusk and a cold night on the way. This hour when we seem caught in the bluff death of the year. The light loses its breadth, but not its clarity or its power. These subtle blues and lemony lights are like the lights of anesthesia, lust, repose. The stars come out and the play of light continues. It is not that the light goes; a dimness falls from the sky ove
everything, obscuring the light. The dimness falls over everything. The cold air makes the dog seem to bark into a barrel. Bright stars, house lights, rubbish fires.

•

Waking and dreaming I seem caught in this ridiculous cycle of petulance, suspicions, and hostility. Working, and at the hour of waking, I see clearly what it is that I want: love, poetry, inestimable powers of understanding or forgiveness if that is needed, humor that is not rueful. But I seem to see much too clearly the deterioration of my high spirits. I seem to see much too clearly the working of an idle and a morbid imagination, I see myself succumbing to all kinds of imaginary meanness and, what’s more, how can I take pride in my skin when my skin seems lacerated? But I also see that we perform our passions in the large scene of what we have done and left undone in the past and that now and then the curve of feeling—hostility—seems to intersect the structure of my disposition, for this painful feeling of laceration was felt years and years ago. Reason cannot enjoin the carcass to be cheerful and lusty—and when my powers of desire are maimed, so are my powers of wisdom—but I can persist at least in my hopefulness—in my knowledge that a simple cure—a trip, some skiing, the heat of the sun—will set the mind free.

•

Not working well: how deeply buried in this community are the dramas of hardship and lust. Or so it seems to me. Traces of midwinter angst. Asking myself each minute: This is not the maximum of my happiness. Why am I not as happy as I was in the golden days of autumn? To read the hardy text of this bright day: all bold things. Hill the bright colors of smoke, in the winter sun’s heat the fragrance of last year’s leaves, the bewilderments of childhood; also fishing trips in the north. Now love. Skunk cabbages pushing through the dead leaves. And still the brook runs. Sweet and hardy, life seems like the faintest perfume, coming and going. Why, I wonder. I am poor and I am bored. But this day should shatter all these things. Looking up from the sawhorse in the woodpile, he saw the winter twilight. Pruning the apple tree that was planted on their tenth wedding anniversary. Drinking gin before
an open fire; in one another’s arms: these passionate, strong, and capricious things.

   I do not seem able to call up, at will, the sweet flavor of compassion, but I think I can conclude that life, as it passes before our eyes, is a creative force—that one thing is put usefully upon another—that what we lose in one exchange is more than replenished by the next, that it is only us, only our pitiful misunderstandings that make for crookedness, darkness, and anger. There are times when I seem to see nothing but that world that lies in the corner of the eye: the leering stranger, the flick of a mouse in the hammered-brass woodbox, the prostitute in the drugstore. And there are times when the juices of understanding and love seem to flow freely through my arms and legs and all my parts. That she would never quite lose the appealing look of an American girl in a foreign boarding school. Her dark yellow hair; her white blouse … There is some special bad luck that seems to strike at the end of their journeys, holidays, and excursions. The curl mysteriously slips out of their hair, dust seems to settle on their hats and the shoulders of their coats, their lipstick smears, their eyeglasses steam, and the gay smile with which they meant to face the world lapses into the scowl of loneliness which is their habitual expression. Their white gloves get dirty, their ribbons come undone, and although they have attacked the problems of homeliness with spirit—even with gallantry—they are finally discouraged.

•

What a beautiful day; what a fair day. “It’s the kind of weather,” the maid says, “that makes you glad to be alive.” The early-morning air is moist, and mingling with the sweet fragrance of the earth is the smell of smoke, frying fish, and the slack river water. It is no wonder that we are stirred by this show of light and color; it is the plain difference between sanity and horror. I am lifted so high that I think of stopping my conversations with B.G., or at least telling him that I only want reassurance; that I want only to be told that the smell of laurel is not an aberration; to be encouraged in this belated discovery of personal strength. Some of what he said seemed to throw light on a part of the mind that has never been lighted before and there I found a kind of man-made cobweb—a complicated contraption of string, bits of glas,
small bells, old Christmas-tree ornaments, and other rubbish so tied and woven that to touch the web at any place would make every last ornament bob and jingle. I may not be able to destroy this contraption with one blow but at least some clear light has been turned onto it. And to describe the feeling of mystery we experience on stepping out of the house on a morning like this. The April dusk that smells unaccountably of mushrooms, the west wind smells of lemon trees.

•

When Huxley speaks of the rut of connubial bliss, I wonder if this is where I am, for walking after dinner with the children and the dog I am very, very happy. My son and I wait at a turn for Mary and Susan to appear. The woods where we stand are dark but it is light beyond the bend. Mary comes into view. Her shoulders are bare; her dress is cut low. She carries an armful of lilies, trailing this way and that their truly mournful perfume. She seems content and so am I and when she takes my arm and we continue to walk under the trees in the last light, under the beeches that spray like shrapnel, arm in arm, after so many years and with so much sexual ardor I think that we are like two sheltered by the atmosphere of some campus; that we are like a couple engraved on a playing card. There is a lack of space and motion and money, to be sure, but I can’t feel that sexual depravity would enlarge our horizons, although the advice seeps in, at times. We are happy, we are lucky, and if we steer clear of sugary dependence it can be let go at this. Venus and Eros are capricious and we may be fighting tomorrow, but we do not lose sight of the fact that with some patience and wisdom the resumption of good feeling is inevitable.

•

Overcast, unseasonably cold day for the last of June. Depressing cocktail party. Worked at Moses and Clear Haven. Read “The Confidential Clerk” and some of “The Victim.” The set pieces about the city in the heat are fine. Nothing is in jeopardy. It is encouraging to see good work in this direction, and this direction is a record of the phenomenon of light; that we have always found heart in seeing a piece of wet paving; the trees whitened; the thrill of watching the 7:46 roll down the tracks this morning. Here are water lights and water smells; pristine economic and sexual energies. I think, Make some money to travel.
Made some cherry jam last night. Four pots boiling on the stove. The fragrance of cherries boiling in sugar spread all through the house. Pleasant things.

   Cocktails on Teatown Road; the tag end of the holiday. Mary worried about my gin-drinking distempers, but stayed too long. So we drink too much and become cross. Then to Fred’s, where everything seemed garbled. “Now lissen,” he said, “Langer is juss like McCarthy, and the reason for this is it’s a big goddam country, and the East is nothing buda patch.” Played some badminton; played some at dusk with the old lady. “He is very affable, now that he has sold the house,” she said. “Of course, we’ve always been very good friends, and my husband loved him.” Magnificent evening, with a changing wind; putting the rackets into the frame: a magnificent twilight. Then, not a collapse of propriety but of consecutiveness. Everyone wandering around with a glass of gin. “Stigaround, stigaround,” he says. “I’ll toss some gurry in a frying pan and we’ll have a bite. Stigaround.” I don’t want to eat gurry, I think, and rebuke myself for fastidiousness. Pissed on the driveway, and got my pants wet. Rose plaintively to every taunt. Bored and cross with Mary. Troublemaker. Wanted to get away. Pack my bag and take the midnight. Find some dark-skinned lady who would love me, or some old man. These interminable cocktail hours leave me with a sprained sense of charity and love; leave me spiteful and mean. But there is room for some spite in the picture. It will pass. Equilibrium in good shape, but still some romantic fantasies about us. If I should love my enemy, surely I should love my brother.

•

Back here with mixed feelings. I have known much happiness and much misery under this roof. The house is charming, the elm is splendid, there is water at the foot of the lawn and yet I would like to go somewhere else; I would like to move along. This may be some fundamental irresponsibility; some unwillingness to shoulder the legitimate burdens of a father and a householder. It seems, whenever I return, small in measure, dense in its provincialism. It is partly the provincialism in the air that makes me want to kick over the applecart. I long for a richer community, and who doesn’t. Woke up at dawn. Wandered around the lawn in my birthday suit. Enjoyed the pale sky and the
monumental elm but I kept thinking, It is better in the mountains; it is better everywhere. I have been here too long.

•

There are pleasant things here, pleasant and unpleasant memories. The slum yards blazing with roses and hydrangea and later with dahlias. The people waiting, corner after corner, for the seven-o’clock bus to the station. The pretty girl with the kind of shawl that is fashionable today; the young executive in his uniform; the old woman dressed as a nurse, her cheeks painted a faded pink. There are all kinds of good things, but I might look into my resistance. I feel that this house, tree-shaded and standing at an east-west angle, has some depressing powers. I dread losing my equilibrium here, as I have done before. I see the charm in the valley and its houses—a sense of place—but I feel the force of provincialism within this charming front. This is friendly and clement, etc., but there is some conformism in the climate. There is perhaps the dread promise of permanence. I may be speaking of provincialism; I may be speaking of a deep strain of irresponsibility in myself; I may be speaking of that which in my marriage overwhelms me from time to time. Driving into the village I go along roads where I have been needlessly miserable and depressed. I like to think of a world much bigger than Shady Hill. I suppose every man does. I am not sure how it lies—Venice, New Hampshire, Martha’s Vineyard. I would like to settle and to preserve at the same time some breadth. The flaw in all this may be under my nose and yet I do not see it. We can live here through another winter, but I wish my anticipations were more cheerful. Perhaps I can make them so.

The midsummer night. Undressed, and walked in a towel down to the pool. The air was still and humid; the fountain and the pool lights were turned off. A single pattern of light came from the street through the leaves of the trees; in the distance, the lights of my own house. Waited, in a libidinous humor, for Mary. In the humid stillness, the throbbing of a ship’s motor sounded clearly from the river. It was some big craft—a tanker or a freighter, riding high. The sound of the screw deepened as she passed Clear Haven and then slacked off as she went upriver. Overhead, a plane crossed with all her gaudy landing lights still burning; her cabin windows lighted where thirty-four men and women, and a baby perhaps, sat in the febrile heat reading
The Ladies’
Home Journal
and
Time
. Upholstered, curtained, well-stocked with coffee, Dramamine, and Danish pastry—an image of ennui and meaningless suspense—she seemed to proceed very slowly below the large stars. The tree frogs sang loudly; so on will come the winter cold. It was the hottest night of the year. At my back, I heard some rats in the cistern. In the little skin of light on the water I saw a bat hunting. For a second everything that was familiar and pleasant seemed ugly. In the woods a cat began to howl like a demented child. The water smelled stagnant. I went in, swam, climbed out, and walked back over the grass. Religious things, superstitious things, what Veblen calls the devoutness of the delinquent—whatever it was, I seem to step into a pleasant atmosphere of goodness, a turning in the path that seemed to state clearly, Joy to the world, lasting joy. Awoke at two, smoked on the stones; still the loud noises of tree frogs. The cat drifted home. Many stars.