Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

Swami is now up at Santa Barbara and will stay there till his asthma gets better—so I shan’t be able to visit him on my birthday.

  Michael Barrie leaves for Honolulu and Mrs. Luce the day after tomorrow.

  A postcard from David Hockney and Peter. They are in Spain. They say nothing more about coming here on the way to Japan. The message ends: “p.s. sell your dollars.” We keep getting panicky about money. In a few days we are having Robin French to supper, hoping to get some financial advice from him.

  August 24. Last night I saw Peter Watkins’s Punishment Park. It disturbed but irritated me. Today I feel that I have had an experience but I am still irritated. The scenes at the tribunal, where the prisoners speak, accusing and cursing their judges, are memor able and convincing, because the actors were (or so I believe) sincerely convinced pacifists and activists in their daily lives. But the pseudo-newsreel technique became all the more phony for that very reason, when it dealt with the manhunt. The Watkins film about the Battle of Culloden was convincing all through, despite the anachronism of the newsreel technique, because one knows that everything it describes actually did happen. I have written this down in order to “know what I think” by seeing “what I say”; because I shall have to discuss the picture with Robin French when he comes to supper on Saturday. Chartwell had something to do with producing it.132

  The Sorrows of Frankenstein. Shall Elizabeth tell Victor she is going to have a baby before her interview with the police chief and Polidor? Or wait till she and Victor are safely on board the ship? Shall they go straight on board or hide out at a waterfront inn until it gets dark? How does the Creature, after its escape from the police station, discover where the others are? However, we have made one tremendous breakthrough, entirely due to Don. He has had the brilliant idea that the Creature shall carry Polidor up the mast and that they shall both be struck by the same bolt of lightning—killing Polidor and invigorating the Creature! This is a perfect example of cinematic symbolism. For, as Don at once pointed out, it was always Polidor who hated electricity and Henry (now part of the Creature) who believed in it.

  August 25. This is the end of the month of entries I’d set myself. After this, I won’t write unless I want to—which is almost never! (Even now, I’m playing games with myself; tricking myself into writing perhaps.) Well, anyhow—

  I feel depressed because of the gloomy state of the economy and because of a British T.V. film they showed last night, called: “San Francisco, the City That Waits to Die.” It is vulgarly alarmist, but at the same time it clearly makes the point that a major earthquake up there is apparently inevitable before long; and there are schools and whole residential areas which are built right on top of the fault. The film (or rather, an appendix to it) stated that the same situation exists in southern California—the fault hasn’t moved in a long while and must release its huge pressure in the near future. Oddly enough, the middle section of the fault keeps shifting and is therefore far less dangerous.

  I talked about this to the man at the Duck Blind liquor store. He told me that they don’t have any earthquake insurance. And they had some of their bottles smashed even in the last quake!

  Yesterday afternoon, a young man from Oxford named George Rumens interviewed me. He came here last year, too. He has a girl named Lindy whom he’s going to marry and a friend whose name I didn’t get, who is training to be an actor. Rumens says that Oxford students nowadays are only interested in pop music and their own poetry, they care nothing about writers of other generations. He also complained that all the villages in that part of England are spreading out and merging with each other. Still, they have a literary society at which, apparently, they are ready to listen to interviews which Rumens has taped with literary characters, such as me!133

  September 2. As a birthday present, Don gave us a large gym-type scale; he had taken enormous trouble to find one which was secondhand but in good condition. So we have been weighing ourselves several times a day. Of course the weighings in the gym are all with gym clothes on, which means at least half a pound more than your weight nude. As of this moment (5 p.m.), I weigh 147 and ¼ nude; 147 and ¾ in gym clothes. We are inclined to think that the scale in the gym weighs slightly heavier—and of course ours is the accurate one!

  Now I’m sixty-seven and have my operation ahead of me this month, unless Dr. Ashworth has a very long waiting list. I rather dread this. It will obviously be quite a big production. Never mind. My little finger is getting slightly worse, which is an inducement to go ahead.

  Don Howard showed up from Baltimore, exactly the same, except for an unbecoming blond moustache. Paul Wonner has grown a very unbecoming beard. Bill Harris also appeared, from San Diego where he is visiting his mother. His figure is still all right and he has neither beard nor moustache, but, oh, his face is so nervous and weary, a sad anxious queeny face. I am still fond of him and felt sorry; he is one of those about whom one says, “What will become of him?”

  I got the impression that Paul Wonner didn’t care much for Kathleen and Frank, though Bill Brown had told me that he (Paul) loved it.

  Have been reading through the second file of the 1939–1944 journals, to get background for my work on the reconstruction of a narrative for 1945; my only material is the little day-to-day diary which isn’t even kept up every day. The 1939–1944 journals seem very self-conscious, and very conscious that they are about to be read by Dodie and Alec Beesley. But there is interesting material in them. I keep marvelling that I didn’t break with Peggy years earlier than I actually did. She really was intolerable.

  Much impressed by the atmosphere of the Australian film, Walkabout.134 Amazing how it captures the weirdness of that desert country, its hills and ridges which always promise something marvellous beyond them, and the astonishing variety of scenery which is nevertheless all basically inhospitable to human life. And how it made you feel that slowly increasing horror of being lost!

  Don finally bought a car, a new V.W., light yellow, three inches longer than the standard bug model, a super bug. He had intended that the new car should be mine and that he should take over the beige V.W. But his father and mother took such pride and delight in the purchase (particularly Jess, of course) that he hadn’t the heart to disown the new one. Don hates having a new car and besides, when the older beige one starts to break down, he won’t be able to ask Jess to fix it!

  We have now at last got Frankenstein, Elizabeth, Polidor and the Creature on board the ship—and set sail for the final sequence!

  During last month, I was in the sea twenty-four days out of the thirty-one. All that running down to the beach has undoubtedly been healthy, but it (and the acquisition of the bathroom scale) has rather disinclined me to go to the gym.

  September 4. Don has gone off this morning to spend the day with Jack Fontan and Ray Unger. I have just heard from Vedanta Place that Swami has a fairly serious blood condition and that he has been put in the Cottage Hospital at Santa Barbara for treatment and a thorough rest. He’ll probably stay there a couple of weeks.

  Last night, we had supper with Chris Wood. He was very frank about Gerald; Don thinks that he was feeling he must “confess” to someone. He told us he had been unkind to Gerald quite often; that he had once said to him, “You’re a very stupid man.” He repeated what he has so often said, that he cannot feel that Gerald was really spiritual, “not like the Swami.” Chris thinks that Gerald was always trying to convince himself; that he didn’t know. Chris’s general attitude is that Gerald used to be ever so much nicer and more fun in the old days, in England, before he stopped having sex and got religious. Chris says that he loved Gerald, as he was then, more than anyone else in his whole life, except for Mark Palmer.135 But, when Gerald got to America, he came under the influence of people like Allan Hunter—puritans who disapproved of Chris. Chris says he never wanted to come to America in the first place and only did so because he believed it would be for a short visit; later he realized that Gerald had always intended to stay here per
manently. He never wanted to set up house with Gerald, either. Gerald was living at Peggy’s, and Maria Huxley persuaded Chris to take a place with Gerald (this was Arlene Terrace)—no doubt to spite Peggy (this is my guess, not Chris’s). According to Gerald and to Michael Barrie, Margaret Gage behaved badly to Gerald and more or less ran him out of the house. But Chris thinks quite the opposite; he says Gerald was most inconsiderate in his dealings with Margaret, went away for weeks on end without telling her, etc. Finally, Chris said he didn’t at all agree that Gerald is now merged in Brahman, as Michael thinks. Chris feels that Gerald is still very much himself, wherever he is.

  Of course, some of this is quite obviously what Chris needs to believe. Just the same, I feel and have always felt that anything Chris says must be taken seriously, because he is nothing if not truthful and he gives the impression of seldom if ever kidding himself.

  September 17. On the 15th, we finished the “Frankenstein” teleplay and early yesterday morning we sent it off to Universal. Today, Hunt called, saying he is very pleased with it. He wants to send it to Sheinberg just as it is. He said, “We won’t consider any revisions until we get a director.” So now, quite suddenly, it is out of our hands and we are left without a project. Hunt talks about “The Mummy,” but I most certainly do not want to start on that without taking a break.

  Glancing through the script I feel really quite pleased with it. There is far too much dialogue and things are clumsily expressed, but that’s very easily remedied. The whole thing is 197 pages. It breaks neatly into two sections: the first ends with the confrontation between the Creature and Polidor at the ruined house; the second begins (on page 98) with the wedding of Victor and Elizabeth.

  My operation is now set for the 24th, but I have to go into hospital on the 23rd. I spend at least two nights there. I get depressed about this, of course.

  On September 5th, we had a nice, mildly drunken lunch with Truman Capote, who was staying with the ex-wife of Johnny Carson.136 I wish I had written about this, because Truman is very amusing. All I remember is that Truman teased me by announcing he is going to start a story that I gave the U.S. rights for Maurice to the National Institute of Arts and Letters only on condition that it must elect Gore a member, even if he got no votes at all!

  Swami has been quite sick. But I won’t write about this now as I’m waiting for a call from Anamananda to tell me what the doctors said about him this afternoon.

  Am in good shape physically; I go to the gym or run down to the beach or both, practically every day.

  Nearly three-quarters of our street is parked up solid, every working day, by the cars of the men who work on the new buildings on the corner. The word is that they won’t be finished for another year! Also, they are putting up a new house on Maybery Road, with much early morning hammering. Also, there are more dogs around than ever before!

  Don (describing himself, I think—I wrote it down on my pad some while ago because I laughed so when he said it): “A dried effigy on a throne of cardboard.”

  The doctor is pleased with Swami, so the scare is off for the time being. But I did think he looked both ill and very old and weak when I saw him the day before yesterday. Poor little darling thing, peeping out of a blanket, as he does when sick, and telling me that he had “lost the use of” his mind the day before, while he was sitting in the bathroom; apparently he blacked out. Also, which was very distressing, he had hiccups!

  September 23. Swami seemed much better, when I saw him briefly last night. I asked him if he had had any spiritual experiences while he was sick. He said he hadn’t, exactly—only a dream which made him very happy. He had been outside a temple and someone came and said to him, “What are you doing outside?” and brought him in and offered him a seat. But the seat belonged to Swami Nirmalananda, so Swami wouldn’t take it. Nirmalananda tried to give up the seat to him and Swami clung to his feet to prevent him. Then he woke up.137

  Then Swami talked about grace and was so beautiful, so shining. He told me that he didn’t feel he had ever gone through any particular spiritual struggles; Maharaj had made everything easy for him. “All those visions I had, Chris, I never felt I had really earned them.” As Swami said this, he positively shone with grace, he was the blessed one, the lucky one, and his luck was adorable. When I left I made an extra long prostration to him, and he said, “Get up now.” Maybe he was a tiny bit embarrassed, feeling that I was worshipping him. So I was, but it wasn’t him.

  This afternoon I have to go into that damned hospital. Amazing, how I hate the prospect. It isn’t the prospect of pain. It isn’t worry that this thing may prove to be more serious than I expect. It is basically my horror of The Hospital, the frontier post of death. I hate submitting to their rituals, all the more so because I am otherwise in the pink of health.

  And then there is the pain of leaving Don, which is also symbolic; because the parting is actually only to be for two nights. But that too is a symbol of death—and he feels it instinctively, as I do. We don’t speak of it but we are gentle together; we are more than ever The Animals on an occasion like this.

  October 1 [Friday]. I can’t use my left hand properly until the splint and bandage have been taken off, which won’t be until next Wednesday (October 6) at the earliest. So I’ll write this in longhand now and type it up later.

  When we got to the California Hospital, I was terribly depressed for a few minutes, because it was just exactly what I had been expecting. The lobby crowded with people waiting and looking as if they’d been waiting hours and hours, with a terrible impassive acceptance of delay and a stolid readiness for suffering. I wanted to send Don away, so that I could resign myself utterly to this death experience. But he wouldn’t go; said he was going to see me settled into my room. His gentleness and sweetness made the experience all the more painful, because they made me feel, which was exactly what I wanted to stop doing; and yet, what a comfort it was to have him there!

  But then, quite quickly, someone appeared to take me up to my room. And I had one all to myself and it was quite cheerful—very quiet, but with a pleasing view of the freeway viaducts in the middle distance and the traffic whizzing silently by behind the closed windows. The nurses were all real professionals, not the kind of stopgap help they had at the Cedars of Lebanon when I was there. The only bad thing was the food. But Don returned after supper bringing a great bag of fruit and we sat up all evening watching The Best Years of Our Lives on television.

  I had sleeping pills that night and again next morning—the fact that I almost never take them pays off hugely on such occasions, I’m so beautifully easy to sedate. Also I had a calming shot of scopolamine, after which I felt relaxed enough for execution. This was just as well, for I had to wait quite a long time outside the operating theater, lying on my trolley, and then some more time inside, on the table, before Dr. Ashworth showed up. When he did, I laid my left hand on the chopping block, thinking, with dopey humor, of Cranmer and feeling that I was behaving with remarkable grace and style.138 The anesthetist, Dr. Musicant, told me I should have sodium pentothal with gas to follow. As he gave me the shot, he said “goodnight,” which I thought charming. The operation began at 11:50 a.m. and lasted a little over an hour. It is technically described as a “fasciectomy; palm.”

  When I became clearly aware of things again, I was back in my room and there was Don, waiting. I felt so happy, seeing him there. I had known that he would be, of course—but at moments like this one you take The Loved One less for granted than usual—it was like returning from a long journey—I saw Don’s marvellousness and his presence in my life as the beautiful miracle it always is.

  I left the hospital later that same afternoon. Dr. Ashworth had said that I could, if my heart and blood pressure were all right. And they were; I knew that they would be. I felt rather vain of my good physical condition. We had supper at the Fuji Gardens. My hand was in a cast and my arm in a sling.

  Not long after my return home, I got a letter from Bill Caskey
saying that he was leaving for England from Greece on October 3, and that he might stay several weeks trying to get his photo books published and to arrange a show of his photographs at a gallery. Don at once said that he didn’t want to see Billy if we were all in England together. As for me I know that, if he were there, I would have to introduce him around to people who could help him, and that this would establish all sorts of embarrassing links. So on September 28 I called Richard Simon and asked him did he think it was really necessary that I should give those interviews in London to help advertise the publication of Kathleen and Frank. He said no. So I decided not to go and wrote to Methuen, blaming my decision on the operation. By great good luck, [Richard] Simon139 has had the operation too—and had a much worse time with it than I am having—so he will be able to convince John Cullen at Methuen that this is a legitimate excuse.

  On September 29, David Hockney called from London in tears, having just received a letter I wrote him saying how sorry we both were to hear that he and Peter had split up. (I neglected to record this earlier, but Peter had sent us a postcard from Greece saying, “I’m sort of convalescing here as I’ve left David! I’ve moved into my studio at 5 Colville Square, W11. I don’t know what will happen. It just got too impossible.”) It now seems that Peter hadn’t really had the matter out with David—this doesn’t surprise me after the things he told me in London last year—and had simply slipped out from under. So poor David had a shock when my letter arrived. Now I’ve written to Peter begging him to be absolutely frank with David. Haven’t heard from either of them yet.

  It was also on the 29th that Dr. Ashworth took off my cast and said he was pleased with the condition of the wound. But he has rebandaged the hand and put a metal splint on the little finger. It does seem much better but I get terrific nerve twinges in the palm whenever I make a wrong move. Psychosomatic note: Just before the operation, my right hand became violently “jealous,” because the lazy left hand, which it supports by earning their living, was getting all the attention. So it started an acute attack of arthritis in its thumb—a hundred times worse than any pain I’ve had from the operation itself!