The Journals of John Cheever

by John Cheever

  •

  When we were in college and used to go up to the river, Aunt Mildred used to urge us to swim without trunks. “Who cares about a little thing like that?” she exclaimed, although in the cases of Howie and Jack it was far from little. She used to sit on the pier where we swam. She had cut eye slits into the pillowcase, which she wore over her head to protect her from the ell-flies. She would sit there looking like an ill-dressed member of the Klan, while we porpoised around naked in that fine clear water. One afternoon she showed up with an old-fashioned box camera and without removing her hood snapped pictures of us diving and swimming. I didn’t suppose the pictures would be any good, because of the age of the camera and the difficulty of focussing it through a hole in a pillowcase and I knew that she wouldn’t dare have photographs of naked men developed at the drugstore in Howland. I don’t know where she had the pictures developed and I didn’t see them until thirty years later, when we sold the camp. Mildred was long dead. The pictures had been successful.

  •

  I think I think of the book not as narrative but as bulk, texture, color, weight, and size. I would like to shake my composure, to howl, to penetrate. I hope, this day next year, to have another book done.

  •

  At 7 A.M. Mary wakes me and points to a turtle on the lawn. This is a snapping turtle, three and a half feet long, the largest I have ever seen. He moves like a sea turtle, well off the ground. His head is immense; his tail is scaled and spiked. It would be pointless to dwell on this prehistoric anomaly, this vengefulness of time. I get the shotgun and put two Super-X shells into his head. I see the head thrown back and up by the shell, he rises to his feet and falls, and I go upstairs to shave. Mary calls to me that he is moving, and I look out of the window and see him walking towards the mint patch and the pond. I take the gun again, and this time put four shells into his head. I then resume shaving, but he continues to move, and in the end I put ten shells in his head before he is dead. We start down the road to Providence. I have a drink before we leave, and nip along the road, and I think that to catalogue, idly, the vulgarities of our time—the trailer with stained-glass windows, the man who writes jingles for the highway commission—is useless unless we can describe clearly the world that we desire. The turtle seemed to possess the world much better than I—I with a shotgun, my hands shaking from a cocktail party.

  •

  You have to be patient and you have to like people, says the cabdriver in Washington, shortchanging me two dollars. S. and I walk to the White House. I find the face of the President tragic. He leaves the platform by mistake, and I see his wife lead him back into the music room. Her smile is forced and weary, and it is like looking into the raw material—the exaltations and backaches—of any lengthy marriage.

  •

  I sleep with my head in T.’s lap, and wake as we are entering Moscow. Oh, how exciting the world is at dark, I think—entering some city and watching the lights go on. The people everywhere carrying yellow leaves. Autumn moving over the broad reach of Europe. London. Autumn roses and forest fires in the Crimea. Red and yellow trees in Georgia. Cold after dark. The roads blocked by sheep. We were the last swimmers in the Caspian. The parks in Kiev were yellow. A bitter fog in Moscow. Today is the arrival of the cosmonauts, the deposition of Khrushchev. As I walk back from the embassy, groups are marching in from every direction carrying flags and posters of Brezhnev. Truckload of men and women. I buy lunch and watch TV. No excitement. I have a hangover and an unsavory mind. It is that hour when the seemly world appears useless, worthless. We go to the theatre and see a stunning performance of Brecht that ends with the Communist salute. I eat caviar alone in the main dining room and am excited. I sleep.

  •

  Yevtushenko’s recitation in the medical school. Sharp tiers of desks, the place jammed. Zhenya wears a shirt. The breadth of his bony shoulders, the length of his arms, the size of his fists. The sharp nose, the unrelieved intensity of his face, views of his broad forehead, the impact of this being his role. He has a flat head. He recites for two hours without a note and is given dead chrysanthemums. I seem to love him as I love most natural phenomena.

  The deluxe train to Leningrad. Rainy midnight. Red plush. On the radio a soprano sings “Vissi d’arte.” So we travel, drinking vodka in good company. The train whistles, smells of coal gas, the sombre beauty of Leningrad. Views of the river from the Winter Palace. Back through the suburbs of Moscow at daybreak. The Ambassador’s lunch. A fuse blows during the cocktail party. Dinner back in the Sovietskaya with the Updikes. So I get kissed and leave Russia with a tremendous confusion of feeling. All the rest of Europe seems much more successful, orderly, but I think of Russia as lovable, vast, pathetic. The women in Amsterdam are beautiful; their heels make a fine click on the floor. The table linen is white, but in some ways I prefer the Ukraine Hotel—gloomy, impractical, and smelling of unwashed socks. My Russian memories seem to be fading. I try to recall the brilliance of Zhenya’s face, his airs. I see the Berlin Wall, flowers, graves. H. speaks of the last days here, the streets on fire, the lions loose, the world that has outstripped our nightmares, our subconscious. I found the ruins ghastly and impressive. So I shall go home on Saturday.

  •

  When we say “Christ, have mercy upon us,” we don’t ask for a literal blessing, I think. We express how merciless we are to ourselves.

  •

  Waking, one thinks, The rain will come, and after the rain, my love. First I will hear the sound of water and then the sound of he footsteps on the stone floor of the corridor, the hall. But what is this hall and why does it have a stone floor? Am I involved in towers, moats, stupidities, and fancies, are these the foolish terms in which I phrase love? Troubadours in fancy dress. There is thunder, lightning, and then rain. I hear first the rain and then her voice from the driveway below the house. She is tired and I leave her unmolested, but see, as I get into bed, through the transparent cloth of her nightgown the darkness of her fuzz: fragrant, delicate, it seems to me a flower.

  •

  I long so for love that it seems I long for the love of God. But I do not follow Rilke on the prodigal and the love of Him. I go with Ben to the town dump. Two scavengers. One is the stooped cretin who lives with his old parents in the house by the pear tree. The other is a young man who glares at me with a hatred I find mysterious. My son explains that the look of hatred is the look of a scavenger. Scavenging is a most intimate business, and no one wants to be discovered at it. I scythe, wash in the brook, wash in the hose, swim at S.’s with Mary and my son. The lawns are a brilliant green, the sky stormy and clear. A hot night. I fall asleep before I am joined.

  •

  Oh, to be so much a better man than I happen to be.

  •

  My difficulties continue, and I can’t determine where the blame lies. I sit in a chair under a tree. It is raining. The rain is light. I can hear it fall on the leaves, but the leaves of the tree make a shelter. I think—I have been drinking—that I must speak with Mary, make some stab at candor and perhaps approach love. This may be tactless and stupid. In any case, I speak. “You’re just making up one of your little stories,” she says. I say that the remark is spinsterish and irrelevant. I speak of those weeks following my return from Russia when I received, for the first time in my marriage, a vocal declaration of love. I ask if she doesn’t remember this; if it wasn’t true. She replies, “I wish you could have seen your face when you asked that.” I cannot settle on any motive for this. Does she think I despise her so deeply that any declaration of love is ridiculous? Or does she mean to say that I am ugly? She claims not. But how cruel it would be for a woman to call her lover ugly. The children return from the movies and I sit with them in what seems to me a fragrance of reasonableness. Returning to bed, I think I shall suffocate.

  •

  In the morning there is the familiar anxiety. I fear that I have done and said some irrevocable things; that I have ruined my marriage and exiled mys
elf. I feel both tender and horny. But opening a gin bottle at noon I think that the only declaration of love I have ever received has been rescinded. This is merely at the sight of a gin bottle.

  •

  The Skidmore girls, some of them are beautiful. One’s head swims. Watch for the inch or two of thigh you’ll see when they mount their bicycles; watch the bicycle seat press into their backsides. Some of them, much less beautiful, muster a sense of humor and get by on this. Some of them have nothing at all. It is hot, and as in all small towns people complain more bitterly than they would in some larger place. The broad porches are still open, with their straw rugs, wicker furniture, tables with vases full of flowers, copies of the Reader’s Digest, and, at four, a pitcher of nice lemonade. “It’s our outdoors living room,” said Mrs. L. A bridge lamp burns at night. Crossing the park where I once saw a woman steal marigolds I think with sudden love of my son Federico; I think with shame of those quarrels he has overheard. How can he grow straight and courageous as he must in a house where there is so much that is bitter and frigid? I am sorry, I am heartily sorry, my son. I love you and will try to stay at your side. Girls pass with shadowy cheeks, with round cheeks, with no cheeks at all. No dogs bark. Have they passed a leash ordinance? I think of what I may do to C.B., but I won’t put this down. I am plagued by some circulatory distress, a whiskey thirst, and the bitter mystery of my marriage. They all three go hand in hand.

  •

  The lollipop clock in front of Edelstein’s jewelry store stopped twelve years ago at five minutes to six. A blizzard was raging and the hands of the clock, still at five minutes to six, solidly commemorate the snow-burie streets, the stalled train, the barely visible street lights, the stillness. The clock in front of what used to be Humber’s hardware store stopped at 9:10 on an April evening when the store caught fire and was gutted. That was ten years ago. The boredom and the aspirations of a small backwater on an April evening belong to the second clock. They sometimes ask, What kind of a town is it where we have two stopped clocks on the main street? It’s that kind of a town.

  •

  People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worser, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.

  •

  I cut the grass, hoping to improve my spirits, but then I hit the bottle with such vehemence that nothing is gained, much is lost, and this morning I feel sick. I read a biography of Dylan Thomas thinking that I am like Dylan, alcoholic, hopelessly married to a destructive woman, etc. The resemblance stops with alcohol. Once the idea of divorce had occurred to Mr. Halberstrum, he found himself unable to uproot the possibility. It established itself with the tenacity of a thistle. His manifest responsibilities to his children began to seem unreal. He knew how deeply bewildered they would be if he divorced—that this action might be a serious impediment to their growth as men and women—but the ardor with which he dreamed of being free of a way of life that seemed unnaturally debased and crooked made the sufferings of his children distant and powerless. Boarding the 8:23, he thought of divorce. The mountains and the river spoke of divorce. The noise of midtown traffic urged him to divorce. He looked during the business day for associates who had divorced and thought them the happiest of men. He approached his lighted house in the evening with a reluctance that was physical. It was a struggle to climb the stairs. He stooped with despair when he heard her slippers in the upstairs hall. A man with no religious training and no faith at all, he was forced into the emotional and physical attitudes of prayer. “Dear God,” he sobbed, “restore to m my patience, my faith, my powers of love; let me forget the bitterness that has passed; set me free from resentment, petulance, and anger. Amen.” But she had traduced him lengthily twice in a week and responded to his cozening with a swift kick. Now her voice was soft in the evenings, but it did not reach him. Let us pray.

  •

  Mrs. Hammer had begun her monologue. Hammer, who had been reading Time, took off his glasses and watched her. Her color was high, her style was vivacious, her eyes flashed. He had said or done nothing to commence the scene. “If you think you’re going to make me cry,” she explained, “you’re mistaken. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. I can tell by the way you look. You’re thinking that I’m sorry for what I said last night. You think I’m going to ask to be forgiven.” She laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t ask for your forgiveness if my life depended upon it. You hate me, you loathe me, but I couldn’t care less. I used to worry, but I won’t worry anymore. There’s something wrong with you. I think your mother did something to you, and, of course, you never had a father. I think I know what’s wrong with you, although I’d hesitate to tell you to your face. It would seem too cruel. I won’t give you the satisfaction of a divorce, because it would upset Dora. If I know one thing, it’s that Dora loves me. I’ve protected her from your drunken rages. I’ve given her the only loving-kindness she’s ever known. Oh, I know you’re jealous. You’d like to think she loves you, but she doesn’t, and she never will. You think you’re a great lady-killer, and I suppose some women see something in you, but the trouble is that you don’t have any men friends. Men don’t like you. When I took the train on Tuesday all the women on the platform asked me how you were, but not a single man mentioned you. Not one. You’re always talking about your sexual needs and desires, but if you spent a little more time out-of-doors you’d be more like a normal man and not so sexy. You never go fishing anymore. Well, you almost never go fishing anymore. Well, when you do go fishing you almost never catch anything. Of course, there are exceptions. Well, I may be wrong about this, and if I’ve said something stupid, how you’ll gloat over it! Oh, look at you. If you could only see how smug you look! If you could only see how happy my little mistake has made you! Well, at last I’ve done something to please you, I’ve brought a little sunshine into your life. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait before you remind me that the last time you went fishing you caught three trout. Oh, well, I’ve made you happy. It’s still in my power to make you happy.” Laughing bitterly, she left the room.

  •

  And in Nailles’ happiness, his stubborn insistence upon the abundance of things, his passionate love for MaryEllen, I seem to sense some obtuseness. How could any woman of character live and breathe in so close, unremittent, and airless a love? “I love you, I love you.” He said it every day, seizing her buttocks, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. “I love you, I love you,” morning, noon, and night. I sense some obtuseness, but I merely sense it; I cannot see it, judge its altitude or nature as one sees the Atlas Mountains from Gibraltar. He is incurable. When MaryEllen—or some earlier girl—said that his love was crushing, he would be bewildered. Envy, sloth, pride, anger—all these things could be crushing, but not love. Standing on his porch on a winter night, naming the few stars that he knew for his son and exclaiming loudly over their brilliance and the beauty of the night, he might appear to her to be a fool, an unredeemable fool. “Oh, it’s so beautiful out there!” he would say, his breath still smoking, the sharp perfume of cold coming off his clothing. “Why do you cry?” he would ask. “Why do you choose to cry on such a beautiful night?”

  •

  Someone had written something in the fresh snow. Who could it have been—the milkman, a boy, some stranger? And what would he have written—an obscenity, a calumny? What the stranger had written was: “Hello World!”

  •

  He had a concession at the bowling alley. He called it the pro shop, sold equipment, and drilled and plugged bowling balls with some rented machinery. It was dark that afternoon, but you could see him in the darkness, talking into a wall telephone. He had been talking for three-quarters of an hour. He lowered his voice when I came in, but I heard him say, “She’s wild, that one, I wa
s into her three times, and she buzzbuzzbuzz.” He said he’d call back, hung up, and turned on a light. He was a tall, bulky man with a vast belly—proof of the fact that ther is little connection between erotic sport and physical beauty. His thin hair was most neatly oiled and combed with the recognizable grooming of the lewd. On his little finger he wore a flashy diamond, flanked by two rubies. His voice was reedy, and when he turned his face into the light you saw the real thing, a prince of barroom and lunch-counter pickups, reigning over a demesne of motels, hotels, and back bedrooms—proud, stupid, and serene. His jaw was smooth, well shaven, and anointed, a piney fragrance came from his armpits, his breath smelled of chewing gum, and he had the eyes of an adder. He was the real thing.

  •

  Waking, I think that as a social impostor I have gone to some pains to conceal the fact that in the house where I was raised there was an automatic piano. It was called a Pianola and had been won by my father in a raffle. It was not in the living room, where we entertained, but in an obscure room to the right of the hall, yet on Sunday mornings before going to church I would happily pedal away and loudly sing the words of hymns, and on weekday evenings I would play “Dardanella,” “Louisville Lou,” “Lena from Palesteena,” or if I felt serious the “Barcarolle,” a little Chopin, or my favorite, the “William Tell” Overture, with its storm on a mountain lake. The Pianola was an ugly object, stained the color of mahogany, somewhat scratched and battered by me, but it was a source of great pleasure, which I seem to have veiled as a vulgarity or to have supplanted with a glistening parlor grand, some Schumann on the rack.