by Janet Frame
Well it’s all over now, and what a fiasco. Hurrah, I may be turned out of the country for harbouring peedauntals! (This letter is being sent by wax-eye.)
What other news? I’m afraid I’m homesick all the time for you. Just for you to be around.
I’ve just been to visit my aunt and I spent some time persuading several of the old dears that it was night-time, for suddenly they began to get up, saying, Well we must be going, we can’t stay here being waited on.
I said, –It’s night-time now.
–Oh, is it? they said.
Well they (there were three) decided to take my word for it and so they settled down to sleep. I go there out of visiting hours, though there are very few visitors, and it’s guiltily easy to play the role of comforter.
I forgot to say that for dinner last night at Charles B’s I had soup that started off as ham hock with lentils but has been going for three weeks now, and was full of good things, and very tasty. Then some cubed steak with vegetables, then boysenberries and cream and seed cake and coffee; and wine.
And in spite of the Peedauntal incident the opera was fun although I was surrounded by the smell of cough lollies (sweets) for a woman next to me was eating very strong irish moss and licorice and wintergreen, everything cough mixtury and it didn’t quite go with the operas, though maybe it did, for the music sometimes made me wince when the violin played a squeak instead of a note.
I play your poems and the bagatelles and Hérodiade and Wolf almost every day, Bee, and the interview I played too. I’m always curious about what you edited out! I had hoped to ask the French woman for her interpretation of ‘the slow, the happy’ etc. but after waiting most of the afternoon for her to turn up I found out that she was so excited that she forgot which day she was coming to see me and she decided it must be Saturday! So she’ll be here on Saturday and far fom answering any questions about myself or giving her any information I’m going to be armed with Rilke’s poems. I recently got Baudelaire’s Journal Intime, reissued in Penguin, translated by C Isherwood with introduction by Auden. Do you know it—I’m sure you do. It’s horrifying.
—PEEDAUNTAL REPORT—
Special baths were provided for members of the audience at the Dunedin Opera Company’s performance of The Impresario when a number of faulty Peedauntals burst under pressure. One of the directors of the Company, when approached on the matter, had no comment to make.
Co-directors of the overseas-based company, resting quietly in their home in Hermosillo Drive, also had no comment to make, though a black and white cat resting on the family patio was heard to remark,
It is not known whether repairs will be made to the theatre and the stage after the unprecedented flooding from both members of the cast and members of the audience who were known to be wearing the faulty peedauntals. When approached once more the Dunedin-Opoho-based director stressed that the performance both of the opera company and the peedauntals which were a new design had been:
The Chief Inspector of Police and the Manager of the Opera Company agreed that the cast of an opera and the audience needed to have a special concern for water safety.
One member of the cast who was wearing a special-capacity peedauntal has warned that he will sue the company for damages. Speaking of the peedauntal he said his family had insisted on his buying one and had gone without holidays for ten years.
was his comment when asked to name the sum he would demand in court.
Local members of parliament, concerned at the influx of peedauntals and their production by an oversea-based firm said investigations would be carried out, and searches without warrants made at 61 Evans Street where some of the company’s correspondence and designs were believed to be kept. They assured the Press.
74. Dunedin July
Dear B, P, N, and all at Live Oak Inn including the Carnie who slunk home, tendril between his legs, because he didn’t like the big bad world. In one of his journeys he took a tramp steamer to Great Britain and the papers wrote nasty things about him, and there were rumours too with quotes like a
What hope has a plant of protesting? Well, he left Great Britain and took a tramp steamer home to Live Oak Inn and that was what Paul must have seen sailing through the hall—after so much furious conjecture one realises it was, of course, Carnie on board the tramp steamer, coming home with his tendril between his legs and with his little bundle of cottage cheese, peanut-butter, round-square or square-round of bread only half-eaten. Bill can never play the page of music again though, it is all covered with tramp-steamer residue, and it got rained on and the raindrops stayed on it, glued there with soot, making new notes of music, so if you do try to play it, Bill, it will be like something you’ve never played before.
All that, however, is a digression. There you are on the peanut butter patio and here am I saying hello and wishing I were there.
I had a visitor last evening, the nicest visitor I’ve had since I’ve been home. I heard something at the door and when I opened it there was a mewing kitten which wouldn’t go away and clearly was visiting me. It wasn’t a stray, it was tiny, plump, wellfed, but it insisted on coming in. I gave it a small drink of milk. Its purr sounded all over the house. It wasn’t a ‘pretty’ cat—nondescript grey and white and eyes set very close together, but it was a cat with a cat’s grace. After it had drunk the milk it explored the sitting room and my study and walked to the front door and back. Then it peed in a small tray I put down for it. Then it came to the sitting-room and washed itself. Then it climbed on my knee and purred and purred and snuggled. Next it explored and played. It skated on the kitchen floor, rushed up and down, skating from end to end, it climbed on the table and sat and fell asleep on the typing paper, then it rushed to the study and ran round and round the chair, all the time purring loudly with a loosely-beaded purr. Sometimes it meowed and I spoke to it in meows. Then it went to the back door, opened the door, said goodbye, and the kitten went home to wherever it lives—I’ve never seen it before and there’s no sign of it today, but it was a delightful visitor. I can’t think why it came to me but I’ve at last decided that the old dark grey tom who nests under the apple tree in the garden is some relation and it happened one day to see this little kitten, and suggested, Why don’t you go to visit J.F. one evening? Get some practice in visiting people, as part of your education. All you do, as guest, is go in, have a drink of milk, a pee, a wash, a cuddle and a play—it’s quite simple but you need practice—there, dart up to the door now and pretend you’re starving, and once in, do your stuff. You have to learn some time how to handle people . . .
Page Two.
Of Peedauntals, Yawls, and Other Complications.
I’m sorry the Peedauntals business turned out badly. At least the chap with the special-capacity peedauntal who had been going to sue the company for thousands of dollars has been pushed over a cliff by an elephant I hired from the Auckland Zoo. The elephant was flown down a week ago and I gave it instructions and took it out to St Clair where the cliffs are and sure enough this chap appeared and the elephant did its stuff, or its thing or whatever you call it. I thought I’d better explain the elephant Requisition on the Company Report you will be sent when our bankruptcy hearing comes up later on. No date is set yet. Meanwhile 61 Evans St is overflowing and flooded with peedauntals. I have them in the cellar, in the washing-tubs, in the garden, everywhere and I had thought of sending them free to underprivileged Americans on the Moon.
How glad I am to wash my hands of the business!
About Yawls.
I hope you and Paul and Ned are not worried by the yawl. I’ve been doing some research and I came across a reference which should calm all fears at Live Oak Inn (I mean fears that you all might be sane after all).
The verse is as follows:
The reference was ‘Halls, Passing through by yawls’.
Yawls have been known to pass through halls
just as shoes have been known to wear feet
and old women are ofte
n worn by shawls
(a last line is censored
because of its pornographic pitfalls.)
so you can all breathe easily at last!
Many thanks.
Stars.
Pure virgin wool love, warm, shrink-proof, mothproof, easily
washed in Cold Water All,
also transportable by yawl
and useful
when correctly spread
for warding off a chill
– this finished fabric from me
to Bill and Paul and Ned
or more familiarly to N and P and B
(Aren’t I crazy?)
My mortal enemy keeps turning the other cheek.
Bill filled the Bill and all was still.
Paul cried out in the hall, –I sight a yawl!
Ned, recently fed, tucked his head under the covers
of his washer-drier bed.
The night came. (This is an impromptu rhyme.
I make them all the time
as I weep on the southern shore)
inchoate –just a word I know –all the time I make my rhyme
from caustic soda and lime
Na2 SO4
and calcium carbonate—for you see
I remember my chemistry.)
Where were we?
The night came. Out in the patio
the moon dangled low on strings as if the silver dark were fishing
with a gold bait
but what it hoped to catch no-one will ever know. I think
the olive tree dreamed of Spain (only poetically, Dot!)
and its feet deep down in red earth for earth is a kind of flesh there;
and heavily the freeway freewayed, while inside the house in the hall
Paul was still concerned about having sighted a yawl.
–It passed by the Steinway, with a list
to starboard, he hissed (not wanting to waken Ned).
The sails were purple and red
like petunias. What has come over the place?
Bill strode forth with a white face and shoed feet and fingered hands
–Tell me all,
he whispered. –Paul, tell me all. Your face is eyed
and mine is mouthed. Is that at all
unusual? There’s little weather outside.
Nor rain nor hail nor snow. Bill said –Be still. But, Paul,
truly I did not know
we had a yawl!
Panic. Ned woke
in a stroke of waking (a kind of explosion like that suffered
by baking-powder when it meets a liquid in baking).
Ned fizzled and purred and finally stirred, the dreams vanished
deep
in his eyes as he was cooked out of sleep.
He meowed. –Did I hear something fall?
–No, Bill said, patting the sleek head. –Tell him, Paul.
Paul spoke aloud,
his voice unafraid and proud,
–I saw a yawl pass through the hall
with a starboard list to Steinway
its sails purple and red (I’m not dreaming, Ned!)
like petunias. In unity
we three
let us go seek it.
With the battlecry –Seek seek, and now not at all
afraid they strode through the hall
led by Paul. (To be continued next week.)
(a tender alternative is the sails were disguised air-mails wax-eyed your way from J)
75. Dunedin July 3 (postcard)
Postscript
Dear Paul,
Looking back,
I’ve decided it may have been a fishing smack
on its way to trawl
and not a yawl at all.
But why did it sail
through the hall?
76. Dunedin July 7
Dear blonde, brunette, periwigged, Paul, C.P.C. (Co-director Peedauntal Company),
Your letter came just now. You are a dear to make enquiries about teaching, and thank you. Unfortunately, away out here on the outskirts of Wax-Eye City, with the Peedauntal Bankruptcy Case looming (loom loom) I lose most of my ideas of social judgment. Just as when one goes to U.S.A. one puts on a certain watchfulness for the big bad cities, until the watchfulness becomes an unnoticeable part of one, so, in returning to New Zealand I put on a fear—understandably, inevitably—for I cannot abolish my past experiences here (not at the hands of the wax-eyes or garden trees or Carravaggio skies—but at the hands of people—maybe you know that species??) I mean I, rather timid to start with, become really timid, and so from here the prospect of teaching anyone scares me—apart from the fact that I know so little about writing, and the responsibility of pronouncing judgment on the work of those just beginning is a fearful one. On the other hand the technique and forms and problems of writing fascinate me and I would love to learn more by teaching. I’m inclined to think that if I attended the College of Creative Studies it would be as a student. The opinion of some who know my work and have seen and talked to me as a person (or plant or animal or vampire) is that I would be able to teach. I’m thinking of a poet, Ann Stanford who’s in charge (or was in charge) of the Creative Studies at San Fernando State College. She saw me at Yaddo a couple of years ago and saw, I suppose, what a reserved (!) person I was—they used to call me The Corner Woman because I sat in the corner and listened and would not join in the conversation (that was Hyde Solomon’s nickname for me), and yet Ann was very keen for me to go to San Francisco, en depit de tout.
Well . . . I’ve rather gone on about this but I don’t want to say yes, and have you make arrangements, and then get scared and send a wax-eye with a big NO in its bill. Not at all, Paul. A short tern class—a month to six weeks—would be a good idea and then I would find out; and I’m not scared when I’m away from New Zealand—well, I’m naturally shy to start with but I don’t get really pathologically scared as I do in N.Z. though it’s not pathological, it’s natural.
To parody Auden who had his photo in our morning paper today (on the second page—the front page was occupied by the photograph of two jersey cows), ‘Oh my dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely’—‘Oh my fear is natural as plastic flowers are bright’. A bit askew but it will do.
I’d say yes to a class of a month to six weeks. After that—the deluge. And I might like it very much—I wouldn’t know until I try (I mean the class not the deluge) though perhaps I can combine the two.
I hope you get the job you want and not the job they seem to want for you, and that you cast a spell over them by gazing in the mirror of your picture, or letting them gaze in it,
Miroir, miroir,
and now I’ve got myself into French phrasing how do I get out? I’d really much rather try to earn my living by ‘pure’ writing.
Miroir miroir au mur
suis-je pure?
je ne suis pas sur.
If, however, saying I am interested in a few weeks of teaching will get me information on what to do, that is, how to go about turning the administrative wheel, and not mean that a yes cannot become no, as in your mirror painting, then I’ll say I’m interested.
You are an angel, Paul.
And a dove.
That’s all
77. Dunedin July 7
Bee dear I’m thanking you too.
Was receiving yesterday
letter one, painting one, records two.
Your letter said you knew
that they were due.
Well they’re here this week.
The saucy painting’s lovely work.
I’m overwhelmed by the music.
Your letter like your sweater’s warm and thick.
You’ll get my letter say
July the something. Reply some day
or better with or without sweater bee my way
yours, Jay.
I am running out of Emily-battery for that poem.
I find I’m suddenly addicted to writing in rhyme.
in Santa Barbara where
‘How doth the little busy bee
improve the shining hour’.
Excuse this crazy corn, if you will, Bill.
Bear with me as well as bee . . .
at last, I’m free
from the circuit of rhyme!
Let all drivel shrivel.
Forgive the above. I like the Lotos Eater painting very much and you are so kind to give it to me—‘on the hills like Gods together careless of mankind’—I always love the colours you make. The painting is saucy but the shapes give away the sadness—but I’m foolish about everything, I could go on and on saying things—on paper only; speech is different, it is awkward for me, it is like groceries. And I have so much to say about the music that perhaps I had better say nothing about it. I’m going to listen over and over again. The jacket describes the B Sonata as ‘tearless’. For once, I agree with what is on the jacket. It’s a lonely tearless grief, ‘telling it like it is’ without once turning away to how it might have been or using the notes for comfort—or that’s how I feel, in listening to it. I like the places where the music takes me—there are no images there and no words. I’m afraid—or glad—that I gave up all yesterday to this music. I played the Requiem also. I must have heard these before but not listened as I find it hard to listen at concerts. I really listened—in my study where I have my record player and which is naturally a room where listening is the chief activity whether it is to the silence or the sound. I have heard some music, listened to less, and so have not a wide range of experience in it. I have never heard music which showed so clearly to me the nature of death as the Mozart Requiem does. It takes one beyond death. It shows (for me) death not as the surrender of life, as if one met death and said, I give up, here is my life, and was dead, having surrendered, that is, acknowledged the victory of death. It shows death as submission, where one does not empty oneself of life, one keeps everything, oneself and one’s life; yet one submits, accepts death, and dies—if that can be called death. It overwhelms me that all this comes through so clearly in the music. No words, except the ritual words of the singing. No images. Another language full of telling, if language is telling.