Jay to Bee

by Janet Frame

  More of our exciting adventures in my next instalment . . .

  Oh Paul that is a lovely knit-skin you have in mind and on paper! I’ve made another cap, but it’s not in the colour which is your blue, I’m afraid. You’ll be thinking I’m quite sane to be sending a—rash, troup—what?—of caps. It happens I have the wool and I haven’t been able to use my eyes for words, so I’ve kept them in practise by using then for stitches. You should receive the first instalment of blue cap shortly—other instalments may follow when I am within measuring distance of you.

  Meanwhile, and keeping my fingers crossed for the early instalment of the mountain lions or at least for an early visit and meeting, I’ll send simple unvarnished rustically flavoured

  LOVETOB P N

  Dear Paul,

  I am a cap, hat, petit chapeau and I look forward to seeing the world from the top of your head. I have a tassel or pom-pom which can be removed. My colour is not to your specification, but my maker tells me that nothing in this world conforms to specification. Although I am inclined to disagree with her I am not yet old enough to have formed a philosophy which develops—so my maker tells me and this time I agree—with wear and tear.

  This is not to say that I am raw fleece. Far from it. I have been scoured, dyed, teased, twisted, & knitted to conform to a pattern.

  Ah me!

  I am a wishing cap.

  Yours (I hope)

  Petit Chapeau

  95. Dunedin August

  Dear Ned and Bill and Paul,

  The large ginger cat who seems to own this house and who rescued me from a cage in the pet shop out South Dunedin has told me about you, Ned, and about your two big cats who have been staying with you quite a while, and whom you employ to provide you with bed and board. My large ginger cat has been doing something like that for me since I arrived four days ago. What colour are you, Ned?—From a painter’s point of view, not from the aspect of racial discrimination—I am white. I think I am seven weeks old. I am going to be a writer when I grow up. Already I can hit the space bar of the typewriter which I let the ginger cat use in the meantime as I am not old enough yet.

  My house has three pretty good chairs. (You will understand that I adopt the policy of letting the ginger cat believe she owns the place.) When I first arrived I was given quite a good box to sleep in and to humour J I slept in it a couple of nights until I discovered my own place in the small sittingroom—there are two sittingrooms and two bedrooms, with J having her study in her bedroom as she likes it this way. I found a marvellous place on the bookshelf beside Bullfinch’s Mythology and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (no doubt you have read them). J had a white woollen stole which she uses to keep warm with, and again I have humoured her by letting her think it belongs to her. It is ideal for a bed, and I sleep there every night now, and oh it reminds me of mamma who was white and soft with tassels that I used to pull and suck just as I do those on the stole. J, of course, has no idea of my secret thoughts. Have your cats any idea of your thoughts?

  I’ve heard about your Dr Gilbride. My vet is called Dr Twaddle but I have never seen him yet. I may go soon to be inoculated against that dreadful disease feline enteritis which strikes very quickly. I will have to stay overnight and it will cost me two dollars fifty cents. I shall probably hire a taxi to get there. I have not yet learned to use the phone, though.

  I think I will enjoy living here. I’m too scared to go outside yet though I like to sit on my stairs. It seems such a long way to get to the garden and there are many enemies about, for instance the other evening a cat which thought it owned the place came right inside the door. I put on a furious display like a white peacock. ‘Get out,’ I said. ‘I live here.’

  ‘I live here,’ it said. It hissed and snarled at me. I looked up at J, my faithful servant for her to tell it that this is my place. She explained nicely that it was my place. The next time a strange cat appeared I had more confidence and really frightened it away. Both ladies and gents have left their calling cards around here, and I daresay all the ladies, even the grownup ones have fluttering hearts. What a life!

  There’s not much more news for you. I’ve explored everywhere. I climb everything I can climb. I chew everything I can chew. I have fairly good meals—egg and milk, and meat, sometimes mixed with salad oil and garlic to keep the worms away. At first my motto was Pee Now Pay Later but now I know where to go and I think J is surprised I’m so quick at learning. She should see me when I commence my studies at the bookshelf when she is fast asleep.

  Do you have a book shelf, Ned? Do you have a little garden? I’m dying to hear from you. J says she is going to visit you some day and there are other people who want me to look after them when she goes.

  J’s news.

  J has asked me to add her news to my letter. She says she has no news. She just lives a quiet life. Her flowers are coming out—daffodils and so on. She thinks a lot about you and your two big cats and misses you very much and sometimes feels depressed because you are so far away. She is writing something on her typewriter. There is an airport strike and after September 7th there will be a postal strike which worries her. She will feel cut off (not in the sense you and I understand it, Ned).

  I’m saying goodbye now. Your affectionate penfriend,

  Lucas.

  P.S.I have marvellous hiding-places here.

  Hi, & love daubed, scumbled, tattoed, varnished, mellowed, whitewashed, discoloured, illuminated to

  96. Dunedin August

  Dear B, P, N, and all other mythical and real members of the household,

  A misty rainy day and I sit at my panoramic window in the sitting-room typing this while Lucas plays with the keys (he depressed the space bar just now). Let me explain Lucas. He is my guest, invited, and even named—one does not always have the delight of naming a guest. I saw him shivering with fright and shock in a shop window—in a cage—and I impulsively bought him for one dollar. He is all white with a faint smudge of black between his ears and he has short hair, and is seven weeks old. A kitten. His whole name is Lucas Burch, from Cat in August—probably a son of Frederika’s lover. After a short period to recover from his shock—I suppose he had been taken from his mother, also—he has made himself very much at home. It is strange to see the surroundings from a cat’s point of view—I did not know I had such wonderful chairs. I have three chairs—the big winged Landfall chair that can be climbed over and along; and a very tall-backed chair, originally a prayer-chair, which someone bought in a church sale, and gave to me; and a cane chair which also can be scratched at and climbed. I really got swelled-headed yesterday, thinking what fine chairs I have, and I never knew it.

  I loved the notes from the Underground. My ’flu’s gone now. It was a nasty ’flu. Charles B phoned the other day and asked if he could call in on his way to visit a friend. He came for fifteen minutes—stayed I mean—and brought a big bag of grapefruit, lemons, and a lovely kind of honey that I haven’t seen since I was a kid and my father used to get it wholesale, in forty pound tins. He was looking very fit and had been mountain climbing with a friend. He said he had been to five funerals in the past three weeks, including that of an aunt who was 96!

  Carnie’s visit to supervise the breeding of the lilacs was—you may tell him—an immense success. My lilacs seem not to be able to wait to burst into leaf, anyway—I doubt if they will flower yet. I’m sending you one of the ‘heart-shaped’ leaves, from the lilac in the dooryard.

  Lucas is asleep now, snuggled on a woollen shawl that is on a hot-water bag, in a cardboard box. I wish we had fur instead of plain skin. Human beings are terribly deprived.

  I am a ‘heart-shaped’ lilac leaf.c Jay says this is a scrappy letter but she had fun making the collage. She sends lots of heart-shaped love.

  a lilac leaf was affixed to the letter

  P.S. I grow in the dooryard.

  97. Dunedin August 28

  Dear Bill the Kill, Paul the Call, Ned the Head,

 
So Cap no. 1 has arrived for Paul! You’ll be wondering what form of sanity has struck me when you receive in about a week the specification Cap (cap only, minus body-skin). I assure you I haven’t been struck by sanity—I’m as insane as usual. People who return to Dunedin from the United States always start knitting caps, after a few months. Most do a dozen. I have done only three and already the cure is in sight, the symptoms are disappearing. One is always in danger of scarves, too. Fortunately I have never had the sweater syndrome which is very serious and quite incurable. I had supposed I was immune to it but one never knows . . .

  Why not come to New Zealand if you are eager to get out of the United States? I want to come to the States only because you are there and I’m rather like a kitty that feels separated from its family. I hope this doesn’t scare you.

  Paintings sell for less in New Zealand and salaries for teaching are less but though the cost of living has risen quite a lot one can still live on a small amount. Telephone rental for the year (excluding toll calls—local calls are not charged for) is 44 dollars. My two-month electricity account which includes all heaters warming the house, cooking, hot water, lights and so on, is sixteen dollars maximum. My house tax or rate is 44 dollars a year with Insurance on the house (Fire etc.) about eighteen dollars. A visit to the doctor which used to be free, is now one dollar. Medicine is free as are hospital treatments.

  Etc. etc. etc. Now are you sufficiently bored with this economic review, sitting there all surcingled in your sanity-caps, with peanut butter all over your tender fingers?

  It was lovely getting your letters and Ned’s photo (which I haven’t yet shown to Lucas) and to hear all your news. The Violence in America episode sounds similar to the one in Baltimore when I was going to cross the road and a car passed and slowed down. There were three men in it with what I thought was a walking stick pointing out of the car. They called out something to me—probably abuse which I did not hear distinctly—and I laughed and looked happy and they drove by. I learned later that they had been picking off people with their gun, around North-East Baltimore. Smile at your would-be assassin! I’ve told this story several times as an illustration of Violence in America (I told it to you, too, I think) but I haven’t embroidered on it. Frank Sargeson is a marvellous embroiderer. If you tell him a story and visit him a year later you find him telling the story with all kinds of improvements and innuendos—preferably with a sexy base. To digress—I once knew a physicist working at the University in Wellington. He was a gentle mild man, an inventor, who had invented a detonator, and once when I passed through Wellington he invited me to the Dark Room where he had set up his headquarters (he even slept and ate there; this was in the university), to see his detonator. You can imagine the story Frank told about that one! Actually it was quite a scary experience as we had a meal there, cooked over a Bunsen burner, and I enquired about a little saucer of white stuff on the improvised table. I thought it was icing sugar. He told me calmly that it was PETN (whatever that is), so many times more explosive than TNT!

  So ends my digression and adventure in detonators.

  I haven’t played Scrabble solitaire for ages now. I just could not resist cheating and so scored for impossible words. I needed the enforced discipline of MacDowell cronies. Oh yes I remember the day B and P set off for Wright Ludington’s. It’s a very happy memory. You both looked so handsome (‘dashing’ is the word Sylvie Pasche would use) and I loved your colours, and Paul’s tie, and the day was blue—your blue—with the sun out, and I liked the idea of your going out to lunch and then coming home and telling me about it. Maybe I have no right to get so homesick for you, and there.

  Lucas Burch is settling down nicely. He would say, no doubt, that I am settling down and getting trained. He’s still too scared to go down the stairs into the garden but he’s exploring a little more every day. He is touchingly gentle and patient. My clothes are being chewed, my buttons are being chewed off and anyone who comes to visit me is chewed. I’ve had only one visitor—the rather dramatic woman who came to see me some weeks ago. I don’t care for her company at all but I could scarcely turn her away when she appeared at the door the other day and said, ‘Can I see you, I think I’m going insane.’

  I’m making arrangements with my friend Ruth whom I seldom see but who phones me now and again, and perhaps with Charles B whom I never talk to on the phone but whom I see about once in six weeks for a cup of tea, to have a special code of communication so that I can escape unwelcome callers. I’m quite interested to see what Charles thinks of my kitty because when I first visited him some years ago when he was living with Rodney K. (his old close friend) they had a white cat.

  No prostitution, no money! How right you are! I know it’s the custom in U.S.A. for authors to get an advance on a book they have yet to write but the thought of it appalls me. I always get my advances for books I have already written. The idea scares me—being paid for an idea that might decide to disappear if it thought it was captured in a money-cage. I remember poor Harrison Kinney trying to write his book years after he had spent his advance—but then ‘his pecker was excessively skinny’. (This is a quote from a MacDowell historian of the times, who wrote a long dissertation called Peckers and Prose: A Comparative Study.)

  It’s my birthday today.

  I had a phone call from New York yesterday. A friend there (she and her husband lent me their apartment for the summer once, and offered me their house on Martha’s Vineyard also but I had no transport and would have been scared by myself) has offered to pay me so much a month if I want to live in America. She has repeatedly offered this kind of help but I have declined—so far. She is a good giver, though, in the sense that unlike with some givers, the giving is not the equivalent of taking, a way of getting possession. If I accepted this offer I would arrange for her to be paid the income from my books. She would still lose quite a bit of money. But my conscience would be helped. (It’s less a conscience than a fear of being involved and ‘tied’.) Well, I’m thinking about it and haven’t decided. For ‘thinking’ read ‘worrying’ . . .

  I went into a shop yesterday and I was surprised at the tomcat smell in the shop—until I realised it was me. Ned would probably attack me if I walked into Live Oak Inn now. Lucas Burch’s favourite desire at the moment is to get into the bath with me. He goes crazy in the bathroom—I suppose because of all the smells.

  How’s your status quo? Improving?

  I know all too well the feeling that what one is so tenderly creating suddenly turns to shit. I get it when I read reviews of my work. And I get it every time I re-read in the evening what I have written during the day. If I want to regain my confidence which is so easily lost as I have a very small store, I read my work in the early morning and then I think, sometimes, maybe there is hope for me as a writer, but sometimes even in the morning my work bores me and reads dully and I hate it, no the feeling is not as strong as that, I just feel it doesn’t matter and I’m wasting my time writing and why on earth did I begin etc. etc. When I was living in London which I thought was such a convenient place, and this feeling hit me I used to go off to one of the suburban movie-houses to see a double-bill of B grade movies. Sometimes if I went to a good movie (a Bergman for instance) I would emerge inspired and ready to accept writing again. I used to rely a lot on the movies. I’d go in the afternoon among the pensioners and West Indians and dirty old men and sometimes I’d have to move my seat as quite a bit of unwanted fingering and handling was the rule. I should really have accepted it as part of the fun shouldn’t I? I used to go every afternoon to the movies. It’s quite convenient to go here, and there are four or five theatres in Dunedin, but one does not feel anonymous, and there isn’t the nice depraved feeling that one gets in a theatre that shows continuous movies—it’s all too clean and healthy for me. Everybody seems so respectable.

  Here are two limericks which Frank S wrote. Robb is a heart surgeon in Auckland. And Liston is the Archbishop.

  [two Sargeson limerick
s were enclosed here]

  Stars now for stars.

  Love hot and cold, flowery-fruity, sweet-sour, and longing to be among you with my mountain lions.

  SEPTEMBER

  98. You know where. Dunedin September 1

  Dear B, P, N,

  How nice to get a morning letter—I’m always there in my breakfast thoughts—also noon and night and inbetween thoughts.

  The news about Frederica is enchanting though I suspect that only a mamma cat who was looked after by two painters could have produced such a delightful assortment of her colours—white, black and white, calico, orange. And for her to have had the good taste to have booked herself into the Wonner Ward of the maternity hospital is altogether too much. These cats are too smart for me. What will happen to the kittens?

  I haven’t mentioned the event to Lucas Burch as it might put ideas into his head for the future—or to shift the context of the Stravinsky letter (which you suspect is Craft letter)a it might take ideas out of his head. He (Lucas) is more like a little white fox than a cat. He may have Siamese relations, perhaps. He is long and lean with huge ears and a pointed face and if he is good training for me before I progress to mountain lions I may have to revise or reduce the number of mountain lions I can keep.

  Brown was a friend of Stravinsky; Robert Craft was Stravinsky’s biographer

  The lunch at Wright Ludington’s sounded blissful. My mouths watered.

  In the same mail as your letter was one from the New York Times inviting me to send them a poem to print on their editorial page! For a few minutes I had a swelled head and was dying to talk to someone so I could say casually, Oh I’ve been invited . . . My head so easily swells but more easily diminishes to pin-size. I wish I had the confidence even to think of sending poems anywhere, but they all seem so bad—and are so.