by Janet Frame
I hope the allergy has gone. I sent a special spell straight away which meant Removal of Allergy from Man in Electronic Bed in 131 Hermosillo Drive. I hope it worked. By now you will be East. I’ve sent a special spell to Man Going East. I hope it reaches you with its powerful waves.
I loved the Dicks pricks quicks kicks licks of California. And I shall be flying your way around the 12th February next year if that is O.K. My first stop.
When you return from the East you will find my new tape waiting. Dominique Sion from the French Department came to see me the other afternoon and I recorded her reading some of Rilke’s French poems, and she was highly amused to find that she is sandwiched between two samples of Lucas Burch’s purr. I’m sure you’ll like these. I have to think of something this weekend to fill the tape—it’s hard isn’t it—I mean thinking of something is hard, but you and Paul are O.K. you have the piano and reading poetry and Paul has the interviewing techniques and communication with Dame Mary Margaret last heard of on SplashDown Day. Rather suspicious, that. Dominique is quite delightful, and everybody has loved her, and she’s been happy here. Well, that sounds too good to be true. It’s like the statement people make about a marriage—they’re very happy, they’ve never been otherwise. Dunedin has reminded Dominique of a small German town in the mountains. She has been pleased that whereas in France at the University of Toulouse most of the staff are French, here there are people from all nations on the staff. The University has N.Z., English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Australian, American, Russian, French, German, Dutchy and so on, also Chinese, Polynesian. I realised when I was talking to Dominique about Dunedin that it is very much like Peterborough in New Hampshire except that it is by the sea and the climate is not extreme.
Well it is Saturday morning
and Jay is yawning.
I went to dinner last evening and I swear never never again, not with the same people. It was interesting though. There were Dorothy and Robert Ballantyne (second wives and second husbands, he is a doctor), Wanda and David Hall (he is a retired lecturer) and Ted Middleton (the Burns Fellow) and I. The dinner (at Halls who live quite near me so I walked there) was delicious, a flavoursome concoction of rice and meat and so on, preceded by some kind of fish on toast, followed by something worthy of Yaddo, called The Best Ever Pie topped with whipped cream, followed by coffee, brandy and chocolates. There was wine at dinner and drinks before. I thought the company was heavy-going and the conversation tiresome and I don’t suppose, I mean I’m quite sure I did nothing to help, as it is my custom to withdraw and spend the time receiving impressions and whenever I am startled by having a question directed at me I give a laconic yes or no which makes me appear utterly brainless, which I feel that I am. David Hall, at the head of his table, turned to me, quoting Disraeli’s comment on the English as a divided nation and asking me if I agreed it could be applied to America.
I gave him very short change with my clipped, Yes.
End of conversation with David.
Meanwhile, Ted, who’s almost blind and who’s had a rough working life among the wharfies and the seamen and so on, and who a few years ago brought a successful libel case against the national scandal sheet which hinted at his communist activities, was obviously not enjoying himself, among the solid citizenry, which is what the Ballantynes and the Halls are.
What a marvellous view I had of everyone!
That sounds very pompous but I did get such a clear view and it was unfair of me, really, to stay in myself. The point is that I’m strictly a nonverbal creature. After watching Lucas and seeing how he is receiving, receiving impressions every moment, I have the feeling that maybe I’m a cat or some kind of animal, because going among as many as five people I am bombarded with impressions, undercurrents and so on, and become an instrument more than a person.
This sounds crazy.
Anyway, I showed as usual how brainless I am.
Though I had a rather nice time with David whom I’ve seen only twice before and who has a nasty streak but a nice sense of humour. He was in the hospital at the same time as I (I had not known this) and he was not as lucky as I in the results of his tests and I suppose it’s the beginning of the end for him. I basked in the reflected tragedy of his fate for I had been there. We discussed, in asides, details of hospital routine.
A tiresome evening, though.
I was glad to get home to kitty who tugs my heartstrings so. He is so spiritual and so wicked. I have had to keep Joan Tanner’s drawing well out of his way. He seized or tried to seize Paul’s painting when it was taken out of the tube. Dominique thought he was beautiful but she looked rather sceptical when I said he leaps at the wallpaper in the passage and tears it and eats it. As she was going out, Lucas came rushing along, leapt at the wall and began to chew it. Next letter, I’ll let him tell his own story, particularly about his new range of expressions all guaranteed to make me feel guilt or heartbreak.
Stars
Oh your letter just came with the kiddies’ page. My spell couldn’t have worked on your allergy. Maybe the man in the electronic bed was Ned and Ned received the spell? I do hope it’s better now. What a lovely Mixon! I mean Nixon!
And what a lovely Bee. In Bed with Ned on Knee
or is it Ned in Bed with Bee on Knee.
A couple of hours ago I sent you an International telegram as this letter will be too late to get to you before you leave (if your allergy is better, and you do leave). Don’t I chatter and babble?
I just wanted to hurry on your good health as my spell has not worked. And to say I had received the painting and the drawing which is lovely and mysterious. I wrote Paul a poem for his painting which changes colour (the painting not the poem); it has a day of its own with the sunlight changing its patterns. Again, the Day is of course the artist who admits the sun.
Change the subject baby Jay and quote from Virginia Woolf whose essays I read in bed. V.W. received her first cheque for one pound ten shillings and sixpence.
‘But to show you how little I deserve to be called a professional woman (?), How little I know of the struggles and difficulties of such lives, I have to admit that instead of spending the sum upon bread and butter, rent, shoes etc. I went out and bought a cat—a beautiful cat, a Persian cat, which soon involved me in bitter disputes with my neighbours.’
You probably knew this. I didn’t.
One point in favour of the people I visited last evening was their liking for cats. Their Elizabeth whom we did not see had just had kittens and they were horrified when I told them I had bought my cat. I realise that in the world of cat-owners, however temporarily I may be there, my status is low indeed: you are worthy only if a cat chooses you, you do not condescend to buy a cat. Both their cats simply arrived from nowhere and stayed. Opoho, they told me, is Cat Country. I already knew this. Indeed, almost everyone in Dunedin has a cat. Every house in my neighbourhood has one.
End of cat report. It’s too long already . . .
I’m waiting to hear from the U.S. Embassy whether they consider me worthy enough to be granted a visa for a longer stay than six months. I’ve not mentioned my time in that kind of hospital and I don’t intend to. If the question arises (and it’s pretty well known that I was out of circulation for many years) I have the advice of the psychiatrists whom I know in the worldfamous Maudsley Hospital in London. They, including Sir Aubrey Lewis, once head of the hospital, insisted that I should never have been in hospital. I may have had psychological difficulties, they said, but I have never suffered from a mental illness. I know that, myself. They are prepared to offer evidence and so on, if the question arises. It’s a pitiful reflection on N.Z. psychiatric services and one which, I should imagine, they would not want publicised. The question, I hope, is not likely to arise.
I knew you’d understand about the Intensive Care aftermath. What I’ve been writing since (I have been writing, all winter) is more than I thought I’d done but it is really in the nature of an afterbirth, probably to be disposed
of, burned or buried. (If I were a cat, I’d eat it.)
It’s a sour time, with confidence in one’s work low. As Paul said ‘everything turns to shit’.
It’s grim, Paul, if the teaching is not fairly enjoyable. What will happen?
I’m going to mail this now. Look after yourself, and selves and each other, Bill and Paul and Ned and Steinway. I wonder how my words ‘Avoid Carnie’ in the telegram will arrive. I said Carnie was the name of a friend, and who will deny that I am telling the truth? All the same, avoid him or put him in the care of Steinway because when B is in bed with Allergy and P comes home tired from teaching, Carnie gets an instant reading on his gauge which says to him, A moment’s inattention and possible meal ahead. Fool he is. He does not know that the ‘meal ahead’ is one of Live Oak Inn’s dinners.
oh this is drivel; Love in glorious technicolour for B & P & N & Steinway (& Carnie)
from J
114. Dunedin October
Dear B P N.,
A few lines to keep you in touch and to keep in touch with you; from the cold cold Antipodes where summer is never going to be—maybe I’m unfair; it’s very warm but overcast—the sun has gone to another country.
Nothing much to say, therefore I send a few notes from here and there. Been nowhere, done nothing, seen no-one, said nothing. Rosalie Carey, the woman in the enclosed cutting, came up the other day bringing the script of a A State of Siege which is being performed in November. It’s very arrogant of me but I think I could have done better myself. She acts it very well, however, which I could never do. I don’t care for the sudden publicity simply because I’m such a drip when it comes to being interviewed.
I have to say goodbye to Lucas this week while he is still young enough to re-adapt. My sister can’t take him, after all. Parting with him is one of the most terrible things that’s ever happened to me. I think I told you he’s so ethereal and at the same time so wicked. He’s one of these very intelligent cats—and I don’t think I’m saying this in the role of proud mama—and he will always be a poignant memory in a life that is crammed with memories of cats lost, dead, and so on. His chief delight at the moment is trying to use his paws as hands. He doesn’t put his mouth to his food; he picks up a portion of food in his paw and conveys it to his mouth. He puts a paw on my face to wake me in the morning. The cat next door who used to visit me when it was a kitten has now adopted me and Lucas, and sleeps at the back door and Lucas who really enjoys its company had given up trying to defend his territorial rights except for an occasional half-hearted box over the rump and sometimes a mewing appeal to me to, Do something about it can’t you.
I sent off a tape yesterday. It’s crazy and dotty and everything else.
We’ve had a bus strike here so I’m cut off unless I want to walk downtown which is too much there and back every few days. I had a lift from a man who immediately travelled his hand on my knee and upward and sent the car zigzagging on the road. I hastily said, I live here (a few hundred yards from my home) and got out. Virtuous Jay.
B will B out East now, as I write this. P will be home with Ned. I’m getting excited about seeing you all again, about 12th February in 1971. My battery is exhausted. Take care of each and all
and love
old fashioned
tonic
love from
Jay
115. Dunedin October 27 Labour Day in N.Z. (handwritten)
Dear Ned,
Hi, handsome, Hi. This is your friend Lucas writing to you with J’s pen in J’s preparation book. In three days from now I leave this house of mine; and my trusted servant who has told me of my forthcoming departure yet presumes that I did not understand—I do! My God, I’m going to miss this little mansion of mine with its chairs and scratching posts and mama-stole which I still suck at and the garden with its trees which I’m clever at climbing. I’ll miss my slave too. She thinks that I follow her around everywhere; the reality is that she follows me. Certainly, though, I feel it my duty to keep an eye on an inhabitant of my house, and I do check fairly frequently to see where she is and what she’s doing.
Well, Ned, my secret is out at last now. I’m going as a birthday present to a little boy who will be seven at Hallowe’en. You know what that means don’t you? The magic 7 and All Souls’ Eve and a white cat. I have been a spirit in cat form. Getting down to more earthly things, however, I think I shall enjoy (continuing as cat) the company of a boy of seven. I think—I hope—he is much wiser than his mother who called to inspect me to see if I was suitable. She had wanted a tiny kitten but when she saw me of course she fell in love with me, cat-about-town that I am, and wanted me. (She knew me, as they say in the Bible.) She was rather inclined to go on about the last cat they had who died. He liked this, he liked that and did I like this and that?—What J calls the cooked fish syndrome from the line of an old song ‘My first wife never cooked fish like this’. My new servant’s mother, however, had a gentle voice and manner and as long as the boy of seven protects me I’ll be O.K. (Is that what you American cats say?)
J tells me that B has been out in the wicked East and that you are home looking after Paul. I hope you take care of him, give him his Petromalt and so on and when Bill returns make sure he hasn’t any more kittens in his luggage, I mean you’ll never know where you are if there are strange kittens around the house all the day.
What a lucky cat you are to have a door of your own. Maybe where I’m going I’ll have a door though I confess, with a tear in my eye, that I’m happy enough to have had such a magnificent stair.
Ah, I’ve learned since I was that tiny fox-like kitten that catdom as well as peopledom are cruel. Already cat-next-door has taken possession of my stair and I haven’t the energy to drive her away. She comes in the window now and sleeps on the spare bed. I’m going to miss her. Every morning as soon as I wake I rush to see if she’s there trespassing. If she is there I make such a magnificent display of anger, and if she isn’t there I make a magnificent display of disappointment at being deprived of an occasion to make a magnificent display of anger.
J and I have been good friends, as cat and mistress go. I talk to her quite a lot and whenever I enter through my window I call out, Anyone Home? I’ve been practising my Abandoned-to-Strangers-When-I-did-so-much-for-you-is-this-love-and-gratitude expression which is quite an advanced expression calling for subtlety and a nice sense of timing. I pray—I know—you will never have to use it.
LATER:
Well Ned old boy it’s morning again and for these last few days I’ve been standing guard over the basket of toys I’ve collected since infancy. I still play with them and select one in particular to play with each day. I put on my Anxious Expression whenever J goes near the basket.
But, Ned old boy, sleep calls, my eyes can hardly stay open so good morning. This will be the last time you hear of me so I hope you wish me well. I was going to pass your way and visit with J but she decided against it; perhaps it is better that you and I never meet and have only the beautiful memory of our strictly nephew-uncle-nephew correspondence.
Don’t let the two big creatures Bill and Paul read this. If Frederika is next door you can read it to her, if you can bear to after her parturitive trespass on your sacred territory. Meanwhile you and I (to quote an old cat-lover J told me about)
‘grow old, grow old’
and no doubt you will
‘wear your black and white fur and walk upon the beach’ and we shall both
‘hear the neighbourhood cats crying each to each.
Will they sing and meow to us?’
(While in your home Bill and Paul come and go talking of Michaelangelo . . .)
Farewell, Ned.
Yours in memory of a beautiful promising friendship, August to October (the lilacs bloom now)
Lucas Burch esq.
116. Dunedin October (handwritten)
Dear B P & N,
I may be mistaken but early yesterday morning I fancied I saw Lucas stealing out t
o mail a letter he must have written, perhaps to Ned. I hope it wasn’t too sad, as he may have told Ned of his leaving here tomorrow. I’m sure Ned can take it. As I write this, Lucas is
a.trying to eat an airmail sticker.
b.trying to file himself in the filing cabinet. He was filed last week and meowed to get out. He did not care to be among manuscripts miscellaneous.
Overjoyed to have your letter yesterday, B. Sad that you have generously given your cold to P. Glad that the butterflies are back. And that you’re having a show—but what a torment a show must be—Exciting, too. It will have a fair number of portraits? The impact of a number of portraits is quite overwhelming. I remember a Beckman show I saw in Boston. And here in little old Dunedin there is in the Early Settlers Museum, a room with the walls full of photographs, painting-size, of the early settlers. There’s a surrealist air about the photographs. It’s quite a frightening room, not merely because the women are all such stocky-looking battle-axes and the men so gentle and frightened-looking—almost without exception, though this helps with the air of dream & unreality (I’ve just rescued my fountain pen from Lucas).
If my U.S. Certification of Labour comes through by then I’d love to be in U.S. at the end of Jan—I mean I could manage to arrive in L.A. on Sat. Jan. 30, early morning, or Friday Jan 29th in the evening. The early morning Sat. seems O.K. If I get my certification (which will mean that I can get work in U.S. if I want it & if I can find it). I think I then go through the Immigrant Visa rigmarole which must be done here though I think the results can be given to one in U.S.A. There’s a quota, of course. It’s easier to get in if one comes from U.S.S.R. and asks for political asylum. Being a ballet dancer helps, or the daughter of a dictator. Alas, I can put forth neither claim. Only that I am a Daughter of Mark Twain . . . I think I’m repeating myself. I