by Anne Sexton
Oh KIDS, oh woe. I didn’t lose new poems in manuscript for they in briefcase I brought to room, which is some good. We are some homesick … we are little lost babes … the “adventure” turned sour.
And even the umbrella. Where will I find one so good here. Bought hankys today for xmas presents, but need them to cry into. Oh, how is our home, it is so cold and rainy here. It never suns or gets warm. We are lonely. We write, tonight, out of desperation and fear and loneliness … We miss Clover and Deery [family dogs] for their sweet consoling eyes … we missed being kissed and hearing “it’s all right now” … and at least we have this typewriter to send our love which is our total belonging. Your almost naked but loving girls.
[…] We say to each other—all good experiences—umbrella in Paris was comic opera. Luggage in Belgium tragedy like Shakespeare. Our recovery of spirits in a true Freudian light—not bowed.
[To the Sexton Family]
[Belgium]
BLACK AND WHITE THURSDAY
Sept. 5th, 1963
Dearest Home Folks,
Well today, with such rushings, went by without mailing yesterday’s letter. So this will have to be part of it and too all. But, by now or almost now you have gotten our cable, of course when you read this, but as we write we think of you knowing NOW of our tragedy. We sent out word over the waves. Our luggage stolen, letter follows. Hope it did not throw you … but we needed to share so you wouldn’t continue to picture us in some sort of European idle.
… This morning, with not enough sleep, we groped out of bed and ate breakfast … called the Embassy to say we’d not be at le Zoutte for a few days, told Madame (so kind, speaks English, so très nice and fat and funny and likes the “americans” and more of her later. She told us, at length, just where our clothes would be for sale. In the Flea market and she told us where. We wrote down directions for flea market for later). First things first, we returned to police station to tell them we needed a copy of our complaint for insurance and to tell them we had forgotten to report a third bag stolen (all my books) worth $150.00. This complete and with no hope, they said, of ever getting thief we got back to Bloo Jool with still our kitchen in it and drove to flea market. We had forgotten our cameras which is a pity as flea market something. A Place de Flea! (place as in glass not as in face). There in an empty square everyone sets up shop, bringing their goods in old wagons. Things, clothes, shoes, spoons, tires, mattresses, umbrellas and old real flea sweaters, racks with fine looking coats, racks with odd dresses, and mostly on old bedspreads are spread out the articles for sale. So went we, like two rather old and wrinkled female Perry Masons, to spy for our lost clothes. To put the suspense down, they were not there! They are certainly lost. We are not good detectives and have lost the scent. We, true women, found something else. By that I mean, that laid out on top of a pile of old and really dirty clothes was a fine looking houndstooth suit that fits Sandy. It is true chic and looks very Peck and Peck only perhaps with more style. Of course it is stolen goods, being used and obviously wearable … but most things are “rags” or stolen, so we prefer the stolen. Perhaps tonight in some other hotel room in Brussels someone is putting on my navy blue low cut dress that they bought at the flea market. If so we could not find. It occurs to us a good idea to buy our own things back after claiming insurance. The reason this would work is that one gets very little money for stolen (hot) merchandise and so it is also sold cheap to public. Sandy’s suit (it’s true) cost 2 bucks. I priced a very pretty red dress but only got them down from 7 to 5 and that was too much for that place. Don’t mistake the prices in Brussels, they are for normal goods, high and ordinarily higher than in the U.S. Belgium is booming and prices are up and up. I can tell you this like a comparison shopper for the rest of the day spent in the Bon Marché (a cross between Filene’s and Peck and Peck and Jordan’s) and the 5 and 10 buying things not available at Flea Market (before we left it Sandy bought me Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio in paperback for 16 cents to start a book collection over again) … such as … one girdle (Sandy) one bra (Anne) one garter belt (Anne) one black jersey top to go with suit (Sandy) one pair falsies (Anne) (foam yet) then to. Haute Courteir (sp wrong) to buy me one dressy dress for Knokke which is having a “ball” on Sat. evening. I have no dresses left, Sandy has a white with thin straps left for it. My dress is blue, I think silk, print, too dressy, but very lovely. […] Oh me—even in bedraggled condition after police dept. and flea market. I hate to say but it cost 60 dollars but can’t be helped. It is being fitted and ready tomorrow.
So you see we have taken the reins into our hands, though it hasn’t been the least easy I promise you, and are trying to muddle through this mess alone. We sent you the telegram after the Bon Marché, where we also bought a navy blue umbrella (oh Billie, (sorry Robarts, this old ragged carbon borrowed from Madame, Bon Marché doesn’t have carbons) … and we had walked wrong way to Bon Marché and it was about ten miles both ways and we had been all over the damn store cashing checks, looking, asking, Sandy forgetting all her French … to think we had come to Europe to end up in a huge dept. store, hot sweat in store, full of counters and escalators that went up and up into the air, as up a mountain. We walked home in rain, going twice the wrong way, and then couldn’t stand you, at home, not knowing what had happened […]
Well, in we came, up comes our friend, Madame, who is so distressed that we didn’t find our clothes. We sit in bar (lobby is bar where Madame holds forth, fixes t.v. for customers, serves wine … bar not a regular bar, bar is where only beer and wine is served … cooks meals, gives change, rents rooms, advises guests, etc). We sit down and order glass of wine and tell her our tales of woe and of “finding” in flea market, finding SOMEONE’S suit anyhow. By then it is pelting rain and we too tired to go out to eat … Could have used a triple hooker of whiskey but no real bars (that serve real liquor) in this neighborhood. So Madame says she serves small dinner and (of course for money but not much we don’t think, we hope not) and what would we like. She has cooking, she tells us, some pork, some beef, some cauliflower with cheese, some boiled potatoes, some asparagus soup. HOORAY, we say! (in French) and all grubby and too tired to walk upstairs and even wash, much less go to bathroom, we sit and wait and Madame fixes us supper. We walk back and forth to kitchen, on left of bar, talking to Madame, showing her Sandy’s suit and etc. while she cooks away. It seemed homey. Only one other couple in bar (speaking French.) Like a little family. Madame says it is too bad we are leaving tomorrow for tomorrow is her birthday and she would like to ask us to supper. Sandy and I think that over (by now almost in tears for someone is being kind to us). We then declare her “our mother” and decide to stay an extra day … This is fine, not only for Madame’s birthday dinner but because it will allow us more time to screw our heads on right and we think, to splurge and get our hair done and also we will buy Madame flowers. By this time Madame is getting nicer and nicer, bringing us each delicious course and telling us to eat and forget our troubles and that she personally knows the Chef of police and she will call him and tell him to watch for our stolen goods and she will slap him on bottom if he doesn’t. Then we ask if we could have bath (Madame must light water heater beside tub for this) and she says we may have bath with no charge to make up for losing everything. And thus we come upstairs and wash and wash clothes (no hot water in room but we have sink and we have plug and we use El. Boylan’s little heater, glass by glass to make hot water). Right now room looks like a laundry full of drip drys. Sandy is sewing. We are très domestique! The rain is pattering on the roof and Madame turned the heat on for an hour to “take off the chill” … quite cosy. Madame put blue scent bubbles in our baths to cheer us up. We are both clean and warm … I looked hard and long at the pictures of you, Kayo, Linda and Joy, today, tears welling up, missing you … not just the clothes or books, but you. Sandy has only pics of Andy and Sis and wish she did of others. Kayo, could you take a polaroid pic of Robart family and send? Sandy would most appr
eciate it. She longs.
Kayo, I worry terribly that I don’t have time to write to Maxine. She will be feeling rejected … and yet no other carbon and this is the whole story and THE whole strength. Tell her I think of her as I write and it seems, almost, as though she were dictating this to me and we were writing another children’s book. She is part of my fingers and they feel strange not writing with her (or very guilty not writing to her) … (Please call her, just for me!!)
We both miss our cats and our two dogs. But out of the whole trip I think we are gaining great experiences … even the true loss of luggage has its happier aspects (staying over for Madame birthday or even the mundane time spent shopping which shows up Europe is more like America than we dreamed.) I know that out of the worst, the unexpected, we gain. Life is indeed, happening to us, over here, we are not just “visiting it” or seeing it through the large-money-tour-type eyes of most Americans abroad. The people are all kind and so willing to help … You should have seen two policemen try to help us open collapsible umbrella that wouldn’t open and would only collapse! Everyone seems to have more time for the personal touch, even in the big stores … more helpful, more interested … Knokke on Sat. morning and there until Mon. or Tues. and then to Amsterdam and God knows what. Right now the bidet is catching water from our dripping clothes … we are making a home, of sorts and Madame calls us … “how are my babies doing?” We took a picture of Madame behind the bar. Tomorrow we buy her violets and some other flowers sold in great bunches under gay umbrellas in middle of The Grand Place. Buildings are fine but the people are the grandest (don’t count thief … there are thieves everywhere, must ask Joy! And we all learn. I need lessons from Joy!) … Sandy sends love to all and misses greatly too. She wishes when you have finished their copy, that Robarts wld forward it to Andy (telling him to keep and return as we have no real journals, only our letters to you) … I can find my way pretty well, now, in Paris and in Brussels, car good for that. Soon I will know many more cities this intimately (better than I know Boston). And more about people. We have weathered a bad storm, we think, and tonight after bath and a wonderful home-cooked meal, things look better … we feel in control. We love! We miss … there is true pain in not sharing with you (thus cable) all good and all bad. (bloody but unbowed)
yrs
girls.
XO Mom—Your faces look so dear to me. Please write just everything (good or bad) I want to know—(share letters [with] anyone who cares. Tell John Brussels very lovely & fun—His friends charming—MADAME TAKES THE CAKE. I miss my home—(ie you)
[To Alfred Sexton]
Saturday night,
Sept 7th. 1963,
Knokke le Zoutte
Dearest Kayo,
I want, though not often, to write you a letter of your own … ie. a love letter. It can be a drag to have to speak publicly (to all, the girls and whoever, sometimes I feel to the whole neighborhood) … when, I often long for you and wish to speak only to you. Naturally the news goes on, the road moves, the travelerama continues … and with it, with each time I type are these almost unspoken words of love for you. Kayo, my darling, I miss you terribly … each food I taste that I think worthy of your taste I miss you more. And more! Oh Boots, there are times, despite the excitement of the buildings, of the food, of the people, when longing for you wells up in me … and I want to be home beside you in the bed looking at t.v. or at the kitchen table drinking a martini … (for God’s sake now Sandy is talking and talking and all day she has been silent but when I start to write, well then she talks …) enough complaints. Actually we get along pretty well, except for a fight last night that didn’t last long. I was typing out the list for Kazan and asking her how to spell and she sounded irritated and I barked back and told her to go to hell etc. She went out of the room in a huff and went to the John and smoked a cig. Good for me I sez … might as well speak up and clean the slate off once in a while. […]
Kayo, the night before last I dreamt that you were having an affair with someone and I woke up crying. Awful! Please keep loving me! I love you so much and feel you are here with me all of the time … miss you more than I had thought possible. True, I am terribly busy, what with losing everything! And all. The shock of losing it all just doesn’t sink in. I lost all the books! Even nana’s letters from Europe and grandfather’s too. I did value and love those two books … but they are in the thief’s wastebasket I guess … and life must go on not backward (just this fact makes me feel better, the trouble with therapy is that it makes life go backwards … and I am so tired of that old suffering. I want life to go forward even if I have to lose all my books and clothes to keep it going in that direction. And in a way, life is flowing toward us … you and me … and the life we have, for each day that goes by brings us nearer and each mile does it too. I feel, sometimes, as if I were actually driving upon the map in our kitchen! I know I am here and you are there and yet, and yet, not quite. The sound of the ocean reminds me of the night in front of the house we rented on the Cape. Do you remember that night on the beach?) … I keep missing baked beans. Do you think you might send me a care package of baked beans? It is the first meal I think of and long for. Tonight in Knokke at our hotel (meals with room … a nice summer out of season hotel … typical dutch bourgeois hotel resort, very nice) we had tiny, two or three inch, lobster as a start and then steak and marvelous sauce and french fries. The french fries all over Europe are wonderful. I have become a lover of french fries (not frozen, not HoJo) … The poetry festival is a farce, à la New Eng Poetry Club only from every country … perhaps better but not much, arrived today and have taken no part really, sat in café outdoors by beach and drank an apertif, sea too lovely to bother with a building full of poets. And, I must admit, that it is perfectly awful not speaking French. I mean it is useless … French is THE language! If you really want to tour France—you must start now taking French lessons … I am serious, Berlitz on Sat. or something. You can’t do it without it. It is like a car without gas. Sandy speaks. Thanks God for we get in the right direction (though I have a better sense of direction and usually find out way home or “back”) but when she has a discussion it is in French and I stare at floor and wonder what the weather will be tomorrow. Otherwise (if you don’t have time or won’t) we had better stick to Spanish speaking countries … for I am serious, no speak no live (except a la Fran and A and who wants that) Sandy says to tell you that he [you] would be proud and overjoyed the way I am bouncing around from place to place and taking it in my stride. But you know, Kayo, I always did have a “wanderlust” and it wasn’t JUST A NEUROTIC wish to flee responsibility … but to see new things. And I do love that. I don’t have the time or energy to get depressed or anxious … if anxious I seem to have four miles of walking in front of me and that takes care of THAT. Tonight we are suppposed to be at the Poetry Festival Ball (for which I bought that damn expensive new dress in Brussels) but which I don’t feel like going to. The sea has undone me. To hell with the ball. The dress I will wear on New Year’s eve and you will fall in love with me. That’s what I want the dress for. Meanwhile I’ll wear the few rags I have left. We have a copy of what we sent to Kazan as a list and will send it later, perhaps from Amsterdam (right now using mailers) for you to check. I wrote it out quite correctly, be sure to check with him and see what’s up and tell him clothes all new for trip and not to devalue them as “used” … some never worn. Kayo, my boots, please keep loving me. It is hard to go so long without letters from you. Every night before sleep I read the ones I got in Paris but then you had never heard from me … the time lapse is painful (that’s why the cable) … You hear from us more regularly, but it is hard for me to wait this long, I become fearful and afraid, afraid I’ll lose you. I know that IS silly, but there it is, in all its little ugly unsureness and with its open love. Europe is fascinating. I am truly interested and excited but I miss you very much and love you with all my heart. Usually I must write the large common letter. But tonight I must say my
special say which goes for always but must be said once more. I love you. […]