Mary McCarthy

by Thomas Mallon

  Arturo took the slip of paper from his father-in-law. “Mais tu t’es trompé, Maurice,” he said. “Sûrement.” This was the conviction of everyone—that the doctor had come to the wrong place.

  Looking about them, they were conscious of a fearful disappointment. The spot on which they stood, surrounded by marble slides, looking into a chasm of rubble at the bottom of which ran a dirty torrente, was at the farthest extreme from what they had imagined. The scenery around them, far from being alpine, was a Cyclopean desert or monstrous manufactured wilderness that resembled, more than anything else, a set for some early super-colossal film, before the day of sound or color. The absence of sun in this pocket of the mountain combined with the bleaching light diffused by the monochrome stony gravel to suggest an interior, artificially lit and yet without shadow. There was no sign of a quarry or of a village—only a sort of frontier hut with a bus placard posted on it, around which some workers were loitering. Added to this, it was dusty; everyone was thirsty.

  As they stood there, uncertain, a boy approached them and offered to accompany them to the nearest quarry, which he said was two kilometres off. They were in the right place, he assured Arturo and the editor. The quarries up there—he nodded toward the farthest mountain—were very old; Michelangelo had worked there before the birth of Christ, and slaves had carved pictures of Roman soldiers on the walls, which was why the place was called Fantiscritti.

  The “French” smiled dubiously at each other and looked at their watches: to go or not to go and see for themselves? Looking up at the towering mountains, the younger children refused; they were afraid of the avalanches. Finally it was decided that the men should go ahead with the older children, while the women could stay behind with the younger ones. “I’ll take Seanie in the stroller if you like,” said the poet, speaking of his six-year-old, but the boy guide protested this arrangement and Sean was left behind with his mother.

  The women walked across the bridge in the direction in which the others were vanishing up a mountain track; as they chatted, Sean slipped away from them and began to sidle down a sort of path that led to the half-dry torrente. Suddenly the women heard cries in a dialect they did not understand; a worker came running very fast across the bridge to warn them. What the boy was doing was dangerous. At any moment he might dislodge a stone and start a slide that would bury him.

  But he seemed not to hear the workers’ cries or his pregnant mother’s pleas to come back, and Hélène started to run down after him.

  “No, signora, no!” the workers shouted. A few stones began falling, like flour from a sifter, in her wake. She hesitated, saw the peril for the boy in her rashness, and turned back.

  Then they simply waited, holding their breath, watching the child wave to them from the abyss; in the end, he returned coolly, unconscious of his danger, carrying with him a purple flower he had picked on the edge of the stream.

  This nerve-racking episode confirmed the sinister impression made by the lonely spot. A bus came and collected the workers from the other side of the bridge, turned around, and started down the mountain. There was not another human being to be seen; they had not passed a single car on the way up; the women and children were alone.

  “I don’t like it here,” “I want a drink of water,” “I want to go home,” the children whimpered, looking at the family cars, driverless, like a group of widows, on the other side of the chasm. Sean’s older sister, Brigid, profited from the occasion by trying to imitate her brother’s exploit; she was hauled back at once and spanked, with the approval of the child psychologist. Time passed; from the changing of the light, the women assumed that somewhere the sun had set. It grew colder, and the children were shivering in their summer clothes. The mothers fought down their hysteria, offering each other various explanations of why their husbands were so long in coming back. When the men and the older children at last returned from the quarry, they found their families huddled, terrified, in the automobiles, with the heaters turned on.

  It had not been so different from the tourist quarry, they reported—another chamber cut into the wall of the mountain. The deep quarries, where they cut the white marble, were higher up; the workers walked an hour and a half every morning to get to them.

  “Did you see the soldiers?” demanded the little children.

  No, they had not seen the soldiers; the old Roman quarry had been closed a long time ago and the fanti, the foreman had said, were in the museum in Carrara.

  “On peut visiter, maman?” said the children, coming to life.

  But again they were told no; another day perhaps—at this hour the museum would be shut.

  So instead, though it was dark and nearly their suppertime when they reached the bottom of the mountains, they all had ice-cream cones at the marble counter of a gelateria in Carrara, and the older children and the fathers heard about Sean’s adventure.

  “Qu’est-ce que tu es venu chercher ici, papa?” Hélène said thoughtfully to her father on the way home.

  “Rien,” equably replied Dr. Bernheim. “Une petite distraction.”

  Hélène shook her head. It was not just for amusement, she told her husband, that her father had brought them here. He wanted to tell them something. She knew her father, she said.

  That night Arturo did not play chess. He and Hélène stood on the pier listening to the music coming from across the river. She was pensive, still thinking of the “scenery” they had visited, which on close view was an industrial landscape—a big gray outdoor mill. It was ugly, she said, turning to Arturo with a question in her voice. “Très laid,” her husband agreed.

  She remembered the sallow marble slides and shivered. “François a eu raison. C’est de la fausse neige. Comme dans le théâtre. Nous l’aimons parce que nous aimons la vraie neige.” But everything here, she went on, was slightly false. The “French” were not French; the “Germans” were Italians; the “Jews” were a little of everything. The “Englishman” was maybe a German. Or a Jew, according to her father. The “fishermen” were businessmen. Everything was in quotation marks. Even François’ “birthday.” His real birthday, which they had all forgotten, was today. She sighed heavily. “C’est moi, tu le sais, qui l’a faussée.”

  She was the one, alas, who had done it; she had moved his birthday ahead, two years ago, so that it would fall in the middle of the month before the first departures. And now other families had followed suit, so that every child’s birthday celebrated by the summer people of Porto Quaglia was a false birthday. She gave a guilty, skittish little laugh. All was false, she repeated despondently—theatrical snow or the snow in a souvenir paperweight.

  Arturo listened. “Ce qui est vrai, Hélène, c’est le travail.” The work of the fishermen, the work of the miners in that fearful dust. It was work that joined man to Nature. Not vacations, despite what people thought.

  “J’aime les vacances. Je déteste le travail,” Hélène flung out. And it was true that she loved vacations and was already hating the day they would pack up and leave for the winter’s work. After a pause, she asked in a different voice, diffident and stealthily curious, “Et comment c’était, dans la carrière?”

  Bad, Arturo answered; the work conditions were hard. Every other day, according to the workers, a miner lost a thumb, an arm, a leg. “C’est pas joli,” he added, grimacing. The work was unhealthy and badly paid; the less-skilled miners got a thousand lire a day.

  “Mille lire!”

  Arturo nodded. François, he said, had been very much struck by that; Laure too. There were many strikes, and many of the miners were Anarchists. “C’est drôle que c’est la première fois que nous y sommes allés.”

  Yes, agreed Hélène; it was funny that they had never gone there before, in all their years at Porto Quaglia. “Les ‘intellectuels de gauche’!” she burst out after a minute. Another set of quotation marks, another cheat. Good, she went on bitterly, it was finished. They would not come back to Porto Quaglia another summer. She refused to
live another summer with such trite illusions and echoes. “ ‘Ah, comme elles sont belles, les montagnes de marbre!’ ‘Que j’adore la Nature!’ ” Mimicking her own voice, she stamped her foot on the pier.

  But it was the same everywhere, replied Arturo, smiling. All the desirable vacation spots were like that. All vacationers “adored” the poverty of the natives. “Surtout les âmes sensibles.”

  “C’est vrai,” muttered Hélène.

  Why not be honest, said Arturo. If they never came back to Porto Quaglia, what would be the reason? “Je ne sais pas,” said Hélène.

  The true reason, declared her husband, was very simple: “les vacances payées.” When they had first come to Porto Quaglia, only a few—professional people, artists, and salaried intellectuals like themselves—had a month off in the summer and a car or the price of railroad tickets to take them far from home. Now the many had it, especially the Germans. It was the “higher standard of living”—he quoted the words in English—of the European workers and small employees that had put Porto Quaglia on the map. The vacations of the masses were necessarily mass-produced. There was no escape from the “Germans” except for the very rich. Next summer the same problem would present itself. What would Hélène say when her coiffeur asked her where she was going for her holidays?

  “Il faut avoir une réponse, Hélène. C’est une question très importante. Tout le monde a le droit de savoir.” The whole world had a right to an answer—the concierge, the grocer, the mailman, her editor at Gallimard. What was she going to tell them? An undiscovered Greek island? A woodcutters’ hamlet in the Alps? A hotel in Turkey? A cliff on the Dalmatian coast? “Un château en Espagne?”

  Hélène did not respond to her husband’s raillery. There were Germans everywhere, she agreed morosely. “Bon, donc. Au travail.” She leaned her head against his chest. “Mais comme j’aimais Porto Quaglia!” Hearing the past tense of the verb that meant love, Arturo stared stiffly ahead of him into the dark.

  “Oui, c’était beau,” he said.

  CHRONOLOGY

  NOTE ON THE TEXTS

  NOTES

  Chronology

  Unless otherwise identified, quotations in this chronology come from a letter McCarthy wrote to Doris Grumbach, the first of her biographers, on February 22, 1966, in which McCarthy included her own year-by-year chronology of her life, with often revealing commentary. The letter is now among the Mary McCarthy Papers in the Special Collections of the Vassar College Library.

  1912

  Born Mary Therese McCarthy on June 21 in Seattle, first child of Roy and Therese Preston McCarthy. (Father, born in 1880 in Illinois to devout Catholic family, attended the University of Minnesota. Mother born 1888 in Seattle, Washington, to nominally Protestant father and Jewish mother. Parents met in 1910 at Oregon resort and were married in April 1911 despite reservations of both families—Roy McCarthy had a damaged heart and had previously been hospitalized for alcoholism. Mother converts to Catholicism. At first the couple settles in Minneapolis so that Roy can work at his father’s grain elevator business, but they move to Seattle when he starts drinking again.) In fall, father begins law school at the University of Washington and paternal grandparents purchase them a house at 934 22nd Avenue.

  1914

  Brother Kevin McCarthy, the eldest of Mary’s three brothers and the one to whom she would remain the closest (later a well-known actor in theater, films, and television), born February 15.

  1915

  Father graduates with law degree and begins to practice part-time, but by 1917 his heart condition makes it impossible for him to work. Brother James Preston born September 5.

  1917

  Brother Sheridan born April 26.

  1918

  In fall, mother enrolls McCarthy as a day student at the Forest Ridge Convent of the Sacred Heart. Family moves to Minneapolis, where paternal grandparents have purchased them a house; on three-day train journey everyone contracts Spanish flu virus. Father dies on November 6 at home of paternal grandparents; mother the next day. McCarthy and her brothers are put into the often neglectful and cruel care of Margaret and Myers Shriver, their great-aunt and great-uncle. Enrolled in St. Stephen’s, a Catholic elementary school.

  1923

  After a visit to Minneapolis leaves her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, appalled, McCarthy is rescued from the Shriver household and moved to Seattle; enrolled in Forest Ridge Convent school. Brothers Kevin and Preston go to live with paternal grandparents, while Sheridan remains with the Shrivers. Given free range of grandfather’s library, and reads Dickens, Tolstoy, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

  1925

  Enters Garfield High School in Seattle; despite continued adventurous reading, she nearly fails all of her courses and after a year will be “removed from the excitement of boys” to an all-girls school, Annie Wright Seminary in Tacoma.

  1926

  Over next three years will run “away from school once, just for fun, with another girl . . . Acted in many school plays. Wrote ‘realistic’ short stories and romances rather in the manner of [British historical novelist] Maurice Hewlett which were shown to Miss Atkinson, for her private consumption. Took (strangely) cooking course one year, probably because the teacher was young and pretty. Was terrible at it.” Loses virginity in the fall of 1926 “in Marmon roadster; unpleasant experience.” English teacher Dorothy Atkinson, a recent Vassar graduate, encourages her to write short stories. Decides to attend Vassar herself, and begins the necessary three years of Latin for admission.

  1928

  Has additional sexual experiences with a portrait painter in Seattle; travels to Montana in the summer on vacation with two classmates. “Also knew weird circle of Lesbians, who liked to read Pierre Louÿs aloud. Introduced by friend, ‘Ted’ (Ethel) Rosenberg, alluded to in Catholic Girlhood.”

  1929

  Graduates from Annie Wright as class valedictorian. Does summer study at Seattle’s Cornish School; takes classes in theatre and eurythmics. Meets Harold Johnsrud (born 1904 in St. Cloud, Minnesota), who is “acting in local little theatre and having affair with eurythmics teacher. . . . Went to ‘Symphonies under the Stars,’ in the stadium, conducted by Michel Piastro. Tried to grasp music; failed. Only responded to names such as ‘Sarabande,’ ‘Scarlatti.’ ” Enters Vassar in the fall after once more meeting Johnsrud “on street of New York first day on pre-college visit with grandmother and aunt. Only person I knew in New York. Seemed like fate . . . Love affair began shortly after; lasted, with very bad vicissitudes in summer of ’32, through college . . . Cruel man, really. Liked to get power through wounding.” The strongest influences on her at Vassar are Helen Sandison and Anna Kitchel, English department professors whose aesthetic approach to literary study appeals to McCarthy more than the progressive political interpretations of their colleague Helen Drusilla Lockwood.

  1932

  In summer, works for art dealer Emmanuel “Manny” J. Rousuck in New York. Describes him in a letter to her friend Frani Blough as “a nice, sweet, battered soul who spends his time skulking about, avoiding the sheriff.” (Several years later she will fictionalize him as “Mr. Sheer” in “Rogue’s Gallery,” The Company She Keeps.)

  1933

  Publishes essay “Touchstone Ambitious” about the Elizabethan writer Sir John Harington in The Vassar Journal of Undergraduate Studies. Graduates from Vassar in mid-June and marries Johnsrud at St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York on June 21; “Wedding very much as in The Group.” Over the next few years Johnsrud is “unemployed a good deal . . . Expensive apartment (my fault), debts, no money. Did not ask family, except when had appendix out.” Begins reviewing books for The New Republic. At the end of the year writes to Frani Blough, her old Vassar classmate: “Housework and a book review or two are not effective substitutes for sixteen hours of classes a week.”

  1934

  Falls out with Malcolm Cowley at The New Republic over a review of Lauren Gilfillan’s I Went to Pi
t College, a memoir he pressured her to praise. After changing his mind about the book, Cowley prints a “correction” to what he deems an overly favorable notice by McCarthy, who has begun reviewing regularly for The Nation. On February 6, joins Selden Rodman, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and others in a demonstration of support for striking waiters at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

  1935

  That fall, in The Nation, writes most of a much remarked upon five-part series about American book reviewing, “Our Critics, Right or Wrong.” Shares the byline with Margaret Marshall.

  1936

  Gets Reno divorce from Johnsrud on August 11 in order to marry a “young unemployable, John Porter, later died in Mexico, wretched circumstances. Looked like Fred MacMurray. Charm . . . Williams boy, had worked on Paris Herald.” (McCarthy had marched with Porter in a May Day parade on lower Broadway that year.) In the fall returns to New York, decides not to marry Porter; rents apartment on Gay Street in Greenwich Village. Works again for Rousuck. Develops friendship with James T. Farrell and his wife. In November, attends a book party for New Masses cartoonist Art Young, at which she bucks the Stalinist tide by saying that Trotsky deserves a fair hearing. (The Moscow Trials had begun in August.) Soon finds herself being listed on the letterhead of the Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky.