Life Class: The Selected Memoirs Of Diana Athill

by Diana Athill

  That was the first time he talked to me about identity, explaining how painful it was not to have one: to lack a basic ‘I’ and to exist only as a sequence of behaviours. Did I have a basic and continuous sense of identity, he asked, and I was tempted not to say ‘Yes’ because such a commonplace lack of anxiety seemed uninteresting compared with the condition he was claiming. I think I put the temptation aside because I didn’t take him seriously. How could quartz-like Alfred feel, even for a second, that he had no basic identity?

  Nevertheless I remember that long-ago talk very clearly. Perhaps I am being wise after the event, but it seems to me there was a slight judder of uneasiness under the surface which fixed it in my head.

  Through ’56 and ’57 we exchanged letters, and one of his contained a passage which now seems obviously deranged.

  I was running away from the police, through Luxembourg which is incredibly beautiful (a valley in the midst of a city), then to Brussels and back to Paris in thirty-six hours without sleep only to find that no one was chasing me after all. Unless they are being incredibly clever. You see, I’ll be able to do things like that when I finish my book.

  That sounds like paranoia. And how does the last sentence connect with the first two? But I was not much disturbed by this letter at the time. The rest of it was cheerful and normal, and the sobriety of my own life compared with Alfred’s must have made me assume that his might well include mystifying events.

  A letter of mine dated July 1959 reminds me that one of his London visits ended when he disappeared without a word.

  … at one time, a long time ago, there was an extraordinary panic in London. John Davenport kept calling me and Elizabeth Montagu kept calling me and I kept calling J.D. and E.M. and they kept calling each other and at one point an excursion was organised to Archway to confirm that you really had vanished and were not lying there sick unto death, or dead, or were not under arrest. After a while we said to each other ‘Look, if any of those things had happened we’d have heard somehow. Wherever he is he must be all right.’ So we gave up.

  It was about a year after this disappearance that a visiting New Yorker let fall that Alfred was back in New York, and gave me the address to which I sent the above, whereupon Alfred replied that yes indeed, he’d become fed up with Greece and was now installed in a Greenwich Village apartment ‘with a roof garden!’ And that was where I next saw him when I was on a business visit to New York: in almost unfurnished rooms above the theatre in Sullivan Street, where I found our friendship in good health.

  Alfred had to lead the way up the stairs because he was feuding with the landlord who had taken to leaving brooms and buckets in the darkness, to trip him and send him crashing through the frail and wobbly banisters. As we climbed he described the feud with great relish. It was still daylight, so he took me right to the top to show me the roof garden – the heat-softened asphalt of the roof’s surface, thickly studded with dog turds. Dutifully I leant over the parapet to admire the view and the freshness of the breeze, but I was shocked. Dogs are quasi-sacred in my family, and I had been raised in the understanding that they don’t ask to belong to people, so – given that we have taken them over for our own pleasure – it is our duty not only to love them but to recognize their nature and treat them accordingly. Never have I denied a dog exercise and the chance to shit in decent comfort away from its lair – adult dogs, except for halfwitted ones, dislike fouling their own quarters. I saw soon enough that Alfred’s beloved Columbine and Skoura, whom he had rescued in Greece, were a barbaric pair, perfectly happy to shit on the roof – and indeed on the floors, and the mattresses which lay on the floors to serve as beds. They had never been house-trained, and Skoura, anyway, was half-witted. But still I was disconcerted that Alfred was prepared to inflict such a life on his dogs.

  It was dark by the time we sat down by candlelight (the electricity may have been cut off) to eat mushrooms in sour cream and some excellent steak, and the dim light concentrated on the carefully arranged table disguised the room’s bareness and dirt. Halfway through the meal we heard someone coming up the stairs. Alfred hushed me and blew out the candles. A knock, a shuffling, breathing pause; another knock; another pause; then the visitor retreated. When Alfred relit the candles he was looking smug. ‘I know what that was. A boy I don’t want to see any more.’

  That led to talk of his unhappiness. Arthur, the most serious and long-lasting of all his loves, had left him. He was trying to force himself into an austere acceptance of solitude, but like a fool kept on hoping, kept on falling into situations which ended in disappointment, or worse. The boy on the stairs was the latest disappointment, a chance pick-up who turned out to be inadequate. I said: ‘But Alfred, dear heart, what makes you think it likely that someone you pick up in a urinal will instantly turn into your own true love?’; to which he replied condescendingly that I had no sense of romance.

  My two favourite memories of New York were given me by Alfred during my visit: he showed me the only pleasure in the city which could still be had for a nickel, and he took me to Coney Island. The nickel pleasure was riding the Staten Island ferry there and back on a single fare, which meant hiding instead of landing at the end of the outward journey. Early on a summer evening, when the watery light and the ting-tong of a bell on a marker-buoy almost turned Manhattan into Venice, it was indeed a charming thing to do. And Coney Island was beautiful too, the water sleepy as it lapped the dun-coloured sand, the sound of the boardwalk underfoot evoking past summers which seemed – mysteriously – to have been experienced by me. Sitting on the beach, we watched the white flower of the parachute jump opening and floating down, opening and floating down … Alfred teased me to make the jump but I’m a coward about fairground thrills, and jibbed. He was afraid, too, and told stories about famous accidents. He showed me where, when he was a child, he used to climb down into the secret runways under the boardwalk, and instructed me in methods of cheating so that this or that could be seen or done without paying. He was fond and proud of the child who used to play truant there and had become so expert at exploiting the place’s delights, and as we sat beside each other in the subway, going home, I felt more comfortably accepted by New York than I had ever done before. I don’t remember him ever talking about the pleasures of being an enfant terrible reviewer, capable of causing a considerable frisson in literary New York, which he was at that time.

  Being the publisher of someone whose books are good but don’t sell is an uncomfortable business. Partly you feel guilt (did we miss chances? Could we have done this or that more effectively?), and partly irritation (does he really expect us to disregard all commercial considerations for the sake of his book?). Alfred gained a reputation for persecuting his publishers and agents with irrational demands, but with us he was never more than tetchy, and most of the uneasiness I felt came from my own disappointment rather than from his bullying. In England he was all but overlooked: a few reviewers made perfunctory acknowledgement of his cleverness and the unusual nature of his imagination, but many more failed to mention him. Our fiction list was well thought of by literary editors, and I had written them personal letters about Alfred. I was driven to wondering whether the favour we were in had backfired: had they – or some of them – taken against his work and decided that it would be kinder to us not to review it at all, rather than to review it badly? Only John Davenport, a good critic who had become Alfred’s friend out of admiration for his writing, spoke out with perceptive enthusiasm.

  I have forgotten when Alfred moved to Morocco and whether he told me why he was doing so (Paul Bowles had suggested it at a party in New York). The first letter that I still have with a Tangier address was written soon after the publication in England of his collection of stories, Behold Goliath, early in 1965.

  Dear Rat

  Why haven’t you written?

  Why didn’t you let me know about publication?

  Why haven’t you sent me copies?

  Why haven’t you sent me re
views?

  I will not make you suffer by asking why you didn’t use the Burroughs quote, though I would like you to volunteer an explanation. I hope you will write me by return of post.

  I’m coming to England, either driving in my trusty little Austin or by plane which terrifies me. I’m coming with my Moroccan boyfriend, and the real reason for the trip is to get his foot operated on. He has a spur, an excrescence of bone on the left heel, due to a rheumatic process. I’m afraid of doctors here. But please keep this a secret as they probably won’t let us into England if they find out … I would appreciate it if you would check up on surgeons, bone surgeons or orthopedic specialists. I have some money so it doesn’t have to be the health insurance thing, though that would help … They always used to fuss about me at the frontier, so there’s bound to be a fuss about Dris. I am going to tell them that we are going to be your guests over the summer. I hope this is okay with you (for me to say so, not for us to stay) and that if they phone you or anything you will say yes it’s true. Please reply at once.

  Oh, I don’t know if Norman [Glass] mentioned it, but I don’t wear a wig any more. I thought I’d better tell you in advance so you don’t go into shock. I like it better this way, but I’m still somewhat self-conscious.

  Edward [Field] says I must give you and Monique Nathan* a copy of The Exquisite Corpse immediately. Epstein** says: ‘I doubt very much that I can publish the book in a way that will be satisfactory to you, and I don’t want to compound our joint disappointment in Goliath. The other reason has to do with the book itself. I recognize its brilliance – or more accurately I recognize your brilliance – but I confess that I’m baffled by your intentions, and I’m concerned that I would not know how to present the book effectively. I don’t mean that for me the book didn’t work; simply that it worked in ways I only partly understood. Or in ways that suggest it is more a poem than a novel, though whether this distinction clarifies anything is a puzzle.’

  The book is too simple for him. It reads like a children’s book and requires innocence of a reader. Imagine asking Jason Epstein to be innocent …

  Will let you see it when I come. PLEASE REPLY BY RETURN OF POST. Love.

  My answer:

  I did tell you publication date, I have sent you copies – or rather, copies were sent, as is customary, to your agent (if A. M. Heath is still your agent – they are on paper. I called them this morning and they said they’d post your six copies today, and I don’t know why they haven’t done this before). Here are copies of the main reviews [my lack of comment makes their disappointing nature evident]. And I didn’t put the Burroughs quote on the jacket because no one in Sales wanted me to, Burroughs being thought of here except by the few as dangerously far out and obscene, and they not wanting to present you as more for the few than you are. Should have told you this. Sorry.

  I am enclosing a letter of invitation in case it may be useful with the visa people or at frontiers. It’s marvellous that you are coming …

  Your quote from Jason Epstein made me laugh – there’s a nervous publisher backing against a wall if ever there was one. I was also, of course, scared by his reaction because there is nothing more twitch-inducing than waiting for something to come in which you know is going to be unlike anything else, for fear that it is going to be so unlike that one will have hideous forebodings about its fate. I’m dying to read it. Hurrah hurrah that you’ll soon be here. Love.

  His answer, written in a mellow mood, ended with the words: ‘As for The Exquisite Corpse being unlike, yes, it is probably the most unlike book you’ve read since childhood. And probably, also, the most delicious.’

  I could not have rejected The Exquisite Corpse, because it seemed – still seems – to me to draw the reader into itself with irresistible seductions. Alfred was right: you must read it as a child in that you must read it simply for what happens next, without trying to impose ‘inner meanings’ on it. The title comes from the game called in England ‘Consequences’ – it was the Surrealists who gave it the more exotic name. Do people still play it? A small group of people take a sheet of paper, the first person writes the opening line of a miniature story, then folds the paper so that the next person can’t see what he has written; the next person writes the next line, and folds – and so on to the last person, whose line must start ‘and the consequence was …’ Unfold the paper and you have a nonsense story which is often delightfully bizarre. You can do it with drawing, as well as with words: I can still remember a sublime monster produced that way by my cousins and me when I was a child, far more astonishing than anything any of us could have thought up on our own, yet perfectly convincing. Alfred followed the ‘consequences’ principle – it’s as though the paper were folded between each chapter, and when people you have already met reappear you are not always sure that they are the same people – perhaps the name has been given to someone else? Sometimes appalling or obscene things happen to them (I still find it hard to take the scene in which the character called Xavier watches his papa dying). Often it is monstrously funny. In no way is the writing ‘difficult’. There is nothing experimental about the syntax; you are not expected to pick up veiled references or make subtle associations; and there can never be a moment’s doubt about what is happening to the characters. The writing – so natural, so spontaneous-feeling, so precise – makes them, as Alfred claimed, delicious. The book’s strangeness lies entirely in the events, as it does in a fairy story, remote though Alfred’s events are (and they could hardly be remoter) from those of Hans Andersen.

  I was captivated, but two things disturbed me. The first was that we would be no more able than Jason Epstein to turn this extremely ‘unlike’ book into a best seller, so Alfred was bound to be disappointed. And the second was that it left me feeling ‘one inch madder, and it would have been too mad’.

  This was something to do with the contrast between the perfection and airiness of the writing and the wildness of the events. The easy elegance, the wit, the sweet reason of the style are at the service of humour, yes; of inventiveness, yes; but also of something fierce and frightening. A fierce – an aggressive – despair? If aggressive despair is screamed and thumped at you it is painful, but it makes sense. When it is flipped at you lightly, almost playfully … Well, it doesn’t make nonsense, because nothing so lucid could be called nonsensical, but (like Jason Epstein) I don’t know for sure what it does make. I am captivated, but I am uneasy. I am uneasy, but I am captivated. The balance wobbles and comes to rest on the side of captivation. I use the present tense because I have just reread it for the first time in years, and reacted to it exactly as I did at the first reading.

  When Alfred arrived with Dris he was wigless. He looked impressive, face, scalp, ears, neck all tanned evenly by the Moroccan sun. Although he himself had already broken the taboo, I still felt nervous and had to screw up my courage in order to congratulate him on his appearance. I don’t think I am inventing the shyly happy expression on his face as he accepted the congratulations. As I learnt later, having to wear a wig because a childhood illness had left him hairless was the most terrible thing in his life, an affliction loaded almost beyond bearing with humiliation and rage; so throwing it off, which had taken great courage, was a vastly important event to him.

  Morocco, I thought, had given him a new calm and freedom, and he agreed. The version he gave me of the place was all liberation and gentleness: you could smoke delicious kif there as naturally as English people drink tea; no strict line was drawn between hetero-and homosexual love; and you didn’t have to wear a wig – you could be wholly yourself. I rejoiced for him that he had found the place he needed.

  A couple of days later he brought Dris to dinner at my place: handsome, cheerful Dris, with whom I could communicate only by smiling because I have no Spanish. After dinner Alfred sent him into the kitchen to wash the dishes, which shocked me until they had both convinced me that it was dull for him to sit listening to incomprehensible English. Soon Dris stuck his he
ad round the door and offered me his younger brother – he thought it wrong that I should have no one to do my housework. Alfred advised against it, saying that the boy was beautiful but a handful and that Dris constantly had to chivvy him out of louche bars. Dris himself had become a model of respectability now that he had a loving and reliable American, and Alfred – so he said – would one day be the guest of honour at Dris’s wedding. That would be recognized in Morocco as the proper conclusion of their relationship, and probably Dris’s wife would do Alfred’s laundry while their children would be like family for him. It sounded idyllic.

  The high point of the evening was the story of their adventures on their drive to England, told with parentheses in Spanish so that Dris could participate. Alfred had crashed the car in France. When the police came Dris was lying on the ground with blood on his head. It was really only a scratch but it looked much worse and Dris was groaning and rolling up his eyes so that only the whites were visible. Yes, yes, Dris intervened, sparkling with delight, with Alfred interpreting in his wake. He had suddenly remembered that a friend of his had been in an accident in France, and was taken to hospital, and when he got there he was given all his meals for free! So Dris decided in a flash to get to hospital where he would save Alfred money by getting fed, and also – this was the inspiration which filled him with glee – by complaining piteously about his foot, as though it had been hurt in the accident, he would make them X-ray his foot, as well as feed him, so that Alfred would not have to pay for an X-ray in London. Unfortunately this brilliant wheeze came to nothing because he was not allowed to smoke in the ward, so before he could be X-rayed he became too fed up to endure it, and walked out. It was pure luck, Alfred said, that they had run into each other as they wandered the streets.