The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  Gondor is besieged and Pippin is listening intently, standing behind the throne of Denethor, for Faramir has at last returned. Gandalf rescued him from orcs, I think. The Great War is on and the tides of Darkness everywhere. Aragorn & Co. have come up through the Paths of the Dead. So you see what I am about, in this flickery morning. Oh–that amazing Mr. Tolkien. I have a copy of volume three for you waiting here. Maybe this will lure you faster. I do not doubt that Mr. Tolkien has immense fountains of lovely hair gushing from his mothy ears. That is only logical, for surely he could not be the chronicler of The Lord of the Rings without hairy, lovely moth ears.

  AUGUST 8, 1956 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  I must tell you something that will possibly upset you a bit. Touche is dead. Teddy [Griffis], Alice, Touche—and before that Valeska and Bravig [Imbs] and Marian and Harry Dunham.7 So almost all of that world gone and nothing to explain it—nothing. This happened in Vermont at four a.m. yesterday morning, without any warning—save what seemed an indigestion attack—and then he was dead. His heart stopped. Harry [Martin] had been with Touche in Vermont.8 But it is Ken [Elmslie] who will suffer the most, for he has nothing save his future and this little high-time past. I have always had the rich possibility of you not gone out of this world, but poor Ken—his one golden egg he furnished to this basket—and lo—not even the fabric of the basket will remain. I think only the energy remains at large—certainly not the intelligence. Sometimes so intense is the energy that, granted certain conditions, this energy can even assume shape, become visible, but not palpable—and of course, the energy can be wicked or good and used by angels or devils.

  How they have all hurried away—one chasing after the other—that world of little friends. How eagerly they ran to catch up. Now I must stop—what with Gray's illness and this, which has picked me up and set me to flapping like Monday washday sheets to beat the world and fly the wind to scorn. This is also bad for Rut. No matter how they fought, he inevitably helped her. So Touche is dead—passionately dead, I am sure—and rebelliously—and as ever unable to resist an invitation—and mostly not too sure of keeping it on that date and at that moment.

  AUGUST 28, 1956 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  It is so fantastically hot that even the blank-faced full moon is vaporous, trailing heat clouds all about like fading beauties do veils, and probably for much the same reason. What happens to the moon as one grows older? (How exact that phrase—grows older is precisely what happens.) It becomes and is all things— fear—science—beauty—but not the symbol of passion so frequently confused with love when one is very young.

  I went out into the garden. Looking up at the skies decorated with still, leafy branches, pricked and primped with stars, the moon—her highness—so collected—so superior—so round—I could not resist admiring her assurance. Then I saw that Mrs. Blum's bedroom was lighted. Off they went last Thursday, and those lights had been running since then—for four days and four nights! I could cheerfully strangle them. So much for the moon.9

  MARLENE AND MARIA Marlene was curious about Maria, and Maria was curious about Marlene. So one Sunday afternoon, some days before Maria's first Norma in her first season at the Metropolitan Opera house, two ladies came to meet each other in our parlor.10 Maria arrived first, attended by her husband and her father. Maria was perfectly dressed, as usual, this time in a very plain, beautifully cut black afternoon frock made by expert Italian hands. It was ornamented, in exactly the right spot, high on her left side, with an intricate diamond brooch. Maria had no ancestral jewels, but her genius acquired them. She was hatted neatly. As she sat down she drew immaculate white kid gloves from her hands. On her fingers were at least two severely cut diamond rings— nothing ostentatious, but they spoke for themselves. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and looked like a very sweet young girl. I thought: This is a dangerous situation.

  Doorbell rang, and Marlene came in. Marlene had chosen to be sportive. She was all done up in tweeds. She was very jaunty. She was very hail-Maria-well-met. She relaxed into a corner on the same sofa on which Maria sat and extended endless legs. Maria, obliquely, looked at the legs and smiled. Marlene laughed. Both girls seemed to be getting on very well. There was a finishing-school atmosphere about that sofa. They fell to chatting.

  Marlene was curious about Maria's career. Marlene, I could see, was eager to give advice. Mother Marlene could never resist taking over. Soon I heard, while the teacups tinkled politely, Marlene say, “But, liebling, you should really not have such hair….” My heart sank. I heard Marlene say, “But, liebling, I know exactly the right hair for you….” Maria just sat stirring her tea. Nothing was coming from Maria, except a look in my direction. Marlene noted no signals whatsoever. “And, liebling, I will make for you the most wonderful thing. It will preserve your voice. I will make for you beef tea….” I knew Marlenes beef tea. I could have thrown up on the spot. I could see in Maria's eyes a gleam of amusement. Marlene could see nothing except Marlene-being-mother. She inched slowly toward Maria, put her hand around Maria's shoulder, and said, “I will help you. Leave it to me. I will fix your hair. I will see that your voice is all right. I will bring you beef tea.” Marlene moved back into her corner. Maria sat in her corner. Both ladies sipped their tea. Marlene was radiant. Maria was amused. Maria by and by said, “I think I must go now because I must preserve everything for Norma.” Mr. Meneghini rose. Her father rose. They had said nothing throughout this scene. Maria got up. The gentlemen helped her into her furs. Maria bent toward Marlene. Marlene got up and kissed her on both cheeks, and Maria went away with her father and her husband. Marlene sat down and said, “She doesn't have much conversation, does she?…”

  And then by and by I had a call from Maria. “Your friend Miss Dietrich was here. She brought me this awful stuff. What should I do with it?” I said, “Throw it out and say you liked it very much.” “Then she will bring me more,” she said. “No,” I said, “she won't.”

  A little over a month later, the night of Maria's first Lucia di Lammermoor, at the Met, I stood in the wings just before the mad scene. There was no one on the stage at all. In a faded, dusty, shimmering, paraselene light, Maria stood at the top of a long flight of steps, miserably moving to and fro, her right hand moving nervously up and down her left arm. She moved incessantly, a kind of caged movement, then the flute struck its note, and Maria, who really could not see where she was going, the voice pouring out into the vast darkness of the auditorium, carefully flowed down all those steps, not at all a human but an apparition with a disembodied voice making humanity of abstract sound, making form out of madness, clarifying beastliness.11

  Later in her dressing room she sat exhausted but smiling, and when she saw me she lifted up from a low stool by her side a hank of hair. “Your friend Miss Dietrich brought me this. She thought I should wear it in the mad scene. What do I do with it?” I looked at it and I said, “You keep it. You keep it forever. You cherish it….”

  Marlene and Maria never became friends; they existed in a state of mutual respect. (1993)

  NOVEMBER 25, 1956 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • hamburg, new york?

  Last Sunday I had my Callas supper—Chinese food, eighty-five-plus came, the oddest food-line ever. They all had to line up to be served—and they loved it. The line stretched from the living room down and around through the parlors—Maria and entourage, Carmel Snow, William Faulkner,12 [baritone] George London, [producer] Roger Stevens, Lillian Gish, Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart, Celeste Holm, the Toscanini “girls,”13 Jennie Tourel, Lennie Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, Sono [Osato], Siobhan McKenna, [actress] Leueen McGrath Kaufmann (unspoused), Stanley Young and wife [Nancy Wilson Ross, a novelist], and so very many others—but I missed those elsewhere or gone forever. Ania Dorfmann played the piano. The party cost under $125 and several days and bad tempers all around domestically, but I guess it was worth it. If
only people did not bring people—if only.

  JOURNAL • January 17, 1957 On January 16, I heard that Maestro was dead, ninety years old. Gray and Richard kept this from me. Gray and Howard [Rothschild] lurked around a man reading a newspaper with this news in it. But when I did glimpse the Maestro's name, the photographs showed him most active. I concluded that the paper was running a story on him.

  So now he is dead, and in my weeping I thought, “At last Ela has him.” But when Gray said this to comfort me, I said, “There are so many there ahead of her.” I wonder whether Ela is hiding behind a cloud or has she brazenly and daringly rushed up to him and kissed his darling face at last? Whatever she's doing, she must be radiant with that special radiance which only she had. In all of my life, I loved her most. And when the Skater's Waltz came on the radio, just a little while ago, I found myself crying again, not for Maestro, who had a long and most glorious life, and who in these last months was, Rut told me, quite gaga at times, not for him but for me. For now I realized that Ela would never return—never. So that forlorn hope is ended. I can see her smiling and giggling in that way she had, so sweetly demented. Now the night program is playing some of his Wagner. How vital. How full of life. No, not full of life, but life itself. So the glorious ones depart, and the world sinks into a long gray time. Not the dark ages, but the gray ages. To my aunt Minnie this is a marvelous time in which to live. “If only I was younger,” she cried on Sunday last while watching her color television set. “If only I was younger! What a wonderful time we live in!” But she sees only the surface, the glittering, telescoped surface, when she joys in her color television, in all the miracle soporifics, the magical cozeners…. Oh, what a bloody synthetic time. What a swindle this time is. What a bitter joke—especially in this huge stony city, this airborne congeries, which has had to rear its head so very high. One story lower and it would have mud on its face—permanently.

  I lost $200 a month today. My expense account was cut totally. So now I must think how to supplement my dwindled resources. Next, the whole job could vanish. I must somehow prepare against such an emergency. I have no savings save those in the tin boxes—pennies, loose change. I must fortify myself, and that means work for the outside. Also, I must keep my ears and eyes open for another job.14

  The house is so empty feeling now that Richard's gone.

  JANUARY 18, 1957 The struggle to write in this notebook—the unwillingness and then the pleasure of writing in it. But the time of procrastination, the resistance? Perhaps because the fear of failure goes so very deep in the bone. I must work to eliminate this fear, for it corrodes and ruins. Deep down I'm frightened that I'm about to lose my job or that I'll be asked to cut my salary still more. But most of all I'm frightened that I'll lose my job.

  FEBRUARY 12, 1957 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • grenada, west indies

  A week ago, on a Sunday evening, I was rushing into my clothes because I was late for the Toscanini memorial concert (very good—[Charles] Munch, [Bruno] Walter, [Pierre] Monteux each conducted) when the telephone rang and Gray answered it. Then he said, “It's Knox Laing, your schoolboy crush.” I said, “Stop kidding! Who is it?” I thought wildly that maybe you were playing a joke—or Ben [Edwards] was. But no one was—it was Knox. I told Gray to get his number. The next morning I called. There he was, stopping in the Dakota, with [British actor] Eric Portman, with whom he has lived for many years.15 So I arranged to go there—to lunch I thought. I met this man of seventy in whom I could discern a boy we had once known! He is obviously an alcoholic. He lives in a “pretty” house—Portman's in Cornwall—sometimes, rarely, in Port-man's London house. He does nothing save cope with three bull terriers—and he drinks! He burst into tears—and thereafter he had frequent torrents of weeping. He knows so very well what has happened to him—and oh how awful to see it. He said I looked wonderful and that I was the only good thing that had ever happened to him, and that he thought of me constantly, but knew there was no purpose in writing. If he hadn't gone with Portman (a strange, tense, nervous, somewhat forbidding man—like someone in Samuel Butler or Thomas Hardy) to a party on the eightieth floor (!) of the Empire State, a party given by Roger Stevens, he wouldn't have called. It was a dreadful afternoon—something out of an Elizabeth Bowen novel—sometimes comical, but not really. He seems to live much in the past and remembers incidents and people I've forgotten. Then he doesn't remember what he has just said. How dreadful to see someone who seemed to have so much and have it so easily become this. I couldn't ask him about his family or anything because I didn't feel that I should. So that's what became of Knox Laing. How fortunate we are—you, Ben, I.

  NOTE: In May 1957, Gray went to California to visit his mother.

  MAY 21, 1957 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank, california

  Richard housekeeps, so I don't worry about that, and he sits lilacking— [drawing them] diligently and doggedly. But, oh, how intensely cold these days and nights are. Below forty degrees. I am done up in my gray sweatshirt and Chinese hat and wool scarves and mittens, and my feet (in socks) are ice….

  I'll tell you about Nora [Kaye]: I thought she seemed worried, so finally I asked what the matter was, and she said she was frightened because as soon as arrangements could be made she would, sometime next week, go into [the] hospital and have an operation. Her doctor says it is some sort of growth—or woman's trouble—but, of course, she worries about cancer. You can imagine how upset I was, although I told her all the things I've ever heard anyone say— but, of course, that didn't help much. She's still frightened. Also, she does love Kenneth [MacMillan] very much and he loves her. She says they are very much suited in all sorts of ways, but she is ten years older and an aging dancer who does not know how long she can continue to dance. If they married he would have to give up Sadler's Wells—so it's all a mess—and what with her illness and love and all she feels older than old. She was extremely sensible about it all.16 How relentless life is—with its seesaw of delights and darknesses. I told Arthur [Laurents] this morning and we both cried a bit—suddenly—and I said if you were here you would be tuning up, too. So then we laughed.17

  JUNE 10, 1957 • EN ROUTE FROM BOSTON TO NEW YORK

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank

  Dr. [William Carlos] Williams burst out passionately to Robert Lowell, about death: How he didn't mind dying, but he did mind not knowing so many things and having no time left in which to learn them—so many books he hadn't read. When he publicly thanked his wife for being so good a wife, she gave an angry look. When I came up to her, she said, “All those weeks and months when I didn't even know where he was …” And [novelist and critic] Elizabeth Hardwick Lowell said, “I deserve some praise, too…. Why doesn't Cal [Lowell] get up and sing a song about me!” Poets' wives… Seems I heard Mrs. Shelley and Lady Byron laughing grimly in the ether.

  NOTE: Richard Hunter and Howard Rothschild had rented a house in Connecticut for the summer of 1957. Leo spent a few nights with Richard there on his return from a visit to Boston.

  JUNE 15, 1957 • CORNWALL BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank

  I must tell you about last night's dinner guests—Jane Grant, once Mrs. Harold Ross (together they founded The New Yorker), and her now husband [William Harris] and an elderly woman (very Boston and crusty, belongs more in a herbaceous border than a drawing room). Jane Grant is a Lucy Stoner.18 She and her husband (he works for Fortune) live up here and have White Flower Farm nursery. Remember their wonderful catalogs? It is strange to see this woman, once the center of the Algonquin Round Table set (Woollcott lived in her house, so did Benchley and almost all of that world), here in remote Connecticut and wrinkled the way country women are wrinkled, as though each line, each wrinkle held earth—the sort of skin you could grow something in— herbs rather than flowers. I like her and she is, of course, writing a book about her dead world.

  JUNE 27, 1957 • NEW YORK CITY

  T
O GRAY FOY • burbank

  Poppa is in the hospital. He had to be rushed there for a blood transfusion and oxygen. Oh, Pussum, he's so pitiful.19 I've never seen him look so awful—all nose and huge scared eyes, sort of like a lumpy sack. When I was going away, he sat up and said, “I want to see how you look. Be a good boy and take care of yourself.” I don't think that he wants to live … but he can linger on and on. I found out that each blood transfusion costs $80. I wonder where the money comes from, and I guess I had best start scrimping some together. Momma sits by his bedside from early morning until closing time. She behaves very well, and seems bright and even gay—such a show.

  I talked to the doctor at eight a.m. He says that Poppa has unregenerative anemia. That means the marrow in his bones doesn't make red blood, and that means he can only be kept alive by receiving his red blood from outside sources. Poppa, to live, may need at least one [transfusion] a week. They don't know yet. Also, they don't know whether he can come out of the hospital. He has developed a congestion in the right lung. He's had three heart attacks, and his diabetes is dreadful. He's so frightened and looks like a child who has been through bombardment.20

  JUNE 30, 1957 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank

  I went out there [to the hospital], and Momma was on the telephone almost every moment (poetic justice) while Poppa was immersed in a baseball game (television)—emerging only to get hurt when in answer to his asking me wasn't I going to stay there over the weekend (where I wonder?), because he wants his sons around him, I said no, why should I be uncomfortable there when I had a big house with quite a few beds in it? He acted as though I had hit him while he was wearing at least six sets of eyeglasses and had diminished to baby-size. Oh! Anyway, I'll let this go on a wee bit longer and then I'll absent me a while. Give them a bit and they show themselves for the cannibals they essentially are.