Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Next day, Berthold wrote me the following letter:

  …. You know, I’m not as radical as Brecht is, or in a different way—and we two know each other too long and too well to change our behavior towards each other. But the funny thing is that you’ve become dear to Brecht too, after so short an acquaintance. Therefore his bitter fight for your soul, his utter frankness (he is a man, and a good one!) even if he should lose an ideal translator, a helper for his work that is everything to him. It was so bitterly well meant that I couldn’t stand behind—and my risk was a greater one: to lose one of the very very few friends I still am calling mine—perhaps the only one left who connects me with these ominous years since 1933. You know what I mean with that. It was a depressing, or, better said, a torturing evening, yesterday, for me. There was the great struggle of our time being fought between friends in this room—and, as I felt, the battleground was your heart, your sensibility (and mine too). It couldn’t be helped, and may it lead to something better! All of us will be able to judge this evening definitely—let’s say, five years from now, if we still are alive. If not; everyone of us has certainly tried to find the “right way.” What we called your “experiment” will have brought you experience: I do hope, the decisive experience of your life, if not the solution. Would I stop you if I could? I have to answer with “yes.” You see, love does answer without hesitation, so does conviction. But I cannot stop you. I can only wish you the very best, fullheartedly. And, certainly, I’ll never finish to be proud of your friendship, I have to thank you for so much: that can’t end. My feeling for you is unchanged. And don’t worry about me. I’m not bewildered, not confused. I am, may I say, clearer than I ever was. Work progresses, modestly but steadily. It’s not easy. What will come to everyone of us—nobody knows …

  To which I answered:

  Your letter just arrived. Thank you for writing it—but your anxiety is not necessary—nothing you said to me could shake our friendship. We understand each other deeply, and love each other, and, as you put it, we cannot “change our behavior towards each other.” I would not even wish it.

  With Brecht it is another matter. Fine, if he likes me. I like him. He may genuinely feel that I am somehow a decent person, although misguided—but he himself said that this human quality is not what matters to him. There we differ, radically. With you, it is different.

  Yes, you can warn your friend (you must warn him) if you think the girl he wants to marry is a whore. But there are ways of doing this. It is not necessary to trample on all his feeling for her with the crudest, dirtiest words you know. That’s not frankness, it’s brutality. When Brecht said that Huxley was “verkauft” I nearly walked out of the house. It is weakness and cowardice to sit and hear your friends insulted—and I only stayed because I felt that, at that moment, Brecht was simply not responsible for his words. He was so excited. When you say things like that, you have told me to take no notice, because it is due to your diabetes. Is Brecht sick, too? If so, I can, of course, understand everything. If he is not sick, well, then I can only go back to his house if he is prepared to treat me like a human being, whom he likes. Yes, we can discuss anything—but that was no discussion, it was denunciation. For once, it’s okay. Now, he has told me my fiancée is a whore. He has warned me. If he goes on saying it, that’s merely abuse. It is fruitless. It helps nobody. It bores me. And it makes me mad.

  I am well aware that I will never be able to fit into the new world he desires. I will be killed quite soon, for being an individualist, and I will be glad to die. I could never breathe that air. But meanwhile I genuinely and truly like Brecht and his wife and Stefan (who is just as radical, but has much better manners! He should be an example to his father). I even find Brecht’s violence sympathetic. But I will never submit to it—that’s the difference between being a pacifist and being a slave.

  You see, unfortunately perhaps, I feel that Brecht is absolutely right, in his way, and I also feel that I am right, in mine. So I can object to nothing—not even his intolerance—theoretically. Only, practically and humanly, I just won’t stand for it!

  You may show him this letter, if you like. In fact, I wish you would. But that is a matter for your judgment. In any case, tell him what I said. …

  September 22. I’m just back from spending the entire night downtown, meeting Pete Martinez, who’s here on leave to see his parents. They recently moved out to the Coast, from Houston, Texas, and now have a house in Long Beach.

  Pete was supposed to get here around 10:30. He didn’t arrive till 2:30 a.m., very small, very brown, with a terrible cold, staggering under a huge kit bag which he dropped, to give me an unmilitary, public hug. He had been on the train for days. He wears his uniform with the slightly apologetic, self-consciously comic air of someone in fancy dress. We drank coffee at a dreary, all-night place with marble-topped tables and then trudged around the bus stations, only to find that there was no way of getting out to Long Beach till 5:00 a.m. The hotel lobbies were littered with service men, sprawling asleep all over the floors and couches. So we retired to a cubicle in the Pershing Square turkish bath, where Pete, who was exhausted and had a bad headache, kept asking the attendant mournfully for a drink. He talked about his army life, not complaining at all, but darkly fatalistic, in his somber Mexican way. He begged me repeatedly not to tell Lincoln that this may be his last leave before going overseas.

  Today is another scorcher: the temperature scarcely dropped, all night. The Santa Ana wind is thrashing the trees like a breath from a furnace.

  September 24. Yesterday, Pete called and wanted me to go down to Long Beach last night. No other time, he said, would be possible; so I had to ask Swami if I could skip the class. This made me feel guilty. I sat with him for a few minutes, because I didn’t want to seem eager to rush off. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, “You know, Chris—even if one gives up the spiritual life altogether for a while, he will come back to Ramakrishna before he dies. We know that, for a fact. We have witnessed it.” As so often, the remark seemed telepathic. It gave me exactly the reassurance I needed.

  I borrowed Denny’s car and drove down to Long Beach—the dreary inland route along Manchester Avenue, where the city never stops. Pete’s new home on East Fourth Street, was a dark little wooden house with a big porch, fly screens already rusted, and a Red Cross sign and service star in the window—just like ten thousand others. The whole family was there: the white-haired, handsome father who speaks scarcely a word of English, and who greeted me with a wave of his hand; the dark-eyed, rather tragic little mother, with her elder son dead already and now fearing for her younger; the three sisters, Dolores, Carmen and the youngest, with the cute little nose, whose name I forget. All three girls were charming, but they seemed homely beside their vivid little wonder-brother, with his flashing eyes and teeth, short-cropped vigorous hair, and powerful compact figure (he has put on a little more weight) in the clumsy uniform and G.I. boots. We ate tacos, and Pete got out a bottle of tequila which we drank under the mother’s doubtful, not-quite-approving eyes. Not that anything Pete does in that family could ever be really disapproved of. His anecdotes of New York parties, his ballet photographs, his imitations of friends and enemies—all are accepted, gratefully, uncritically, like holy writ. Carmen (nicknamed “Butch”) had received a proposal of marriage on a phonograph record from a strikingly handsome sergeant she had only met once. The sergeant had also sent a record to the parents, asking for her hand. We listened to them, amidst much giggling. Then Pete and his sisters sang Mexican songs, in gay heartbroken tones. And I was asked to read poetry out of a drugstore anthology—which I did—the tequila beginning to take effect—with reckless freedom of expression. The mother and father listened to Browning’s “Youth and Art” with the greatest pleasure, not understanding a single word. It seemed perfectly natural that I should be drinking, and smoking one cigarette after another. (It is an extraordinary psychological fact, which I’ve tested several times, that an ex-smoker can smo
ke when drunk without reviving the nicotine addiction.) I felt like quite a different version of myself—Pete’s Christopher—who hadn’t been taken out of the closet in a long while, but had been there all the time, waiting to be called forth. The whole legend, the whole cult of Pete, which Lincoln has established, made the room into a sort of shrine, with Pete himself cross-legged in the middle of the floor, a minor but authentic deity.

  September 27. Last night, I went down to the Union Station and saw Pete off. We had some drinks in a bar before he left. Pete said, “You’ll always want to be different, Chris—whatever you do. You want to fight everybody. You want to take your soul out and look at it.” He believes that he’ll never dance again. He’s thirty-one. All that life he loved is over. We said goodbye at the barrier and he disappeared—still cocky, still marvellous as ever—into the grey future, to become a tiny part of this dismal worldwide military mess.

  September 30. This afternoon, I’m leaving for San Francisco—then on to Portland, to assist at the Durga puja and the dedication of Swami Devatmananda’s new center.

  I’m glad to be getting away from Ivar Avenue, which is verging on an eruption. Amiya is going to look after Ben and Derek while Peggy dashes East for another month with Bill—and this arrangement is most desirable, because Mrs. Milam has just written a really poisonous letter, accusing Amiya of more-than-motherly feelings toward Webster, and Amiya is so upset she got pains in her legs and retired to bed. Also, Yogi is suddenly aware that he’s a probationer-monk, and can’t sleep with Yogini any more; and Yogini says she’ll stay here even if he quits. So he’s getting a job and sticking around, sulking and grumbling.

  There’s also Kolisch, who’s making a comeback here, despite terrific resistance from Sudhira and Amiya. Sudhira tells me that Kolisch has a theory that everybody in the world is suffering from syphilis—either as an hereditary or a primary infection. He used to tell his patients this, but they got so indignant that now he keeps his mouth shut and just treats them for it. (Hence his mysterious remarks, when I first went to him, about my family background.) Sudhira finds this theory amusing and even tentatively plausible, but she is outraged when Kolisch applies it to someone like Sarada, because it seems to reflect upon Sarada’s purity. (Where Sarada is concerned, Sudhira ceases to be a nurse and becomes a sentimental Irish nanny—to such a degree that I used to suspect her, quite wrongly, of being a lesbian.) Web has a sore in his mouth—and of course, according to Kolisch, there’s only one explanation of that. Last night, Roger Spencer went to Kolisch and told him he had shingles; and Kolisch gave Sudhira a significant glance. She dashed into the kitchen and told me in a stage whisper, “Roger’s got it now!” We both went into hysterics.

  The obvious conclusion is that Kolisch has syphilis himself.

  October 1. Well, here I am, in the absurd 1905 Hindu fretwork building of the San Francisco Vedanta Center on Webster Street, with its balconies and galleries and greenhouses and sharp-pointed metal domes. Tinted photographs of the Holy Family cover the walls. Downstairs, in the lecture room, is a gigantic oil painting of Ramakrishna, which looks like King Kong emerging gibbering from the jungle.

  If Swami Ashokananda were a Catholic, I think he’d be a Jesuit. He’s quite a complex character—very intelligent, very ambitious probably, and underneath his politeness, quite scornful of western ways. His disciples, Adolph Gschwend and Al Clifton, are both nice, but somehow crushed. Adolph used to be an athlete; he sometimes swam the Golden Gate. Al has been to India, with Ashokananda. He is the only real monk in the whole of American Vedanta; that is to say, he’s actually taken the first vow, of brahmacharya. There is also a tall boy named Fran, with crooked teeth, who works in the shipyards. And another man who carpenters, and believes the Catholics are to blame for everything. And an elderly Englishman named Mr. Brown, who started to be a monk under Swami Trigunatita, quit to get married, and is now back here again in his old age. The whole atmosphere of the house is frugal and depressing: a typical all-male ménage. I’ve just written to Sudhira, saying, “I never realized before how absolutely necessary women are.”

  Just to give an idea of my state of mind, I actually looked in the telephone book to see if I could find an address Paul Sorel once gave me, which he said would be “amusing.” Thank God, it wasn’t there.

  Oh, Master, are you really here—in this weird museum of Victorian India? Come out from wherever you’re hiding. I need someone to talk to.

  October 2. Swami Ashokananda is a handsome grey-haired tomcat: quite the tyrant, underneath his tomcat charm. He was really rude and unkind to Mr. Brown, at a class he held this morning before breakfast on Shankara’s philosophy. He drove me to see the temple at Berkeley: Gschwend chauffeured us, and wasn’t spoken a word to, all the way. And the women call him “Swamiji” and practically salaam when they see him. The temple has a nice garden and isn’t too bad, except for the fittings, and the altar which looks like a dressing table in a cheap hotel. The day was glorious. What a nostalgic city this is! It is preeminently the city of departure. The ships steal out into the fog and the shadowy Pacific, where the war is, across the cold water-hemisphere. And in the bars, the young soldiers sit waiting for their orders to leave and go into battle. You long to take wing from the tall terraces and fly, fly away to the uttermost islands. From the roof of the center, you can see the great spider-slung bridges, and Alcatraz, that other kind of monastery.

  After lunch, I went out by myself into the town, vaguely intent upon adventure. But there was actually nothing I wanted to do, except get away in a corner by myself and burst into tears. I just wandered around, and thought of my visit here with Vernon—which was even more depressing—and felt as sad as hell. I’m thrown back, again and again, upon the terrible recognition that what I am now doing, however badly and unwillingly, is all I am fit for, at present. There is simply no alternative.

  Hotel sign: “Hotel Cosmos: no vacancy.”

  October 9. I’m writing this on the improvised trestle-and-plank dining-room table, at the Vedanta Center in Portland, before starting on an expedition to the retreat, where the Swamis are going to lay the foundation stone of a future temple. Four of them are here—Ashokananda, Vividishananda, Devatmananda, and Vishwananda. Vishwananda spends all his time eating, chanting, or playing the harmonium: it is wonderful to see him at breakfast, clapping his hands as though he were in an oriental inn and shouting, “Bring eggs!” Ashokananda jokingly but rather maliciously finds fault with everything. Vividishananda smiles and smiles. Devatmananda is Hinduism’s boy scout. He’s younger than the others—almost boyish—and his motto, taken from Vivekananda, is “Face the brute!” He fixes everything himself—the other morning, he stood on a step-ladder tinkering with the electric light and wincing at innumerable electric shocks: he telephones, he hammers, he saws, he puts up pictures, he dashes in and out of the house on errands. And he drives his followers, mostly elderly women, to the point of exhaustion. They have only lately moved into this house, which used to be quite a grand mansion, but is now shabby and ramshackle, and there is much to be done. We are in the midst of a clammy heat wave. The street outside reminds me of Denmark: a wide old avenue of beech trees. But this town, like San Francisco, has the weird, all-pervading Pacific sadness.

  We’ve just gotten through three days of severe puja, with aversion prevailing. An avalanche of flowers, fruit, sandal paste and six-armed sacred pictures has been pouring down between me and Ramakrishna. No—it’s better not dwelt on.

  Richard Thom, who leaves for the marines today, has been my only relief. He dodged all attempts to make him work, and threw a heavy breadknife around in the garden, as a preparation for “Jap hunting.” On his last day at home, he smashed the Thoms’ water pipe by backing the car into it, and leased his weights to a friend for five dollars. I sneaked off with him, the day before yesterday, to see The Leopard Man,178 when I was supposed to be handing sandwiches at a party. Devatmananda didn’t quite dare to reprimand me.

  My journ
ey up from San Francisco, on October 3–4, was the nicest part of the trip, so far. On the train, I read Jane Eyre, for the first time: she’s one of my favorite characters in fiction. I so understand her when she says, “I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt.”179 I like to feel myself alone in a crowd and yet part of it, more than I ever did: it’s the way a writer should live. Three sailors talked about a boy they knew who was exempted because he was in the dairy business. “He buys a new Buick every year.” “Not this year, he won’t.” “The trouble is, he’s had too many things.” How nice they were! There was absolutely no malice in their voices. And I felt so happy to be with them, and accepted on face value: they hadn’t the faintest idea that they were sitting with a freak. And yet, if they’d known what I was, where I was going, they’d have accepted that, too, with perfect good nature. They’d have accepted Vishwananda himself, and called him “Reverend,” and fed him like a bear in a national park.

  In my berth next morning I was wakened by the sun rising over the broken bridge of my nose, shining into my right eye. The hollow of my eye was still dark and crowded with black, lance-headed conifers; it was a prehistoric crater. Oregon, giant land where the forests swallow the sun. By breakfast time, we were passing through beech woods. “They changed the trees,” I cracked, “someone must have complained.” But I always throw these lines away. Nobody laughed. The M.P.180 and the Shore Patrol yarning in the washroom: two pariahs, misunderstood. “I always try to give them a break,” said the M.P., rather wistfully. And the Shore Patrol agreed, “Me too.”

  A sudden gust of aversion and fear that Swami will give me a Sanskrit name. Decided to write to him, “I am your disciple, not a member of the Ramakrishna Order.” But I didn’t, and I won’t.