Becoming a Londoner

by David Plante

  When, at about 9:15, he said he was rather tired, he got up to leave.

  It surprised me that, after Nikos had opposed him on so much, he seemed to single out Nikos for special thanks, even affectionate thanks.

  As for myself, I thought, well, really, there’s no reason to see him again.

  I mentioned my anger at Auden to Stephen over the telephone the next day, and he said he knew exactly what I meant, and that it was highly unlikely that the servant, whom Stephen had known, had stolen the money, as Wystan often imagines things are stolen from him when in fact he has lost them.

  Stephen said, ‘Wystan’s only interested in himself, in no one else. He doesn’t listen when anyone speaks to him, and he isn’t interested in any case.’

  Still, Auden is a very great poet, any number of examples of his poems testament to his greatness. How moved I am every time I read ‘In Praise of Limestone’ for the intelligent lyricism of the flowing lines, as if the very lyrical intelligence of the poem is what makes it so very moving – and mysterious!

  After a recital at Festival Hall of Bach by Rosalyn Tureck – a pianist Nikos admires, though he said that she did often hit the wrong note (he is much more educated in music than I am as he had wanted to be a pianist but was discouraged by his mother who even refused him piano lessons, for she had it in mind that he should be a medical doctor) – Nikos and I were invited by Rodrigo and Anne Moynihan to their large house for a post-recital party. We knew almost no one, so, unlike us, we stood together and looked about at others. I noted a little old man, with long white hair round his bald pate, and, seeing me look at him with interest, Rodrigo brought me over to meet him, Sir Francis Rose, to whom I said, to let him know that I knew, ‘You were a friend of Gertrude Stein,’ and he, smiling a tender smile, said, ‘Yes, yes, I was,’ and he seemed to wait for me to ask him questions about Gertrude Stein.

  She was someone whom I used to, as a student, fantasize about, reading with wonder The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, writing a paper in college on Tender Buttons (not then knowing that tender buttons referred to the female anatomy and trying to make sense of a portrait of a Red Stamp as ‘lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust’), and, more, to playing, to the distraction of my roommate, Gertrude Stein reciting in a recording, ‘Portrait of Picasso: Shutters shut and open so do queens,’ as if she were opening up not just a way of writing but a way of life – the fantasy certainly an impulse to my first going to Paris and searching out 27 rue de Fleurus to stand outside and wonder at all of her world coming to visit.

  But, suddenly, I had nothing to ask Sir Francis Rose about Gertrude Stein or her world, and that world vanished here in London, and I realized it was an American fantasy world, of little interest to the English, and not at all to the French.

  As for the lack of interest among the English in William Faulkner, this puzzled me until it came to me that his novels are not within the narrative of English history, in which history the sale of slaves may have been a source of colonial income, but a history not wounded in the land by mass slavery, the deep and lasting wound in the land of my country.

  Had lunch (‘luncheon’?) with Stephen before he left for the South of France with Natasha. He told me to meet him at Chez Victor, where another guest – a Polish poet – was to join us. I arrived before Stephen, and taking off my coat asked for Stephen’s table, and the headwaiter, big, blocking my view, turned and pointed to the table behind him where Natasha was sitting with a man I presumed was the Polish poet. We looked at one another, I, I’m sure, as expressionless as she was; then I quickly went to her, said how nice to see her, and, to my surprise as she had the last time we met ignored me, she introduced me to the Polish poet. There was another woman at the table, and when Natasha stood the other woman stood, and they both went to another table and left me sitting with the Pole.

  He said that Natasha told him that she had arranged with her friend to have lunch at Chez Victor without knowing that Stephen had also arranged to have lunch there. I got up and went to Natasha and said how sorry I was we weren’t all having lunch together, and suggested that Stephen had invited me because I had wanted to see Richard Wollheim, whom Stephen had invited. She smiled, and, trembling, I left her.

  Stephen appeared with Richard outside, saw me through the window, which he knocked on to say hello before he came in. Natasha was in a little alcove and couldn’t see him. When Stephen did come in, taking off his coat as he advanced to the table, I said, ‘Natasha’s here.’ ‘Where?’ I pointed. He went to speak with her, then came back, red. All during lunch with Richard and the Polish poet, we kept looking at one another, he smiling and blushing. We finished lunch before Natasha and her friend, and, leaving, I said goodbye to her. Outside, the Polish poet left us, and Richard said something that let Stephen and me know he understood the situation.

  At home, I told Nikos, and he said, ‘Well, does it surprise you that Richard, that everyone, knows about Stephen and us? Thank God I wasn’t there.’

  Stephen, ringing that evening, said that Natasha hadn’t mentioned a thing about it when she got home.

  Natasha has become a big presence in Nikos’ and my life, though we don’t in fact see her. We dream about her, sometimes have nightmares about her. We both think she has been treated unfairly by Stephen. I think, of course: if we were really on her side we’d stop seeing Stephen, but that is impossible.

  I have heard the curator of exhibitions and writer on art David Sylvester say that there is not a drop of English blood in him, he a Jew who dresses like a large rabbi in black with a large-brimmed black fedora, which made me wonder what it is to be English. I asked him what he considers himself, and he answered: British. The differences among the Welsh, the Scots, the Northern Irish, even, I feel, Yorkshire people as distinct from the English becomes more and more marked, and not only in my awareness but in what is called devolution. Devolution from what? From England? But what is England? I may become British one day, but I’ll never be English, though I wonder who does know what it is to be English? I would say, once again, the name connotes a vagueness as vague as the boundaries of London, with, perhaps, Hyde Park Corner as the centre of the outlying vagueness. Perhaps, in my own vagueness, I can now call myself a Londoner.

  From James Joll’s The Origins of the First World War:

  Men are not motivated by a clear view of their own interests; their minds are filled with the cloudy residues of discarded beliefs; their motives are not always clear even to themselves.

  I remember the end of World War II, Victory Over Japan. I was five years old. However unaware I was of the world, I, by being historically a part of the world, grew up in a world more outside me than inside me, a world that, after World War II, belies personal history for world history. As ridiculous as this may seem, given how personal my history appears, I think that really I am much more in world history than I am in my own.

  It seems to me that my life occurs, in ways far beyond my interests, my motives, outside in the world, however the world outside is filled with residues of discarded beliefs, and far from any clear motives.

  And Nikos is much more in world history than I am.

  And think of Stephen – Stephen during the Spanish Civil War, Stephen as a Communist, Stephen during World War II, Stephen in Germany after the war, when, in Berlin, he picked up fragments from the top of Hitler’s desk, for which he paid a few cigarettes to an old woman selling the fragments. Back in London, he propped the fragments on a mantelpiece until one day, studying them, he was shocked by their presence, and threw them into the rubbish.

  We went to a party at Mark’s, who had just moved into a big bright white flat near Belsize Park. We knew Stephen and Natasha were going to be there. Stephen met us at the door, smiling mischievously. Nikos asked, ‘Is Natasha really here?’ ‘Yes,’ Stephen said, ‘she’s in the sitting room.’ Neither Nikos nor I went in for a while, then finally did. Natasha was speaking with Ted Lucie-Smith. I went up to N
atasha, said hello, said hello to Ted, and went for a drink. Nikos went straight for a drink.

  I was at one end of the room talking with John Russell and Nikos was at the other talking to Stephen Buckley and his new lady friend. Natasha was in the middle, on a sofa, from which she suddenly got up and went straight to Nikos and started to talk to him. Stephen B. withdrew.

  Nikos told me later that they talked for about an hour, all about Nikos’ upcoming operation to have a rectal polyp removed – an operation that, given the presumed nature of our sexual relationship, makes me wonder if people are somewhat amused by it, though it is hardly up to me to tell them sex is for us rather in the intercrural ancient Greek way. Natasha, Nikos said, was very concerned, advised him to have a blindfold so he would be able to sleep with the lights on, to take lots of cologne, and said that if there was anything she could do for him to let her know. Nikos said he was sweating, and the talk was very stilted, but she wouldn’t stop.

  Everyone was aware that they were talking. Mark came over to me and said, ‘I listened in. They’re talking about hospitals. It sounds rather awkward.’

  Finally, Stephen went over and broke them up to go home. As he and Natasha were leaving, he turned to Nikos and said, ‘We’ll see you tomorrow at Richard Wollheim’s.’ Nikos told me that Natasha’s face fell, surprised by yet another of Stephen’s ‘conspiracies’ behind her back.

  Richard and Day, having invited Nikos and me and Stephen and Natasha to dinner, wondered if they might have done the wrong thing, and Richard rang Nikos to ask him if he or I would be offended that they’d also invited Natasha. ‘It’s Natasha who might be offended,’ Nikos said. So Richard rang up Stephen, who insisted that we should all go but that he wouldn’t tell Natasha, who’d simply find Nikos and me there. But for some reason he decided to let Natasha know at Mark’s party.

  The next evening at Richard and Day Wollheim’s, in their large studio in Pembroke Gardens, there were Stephen and Natasha. I went to Natasha immediately and began to speak to her, but she seemed to me stiff and not willing to talk. Stephen came over to us and said she had been in bed all day. Richard came over to introduce someone to Stephen and Natasha, and I left to get a glass of wine. I thought, Well, Natasha is offended.

  When I turned back into the studio room, I saw her talking with Nikos, both of them with hands gesturing with great animation, their voices bright and engaged in whatever they were talking about. (Nikos said later it was all about Encounter magazine, whose chief editor, Melvin Lasky, held back from Stephen and Frank Kermode the fact that the magazine was financed by the C.I.A.-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom, a fact that, when revealed, made Stephen and Frank resign, Natasha enraged by the duplicity that Lasky forced on the unknowing Stephen and Frank.) She talked on and on.

  Stephen went up to them finally and said to Nikos that he wanted to introduce him to someone else. Natasha said, ‘But we’re talking!’ Stephen went away, then, blinking rapidly, came back a short while later and again tried to get Nikos away. Natasha got angry. Stephen left, only to go back soon after, blinking more rapidly, and almost pulled Nikos away from Natasha. I saw Nikos give Natasha a look of helplessness and shrug his shoulders. But later in the evening they were together again, Natasha now advising Nikos once again about his time in the hospital.

  As she and Stephen were leaving, she came to me and said, ‘You will let us know how Nikos is in hospital.’

  I can’t help but wonder what she wondered about in Nikos having rectal polyps.

  Stephen seemed anxious to leave. They did leave, but a moment later he came back, his huge overcoat flapping, his face red, his white hair flying about, as though he had been running, only to blow very demonstrative kisses to Nikos and me, who stood and smiled back with silly smiles.

  The revelation is quite simply that Stephen seems more responsible for the separation between Natasha and us than Natasha herself.

  Nikos went into hospital on Monday, was operated on on Tuesday, and came home on Thursday. I went to see him twice a day, was only happy when I was on my way to see him or at the hospital bed beside him, and I hated to leave him. I minded his being there, I think, more than he did. All my hatred of hospitals came out: I resented the nurses touching him, the doctors examining him, the operation itself.

  He became friendly with a Russian sailor in the ward who had had an accident on a Russian trawler off the coast of England, and had had a leg amputated, but who was very lively. He loved the care he was given in England.

  While he was in hospital his cousin Maria had a total breakdown, and was in a locked ward at Friern Barnet. She finally believed she was possessed by the devil, and had to be taken away by the police in a straitjacket. When I wasn’t visiting Nikos, I was visiting her.

  Trained in philosophy, Nikos will explain to me, say, Kant’s categorical imperative, and for a second I understand, but then the second of understanding goes, and I am left, not with understanding, but a ‘sense’ of the concept, which ‘sense’ I am not able to articulate, but which appears to be a little, radiating globe in my mind.

  I think I don’t have ideas, am incapable of ideas, but can only have a ‘sense’ of meaning, the ‘sense,’ however, filled with more meaning than I could ever state. I have a ‘sense’ of meaning without knowing what the meaning is.

  What is odd is that this ‘sense’ of meaning seems to come not from within me, but from out in the round world, for that is where the greatest meanings are.

  Richard Wollheim had us invited to a drinks party given by a friend of his, a large queenie man dressed in a loose white caftan, his flat as if transported from Morocco, or what a European imagines a Moroccan interior to be –

  (I realize that Nikos doesn’t try to transport Greece into our flat with Greek artifacts, but, as if to identify the flat as Greek more than American or English by referring to what to me is the richer world of Greece, which I, living with Nikos, make a show of belonging to, I will buy in a Greek shop a spice, machlepi, which, however, is never used, or a little coffee-making pot – briki – or backgammon – tavoli (Nikos prefers Scrabble, he always winning) – these little attempts to bring Greece into our flat amusing to Nikos)

  – the lighting in the Moroccan-like flat was somber so the people appeared to move about slowly as if the air was thick, and, in the midst, a tall, wide armoire on top of which was a human skull. We were welcomed with a grand indifference by the man, as if we were there to prove ourselves before he would pay particular attention to us, and soon after Nikos suggested we leave; together, we thanked the man, who said, ‘Go, go, go,’ and we were being dismissed before we had the chance to say we were leaving, so we left feeling belittled, but relieved. The man, we understood, has a shop for antiques in Chelsea.

  Stephen Buckley came to have lunch with the artist Jennifer Bartlett. She once had a show in Tony Stokes’ gallery, Garage.

  I think I amused her by reading out from Gertrude Stein’s Lucy Church Amiably:

  After all there are very many knives that have wooden handles.

  It has been said that clouds can meet but it has not been said whether the clouds were of the same size and thickness . . .

  It is always a mistake for the sun to come through the window from within to the outside.

  She has an easy manner, an easy sensual manner, as if her body were one with her easy thinking and feeling, and yet, oh, there is beneath the easiness an absolute devotion to her art. She will never self-deprecate, but will say about her own work, ‘It’s great, isn’t it,’ not as a question but as an indisputable affirmation that it is great. She has a light, ironical laugh that seems to belie her seriousness, but her seriousness is absolute.

  She is a friend of the artists Jan Hashey and Michael Craig-Martin from when they were all students at the Yale Art School.

  After seeing the documentary by Alain Resnais, Night and Fog, about the death camps, Nikos and I were silent, and went home to a meal in silence, and after our meal Nikos said, simply,
‘Let’s go to bed.’

  In bed, I sensed his thinking about what has no words, thinking about what is happening in the world for which there are no words. I wonder what any self-awareness in personal introspection, in therapy or analysis, can do personally to accommodate the suffering of the world; and, given such depersonalizing awareness, what any analyses of nations, of governments, of politics, of history itself, can do to make somewhat comprehensible the sufferings of the world, and, with some comprehension, accommodate the sufferings of the world.

  Again, some days later, home from the publishing house, Nikos said, ‘It isn’t that I commission books, especially of poetry, in defiance of the horrors, because the horrors are too great to defy, but because I believe poetry is a moral and spiritual recourse for the defeated, as, I suppose, we all are.’

  A friend came from New York to visit.

  Hearing me speak – my pronunciation of certain words now deliberately British, as aluminum, vitamin, tomato – he said, severely, ‘You’re American, speak like an American.’

  For a moment, I saw myself from his point of view as an American pretending to be British, and, more, from his point of view saw my entire life in London as pretentious, an accusation that for the moment shook me. I felt pulled back to New York, where I had felt imposed on me the condemning self-consciousness that in New York made me think that everything I did was phony. Then I thought, this is where I live, here in London.