Herself

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by Hortense Calisher


  But now I am a professor, no matter what Texas Wesleyan thought—and on their preferred list. So I write asking to join whatever program they may have in Iran. Just then Iraq bursts into flame, curtailing their Middle-East projects, but after some bargaining it is suggested that if I will do a three-month tour of Southeast Asia for them, they will drop me in Iran as I have asked to be—I hadn’t said why.

  I have brought love and the U.S. government together, but the joke is private. So far. We plan to live together in Tabriz, perhaps even to the end of my children’s school year. Because of the place being both Islam and a tiny foreign community, we weigh whether it will be easier for us to live as married. Decenter too, for them. Though we dislike the pretense. As for actual marriage, we haven’t spoken of it. His marital status is still in question; his wife and the other man had once flown to Mexico for “papers,” but she had reneged and come home without—later sending on mail-order ones.

  Perhaps we ourselves are trying out marriage, in our own way. “Marry him!” my friend Alma—on whom I have relied for the conventional approach—says when I bring up the differences in our ages, I the elder. “He’s older now than your first—(five years my elder)—will ever be.” Her acerb look adds, “And in some ways, my dear, older than you.” Right. My friend Mickey says lightly “Oh do marry him—it’s so much easier in hotels.”

  And on the Southeast Asia diplomatic circuit as well. For very soon, some weirdo—one of the gods perhaps, fresh from a summer conference course in fiction—takes over our script. We have never been certain whether or not his wife—now hopefully “former”—knows of our connection, though we hope that perhaps the academic grapevine has done its work. Shortly we do hear that she and her new husband and baby have been posted to Bangkok. Where, in discharge of their duties and mine—we will most surely meet. (In the Journal they are J. and R.) Proprietary letters from her to my friend still keep coming, indicating she feels that the option to return to him is still hers. When my friend, leaving the U.S. ahead of me, gets to Tabriz, her greeting awaits him. “Welcome to this side of the world!”

  We too are struck by how small it is. Since I, in my modest way, am to be a public personage over there, we decide, consulting by letter, to spare ourselves and the U.S. any domestic drama. The prospective lie bugs me—like somebody else’s mucilage I have got stuck in. Not my style. Nor his. But we shall try to be as seemlily married as the occasion appears to demand.

  Meanwhile, we have decided that during the separated part of our travels we will keep journals, and exchange. The following, somewhat abridged, is mine.

  PART III:

  SEIZURES OF LOVE AND WORK

  SEPTEMBER 11th or 12th, nearing the Aleutians—(Somewhere we cross the International dateline.)

  Washington was bland and brilliant when I arrived at about one in the afternoon. Although the airfield is in Virginia (where, as some said, it always feels warmer than D.C.), the atmosphere already had for me, as it always does, the reflected memory of central Washington, the white, null buildings of a nation’s public grandeur. I did not see these this time. Instead, after tucking myself away in the Presidential, a small hotel, old-fashioned but pleasant even to price ($5 per diem as against the Statler’s expense account $13) I walked around the corner to the offices of the International Educational Exchange Service. Housed in a separate building away from central bureaucratic Washington, it is, as one of the staff informed me, somewhat a stepchild of the State Dept. It felt strange, after so many months of corresponding with titled names under the august blue S.D. imprint, to meet Mrs. G., inhabitant of a small office, and suffering humanly from a bad cold. Colwell was out ill also; mortality runneth high perhaps, among these step-children. Man next to her handles Latin-American cultural requests; said Vance had written to him giving my name. (They heed people who speak Spanish.) Gave V. a strong recommendation—imagine he will be asked to go next summer.

  The main impression of my visit—that I was told nothing. It was assumed that I knew why I was going and what to do—I cd not decide whether or not this was intelligent on their part, or the resignation of routine. Appointments had been set up however—first with Miss Wilkins, the financial head, who explained, in hallowed tones, about ‘per diem’—pronounced ‘per dye-em.’ In any case, it hangs heavy over every S.D. person—all women of this type—the figure-handlers, bursars, comptrollers, have an air of the religious about them; they affect me like certain librarians of my childhood—with the best will in the world, listening to them, as I do, with the prim air of the very good child, I know I shall be in Dutch with them ere long.

  Then the briefing. Two hours approx. for 4 countries. A Mr. Gregory, eager to get back to his car pool, escorted me thru various divisions of the Bur. of Far Eastern affairs. On Thailand—Mr. Buschner; Manila—Mr. Brand; Japan—Mr. Derr. It was my strong impression that they did not know why I was there—I was ill-equipped to tell them, and cd scarcely ask them whether they had heard of the IEES. Mr. B. was outraged at the limited time given. Intelligent man, but he cd but tell me bits and stuff—such as—it is an insult to cross legs and point the toe or sole of foot at the Thais. Suggested I hear some of their music. Gathered he loved the T’s; his face brightened when I spoke highly of those I had met at Pat’s in London. Suggested I contact the man sent by New Asia Foundation to teach journalism at Thomasat U. Gave me a pamphlet—of which I already had 2 copies, and, I suppose, his blessing.

  Mr. Brand (Mr. Gregory told me sotto voce) might be a bit of a wind-bag. Certainly B. loved to talk, but he did it well, and was by far the most informative. I gathered that he had earned the reputation the enthusiast often does among staff with more routine incentive—or else Mr. G.’s ride home was in extreme peril. B. showed me a copy of the Phil. Free Press—comes out bimonthly, article on the short story by N. V. M. Gonzalez, their most eminent novelist, a member of Santos’s group. I gather that these are the more conservative nationalists—the younger and more arbitrary, leftist or whatever group—this was not clear—cluster around the Manila Chronicle. Their idol, however confusingly, is Claro Recto, Japanese puppet gov’t member during their regime. Other names—Nettie and Fred Ramos—leaders in the group of young writers at the Univ. of P. Also a litry lady—Mrs. Nakpil, very energetic, has ulcers. Random comments—the Islands have a long super-cigarette the size of a cigar, that I must try.

  Morning—Saturday, Sept. 13, Imperial Hotel Tokyo.

  I see that I have just escaped Friday the 13—perhaps that was the day that went over the line. What a satisfactory thing a journal is—or perhaps it is just the sensation of resolve fulfilling—I always wanted to keep one and never have. Then too, it is a companion when one is touring alone. And one forgets so quickly. I meant to put down, back there over the Aleutians yesterday (how I love such an off-hand phrase, flinging my still newfound cosmopolitanism over my shoulder like a scarf) that back there in Washington, Mr. Derr, the man to brief me on Japan, and I throw up our hands over the impossibility of same. Again I had the impression that he had no idea of why I was going, or whom sent by. I imagine (from the way I have heard Foreign Office gents refer to the Br. Council) that information services are usually viewed dimly by the official services. But, feeling that this was no reason for me to be embarrassed, I told Mr. D. that I supposed the IEES simply picked someone who cd be trusted to fare forth on his own, etc. Mr. D. quickly and relievedly seized on this, returned my own remark twisted neatly around a compliment, rather like a napkin folded over a hot roll that he had buttered for me, and said “Yes,” he imagined that most of the briefing had been done in Personnel, when they had chosen me.

  Dick Kearney, in the Legal Dept. of the Bureau of European Affairs, friend whom, with his wife Peg I had met in England in ’52, picked me up and drove me down to their place in Bethesda for dinner. Nice evening with him and Peg, who appeared the next morning to see me off. NWA is the best airline I have flown—I remind myself that it is the first time I had flown first class
. En route to Detroit, over the champagne, seat-companion Joe Maher (pronounced Marr) of the legal dept attached to the Senate. Very pleasant, interested in my “mission,” discussed, among other things Norman Mailer—he is an admirer of The Naked and the Dead. “Approved” my ideas on various subjects which he extracted neatly—(few people have trouble on this with me, I say, rather pointedly to myself) with the constant statement “Ve-ery good. Very good”—that somehow seemed to be already infinitely American. In a nice way.

  As soon as I start a journey to another country I already find myself looking at my compatriots from a certain severe, measuring distance. Champagne floated me to Seattle, steadied by a ceaseless flow of food. Plane out of Seattle was to have had only a 2½ hr. stopover, however was delayed 4 hrs., so I slept in the terminal lounge intermittently, writing letters in my head to the designers of air-terminals (Seattle’s is a new and handsome one) asking why they persist in installing doors that must be PULLed instead of pushed by passengers and porters with hands already encumbered (why not the photo-electric doors that every supermarket has?), and why they do not have a room with couches and SHOWERS.

  On plane to Tokyo sat with a Miss Vivian Denkhahn, whom I had seen in terminal and already tabbed as an old hand, probably a social worker. (Blue serge suit, sandals, frizzed gray hair, neat and durable all round.) Not far off, I—she turned out to be a regional director for Southeast Asia, of the World Health Organization of the U.N. (headquarters in Geneva) recently working out of New Delhi. Bits of info mostly on shipping—although I tried to get her to talk of her own work—by asking about yaws in S. A., where she may go, etc. In Bangkok said she, I must buy jewelry at Johnny Siam’s, silks at Jim Thompson’s, an American who came originally to install Amer. methods in their silk industry and stayed to open a store. We floated over the ocean, and sozzled by the omnipresent champagne—I began to feel, and at this writing still do, that if slit neatly down the middle I should appear like one of those Russian doll-puzzle-toys I had as a child—a wooden oval doll inside which is another slightly smaller, inside which is—and so on down to the infinitesimal. Or like one of those cordon-bleu recipes out of Gourmet, which starts with a large bird, say a duck, inside which is a Cornish hen stuffed with rice at whose heart there is an artichoke which contains a crabapple which contains an olive stuffed with, I was going to say a toucan, my still air-addled head having intended pecan. But perhaps “toucan” is what I meant after all—it feels rather like.

  Shemya airport, our only stop, formerly an airbase, is one of the last in the chain of the Aleutians, a 2 mile island that served us tea and more snaks (Aleutian spelling—Alaskan influence?) in the middle-middle of the gray Pacific. It is so small that we seemed to hover dangerously over the waves, scarcely more than a few hundred feet it seemed before we glimpsed its mud and gravel. An hour and a half there, during which most of us wrote letters or cards on forms accommodatingly supplied by the airline, which will mail them on free. I sent cards, knowing that I wd never do so from now on, and because not to send mail from an island so situated, when one can, is to slap the face of wonder.

  At Tokyo airport, the official tour began. Met by Nancy Downing, very pleasant assistant to the cultural officer—one of those poised, cool American girls with a prettily indented profile, charmingly assured clothes and a perfect, lissom, if slightly unripe figure—all of it with a businesslike femininity about it that seems only slightly related to a sexual quality, and is almost too trim and virginal for it. I had forgotten how this comes out in our women so much more clearly when they are abroad. (Miss D. is by Decatur, Illinois, out of Wellesley, six years in Japan, her first job with the service.) I suppose it is this quality—the boss-virgin in them, which draws them plenty of beaux—(one thinks of these as beaus, not lovers, although this may often not be the case) but about which European men ultimately complain. I imagine too, that if one took a census of American women working abroad, a larger number of them wd prove to be middlewesterners, in the same way that the majority of our good correspondents come from there. More intrepidity, plus more desire for coastlines and seas. Anyway, the combination of good—quite good, or “solid” midwestern family and an eastern education is unbeatable in this sort of job.

  Miss D., with the help of the NWA rep—a Mr. Watsunabe or Matsumoto—some Jap. equiv. of Smith-Brown, got me thru customs with a smooth and very acceptable V.I.P. treatment—the customs officer questioning only the traveling-iron, still packed in its anonymous wrapping from Abercrombie’s. I wondered how I should explain the packet which Donald Keene had given me to carry to Mishima, Keene’s wedding present to him. Since M. had asked for “a Western antique,” and D. had left it for me at the Beekman already packed, while I was out, I cd not have told them what it was if asked, but was not.

  Japan, which I had hoped to be already cool, and Donald said might, greeted me with a gray-green humidity, something thick and sweet about it. Used as I am to New York, this was different—and my knitted sheath was no help. As we drove on, the rains came; it is the typhoon season, but I am told should already be cooler than it is. This is my usual luck, especially about heat—I had the familiar sensation of trying not to sweat in my unsuitable clothes. Miss D. gave me my itinerary. Only my plane’s being late saved me from appointments that same afternoon with embassy officers (these therefore delayed until Monday); they waste no time.

  I therefore had Sat. and Sunday free—Miss D. asked if I wd like to go to Hakone, the national park area around Fuji, or Nikko. Although I might—I thought it wd be too melancholy and wearing to do alone and at first and said so. (What a bad tourist I am—one year’s residence in England and a second visit, and I still have never seen the Tower. It wd be entirely in line if I got out of Japan without seeing Fujiyama, which of course was shrouded when we came in on the plane—the steward said he had seen it so only once in 8 yrs.) Miss. D. accepted this, questioned me very little in general—to her I was an entity in the business way, quite like the sports personality sent by my program last month—who “spent all his per diem on shopping and was difficult over being denied PX privileges.” I humbly indicated that I wd not be. Since I had no Jap. money and she had to be at an embassy reception at 5:30, she recommended that I wait to cash a check in the Imperial. They put “all their visitors” there, she informed me—again I had the sense that I belonged to a category which they were prepared to find unmanageable in some inconvenient way—Faulkner had undoubtedly got drunk, the sportsman had his Achilles heel—what wd be mine? I chatted with a heady air of competence and worldliness—when Miss D. got back to her own she wd be able to say “This one seems O.K.”

  We drove first up to the Old Building—of the Imperial—regrettably I am quartered in the New Annex, not the old one, (Frank L. Wright design). Rivers of water came out to meet us—at least on this score I have been provident. Boots of light rubber and heavy in my bag, umbrella, raincoat. The Imperial is undoubtedly one of the great hotels of the world. Arranged for foreigners—almost all personnel speak some English—and now of course definitely oriented (in two senses of the word) toward Americans, as it might once have been toward Germans and then English. (Kippers still on the breakfast menu—I had them the next morning.) At the last minute Miss D. invited me to the reception—probably to her horror, and mine, I accepted. It was partly the inability to stop that comes from exhaustion, and partly habit begun on my first trip abroad in London—never, however weary, spend the first night in a foreign country alone in a hotel. Claustrophobia, even xenophobia, might set in. She lent me 200 yen, enough to get me to the Sanno hotel from mine, cautioned me, in answer to my question about dress, to wear nothing too barely cocktailish, no thin straps—the Japanese don’t and Mrs. MacArthur had so decreed.

  The room was quite lovely in the J. manner to which our own recent craze for their interiors—the motel in Suffern, the house exhibited at the Museum, of Mod. Art, and countless lampshades in the houses of my friends and myself—had already accustomed me all
too thoroughly. Once on the bed, released from the air-motion but with it still inside me, I placed my forehead on the sheet and all but conked out—“smiling, the boy fell dead.” Exactly so—a poem was never more convenient. Southey? Not what one wd have thought one wd think in Japan. But of course I was not really here as yet—or there. My atoms, streaming behind me, had still to be collected—from Washington, Seattle, from the house in Nyack, Josh’s place in New York, Mary’s with Curt, the Earle with Curt. Lulled by the motion of the DC7, hedge-hopping up and down through the last clouds of the voyage, and probably seduced by the penultimate glass of champagne, I dreamed of him, of making love. In my dream we did so, then still atom-confused, we met at the airstrip in Tabriz, I fell on his breast and said “I have come a long way to be with you,” and scanned his face for traces of Italy where, even in my dream, I knew he was at the moment.

  I woke up on the bed, trifled with thoughts of calling Miss D., now dressing at her home whose number I had, and begging off. No. She had suggested a stole if what I had was too bare. Not sure it was—the black Lanz silk jumper without blouse—the white wool stole, though smart, was too impossible for the weather, the long black lace scarf, my grandmother’s, properly aristocratic but bad against black. I was too tired to be chic; went off draped in the lace, feeling rather—and looking, what with my black hair and gold earrings, as if I were about to tell fortunes. But I was glad I went—even though I began to feel ill from the standing. I had never before had the symptoms of real lack of sleep (very little in four days)—and I have the writer’s greediness to know all such sensations—rather like Colette’s insistence that she not be drugged even when dying of arthritis—although my version of it is pale beyond comparison—I shall never be that brave, when the time comes.

 

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