Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  As before, I was too dazed to be frightened, but I was about to get really scared as the quake continued, and the later small jolts made me progressively more and more jumpy. Don says he thought, “This is it,” and that he now no longer feels he wants to be in an earthquake, he has been in one. It was 6.5 on the scale, not bad at all, and certainly without question the biggest I have ever felt; but tonight commentators are becoming rather superior about it and saying it wasn’t among the real great quakes.

  February 10. Last night there was an eclipse of the moon. Some people believe that eclipses trigger earthquakes. An earthquake expert who was interviewed on T.V. wouldn’t absolutely deny this but wouldn’t confirm it. The experts we heard yesterday evening (whoops, there was an aftershock, quite a strong one, as I wrote that!) were all a bit reproachful and demurely bitchy, as much as to say, Oh yes, you are very interested in seismology all of a sudden, but you never let us have enough money for research, you built towns all along the faults, and by next weekend you’ll be all steamed up about something else, children that you are.

  Meanwhile, life has to go on, as they say, and we are already trying to figure out how to reconcile some of the things Hunt Stromberg wants us to do with “Frankenstein” (we saw him the day before yesterday) with our own story line. At the moment, I feel discouraged and think to myself, why, at the age of nearly sixty-seven, do I have to be involved in projects like this? The answer is, I don’t. Actually it pleases my vanity that I am still employable and that my wits are still quick enough to play these nursery games. And, although we have about $74,000 in the savings accounts, plus the Hilldale property half paid for,75 I always feel we ought to have more, or at least not start living on capital.

  A Richter Scale joke: If Fellini made a film about the San Francisco earthquake he would call it 8½.

  February 11. Had tea with Larry Holt, whom the quake had made so jittery that he kept feeling new jolts every other minute. He was most indignant because his friend Tom had told him that Swami, at the end of his last Sunday lecture, had said, “I’d better stop,” and someone in the congregation had said, “Please go on!” Larry thought this cruelly inconsiderate, since Swami’s health is so poor. But the truth is, Swami would never have said “I’d better stop” unless he wanted to be asked to go on—it seems obvious to me that he was enjoying himself and very characteristically flirting with his audience. And Larry’s indignation is all part of his deep resentment at being excluded from the Vedanta circle.

  Went on to Vedanta Place for supper and the reading. Swami told us that during the quake he got out of bed, put his robe on and went to stand in the doorway to his bathroom. As he did so, he thought of a text in Sanskrit: “If Krishna saves, who can kill; if Krishna kills, who can save?”76 One member of the congregation had his house jolted right off its foundations. Larry had a friend who lost his liquor store; everything was smashed. Thousands of people are still evacuated from their homes, lest the dam on the other side of the San Fernando Valley should break, before it’s been emptied. On Hollywood Boulevard quite a lot of shop windows were smashed. But, alas, almost no damage is reported from any of the high-rise buildings; so the work at the end of this street is presumably going ahead.

  Toward the end of the day I noticed that the earthquake atmosphere was getting me down. Guts very gassy and an overall feeling of angst. One doesn’t mind a bit of worry about one’s possessions at first, but then the act of worrying becomes in itself humiliating; it is so unworthy of the Atman to fuss over all this fucking real estate.

  February 12. A quite sharp earthquake jolt this morning, while I was trying to meditate, “Trying” is nearly always the operative word. This meditation period isn’t satisfactory, because I usually want to shit soon after getting up, and because there is a lot of traffic on the hill below our house at that hour, and because there is an underlying psychological pressure to get the show on the road, have breakfast, start working and worrying. It is very good to say, “Whatever I do, whatever I give, may I do and give it as an offering to You,” but how often do I remember to try for this attitude? Almost never.

  Am taking Maalox to reduce the gas, which it does; but I still have this little sensitive knotty lump on my left side, it seems to be in the muscle rather than in the gut, but how can I tell? I keep looking in my old diaries to find if I have had this symptom before. It seems to me that I have, but I haven’t yet turned up any reference to it.

  Supper with Gavin and Mark Andrews. Mark talked throughout the meal, about himself and his reactions to his drama coach. (He has only lately started taking these lessons.) He was lively but boring and we might almost as well not have seen Gavin, we hardly got to talk to him. It was like a meal with Frankenstein and the Creature: out of politeness to Frankenstein, you had to let the Creature ramble on and on, lest you should seem to suggest that Frankenstein had made a mess of him. Gavin still has no definite offer for his screenplay, but now he has an offer, or offers, for a film of The Goodbye People. This would also probably include a part for Mark and possibly a chance for Gavin to direct. Gavin is such an intensely private person anyway that you don’t really communicate with him unless you see him alone, and I haven’t done that in months.

  Am still reading Chekhov. And Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Am just about to start a book of short stories by Dostoevsky. Don is fascinated by The Brothers Karamazov.

  John Lehmann called from Texas yesterday morning to know how we had come through the earthquake. Of course his experiences during the bombing of London were brought in. But still, John has changed. He no longer looks down his nose at us who live in America. He has fallen in love with it, or rather, with American campus life. So our relations are very cordial.

  I am thankful to say that Dr. Kafka thinks the growths on Don’s foot are responding to treatment.

  We are taking a fantastic amount of vitamins, prescribed by Ray Unger. Can’t say I feel any better for them, as of now.

  February 13. Yesterday afternoon at four, the people who had been ordered to leave their homes were allowed to return to them. At the gym, Bill van Petten told Don that “the very rich” are leaving Los Angeles, because they are expecting another, much worse quake.

  A sudden fit of worry about the little lump in my left side. So I went to Dr. Allen again. He said, “I can’t feel any mass there.” He suggested a barium enema but I said let’s wait a while. Don got terribly worried about this. He is being angelically sweet. Last night, after I got back from having supper with Chris Wood, he showed me some new paintings, two or three of them marvellous, all of them interesting.

  Chris Wood says Peggy wrote a note to Michael, begging to be allowed to see Gerald. (Chris is allowed to see him every week.) Peggy’s note was very tactful, according to Chris, but this I don’t believe; she is incapable of tact and she is too hostile to Michael to be able to conceal it. Michael is now thought to be very angry with her.

  As usual, Chris talked about going to England after Gerald dies, but he also said he is so lazy. And then there’s the question of Paul [Sorel]. Chris says Paul is still guilty because he lives on Chris’s money. Chris says he is so accustomed to living alone that he couldn’t possibly live with anyone else now. He says that having lost interest in sex makes a great gap in your life. “It use to take up so much of one’s time.” I have given him the first two folders of Kathleen and Frank to read.

  February 14. Our eighteenth anniversary. Go back eighteen years from the day we met, and Don was only just born and I was— where was I? Somewhere in Europe with Heinz, making myself miserable and worrying about a lot of things which never happened and a lot which did and weren’t so ghastly, after all. I wish I could find out exactly what I was doing on the day Don was born. It seems to me that the rising of that tiny but powerful star on my horizon must have begun to influence my life immediately.

  Anniversary dialogue: “Merci, Kitty.” “Mercy, Dobbin.”

  Yesterday I at last persuaded Don to
take some of his paintings to show to Billy Al Bengston. Billy seems to have been quite impressed, told Don he ought to show them. So now Don feels encouraged to start work again. Billy and Penny are leaving for Mexico tomorrow, eager to get away before the bigger quake which is promised us takes place.

  Last night we went to Royce Hall and saw Emlyn Williams in his Dickens recital. It is real old-fashioned exactly contrived acting, absolutely brilliant in its own way. Emlyn older, fatter, self-indulgently weepy, yet sort of delighted with his grief or rather with all the sympathy and attention it has brought him.77 I am not being brutal. This is actually a very good way of recovering from a loss, and why shouldn’t one recover? One owes it to one’s fellow creatures to recover, to recover at all costs. The alternative is to be like old Jo. We took them later to expensive inferior Stefanino’s, where we spent fifty dollars on a mere snack for Emlyn, his son Brook and Marti Stevens. Emlyn and Brook sort of flirted throughout the meal. Indeed, Emlyn joked that the restaurant people, seeing them kissing each other, would think Brook was his pickup and Brook said well, why not? He is kind of attractive in an ugly funny-faced way. Is here working on a film which Peter Ustinov is about to direct in Mexico.

  February 15. Don gave me various anniversary presents, such pretty light and dark blue polo shirts to wear as undershirts, and a choice of beautifully patterned Indian rugs. I had nothing to give him, but he reminds me that he gave me nothing last year and I gave him a gold toothpick! We had a happy day of work on “Frankenstein” and then Don painted and we ate at home, our special ham burgers, with parsnips and salad, and watched Fantastic Voyage on T.V.

  Horrors, at the gym this morning I weighed over 149, a long-time high. Nowadays I go for quite long jogs, always two blocks and sometimes more. Saw Dr. Kafka who has now fixed up my toe, at least temporarily; he told me to come back only if I have trouble with it. He also told me that Don’s growths on his foot are tumors but that they are never fatal and he thinks he can get rid of them altogether. As for my gut lump, I can’t say it has disappeared but I have lost interest in it for the time being.

  Two aftershocks of some size, during last night. Meanwhile bitter complaints of the sightseers who crowd into the disaster area. The announcer on the radio said, “They went to church in the morning and then they said let’s take the kids and go and look where all those folks were killed.” So the police are setting up roadblocks.

  It is so sad to see the builders at the end of Adelaide tearing down dear old Moon Manor and excavating its site,78 ready for these stinking high-rise towers.

  February 16. 1:45 and it has just started to rain, dripping down out of gloomy fog. This morning Hunt called to say he is going away for about two weeks, the day after tomorrow; so we are off the hook, as far as the “Frankenstein” treatment is concerned—except for the fact that being off the hook creates a temptation to finish off the whole thing in record time and get it out of the house.

  Last night Don went to supper with his family to celebrate Glade’s birthday. Glade sent me a sweetly intentioned ethnically outrageous Valentine card of a little Redskin girl saying, “Valentine, you nice and how! You have-um heap fine time today, because you nice in every way.” I had supper with Marti Stevens, Emlyn Williams and Brook. Emlyn was in great spirits. He told us how Princess Margaret had said to him about Elizabeth Taylor, “She’s a common little thing, isn’t she?” I must say, this struck me as a real new low for the monarchy—but then, the princess is herself a new low; Emlyn described her as a ridiculous tiny creature in pink with an enormous cigarette holder. Brook treats his father with a kind of nineteenth-century respect, jumping up from his chair as soon as he enters the room. Emlyn is a bit of a “Public Baby” and I am sure he will be coddled and cherished more than ever now that he’s a widower; women will fight each other to look after him. He is so pretty and naughty and feminine. Poor Marti was in pain from her leg; she went to the San Fernando Valley to help a friend who was an earthquake refugee and he hadn’t any water, so she asked a man to give her some; he had a big container of newly boiled water and he upset it over her, scalding her thigh badly. I greatly amused Emlyn by telling the story about the man on the plane who jacks off in front of a Playboy pinup picture, then puts the picture carefully away in his briefcase and says politely to the girl sitting next to him, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  February 17. At the gym today I weighed just under 148. Saw Evelyn Hooker, who gave me two of the files from her archives of case histories. After I’ve read them, we’re to meet and talk. I feel more doubtful than ever about doing the book with her and I tried to prepare her for this, this morning. I’m determined not to take on another job in which I’m just a ghost writer—unless, of course, it’s for the Vedanta Society!

  Rather miraculously this morning, despite the British postal strike, the missing Chekhov volume, The Schoolmistress, from the Constance Garnett edition, arrived, sent by Heywood Hill.79

  Don has hung two of his paintings, which I call the “white” ones, in my workroom. One of them is certainly among the best things he has ever done—the white woman with the pink-face man looking over her shoulder within a blue frame which seems to be partly made of spider’s webs.80

  February 18. Yesterday Don went over to the house on the opposite hill from which we hear the terrible dog barking—the house he once visited in the middle of the night, without being able to rouse anyone. This time a man was there; Don describes him as a middle-aged hippie. He wasn’t at all apologetic, but Don feels some impression was made on him.

  This morning I ran a whole class of painters with their easels off the top of our ramp and the top of the steps down to Don’s studio. I feel ashamed of my ill humor and yet, why the fuck do they think they can encamp themselves there without even coming down to the house and asking permission?

  We are pushing ahead with “Frankenstein,” rather grimly. Probably we’ll enjoy it more later.

  John Lehmann called yesterday. He wants to stay here, early next month, when he gives a lecture. Don is furious.

  February 19. At the gym I weighed only a fraction over 147. (These gym weights are always with my gym clothes on but without shoes; the terribly high weights of this time last year in London were naked on the bathroom scale.) I believe my piles bled, because I found some blood on the bench where I was sitting after being in the hot room and under the shower; a bit worried about this.

  A gruesome party last night given by Rachel Roberts and her lover Darren Ramirez. Darren is a very sweet-natured boy, slender and well built and pretty in a Mexican El Greco way. He designs clothes and often wears something striking; last night it was a marvellous shirt with a pattern like the markings on a tropical butterfly. The shirt was open nearly to the waist, showing his long slim body with curly black hair on it, which was quite sexy but embarrassingly faggy. I’m sure everybody in Rachel’s circle dismisses him as a queer who is simply after her money—but life isn’t that simple. Marti Stevens is sure that he is devoted to her, and has helped her stop drinking. Darrin and his mother fixed a first-rate Mexican meal. I wish they had fixed the guest list too. Some time ago, Rachel tried to invite me to meet the British Consul, Andrew Franklin, and I refused. Well, he was there and he is a stunning bore of the old school—he reminded me a bit of Sylvain [Mangeot] and even of Basil Fry. We talked about Berlin and China and the Manson case,81 and he knew a great deal—about the first two subjects at any rate—and made his knowledge absolutely intolerable. Tony Shaffer, the one who wrote Sleuth,82 was there too and was also a bore, though much more sympathetic.

  Have just talked to Rachel on the phone. This morning, her divorce proceedings went through, at the court in Santa Monica. Told her how much I like Darrin, which pleased her.

  (Marti surprised me yesterday by telling me she had a short affair with Brook Williams; that was how she got to know Emlyn and Molly. She was at the party too, looking ghastly. I feel sure the scald she got at the time of the earthquake is festering and starting to
poison her.)

  When telling me about the court proceedings, Rachel kept saying how ridiculous and obsolete and meaningless marriage and divorce are, nowadays; and yet, a moment later, she remarked that one item in the divorce settlement hadn’t been clear to her and she had asked the judge to explain it—namely, how was the money for her support going to be paid in the event of Rex’s death! The answer, it seems, was satisfactory.

  February 20. Terrific wind began as soon as it got dark and grew stronger and stronger; a man on T.V. said it was blowing in gusts of seventy-five miles an hour. The door to the cellar won’t shut properly and kept slamming. The wind makes both of us nervous. But this time I noticed that I didn’t mind it quite as much as usual, although it was shaking the house, because it seemed an anticlimax after the earthquake. This morning there is still a lot of wind and it is clear and brilliant; the light is almost Australian.

  Gore was on “The Merv Griffin Show,” almost unbelievably fatter than when we saw him, less than three weeks ago. (Of course I don’t know when this show was taped.) Griffin tried to get him to talk about Merle Miller, the writer who has just declared himself to be homosexual;83 but Gore was cagey, perhaps because he is now halfway into politics again, getting together this third party with Dr. Spock[,] and Ralph Nader for their presidential candidate. Last night, Don decided that he was overweight, 143; so we had nothing but soup for supper—only, the way he fixes it, it is a meal, anyhow.