Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  Talking of Bill Gray’s letter reminds me that the mail this morning brought several other letters worth mentioning. Calder Willingham wrote one to accompany a copy of his new novel, The Big Nickel, which is the third volume of the trilogy, with Geraldine Bradshaw and Reach to the Stars. (I reread Geraldine a short while ago and was just a bit disappointed; it seemed to go on too long. But some of the dialogue is marvellous.) Willingham writes that he saw our “Frankenstein” and liked our conception of the story, thought “it was undoubtedly, by far, infinitely the best variation on this theme, really an original work.” At the same time, he says that he felt Jack Smight’s direction “was awry vis-à-vis concept and performance.” He once worked with Smight himself: “He really didn’t have the vaguest idea what he was doing.”

  Then there is a charming letter from Dan Brown, who wrote Something You Do in the Dark under the name of Dan Curzon. We met him at the convention in New York and then he came to see us here on the 19th. We both liked him so much. He wants to come down again and be drawn by Don. Also, Julie Harris sent me a newspaper clipping describing Liza Minnelli giving a triumphant concert in Berlin. Cabaret has been running there for going on three years. Then there is a weirdly pompous letter from a Doctor Jeffrey Elliot, who is “Dean of Curriculum” (a new one on me) at Miami-Dade Community College. “I have found your writing perceptive, thoughtful and engaging. In every case, it exudes a special warmth and humanity, qualities which reflect your own devotion to the ideals of love, nobility, courage, service and truth. In addition to my fondness for your writing, I have marvelled at your lifelong commitment to those ideals which reflect admirably on the human condition. Indeed, everything that I have read about you suggests that you make a conscious effort to live and love as though life and love were one. Such a commitment is really precious. Guard it, please. It might even grow!” He then goes on to ask if he may come and interview me—at his own expense—for the Community College Social Science Quarterly—which is he says the nation’s largest circulation journal serving two-year colleges; as he has been commissioned by them to “conduct a feature interview with a prominent individual whose life is a testimonial to humane ideals.” I am writing to ask him if he knew that I’m queer and if, in the event that he didn’t know till now, he still wants to interview me.

  Don had a fan to visit him yesterday, a young artist named John Sonsini,3 who had seen the Nick Wilder show of his paintings. [. . .] Nick tells us that the man who used to be head of the Marlborough Gallery in New York has just seen Don’s paintings and was very impressed. He wanted to see the work of artists who don’t have a representative in New York. But, so far, he hasn’t got in touch with Nick again.

  Wednesday last, the 22nd, I was at Vedanta Place for supper and the reading. A new major crisis situation is rapidly approaching. Some weeks ago, Swami definitely made up his mind that Asaktananda isn’t up to taking over the center after his death. So he has written to Belur Math asking for Swami Lokeswarananda, the Swami who used to be in charge of the Narendrapur College or Boys’ Home or whatever it’s called. (I met him when I went there on December 31, 1963.)4 Lokeswarananda now runs the Cultural Center in Calcutta. He’s about sixty-five and very well thought of by everyone.

  So far, Asaktananda knows nothing whatever about this. At least, we are told so. It seems a miracle that this huge secret can be kept when at least six people already know it. Swami’s plan is to wait until a favorable reply has been received from India. Then he will call an emergency board meeting to which the letter will be read, in Asaktananda’s presence. This seems to be about the most shocking way possible of breaking the news to poor Asaktananda. Indeed, Abhaya (whose name I at last am able to spell, because I just called the Vedanta bookshop—it seems you can write it either as Abhaya or as Abhoya; the latter is Bengali spelling, I think) took me aside when Swami had gone into the bathroom and asked me if I couldn’t persuade Swami to tell Asaktananda privately before the meeting. But I don’t want to get mixed up in this.

  Swami himself tacitly admitted that it would be unwise to break the news in this way, for he said that Asaktananda couldn’t run the center because he was “emotionally unstable.” As an instance of Asaktananda’s instability, Swami said that he had wept while lecturing on Holy Mother at Santa Barbara. I nearly said, “Well, what about you, when you broke down in the Santa Barbara temple and had to be led out—was that merely instability?” but I thought better of it.

  I smell some sort of plotting and pressure by the nuns, behind all this. But Abhaya told me one curious thing which doesn’t seem to fit into this theory. She says that Anandaprana doesn’t know that Prabha knows about the Lokeswarananda plan, and that Prabha doesn’t know that Ananda knows—they haven’t been told, according to Abhaya, because they are often jealous of each other’s influence in matters of policy.

  Jim Gates told me that Larry—I forget his other name*—the one who left because he had cancer—has written to say that he’s coming back and that he’s so happy about living in the monastery again. Larry is coming back, according to this letter, because the doctors who have been treating him in the East now say that the UCLA hospital could do a better job. (This sounds horribly like buck-passing; they know the case is hopeless and want to give someone else the discredit of having failed to save him.)

  But Swami had just told me that Larry couldn’t come back, because his parents aren’t prepared to support him here; they’ll only do it if he stays with them. And because the society can’t support him, having spent all its money on the new convent buildings. When I told Jim this, he replied that that was odd, since Michael Barrie had already offered to pay whatever expenses there might be and that they wouldn’t be great, because Larry’s treatment at UCLA was mostly for free—it’s regarded as experimental research. Jim said, “Ah well, it’s probably something to do with Anandaprana—she’s against Larry’s coming back.” Those nuns! Don can’t even look at the new buildings without raging against their selfish cuntiness.

  Krishna has been having a severe cold, and he absolutely refused to take medicine or even to eat. He merely drank water. Swami called him on the phone and threatened to send for Krishna’s brother from the East unless he consented to see the doctor. Krishna growled that Swami was “going to extremes” and that he was “quite ready to die, if it’s so easy.”

  January 31 [Friday]. Larry Holt called this morning to tell me that the doctor thinks he may have cancer of the throat. I had tea with him last Wednesday, the 29th—this was the first time I’d seen him in ages, since long before his operation for the malignant tumor on his colon. I always had the feeling that he was very sick and that that was why he didn’t want to see me. But on Wednesday he actually seemed better, not nearly so heavy-gloomy. I asked him if his religion had helped him through the operation and afterwards and he said yes, absolutely. He had been up to the center, for a meal with the boys at the monastery, but they won’t let him see Swami—I suppose that really means, Anandaprana won’t. However, Larry says that that isn’t so important to him any more, because he feels Swami’s presence all the time. He thinks of Swami as a great saint. It was quite easy being with Larry, except just at the first. He noticed that I wasn’t sitting close to him on the sofa and asked me, not altogether jokingly, if I was afraid I might catch his cancer.

  After seeing Larry, I saw Swami. I told him about Larry and he immediately told me a story I have heard before—that Larry and Ben Tomkins5 once played a joke on him, sending him a fake letter from a girl, saying she was in love with him and asking him to call her at a certain number, which was actually Larry’s. Swami says he recognized the number and knew this was a joke. (Larry says that the whole story is untrue as far as he was concerned, it must be about someone else.)

  Referring to this story, I said to Swami: “I suppose you must have had a lot of trouble with women while you’ve been in Hollywood?” “Oh yes,” he answered, “terrible—you have no idea—” Then he added, with truly adorable simplicity
: “You see, Chris, I used to be very handsome.”

  No news about the possible coming of Swami Lokeswarananda has arrived from Belur Math, so far.

  After telling me about the doctor’s suspicion of throat cancer—which will be either confirmed or not confirmed by next Tuesday—Larry said to me, “You may think this is very absurd, but I can’t help remembering that Thakur had it. I guess I’m a hopeless romantic.”

  February 9. Larry Holt hasn’t got cancer of the throat, but Larry Miller has had a recurrence of his cancer and it now seems that he’s doomed. Jim Gates is very bitter because Larry Miller isn’t to be allowed to return to the monastery, as he wants to. Surely one of the functions of a monastery is to be a place for people to die in, if they are believers and will get spiritual support by being there at the end? Jim blames Anandaprana.

  No news yet about the possible coming of Lokeswarananda, except that Belur Math has sent Swami a cable, saying that they are writing him. I personally believe that they are going to excuse themselves and say that Lokeswarananda can’t be spared.

  Swami says that Asaktananda couldn’t be head of the center because he has an inferiority complex and would therefore, if he got power, become so bossy that he would drive Chetanananda and most of the monks and nuns away and ruin the center altogether.

  We hear that Yogeshananda (Buddha) has left the London center and come to live at one in Chicago. (It seems that most of the monks at the London center have left, too. Some of them have gone to Gretz.) The amusing thing is that the Hindu swami who is head of the Chicago center—I forget his name—is going back to India on a visit and so Buddha will be left in charge, thus becoming the only white swami to be the head of a Ramakrishna center anywhere.

  The Wild Party, Jim Ivory’s film, was a disaster when they previewed it in Santa Barbara, we are told. Not a word from them about A Meeting by the River. Or from anybody.

  Michael Laughlin and Leslie have been having a serious falling-out. Leslie has announced that she loves David Lonn, the producer of the play (13 Rue de l’Amour) which she is starring in in Chicago— we saw it and met Lonn while we were there in December. She has told Michael that she wants a separation. Michael made a scene with Lonn [. . .]. Leslie became motherly and sympathetic and gave him Valium. Michael called me this morning for advice. I told him to refuse to agree to a separation at this time, to leave Chicago and come back here and let Leslie make up her mind—assuring her that he loves her and is determined to save the marriage if possible. Don thinks Lonn is just an operator.

  We had lunch today with Truman Capote. Don thinks he is very sick. But he seemed much more cheerful than last time we saw him. We had been told in New York that he was abandoning his novel. He assured us that part of it will be coming out quite soon in a magazine. Don isn’t sure that he’s telling the truth. It was nice seeing him, as nearly always. But today, as far too often, there were a lot of other people around.

  February 19. Am writing this around ten in the evening. We are sitting up waiting until it’s time to go out to a midnight supper at Marti Stevens’s house. The supper is late because she is playing in The Constant Wife and she will be bringing Ingrid Bergman back with her. Bergman is at present playing her part sitting in a wheelchair, because she has broken her toe (or foot, I’m not sure which). I’m sure the audience loves this; indeed, that it’s an added attraction. That’s what being a star is all about.

  Talking of being a star, old Dub is about to prance in public again. I have been awarded the Brandeis Medal in literature for this year. They want me to go to New York to receive it on April 6, but I am holding out for travel money, in addition to the thousand dollar honorarium.6

  Meanwhile, we have practically committed ourselves to taking on a T.V. assignment: Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned.

  I keep plugging on at the book. At present, not joyfully. I feel it is somehow flat—that I’m failing to give it the sparkle of life. One thing that keeps bugging me is that I have covered so much of the material in my fiction and what’s left for me to write is just—leftovers.

  After the grand lunch with Gore Vidal in 1973 and Don’s New York show last year, our anniversary celebration this year lacked public recognition. So we made a virtue of that; spent the evening in bed, watching T.V. and drinking champagne. I really liked it much better that way. I think Don did too. With us, domestic bliss isn’t just a phrase; it’s an exact description of a mood we often experience.

  Larry Holt called me tonight and asked me to collaborate with him on the story of his love affair with the young chief on Maupiti.7 I said yes, I would record it all for him and write it up later. I have often urged Larry to record it and I don’t want it to be lost.

  A strange dream about Swami—four or five nights ago. Like an idiot I didn’t write it down at the time. Now I’ve forgotten part of it. To begin with, Swami and I were walking in a landscape which was very like the Derbyshire Peak District—say, the pass above Castleton. Green turf over limestone, with grey rocks showing through. A steep smooth rock path, leading downhill. Swami was old as he is now and weak and I was helping him. Suddenly he lost his balance and slipped from me and slid rapidly down the rock path on his bottom into a very small cleft in the rock. I tried to get him out again but couldn’t. I knew that he was sitting inside a tiny cave which I was too big to enter.

  So I ran down into the neighboring village and began calling to the villagers for help. I was addressing them in Spanish because that most resembled their native language, which was Italian. But they didn’t understand me.

  The bit I have half forgotten was a sort of X-ray view of Swami inside the tiny cave. My impression is that he was making a terrible fuss and show of panic, but that I knew all the while that this was some sort of deliberate playacting. . . . The explanation which presents itself is that this was a dream about Swami’s death, and about the absurdity of our concept of death. Certainly, it wasn’t an unhappy dream. But it wasn’t particularly joyful, either.

  Leslie has just returned from Chicago, but she is staying in a hotel. Michael, who came to dinner last night, said she was terribly touchy and difficult. He doesn’t yet quite know what the latest score is.

  February 27. Yesterday, having bought a new mike, I tape-recorded the first part of Larry Holt’s narrative of his love affair with the son of the chief, on Maupiti. Larry really dictated very clearly and logic ally and I feel pleased to have got some of this down, and eager to get more. He was so moved that he shed tears. Later, he said it was probably bad for him to bring these memories back. But I’m sure he loved doing it.

  Before I saw Swami, Anandaprana told me that the doctor had said that Swami is “beginning to fail,” according to all the physical signs. He seemed much as usual, however. He said with his usual, rather satisfied aggressiveness that there was going to be a fight with the Math over Lokeswarananda’s coming here. The poor man has got to have a gallbladder operation first, and no doubt that’s why they’re unwilling to let him travel—quite aside from their general unwillingness to let any of their good men come over here.

  Anandaprana had also told me that Swami had another spiritual experience when he was up at Santa Barbara, the other day. So I angled around until he told it to me. This time it was a vision during sleep. He was feeding Holy Mother and he began to weep. “I could have wept myself to death,” he said. “When the doctor examined me, he said, ‘You have had a shock.’ It was like a heart attack. . . . When I wish to die, I can die. Whenever I wish. But I don’t want to die yet—not until this place is saved.” (By which I suppose he meant, when he has got Lokeswarananda over here.)

  He began to talk about the lower samadhi, and how doubts still remain, after you have had it. “Do you still have doubts, Swami?” I asked. “Oh yes—well, not doubts, exactly. It’s what you call divine discontent. You know, Maharaj used to tell me, ‘What’s wrong with you is, you’re too contented here. You shouldn’t be contented in spiritual life. You should always want more.’
Well, now I always want more—more.”

  Deepti, I am sorry to say, has left. This time, she didn’t give anybody the chance to dissuade her. She disappeared, saying goodbye by notes. They don’t know where she is. Swami says Bhuma (Cliff Johnson) is “so restless—he keeps going out shopping in Santa Anna—he stays away all day.” And Jim Gates has rather turned against Swami. He went in to see Swami and begged him to at least write a letter to Larry Miller. Swami refused. But even Jim admits that Swami probably misunderstood exactly what Jim was asking him to do, and thought Jim wanted him to write that he’d take Larry back. So Jim is getting restless, too.

  April 7. No use apologizing to myself for the huge gap here. The truth is, I am slowing down; I simply cannot get through all the jobs I set myself to do. And so I develop a masochistic attitude toward myself as my own taskmaster.

  Don went off to New York on the evening of the 5th and I said to myself that I will accomplish marvels while he’s away. But today I have merely puttered, wasting all these hours of precious solitude on a few letters, telephone calls, shoppings, jogging at the gym. Well, anyhow, Don has already accomplished something. He called me last night to say that he had made the speech I wrote for him to the Brandeis people and received the medal. And I could tell that he had been a success. My darling, he had told himself he couldn’t do it and he had done it—as usual. It seems that Glenway was almost entirely responsible for my being awarded the medal, as I suspected. And now Don will stay on until the beginning of next week, so as to draw Ingrid Bergman after The Constant Wife has opened in New York.