Steinbeck (45 page)

I wish I knew what time you would be likely to call tomorrow. I—well, damn it, I will wait for it. The boys can just play in the street or Neale can take them someplace. I am a little razzledazzled with the crawling house but it is a healthy razzledazzle.

 

 

 

Tuesday

Jesus, I hope you do come up. I hope, j'espère, Espero!

I did a bad thing. The nurse just told me. John didn't even have a cake on his birthday. Reason—he had a cold! If he had been dying in my house he would have had the biggest cake. It made me feel good in a nasty way. Soooo! Thorn's birthday is going to be THEIR birthday and I'm going to shoot the works. Big party. Two cakes. King's birthday. You are invited —Aug. 2. Paper hats, snappers—outside barbecue. All hell breaking loose.

 

 

Friday

Did I tell you I had a letter from Trampoline? [This was the “Mexican hustler” previously referred to.] She says—“I am working for the Banco de Mexico. We carry gold and pesos —want some?”

 

 

 

Saturday

This is note passing time. Thom is lying down on my bed and taking what is called a rest. This is only slightly less active than football. We went in a boat all morning—with Mr. T. as skipper. He is becoming unbearably nautical. If you are leaving about eight I will compute the time and may possibly just happen to be in the bar—beautifully dressed and smelling of cologne water.

Am burned cardinal red from the water and with a little salt and rosemary could bring high prices as a steak.

I'll leave this open. Because there will probably be more note passing. But I think it would be pleasant if I were in the bar at the lodge just starting my second martini and discussing nuclear physics with the bartender when you just happened to drop in there. What do you think?

Monologue from the tent.

It's a kind of sleeplike talk, almost rhythmic. And now he's asleep.

 

 

Monday 5:15
(in the bar
at Del Monte Lodge)

My dear—this is about as complete a record as you could wish. Here I am dressed like a lily of the field—neither sowing nor reaping but getting into a gibson and waiting for you. What a title.

Also have worked up a fiesta for J. C. I hope she doesn't try to live up to her initials.

I hope you get here before I have too many gibsons. I've only had one so far but I'm a persevering rollo. But why? I just ate the onion out of the second gibson.

5:30. New pencil. This writing is a nervous habit. I am very much excited—very much.

5:35. You are late—Ardo!

[Pacific Grove]
July 23 [1949]

My dear—

Parting is not sweet sorrow to me but a dry panic. You were kind to wire—not that I was worried but because it is like a last touch and a reassurance. One begins to distrust so much good luck. Now—8 in the evening and kids bedded down and read into the ground and I'm in the little house that has a perfume. And I have a nice weariness. Now I don't mind sleeping but before I resented it. And I don't really have any words to say.

Good night darling. I'll add tomorrow. So tired—and so properly.

Thorn told a fine fantastic story tonight. I hope I remember it. It was very intense. Had to do with a little boy who left his comic books on the floor and the mother came and got angry and pulled down the house and the father came and hit her and beat her up and rats ran all over everything. He lost track of the little boy in his interest in the other gaudy details.

Again good night.

 

 

Sunday morning

Oh! honey—I feel sick. I guess maybe it is the subsurface panting because you are not here.

Love—oh yes.
Cincinnatus

Pacific Grove
[July 25, 1949]

My dear—

Monday evening: an enormous day. Kids had their enormousest day of play. They have dropped as though shot. Thom wanted to know where you had gone. I told him—home. “Isn't this home?” he asked. And of course he is right.

I do make so many mistakes. I don't want to make them in this of ours. But with my long record of mistakes I suppose it is an impossible wish. I put a flower in on the bird to propitiate. This sounds as though I were abnormally superstitious and I am to the extent that I believe that the things that happen under ladders and with open umbrellas in the house are the results of unconscious wishing and the propitiation is to the evil in one's self. And God knows there is plenty of it in everyone—dark mean imps that make us do things we don't want to do.

I was very ill yesterday—sickness used every means it could—symptoms of a cold, stomach ache, even bleeding pains in the chest. The works, and all of it the bad child stamping its foot because it could not have what it wanted when it wanted. So I spanked it soundly and it gave up and today I am more calm and the aches are gone except the lonely ones—but they are honest and not roundabout.

I shall not try to tell you anything. That has all been told, both ways and instantly and I remember the telling and hearing like phrases now on one instrument and now on another, sometimes like the notes of high humming insects and sometimes like the breathless beating of copper kettle drums. And there it is. But I am jealous of your time.

If your eastern oak is not there I shall work one out. But let me know and I think it might be better if you kept this name.

I shall send this on Wednesday. Do you know when a plane flew over today I was four feet off the ground following it? Must watch that.

One fault of such closeness is that words no longer convey much. Before—words can stimulate the senses and the understanding but after—they are pretty weak vehicles. Wherefor words are properly the tools of loneliness and rarely of fulfillment—the conveying of loss and frustration but no triumph like the closing of fingers on fingers or the pressure of knee on knee or the secret touching of feet under a table. Do you realize that language reaches its greatest height in sorrow and in despair—Petrarca for Laura, the Black Marigold. The fierce despair of Satan in Paradise Lost. L'Allegro is not nearly the poem Il Penseroso is. I suppose that what the human soul says is—“If one finds it—there is no need for words.”

I want to send you some records. How can I do this? Shall I send them in care of Jack [Wagner]? They are the recordings of Monteverdi—These have some of the passion in music that the Black Marigolds have in words.

I think I may take the children to Berkeley this next weekend to see my sister Beth. I wish you knew her. She is very homely and I have seen her draw people to her and not know what she was doing. She has an incredible charm and an unbelievable energy.

Cathy and Walter [the nurse and her husband] took the kids for a ride after dinner and it is nine and they aren't back yet. Ed Ricketts used to do that when his children were restless —just put them in the car and drive. The vibration and motion soothed them and made them sleep so well. They will have to be carried to bed when they get back. And I'll wait here before I go over to my house.

Oh! and I have a present I want to get for you one day but it will take a very long time. But all good things do take a long time. The engagement ring my father bought for my mother, a good quarter of a carat, took him several years to pay for. But when he had done that he had something. I suppose that one of the troubles with having money is that beautiful things are available without effort and so the things have not the same value. I suppose nothing in the world was ever so valuable as that quarter carat diamond.

Words are not good to me tonight. They come out crooked and I have little faith in them. Sometimes they are much better—and once in a while they are born with small blue bows on them.

 

 

Wheel I'm up late tonight. It is midnight. For a while I thought I might go out but gave that up because where would I go?

Going to bed now darling. Neale changed the sheets, damn him. Some time with sleep—huh? That's the only thing we've not had—sleep and breakfast.

Night dear.

 

 

July 28
Thursday afternoon

My pretty quadroon—

Kids are bedded for the moment and I use the word advisedly. What a strange night was last night. I could not sleep, the kids had nightmares and today they are looking far inside and they are far away. I thought it might be a change of pressure because the air is strange and the sea is unusual but the barometer has not changed. Maybe an earthquake coming. I've felt them before. Animals are a little nuts too. Something about to happen. I wonder what. I have the excited feeling of a storm. Something has changed of course—something I didn't think ever could again and I am a little terrified but I surely would not have it any other way.

I watched the postman with gleaming eyes this morning. Once long ago when a letter with a tiny check meant the difference between dinner and not, there was a long desert time and the postman got so ashamed that he walked on the other side of the street. Finally I got to cursing him as he went by and at last I accused him of deliberately stealing mail. He drew himself up with pitiable dignity and said, “When they write them—I bring them.” Poor fellow. He still works in the postoffice but they only let him cancel three-cent stamps for his spirit is broken and his armor is split and rusted.

I am going to make my world-shaking macaroni for dinner and the kids are wild with joy because it means that there will be tomato sauce all over the kitchen and all over me. My dinners are not only food. They are decorations also.

[Thursday] evening

What macaroni. I have been heartily congratulated by macaroni-faced children.

They are at a drive-in movie beautifully dressed. But while waiting and sitting straight to keep clean—we had a conference—the old tough one. “When are you coming home to New York?” “I don't know.” “You aren't ever coming back, are you?” “That seems correct.” “Why not?” “I honestly don't know.” “Do we have to go back?” “Yes.” “Why?” “I don't know.” “Why can't we stay here? We can stay in the tent—we would like it there.” And Catbird—“I
like
the tent.” Catbird underlines all words. There are bad times when I can't tell them anything and still am not willing to lie to them, and they are not old enough for the truth because it wouldn't make any more sense to them than it does to me. I'll have to make this start home an awful lot of fun or there is going to be bad heartbreak.

I'll put this away and finish it later tonight and post it in the morning. Don't make it too long, dear.

I've solved one thing. The two drops of Femme on the pillow make for good dreams.

 

 

Thursday night

Now a kind of ennui, darling. I wish you would call Annie Laurie Williams [in New York] and perhaps have tea with her. She's really family. I know you'll get along. Another Texan and after many years in the theater she is still starry-eyed about it. She loves me quite a lot. Also is my dramatic agent. I will write her that you may call her. Of course you need not but I would like it if you did. And I don't even know why. But it seems a right thing.

I've had a number of years of frustration and sterility. And I have work that has to be done and it should be done with violence and gaiety. And I think, God damn it, that such can be. Don't you?

I have a great humming in my ears from clenching my jaws. Isn't it odd the physical symbols we use?

The bird will have a new flower in his box for you. I should have given him to you but he might have been found and there would be no way in the world to explain him. But I hope you had the chain fixed and that you will wear the wood sometimes when you think of it. And the time will go very quickly (that's a goddamned lie of course but it's the thing one says). The time will crawl like a blind snail on soft sand. And the dogs will bark pretty much too.