A Covert Affair (35 page)

During their brief reunion, Julia and Paul agreed to
“pursue the plan”
they had formulated on the hilltop at the Wenjen resort. What Paul had in mind was a waiting period of sorts,
“to see what we looked like in civilian clothes and meet each other's friends and family, then see if we still felt the same way.”
He had managed to get through the war—no mean feat—but it had cost him dearly. Now he needed to give his depleted mind and body, to say nothing of his soul, time to heal. Over the Christmas holidays, he wrote her a long, ruminative letter, musing about her progress since he first met her
“on the porch of the tea-planter's bungalow”
in Ceylon:

You have been emerging from the mists, indecisions, and attitudes of your past into a fuller and more balanced life. I am curious to know if your family will have noticed that you are indeed a newer, better Julie, a more emotionally stable Julie, a more thoughtful Julie, a darlinger, sweeter, and lovelier Julie—or are these perhaps qualities which you have always had and which it took my old eyes two years to see—finally?

Paul was too self-analytical not to
“allow for the possibility”
that he, too, had changed, and that it was perhaps he who had become more open and perceptive “and finally able to see the reality.” That this “reality” might mean finally parting with his fixation on an impossibly idealized and unattainable woman (the Zorina) remains unstated if not unrecognized. What he does recognize, and pay homage to, is that both he and Julia were better people for knowing each other, and that
“a relationship based on appreciation, understanding, and love can work that sort of double-miracle.”
He added: “Whether we do or do not manage to live a large part of our future lives together, I have no regrets for the past, no recriminations, and no unresolved areas of conflict. It was lovely, warming, fulfilling, and solid—and one of the best things that ever happened to me.” He signed the letter “Affectionately, Paulski.”

While Julia welcomed these sentiments, she found herself wishing
for less talk of regret and more in the way of resolution. She had agreed to Paul's wait-and-see plan in theory but dreaded what it meant in practice. She was impatient to get on with their courtship, and a long hiatus spent in quiet reflection and renewal was the last thing she really wanted. Moreover, returning to her father's home in Pasadena and her prewar role as the spinster daughter cum caretaker—currently occupied by her sister, Dorothy—felt like a giant step backward. She needed to move forward with her life, but with no job prospects and absolutely no idea what she wanted to do professionally, she felt completely at sea. Her OSS experience had improved her confidence and people skills, though the only obvious career path it had prepared her for was some form of administrative work, and she had made it clear on her government employment form that she would never have anything to do with files again. She listed “public relations” as an alternative, for want of a better idea, but that seemed far-fetched even to her. The one thing she was sure of was that she did not want to lose Paul. But how was she going to win him over when they were living on opposite coasts?

If Julia had learned anything about Paul during the war, it was how much he cherished letters from friends and family, and she remembered the time and attention he had lavished on the Homeric offerings he penned nightly for his brother, often reading long passages aloud to her in her room after dinner. She knew he savored missives from old friends and past flames, carefully tucked them away, and took them out to read over and over on rainy days. Words, she decided, were the way to his heart. If they had to be apart, then she would keep him close by way of a persistent, intimate correspondence, an outpouring of love and desire not even his defenses could withstand. As with everything she did, Julia embarked on their epistolary romance in January 1946 with great gusto, infusing her letters with her irrepressible enthusiasm, passion, and personality. Acutely aware that Paul was a very physical man, the pages fairly tremble with her burgeoning sensuality:

Dearest Paulski
:

Oh. I love hearing from you. I find myself haunting the mailbox. When I read one of your letters I am engulfed with pleasurable warmth and delight which glows in me. What have you
done to me, anyway—that I continue to long and languish for you? I want to know what you think about, what you would think about things here and people. I want to sit next to you, closely. Well.

Julia kept her tone buoyant and optimistic, describing busy days filled with the kinds of self-improving activities Paul would find commendable. She had bought a book on semantics, the philosophy of language, which she knew he had made a study of and considered crucial to any understanding of the deeper and hidden meaning of words and symbols. This had opened her eyes to the extent to which she was being “led around by words—slantings, loadings, judgements, inferences—but had never taken the trouble to see how.”

Under Paul's influence, she was avidly reading the newspapers, with particular attention to the political pages and their conservative bent. “I am noticing things in the pages now, and with a sneer,” she reported. “I have become insanely angry at the
LA Times
for being a biased and inadequate ‘leading' paper in this every day more enormous community.” For a more balanced view, she had subscribed to the daily
Washington Post
and Sunday
New York Times
. “I am going to make a detailed analysis of why the
LA Times
is inadequate—what news it misses and discolors. Then I am going to confront the Chandler family with the ineluctable facts, instead of raging at them with empty emotions. That will take at least two hours a day but will be very fruitful for me in (1) semantics, (2) general information, (3) newspaper techniques, (4) possible benefit to the community in improving the paper (very doubtful.)” She was closely following all the foreign news, and was intensely interested in Russian imperialism, which she understood to be “historic and crucial,” with profound implications for the future of Europe, Asia, and the United States. “I wish you were here so I could sit in your lap and you could tell me
all
about everything and why,” she wrote. “How little I know, to witness all of this intelligently—and it is the beginning of a new era, the end of an old regime and way of life.”

To further address the grave shortcomings of her education, she was taking advantage of her leisure time to improve her mind. She
had majored in history at Smith, but was too much of a
“dilettante”
in those days to concentrate on her studies. It was not until she joined the OSS, and found herself regularly in the company of academics—anthropologists, geographers, and historians—that she discovered that she
“liked that type of person very much.”
Late in life, she had stumbled upon a whole new world and was ravenous to learn. To make up for lost time, she began reading everything she could lay her hands on, relying on Paul for guidance. At his suggestion, she read Henry Miller's
Tropic of Cancer
, a controversial novel based on the writer's youthful exploits in Paris, but confessed it was “too much of a stiff-prick forest” for her taste. As Paul insisted Miller was “a magnificent writer,” she was attempting another of his works,
The Cosmological Eye
. She would return her “elementary book” on semantics and pick up the more advanced text he recommended. She had even started in on psychology, enthusing, “There is so much that is fascinating!” Ever his devoted protégée, she reported, “I have luxuriously surrounded myself with everything I am eager to know about.” Piano lessons were also on the agenda, along with the promise to “practice laboriously.” Knowing food was a subject dear to his heart, she concluded her letter with the description of a favorite delicacy and tried to tempt him with an invitation: “Now I am about to eat some cracked crab (would you care to join me?).” She signed the letter “Much loving and more so.”

Determined to impress Paul with a fine homemade dinner the next time they met, Julia began taking cooking lessons. She studied under “two old English ladies” at the Hillcliff School of Cookery in Beverly Hills, dutifully attending classes three times a week. Paul responded with encouragement, observing drolly that he was sure she would one day make a superb chef “because you are so interested in food.” Julia was not exactly at home in the kitchen. Unlike Paul's mother, whose taste buds were so exacting she once spent six months searching for the right coffee bean—and in the end roasted her own combination of three—Mama McWilliams had been no gourmet. She had relied on a family cook to get simple all-American fare to the table, raising her brood on baking-powder biscuits, Welsh rabbit, and roast beef. Julia lacked even the most rudimentary skills, admitting that her maiden
effort with spoon and spatula resulted in a “debilitating kitchen experience.” Her first forays—an array of breakfast dishes—were limited in scope, but her enthusiasm knew no bounds. After graduating from omelets to pancakes, she wrote Paul that she now considered Aunt Jemima mix to be “pedestrian,” and boasted that her own recipe was an “experience in superbity,” and that “a mediocre substitute will be but phlegm after a Julia Child pancake has once been eaten.”

Julia was not a natural, but with time and practice she began to improve. With characteristic honesty and self-deprecating humor, she kept Paul informed of her every success (“a light, delectable” béarnaise sauce) and failure (an exploded duck that set the oven on fire). It still took her hours to get dinner on the table, and she invariably wrecked the kitchen in the process, but it was progress. By the end of April, she professed herself “very pleased” with her latest kitchen feats, adding, “I do love to cook. I suppose it would lose some of its glamour if I were married to a ditch digger and had seven children, howsoever.”

Reflecting on how much she had changed, Julia wrote Paul that she was finally “coming out of her cocoon and looking around at life as it should be lived.” She mustered up the courage to tell her father that she would be moving out. Pasadena was “comfortable and lovely” but too contained. A sign of her newfound independence was the critical eye she turned on her beloved sister, Dorothy, or Dort, who was still unmarried and living at home. After four years of tending house for their widowed father, she struck Julia as “quite stale and stultified.” Julia had argued vigorously against Dort's old-fashioned notion that as dutiful daughters their place was at home with “Pops.” “I think girls should lead their own lives or they will be a pleasure to no one in the end,” she asserted, adding that she had pointed out the obvious, which was that if they were “married and living in Oshkosh” he would have been alone anyway. He settled the question by announcing his intention to remarry.

Julia wrote Paul she thought she might look for work in Hollywood, and was planning to begin checking out opportunities shortly, after recovering from minor surgery on her neck. She did not rule out Washington or another government job, but her ambitions were bigger
now and she would not settle for “any kind of job like Registry” nor less than four thousand dollars a year: “I want something in which I will grow, meet many people and many situations.” In a subsequent letter, she noted with satisfaction that she had come a long way from the awkward twenty-five-year-old girl who was “so self-conscious that I actually hurt if I thought people were looking at me.”

Even long distance, she remained Paul's biggest booster and was lavish in her praise of his talent and promising career. When he complained about his boss's attempts to undermine him, she reassured him that his worth would make itself apparent to his superiors: “Who is the most remarkable, charming, intelligent, and clever man to have but General Paulski?” Later, when he expressed interest in possibly working for UNESCO, which had a branch in Paris, she encouraged him to apply for a position. “It sounds like
the
place for you, my darling,” she wrote, adding insightfully, “if you could find your niche, I should think you could find your life.” After Paul reported to her a critical remark by Marge Kennedy, a former OSS colleague, to the effect that
“everybody”
in Kunming said he was “cold and uncommunicative,” Julia leaped to his defense: “That is often a ‘line' people take to ensnare the object into a passionate demonstration of warmth. With people you know, or think you will like, you are one of the most warm and personal people I have ever met—and that's what ‘everyone' says.” And when he took ill (a recurrence of dysentery) during a trip to New York, she worried about his health and suggested he come out west for a month to recuperate and regain his strength. He declined, citing his State Department work and ongoing job search.

While she was careful not to belabor the subject of their uncertain relationship, Julia made it clear that she was not spending her days and nights mooning over him. There are references to duck shooting with the boys, amusing dinner parties with friends, and late evenings that end with her tipsy (“but not swaying”) after “fifty martinis.” She is candid in answer to his query about potential suitors, owning up to not having met “a lot of nifty men.” She immediately rescues herself from this potential humiliation by going on to say she had finally told her old standby, Harry Chandler, “who has been sucking around for years
with $2 million and a thick head,” to stop wasting his time. “I still like Paulski best,” she teased, “but I ain't going around with my eyes shut.”

Though she was too generous to toy with his affections, her own jealousy was easily aroused. When Paul wrote that Bartleman's latest predictions had them falling in love with other people, she replied hotly, “I think that woman, Bartleman, is really in love with you herself.” On another occasion, after not hearing from him for a week, she made no attempt to hide her suffering. When his letter finally arrived, she berated him for not writing more often and admitted she was bereft at the idea that he had lost interest: “I was thinking, ‘My G. that man has forgotten me, absence making heart grow fonder for someone else; my life turning to gall and emptiness; have my correspondings been
so
dreadful.' You see, you continue to have me, or it—you are under my skin.”