Going Too Far (6 page)

You've just awakened and trotted out past my desk, naked, in that sleep-potty summery way of yours that is so foggy and bewildered at being awake, and so endearing. And for the thousandth time, your presence in the room, simply as that, all unaware, drives old ghosts back to their graves, your love for me wrapping me round in itself as protection against all their haunting cries, all my failed loves.

So I will speak of another realization I had tonight, which has rocked me somewhat. I don't know yet whether it's good or bad, but
it's frightening. That same silly Mielziner book (such petty things can set off
such
thought processes) rambled on about the
theatah
, and actors and rehearsals and the comradliness of it all and the nervousness before openings, etc., all so familiar to me, both from the cliché of it and the actual knowledge of having done these things for so long, that I was deeply shocked to find it all totally foreign to me. I mean, simply, that although I could remember those experiences and even recall those very feelings, I suddenly knew as an absolute fact that I could never know them again. I don't believe I can act any more. I don't mean this as a rehash of all the old disillusionment I went through when I first left acting, which I've since coped with by looking at it simply as a job. I mean I know I can never really act again. Nor does having been away a long time explain it. I don't think I can perform a character before an audience any more. That schizophrenic temperament—the weirdness of being onstage or before a camera, speaking, and
meaning
, mind you, lines—and still knowing that you are yourself, at least partly, aware of both in the same instant, is now … not incomprehensible quite, but foreign, alien, impossible to me. I'm too much myself, too integrated, to exorcise myself from my own body successfully. The thought terrifies me, as if I were a schoolgirl afraid of standing in front of people to say my piece. And all the techniques and tricks that I can still call up to aid me don't help if, in that moment, a real and a fictional character strive for existence in the same body. The real one wins, the performance is false, the tricks are just tricks. I really don't think I can ever act again. This has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting to, it's quite beyond both. Does this mean I've become realer as a human being, more vivid in my own personality, more introspective as a person or a better poet? I think not, but don't know. I've lost one thing, and don't know if I've gained another in its place or, to be more exact, don't know what has thrust the first thing out. Perhaps I've indeed lost the world, but gained my own soul.

This letter—or entry—has served its purpose and comforted me. Sometimes I think that all writing is just an expression of frustrated love, but at least I've learned to turn (most of the time) that frustration on thinking of the past into something constructive in the present, or at least something self-revealing, or even merely sedating, to the pain. Strange that I should write this first letter tonight. So many times I've been about to start it, either in a mood of great mushy Schubertian love and yearning, or simply to number in writing the one hundred reasons why you should go to hell. Neither, tonight, but calmly, confidentially, as to a friend. My dear, my dear, you're still the only
friend
I have.

R.

On rereading this, I feel I should add that I don't intend to polish these letters (if I ever write another one), but just let the thoughts come as they will in what language they will. Hence the striking lack of immortal prose. With all my secret hopes that you, or posterity, will read this, for the sake of truth—and my own sanity—I had better assume nobody ever will.

3

This letter refers to the writing of the first draft of K.'s novel,
The Beholding
, which was ultimately completed in 1976. “Killing off Leonard Porterfield” is a reference to his writing the death scene of one of the major characters in the novel. Hektor, the cat mentioned throughout this letter, was born on the day we were married. One of a circle of cats all named for Homeric characters, he is at present alive and well, thirteen years old, and extremely dignified at such a venerable age.

27
July
1965, 1:00
a.m. (actually
28
July)

D
EAR
K.:

Tonight you are killing off Leonard Porterfield at last, and before I set to work myself I thought I would put down the “Leech Dream” we've so often discussed—probably the most beautiful and terrifying dream I've had.

It's been almost a year since the dream, but I still can recall it quite vividly, partly from our many talks about it, and partly from the clarity of its symbolism.

I was in a small stone cottage in a tiny clearing, in the midst of dense, almost jungle-like woods. You, already my husband, were away, on a space mission actually, although it was not so much for the government as a private, personal expedition to some planet—Venus, I believe. I was confident of your safe return, and I lived quietly, without fear, despite my solitude. My only companion was Hektor, our orange tiger cat, still young and lean and affectionate. He didn't live in the tiny cottage, but in the woods just beyond. He visited me daily. It was summer, the sun was warm, and I took a mat outside (just beyond the house, in the little clearing) to lie on and enjoy the sun. Hektor came up as I was doing this, and after I had taken off my shoes (which, for some reason, were brown loafers—the kind kids put pennies in) and set them a little away, at the edge of the woods, he lay down beside me to sleep. Somehow he was much larger stretched out beside
me, reaching from my breasts, where he nestled his head, to below my knees.

As he lay there, a strange snake-like creature, part lizard, with a head like a snake but with squat legs and claws, and a long tail, appeared from out of the surrounding growth. (I somehow knew, in the dream, that he was a leech, although an actual leech looks much different.) He hissed out a warning to us, saying that he hated us and would destroy us.

In the passage of time in the dream, this scene seemed to have occurred a number of times. Then, one day, as Hektor and I lay in the sun, both thinking of you with confidence and love, we began to shift positions. He now lay on top of me, long, silky, luxuriant, and quite without hurting or clawing, he entered me. As we made love, it was somehow an offering, a tribute to you away on your planet or star. But the leech appeared, more malevolent than ever, and sidled over to one of my shoes, hissing that whatever he touched became poisoned, and that he would destroy us now. He said that the instant one of us moved off the protective mat, he would sting or even just touch us, and we would die. He said that he would avenge you for our unfaithfulness.

I asked Hektor if the leech didn't know, didn't understand what this scene meant, that our love was part of you, that you would have approved, that in some way you were even participating in our love-making yourself. I began to move toward the shoes to explain, to make the leech see this. But Hektor would not let me. He said, in a terrible voice, that others will see evil where they will, through their own distorted view of good; that one can never assume any act, no matter how pure, will not be misunderstood—nor should one then, knowing that, cease to act.

Overhearing this, the leech expanded in anger to half again his size, left my shoes, and approached us. He said he would touch us even
on
our protective mat, killing us and freezing us in our sexual position so that the proof of our infidelity would be there for you to see when you returned.

“But he will not care!” I cried. “He would not feel betrayed, don't you understand? He would not see evil in this, he would understand the love we have for him, expressed in the love we have for each other!” The leech still approached, and then Hektor sprang at him. I fled to the safety of the cottage, but looked out the window to see their battle. It was over almost instantly, the leech dead, and Hektor alive but frozen in a horrible, crouched position: mouth open, fangs bared, claws spread, muscles straining in rage, terror, agony. I knew now I could not touch him either, so infused was he with the poison. His paralyzed eyes looked back into mine through the window, as if to warn me away.

Then I had left the cottage and the woods, still dark and
overgrown around the sunny clearing, and I was in a spaceship hurtling through the star-splashed black to join you. Somehow, I felt that Hektor would survive the poison, and would join us, too, in time. But I also felt that the leech was not really dead either, that he would crawl back into the jungle to recover, let his poison fill his veins again, and then emerge to cry his evil morality against the world once more.

Whatever else the dream meant, I really believe that Hektor's words are a profound truth. He seemed to be a symbol for you in the dream (I've often commented that I think you and he look alike!), and he spoke with your voice, I remember. The feeling was that he, being an animal, albeit a tame one (not completely so; remember he lived in the woods, too), could understand the true nature of the leech more quickly and thoroughly than I, and could do battle against it with some hope of survival. Perhaps it is the civilized element, the moral element in the human being that is more easily converted to evil without recognizing it, that thinks sex is wrong, that sets up mores and then lives in terror of them. Certainly people are more “bestial” than any beasts which have ever existed. We are the only creatures who kill for pleasure, beyond food or survival.

In any case, before I dig this line of reasoning into a Rousseauean trap for myself, I will stop here and get to work. Dreaming, I survived the leech, and went off to join the other part of Hektor (you) on a distant star. But awake, I have not forgotten the leech's eyes, or his hiss, or what that hiss said.

R.

4

“The rains came” refers to a Swiss-cheese leaky roof in our apartment which, during one particular rainy season, left us vulnerable to the deluge and to a consequent indoor flood. We were months repairing the damage. “D.” was a neighbor, one of those persons who are overly generous about music—he played Puccini operas ceaselessly on his phonograph, and at a volume which made it all but impossible for anyone within hearing distance to work. Fortunately, he finally moved away. “T.” was a male acquaintance who seemed to think he was Tristan and Don Juan in one miraculous combination.

1
August
1965

D
EAR
K.:

Tonight I must write you, as tonight is an Occasion.

You sit at your desk now (ten in the evening, August first, a Sunday), finishing the last chapter of your first full-length novel. Wearing only white undershorts, the broad expanse of your back, slightly tanned from our two times at the beach so far this summer, hunches over your typewriter. You sit with your chair tipped back but your body leaning forward (that funny old oak desk chair!), and you're typing very fast now and not even smoking and I love you.

Later a few close friends will come over and we will celebrate and you will type the last period with a flourish, like a ritual, a ceremony. Oh, yes, and there's much revising to do but the main body of the work, the foundation, will be done as of tonight. You began the novel before we were married, and began it in your mind years before that. And that first summer of our marriage, you worked on it, and I worked, quietly, happily, before “the rains came” and then D. began his assault with sound. And now, just about a month ago, you picked up again, and it will all be completed in a matter of minutes now, a short while. So much struggling, this past year and a half, so much
angst
and unnecessary suffering, while that novel lay gathering dust in its uncompleted state. Some of the first pages of the manuscript are slightly yellowed already, as you write the final pages now. (T. just called and would adore to come by, but could he bring a new girlfriend,
one of the Radio City Rockettes, with him?—God, novels get finished after all, but some things never change!)

And it's a good novel, by God, it's right and good. It frightened me sometimes, reading it hot off the typewriter, chapter by chapter, even in rough state, by its power and rightness and painful lyricism. Dear God, it makes me proud. And having just completed a six-months' affair with Faulkner, every one of his novels, and having just a day or so ago finished reading
The Rainbow
and tonight completed
Women in Love
, I'm
not
merely rhapsodizing about my husband.
The Beholding
will stand up. It will be around for a long time.

But very soon now you will be finished and then people, albeit dear friends, will be here. I wanted to say in this letter what I may not have time to say, shortly, to you, though God knows I will try (despite Rockettes). How deeply happy I am, how gratified, how worth it it all has been, how this seems only the beginning—but if it were the end, tonight, even so, we have lived more and crammed more life and work and spirit into our days and nights so far than most people have in whole lifetimes; how remarkable a man you are, dancing a little jig of excitement in your undershorts just before beginning the last chapter, lying above me last night in our bed, straining now over your writing; how stunningly free our relationship seems (especially after Women
in Love
), a clean, frank, uncompetitive, comradely working together, loving each other's work more than each other, loving our own work more than each other's, proudly, strongly. All fine, so fine.

About five years ago in a chrome luncheonette on Third Avenue, a funny, plump young girl, with dyed blond hair fizzing over the mink collar of a pearl beaver coat, told you earnestly (while ripped to shreds of despair internally, since you were something she could never have, somthing denied to her forever) that she loved you because you were a great writer. Tonight, I sit in our lovely dark-beamed study, walled round with books, pools of light encircling our two huge desks. And my hair is natural, a dark green-gold, and my body is inhabited by me in every limb and pore, supple and light, your touch still warm upon it under my white summer shorts and avocado sweater, and I look across at your back and neck and proud head, and I bless this night, this moment, and that long-ago despair that brought me here. I bless this study, I bless our bed, I bless the past year of anguish that proved we would endure, I bless the absurd sound of our typewriter keys clacking together, I bless myself for my courage and wisdom in fighting for all this, I bless you, oh, I bless you for all that you are.