Salinger's Letters (7 page)

Many years before, Schroder had tried to explain to his daughter what being depressed felt like. To make it easier to understand he illustrated it by making drawings. The drawings were among the papers he left behind. One of the drawings was of a post office. Underneath the post office he had written: ‘Let's say you receive lots and lots of mail all the time and you don't know what to do with it. Some of it might be important and should be read immediately, some of it can wait, some of it's just spam and you can throw it away. But the mail keeps piling up and you don't know what to do.

‘At the post office they have a mail processing system, a mail sorter. Well, I don't have that kind of filter. I'm in danger of drowning in mail, suffocating in mail. When I feel I'm drowning in mail I'm unhappy. That's what depression is: When you feel you're being swamped with mail.'

The post office was in bed with me when I slept with Beate. Beate had understood about the post office since she was a child and Schroder had explained it to her. I recognized Schroder's description at once; it corresponded perfectly with my own type of depression. My own post office simply didn't work.

I wanted to study the Salinger Syndrome more closely. I knew nothing of the Kierkegaard Cure as yet. Schroder had just made me a gift of it. He had also given me his daughter. Beate was the first woman I slept with who could understand what I meant if I said my post office was out of order.

But now, lying in bed with Beate in the apartment on Vester Voldgade, my post office was open for business. All mail relating to Beate's face, her voice, her body was received and opened immediately. My post office was up and running for the first time.

It had taken me 22 years to discover ordinary sex. I was aware that I had been luckier than I had ever dreamed and I knew it was a stroke of luck that comes once in a lifetime.

Beate was dangerous for me, I knew that from the start. From now on there would be a life with Beate and a life without Beate. That's what I call dangerous.

 

 

On the stroke of 9 a.m. a light brown Chrysler drew up in front of the Pioneer Hotel on Broome Street where we were waiting. Rose Goldman was behind the wheel. Art jumped out and opened the door for us.

The trip to New Hampshire through upper New York State and New England took place in a cheerful, chatty atmosphere for all the world as though Art and Rose were our American hosts who wanted to show us the beauties of New England's gentle spring landscape.

Not a single mention was made of Salinger, an appointment, an interview, a letter transfer.

They had brought homemade sandwiches and a thermos of tea and coffee. They spoke of their lives, their families and friends, and we spoke of ours. Rose had once sung in a trio when she was at college. She knew all the songs of the 60s and her Diana Ross impersonation singing ‘You can't hurry love' with Beate was a huge success.

Was Salinger waiting for us at his home in Cornish? Or would he meet us at a drugstore or a restaurant in town? Art and Rose apparently didn't know either because as we approached our destination they engaged in lengthy phone conversations with people whose names we didn't catch. It sounded as if they were receiving instructions; their contribution to the conversation consisted almost solely of ‘Yes' and ‘I understand' and ‘Sure'.

When we reached Cornish, Art turned into the parking lot behind a supermarket. He found a parking space between two trucks and turned off the ignition. In silence we began to wait. Suddenly a woman knocked on the car door. She had strawberry blonde hair and was in her late 30s. She and Art had a brief exchange which we couldn't hear after which the woman disappeared among the parked cars. Art switched on the ignition and drove out of the parking lot. A small blue Japanese car passed us when we were out on the main road. The strawberry blonde was at the wheel. Art followed her as she drove out of town. She drove very fast for a while and then after about 10 minutes made a sharp left. We entered a wooded area. At the end of a long forest road, in a clearing, an old black Land Rover was parked. The woman drew up alongside. A man got out of the Land Rover. He was tall, his thick hair dark and greying. He wore glasses.

It was him. I recognized him at once. He was wearing a pair of blue canvas trousers and a blue sweater. A light coloured silk kerchief was tied loosely around his neck. He was elegantly and neatly dressed. It was him, the man I had dreamed of meeting, J.D. Salinger himself.

The woman indicated I should get out of the car. I went over to Salinger who greeted me pleasantly. His handshake was firm. He had an old man's hands.

He was 67 years old but well preserved. He looked at me kindly and searchingly. His eyes were jet black and his eyelashes, which so many women had fallen for I had read somewhere, were still thick and attractive.

The woman got into the driver's seat of the black Land Rover. Salinger invited me to get into the back seat with him. As he was getting in I heard his voice for the first time. Mellow and pleasant, the way he must have sounded ever since he was a young man, I thought.

The first thing he said was that he was hard of hearing, but he had recently acquired a hearing aid made in Denmark, that he was very satisfied with. He asked the woman, whom he called Colleen, to start driving. Out of the rear window I could see my wife standing in the clearing, growing smaller and smaller. I felt like a schoolboy leaving his parents for the first time, watching them disappear from the back seat of the bus.

For as long as the interview lasted we drove around the country roads near Cornish. All I was aware of was the old man sitting next to me. In his own way he was just as handsome as the only existing official pictures. I gaped, hypnotised.

There was something attractive and frightening about him at the same time. He had a way of pushing his jaw out and staring fixedly at me that made him look like Marlon Brando playing Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather himself. Mafia associations, literary mafia, were not unwarranted; Salinger was the boss of his own universe. He demanded obedience and omertà, total silence. He had made me an offer through a strawman. Now I had broken mafia rules by outbidding him with an offer he could have refused, but which he had chosen to accept.

‘Let's get started,' said Salinger.

‘Are you the one that wants to buy the letters?'

‘Does that surprise you?'

‘Why didn't you just write me in Denmark and ask for them back?'

‘Would you have given them to me?'

‘Of course'

‘Even when you know how much money is involved.'

‘Hmm. I hope so.'

‘Collectors would give their eye teeth to get a hold of those letters. Everything I think about Kierkegaard is in there.'

‘How do you feel about my blackmailing you into giving me your first real interview?'

‘I have mixed feelings about it, very mixed, but I've made a promise. A deal is a deal. I'm doing it because of Kierkegaard. I've been obsessed with Kierkegaard ever since I read him for the first time at military school. Everything I've ever written was inspired by Kierkegaard.'

‘Was that why you answered my first letter, back then?'

‘Yes. And also because you knew things about Kierkegaard only a Dane could tell me. Holden Caulfield is partly based on Kierkegaard, partly on my own life. The way Holden divides other people into categories, those he doesn't like, the phonies, and those he likes, is straight out of Kierkegaard when he speaks of the single individual and the ethical and aesthetic idiosyncracy which so painfully cuts him off from the world and from living a normal life. That's Holden's dilemma, it was Kierkegaard's, and it's mine.'

‘Why do you care where your letters end up? What's so terrible about a collector or a university?'

‘Are you naive or do you just pretend to be?'

‘I just pretend.'

‘When I was young I dated Oona O'Neill. I was crazy about her and her best friend, Carol, who later married the writer, William Saroyan, and after that the actor, Walther Matthau. When Oona started going with Charlie Chaplin I wrote her a bunch of letters. I was devastated and I ridiculed Charlie Chaplin. Those letters are now in the possession of a university library. Anyone can just go in and read them! Somebody even tried to publish them as a book, but my lawyers managed to put a stop to that.'

‘Do you think I should feel like a traitor, a whore or just a common blackmailer for taking advantage of the situation to get an interview with you?'

‘You'll get no absolution from me! But I know what I'm expected to deliver. I've been a devoted fan of lots of people myself.'

‘You? The guy that's famous for refusing to let his fans anywhere near him?'

‘There are people I would have travelled halfway around the world just to see walk down the street.'

‘Who?'

‘The person I'm the biggest fan of is Kierkegaard but he died in 1855 so that pretty much leaves him out, I guess. The other person I worshipped just as much as groupies dote on film stars and rock singers was Freud. I besieged him with letters and I met him once too.'

‘How did that come about?'

‘I wrote to Freud in Vienna when I was young. He always answered me, kindly and impersonally. He got lots of fan mail. I thought he was a brilliant novelist, in Kierkegaard's class. His works on the mysteries of the soul were pure poetry to me. I dreamed of meeting him. Just before the war broke out I went to London to meet him. I was relentless. I
had
to meet him. I went to where he was living in exile and knocked on the door. And there he was, the old man, almost a dotard, his mouth in excruciating pain because of the cancer. He listened patiently to what I said, how much I admired him, how much it meant to me to meet him. My secret wish was to get to touch him, physically touch him. I was sure some kind of spiritual energy would be transferred from him to me by the least physical contact. Freud invited me to walk with him in the garden. We strolled there together, arm and arm, for 10 minutes at most without saying a word, Freud leaning on me for support. I was ecstatic. When his daughter Anna called Freud into the house again I did something perhaps I should be ashamed of. I stole a small plant shoot and put it into a little plastic bag I had brought. I took such good care of that shoot that its descendants now live in my garden. The day that plant dies I'll die too, I'm sure of it.'

‘So you understand us, all us fans.'

‘Otherwise I wouldn't know what I was turning down, would I? And who was a greater fan than Kierkegaard? He wallowed in names, he hid behind any number of pseudonyms the way only people do who long to be famous. He sat at Hegel's feet in Berlin, he dreamt of knowing everyone who was anyone in Copenhagen and was beside himself with rage when he wasn't invited to the right parties. Kierkegaard was the ultimate fan long before the word was invented. A fan wants names, a steady flow of names to root around in so as to fill up the emptiness inside. I'm offering you a trade in names to get my letters back. You want names, facts. Don't get me wrong though. I don't mean to imply you're a pig!'

‘I'm surprised you don't sound angry.'

‘Listen, you Kierkegaard landsman. I've been friends with some of the most notorious gossips in the world. Take Truman Capote and Andy Warhol for example.'

‘You were friends with Warhol? And he never said anything about it in his diaries?'

‘Andy virtually besieged me. He told me he looked up people who knew me, he came up here and knocked on the door. Andy taught me something. Unfortunately it was much too late at that point; I was already famous as the freak who never gave interviews. Andy taught me how to be open and reserved at the same time. There was Andy the exhibitionist, wide open, the persona he had created as a shelter from the outside world. And there was the shy, withdrawn Andy. He kept that side of himself to himself. That way he didn't have to live the hermit's life I had created for myself. I'm just as sociable as Andy was, or at least almost. It's just that Andy managed his inner split better than me. We were good friends. He used to come up here and visit, especially after he had been shot in the stomach by that crazy woman who wanted some of his fame to wear off on her and could only get it by shooting him. When Andy was here he took off his wig so nobody recognized him. We'd go fishing together. Andy was extremely intelligent and enjoyed hiding behind the façade of the red-neck village idiot. On the personal level the person he reminded me of most was Elvis Presley.'

‘Did you know Elvis too? I thought you despised popular culture?'

‘Does that surprise you? We often spoke on the phone. He was very gentle, very well mannered.'

Salinger fell silent for a moment. Then he turned to me and indicated I could continue the interview.

‘Do you still write?'

‘Every day.'

‘What do you do with your manuscripts? Is it true what the rumours say that you have a safe full of manuscripts that won't be published until you die?'

‘I've published lots of books since 1965.'

‘You what?'

‘Under other names.'

‘How many?'

‘Seven. Or is it eight?'

‘Can you give me the books' titles?'

‘I can. But I won't.'

‘Why don't you publish them under your own name?'

‘It turned out that publishing under a pen name has a marvelous effect on me. The vanity, the ego I've been fighting all my life simply disappears. I can concentrate on doing what I like best, writing well and telling interesting stories.'

‘How have your books been received?'

‘Often better than the books I published under my own name. That was a trick Greta Garbo taught me.'

‘Did you know Garbo?'

‘We were good friends. I had been called the Greta Garbo of literature so often that when we accidentally ran into each other on the corner of Second Avenue and 47
th
Street she came right over to me and introduced herself. As you can imagine I was beside myself with pride. She and Marilyn Monroe were my two best women friends in the movie industry.'

‘My God, did you know Marilyn too?'

‘Hey, take it easy there. Marilyn and I were friends all the way back in the 50s. We met in the waiting room of our mutual psychiatrist, a German woman who had been a patient of Freud's. We got to talking in the waiting room because we always arrived at the same time and our therapist was always delayed because of the patients before us.'

Salinger had a faraway look in his eyes. I let him alone, then I asked, ‘Tell me how you write.'

‘Every morning I go over to the little house I built on the grounds. I lie down on the sofa because of a back injury I've had since the war and write by hand. I write with the same pencils and on the same paper that Hemingway used. I met him during the war in France. I looked him up and asked him to read a short story I had written. When he'd read it he picked up a revolver and shot the head off a chicken to show his appreciation. Never was I given higher praise. We corresponded until just before he died. I went to his funeral in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway taught me a lot of things, the most important of which was to make sure you stop writing while there's still water in the well. But he also taught me a lot of technical tricks. Whenever he and William Faulkner were in New York we'd meet and get drunk. The only problem was that I can't hold my liquor and I invariably fell asleep out by the hatcheck and would miss the words of wisdom those two old drunks were spouting. Faulkner gave me his old typewriter before he died. The machine still has the little handwritten message he'd put on it. ‘Kill your darlings,' it says. I try to but it's harder than you think. I use the machine to type up my handwritten manuscripts. Then Helen takes over on the computer. Helen is a retired Cornish school teacher who's typed things up for me for years.'