Steinbeck (27 page)

It is so strange—remember how we used to think of Mexico as the golden something and we never really thought we would get there for all our talk. Certainly I never thought I would be going again and again and not particularly wanting to. It's like all the beautiful ladies. I remember wishing so much I could just associate with them. And now they bore me so completely, because they aren't really beautiful at all. I know one or two who make me feel full and warm and excited and happy and they aren't the really beautiful ones at all, I mean the accepted beautiful ones.

Carol has a new hobby which she likes. She takes two big buckets and goes up into the pastures and fills them with dry cow manure and then she brings them down and puts them on the garden and then she makes another trip. It satisfies some profound anthropomorphic economy in her, and besides, she thinks it is a little funny.

I have to go now. The carpenter who built this house fell off a roof a couple of days ago and broke his leg and he is down in a hospital and I want to go down to see him.

See you when I get back.

love
john

Mexico
[November i, 1940]

Dear Max:

I wish you and Gwen were down here. It's all work and not much else. Out at daylight and back after dark. But we're getting a picture on film—one of the first times a Mexican pueblito has been photographed. I hope it is good. I know it is true—so true that in direction we don't say “Do this!” but “Do as you always do.” And what natural actors they are. When the film gets to Hollywood I'll show it to both of you right away.

I got a big ring for you. I hope big enough. And something else I won't tell you about. Don't exactly know when I'll be through but sometime between the fifteenth and twentieth. I'll wire you when I am arriving and maybe you and Gwen will meet me because I have little presents for her too.

The days of the dead are here and our village is drunk to a man and a woman. They have been gradually picking up their binges for three days and they have two days to run. They mix pulque and aguardiente and it flops them beautifully. Our problem is mainly light. Herb [Kline, the director] cannot learn that a Mexican answers what you want to hear. He asked if the October sky was clear and of course they said yes. I could have told him that there is rarely a cloudless afternoon in October. You see, this is not like a studio picture. We have to wait for light and catch it as we can.

I'm a little bored because too much picture and not much else. I'd like to play a little, but it's dull having no one to play with. Once in a while I go out with Delgado, our second camera man. He's a good scout but he has only one thing on his mind and he doesn't play at it. It is life work with him. Besides, he is sleeping with a deputado's wife and is a little jumpy. Any sudden noise and a forty-five appears in his hand. I don't know how it gets there. Anyway, it is not restful. When I go out with him I find myself taking a chair which is at right angles to a line drawn from the entrance through Delgado. It's just an instinct to be out of the line of fire. Deputados are nervous men and the laws don't apply to them.

I think that's about all. Look after Gwen a little, will you? And there's something I want you to do for me when I get back. But I'll tell you about that when I see you.

Love to your family.

Chocolo Chamaco!
John

[Los Gatos]
[November 23, 1940]

Dear Max:

I have subjected you to a test no friend has any right to expect any friend to survive. I have wondered if you know I knew the stringency of the test. I did not do it to test you. You knew that. But the test was there. You know that I love you as a friend and trust you beyond ordinary understanding of trust. I have not said it, thinking, in fact, knowing that you knew it.

This last thing was an humiliation to you. Shall I recall it? I said, “Max, I want you to do this thing because it is a thing you could do through love.” And I said, “The backers want [Spencer] Tracy. He has technique and a name that can be counted in money.” I did not think his studio would let him do it. He has a great heart. I knew he would want to do it. And then they let him. Do you feel that I have let you down? Understand, that if I wanted to fight I could force the issue. I could make it so that you could do it.

Let me tell you something—perhaps another cowardice, perhaps a wisdom. I don't know. Recently I was at Del Monte and there came to my table people, our dear friends from Salinas. We drank and they said—“When you're in Hollywood do you ever see Wagner?” And I said, “Always.” And then there was a word, only one—and I felt my hair rise. You have never fought me so you don't know. And I stood up and in the middle of it—I sat down again because of a grey sadness. I knew then they could not know you and my beating them to death would not let them know. And I sat down. Because I think that only I and Gwen maybe know who and what Max is, how beautiful, how valuable. And in the middle of anger it seemed to me that I would dirty your goodness by fighting and so I killed it by saying—“Max is my friend.” And they—the curs, who hate me and are afraid of me, were afraid to violate my friend in my presence. But they would violate both of us if neither of us were there.

And the same thing with this picture. I could force it but that might be bad. I think you with your love could do a better thing than the other with his technique.

You have given me a great deal, Max. I want to repay and I won't know how, because you are beyond the reach of ordinary presents. You have given me loyalty I have almost given up hoping for in all the world. And you have given me friendship when everyone else was using me in some way.

You could have been a great actor if you had wanted to—the feeling was there and from the feeling would have come ability. But you didn't want to. I think you didn't have the mean little ambition. You are proud of me now. I hope you know that I have no pride—that I know the series of accidents which gave me this silly name.

I value you as I value very few people in the world. Know this, Max. When I called you hermano, I meant it in the most tremendous sense I know.

Adios, Max a dios—los dos—espero.

John—qui es y
sera tu hermano.

Please tell Gwen that I am making a song for her and I have never made a song for anyone before. I love you both. And protect her a little, please. For she is dear to me.

Los Gatos
[December 12, 1940]
Thursday

Dear Toby:

Why is it, do you suppose, that we don't get together any more? Of course, I know you are carrying some big secret in you that is bigger than you and that you've turned inward on your secret. And I suppose I've turned inward on something too. And I don't think there's any suspicion between us—maybe it's all just the grown-up conviction that there isn't any possible communication so what's the use of trying any more? Maybe it's that. Maybe the whole first part of living is frantic attempts to communicate and then all of a sudden you stop trying and that's what makes the eyes change and the manner change. I talked to a girl recently whom I had known in Stanford and she told me she had been very much afraid of me because—she said, “I was afraid if I stopped listening to you for a moment, you'd flare into rage and knock me down.” I guess that's the same thing.

But we've become such strangers and no seeming way out of it. You're surrounded with things and I am too. And sometimes I get so dreadfully homesick I can't stand it and then realize that it's not for any home I ever had. And the passionate youthful desire to communicate was the same kind of homesickness. It's curious and it doesn't get any better, only one learns not to talk about it. And if everyone is that way, I wonder why they all learn not to talk about it. Their eyes get dull with disgust or pain or tiredness. I haven't crossed the hump I guess or I wouldn't be writing this letter.

But I sit upon this beautiful ranch in this comfortable chair with a perfect servant and a beautiful dog and I think I'm more homesick than ever.

John

[Los Gatos]
December 26, 1940
Thursday

Dear Max and Gwen:

I'm sending this to Max because Gwen will be moving. I thought I was just nervous the last day I saw you—Sunday. Carol was pretty sick—a hangover, she thought. Sunday night the phone rang and rang until I got hysterical and cut it off. Monday morning we both felt terrible but started out in the rain. God knows how we got here. I was half out of my head when we got here. Joe went for a doctor. I had 104° and Carol 103°. We were deep in the flu. So he sent a nurse up. I'd been off my nut for two days. Just out now and must stay in bed for several days. I don't yet know how I drove that far in that condition. The doctor says it couldn't be done. Whole thing seems like a nightmare. We had no Christmas of any kind and will have no New Year's either. Jesus, I'm weak. But you've had it. You know what it's like—just saps you.

Wire from Herb [Herbert Kline, the film director] says he'll be up with the film about the tenth, so I'll see you about then. This is just a note. I'm all wrung out.

John

[Los Gatos]
[December 29, 1940]

Dear Max:

Since the secretary is moving and the mail is uncertain, I'll make this report through you. It seems that I had more than the flu. I had pneumonia. They piled me full of one of the sulphanilamide compounds and licked it in two days. That's wonderful stuff. Now I am sitting up and am pretty weak but feeling good.

Will you tell the secretary that there will be a meeting under the old rules between the fifth and the tenth. I'll wire you when I am flying down. And I won't stay at the Garden of Allah. Too many people can find me there. I'll take a small apartment somewhere.

Will you also tell the secretary that the heat is on the mail a little bit and some other arrangements will have to be worked out. Fix that at the next meeting of the club.

The film will be up soon now.

And I think that's all. I'll let you know when I'm coming down.

John

Los Gatos
January 1 [1941]

Dear Pat:

I'm very glad you are all recovered again and I hope no recurrences. Had you any idea what was wrong with you? Happy New Year anyway.

We are still house ridden from the flu but should be able to get out a little tomorrow if the sun shines.

Next week I'll go to Hollywood to do my final work on the Mexican film and then I'll move to Pacific Grove to work on the Gulf book. I'll come up here weekends but must be near the lab for the routine work.

And speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It's as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion—as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn't very pretty. Before the year is over, I think I will be looking back longingly on the Gulf of Lower California—that sea of mirages and timelessness. It is a very magical place.

It is cold and clear here now—the leaves all fallen from the trees and only the frogs are very happy. Great cheering sections of frogs singing all the time. The earth is moist and water is seeping out of the ground everywhere. So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing—that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceeded. Maybe you can find some vague theology that will give you hope. Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that the evil thing wins—it never will—but that it doesn't die. I don't know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn't recognize and probably wouldn't like.