The Journals of John Cheever (Vintage International) (16 page)

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I am a solitary drunkard. I take a little painkiller before lunch but I don’t really get to work until late afternoon. At four or half past four or sometimes five I stir up a Martini, thinking that a great many men who can’t write as well as I can will already have set themselves down at bar stools. After half a glass of gin I decide that I must get a divorce—and, to tell the truth, Mary is depressed, although my addiction to gin may have something to do with her low spirits. The gin flows freely until supper and so do my memories of the most difficult passages in our marriage; and I think of all the letters I have received from literary ladies implying that my experience with the sex must have been unnaturally difficult and that I deserve better. How right they are, I think. I am deserving of much better. I am sweet and good-humored and I deserve a lovely and an intelligent wife. The fact that my marriage is subject to excessive scrutiny does not occur to me. The fact that other women I know have their intractable passages does not cross my mind. I am deserving. I should have something better. So the gin flows, and after supper the whiskey. I am even a little sly, keeping my glass on the floor where it might not be seen. Mary does not want to speak to me, to be sure. Her looks are dark and impatient. I rustle up a glossary of little jokes to prove the sweetness of my disposition, but she does not laugh. She does not even listen. She does not want to be in the same room with me. She would sooner stand out in the rain. I realize I have gone through this a hundred times before. Not my sources of patience, but my whole point of view seems to have undergone some change. I make another drink and try to read Italian but I am too drunk to make much progress; I doze on the sofa and then go to bed. In the morning
I am nauseated. My head aches. A rat has been in the house during the night and eaten the fruit on the table. It is humid and overcast as many of the days have been this year.

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I drink whiskey before lunch; take Federico for a walk. There is a shower again but hardly enough to darken the walk. It is a terrible day, painful weather. Mary seems to make an effort to end the tension between us and I am very willing. But it comes to nothing over the issue of dishwashing. I am not to wash the dishes; I am to take care of the baby. I think it would be better if I washed the dishes and she took care of the baby. So I take care of the baby and the baby screams and she must leave the dishpan and I say, “We must talk; we must talk. This is unbearable. I have thought of writing you a letter.”

“Write me a letter,” she says, laughing, and the situation is hopeless. But there is no place where we can talk without being overheard by the children. But I decide then, and later at three in the morning, that I will make three points, (1) She must admit that she is the victim of capricious depressions and do something about this. (2) I will not drive her to New Hampshire. It will be good for her to make the trip alone and to spend some time with her father. (3) If she continues to complain about the house and long for other houses she should look for some modest rental where she can live alone with the children. But then at half past three there is a heavy shower of rain; the wind changes its quarter, one needs a blanket, and suddenly I am happy, well-disposed, cheerful. At perhaps the same moment the great rat, the monster, puts his head into the trap and his neck is broken in two. In the fresh light of morning all my resolves have gone like smoke. I will not mention the depressions; I will drive her to New Hampshire; we will look at a farmhouse this afternoon.

Sometimes, in my hankerings, I feel as if I had sold my parts to the devil. How can one imagine such indecencies without such a bargain having been made?

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We start early on Tuesday for New Hampshire. Since my relations with Mary have not been good, I have thought of her parents with less and less friendliness, less and less love. We are on parkways most o
the distance. I do not see much of this country I love. The car overheats and we must stop. I must seem rather tough to my son. The car overheats and we have to keep stopping. I have a muscular pain in my back but I interpret this as an infected kidney that will have to be removed before evening. It is foolish; and it is painful. We stop at the boathouse for a swim. The water is fresh and cold and limpid, but lifeless compared to the sea. There are the mountains, the pines, and I feel for a second the poignancy, the virile poignancy of this place. The wind sound in the pines; this endless noise of passing silk. There is some ease here in this fine air, some suspense of haste. At the stone house we are met by P. and W. He opens at once with a broad attack on
The New Yorker
. She has some gossip about Philadelphia. They talk loudly and at cross-purposes and when her back is turned he makes a face at her and says she is a stupid bitch. We have a drink and then go on to Ben’s camp. I am too tired and have drunk too much to feel very strongly or to see very clearly the place where we are leaving him. I love him but he seems not quite ready to love me. Back at the house the loud, cross-purposes conversation continues. He does not answer her most civil questions. He leaves the room in the middle of her remarks; and so we go to bed in a fragrant, homely room where we have been very happy wrapped in the silky sound of the wind passing, streaming through the pines. But I discharge my conjugal responsibilities poorly, and meaning, at dawn, to make amends, I am rebuffed. I dress and go up the hill and make a pot of coffee. It is half past five. The air is very light and fragrant. It smells of flowers and hay. I have never known anywhere, especially not in the Italian hill towns, such a fine air. It is a summer place where a family has come of age. They are not, in my opinion, an especially fragrant family, but at this hour the fragrance of their lives seems to cling to the matchboard, which is fragrant with time. Here are the family photographs, the tastes, a detail from the Sistine Chapel; a picture of Mary and the other children, all of them but Mary bursting their best clothes. The sun has still not risen, and in this still and lovely hour I feel tenderly for all these people whose youth seems centered in these rooms.

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My first feelings about the Kerouac book were: that it was not good; that most of its accents or effects were derived from some of the real
explorers, like Saul; and that the apocalyptic imagery was not good enough—was never lighted by true talent, or deep feeling, vision. It pleased me to catch him at a disadvantage, to sum up the facts, which could reflect on my lack of innocence. Here is a man of thirty who lives with his hard-working mother, cooks supper for her when she gets home from the store, has a shabby affair with a poor Negress—who knows so little about herself that she is easy prey—wrestles, very suspiciously, with his pals, weeps in a train yard where his mother’s image appears to him, discovers that he is deceived, and writes a book. The style has the advantages, to make a rough comparison, of abstract painting. When we give up lucidity we have, from time to time, the power of broader associations. Life is chaotic, and so we can state this in chaotic terms. In trying to catch him at a disadvantage, I find him vulgar, meaning perhaps unsophisticated—his sexual identity, his prowess, is not much. He is a writer and wants to be a famous writer, a rich writer, and a successful writer, but the question of excellence never seems to cross his mind. The question of the greatest depth of feeling, of speaking with the greatest urgency. My life is very different from what he describes. There is almost no point where our emotions and affairs correspond. I am most deeply and continuously involved in the love of my wife and my children. It is my passion to present to my children the opportunity of life. That this love, this passion, has not reformed my nature is well known. But there is some wonderful seriousness to the business of living, and one is not exempted by being a poet. You have to take some precautions with your health. You have to manage your money intelligently and respect your emotional obligations. There is another world—I see this—there is chaos, and we are suspended above it by a thread. But the thread holds. People who seek, who are driven to seek, love in urinals, do not deserve the best of our attention. They will be forgiven, and, anyhow, sometimes they are not seeking love; they are seeking a means to express their hatred and suspicion of the world. Sometimes.

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If we do not imagine the future how can we believe it to exist? I think now that in a year or two the atmosphere will recuperate, the damage will be repaired, and we will walk in the clear light of day again. But I have never been so deeply conscious of chaos, as if we were i
the act of falling from some atmospheric and moral orbit, as if the sweet seriousness of life were in great danger.

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In town, and pleased to have this contest suspended for a day. At 11
A.M.
on the corner of Park Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street a tart gives me the eye. I am alarmed, excited, astonished, etc., as we pass, but when we have passed my mind continues along at her side, climbs the stairs, waits while she turns the key in the lock and performs with copious and revolting detail the whole shabby encounter. This seems to me unclean, unmanly, and I protest, and there you have it, the mind climbing the stairs as the conscience calls it back and both of them powerless to change one another’s ways. At the next corner I see a head of light-brown hair and that love of the future that is excited by my children leaps up in me like an illumination and I am refreshed by those sentiments that cool our blood. What fine things I will do for them. What tall things I will build. But the independence with which my imagination pursues the tart seems to reflect on the seriousness of my wish to lead a worthy and a cleanly life.

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We climb Cardigan. I am short-winded. There are clouds, and from the summit we see their shadows—continents, with neighboring islands, moving over the hills. The air has a perfect lightness, perfect for carrying the smell of pine, moss, the delphinium that grows by the ranger’s cabin. The granite down Firescrew still has the rush and flow of lava. I climb down slowly, relaxed from the trip up, sniffing the woods, admiring the moss with its second growth of red hair, microscopic flowers. The stone bed of the lowest stream is paved with moss. I remember coming down another mountain two years ago, my mind as lame as my legs, as lewd to boot, and hearing suddenly the noise of water pouring over stone and seeing it in my mind all green and golden in the pools, as it truly is in these streams; pouring, pouring, pouring, pouring, as sweet as the sounds of wine, oh, much sweeter, this pouring noise.

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Waiting in the police station to pay a parking ticket, I hear on the radio that a middle-aged man, slight build, five feet seven, brown hai,
is wanted for open lewdness. He unzipped his trousers at the corner of Elm Avenue and Chestnut Street and did the same thing twenty minutes later in front of the A. & P. He is driving a yellow convertible but the license number and the make of the car are unknown. A five-state alarm is out; and where can he be? Reading “Tommy Titmouse” to his children. Hiding in a garage, or a movie theatre. Drinking in a bar. I pray for him, among others, in church. It is a rainy Sunday and the smell of pew cushions is dense. One can hardly hear the priest, the noise of rainspouts is so loud. I seem to be back at the farm, a happy child, sitting on burlap cushions and hearing rainspouts. For a second the recollection is so vivid, so full, it is like the rush of memory brought on by a mouthful of hot pudding. I reproach myself. I reproach myself for reproaching myself. I contemplate the quality of introspection in church. I think that faced with the mystery and passion of life we are forced into a position of humility that is best expressed in the attitudes of prayer. I think of the mystery and passion of life. In front of me or behind me is a wayward youth and I brood on his problems. He seems, out of the corner of my eye, thoroughly depraved. I read the Sunday paper.

   Walk with Federico at four. We see the sun setting when we come up by the rise above the river. A tawny light burns on the lower windows of the M.s’ house, empty now for two years, a haunted house for children, a point of adventure for boys, a headache for the police department—and yet for a moment it seems that fires and lamps burn in the drawing room, the smell of cooking rises up the back stairs, order and love reign here; it seems for the moment that the sun lights the lower windows.

The grass is beginning to yellow; it has a yellowish look in the last of the light. The ground is still covered with cut-leaf maples. Federico sees the moon for the first time and is enchanted. He points at it, and I tell him the word in English. “Moona,” he says, “moona, mia moona,” and when we lose it behind a tree or at a turn in the path he says, “Ciao, moon, ciao,” and is surprised and pleased to find at another turning that the light still hangs in the sky. Mary is covering roses in the garden, and he shows the light to her. In the house, he drags a chair to the window and stands on it to see the light.

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How the world shines with light.

I dream of a better prose style, freed of expedients, more thoughtful, working closer to the emotions by both direction and indirection, feeling and intelligence. A pleasant dream, and I feel like myself.

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But my brother, now, what will become of him? There seems to be no way of appealing to him; he seems to be blundering impatiently toward his grave. And what about the children? S., whose beauty was refined and sweet, has dyed her hair an orangy yellow that makes her features seem sharp. But will he, in his blundering, be able to give her the support she needs?

   We cannot cope alone with the devil; we cannot cleanse our hearts and minds by our own devices. When we sin, and I have sinned—I have indulged lewd fancies and read the writing on the public wall—it is not our own flesh and blood that we seem to disfigure or our chances at immortality that we seem to damage, but the whole picture of life, shining or dark as the case may be, seems to have been offended by our lapse.

   Heaven may be no more than the tender memories of our friends and lovers; some ghostly reappearance that we make, touching on courage and humor.