Zelda (27 page)

Zelda

In a postscript she added:

Please write immediately to Paris about the dancing. I would do it but I think the report will be more accurate if it goes to you—just an opinion as to what value my work is and to what point I could develop it before it is too late. Of cource, I would go to another school as I know Egorowa would not want to be bothered with me— Thanks.

Dr. Forel was absolutely certain that the way to Zelda’s recovery did not lie in further dancing, and he too thought that Scott should write to Egorova. But he suggested that Fitzgerald make clear to her their preference that in her answer she discourage Zelda, even if it was a gross deception. Zelda, Forel decided, had to be made to realize that
dancing was not her vocation. She wanted to begin working again, but in Forel’s opinion it was medical treatment that she urgently needed rather than more dancing. The weekend before, Zelda had gone out with her nurse and tried to run away. It was only with the assistance of several nurses that she was brought back to Prangins and he found it necessary to transfer her to the Villa Eglantine, where patients were placed under restriction. It was a severe blow to both Zelda’s and Scott’s hopes for her rapid recovery.

Scott did write to Egorova, but he could not bring himself to suggest to her that they deceive Zelda about her potential as a ballerina. He asked very specifically, however, just what her abilities were in comparison with the professionals in Mme. Egorova’s studio. Egorova did not equivocate. She wrote that Zelda had started dancing too late to become a dancer of the first rank; she could, however, become a good dancer; she could dance with success important roles in the Ballet Massine in New York. But among Madame’s pupils there were many who were superior to her and who would always be. She would never equal stars such as Nemtchinova. For Zelda, Egorova’s judgment (when and if she learned of it) would be a crushing blow, but to Scott and Dr. Forel it was far more positive than they had anticipated.

Zelda, meanwhile, in an effort to understand her own condition, began writing letters to Scott that were a recapitulation of their life together. She had no idea that she would remain at Prangins under treatment for the next fifteen months. And these letters to Scott, whom she was allowed to see only once every few weeks, had a voice and tone of their own. They were unlike anything she had written during the course of their marriage; strangely enough, they were perhaps most like the candid letters she had written to him during the period of separation in their courtship during the spring of 1919— but without the girlishness, without the absolute self-confidence. They permit access to the terrain of her anguish.

Every day it seems to me that things are more barren and sterile and hopeless— In Paris, before I realized that I was sick, there was a new signifigance to everything: stations and streets and façades of buildings—colors were infinite, part of the air, and not restricted by the lines that encompassed them and lines were free of the masses they held. There was music that beat behind my forehead and other music that fell into my stomach from a high parabola and there was some of Schumann that was still and tender and the sadness of Chopin Mazurkas— Some of them
sound as if he thought that he couldn’t compose them—and there was the madness of turning, turning, turning through the deciciveness of Litz. Then the world became embryonic in Africa—and there was no need for communication. The Arabs fermenting in the vastness; the curious quality of their eyes and the smell of ants; a detachment as if I was on the other side of a black gauze—a fearless small feeling, and then the end at Easter— But even that was better than the childish, vacillating shell that I am now. I am so afraid that when you come and find there is nothing left but disorder and vacuum that you will be horror-struck. I don’t seem to know anything appropriate for a person of thirty: I suppose it’s because of draining myself so thoroughly, straining so completely every fibre in that futile attempt to achieve with every factor against me— Do you mind my writing this way? Don’t be afraid that I am a meglo-maniac again— I’m just searching and it’s easier with you—

You’ll have to re-educate me— But you used to like giving me books and telling me things. I never realized before how hideously dependent on you I was— Dr. Forel says I won’t be after. If I can have a clear intelligence I’m sure we can use it— I hope I will be different [. I?] must have been an awful bore for you.

Why do you never write me what you are doing and what you think and how it feels to be alone—

There were also letters that were accusing, sometimes incoherent, plaintive, questioning, violent, and loving. It was at great cost and pain that Zelda admitted her illness, admitted her own need for psychiatric help. And her recapitulation, although often a line of defense, was never that alone. She faced her madness and by way of explaining it to herself tried to express it to Scott. What she could not fully grasp was the extent of her damage or her own part in it.

Dear Scott:

There is no use my trying to write to you because if I write one thing one day I think another immediately afterwards. I would like to see you. I don’t know why I have constantly a presetiment of disaster. It seems to me cruel that you cannot explain to me what is the matter since you will not accept my explanation. As you know, I am a person, or was, of some capabality even if on a small scale and if I could once grasp the situation I would be much better able to handle it. Under existing conditions, I simply grovel about in the dark and since I can not concentrate either to read or write there does not seem to be any way to escape. I do not want to lose my mind. Twice horrible things have happened to me through my inability to express myself: once peritonitis
^*
that left me an
invalid for two years and now this thing. Won’t you please come to see me, since at least you know me and you could see, maybe, some assurance to give me that would counteract the abuse you piled on me at Lausanne when I was so sick. At any rate one thing has been achieved: I am thoroughly and completely humiliated and broken if that was what you wanted. There are some things 1 want to tell you.

Zelda

Dear Scott:

To recapitulate: as you know, I went of my own will to the clinic in Paris to cure myself. You also know that I left (with the consent of Proffessor Claude) knowing that I was not entirely well because I could see no use in jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, which is what was about to happen, or so I thought. I also went, practically voluntarily but under enormous pressure to Valmont with the sole idea of getting back enough strenghth and health to continue my work in America as you had promised me. There, my head began to go wrong … During all this time you, knowing everything about me, since in all this dreary story I have never tried to conceal the slightest detail from you, but have on the contrary urged you to manifest some interest in what I was doing, never saw fit
to
either guide or enlighten me. To me, it is not astonishing that I should look on you with unfriendly eyes. … if you had explained to me what was happening the night we had dinner with John Bishop and went to the fair afterwards which left me in hysterics. The obligation is, after all, with the people who understand, and the blind, of necessity, must be led. I offer you this explanation because I know 1 owe you one and because it is like this that I began this abominable affair.

My attitude towards Egorowa has always been one of an intense love: I wanted to help her some way because she is a good woman who has worked hard and has nothing, or lost everything. I wanted to dance well so that she would be proud of me and have another instrument for the symbols of beauty that passed in her head that I understood, though apparently could not execute. I wanted to be first in the studio so that it would be me that she could count on to understand what she gave out in words and of cource I wanted to be near her because she was cool and white and beautiful. … at home there was an incessant babbling it seemed to me and you either drinking or complaining because you had been. You blamed me when the servants were bad, and expected me to instill into them a proper respect for a man that they saw morning after morning asleep in his clothes, who very often came home in the early morning, who could not sit, even, at the table. Anyhow, none of those things matter. I quite realize that you have done the best you can and I would like you to try to realize that so have I, in all the disorder. I do not know what is going to happen, but since I am in the hands of Doctor
Forel and they are a great deal more powerful than yours or mine, it will probably be for the best. I want to work at something, but I can’t seem to get well enough to be of any use in the world. That’s not all, but the rest is too complicated for me now. Please send me Egorowa’s letter—

Zelda

Knowing how defeated she would feel by Egorova’s letter, Scott suggested that Dr. Forel use caution in showing her the reply: “Poor girl, I am afraid it will be taking away from her what appears to her as her last
refuge.”

By mid-June Zelda had developed a severe eczema that covered her face, neck, and shoulders. It came on the heels of a visit from her daughter, when Zelda had made a valiant effort to appear normal so that Scottie would see none of the traces of her illness. The strain was too great. Zelda had suffered from eczema before, but always for brief periods of time, and at those times it had been thought that the skin irritation was due to drugs she had been taking. This time there was an obvious psychological link, and the eczema was virulent and painful. None of the medicines tried at Prangins were effective against it. For the rest of July, all of August, and early September Zelda suffered its debilitating pain, which Scott was later to make use of in
Tender Is the Night
, where he wrote:

On her admittance she had been exceptionally pretty—now she was a living agonizing sore. All blood tests had failed to give a positive reaction and the trouble was unsatisfactorily catalogued as nervous eczema. For two months she had lain under it, as imprisoned as in the Iron Maiden. She was coherent, even brilliant, within the limits of her special hallucinations.

Zelda wrote to Scott, at the onset of the affliction:

Please, out of charity write to Dr. Forel to let me off this cure…. For a month and a week I’ve lived in my room under bandages, my head and neck on fire. I haven’t slept in weeks. The last two days I’ve had bromides and morphine but it doesn’t do any good.— All because nobody ever taught me to play tennis. When I’m most miserable there’s your game to think of. If you could see how awful this is you would write lots more stories, light ones to laugh about. I want to get well but I can’t it seems to me, and if I should whats going to take away the thing in my head that sees so clearly into the past and into dozens of things that I can never forget. Dancing has gone and I’m weak and feeble and I can’t understand
why I should be the one, amongst all the others, to have to bear all this—for what? …

I can’t read or sleep. Without hope or youth or money I sit constantly wishing I were dead.

Mamma does know whats the matter with me. She wrote me she did. You can put that in your story to lend it pathos. Bitched once more.

Dear Scott:

The panic seems to have settled into a persistent gloom punctuated by moments of bombastic hysteria, which is, I suppose a relatively wholesome state. Though I would have chosen some other accompaniment for my desequilibrium than this foul eczema, still … I am waiting impatiently for when you can come to see me if you will— Do you still smell of pencils and sometimes of tweed?

Yesterday I had some gramophone discs that reminded me of Ellerslie. I wonder why we have never been very happy and why all this has happenned— It was much nicer a long time ago when we had each other and the space about the world was warm— Can’t we get it back someway—even by imagining?

The book came—thanks awfully—

Dear, I will be so glad to see you—

Sometimes, it’s desperate to be so alone—and you can’t be very happy in a hotel room—we were awfully used to having each other about—

Zelda

Dr. Forel told me to ask you if you had stopped drinking—so I ask—

In early fall Scott wrote Maxwell Perkins from Geneva, where he was living: “Zelda is almost well. The doctor says she can never drink again (not that drink in any way contributed to her collapse), and that I must not drink anything, not even wine, for a year, because drinking in the past was one of the things that haunted her in her delirium.” Scott not only exaggerated the rate of Zelda’s improvement, but he was also unable to admit the hold that alcohol had over him. However, in a letter written to Dr. Forel that summer, he stated that he could not give up all drinking permanently. Although he was as trapped in alcoholism as Zelda was in her madness and eczema, he avoided coming to terms with it by placing the blame on Zelda.

Dr. Forel …

When I last saw you I was almost as broken as my wife by months of horror. The only important thing in my life was that she should be saved from madness or death. Now that, due to your tireless intelligence and interest, there is a time in sight where Zelda and I may renew our
life together on a decent basis, a thing which I desire with all my heart, there [are] other considerations due to my nessessities as a worker and to my very existence that I must put before you.

During my young manhood for seven years I worked extremely hard, in six years bringing myself by tireless literary self discipline to a position of unquestioned preeminence among younger American writers; also by additional “hack-work” for the cinema ect. I gave my wife a comfortable and luxurious life such as few European writers ever achieve. My work is done on coffee, coffee and more coffee, never on alcohol. At the end of five or six hours I get up from my desk white and trembling and with a steady burn in my stomach, to go to dinner. Doubtless a certain irritability developed in those years, an inability to be gay, which my wife—who had never tried to use her talents and intelligence—was not inclined to condone. It was on our coming to Europe in 1924 and upon her urging that I began to look forward to wine at dinner—she took it at lunch, I did not. We went on hard drinking parties together sometimes but the regular use of wine and apperatives was something that I dreaded but she encouraged because she found I was more cheerful then and allowed her to drink more. The ballet idea was something I inaugurated in 1927 to stop her idle drinking after she had already so lost herself in it as to make suicidal attempts. Since then I have drunk more, from unhappiness, and she less, because of her physical work—that is another story.