Against Wind and Tide Read online

  While he goes out of the room for a moment, I decide to get into bed fully dressed; I only have a few hours anyway and it isn’t worth dressing and undressing, especially in front of a strange man. I take off my skirt and coat and wrap myself in my raincoat and get into bed.

  My friend returns. Realizing that I am new at a sleeper car, he starts to explain it to me. “Voilà,” he says, opening up the wash-basin with gallant posture. “Now, I will go out and let you get ready for the night.”

  “But I am ready for the night,” I protest. “I shall sleep just like this.”

  “But madame!” His face is a mixture of dismay and hurt feelings. “You cannot sleep like that. You will not be comfortable. It is for that I suggested my sister-in-law coming in here—only she is newly married. I am confused,” he says, pulling at his tie.

  Not nearly as confused as I, my dear young man, I think, drawing my raincoat closer about me. Is he going to insist that I undress?! “Oh, no,” I say, wanting to put him at ease again, “I’m not afraid. I have five children and I’m not very young.”

  “All the more reason,” he says, with real concern, “for your having a comfortable night!” (Goodness. Do I look as old and as unattractive as that? I suppose I do. Maybe the raincoat wasn’t such a good idea.)

  “Ah well, excuse me, madame,” and he holds out his hand to say good night as he starts up the ladder for the upper berth. Before he puts out the light, he calls down “Bonsoir, madame. I have enjoyed our little talk. It is so interesting to get a view of another country.”

  “Bien sûr, Monsieur, bonsoir.”

  Paris

  Sunday, September 7th, 1947

  Dearest C.,

  I am back in Paris. I got back yesterday evening, rather tired after getting up at 5:30 in Berlin, driving in a jeep to Templehof, taking off in an Army plane (European Air Transport—bucket seats—parachutes etc.—no woman allowed on without slacks—I had none so they lent me some!) for Frankfort. Then an hour’s wait for Air France’s plane to Paris.

  I went out alone to supper, with that familiar sunk feeling of coming “home” and finding no one to tell my adventures to. My enormous pile of mail comforted me a great deal (five letters from you!). I took your letters to the restaurant with me—not to read, just to hold in my hand. “Madame is alone?” “Yes, all alone.” It takes a lot of self-restraint, when you feel like that, not to fall into the arms of the first Frenchman who eyes you. Restraint—& also discrimination!

  I guess I really just want you to talk it over with. I have the whole English adventure to go through before I can get home to that understanding. I need to talk to you so badly! Poor C., how are you surviving there in the way of household troubles?

  How right you were about Germany! That is really why I am so exhausted, emotionally and mentally—from the impact of Germany and no one I can talk frankly to about it. The impact of Germany is terrific. Truman* suggested that I get a “human story”—it is impossible. There are too many and it is too universal: the suffering and the tragedy, the need, the hunger, the hopelessness, the fear. The personal is dwarfed by the immensity of the tragedy. Everyone in Germany has a tragic story to tell. You hear too many. Everyone is in desperate need, everyone is near starvation, everyone is worn out with the struggle to survive, everyone is hopeless, everyone is afraid of war—afraid of Russia, afraid of the winter. Everyone looks to America as the last hope, and even here there is great disillusionment and bitterness. “Is it too late?” everyone is asking. There is apathy—hopelessness and a kind of fatalism. “The Allies don’t wish Germany to get on her feet; they could help us but they don’t want to.” “It is the Russian century.” “What is Germany but one big concentration camp today?” “Why don’t the Americans just drop the atom bomb on us and be done with it?” etc., etc.

  What is horrible to see, and what dawns on you before you are long in Germany, is that even without Russian pressure the whole of Europe is sinking down to a level of existence that heretofore one had considered possible only in the East (India, China, etc.). And this is true in every field: physically, mentally, and morally.

  As I said to you in my first letter from Frankfurt—one of the most terrible things about Germany is the glass wall that separates you from the Germans. Germany is no longer a country—it is a colony. The press is equally insulated from Germany. They get superb treatment: press clubs with tons of food, hot water, swimming pools, drinks, transportation, etc., all over Germany. The press clubs are generally run by Army, or retired Army officials—very efficient. The press go off in a body, in cars to the Nuremberg Trials, to Hamburg to see the Exodus shipload of Jews come in to the Leipzig Fair, etc. They sit around when they come back from these mass jaunts and drink and argue far into the night and no one even gets up in the mornings until noon.

  Of course there are exceptions, the quiet hardworking ones you don’t notice so much. The person I liked the best was Gault McGowan, a crusty Scotch Irishman. He was so nice, so honest and independent. He is head of the European staff of the New York Sun, and though rather a rough diamond, a lot more perceptive and less sheep-minded than the rest of them. He won’t live at the press clubs and has a house in Heidelberg, on the river, where he insisted I come on my way back from Baden-Baden. I was so grateful to him for that quiet evening and good talk. We went up the hill to the observatory and looked at the moon through the big Bruce telescope there. Such a relief to be in a city untouched (relatively) by the war and to feel some continuity of intellectual thought—of the old culture of Germany. “This is the only thing that keeps me sane—living out here,” said McGowan (I’m going to read the N.Y. Sun after this!).

  I have rather broken the rules by seeing the Germans and by not asking to meet important people and by not going to all the big news shots. Also by having Germans to the press club.

  It was such a relief to walk the streets of Paris yesterday—to see cigarette butts lying on the street (not quickly snatched up by barefoot children; a cigarette butt is worth money in Germany), to see people with shoes, stockings; to see fat children, fruit in the stands, streets intact, houses standing, roofs on, buses running, people walking arm in arm casually—not hurrying like animals, haunted & hunted.

  France is a country. It has been very ill—it is drawn—it is tired—but it is whole: breathing, living, functioning (and how beautiful life is when it functions!). Germany is no longer a country. It is ill—dying perhaps—struggling to breathe under an iron lung. I feel as if I had just gotten out of that iron lung myself. That weight of fear, panic, misery, hopelessness. Do you remember how we felt when we reached Romania after flying out of Russia? The sense of breathing again—of relief, ease, normal life? Well, I felt like that yesterday afternoon after flying from Berlin. I felt also the French don’t know how beautiful their life is, how easily it can be lost, how near the danger is. (Perhaps they do know how beautiful life is, since they were once “occupied,” but they do not see the new danger; they are thinking in terms of the old one.)

  Everyone should see Berlin—everyone. It is like a city of the dead. It is like some coral colony from which the living organisms have gone. It can only be seen in terms of the sacking of Rome by the barbarians. There is grass growing in the streets of Berlin, grass and pink fireweed on the piles of rubble from collapsed buildings not yet cleared away. The hammer and sickle float over the bronze horses of the Brandenburg Gate and the trees of the Tiergarten have disappeared long ago for firewood. In their place is a wide expanse—like the flats of Flushing: little truck gardens, dumps, shacks of corrugated tin, fences, tin cans, patches of beans, tomatoes. Dominating this vast slum of truck gardens, on the Charlottenburger Chaussee, is an enormous marble-columned semi-circular monument on top of which strides a colossal statue of a Russian Soldier, cloak behind him in the wind of conquest, hand outstretched over the vast ruin of the truck gardens—over destroyed Berlin. A real Russian soldier (human size & living) stands at attention below this great statue day and
night—symbolizing the Russian victory.

  That great black-cloaked figure—like a storm—like a tornado towering over European civilization.

  I hope the Congressmen saw this! But what does it take to see? I don’t know. There are people with eyes to see who don’t see.

  Paris

  Tuesday, September 30th [1947]

  Dearest C.,

  The poems are wonderful (the children’s). They give me such a marvelous inside feeling about them. How different they are. Land’s are vivid—visually—and in action (the Horizon one is best, with the horses coming over the horizon) but not musical. Scott’s are spare, strong, secretive—with a secret and surprising force in them. But Anne’s are the stuff of poetry—musical always, dream-like, a wellspring gushing up: images, music, color, and magic. Magic—she has—so important for poetry. She can spin a spell. I am excited about it.

  I shall try to rest and write on the boat. I am, of course, tired. I am also doubtful of what I can write. I see so well the lacks. But, on the other hand, I know I was right to come. I know what it has done for me. I know it was right and that I can give back some of it.

  Dear Charles—I have been lonely. It has been difficult. I have made mistakes and yet it has been one of the big things in my life. Of all the things you have given me in life, and you have given me so much, perhaps this is one of the biggest: your sending me out on this mission alone (for I should not have done it if you had not pushed me a little and told me I could do it!).

  I am grateful to you for it. You are always giving me life, life itself. May I make something of it! Bless you.

  Scott’s Cove, Darien

  December 18th, 1947

  Dearest C.,

  You have been gone just over a week and it feels like a month. I realize I have been delaying to write you until I should have something to report—on the writing end. Because I really have nothing very tangible, this fills me with a kind of panic, a negligent pupil, a bad-girl guilt. I want so much for you to think me “a good girl.” It is my great weakness: I would rather have you think me “a good girl” than be right myself, or than to have anyone else think me a good girl. And I am afraid you will not. All the time I feel like a bad girl—that I am not living up to your idea of a good girl.

  I felt this very strongly when I got your letter from Chicago. In fact it really upset me, though I don’t believe in the least you meant to. It struck me with the pressure of a fire-hose, though you did not mean it that way. I cannot work well under pressure—and I feel as if I have been under pressure for about six months.

  I feel like explaining to you quite honestly (as if you were here—oh, if only you were here) the metamorphosis I am going through and what I have been thinking out. After you left—and I got back the pieces from Wallace*—I felt an extreme nausea about writing, especially that kind of writing. It seemed to me that I had been writing with blinders on, or trying to run with shackles on my ankles, ever since I got back. And that even during the trip I had had those blinders on: of “Writing for the Digest.” Now they don’t want any more, but it is a little hard to throw the blinders away. It is hard to start all over again and this is what I must do. I must look at all my material again—with no blinders at all. And no magazine at all and no circulation at all in mind. Just look at it. And see what there is and let something spring from it.

  I feel a hunger now—a real hunger—for letting the pool still itself and seeing the reflections. I feel a hunger for the kind of writing that I feel is truly mine: observation plus reflection. I believe this hunger is good and must be followed regardless of time, circulation, crisis, etc., because it is not just the luxury of an artist, it is the law of the date tree: you must not try to give coconuts if you are a date tree. You must not give in order to do good, or to benefit mankind, or to reap praise or reward, but only because it is your nature to give forth dates. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of anyone who follows this law with as much integrity as you do. It is incredible how you cleave to it, even when I often sneakingly wish you wouldn’t—when I can see you in other roles. But you always know—unnervingly.

  I am not like this. I get pulled off—by people generally, by wanting to excel in all fields! By wanting to live up to other people’s standards, to be thought “a good girl” when I do sit still and listen to my own law. I also have power—not the same kind as you—but a power and rightness and clarity of my own which you are the first to recognize.

  Did I have anything more to say on Europe? I wasn’t sure. I felt my ideas had been crippled by trying too hard to write for the Digest and that it was now a dead experience. Only one clear idea came to me and that was a conviction that what I wanted to say was on a scale above the struggle between Communism–Democracy.

  The next day I got your letter and I felt chiefly upset by it. (You didn’t mean to do this—I have reread the letter now I am steadier and feel sure I took it wrong.) The still pool was ruffled by a fifty-mile-an-hour gale. I must do something fast. I must have something to show C. I must hurry. Time is short. The hound was at me again. Hurry—Hurry—Hurry!

  No, I began to realize, I mustn’t hurry. If I try to force something this month, it will be soulless. In a sense, I feel—rereading my notes, diaries, etc.—the time for timid articles is past. (Perhaps Wallace knows this.) All those facts and notes are not what is important now to say. They are ephemeral. One must start on the timeless. And from the whirlwind of your letter I remembered one still place. And it had struck a chord in me, because I had come to the same conclusion. And I felt—this is the important part of the letter.

  I think I can make an informal piece which still has a kind of pattern and says something too, in the reflections—something critical and questioning—but which doesn’t preach. I think this is the thing I do best.

  I realize, after my week of reflection, certain things about my writing:

  I. That I do the indirect thing best and that this is my sort of writing. I like to suggest, to say “Here it is,” not “I love,” or “I hate,” or even “This is true,” “This is false,” or “This is good,” “This is bad.” I don’t think the Digest people particularly like or understand this sort of thing. And I don’t think you completely approve. It is not trivial but it is not direct. Perhaps you will say: there isn’t time to be indirect.

  The only answer to this is that you must always take time to be yourself; otherwise the time is completely wasted. You can say, and I frequently do, I am not right for my time. I am not the kind of voice or the kind of writing that is needed. Then you must be quiet. You cannot speak with any voice except your own. If you can’t do that, be quiet.

  II. I also realize again that my constructive or creative periods come in waves and that there are definitive troughs, depending on the energy spent, etc. I don’t think the work done in the trough, or against the tide, is any good—or you wear yourself out, like swimming against an undertow. I think I made that mistake on the boat. I should have just gone to sleep in a deck chair instead of sitting at my desk in the cabin producing nothing. If I had sat in a deck chair, letting the ideas turn over in the deep well—but not forcing them—and resting, relaxing, then I think I should have been much fresher to work that two weeks at home. And what is more, I believe the seeds would have been further along left to themselves for that ten days. So much of creation (how much?!) is in the dark. I believe I am in some such period now. And I allowed myself, stupidly, to be panicked by your letter (as I let myself be panicked on the boat by the thought of a Reader’s Digest deadline) when I was still in the deep-well period.

  I think the deep-well period needs some studying. It needs diversion and getting out—refreshment but not distraction, not dispersal of forces. There is no use freeing yourself from the pressure of deadlines and submitting yourself to the pressure of Christmas shopping or late nights.

  It is possible, of course, to do another thing about Christmas and sometime I would love to do it. This is to get out of the st
ream. All of us as a family go off alone—to a log cabin in the snow and make our own Christmas there. It would be simple. It would be quiet and no one would contribute to it or enter it but ourselves. But it can’t, I believe, be done in Darien.

  I have spent the whole day writing you and lots of other hours thinking it out. But it has helped me. How I wish you were here and we could have talked. As I reread your letter now, now I am stronger about my own convictions, I find it gives me an entirely different impression. I really believe everything you say in it and it is very beautiful. It has also great power. This I felt and interpreted wrongly as pressure. You have so much power. When you concentrate it like that in strong writing, the result really is a fire-hose.

  I am going to take this to the post office. I am very doubtful of its reaching San Francisco in time to catch you with the moved-up schedule but I was not clear enough to write it ahead of this.

  The children have mild colds. Land has had earaches but no temperature, which Dr. S.* with his usual facility has diagnosed as a strep infection and prescribed sulfa for. Land is in bed, gay as a lark and very un-sick-looking and -sounding. Radio on. Also practicing on his guitar and making Christmas cards. He should be up Sat. or Sun.

  Reeve still asks for you. “When is Father coming back?” And “Where is all the family?” she asked one day at lunch. Scott was an angel in the Christmas play, in a white robe and pink wings. His star got broken. “How?” I asked him. “I was walking vewy quietly and John was walking vewy fast.” Anne was a German Frau in the Christmas play. (They did Christmas in many lands!) She looked charming in a black velvet bodice and full skirt, her two gold braids hanging down. They sang “O Tannenbaum.” Another girl wore her Swedish costume. I wondered why Anne was made German instead of Swedish?! But I think it was accidental.

  Jon is busy making presents for the children in the toolshed. I don’t know what, but it pleases me. He can make anything—and this is a real Christmas thing to do, to give gifts you make with joy. Mrs. Hepner* made us a lovely wreath for the door. Same kind of gift. One should give from one’s own gift. That would be the truest kind of Christmas. In that sense, perhaps I should write. But not, I mean, articles—write my warm thoughts to people, not conventionally, but what I feel. I should touch them that way, not by giving bought presents. I have not done much buying and shopping this year. The shops are horrible—nauseating.