By Christopher Isherwood 6 страница. When they look at its registration slip and find that it belongs to someone else, Rick swears that that's his real name; he changed it when he started acting

 

When they look at its registration slip and find that it belongs to someone else, Rick swears that that's his real name; he changed it when he started acting. The kids absolutely disbelieve him, but they yell that he's a liar and crazy and they beat on him with their fists. While they do this, Rick capers grinning around the gym on all fours, like a dog.

 

George lies down on one of the inclined boards in order to do sit-ups.

This is always something you have to think yourself into; the body dislikes them more than tiny other exercise. While he is getting into the mood, Webster comes over and lies down on the board next to his. Webster is maybe twelve or thirteen, slender and graceful and tall for his age, with long smooth golden boy-legs. He is gentle and shy, and he moves about the gym in a kind of dream; but he keeps steadily on with his workout. No doubt he thinks he looks scrawny mid has vowed to become a huge wide awkward overloaded muscle man. George says, "Hi, Web," and Webster answers, "Hi, George," in a shy, secretive whisper.

 

Now Webster begins doing his sit-ups, and George, peeling off his tee shirt on a sudden impulse, follows his example. As they continue, George feels an empathy growing between them. They are not competing with each other; but Webster's youth and litheness seem to possess George, and this 55

 

 

borrowed energy is terrific. Withdrawing his attention from his own protesting muscles and concentrating it upon Webster's flexing and relaxing body, George draws the strength from it to go on beyond his normal forty sit-ups, to fifty, to sixty, to seventy, to eighty. Shall he try for a hundred?

Then, all lit once, he is aware that Webster has stopped. The strength leaves him instantly. He stops too, panting hard--though not any harder than Webster himself. They lie there panting, side by side. Webster turns his head and looks at George, obviously rather impressed.

 

"How many do you do?" he asks.

 

"Oh--it depends."

 

"These things just kill me. Man!"

 

How delightful it is to be here. If only one could spend one's entire life in this state of easygoing physical democracy. Nobody is bitchy here, or ill-tempered, or inquisitive. Vanity, including the most outrageous posings in front of the mirrors, is taken for granted. The godlike young baseball player confides to all his anxiety about the smallness of his ankles. The plump banker, rubbing his face with skin cream, says simply, "I can't afford to get old." No one is perfect and no one pretends to be. Even the half-dozen quite well-known actors put on no airs. The youngest kids sit innocently naked beside sixty- and seventy-year-olds in the steam room, and they call each other by their first names. Nobody is too hideous or too handsome to be accepted as an equal. Surely everyone is nicer in this place than he is outside it?

 

Today George feels more than usually unwilling to leave the gym. He does his exercises twice as many times as he is supposed to; he spends a long while in the steam room; he washes his hair.

 

WHEN he comes out onto the street again, it is already getting toward sunset. And now he makes another impulsive decision: instead of driving directly kick to the beach, he will take a long detour through the hills.

 

Why? Partly because he wants to enjoy the uncomplicated relaxed happy mood which is nearly always induced by a workout at the gym. It is so good to feel the body's satisfaction and gratitude; no matter how much it may protest, it likes being forced to perform these tasks. Now, for a while at least, the vagus nerve won't twitch, the pylorus will be quiet, the arthritic thumbs and knee won't assert themselves. And how restful, now that there's no need for stimulants, not to have to hate anyone at all! George hopes to be able to stay in this mood as long as he keeps on driving.

 

Also, he wants to take a look at the hills again; he hasn't been up there in a long time. Years ago, before him even, when George first came to California, he used to go into the hills often. It was the wildness of his range, largely uninhabited yet rising right up out n1 the city, that fascinated him.

He felt the thrill of being a foreigner, a trespasser there, of venturing into the midst of a primitive, alien nature. He would drive up at sunset or very early in the morning, park his car, and wander off along the firebreak trails, catching glimpses of deer moving deep in the chaparral of a canyon, stopping to watch a hawk circling overhead, stepping carefully among hairy tarantulas crawling across his path, following twisty tracks in the sand until he came upon a coiled dozing rattler.

 

Sometimes, in the half-light of dawn, he would meet a pack of coyotes trotting toward him, tails down, in single file. The first time this happened he took them for dogs; and then, suddenly, without uttering a sound, they broke formation and went bounding away downhill, with great uncanny jumps.

 

But this afternoon George can feel nothing of that long-ago excitement and awe; something is wrong from the start. The steep, winding road, which used to seem romantic, is merely awkward now, and dangerous.

He keeps meeting other cars on blind corners and having to swerve sharply.

By the time he has reached the top, he has lost all sense of relaxation. Even up here they are building dozens of new houses. The area is getting suburban. True, there are still a few uninhabited canyons, but George can't rejoice in them; he is oppressed by awareness of the city below. On both sides of the hills, to the north and to the south, it has spawned and spread itself over the entire plain. It has eaten up the wide pastures and ranchlands and the last stretches of orange grove; it has sucked out the surrounding lakes and sapped the forests of the high mountains. Soon it will be drinking converted sea water. And yet it will die. No need for rockets to wreck it, or another ice age to freeze it, or a huge earthquake to crack it off and dump it in the Pacific. It will die of overextension. It will die because its taproots have dried up--the brashness and greed which have been its only strength.

And the desert, which is the natural condition of this country, will return.

 

Alas, how sadly, how certainly George knows this! He stops the car and stands at the road's rough yellow dirt edge, beside a manzanita bush, and looks out over Los Angeles like a sad Jewish prophet of doom, as he takes a leak. Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city. But this city is not great, was never great, and has nearly no distance to fall.

 

Now he zips up his pants and gets into the car and drives on, thoroughly depressed. The clouds close in low upon the hills, making them seem northern and sad like Wales; and the day wanes, and the lights snap on 57

 

 

in their sham jewel colors all over the plain, as the road winds down again on to Sunset Boulevard and he nears the ocean.

 

THE supermarket is still open; it won't close till midnight. It is brilliantly bright. Its brightness offers sanctuary. from loneliness and the dark. You could spend hours of your life here, in a state of suspended insecurity, meditating on 'the multiplicity of things to eat. Oh dear, there is so much! So many brands in shiny boxes, all of them promising you good appetite. Every article on the shelves cries out to you, Take me, take me; and the mere competition of their appeals can make you imagine yourself wanted, even loved. But beware--when you get back to your empty room, you'll find that the false flattering elf of the advertisement has eluded you; what remains is only cardboard, cellophane and food. And you have lost the heart to be hungry.

 

This bright place isn't really a sanctuary. For, ambushed among its bottles and cartons and cans, are shockingly vivid memories of meals shopped for, cooked, eaten with Jim. They stab out at George as he passes, pushing his shopping cart. Should we ever feel truly lonely if we never ate alone?

 

But to say, I won't eat alone tonight--isn't that deadly dangerous? Isn't it the start of a long landslide--from eating at counters and drinking at bars to drinking at home without eating, to despair and sleeping pills and the inevitable final overdose? But who says I have to be brave? George asks.

Who depends on me now? Who cares?

 

We're getting maudlin, he says, trying to make his will choose between halibut, sea bass, chopped sirloin, steaks. He feels a nausea of distaste for them all; then sudden rage. Damn all food. Damn all life. He would like to abandon his shopping cart, although it's already full of provisions. But that would make extra work for the clerks, and one of them is cute. The alternative, to put the whole lot back in the proper places himself, seems like a labor of Hercules; for the overpowering sloth of sadness is upon him. The sloth that ends in going to bed and staying there until you develop some disease.

 

So he wheels the cart to the cash desk, pays, stops on the way out to the car lot, enters the phone booth, dials.

 

"Hello."

 

"Hello, Charley."

 

"Geo!"

 

"Look--is it too late to change my mind? About tonight? You see--

when you called this morning--I thought I had this date--But I just heard from them – "

 

"Of course it isn't too late!" She doesn't even bother to listen to his lying excuses. Her gladness flashes its instantaneous way to him, even faster than her words, across the zigzag of the wires. And at once Geo and charley are linked, are yet another of this evening's lucky pairs, amidst all of its lonely wanderers. If any of the clerks were watching him, they would see his face inside the glass box brighten, flush with joy like a lover's.

 

"Can I bring you 'anything? I'm at the market--"

 

"Oh no--no thank you, Geo dear! I have loads of food. I always seem to get too much nowadays. I suppose it's because..."

 

"I'll be over in a little while then. Have to stop by the house, first. So long."

 

"Oh, Geo--this is nice! Au revoirl"

 

But he is so utterly perverse that his mood begins to change again before he has even finished unloading his purchases into the car. Do I really want to see her? he asks himself, and then, What in the world made me do that? He pictures the evening he might have spent, snugly at home, fixing the food he has bought, then lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself slowly sleepy. At first glance, this is an absolutely convincing and charming scene of domestic contentment. Only after a few instances does George notice the omission which makes it meaningless.

What is left out of the picture is Jim, lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.

 

BACK at home, he changes out of his suit into an army-surplus store khaki shirt, faded blue denims, moccasins, a sweater. (He has doubts from time to time about this kind of costume: Doesn't it give the impression that he's trying to dress young? But Jim used to tell him, No, it was just right for him

– it made him look like Rommel in civilian clothes. George loved that.) Just when he's ready to leave the house again, there is a ring at his doorbell. Who can it be at this hour? Mrs. Strunk!

 

(What have I done that she can have come to complain about?)

 

"Oh, good evening--" (Obviously she's nervous, self-conscious; very much aware, no doubt, of having crossed the frontier-bridge and being on enemy territory.) "I know this is terribly short notice. I--we've meant to ask 59

 

 

you so many times--I know how busy you are--but we haven't gotten together in such a long while--and we were wondering--would you possibly have time to come over for a drink?"

 

"You mean, right now?"

 

"Why, yes. There's just the two of us at home."

 

"I'm most terribly sorry. I'm afraid I have to go out, right away."

 

"Oh. Well. I was afraid you wouldn't have time. But--"

 

"No, listen," says George, and he means it; he is extremely surprised and pleased and touched. "I really would like to. Very much indeed. Do you suppose I could take a rain check?"

 

"Well, yes, of course." But Mrs. Strunk doesn't believe him. She smiles sadly. Suddenly it seems all-important to George to convince her.

 

"I would love to come. How about tomorrow?"

 

Her face falls. "Oh well, tomorrow. Tomorrow wouldn't be so good, I'm afraid. You see, tomorrow we have some friends coming over from the Valley, and..."

 

And they might notice something queer about me, and you'd feel ashamed, George thinks, okay, okay.

 

"I understand, of course," he says. "But let's make it very soon, shall we?"

 

"Oh yes," she agrees fervently, "very soon...."

 

CHARLOTTE lives on Soledad Way, a narrow uphill street which at night is packed so tight with cars parked on both sides of it that two drivers can scarcely squeeze past each other. If you arrive after its residents have returned home from their jobs, you will probably have to leave your car several blocks away, at the bottom of the hill. But this is no problem for George, because he can walk over to Charley's from his house in less than five minutes.

 

Her house is high up on the hillside, at the top of three flights of lopsided rustic wooden steps, seventy-live of them in all. Down on the street level there is a tumbledown shack intended for a garage. She keeps it crammed to the ceiling with battered trunks and crates full of unwanted junk.

Jim used to say that she kept the garage blocked in order not to be able to own a car. In any case, she absolutely refuses to learn to drive. If she needs to go someplace and no one offers to give her a ride, well then, that's too bad, she can't go. But the neighbors nearly always do help her; she has them 60

 

 

utterly intimidated and bewitched by this Britishness which George himself knows so well how to em-ploy, though with a different approach.

 

The house next to Charlotte's is on the street level. As you begin to climb her steps, you get an intimate glimpse of domestic squalor through its bathroom window (it must be frankly admitted that Soledad is one whole degree socially inferior to Camphor Tree Lane): a tub hung with panties and diapers, a douche bag slung over the shower pipe, a plumber's snake on the floor. None of the neighbors' kids are visible now, but you can see how the hillside above their home has been trampled into a brick-hard slippery surface with nothing alive on it but some cactus. At the top of the slope there is a contraption like a gallows, with a net for basketball attached to it.

 

Charlotte's slice of the hill can still just be described as a garden. It is terraced, and a few of the roses on it are in bloom. But they have been sadly neglected; when Charley is in one of her depressive moods, even the poor plants must suffer for it. They have been allowed to grow out into a tangle of long thorny shoots, with the weeds thick between them.

 

George climbs slowly, taking it easy. (Only the very young are not ashamed to arrive panting.) These outdoor staircases are a feature of the neighborhood. A few of them have the original signs on their steps which were painted by the bohemian colonists and addressed, apparently, to guests who were clambering upstairs on their hands and knees, drunk: Upward and onward. Never weaken. You're in bad shape, sport. Hey--you can't die here!

Ain't this heaven?

 

The staircases have become, as it were, the instruments of the colonists' posthumous vengeance on their supplanters, the modern housewives; for they defy all labor-saving devices. Short of bringing in a giant crane, there is absolutely no way of getting anything up them except by hand. The icebox, the stove, the bathtub and all of the furniture have had to be pushed and dragged up to Charley's by strong, savagely cursing men.

Who then clapped on huge extra charges and expected triple tips.

 

Charley comes out of the house as he nears the top. She has been watching for him, as usual, and no doubt fearing some last-moment change in his plans. They meet on the tiny unsafe wooden porch outside the front door, and hug. George feels her soft bulky body pressed against his. Then, abruptly, she releases him with a smart pat on the back, as much as to show him that she isn't going to overdo the affection; she knows when enough is enough.

 

"Come along in with you," she says.

 

Before following her indoors, George casts a glance out over the little valley to the line of boardwalk lamps where the beach begins and the dark 61

 

 

unseen ocean. This is a mild windless night, with streaks of sea fog dimming the lights in the houses below. From this porch, when the fog is really thick, you can't see the houses at all and the lights are just blurs, and Charlotte's nest seems marvelously remote from everywhere else in the world.

 

It is a simple rectangular box, one of those prefabs which were put up right after the war. Newspapers enthused over them, they were acclaimed as the homes of the future; but they didn't catch on. The living room is floored with tatami, and more than somewhat Oriental-gift-shop in decor. A teahouse lantern by the door, wind bells at the windows, a huge red paper fish-kite pinned to the wall. Two picture scrolls: a madly Japanese tiger snarling at a swooping (American?) eagle; an immortal sitting under a tree, with half a dozen twenty-foot hairs growing out of his chin. Three low couches littered with gay silk cushions, too tiny for any useful purpose but perfect for throwing at people.

 

"I say, I've just realized that there's a most ghastly smell of cooking in here!" Charlotte exclaims. There certainly is. George answers politely that it's a delicious smell and that it makes him hungry.

 

"I'm trying a new kind of stew, as a matter of fact. I got the idea from a marvelous travel book Myrna Custer just brought me--about Borneo. Only the author gets slightly vague, so I've had to improvise a bit. I mean, he doesn't come right out and say so, but I have a suspicion that one's supposed to make it with human flesh. Actually, I've used leftovers from a joint..."

 

She is a lot younger than George--forty-five next birthday--but, already, like him, she is a survivor. She has the survivor's typical battered doggedness. To judge from photographs, she was adequately pretty as long as her big gray eyes were combined with soft youthful coloring. Her poor cheeks are swollen and inflamed now, and her hair, which must once have made a charming blur around her face, is merely untidy. Nevertheless, she hasn't given up. Her dress shows a grotesque kind of gallantry, ill-advised but endearing: an embroidered peasant blouse in bold colors, red, yellow and violet, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows; a gipsyish Mexican skirt which looks as if she had girded it on like a blanket, with a silver-studded cowboy belt--it only emphasizes her lack of shape. Oh, and if she must wear sandals with bare feet, why won't she make up her toenails? (Maybe a lingering middle-class Midlands puritanism is in operation here.) Jim once said to her kiddingly about a similar outfit, "I see you've adopted our native costume, Charley." She laughed, not at all offended, but she didn't get the point. She hasn't gotten it yet. This is her idea of informal Californian playwear, and she honestly cannot see that she dresses any differently from Mrs. Peabody next door.

 

"Have I told you, Geo? No, I'm sure I haven't. I've already made two New Year's resolutions--only they're effective immediately. The first is, I'm going to admit that I loathe bourbon." (She pronounces it like the dynasty, not the drink.) "I've been pretending not to, ever since I came to this country-

-all because Buddy drank it. But, let's face it, who do I think I'm kidding now?" She smiles at George very bravely and brightly, reassuring him that this is not a prelude to an attack of the Buddy-blues; then quickly continues,

"My other resolution is that I'm going to stop denying that that infuriating accusation is true: Women do mix drinks too strong, damn it! I suppose it's part of our terrible anxiety to please. So let's begin the new regime as of now, shall we? You come and mix your own drink and mine too--and I'd like a vodka and tonic, please."

 

She has obviously had at least a couple already. Her hands fumble as she lights a cigarette. (The Indonesian ashtray is full, as usual, of lipstick-marked stubs.) Then she leads the way into the kitchen with her curious rolling gait which is nearly a limp, suggesting arthritis and the kind of toughness that goes with it.

 

"It was sweet of you to come tonight, Geo."

 

He grins suitably, says nothing.

 

"You broke your other appointment, didn't you?"

 

"I did not! I told you on the phone--these people canceled at the last minute--"

 

"Oh, Geo dear, come off it! You know, I sometimes think, about you, whenever you do something really sweet, you're ashamed of it afterwards!

You knew jolly well how badly I needed you tonight, so you broke that appointment. I could tell you were fibbing, the minute you opened your mouth! You and I can't pull the wool over each other's eyes. I found that out, long ago. Haven't you--after all these years?"

 

"I certainly should have," he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights. Dear old Charley, he thinks, as he fixes their snorts in her cluttered, none-too-clean kitchen, how could I have gotten through these last years without your wonderful lack of perception? How many times, when Jim and I had been quarreling and came to visit you--sulking, avoiding each other's eyes, talking to each other only through you--did you somehow bring us together again by the sheer power of your unawareness that anything was wrong?

 

And now, as George pours the vodka (giving her a light one, to slow her down) and the Scotch (giving himself a heavier one, to catch up on), he begins to feel this utterly mysterious unsensational thing--not bliss, not ecstasy, not joy--just plain happiness. Das Glueck, le bonheur, la felicidad--

they have given it all three genders, but one has to admit, however grudgingly, that the Spanish are right; it is usually feminine, that's to say, woman-created. Charley creates it astonishingly often; this doubtless is something else she isn't aware of, since she can do it even when she herself is miserable. As for George, his felicidad is sublimely selfish; he can enjoy it unperturbed while Charley is in the midst of Buddy-blues or a Fred-crisis (one is brewing this evening, obviously). However, there are unlucky occasions when you get her blues without your felicidad, and it's a graveyard bore. But not this evening. This evening he is going to enjoy himself.

 

Charlotte, meanwhile, has peeked into the oven and then closed its door again, announcing, "Twenty more minutes," with the absolute confidence of a great chef, which by God she isn't.

 

As they walk back into the living room with their drinks, she tells him, "Fred called me--late last night." This is said in her flat, underplayed crisis-tone.

 

"Oh?" George manages to sound sufficiently surprised. "Where is he now?"

 

"Palo Alto." Charlotte sits down on the couch under the paper fish, with conscious drama, as though she has said, "Siberia."

 

"Palo Alto--he was there before, wasn't he?"

 

"Of course he was. That's where that girl lives. He's with her, naturally... I must learn not to say 'that girl.' She's got a perfectly good name, and I can hardly pretend I don't know it: Loretta Marcus. Anyhow, it's none of my business who Fred's with or what she does with Fred. Her mother doesn't seem to care. Well, never mind any of that.... We had a long talk.

This time, he really was quite sweet and reasonable about the whole situation. At least, I could feel how hard he was trying to be... Geo, it's no good our going on like this. He has made up his mind, really and truly. He wants a complete break."

 

Her voice is trembling ominously. George says without conviction,

"He's awfully young, still."

 

"He's awfully old for his age. Even two years ago he could have looked after himself if he'd had to. Just because he's a minor, I can't treat him like a child--I mean, and use the law to make him come back. Besides, then, he'd never forgive me--"

 

"He's changed his mind before this."

 

"Oh, I know. And I know you think he hasn't behaved well to me, Geo. I don't blame you for thinking that. I mean, it's natural for you to take my side. And then, you've never had any children of your own. You don't mind my saying that, Geo dear? Oh, I'm sorry--"

 

"Don't be silly, Charley."

 

"Even if you had had children, it wouldn't really be the same. This mother and son thing--I mean, especially when you've had to bring him up without a father--that's really hell. I mean, you try and you try--but everything you do or say seems to turn out wrong. I smother him--he said that to me once. At first I couldn't understand--I just couldn't accept it--but now I do--I've got to--and I honestly think I do--he must live his own life--

right away from me--even if he begs me to, I simply mustn't see him for a long long while--I'm sorry, Geo--I didn't mean to do this--I'm so--sorry--"

 

George moves closer to her on the couch, puts one arm around her, squeezes her sobbing plumpness gently, without speaking. He is not cold; he is not unmoved. He is truly sorry for Charley and this mess--and yet--la felicidad remains intact; he is very much at his case. With his free hand, he helps himself to a sip of his drink, being careful not to let the movement be felt through the engaged side of his body.

 

But how very strange to sit here with Charley sobbing and remember that night when the long-distance call came through from Ohio. An uncle of Jim's whom he'd never met--trying to be sympathetic, even admitting George's right to a small honorary share in the sacred family grief--but then, as they talked, becoming a bit chilled by George's laconic Yes, I see, yes, his curt No, thank you, to the funeral invitation--deciding no doubt that this much talked of roommate hadn't been such a close friend, after all.... And then, at least five minutes after George had put down the phone when the first shock wave hit, when the meaningless news suddenly meant exactly what it said, his blundering gasping run up the hill in the dark, his blind stumbling on the steps, banging at Charley's door, crying blubbering howling on her shoulder, in her lap, all over her; and Charley squeezing him, stroking his hair, telling him the usual stuff one tells.... Late next afternoon, as he shook himself out of the daze of the sleeping pills she'd given him, he felt only disgust: I betrayed you, Jim; I betrayed our life together; I made you into a sob story for a skirt. But that was just hysteria, part of the second shock wave. It soon passed. And meanwhile Charley, bless her silly heart, took the situation over more and more completely--cooking his meals and bringing them down to the house while he was out, the dishes wrapped in tinfoil ready to be reheated; leaving him notes urging him to call her at any hour he felt the need, the deader of night the better; hiding the truth from her 65