Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey Read online

  All the same, I consider myself fortunate that Viking stood firmly in the third school. Harold Guinzburg explained their philosophy to me: 'We will publish your work. Through blood, sweat, and tears we will try to see that your books are as good as you can make them; but in the last resort, we publish what you write. No one escapes. We give Steinbeck just as hard a time as we give you.'

  Helen Taylor zeroed in on Thuggee... She reminded me that this phrase, that situation, those words, would give a different impression to the American reader than to the British. What was the purpose of so-and-so, his role in the book? I explained (and it was surprising how often the mere attempt at explanation brought the fault to the front). Helen pointed out places where, to her mind, I had not achieved the effect I was striving for. Did I agree? Yes, but now I was baffled. It was easy to see what was wrong... but what would be right? Helen showed her real genius, an ability to understand the writer's intent and the motivation of his characters better than he could himself. She would give me a reasoned and sensible reading of a personality so confused that I had lost track of it, as a parent can lose touch with a loved contrary child through being too close, too involved.

  Our arguments were waged with force and fervour. Accusations of stupidity, ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and lack of sympathy (all from me) filled the air. Helen told me a whole chapter was, unfortunately, nonsense. I defended it hotly. Somewhere in the defence Helen cried 'Stop, Jack! Now you have explained it... but you don't say that in the book.' She was right. It was only necessary to put on paper what had been in my mind — and had stayed there.

  Martin comes in as I scribble notes, stares at me seriously for a while, then says, 'Daddy, why don't you work, like other daddies?'

  It is a long, hard process, and a writer can lose self-confidence; but with editors of this calibre, who love books and have a deep feeling for writing and writers, it enables the writer to bring out the best he has in him.

  Army had a brilliant new young quarter-back, Blaik, and a big, good team. We foresaw great days ahead. Mrs St George was re-elected to Congress and asked us to meet her in Goshen to talk about my Immigration situation, the day after Thanksgiving. A hurricane hit the state that day and at 7 a.m. the Bear Mountain weather station was reporting a wind of over 100 m.p.h. All cars were warned off the roads but we battled through, dodging several fallen trees on U.S. 6, and arrived on time for the appointment. I told Mrs St George that I could not think what was keeping the Immigration people from reaching some decision on my application, and asked her what I should do. She counselled patience, and said she was sure all would be well. We returned through torrential rain to South Mountain Road, and found a big tree down, its upper branches touching the back of the house. I read in the New York Times that Justice William 0. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court was planning a trek in the Himalayas for July and August of the following year. These are monsoon months all along the Himalaya except in the extreme north-west, and on the north side of the main chain, which was hard to reach, both physically, and politically. I therefore wrote to the Justice advising him to make weather enquiries from the Indian or Pakistan embassies before committing himself. He replied warmly and we began corresponding about his trip.

  In December, stemming from the friendships I had made at Fort Knox, I was invited to attend the and annual Student Conference on United States Affairs at West Point. These conferences gathered together forty cadets from West Point and Annapolis and a hundred students from civilian universities across the country. These were grouped into seminars of ten, which spent several days discussing some subject of importance to the country. This year it was 'The Far Eastern Policy of the United States'. What was American policy in the area as a whole, in each country taken individually? What ought it to be? Why?

  My position was as an expert adviser on India and Pakistan. I sat in a comfortable office and waited for delegates from the seminars to come along and ask me questions. What were the origins of the Kashmir situation? What was the Hindu population of Pakistan? Was the Indian National Congress a congress, or a political party, or what? I crept into the back of some of the seminar rooms and attended all the general lectures and expositions. It was a thoroughly rewarding experience. The young people worked together, bending good and informed minds to specific problems, and coming up with sensible and practical recommendations. The civilian youths were usually more bellicose than the cadets when it came to dealing with 'enemy' nations, possibly because the cadets knew that they were the ones who would have to put the harsh words into practice.

  On January 24, 1951, I handed Keith the complete and final MS of The Deceivers; two days later Nightrunners of Bengal was published. Viking gave a lunch at Twenty One in my honour and to launch the book.

  The main course was, appropriately, curry, but the chefs suffered from the common American delusion that if a dish is good made with water it will be better made with milk and best made with cream. (Our American cookbook includes cream in the recipe for the French dish quiche lorraine; the French cook-book does not.) The curry, like much else about West 52nd Street, was rich but tasteless.

  I had vowed to read no reviews except what came under my eye, which were those in the New Yorker, Time, and the New York Times. The New Yorker man was bored with all the running about. Time thought more highly of it, but opined that the flow of blood had obscured my message (that hatred breeds hatred). I did not agree, naturally, but was delighted that at least one critic had deciphered the message at all. The bloodshed also caused Orville Prescott of the Times to drop a stitch in his crochet work. Later he picked it up and, licking his lips, went through the book again, listing the various methods by which death had been inflicted. I was amazed at the bloodthirsty ingenuity shown by both British and mutineers.

  The book started to sell well enough, creeping on to the bottom of the best-seller lists for a week or two. Meanwhile we started a siege of sickness, with one or more of us down from February to June: both children had German measles, then measles proper, then flu, then mumps — (in which they were joined by Barbara). I sprained my ankle.

  In the middle of all this I was hailed to New York for the hearing on the vital application. I hobbled off, supported by witnesses and stalwart friends, keyed up for a final solution. But I was only asked a few questions I had already answered at length on paper, swore to a few more documents, and was told to go away and wait. I would be informed of the decision in due course. My stalwart friends supported me to a few bars and in the evening rush-hour I returned with Keith to Rockland County via Weehawken and the purgatory of the West Shore. This was a time when we were discussing the technical problems inherent in making a martinicle — a very dry martini in a liquid state inside a globe of ice on the end of a stick, to be picked up by commuters on the run and enjoyed at leisure on the train homeward. We were going to make our fortunes...

  Barbara and I faced a new problem. We had desired freedom of living and working conditions. With the Literary Guild's money on the way, we were free. But, as we examined our situation, the size of that freedom was borne in on us. I could make the down payment on any reasonably-sized house, anywhere. We could buy expensive cameras and stock our library with books. Or travel. Or stay here and leak the money away at theatres, cocktail parties, and Chambord. We could go to the sun — Florida, California: to the mountains — Montana, Colorado: to the sea — Maine, Washington: south where land was cheap and labour cheaper — Arkansas, Texas: north to the forests and ice and bitter exhilarating days — Michigan, Minnesota.

  We reined back our vaulting imaginations and tried to set sensible limits to the frightening scope of our freedom. We agreed first that we needed to buy a house. The children had been rootless long enough, with the extra disturbance of not knowing when Daddy was going to be deported (is that the same as executed, Daddy?). Martin had travelled 11,000 miles and lived in seven houses before he was four.

  Where should our house be? We had come to Rockland County through answe
ring the first advertisement that offered a house for rent at a price we could afford to pay. We loved the place and the people, but I could not bring myself to believe that my luck was so great as to take us straight off to the best place in the world to spend the rest of our lives: a good, very good place, yes — but, the best? It seemed presumptuous to imagine it.

  But Barbara said, 'I think we should stay in Rockland. The people here have been so nice. And they're fun to be with. They're intelligent, they read and talk and write.'

  I reiterated my argument. Barbara shook her head dubiously, and repeated, 'I don't see how we could be better off than we are here.'

  Then I said, 'I want to live by the sea.' I had always wanted to, and though the longing was originally defined in terms of the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, another sea would do. I wanted the sea for its own sake, and because the children would grow up with boats, able to swim and sail, handling compass and tiller, sail and engine, from the earliest ages.

  Barbara hesitated, for she loves the sea as much as I. I said, 'And we'll try again to get Liz and Mike. If we have four kids in the house, really the sea's the only thing that would keep them all busy and happy.' With that, she agreed and we turned to discuss what sea, where. Maine seemed the obvious answer; but for years yet I would be dependent on visits to editors, agents, and publishers. Maine was too far from New York. And there was an old saying about Maine weather 'Down east here we have two seasons... July — and winter.'

  At this moment an apparently perfect house appeared for sale in the classified pages of the New York Times. It was in Mystic, Connecticut, that same Mystic we had found so attractive on our drive to Maine. We went to look at it. It was perfect: old, not large, white-painted lath with green shutters, a few huge sycamore trees standing on an acre and a half of lawn sloping to a low sea-wall. We bought it and arranged to move early in April.

  Keith stoked the cannel coal and a cloud of yellow smoke filled the Toad and Throstle. 'Did I tell you about the old Vermonter digging in his yard, and this city slicker comes by and says, "You lived here all your life?" The Vermonter leans on his spade and after a while says, "Not yet."'

  Glasses banged, ice tinkled. Emily came down the narrow stairs, doubled with laughter. 'I asked Julie to toss the salad for me. She's tossing it... it's all over the ceiling.' Bill drew judiciously on his pipe. 'My wife's mind is literal rather than literary.' Emily went back upstairs. The boys stuck their heads in and said good night. Nicky grabbed a handful of peanuts before he left.

  Joe Wright leaned over the back of Donna Morse's chair, leering pointedly down her cleavage; but his heart wasn't in it, we all knew. He was about to remarry, and Jane was there. 'Hey, Keith,' he cried, 'Let's have the farting contest record, Paul Boomer and Lord Windermere.'

  Phil Morse was sweating, his voice angry. 'Bizet never wrote a decent note for Carmen. The good music's all Micaela's. There isn't a soprano today who...' He was not wearing his toupee, which meant that he felt at ease; but with Phil it was hard to tell the difference.

  Phyllis Kauffmann hitched up her skirt another notch where she sat, and took another gulp of bourbon. Her face was flushed but she wasn't drunk, yet, Her eye fell on Joe, but he was dancing across to his bride to be. Keith. No. Ralph Barker. No. Me. 'Hi, Jack, why are you leaving us?'

  '... he's fluffed!'

  'Papa's a great man.'

  'I think Across the river and into the trees is the worst book of the century. Pretentious crap.'

  'Did you read Across the street and into the grill?'

  'Murderous. And the McCarthy piece...'

  'Knife in the back. He's too big for people like that.'

  'Crap. He's a phony chest beater, both in his writing and his life.'

  'I know him. He's... big.'

  'And do you realize that over 14 per cent of the company's income comes from government leases? Hell, that means a change of administration can cut the ground from under their feet! But Consolidated's on a different basis...'

  Emily came downstairs again, frowning. 'I think that's a bit much.'

  'What?'

  'I went to the john, locked the door, pulled down my pants, and sat down. As I was getting up a man's voice said, "How's the party going?" It was Bill Ballantine. He was in the bath all the time, three feet away.'

  'And you didn't see him?'

  'He didn't have time to take a shower before we came up,' Roberta Ballantine said defensively.

  We sang a commercial:

  ?

  Christianity hits the spot,

  Twelve Apostles, that's a lot,

  Jesus Christ and the Virgin, too,

  Absolution is the thing for you.

  ?

  Emily said, 'Funny... but sacrilege. Religion is…'

  '... crap!'

  'You have no right to say that! Some people believe. There are millions of...'

  What about the Unitarians then? Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual. Balls. Judo-Christian witch doctors. Sunrise service at St John's-in-the-Wilderness, very moving. Not a hope in hell. Look, what warrant do you have to believe any of...? Would you believe it if the New York Times...?

  The volume of music rose. Dixieland. Keith Was sprawled by the phonograph, his head cushioned. Seven and a half per cent new equipment sure bourbon and water up MacArthur up skirts better oh God no miracles goodbye goodbye goodbye.

  Chapter Nine

  In Mystic there was a Welcome Wagon, and the ladies who ran it turned out to be good Samaritans indeed. When they called on what is normally a rather commercialized venture (handing the new arrivals free samples from various stores, shop address lists, etc.) I was the only one up; my family were in bed with mumps. Obviously not trusting a man to prepare food for the invalids, they undertook to do it themselves. For the next six days one or other of them would drive up with a huge bowl of clam chowder. We ate nothing else, for that week; but I still love the stuff, whether New England or Manhattan style (the latter is thinner, and with tomatoes).

  We began to get to know our neighbours. They were a mixed lot — a few painters, but mostly businessmen and simple citizens (very simple, some). The Episcopal clergyman came and gushed over us because of our accents. Martin staggered in one morning a pale green in colour, unable to tell us what was wrong. We put him to bed and worried over him until Susan rushed in with the news that the boys down the road had been showing them how to skin an eel. First they nailed the eel (live) to a board by hammering a nail through its head. Then they made a circular cut round the neck, caught hold of the skin and began to pull it off backwards... Martin's malaise was explained. It was one of these same little boys ho liked to excrete underwater and then chase the results when they bobbed to the surface. A brother was in the 6th grade (age eleven) and could not read.

  I buried myself in my writing, and Barbara in housework. My next novel, I decided, would be about the Great Game, the continental chess contest of spy and counterspy in Central Asia during the period of Russia's expansion from the Urals to the Karakorams. This is the subject of Kim, and of some of Kipling's short stories, but what I determined to do was translate the plot of the best spy story ever written, Erskine Childer's The Riddle of the Sands, from the sea background of North Germany to the mountain background of the Himalayas. To make clear to myself what I was aiming at I at first called my book The Riddle of the Pamirs; but certain character developments in it, as I was writing, made me change that to The Lotus and the Wind.

  I went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Barbara was ironing, the radio on. She had taken to listening to the radio then, to take her mind off the fact that we had again failed to get Liz and Mike. She said, 'Someone called 'Willie Mays has stolen a bass. First bass, I think they said. I suppose the man will have to borrow the second bass's bass. I wonder how many they have, altogether?'

  'What the hell are you talking about?'

  She indicated the radio. I listened but could only make out that rhubarb was being served
, which I supposed took the place of lemons at half time in rugger, or tea in the pavilion at cricket. But rhubarb?

  Barbara said, 'It's from the Polo Grounds. Giants against Cardinals.'

  So these people stuffing themselves with rhubarb were circus freaks and princes of the church, and they were playing polo, not baseball, as I had imagined. I returned to the simpler problems of my four-dimensional plot.

  Next day she was again listening to the radio. 'The umpire's called the infield fly rule,' she said. 'That means they can pee in the middle of the field, instead of wasting time going to the john. It must be far enough off so that the women spectators can see what they're doing, but not what they've got.'

  I listened idly. Strike one, ball one. But they were throwing a ball, weren't they? So it was all balls. That's about how I felt.

  Squeeze bunt. Amazing, and almost obscene into the bargain. I advised Barbara to find something more intelligible to while away her hours at the ironing-board. Baseball was just a more complicated version of rounders, a simple-minded game in its own right, and we would never understand it, so why waste the time?

  'You're wrong,' she said. 'If we're going to live here, and our kids grow up here, they're going to be involved. Martin knows what a strike is, so we ought to. We've got to be involved, at least with what involves them. And one day there'll be a Fathers v. Daughters game at some school, and they'll laugh when you pick up the bat. Think of what Susan will suffer.'

  I started to listen to the broadcasts on W.M.C.A. when I could, and on the next day I would carefully read the report of the game in the New York Times, to correlate what I had heard with what was explained in more detail, or pictured, in the newspaper. We asked our neighbours questions. Common-sense and processes of elimination elucidated jargon that initially seemed pure gibberish. W.M.C.A. broadcast all games played by the New York Giants, and we became Giant fans. We learned the names and characteristics of the team, and wholly identified ourselves with it. When the Giants suffered, we suffered; when they rejoiced, we sang. Our favourite players were Sal Maglie, a pitcher with a marvellously black-avised and threatening Sicilian gangster image, and Willie Mays, a young Negro of phenomenal cheerfulness and energy. The team manager was an import from the hated rivals of Brooklyn, the Dodgers or Bums, and all right-thinking Giants wanted to sell him right back there, but he kept on winning, there was no denying it. There were rumours of a pennant, yet.