Five Countries-1 of 5
EUROPE 1969 TRIP, March 21 - June 13, 1969
DATE BOOK FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 21: Leave on Havskar, at 11PM. Lights vanish at 1.
DIARY: To Havskar at 5:30, Joe leaves at 6, dinner at 6:30, sail at 11, up to 12:45, Hubert in bed already. SHIP SNAPSHOT: Helping with luggage, face newly washed, scabbed scar at end of left eyebrow following me back to cabin, asking "More?" Regretfully, to his feet-apart stance and wide-eyed pleading, I say "No" and cry inside. The CONSTANT noise and vibration of the engines. The intermittent set of 3-4 rocking waves.
DIARY PAGE (continued): but when he insists I gasp, pick up the bags, and rush across the mezzanine and into the train, trembling from the exertion. The ride is fast, and we're zipping through the town at 4:30, and I have dreadful thoughts of the boat actually LEAVING at 5, leaving me behind. Stand all the way out, and then there's no cab there, and I think to ask where the bus goes, and it goes two blocks closer lengthwise, but two blocks further widthwise, but that's the best there is, so off we go on the bus. Then comes the rapid trot across the broken sidewalks at river's edge, and the heat burns down and my arms are completely sore, and I simply have to stop to catch my breath, and I'm drenched with sweat. We share the shopping bag between us for the last few steps, and get directed to the ship, where it's literally all I can do to heft the baggage up the gangplank and collapse onto the ship. I made it (at 5:30). Then someone comes around to say that we're not really sailing till midnight, and Joe laughs and I shake with fatigue, and we get my bags into the room, there Hubert is sleeping on his cot, thankfully not snoring. Joe looks quickly around and has to go at 6, so I thank him enormously for helping me out, and it's too late to call Joan or anyone so that seems to be that. There are few people on board, but I hear there are to be 11, and finally a group of four come sweeping on deck with friends who speak German, and everyone's waving goodbye and shouting from deck to deck. We sit down to dinner, and I'm happy to be seated next to Julia Landa, and I don't know who the Muellers are who are sitting on my other side. The dinner on the quiet boat is strange, but it's good and I'm hungry enough, so it sits well. Conversation is slow in starting as everyone wants the boat to leave, and then I'm up on deck in the cold to see the lights of the city just sitting there. Finally a tug comes out with the pilot and at 11 PM we pull away from the pier, car horns blowing and everyone waving, and we round the bend into the harbor, and all the buildings are there and we sail majestically under the Narrows Bridge, the throb of the ship underneath strong and steady, only slightly jerky, and I can use my binoculars against the wind. Stand watching the Empire State Building vanish until 12:45, then down.
DATE BOOK FOR SATURDAY, MARCH 22: In bed most of day.
DIARY: Woozy at breakfast, to bed, to lunch pretty well, but lay outside in sun fine. Talk with Mrs. Landa and Schnur. Cocktails with captain, I have Aquavit, and soup at dinner but leave to vomit and get to bed. Ugh.
DIARY PAGE: I'm awake most of the night, with the strange motion of the ship which remains on an even keel over five or six waves, but then bucks and plunges like a badly adjusted flying horse on a merry-go-round for two or three, seeming almost to be gathering momentum for a plunge to the bottom of the ocean. I'm tossed back and forth in the bunk, and still have my fears, but this isn't anticipation, it's real, and there's nothing I can do about this motion for the next ten days! Up and dress for breakfast, and begin eating a few mouthfuls, but the motion is bad and my stomach just isn't used to it, so I excuse myself and rush to the cabin to lie down. Thankfully, I don't have to vomit, but the bed feels so good that I just lie there, eyes closed, bunched up against the motion of the ship. After a bit I take the effort to get my clothes off, and I just don't have the energy to get out to lunch, (but note says I HAD lunch!) so I don't, even when one of the stewardesses comes in to fix up the room and again to say that lunch is ready. I don't even feel like making excuses. I really don't give a damn what she thinks about me! Then I'm feeling hungry by the time supper comes around, and I'm up to dress to put in a pale appearance at the table. Manage to get through most of the meal (note: only SOUP at dinner, Aquavit BEFORE dinner), but the dessert is a bit too sickening and I again have to leave the table, getting into bed without any excuses. I lie there thinking of what a terrible mess I've gotten myself into! Here I am, maybe having to spend the next week plus like this, ignominiously in bed, and the weather isn't even rough, this is just the ordinary motion of the ship. I think of the captain and everyone else accustomed to it, but even the Krishnamurti tack of accepting the fact that I feel lousy doesn't help: I DO feel lousy, and accepting the fact isn't going to suddenly make me feel better. I shut the drapes against the motion of the water outside, and Hubert and the Landas make efforts to suggest what I should do, but I feel terrible and put them all off, wishing I could just drop out of sight, that the trip would be over, that I wouldn't have to face anybody, and almost that I had flown. The idea NOT to take a freighter back came on very quickly. I might be stranded in Europe!
DATE BOOK FOR SUNDAY, MARCH 23: Feeling better. Monopoly.
DIARY: Feel better and through breakfast, cloudy out, lunch, then Monopoly with Heinz and Doris, the Mullers (Magda & Hans), and Hubert. I win after dinner. Drink vodka (ugh) and bed at 10:30. Read "Wooten."
DIARY PAGE: Put in another dazed appearance at breakfast, and this time managed to sit through the entire meal, feeling hungry and eating pretty much as Julia Landa suggested. I found that turning to the side to talk to her was unpleasant, so I described my sensations and kept looking at the table, and that seemed to help. The Muellers were in rather sad shape, too, and Magda and I exchanged condolences on how we felt, and I was amazed by her beauty even under such trying conditions. I made it to lunch that day, too, and everyone took to telling me that if I were going to lay down, I should lay on the deck, so I stole someone's wooden deck chair, with their blankets on it, and figured if anyone wanted to claim it, they could. Wrapped up against the cold breezes, with the sun baking through the wool of the blanket, it felt increasingly comfortable, and the heat on the face soothed the stomach, so that I could feel myself breathe deeper and erase the stuffiness of the cabin with the freshness of the ocean air. There were whiffs of smoke-smell from the stacks every so often, and sometimes the ocean blew in a fishy savor, but the wind was clean most of the time, and I just baked in the chair, face turning from side to side in the sun, feeling the warmth with gratitude. The captain was present for dinner, as was the first mate and the communications officer, and there was an awkward attempt at conversation, but no one really had much interesting to talk about. Afterwards they almost forced me to the bar and insisted that I drink Aquavit, and I'd remembered liking it before, so I had a bit, but possibly standing was too much to attempt after a whole day prone on the deck or in bed, but after a couple of swallows, I could feel my stomach rebelling against the taste and maybe the alcohol and again I had to excuse myself hurriedly, and actually raced into the john and gave a few gasps of liquid into the toilet. Oh, God, it was starting. But things didn't get worse, it seemed that just that bit of vomit was sufficient, and I cautiously undressed and went to bed, feeling that I'd done enough for the day. Earlier, I'd become involved in a game of Monopoly, and I felt more or less dizzy and sweaty during parts of that, and I'm sure that the eye-usage contributed to my illness of the evening. Though I was prone most of the day, (Note: Read "Wooten," pretty poor) I still slept well.
DATE BOOK FOR MONDAY, MARCH 24: Read Tolkein book "Wooten," Monopoly.
DIARY: Up fine at 8, breakfast good and finish the Tolkein by 11. Start Maharishi and we play Monopoly after lunch to 10, then drink.
DIARY PAGE: Up to breakfast again, still taking Dramamine, and this time feel pretty good. Everyone's feeling better, though Magda still has moments of paleness, and Heintz begins to be just the least bit condescending, being an old sea captain who's gotten used to the motions of the sea, and nothing would bother him. Julia always takes her Dramamine upon arising, and then takes a second only when she feels she needs it. It's funny to see her out on the deck in her long pink overcoat and matching cap pulled far down over her hair, in her little-boy shoes and socks, striding energetically up and down the deck, getting in her mile of walking per day to keep in condition. She's a secretary and he's an accountant, and they have no trouble getting jobs for six months, and they save their money and pack their tents and sleeping bags and stoves and clothes and maps and guidebooks and foreign dictionaries and off they go for six months of camping in Europe, broken up by visits to his family in Czechoslovakia, this year's hiring of a sailboat for two or three weeks in the river-country of Holland, and an excursion into Spain and Portugal which will of course be far more thorough than my trip would ever be. She's a grand talker in the hard-headed New England way, and he's content to sit and listen, though I'm sure he's heard the stories many times, every so often correcting her, throwing in a name or a place or an "I don't know, Jul," when she hits him with some sort of factual question about where or when or who or why. The German couples started speaking only in English, but about today or tomorrow they began to lapse into German while talking among themselves, even at the dinner table, and I was left feeling cut out of their talk. Finished reading Tolkein's "Wooten" this morning by 11, then start on the Maharishi's book, but after lunch we get back to a second game of Monopoly, this time with a crafty artful Julia, and we stop for dinner and return, then stop at 10 when everyone wants to have drinks, and I continue reading in the Maharishi. The Landa's and I cluck-cluck over the incessant drinking going on, especially by the Degeners, whom no one seems to like, though, or maybe because they seem to make such efforts to be liked by everybody.
DATE BOOK FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 25: Play Muller; read Maharishi; chess with Schnurr.
DIARY: Up at 8, breakfast and finish Monopoly, then chess with Schnur after lunch and talk. Dinner and talk and watch poker and bed early at 9:30, feeling poorly. Finished Maharishi. Learn game called Muller. SHIP SNAPSHOTS: Hubert: I'd like ONE rough day. Jul: After two HOURS you'd have enough! Birds following ship like lazy kites attached to the loading booms. Schnurr talking of cute blond kid, Hans calling him "The baby," Captain says he's 18, the baby is 16. Gruff, cute, bleeding, greasy-haired ruffian sauntering in dirty blue jeans, performing for me as I watch from bridge, clasping fellow from back, tight, and only as an afterthought making short, frightened, self-conscious pelvic thrusts.
DIARY PAGE: Up and breakfast at 8, still manfully using the contact lenses full time, and we finish the Monopoly game with myself coming in second and Julia sweeping the properties into her own hands with a satisfied grin: "Oh, you people play like children, you have to change your tactics as you grow up." Mr. Schnurr is a constant presence at the dining table with his grimaces of pain as he lowers and raises himself from his chair, and whenever he enters a room, stately and hunched over his canes and walking support, there's a lull in conversation, everyone looks at him as he self-consciously acknowledges his presence with a nod, and then returns with grim concentration to navigating the floor to his chair, groaning or sighing just loudly enough to be heard, but I'm sure not as loudly as he would like. His hip is being eaten away by some drying disease of old age, and his joints aren't padded and lubricated and his seat is evidently on a bare nerve, so sitting is an excruciating pain for him. He's tried reading a few things, but usually ends up with a Bible, which the Degeners make fun of, and he expresses an interest in chess, so this afternoon I volunteer to play him a game, making the suitable allowances that I really don't play that well. We go through a rather interesting game, advantage wavering back and forth quite radically, though I think he allowed me to catch up at various points, but finally he forces me to concede, and he thanks me, but says he must get back to bed, and further conversation is rather foreshortened. The Degeners are still visible, though they become less so as the trip goes on. He's gruff and fat in jowly (what WAS that actor's name in all the old comedies?) someone's way, and seems to enjoy making fun, but not too much fun, of himself. He delights in calling me R-r-r-robert, and greets me first whenever I come into his sight, and especially at the table. She's a tiny-eyed grinning sort of thing who always seems to be in a slight sweat, and though she tries to dress nicely, she seems like an old man in drag all the time. They both drink to extinction each evening in the bar, and the only thing I envy them for is that they have the attention of the doll behind the bar, dark-haired, large-chested, kind- faced, rather like the doll of a fellow in the Scandinavian slides, yum, but he's straight.
DATE BOOK FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26: Read Bhagavad-Gita; sun for hours.
DIARY: Wake at 5 and 6 and 7 and shower and wash hair and breakfast and start Bhagavad-Gita, motors stop at breakfast, sun for couple of hours, continue to read. Muller playing with wow Magda.
DIARY PAGE: Yesterday there was a change in routine as three ship's men, including the captain, and Hans sat down for a game of poker. They played with a stack of coins in front of them from England, US, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and maybe a couple of other countries, but they played mainly according to size, having a nickel-type coin large and gross, sometimes nickel, sometimes copper, sometimes other lowly materials, a dime-type small coin of silver, and a quarter-type larger coin of silver. There were attempts at bluffing and psyching, and sometimes the Captain would make humorous remarks about his commanding position at the table, and Hans again showed the strain of cheating he had tried so many times at Monopoly. He was turning into a disagreeable person, and even Magda seemed to get disgusted with him after a while. He continually tried to short-change people in paying them even Monopoly money, and more than a few times he miscounted his moves so that he'd avoid some property. But that seemed to make him even more dishonest, and he would try the silliest things, overcharging for rent, taking the wrong card, trying to cheat others out of what was theirs, and finally even Heintz began looking at him as he would frown at a naughty child who didn't know better. It was the idea that Hans did it with such deliberate fore-thought that made it so nasty. Even if he had made an honest mistake, there was always the suspicion that he knew exactly what he was doing. As a child he must have been adorable, but as a pudgy adult, with a wife who seemed not to share his joy in cheating, with an ingratiating smile which had begun to grow ugly with a shifty look in his eyes, it was most unpleasant. He seemed always to be casing the game, always to be thinking of ways to make himself better, even in conversation, but I think a lot of us put up with him because of Magda's charm and good-will. Julia became increasingly short with him, as if saying under her breath "Oh, Hans, stop it, everyone knows what you're doing, no one likes it, and I for one am not going to put up with it." He didn't do much of that at the poker table, and there he was somewhat overshadowed by the mannerisms of the radio operator and the first mate. Today I woke at 5, started Bhavadgita, and learned Muller from Magda Muller. Wow.
DATE BOOK FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 27: Bridge tour; Monopoly; read "Floating Opera."
DIARY: Wake at 8, breakfast and Muller, then Monopoly after lunch after bridge tour with Heinz and Hans. Start Floating Opera and feel queasy. First Dramamine of day at 6 pm. Rest after dinner and read to 12.
DIARY PAGE: Yesterday at breakfast the motors stopped suddenly, and the unusual silence made the breakfast quite uncomfortable, since it seemed to point up the incompatibilities among the people at the table. Hubert hardly ever joined in the conversation, and I talked to him merely because he was my roommate, but though it sounded as if he might have had interesting adventures on his way across Canada and in his dock-working in Seattle, he just didn't talk about it, and we never really talked about girls, though he seemed to want to, but I just wasn't interested. The two couples talked to him in German only because he was German, but he didn't seem to share anyone's mental level. He would have been more at home with the deck-hands. We, unfortunately, saw very little of anyone on the ship except the three unpleasant ones who dined with us almost every evening, the two girls, and an occasional pass across the deck of one of the dirty ship's crew. But there were no opportunities even to smile back and forth as they came up on our deck only when there was some urgent business to attend to. Lunch, and we start Monopoly again, this time only the four guys, and then when Heintz finds I haven't seen the bridge, we go up to talk to the people, he explains some of the workings in his clipped, lip-biting English, and talks of his former sea experiences. There's been no change in the uniformly nice calm ocean, which is pleasant, but dull. Look at the radars and the maps and the charts, and then back down to read Floating Opera. Doris can be very funny in her loud deep foggy voice, and she and Magda seem to get along almost too well. The days have gotten less sunny, so it's not even pleasant to sit outside in the sun, and there's such a wind that reading is uncomfortable unless you sit in the nook set into the back of the ship. I can even look out at the ocean now without feeling queasy, but there's nothing to watch. Once there were dolphins which I didn't see, about three or four times a day we passed another ship in the distance, people would see jet contrails but I wouldn't, and of course there had been no birds from the second day out. Painters went over some of the rusting sections of the ship, and everyone seemed to have something to do as an employee to keep them busy and their minds off their boredom.
DATE BOOK FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 28: Deck tour; chess with Degener; read Rand's "Selfishness."
DIARY: Chess with Degener in PM, he wins stupid first in 3, I take second, he third. Read terrible Ayn Rand "Virtue of Selfishness." Wander boat and back decks with Heinz.
DIARY PAGE: Beginning to count the days now, looking at the daily posting of mileage and position to see where we are. Heintz again takes me under his wing and we go down stairs after stairs into the bowels of the ship, looking under the freight in the front, opening the escape hatch in the back and peering all the way down to the turning screw, quite a sight. Later the story comes out that this ship had been hit on the last trip, and two people had been killed by the water rushing into the engine room, and one had miraculously escaped by means of that very hatch. The ship had been refloated and repaired, and this was its first voyage back. I was glad I heard that story only on the LAST day of the trip. Things are much stuffier and hotter below, and the life of a crewman would not seem to be enviable, though in some places they have a private room. He shows me the maps of the ship, and talks about the cargo, which includes a shipment of silver worth something like 10 or 12 millions, which is locked in one of the safe rooms. Talks of the auxiliary engines, of the continuous servicing of the life boats, each of which could hold the entire passenger and crew list, but how he would first take to the small rubber rafts that carried twelve enclosed against the wind and waves. I hoped they would never have to be used. My anxiety diminished more and more as the trip went on, but one evening this week I woke to hear waves which seemed to be growing outside, and the 3-4 dips to every 6-7 waves seemed to be getting more pronounced, and again I slept, or didn't sleep, in dread of a storm, but we later heard that it was the calmest voyage they ever had. Degener finally grabs me for chess, he wins a fool's mate in 3 for the first one, I take the second one, though he may have given it to me, and he wins the third. Get down to reading again, but I'm getting bored with spending more time just looking out the ports at the heaving ocean, wishing for ships, hoping that the weather will clear by the time we reach the Channel. See the enormous difference between waves watched from the rear and the top and the front and the lower decks, but there's no phosphorescence at night, and few starts because of the fog and clouds as we get closer to the coast. The sea gets even calmer, and sometimes I don't recall feeling the motions at all.
DATE BOOK FOR SATURDAY, MARCH 29: Monopoly with 4; Captain's Party.
DIARY: Start reading "The Way and its Power" in late afternoon, after Monopoly with Hans, Heinz and Hubert, again winning, and Captain's party gets me DRUNK on Black Russians and I dance with EVERYONE to 1 am.
DIARY PAGE: Again play Monopoly with the fellows, I winning shamefully, and then read "The Way and Its Power" in the afternoon. Sometime during this time, out of sheer conversational boredom, I tell Schnurr that I'm gay, and we have long talks about it, he can't get past the point of how I could stand to kiss a scratch-bearded unshaven man. A fifteen-year old boy, he can see, but a man he can't. I can't seem to get through to him, and he talks of his operations, his pain, and his lovely young German wife waiting for him in Antwerp. The Landas and I also have a long conversation about permissivity in sex and life, and he finally floors me, if it's true, with the statement that certain Indians and Africans allow their children to watch and even participate innocently in sex, and it turns out that they are impotent in their adult lives because they have to have greater and greater titillations, and marriage doesn't afford that, so their early sexual permissiveness wrecks them. I don't know that, but I don't know the contrary, and as I can't very well call him a liar, I let it go at that. Captain's party this evening, and everyone dresses, Jul looking just fine, and the girls have asked permission to join us, and we all start dancing. I don't want to, but the older one starts me out, and she flabbergasts me by dancing remarkably well with me. I try the younger blonde, but though she seems terribly interested in me, she's not a very good dancer, and I keep going back to the older. Then Doris and I get to it, and she's surpassingly good, even making ME feel like a good dancer. Magda's somewhat more stiff, but still charming, and finally I even persuade Jul out onto the floor, where she goes through an awkward box step like a young man at a party. I tell them that a Black Russian is half creme de cocoa and half vodka, and I have five or six of them, so by the end of the party I'm really swinging. My contact lens pops out, I skillfully (accidentally) catch it and drop it into my pocket, and Jul laughs. Dance some more, but I'm feeling TERRIBLY drunk, so get to bed at 1, everyone hilarious and telling jokes, and it really was a very pleasant night.
DATE BOOK FOR SUNDAY, MARCH 30: Read "The Way"; foggy channel.
DIARY: Continue "The Way" but it's foggy and see NONE of Channel. Into Schelde at 11 pm and locks at 2, then to bed. SHIP SNAPSHOT: The rain, the fog in the channel, the radar, reading, the boredom, meals.
DIARY PAGE: Finish "The Way" and want to get on to other books, but just don't feel like reading. Look out the ports at the increasing fog, and though we know we're in the Channel, we can't see anything, and I'm down to counting the hours, which is difficult, because we really don't know where we are. Up to the Bridge and at least see the outlines of the English and French coasts on the radar, and look at the blips for all the other ships around us. After dinner some of the lights on the shore appear, and I'm out with binoculars looking at everything that passes, but it's strange because there are dikes all along, and many of the lights are actually below the level of the water. As we get past the coasts, and as it gets dark, the fog clears away, and finally there's watery reflections of shore lights on EACH side as we get into the wide mouth of the Schelde at 11. We're supposed to be docked at 1, but that seems to go by the boards, and we talk to the Captain and the officers and the Pilot comes on board, and the ship is under the control of others. The sides of the river close in, and we're sailing past enormous factories and foundries, brilliantly lit and green-white against the glowing sky. Look for the lights of the city, but we can't see them, and content ourselves with the infernal blazing of the sulfur torches at the refineries, huge plumes lighting up the night and causing the bushes and trees along the beach to stand out in a dim greenish backlighting. Get to the dock area at 12, but slide past the first locks, then the second locks, and then there's a very strange turning motion as everyone gathers on deck and wonders what's going on. Everyone's cheery and sociable on this last night, and cognac is passed around and everyone drinks and throws lit cigarettes into the water to see them snuff out. We turn into the locks, and then wait as another ship joins us in the locks, and watch a huge freighter being handled alone in the next lock. But still our lock doesn't move, and as the time slowly ticks on to 2 AM, I'm getting cold and tired, and as much as I want to watch everything that goes on as we dock, I'm just too sleepy, so I'm down to the strange bed, this time because it's stable, and even the noises don't stop me from falling off to sleep about 2:30. And today was my birthday. Big deal.
DATE BOOK FOR MONDAY, MARCH 31: Off ship at 11, to St. Paul's and to museum. Bed at 9.
DIARY: Wake early and customs are easy and finally get luggage off ship at 11 am, into taxi to train station, cab to hotel, and check into St. Pauls. I had determined to write. Unfortunately I had forgotten that I had not brought my typewriter with me, so I had, unfortunately, to WRITE.
DIARY PAGE: Wake very early and we're at our dock in Antwerp, Customs officers take over the dining room and everyone stands around, impatient in these last few hours. Yesterday I went over Julia's maps of Antwerp, and it dawned on me I really had no idea what I was going to do there. She recommended the St. Paul's hotel, and it seemed to be in the center of things, so I took that down with other places to see. Now that the boat trip was over, I had to get myself out of the lethargy of doing nothing and into the activity of sight-seeing. Customs went very easily, they asked a few questions, but the luggage was safe, and by 11 AM we were carting everything off the ship. I had managed to prepack everything so that it fit into two suitcases, thankfully, otherwise I don't know how I'd manage. The Landa's had five pieces of luggage, and they didn't like it at all. Down onto the solid dock, but the taxi that someone was supposed to have sent for us didn't come, so Julia tramped off for the nearest building and telephoned, something that I just didn't feel capable of doing. I felt completely lost, didn't know where I was, didn't understand the language, and felt awful. Finally taxis came and they took the first one, and the Degeners were going in to the train station, so I asked to come with them. The first appearance of Belgium was the industrial outskirts, and these with many American names on then, and I felt again the guilt of being a wealthy capitalist. There was little to say with the Degeners as they repeated their pleas that I call them in their home, and I said goodbye at the station, glad to be rid of them. In and found the tourist information office, got some change, and spoke to the girl about sights in town, getting maps and brochures, which made me feel a bit better. Out to meet the Landas pulling up in their cab, and took it, telling him to go to St. Paul's. It was a terrible little place, and my first reaction was not to go in, but I did, got a room finally, and then decided I really had to go to the museum, since it was closed tomorrow. Walked through town, getting slightly misdirected, and loved the second floor old-style paintings as opposed to the modern first floor. Back to hotel, looking for restaurants, but can't find any open at 5, finally get into omelette place, speaking English easily, though I start in French, and it seems everyone knows English, but I'm still nervous about using it. I guess I feel I SHOULD know their language if I'm in their country. Back to hotel very tired from last night, and fall asleep at 9.
First, to transcribe my brief notes from the Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts: FIRST FLOOR: Good Ensor, bad Wouters, Braekeleer (not OLD Braekeleer of 1792-1883), Smits, Luys (copying bygone glories, all of them, and I smell paint and someone's brightening a bright Braekeleer). Galleries UNLIT, explaining why they close at 4. Stobbaerts is best contemporary. Labored pointillism of van de Velde and Rysselberghe. Pericles Pantazis good in name only. Vic Gentil's chess game (huge wooden constructions) CHARMING. Permeke lousy eclectic. The GUARD is shooting paper clips---against walls, with rubber band and METAL sculpture, too *KLANG*. Great Devaux Ecce Homo with skeletons. Valerius de Saedeleer's TREES are great. Ingres Self-Portrait MUCH too good for them (as is a David). Reymerswael had FANTASTICALLY great faces. SECOND FLOOR: Verhaecth "Tower of Babel" GREAT. Pieter Nuys is Bosch-like. Ertborn Legacy of 1841 started museum---FANTASTIC. Floris de Vriendt's Angel's Face---YUM. Francken, Flemish, GREAT. Breughel and Rembrandt and FLESH. Live boy, mustached, blunt-nosed, PRECISE Hals coloring. Odd to see Rita Tushingham's face on Von de Weyde's "Philippe de Cray." Lovely Memling. A Henry VIII-like Cranach portrait CREAKED at me.
[Typed in Paris about happenings on 3/31:] But it's working, my piano tuning, and I hear a familiar melody. I lay in bed in Antwerp reading books, thinking how I should be just LIVING and not paying so much stupid attention to the books I'd brought with me. What good is all the knowledge going to do me, etc? Then, I think, I should be just out somewhere enjoying myself, and then the thought strikes me---rather, NOW the thought strikes me---I was SCARED! (And back to the two-motion exclamation points.) Though I was properly and completely floored to find that everyone in Antwerp spoke Flemish, German, French, and English, I still felt very much out of place. How much stock I put into being exactly precisely one of the crowd, with nothing to make me stand out. I think today of my odd behavior in the cabin on the train: the fellow next to me was obviously searching for a conversational opening, and with the "Up to you, sir," along with Carumba, Jinkuyha, Merci, and Danke, he was obviously saying how many languages he was fluent in, wanting to talk to me, and then I refused to say anything, particularly admit I didn't speak his language, which I was about to call German before I decided it was probably Flemish, when it turned out to be Dutch I assume, since they were from the Netherlands)---and here's another thing, or maybe another side to the same thing---how I don't want to make a mistake (looking at the typing I'm doing would not tell you THAT).
So let's try again---OK I'm AFRAID to make mistakes. But I seem to make so many more---like asking for butter in the sandwich place, when the butter was between the bread, or taking the paper Stella napkin on my lap in the Metropole, then brushing it off to the floor when she brings the enormous linen one, then turning quite violet with embarrassment when she bends over to pick up the paper one and put it back on the table.
3/31. Some of the details are charming, though, like when I go into the little shop to buy paper, but she has none "sans lignes" and directs me across the street, where they're just closing, and they speak English, and he says it's too late for me to get the three-holed line-less, so I say the plain line-less is satisfactory, and he pulls out the little container and asks how much I want to pay, and I say "inexpensive" and he goes down two drawers and says it's 26 francs per 100 sheets. When I say I want 200 sheets he flips through the little stack remaining and gets up to go toward the back of the store. "If there's only 100, 100 is OK," I say, realizing that it IS after closing time for him---speaking of closing time, my FINGERS are sure getting tired---it's 11:20, when's Jean-Jacques going to come home to relieve me of this typing task? Imagine having to do 10 pages of THIS per day. Imagine the wrist muscles? Anyway, he then proceeds to COUNT OUT 100. I'd thought that 100 was the amount before the green divider, but it turns out not to be so, as he slips through and COUNTS to 100, by 2's, taking all that time, and he straightens up, goes back to the counter, meticulously lines them up by taping them on all FOUR sides, and then takes a precise length of green paper from the roll, lays it out, lays the paper on, so seriously that I'm not even tempted to think that he's making fun of me, and folds it over twice on the side, then package folds it on the end, carefully taping the center, and for heaven sakes each end twice. He ignores my 26 francs until he goes to the price list to make sure he isn't cheating me, and it IS 26 francs, and I say thank you even louder than HIS thank you, and go off into the night to buy four oranges, from a fellow that I think is really a passerby who takes my purchase in and puts it into an orange-label paper bag. What if I had bought grapefruit?
The entrée to St. Paul's Hotel is strange, too. Ring the bell, then turn the knob and get greeted by another ring of the bell, and the blue-(Now that I re-read what I wrote, to make sure I don't repeat myself (if I'm going to type boringly, at least I can type uniquely boringly), and I found that I didn't finish the hyphenated word---as well as the anecdote---from page 3, so I'll do THAT here)-jeaned good-looker greets me with a string of Flemish. I ask if he speaks English, and he says no. I ask if he speaks French, and he says that someone inside speaks French. The someone inside is painting the walls and ceiling of the back room, and I have the fleeting vision of having to find another hotel. He asks how many I am: one. He asks how many days I'm staying, I say maybe one, maybe two. He asks how many bags I have, and I say one. He says maybe there's a room for me. Then he asks another question which I don't understand, and I say so, and rather than repeat himself, he goes into an elaborate explanation, which I don't follow. He repeats something I don't get, and finally the other fellow shouts out "Nationality" and I say that I'm English, which I correct to say that I'm from America, and the painter begins talking to me in English. When I protest that the other fellow said no one spoke English, he waves that off. He says that the room won't be ready until late in the afternoon. Fine, I say, can I leave my suitcase? Sure. Can I change, yes, I can use the little restaurant. When I've gotten the sweater off and am ready to open the suitcase to put it in, that being the extent of my desired change, he bustles into the room, decides it's a shame for me to have to change in there, and says, "Well, number 10 is ready, is number 10 OK with you?" Why not, and we bumble up the stairs, and number 10 looks as if it's been ready for the past fifty years, and no other room on the floor appears to be occupied, nor does there appear to be any work in progress on the whole floor. The only thing I can think afterwards is that the management had given out the word to make things difficult for those who spoke English until they could be felt out as "serious" or something, and for heaven's sake don't commit the room if it appears they might not want it. Anyway, I got the room, and when I went out the next morning, after the girl knocked at 10:30, saying rather pointedly that it was time for me to get out, the blue-jeans asked for 150 francs for the rent for the last evening, and I gave him 300, which he accepted and wrote something down for his own records, but gave me nothing for my records, and it dawned on me that they hadn't even asked for my name, passport, or anything. I was a body who wanted a room, and after getting past the fitness tests, I could have a room.
DATE BOOK FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 1: Bus to Middleheim; 2-7 at zoo; dinner at Metropole, bed at 10. DIARY: If travel is the inhumation of details; quick, get these DOWN! Every inhabitant of every room of St. Paul's Hotel is of an age, sturdy, and beddable. I'd better get out of here FAST!
Middleheim Restaurant is deluxe, until rat crawls out of moat, flicking head back and forth. And WHERE did the holes in the greensward come from? Never DIRECT by myself back to St. Paul's, always get lost, end at docks, stumble BACK. Find 2-Franc French coin gleaming outside Hotel Metropole Restaurant. Middleheim: Vegetable soup peppery with bitter crunch of tomato seeds, carafe of wine is Beaujolais-tasteless. Roll is crumby, butter cubed and sweet. The Carre d'Agneau Pompidour has lovely sauce, no less than FOUR cutlets with beauteous meat, and an enormous artichoke heart (about 2 inches) topped with minced creamed mushrooms, pomme frites and coupe maison with SALTLESSLY smooth ice cream, gobby pure whipped cream, and peaches, pears, apples, grapefruit, orange, mandarin orange, fig cut in, with clear beer-color sauce at bottom, 400 francs, GOOD. Meal 1: Four slices buttered bread (oh, buttered), huge mushrooms omelet and 2 cups of tea. Metropole: Vegetable soup looking like, but coarser than, Middleheim, Bouchee a la Reine is a puff-pastry filled with minced creamed chicken and mushrooms, and then Chateaubriand with parsleyed butter on top, pomme frites, tomato chuck full of peas and carrots (canned), and wispy good salad of lettuce and two tiny slices of tomato. Stella Artois is tasteless, and dessert cake is so-so. All for 202 francs! My MADNESS of talking to myself, as if saying "That's all right, you're OK, I like you," to me as the MATURING me (who's afraid of not knowing a language, drinks beer and wine, not milk, with meals, hates eating alone) as I WILL (prediction) talk to a young lover about ten years from now: I'm not SAYING you'll change, mature, lose idealism. It may happen sooner, later, or not at all. It happened late to me, but it happened. I backed down, grew up, realized NOTHING'S perfect, and there went idealism.
DIARY PAGE: Try public bus to Middleheim after wasting morning reading all about the city, trying to decide what to do. Get off past the stop and walk through large-housed suburbs, through park with remnant which must be from one of the world wars of bunkers and trenches, and out long sunny street to Middleheim, at whose entrance I'm amused to see a motorcyclist stop, look around at me, and urinate against a tree. Into the grounds at 12, and look around very pleasant place, then back to the restaurant, and it's open and extremely pleasant, with even a bit of conversation about the Russians landing on the moon as an April Fool's joke. Great food, maybe because I'm so hungry and it's expensive, but not by American standards. Walk back to the bus and talk with a guy, and ride back in to the zoo, where I wander around all day, trying to stretch it out to closing time, and I find that the museum had been open, but I'd missed it. They're expanding, but some of the old quarters are really hideous, and the huge glass terminal for the trains dominates from one point of view, especially from the bluff that the aquarium is on. Getting tired of walking, and rather hungry, so walk back through narrow streets, looking for a place to eat, and again none of them seem quite right, so I stop in at the Hotel Metropole, and the waitress is courteous, but I don't like eating alone, though the food is good and there are lots of people passing outside to watch. Back to do some writing on the paper that I'd bought yesterday at a little shop just outside the hotel, and to get some more change so that I can buy my ticket down to Paris. Debate what to do next in the city, and the eating alone had worn me down to the point that I simply decided to go to Paris tomorrow, and letting the train schedule decide what I would see between times. Read quite a bit of "Candy Colored Tangerine-Flake whatever" by Tom Wolfe, feeling silly for spending time in a strange town like this, but I just don't feel like doing anything differently, so I get to bed at 10, eating orange.
DATE BOOK FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2: Train to Paris at 2 after buying stamps, seeing Cathedral and Ruben's house. JJ's at 8 and stay home.
DIARY: At a certain point I've just about forgotten about Krishnamurti, and then on the train to Paris there comes the thought: "Oh, it's 5:25, there's just 35 minutes to Paris" and immediately I castigate myself: what a stupid thing to do. Here I am thoroughly enjoying my train ride to Paris (that is, until the fellow came and stood in front of my window---not someone else's, and try as I may, I have trouble rationalizing myself around THAT one, since all the other windows are empty, and he chooses to stand in front of MINE---and I had to lean forward or backward in order to see what was out the right side of the car, but he couldn't see what was out the left side of the car, anyway.
DIARY PAGE: Up early and walk with my suitcase over to see the Cathedral, and look at the Rubens which is about all it has to offer, and then catch a streetcar up to the station, where I find the train leaves at 2. That gives me time for the Rubens House, so I walk down to it and tour through the big old conglomerate house, and even have time to wander around a bit on the streets, and see a post office and I go in to buy three of each stamp. It runs into more money than I have change for, so I dash out and get some more change, and then get back to get the rest of them. The fellow is very nice, as if it happened all the time. Find that the train leaves from the East Station so I check my big bag (which I put in on my first day there) and my little bag (which I put in when I got to the station and decided I had time to see Rubens House) out of the checkroom and grab a cab and it's a long ride out, and I'm still early. They have a terrible little coffee shop, and I have a ham sandwich with absolutely nothing, only two slices of bread and ham and a beer, but the whole thing runs about 30, so I really can't complain. Have trouble with the fellow in the luggage room, first I have to have a ticket, and the ticket office is closed, then I can check it through if it's open for customs, and it's an extra charge, but it's worth the trouble not to have problems at customs. It appears that the worst customs is USA, anyway. Onto the train platform in plenty of time, and they have neat little metal train models put together to say whether there's a baggage car, where the second class cars will be, and where the dining car, if any, will be. Very nice, particularly since they don't seem to change their schedule very often. The train is very prompt and I seem to not notice which the second class cars are, and get on at the wrong end and have to trundle through every car to get to a second class car which doesn't have a reserved seat. Then it seems there are more reserved seats than not, but I sit in one and am not disturbed, except that the four fellows come together and play cards, not particularly looking out the window, but blocking my view, and then someone stands in the aisle outside as we cross the Belgian-French border and blocks my view from that side. Into Paris exactly on time at 6, but THEN I have to check through customs, but they still don't open the bags, just mark them with chalk. Struggle out to the taxi stand and the stupid porter signs me to go around, but with my load, no thanks. Into a cab and long ride to JJ's through all of Paris, have trouble finding him, but he bumps into me at the mailbox, we talk, and I'm home.
DATE BOOK FOR THURSDAY, APRIL 3: Up at 10, laze all day; dinner at Aissa and drive around 10-12.
DIARY PAGE: He's gone early, but I'm up at 10 and leisurely unpack during the day, since his vacation has been postponed a week, and so I'll be around there for awhile. His place is still elegantly nice, but I'd forgotten how hot and stuffy the hallway was, and how odorous from gas and garbage, and how you have to press the little time-switches to make the lights go on for just a bit, and if you wait too long for the elevator, they click off again. He has three elevators, but the one on the right only stops at even floors, so it doesn't go up to 21, and the middle one stops at all floors, so it's slower, but the habit is to ring for the two left ones, and whichever gets there first, take. It seems that everyone does that, and when someone rings and then doesn't use it, there's a certain built-in delay when it can't be called. Since the caller has no way of knowing which is stalled and which isn't, the only alternative is to ring for both. The phone is also strange, in that he shares it with his doctor brother, who lives in the same building. We run into each other every so often, and though he's older than JJ, he seems to have kept more of his hair, he's not quite so fair, and quite a bit more handsome - more causal looking, too, not as uptight as JJ. So when the phone rings, either might get it, and the other can listen in, and they jiggled the hook making a funny rattley ring if they wanted to talk to the other. The first day I was there it rang for a long time and I answered, and it was for his brother, and I really had forgotten that his name was Alain, so I wasn't too sure, but I knew he was JJ's brother, and so I could leave the message for him. Delighted looking out at the view over Paris, and even got his telescope, but was pleased to find that my binoculars were just the power of his cumbersome brass tube. The Gobelins manufacturing plant was below, as well as a lycee where sometimes kids played shirtless, and in back was the huge Place D'Italie, whizzing with cars and covered with chestnut trees just about to blossom. Out to the horizon was the Madeleine, Notre-Dame, and Sacre Coeur, and, in a mirror held out at arm's length, you could see the Eiffel Tower, which JJ was just as glad he couldn't see. We went to dinner at Aissa for a preview of tagine, and he drove me around 10-12, and went to bed for work.
DATE BOOK FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 4: To Jardin des Plantes 9:30-5, back to talk. Bed at 12.
DIARY: It's 5:45 on April 4, and I've just spent an exhausting day in the museums of the Jardin des Plantes. The day would have started later, but at 9 am the cleaning lady came in, and we had a few hectic minutes of conversation during which time she thought I was Jean-Jacques, since she had never seen him before, always getting the key from the concierge, and coming up here when JJ was gone. Then she thought I was his brother, then she asked me if I spoke Spanish, since she was Spanish, then when she began to tell me that there was too much money for some reason, I said I didn't know anything about it, and I said something like "Vous savez que je ne me suis pas M. Villey." We had a good old laugh about that, as Bill would say, and that cleared up the situation somewhat. Then I told her we weren't going to Spain until the last part of next week, and she figured she'd come next week to clean up, too. I supposed so, but wasn't sure of anything anymore. So I didn't get a chance to meditate as I'd wanted to, and I was out at the grand hour of 9:30, finding out that the street map of Paris was certainly lacking a number of the streets between the ones they DO have. Walked half around the park before finding a way in, and tried the Labyrinth, but they made it most difficult by blocking off the only path to the top of the hill. Makes a labyrinth well-nigh insoluble. Then into the gardens, where I could find no entrances to the Secces, nor to the Jardin d'Hiver, and the zoology building seemed permanently closed, the metallurgy exhibit wasn't open until 1:30, and the meteorites exhibit was "Reoverture" until April 30, and by the looks of things, "Reoverture" means more like "reconstruction"---well, a trip to the dictionary showed that it means reopening, but what a place is doing reopening from Feb 15 to April 30 is more than I can tell. Anyway, the walking is becoming tiring, and I remind myself that I saw the sign for an administration building somewhat earlier, and I figured I could tell in one trip what was open, what wasn't, and when, not to mention why. In the administration building a girl with a charming (read, understandable) accent told me I had to have billets for everything, and that I got the billets at the entrance to the Menagerie. That turns out to have been all wrong, too, but it steered me toward the menagerie, which turned out to be the only thing open at that "early" hour. As for the "Vivarium," the most vivacious creatures were the roaches, and I'm quite sure not all of them were in a position to be eaten, particularly the one that was crawling down the inside of the wall of the private section. Even the frogs had drowned roaches waiting for their jaded palates, if that would EVER appeal to ANY sort of palate of theirs. The rats were lively, too, but the tarantulas were just as motionless as they were in Antwerp. I had thought myself rather silly for going to all these zoos, but I DOES turn out to tell something about the city. In Antwerp, there were obviously buildings which dated back to the year one; there were also fairly new areas, some imagination used in the presentation (for instance the bridges across the ungulata plains, the Egyptian temple for the giraffes and elephants and antelopes and rhinos, the aquarium rather hewn into the rocks), and much new construction underway, thankfully for the bears, some of whom were resting on huge new concrete cliff dwellings alongside the train sheds of the Central Station (some were not resting, however, and were maniacally throwing themselves at the stall door separating them from their sleeping quarters, and they had already launched themselves at it so many times that the baked surface had been worn off at the contact point, and it may be that since the stupid bear COULD see some of progress, namely his own, surprisingly unbloodied, hitting image against the door, he was encouraged to go on, and on he went, the rhythmic thumps only stopping long enough for him to recoup his energies to start again, while his mate looked rather bored just nearby. "Herbert, won't you stop that for just a minute, I want to talk to you.") while others still had to endure the permanently wet concrete and corroded doors and walls of the former bear house, with the smallest chambers thankfully empty. But in Paris they took a rather perverse pride in the fact that the rotunda was the original building put up in 1802, and it was probably poorly, if whimsically, designed at THAT time. (This impossible typewriter will teach me to write without exclamation points, without underlining, and certainly without capitals.) So was the semicircular bird cage, which looked uncomfortable at night, and terrible for the keepers, who had to open dozens of doors to let each bird out, and there was no internal viewing facilities at all, so that the birds would have to be moved to a completely different building in the winter, if they wanted to show them at all, unless they could stay outdoors, which I doubt. The lion and tiger house was new, but rather starkly done, and the grounds themselves were rather narrow and limited. They talked about the Paris Zoological Park in the Bois de Vincennes, so I suppose all the effort is going there. It WAS a rather strange feeling to be standing in the oldest zoo in the West. Most of the outside cages were of the undistinguished ungulate type, so the zoo was quickly seen, and the package of Petit Jean sort of made up for the breakfast I'd been chased out of.
Toward the end I sat rather wearily on one of the few benches and read through the brochure, taking another look as a result at the semicircular bird house, and the bird of prey dungeons, and the fatuity of zoos again struck me. Hardly are these animals behaving as they would normally: the psychotic fox stroking under his chin again and again and again, staring out of the glass cage. The little marmosets looking in panic at the keeper rattling in the back room. The torpid motionless alligators and snakes, the quivering galegos, the frantically scurrying rats, the bloodied pinions of the eagle who thrust himself with a thudding clang against the bars, the panther who snarled when his cellmate, bloated and fat, tried to show some affection, the rhino who torpidly stuck his horn between the bars and allowed his rock-leathery skin to be scratched, the mountain goat which butted the bars again and again, mindlessly, the white salamanders that rushed over to shoo away the roaches that crept too far down the walls, the snakes sliding in conglomerate masses over each other, the rhesus monkeys who clutched at each other, the baby gibbon that peered Keene-like out to try to catch a glimpse at the keepers changing the potted greenery, the baby black monkey clutching his towel and sidling along the floor on mongoloid legs, the baby orang ignoring his wealth of toys, the toucan repeating, repeating, repeating his clangorous call, the Gayal eyeing me worriedly as he champed in his manger, the dead snakes who obviously had to be carried out to produce the sign "Please don't throw rocks at the snakes," and how do they keep BIRDS from attacking the little lizards out in the open?, the worried furrows in the bushy fox fur between his eyes, the murky water in the flooded quadrant of the rotunda where the storks waded gingerly, and the pelican squatted over what was either bloody excrement or a fish in a horrid state of disrepair, the abysmal stench from the monkey cages from rotting vegetation, as another monkey stared in hopeless helplessness at the keepers, and then they scattered in panic as a shuddery "No, NO" came from the fooling-around in the back, the civets stepping delicately over their feces smeared onto the concrete floor, the saliva-covered window where the gorilla, for lack of anything else to do, stuck his tongue out at the world---all these were hardly signs of animals behaving as they would naturally.
Since it was about 12:45, and the Secces were said to open at 1:30, I walked over in that direction, to find it was open at 2, then wandered alongside the Alpine gardens, which were accessible neither from the zoo nor from the gardens, along the excavations which served no logical purpose that I could see, with their barred doors and barbed wire enclosures, and along the acres of rose plantings, only jagged stalks now, as were the tree-arcades along the walks. Though there were some small blocks from forsythia and tiny plants in the Alpine gardens, most of the park was still wintry-bare. To the end to find that the Paleontological museum was open at 1:30, and it's only 1, so I'm across the street to the Cafe Slavia, where the restaurant has a good special menu outside for 9F20, without boisson, but inside it has to be specifically requested or it doesn't appear. The vegetable soup is universal, this a bit more yellow with bits of fat floating on top. The cote de porc comes with French fries, which aren't bad, and when I send the two-person carafe back with the message "Le plus petit, s'il vous plait" and get my 1/4 carafe, the wine is harmlessly tasty for three half-glasses for 1F70, which isn't bad. Coffee ice cream for dessert, and I'm back out to the museum, which is vastly amusing as I walk up the short flight of stairs after paying my entry-franc: the entire collection of skeletons, without exception, is in a dead-on march toward the front door, toward me, toward freedom. Every bovine, caprine, elephantine, balene, giraffine, feline, fish-like, horse-like, rhinocerosish head is heading toward me there at the head of the stairs, and I can't hold back a smile at this cascade of stationery ossuary, all eye-hole, nose-hole, and teeth, facing Mecca, me.
I don't bother to grin at the tastelessness of the fig leaves plastered over the flayed man, and I walk aimlessly and dazed around the room until I come to the genito-urinary samples, and there I'm treated to the verge of the rhinoceros and the clitoris of the sheep, the external, hairy, nippled sexual apparatus of the rhesus, a plaster model of a dissected genital organ of a male whale, and on the other side of the room (at a safe distance) the amusingly cunt-like external orifice of the female whale, the rein (which turns out to be testicle) of the elephant, which I simply don't believe to be a foot long and four or five inches thick, and balls of giraffes, camels, porcupines, lizards, axolotls, frogs, and sheep, all connected up with vas differenses and epydidymusses and vessies, which I hope to be cocks, but it turns out to be bladders---and not once did the French use the French for penis, which happens to be penis. But verges there were by the dozens, some in sections like the elephant (about three inches---across) and the zebra (bi-cameral, like US all), some split lengthwise, like the newt and porpoise, others just like it hangs, like the gibbon and the wildebeest. For three or four racks the genito-urinary specimens paraded, somewhat more than the livers, the kidneys, the stomachs, and even the central nervous system. I looked at them all, but some of the specimens were really, truly, honestly, in rather sad condition, some from leakage of preserving fluid, some from an accumulation of dust, some from stagnation of preserving fluid, some from general decrepitation of the specimen itself, which in some cases seemed purposely designed to resemble as little as possible what it actually WAS.
Next to it, glimpsed briefly when someone gave the French equivalent of "Ugh" next to me, was an exhibit on teratology, and some amazing artifacts were there, including the skeleton of Ritta-Christine, and a couple other beings who were around long enough to be named, joined at the butt, joined at the head, across the chest, and even the Janiceps, two bodies with one head. One particularly frightening specimen, in skeleton form, had two skulls jammed together to sprout from one jaw, a protruding chin, an expanse which separated two nose holes, and then there were two eyes widely spaced as the skulls separated further, and the other two eyes were merged convincingly into one, which was set vertically in the middle of what would have been its forehead. One wonders whether, when it was fleshed out, the normally sized socket contained some semblance of an eye. Two crania dominated the body. There were two-headed rabbits, two-headed lambs, quite a number of rhinocephalics, which had horns on their snouts, mainly pigs. Cyclopean monsters were fairly frequent, too, with a cute stuffed lamb and a ghastly looking dog, again with protruding lower jaws. Something called Acephalic was so chewed, down to the skeleton even though in some sort of preserving solution, which just made the not-quite bare bones look like the result of a piranha attack. Four-footed beasties floated about: calves, cats, dogs, rats, and some multi-limbed human fetuses, too. A plaster model of a two-headed baby had monstrously slanted eyes flat down to the skull, giving them a strangely Martian look.
DIARY PAGE: Most of this day is described on 65-66 and 68-71 of the Trip Diary, so I won't repeat it here, but I went into the Crystal Museum just as an after thought because I was tired and it was a half-hour before closing, and it also turned out I had a 100 franc note (JJ loaned me 200 francs so I could get started on the city, he wanted me to pay him back in Morocco because he couldn't take much French money out of the country (they had a quota for the amount of French money he could take out of the country in a year) and he could not take much Moroccan money out, either (because they ALSO had a quota for the amount of FOREIGN money you could take out of France in one year), so he wanted me to pay for most of it, since I had no restrictions on my funds) and 1 franc 50, and that's what the children's ticket was, so they gave me one of those. I repaid them by only looking at half the museum, because I got hung up on the old pieces of carved jades and crystals and quartzes, and the polished pieces of petrified wood (from the US), and lovely gemstones cut from hundreds of semi-precious stones just to display their fire. Even the ore materials along the walls were so terribly colorful, and it struck me that some of the colors are absolutely unique, and the only way one could describe certain colors was to say they were Azurite green, for instance, or Chrysophase orange, or other such exotic names. I figured I had to re-look at the section in the American Museum of Natural History, and get a book on it, they were all just so beautiful. Out at 5, completely exhausted, and back to the apartment where JJ had gotten in a supply of canned foods which we put away and looked at, and we selected some of his ravioli to eat, and he had some strawberries, and it was just about enough. We sat around and talked again, about his growing discomfort with his job and his pessimism about gay life in Paris, and I talked about quitting my job, my trip across the US, and my book on LSD. By that time it was midnight, and we went to bed, both on our little cots just inches above the floor, and the mohair blanket he gave me was more than enough to keep me warm, and later I used it to great effect as a masturbation wipe, and the sensation was great!
DATE BOOK FOR SATURDAY, APRIL 5: Out at 9, lunch in Argentin, to Mont St. Michel; dinner and sleep at Avranches.
DIARY PAGE: Since he had an extra Monday off for Easter, we decided to go to Mont Saint Michel, which I'd always wanted to see, and which he hadn't seen since he was a child. Out of the apartment at 9 and onto the road around Paris, and then we got stuck in traffic, and we chatted about Godard's "Weekend" and how true to life it seemed, as the cars stretched unmoving over hills and dales. Then we decided to cut off onto some side roads, and it was charming to whiz through tiny tiny towns which sometimes had traffic bottled around their only stop signal, and then through countrysides dotted with cattle, old farmhouses, and every so often an elegant estate hiding behind obscuring hedges. Each little village seemed different from the one next to it, and I could go on looking at the transition from farms to tiny suburbs to a few factories and warehouses to row houses along the streets to the main business district, usually no more than a block or so, and then a reversal of the process that left us going through forests or empty fields until the next set of farmhouses started. The roads were nicely marked with painted milestones that said how many decimeters to the next village, and these came about every five or six seconds, so it really seemed that you were making time. Then there was the sign proclaiming the name of the town, and, neatly, a sign proclaiming the name of the town with a red hash-mark through it to say that you were leaving the town. Lunch in a truly remarkable place in Argentan, with an incomparably vigorous, apple-cheeked waitress who brought up the tart cider and great food with a broad smile of pleasure, and even the bread was truly delicious, soft inside, crusty and crunchy outside. Into a dessert of apples and cheese, and out to the warming road, with the top down. I seem to recall that we had a flat in here somewhere, too. Way through the by roads, and finally there it was, rising out of the sea. Drove up to it and wandered through it, paying for the tour, getting blown about the rooftops from the breezes, listening to the distinct French lecture about periods and ages and styles, and I bought a book to capture its greatest moments. Down to look for a place to sleep in town, but there were none, back to try the Mont, but THERE were none, out to try trailer camps and a hideous cabin, but we said no, and didn't look too hard at Hitchcock's castle. Finally at 11 to Avranches.
DATE BOOK FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 6: To St. Malo and Caen and Rouen; eat at La Couronne, car stops at 1, home at 5 am!
DIARY PAGE: Breakfast in the tiny kitchen and back through Pontorson for about the fifth time (going, coming back looking for a place to sleep, going back looking for a place to sleep, going back to Avranches for a place to sleep), through Dol de Bretagne and up to the coast at Cancale, looking at old shops built along the wharves at the waterfront, and through the twisting streets as the traffic jammed while everyone was going to church. Around coast precipices to Rotheneuf and out toward the lighthouse to look around and climb on the cliffs and clamber down to watch the tides ripping back and forth on the rocks, swirling and foaming the green water into froth. Gun emplacements gape underfoot, and we're sitting on the edge for a long time merely watching the far Atlantic crashing in onto the ledges below. Out to something called the carved rocks, and it's the place where this nutty Catholic priest carved all the grotesque faces out of the existing rocks, but we regret paying the money for the entrance. By this time we're getting hungry, and we're down to Chatenaueuf for lunch, then take off back across familiar roads through Pontorson and Avranches, decide it's too late to get up to see the Bayeux tapestries, and stop at Caen for the old undecorated cathedral, and they're beginning to clean it, so it doesn't even have the patina of age, so it tends to look in the process of construction, rather than a Romanesque relic from almost a thousand years ago. Up to the ocean at Cabourg, and along Blonville and to Deauville, where we look at grotesque old hotels, and Trouville, somewhat nicer, and Honfleur, spectacular private homes on piney cliffs above the ocean, and it's getting dark as we wind toward Rouen, and he shows me the butter-facade of Rouen cathedral under the lights, and we get circuitously to his Jeanne-d'Arc circle for La Couronne, and the food is simply spectacular, and the Profiterolles practically make me come. Out to wander the narrow streets and leaning houses of the old section, and we're onto the road at 1, when the car STOPS on the expressway, and we call a truck and fuss over it, getting it towed and fixed and borrowing someone's Citroen, and we're home at 5 AM, completely exhausted, and he has to get BACK for the car.
DATE BOOK FOR MONDAY, APRIL 7: Up at noon, to cinemateque at 3 for Golem, More (with Mimsy) and Murnau's Faust; dinner at JJ's and bed at 11.
We get up at noon, recovering from the evening before, and I eat breakfast of eggs and go to the Cinemateque at 3 for "The Golem." They have Murneau's Faust at 7, so I figure I'll just stay around inside until 7, and maybe I can get in free. I'm looking at the posters and such around, and I see people filing down the stairs and into the auditorium, and the doors close and I hear the music of an on-coming feature film. I know there's nothing scheduled, but maybe this is a new experimental film or something, so I poke my nose in the back door just in time to see the word "More" fading off the screen and whose name comes on next but Mimsy Farmer's!! I couldn't be more surprised, so I walk into the auditorium and find a seat, and sure enough, it seems to be the film she was talking about that she made about drugs. But this was made in Europe, and didn't look like it had been made a number of years ago, so it must be something new. How fantastic to stumble on it like this!! The film is pretty bad, but she's reasonably well into her character, and the nudity is nice, and the lesbian scenes seem thrown in for largesse. Then I'm out with the crowd since the auditorium is being cleared, and it appears you have to have tickets for this, so I'm back to the box office to ask for a single, and get back into the auditorium for his Faust. The devil is Emil Jannings, and he hams it up wonderfully, and there are some great scenes of him glowering over the little German town, but the girl is awful, and aside from a huge body for Jannings and the heavenly angel, there's little that's good about it. Out dazed and into the metro and back home, and JJ says the car won't be ready for a couple of days, and it looks very bad for the trip, maybe. I tell him about the film and we eat in again, talk a lot, and then to bed.
DATE BOOK FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 8: Museum's closed, so I sit in Tuilleries from 2-8, then home to eat and bed.
DIARY PAGE: The museums are closed today, and JJ has to work, so I decide to follow up what he said about the Tuilleries and see what they're like. They're just like the ramble, with lots of gay guys wandering around and looking at other gay guys sitting there, and every so often straight people hurry through as if they sense they're out of their element. I move from place to place and walk around, but the only ones who look at me are older, and the young ones are all there together and enjoying themselves without outside assistance, so it's rather like the United States. Finally a lightly colored guy passes and re-passes for a number of hours, and finally sits down next to me, and I tell him that I'm American. His reaction is such that he must have met nothing but Americans for the past three months. He's from Barbados, and I can't understand what he says, but his actions (like smoothing his growing cock up one pant leg, stroking it as it gets harder and thicker) are unmistakable, but I'm too frightened to do anything. For all I know, all people from Barbados in the Tuilleries are out to get Americans, and how can I take him to Jean-Jacques? I tell him about my problem, and he says I should be here tomorrow at 6, but I resolve not to be. Shades of Athens! Sit as it gets dark, and the clientele changes, but the character is still the same. Watch the sun set through the glass of the Grand Palais, and the sky turns dark and the lights on the Place de la Concorde come on, and it begins to get chilly and I'm very hungry because I didn't bother to have lunch, and finally I'm home to eat alone because JJ works late, and to bed.
DATE BOOK FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9: To Louvre at 4 and Mondrian at Orangerie to 7:30 and eat at Opera Drugstore; Damnation of Faust at Opera.
DIARY: This has got to be my form of piano tuning, since I haven't typed anything in about three weeks, I'm now typing on my old portable Smith Corona instead of my lovely new IBM electric, and I'm rather weary from the trip down, though the language problem was more taxing than the physical travail. (This typewriter is strange, I have to develop my A's, or else every word with an A will skip a space. I'd forgotten about the tendency for my fingers to slip down between the keys, something impossible with the smaller play of the electrics, and the pressure of the typing, especially for the double letter, which could be done in a flash, is somewhat less than a flash now. Also these letters have a tendency to smash up together against the platen, which takes a heck of a lot of time to get them down, and then there are the double letters where a rather good input wasn't sufficient to make the spacer spree, and---it DOES seem to become a problem, doesn't it. Then there's the apostrophe---let me apostrophize the apostrophe?---and THERE'S the question mark---and how many times did I casually reach for the asterisk before realizing that the return is manual, taking a whole sweep across the page for the return. Then this is the 26th typed line, and I fear this is going to be somewhat less than thirty to the double-spaced page by the time I get down to the bottom, though this is doing rather good because it's 28, and the next one's 29, and I still have to remember that it's easier to type a short line and then I have to type the title RIGHT at the top, so that I'll GET 30. There's also a weird syndrome about capitals in the last line, too---they don't space. And who for the life of them designed the paper flattener so that it would exactly cover up the line previously typed on double space? Well, not exactly, but nearly so.
And there's no tab key for paragraph indentations, either. Sigh, how much WORK (seems continuous capitals are a pain anywhere---no wonder Rita's letters were such a mess) I used to do back then.
Thoughts at Mondrian: Did he MEAN for the paintings of his later years NOT to be hung together because of the sameness? Earlier, it's fun to see increasing abstraction (1910-1914) of his Eglise at Domburg, or study the masculinity of the upright (1918) of the phare at Westcapelle, or the femininity of the horizontal (1909) of his sea at twilight. But all this SAMENESS of red, yellow, blue---and black and white, was more primary than the primary COLORS. One becomes a minimalist, looking to SLIGHT changes of tone in the blue of Compact I, 1926. Did he INTEND them to be minimally different blues or was it chance? Of course, it doesn't matter, for there it IS. And as I tend, NOW, not to like Nain or LaTour, my tastes DO change. SOMEWHERE in 1916, he went from slant to NO Slant. (52) 1915: Plate, HAS slants; (54) 1917: Painting, has NO slants (also no LINES, first AREAS of color). 53 is out of PHASE, a naturalistic painting---but from the catalog: "in 1916, he met at La Haye, van der Leck. In contrast with van der Leck he commenced to paint in plates, using rectangle plans and pure colors." And, before that, Louvre I with THOUSANDS of people, and Italian art, PRE-Cimabue (1270's) and a much-Cimabue-like crucifix. Da Vinci's and Raphaels and Veronese and Titian all in one FANTASTIC room. De La Tour is falling down, and MANY Ingres and David rather pall. Much French and Italian (Mantegna good) seen, and many more TO see.
DIARY PAGE: Up late and shower and spend lots of time doing what he says should be done: washing out the tub and wiping it dry so that all the hard chemicals in the terribly hard water don't dry onto the tub and make it miserable to clean, and this when he has a maid coming in twice a week to clean it FOR him! I do it, though, because he wants me to and it's his apartment, and he's letting me stay here for nothing, so it's putting him out considerably (though he's hardly ever here), and the least I can do in return - is feel obligated to him, which is precisely what he WANTS me to feel, obligated enough to do exactly what he asks for. Well, he's succeeded, I do, and I DO try to do what he asks me to do. Then loaf around the apartment doing my exercises and meditation and yoga, and then type for a bit, but I get bored sitting around the place and decide to get back out to the Louvre at 4, and when it closes, go over to the Mondrian exhibit in the Orangerie until 7:30. There are many beautiful people looking at the paintings, and it's all I can do to keep my eyes off the crotches and on the canvases. Then it's time to get out to meet JJ in front of the Opera Drugstore, where we find a crowd when he gets there late, but someone leaves and we grab the table and order quickly and gulp down our fancy sandwiches in time to rush down and dash up the stairs into the Paris Opera House. Get a rapid impression of enormous splendor and spaciousness, and we're rushed to our seats for a performance of Bejart's "Damnation of Faust," and it should be called Bejart's, because it's certainly far removed from Berlioz. Or, rather, it might be precisely what Berlioz would have wanted. Enormous golden sets brood over the stage, and modular units can rotate to start as amphitheater seats for the chorus, as mountain sides, and as house fronts, depending on their orientation. The staging is spectacular, and all the lighting and costume effects possible are used. The singing is even rather good, and the acting by Mefistopheles is excellent. But the coup for the evening is the dancing, with the nearly-nude people tumbling all over the stage in love-making, or the soldiers doing their beautifully strong virile steps during the march music. Having one set of people for the singing and one set of people for the dancing is just so obvious, it's a pity it isn't done more in the states apart from Carmina Burana. At intermission JJ shows me through the building, and it's merely stupendous. The lobby goes on mirrored forever in brilliant gold scrollwork and black marble touches which under the bright lights give an effect of brilliance and somberness all at once. The stairways are grand, the proportions are splendid, and indeed the auditorium is a minor part of the opera house, and the under-theater assembly area is catacombically impressive with its low ceilings, its use again of mirrors, and the severe floor hard under the foot. We go to the top, where the seats are ludicrously poor, and then back to the seats to gawk up at the Chagal ceiling painting, when JJ says that since the French automatically dislike anything done in the last 100 years, they hate the ceiling because it covers up some more scroll-work and plaster. The rest of the performance equals the beginning, and it's truly a remarkable evening, and I put the Opera House down on my list as one of the most fantastic buildings in the world.