Youngblood hawke, p.52
Youngblood Hawke, page 52
Mr. Hawke, you are a genius, a writer of the first magnitude. What you have done so far is nothing but finger exercises before your real work. I read everything. I read four languages. I think I have read all the novels in the world. I was born well off, as you know, and I am married to a man much richer than myself, so that I have absolutely nothing to do nine tenths of the time. Sports have always bored me. I don't drink, and when we're not travelling we live far, far out in the country. I read a couple of books a day. It seems to me that the American novel has sunk to a nadir unequalled in any art in any century. Am I mistaken, or have contraceptives become the chief preoccupation of American novelists? I think that the modern American novel should be called rubber opera. I'm sorry if I seem coarse, women can get a lot coarser than men when they choose and they can give cards and spades any day, believe me, to these writers of rubber opera. Your work juts out of this mass of pretentious dirty rubbish: young, crude, terribly marred by the desire to please and the greed for money—but no more so than much of Dostoevsky, Balzac, and Twain—but alive, masculine, in plain English, about living people, not about walking talking genitals and rubber.
What do you have to care, after Chain of Command, about critics and royalties? You'll never go hungry again. If there is one living person who can record this incredible, bloody, and marvellous century, it's you. I tell you what your wife would tell you if you had one, and if she were a true wife.
I can't imagine that you've read this far, and if you have, that you want to answer me. The only answer I'd want would be a new book worthy of you. If you care to let me know that you got this silly scrawl and didn't merely laugh and throw it away, I'll receive a letter sent to American Express, Rome. I won't be long in Rome, and I don't care if I never hear from you. I've come to the end of what I wanted to say.
HONOR HAUPTMANN.
Hawke read the letter twice, indolently and with no strong response. He had received, by this time, much mail from readers; including some acute discussions of his books, and also including several teasing notes from women trying to intrigue him. This one fell somewhere between the two kinds. He liked praise; he even liked it as gross as Mrs. Hauptmann's, but her discussion of American novels struck him as ridiculous. The lady had misread him. He did not require abuse of other authors to make praise of himself pleasant, and his own opinion was that American novel-writing was at a high point of variety and force. Some of his competitors—Howard Fain for one—seemed to have surpassed anything he had yet accomplished, and he believed frankness about sex was all to the good when it was necessary.
Damned expensive note paper, he thought; no engraving of any kind on it, no identifying touch, except for a watermark that might be Japanese. Of course Anne Karen's daughter was very rich indeed. The picture of her in a hospital bed was convincing, and the whole letter, especially the outburst about loving him, read like the indiscretion of passing melancholia, the kind of thing women are often at some pains to recall and destroy later.
Among the things his mother had brought down from the garret was a box of his own best stationery: pale silky blue, with YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE engraved in small darker blue letters to one side at the top. He wrote a short reply thanking her for her praise, disclaiming his right to the eminence she would give him, and hoping his next book would strike her as more serious. He expected to go to Europe shortly, as soon as he recovered from a slight illness. Would she still be in Rome, and was there a chance that they might meet?
The idea that he might get out of his New York imbroglio by bolting to Europe was just starting to form in his mind.
8
"Who are those men?" he said to his mother a couple of days later, when she brought him his breakfast. Baritone voices had awakened him, echoing along the stairs, just below his room and now above it.
"They're from the bank. They won't disturb you, I told them not to come in here."
"Bank! What bank? What are they doing here?"
"Why, I don't know but one bank here, Art—yours, where I cash your checks. I just thought I'd ask how much of a mortgage you could get to finish this mess up. I dunno what else you can do, boy. You'll lose a fortune if you try to sell it all wrecked like this."
"Ma, you can't get a mortgage on a tom-up ruin."
"Why, Art, this older fellow here, he's their chief appraiser, he's just been looking at the plans up in the library and saying he thinks the bank might go for about fifty thousand dollars. 'Course they know you're Youngblood Hawke, that makes a difference. They know their money's good."
Hawke stared at his mother, sitting at the foot of the bed in a cheap orange print dress with her knotty hands folded in her lap. Why had a mortgage not occurred to him? It was the obvious answer. There would be no trouble paying it back out of royalties over the years; moreover if he wanted to sell the house—and that was what he did want at this point—it would be easier to do with a bank carrying much of the cash load. He had assumed that no bank would mortgage the broken shell he owned. His mother, assuming nothing, had found the way out of the problem as easily as a cat pushing open a screen door with a paw. "Well, that's a right good idea, ma, if it works."
"What's more Art, I'm pretty sure that contractor of yours has been stealing you blind. Have you gone through those bills and added up the items? Sand! Why if that man bought all the sand he's charged you for, then you also own a dam he's built somewhere, son. You got to check on these fellows, Art, building contractors by and large are bigger crooks even than butchers. This fellow, he's crooked as a corkscrew or I can't add. I've got three other contractors coming here today to look at the place. You need a few fresh estimates for finishing it."
"Contractors? Where'd you get hold of contractors?"
"Asked the real estate man at the bank. He gave me half a dozen names. You've got to get this thing off your mind, Art. You've fretted yourself sick over it and what's more you've stopped writing. That's the worst of it. That's the only way you'll ever make money, by writing. You ought to get out of this house and come home and rest up, and get back to work. Finish up this mess here the cheapest way possible and sell it. It's just a piece of foolishness, Art, what does a bachelor need a big house for? Anyway it's too dark, it's on the wrong side of the street. I wouldn't live in this city for all the tea in China but if I was forced to I sure wouldn't live any place that didn't face south. Why, all the sunlight you get in here is one thin red sliver just at sunrise. You need the electric light on all day. This is a great house for mushrooms, not people."
This speech, which ordinarily would have rasped Hawke on several tender nerve ends, struck him at this time as both relieving and shrewd. His mother occasionally had the eye and the guts to see the truth and to speak it.
All day he heard through his closed door the brisk sharp questions of his mother and the answering voices of men. It was a comforting feeling, to sit in his bed reading a Walter Scott novel, knowing that someone else was doing something about the accursed house. The thought was growing on him that his mother, tough and suspicious and rustic as she was, might be just the person to leave in charge of the building while he fled New York. He had heard her during his adolescence bargaining over bits of coal land. A New York contractor who tried to get the best of his mother, he figured, would soon wish he were in some other business.
The doctor discharged Hawke—in a fashion. He came and thumped and felt and listened and asked questions. He sat for half a minute, tugging at his beard and looking at Hawke. "All right. You have an amazing constitution. I isolated you more for your nerves than your pneumonia. Your lungs are clear and you seem to be acting normally again, but I don't know. You were drifting in a schizoid state when I first examined you, do you realize that? I think you should have that old brain injury you told me about looked into thoroughly. I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't pretend to know how the artistic personality functions, but I think the next thing you need is some mental therapy."
Hawke said cheerily, "I tell you, doc, I have these slumps off and on. I always come out of them and they don't signify. There's no reason I can't see my editor, is there?"
The doctor shrugged. "So far as your pneumonia goes, you're well."
It was always a little surprising to Hawke to realize how small and slight Jeanne was, after he had not seen her for some time. She arrived in a dripping blue raincoat, underneath which she wore a plain white blouse and an old skirt. Her makeup was sketchily applied and she had a harassed, tired look. It gave him a surge of delight to see her face, press her hand, and hear the gravelly voice say, "Hi. Here you've been yelling at me for years about abusing my lungs, and who gets the pneumonia? For the future, my friend, the way to fend it off is three packs of cigarettes a day. Be sure to inhale. Gad, you look better than you did that first night. Thank heaven."
"You were here, then? I thought I dreamed it."
"Of course I was here. You insisted on my coming. Otherwise you were going to get out of bed and fetch me. You with a hundred and five plus, and this was after midnight. Two doctors here, and a nurse, and Frieda. I must say I felt like an idiot coming here that time of night and what I was really afraid of—oh, well, you're better, that's the main thing, isn't it?" A red flush crept into her white cheeks, and she looked much better all at once, and quite confused.
"What were you afraid of, Jeanne?"
"Well, Arthur, you know, they said you were out of your head. And after that preposterous talk we had in the Lexington airport I didn't know what the hell you might not come out with. But I must say even at death's door you were the writer to the last. All you wanted to do was argue about some cuts I'd made and then discuss the new pages. They told me to humor you so I went through the motions. I hung around most of the night, so did Frieda. She and I had quite a talk in that bombed-out kitchen of yours. You've seen her since, of course?"
"Jeanne, you're about the first person I've seen in a month."
"Really? I'm complimented." She undid her damp red portfolio, bending down her head. "If you're interested I've never seen a woman more upset and frightened than Frieda was. She said many strange things, and maybe the strangest was that if anything happened to you she could never face your mother. I feel quite different about her since that night. It's a pity you two aren't married. Maybe it's still not impossible. Stranger marriages have come off. Is this a get-well visit or are you up to working? I have some things here."
Hawke was taken aback at Jeanne's nervous, indiscreet loquacity. He said they would work, and he watched her while they talked. Her voice quavered, and once or twice she seemed to lose the thread of the conversation. When Mrs. Hawke came in and left them a tray of coffee and cake he broke off the work, saying he was tired. She told him the late gossip from the publishing business, including a juicy switch of wives between an author and editor who were next-door neighbors in Connecticut. They chatted idly, and her spirits seemed to improve. Then he mentioned that he had decided to abandon the house—finish it up and sell it. She looked startled, her pallor became more marked, and a haunted expression crept over her face. "Are you sure you want to do that? You've put so much thought into it, let alone money."
"I'm sick of it."
"You were so happy over it at first, you had so much fun with the plans."
"Yes, I know. Let someone else live in it."
Jeanne said slowly, "It's eerie. This morning I talked to the real estate agent in Harrison and gave up the piece of land Karl and I had an option on. Such a wonderful piece of land, Arthur, forest and farms and a lake. Forty minutes on the parkway to the office."
"Why did you give it up?"
"Oh, with one thing and another it wasn't practical. We won't be in a position to build for years. Why sink money in land and pay taxes?" She lit a cigarette and said with comic dismalness, "I think you and I are the kind of people who are destined never to build a house."
Hawke said, "You and I could build a house, Jeanie. A good house."
Jeanne's eyes glistened and she put her dry cold hand on his. "None of that, for God's sake. Just because you're convalescing don't take advantage of me. Karl is in Polyclinic Hospital." Hawke sat up, astonished. She straightened her skirt as she stood. "I'm going there from here. My jolly round this morning."
"What's the matter, Jeanne?"
"Heart. Milder this time, which is a comfort, but it's the second. If I seem less than my old bright chirping self I can only tell you I've had quite a month of it. Among other things Karl's oldest son got drafted—imagine me being the stepmother of a soldier, if you can—and promptly came down with jaundice at a camp in Texas and almost died. I don't know whether that did Karl in, or your brilliant friend Gus Adam."
She told Hawke about the meeting in Hodge's office. Adam had driven Karl brutally to the wall, she said. Even though he had convinced Karl to follow the course she herself had wanted, she hated the lawyer for it. "Karl's face was as gray as the carpet when he promised Ross he would stop making the contributions. He never pulled out of it. He was quiet for three days and then one night we were just sitting around listening to music and he took sick."
Hawke said, "Karl couldn't have stayed in his job otherwise very long. Adam spoke the truth."
"Oh, Christ, Arthur, there are more important things than the truth sometimes. Your Adam is a cold clever bastard and I don't trust him. I don't know why he advised Karl not to go to Washington and clear everything up." She put on her raincoat.
Hawke said, "Jeanie, I'm thinking of going to Europe."
She paused in belting the coat, and looked sharply at him. "With Frieda? She talked a lot about that."
"Not with Frieda. With nobody, I guess. I was going to do my damnedest to take you with me but that was a sickbed daydream, it appears."
"Trying to run from Frieda again, are you? You'll have to run far and fast. You tried that once. Next thing I knew we were all eating turkey together in Beverly Hills."
Hawke said bitterly, "You're the forgiving sort, aren't you?"
Frieda Winter walked into the room at that moment with Hawke's mother. Mrs. Hawke said, "As long as you're seeing people I figured you'd like to see Mrs. Winter, she's been so thoughtful and all."
"I can't stay but a minute." Frieda wore no hat. She seemed to have tried hard to look like a frump: brown low walking shoes, a bagging brown linen suit, her hair crudely pinned up. Hawke had noticed before that she had some gray hairs, but the gray seemed to have come out in streaks all over her head. Had she been dyeing her hair, and decided now to let the gray come? It was not unattractive; indeed he felt a painful throb of affection, seeing his mistress in this careless state, a frankly aging woman with a pretty face and a still seductive figure. She walked to the bed and shook hands with him. "Hello, stranger. I guess you're meant to be hanged, and nothing else can kill you. God, were you sick! Hello, Jeanne. I heard about Karl. I'm sorry."
"It's not severe, Frieda. The worst of it is he's back on that regime he hates, starting with six weeks in bed."
Frieda said, "My husband just got put back on a rice diet. I swear all the men are falling apart."
"Isn't it the truth?" said Mrs. Hawke. "Any day now they'll face up to it and put one of us gals in the White House." She guffawed. Hawke had an irrational spasm of fear, seeing the three women grouped so at the foot of his bed: the mother laughing inanely, Frieda dishevelled and gray, Jeanne's face a white mask slashed with lipstick under a shapeless black poplin hat. Jeanne and Frieda were measuring each other with looks as the mother giggled. It reminded Hawke of their first confrontation in the Prince library. With all their added knowledge of each other, with all that had happened in the passing years, the wary hostility between them was the same.
"How do you like this hat?" Jeanne said to Frieda, jamming it flatter on her head. "Just the thing for the chic editor visiting the great author, isn't it? Or for carrying some peat moss home for the rubber plant."
"Darling, what can you do in the rain?" Frieda said.
"I like your hair that way," Jeanne said. "Goodbye, Arthur."
Frieda stayed only ten minutes. She acted the motherly neighbor looking in on a sick young man to such perfection, gabbling with Mrs. Hawke about symptoms and about diets for convalescents, that he found himself perversely calling up mental pictures of her in moments of abandoned passion. The contrast was unbelievable. He could not help wondering just what his mother made of Frieda. With her ingrained mountaineer suspicion, her readiness to believe the worst of everybody, how could she continue blind to the shrieking fact of his affair? For a moment it appeared that she guessed the truth; she offered, with more than a trace of roguishness, to go down to the kitchen and leave Frieda alone with Hawke. Frieda said briskly, "Nonsense, I have to run along. I just wanted to see for myself how our young genius is coming around. The only sensible thing he's done in the three years I've known him was to send for you to take care of him."
"Well, Mrs. Winter, he saved the price of a nurse that way, that was all."
Frieda laughed as merrily as Mrs. Hawke. The two women went out together, talking about the allergies of Frieda's son Paul. Frieda said in the doorway, "Well now, Arthur, you bring your mother over to dinner when you're up and about. Young Paul keeps asking for you." There was not a hint on the woman's face of anything but bovine jolly middle-aged friendliness.
His mother came back shortly. "Art, you're lucky to have a friend like that."
"I like her, mom, when she isn't too bossy. She has a way of taking over if you let her."
