21 December: Now that I think of it, one of the reasons for our trip was Bea’s inability to feel secure in her friendships with other women. That may sound a little far out but let me explain. Bea was much more dissatisfied with our life style than I was, though I was certainly not fulfilled. She was often downright unhappy: her job had become routine; she went from one obsessive hobby to the next— cooking, crochet, antiques, yoga. Though she excelled at all, including teaching, she remained with a sense of something missing.
Having been an only child and a lonely one she had always sought close lasting friendships. There had been Helene in France, but Bea had been taken to the States when eight. She had a hard time making new friends. There was Suzie, then Barbara, a complex web of deep rooted neuroses who could never be able to have any satisfactory relationship with anyone.
At school, there were others , and later, teaching chums. She has had close friends, but they drifted apart as people’s lives do or foundered on eventual disillusion. Her insecurity turned the departures into self-criticism: she was to blame for not being able to keep a friend / sister.
When we got together we built a lasting life; it only emphasized for her the failure to keep any women friends for long. She thought about it often, in her up moments ascribing it to her strong heterosexuality; when down she tearfully bemoaned her "lack of intelligence." Without a career goal she was ambitionless and bored while I spent a good deal of my time within myself.
She is "other-directed" if you will, while I am "inner-directed.." She always seeks her personal contentment in relationships with other people. It has been a continuing point of friction between us.
M was the latest in a line of Bea’s efforts [at friendship]. A 38 year old teacher, M found herself unhappily married to a prissy effeminate man. In her 14th year of teaching and 13th of marriage, she decided to divorce. We had seen them socially at times but Bea did not become close to M until the marriage had reached the crisis stage. M needed someone to pour out to, and Bea stood there like a big target.
Each day I would get reports of M’s progress. Her problems were soap opera material — their sex life was bad— hadn’t slept together for a year, hadn’t enjoyed it for centuries. She had other vaginal problems: painful periods— unable to have children. She was moving out— had a fight with her husband— it went on and on. Bea was involved though often tiring of the sad story endlessness of it. She hung in there determined to be a loyal friend.
I think it really crossed her mind to cancel our trip to see M through those difficult times, but after we went she determined to write often. Bea sent several letters before receiving M’s reply: a typed, perfectly constructed document accounting for all her inner turmoil, neatly compartmentalized and dissected over and over. After that, we heard nothing. Bea wrote, wrote and then disappointedly wrote M off— "Out of sight, etc..." another friendship gone.
Then two days ago Gerry called saying M was coming to Paris for Christmas. A telegram followed, all with the annoying assumption that the friendship was still on. Of course it was. Bea became tense and atwitter, planned our drive to the airport, a dinner with G&H and Sunday with the family. We canceled our trip to the chateaux from Wednesday to Friday because the plane was arriving Friday afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday we did nothing, becoming bored with our laziness; I wrote and Bea itched about and wished Friday would come.
On Friday I insisted she call the airport and when she got finally through the French system of overlaying operators she discovered that due to bad weather in LA (!) The plane would land 6:30 a.m., Saturday (which means we would have been back from the Loire)..
Bea huffed and worried and thought it out from every angle, but cried in helpless frustration. I railed in pique because of our wasted time. M never called or telegrammed to tell us of the delay. Bea defended M with an ardor that was inspirational though not convincing.
We drove to Paris for our gloomy dinner with G&H, the stuffed shirts, the middle-aged young Bourgeoisie. I cursed M for her lack of English speaking company (which had been the only aspect of her visit that I had anticipated with any pleasure). On the way back we bickered. Bea wanted to arise at 5:30 and meet the plane. I preferred leaving a note for her to call when she landed after which we could come and pick her up. Again Bea was ardent and tenacious, though not logical. We went to bed without a resolution. Neither slept well, Bea not at all.
The alarm rang and she got up to call the airport. The plane would arrive at 7:30 and we were going to meet it. I tried to argue but it was impossible. No amount of logic could change a decision that was made from the heart. I grumbled. "Make coffee."
"Are you going to get up and be angry?"
"Make coffee."
When I opened my eyes I was shocked. "It’s dark out there. They can’t land a plane in the dark, can they?" I was reaching.
The coffee lured me out of the warm bed and as I dressed, grunting and mumbling peevishly, she said: "Isn’t it exciting. Going to an airport again?"
After four months of doing nothing but going to and from airports to catch and escape from planes, she was now thrilled at the prospect of another pre-dawn jaunt. I carefully aimed my undershirt. It glanced off the side of her head as she stood before the mirror combing her hair and caromed into my coffee mug.
Our house was 3 inches from the airport on the map, a couple of miles in a straight line. But of course there are no straight lines in the real world, so we wove through town after town in the pitch dark, dodging French traffic and finally getting lost. Seeing a huge red glow on the horizon I knew it had to be either a sunrise or nuclear explosion or the airport. I guessed the third choice and drove in its general direction, around vast areas of blackness. Often there would be signs teasingly pointing to "Aeroport" and dead-ending in more black fields.
Finally we entered the airport complex, still miles from plane arrivals. We went over and under overpasses and underpasses, on freeways, clover leafs, cul-de-sacs. At last the saucer-modern terminal loomed, gleaming like it had itself just landed.
I dropped Bea off and followed signs that said "Parking", curving into a concrete ramp spiraling up until at last I found a vacant space. I walked back and found Bea looking at the faces of the passengers who were just now departing.
When M was spotted, I was almost as excited as Bea was, surprised at my own enthusiasm at seeing a "new" face, one from "home." But M’s somber joylessness soon drowned the mood. The rest of the day was spent with us telling stories of our travels to a person who seemed particularly uninterested; and us listening to M’s woes on which she was fixated.
22 December Sunday Villeparisis
Clara being absent with leave, Bea acted as chief cook and bottle washer today, buying, cooking and preparing food, setting tables and serving. Raymond & Lola, fearing Bea might not come through with enough food, brought enough to feed Napoleaon’s Grand Armee. Despite Clara’s absence we were a platoon of people (in not very good ‘company,’ pun intended). With M there was the Rosenberg’s daughter and her husband and their two little sons. The day was not unbearable due mostly to the husband’s ability to speak English and my improving French. I find I understand much more and can even form some phrases and make little jokes.
M was uncomfortable, as expected, with the family and all the food. She rarely smiles, talks only of herself and her problems. Most of those seem quite artificial or of her own making and she analyses them so much and thinks about them so exclusively that they are her only topic of conversation. She is also obsessively slow in all her habits, so careful and meticulous that you want to rattle her. The word "uptight" was made for her.
We ate too much food today, including several pieces of pie and huge helpings of creme fraiche. We had to roll into bed and spent the night listening to fat cells form into rolls on our bodies.
With M in tow we tramped to Paris, retraced our route from the E-Tower and back by way of Ave. Pres. Wilson to Les Inv to UNESCO to Rodin to Champs de Mars. This time we walked up and under the monster. It was a sort of kick playing the roles of sophisticated Parisians, pointing out things to M, the melancholy one. We had a good walking day, necessary after Sunday’s stuffing.
I read a good Arthur Clarke and made a mental note (now on paper) to write Rise and ask if anyone seriously explored art fi or lit fi, instead of merely sci-fi. The genre of predicting future development, using the knowledge, trends of the present and future possibilities, mixing in imagination.
While I was reading, Bea was getting an earful of M. When she came to me she whispered that M’s problem’s were becoming tedious, with her constant crying about her condition which prevents any enjoyment of things present. After the gossip about their mutual friends and life at school, Bea concluded that things at home have continued in their petty pace without significant change, a shock to one who has gone through what she considers to be dramatic personal changes, growth in awareness in the past months.
It added a depressing foreboding upon our return to the world: almost a sci-fi feeling of going to a world whose movement is much slower than that which we have become accustomed. (Or if you will, returning to your home town in Iowa after living some time in the big city.) Finding that while you were changing, everything else remained the same; and even more shocking, that after a short time, you fit right back in, with no trouble at all. Now that is horror sci-fi....
There is no lonelier, more desperate time of year than this. Our programming has led us to the sentimental assumption that happiness is home and family, a special kind of weather, a certain mood of gaiety. If any element is missing, we are uneasy, if major ones are absent— disaster.
So here we are on Christmas Eve, three lonely nostalgic people, each with his/her own description of what is lacking— M, the worst. She is here with us, having come all this way to avoid bitter loneliness. Ironically, she should be the most susceptible: she is Christian, from Iowa, alone, aging, having left the desperation of her Iowa home and her Glendale marriage and taken a lover, a married man. She acts like a loser, and drags us down with her.
But we go down fighting: I made a paper eucalyptus tree, we cut out decorations by the cold fireplace, sang a few broken carols, and drank some brandy.
25 December Wednesday Noel Villeparisis
Another day full of drear and recession (a notch below depression). I was unable to drag myself out of bed until almost 11. When I did I viewed through the cabinet window rainy, gray cement. The other two emerged from their cocoons soon and we all faced the cruel facts which left us unambitious. We decided to scrap yesterday’s plans and leave Paris tomorrow, for which we could find ample excuse. M began to cry, for no apparent reason except a welling of her desperation. Bea soothed her though I sensed Bea’s own tension and patience and interest in M’s constant desolation were reaching critical mass.
I left them to their crocheting, which seemed to relax them both. I did a French lesson, read over and thought about my writing, listened to the music as the short afternoon slid by and began my third book in as many days. I am just about read-out. The urge disappearing or dissipating and I am looking toward the beckoning city again, rain or shine. We need to break out of a hard shelled malaise we have built around ourselves.
26 December Thursday Villeparisis to Paris to Villeparisis
We have decided not to allow M’s depression to drag us down. When we ask her what she wants to do, her answer is a shrug or maudlin cry. She is joyless and gray, outwardly as well as in her mind and mood.
So we took her to Paris which can suit anyone’s mood. We walked through Ile St. Louis with its narrow buildings on narrow streets and snuck up on ND from her rear, entering again for a walk around medieval altars and pews. We had an excellent cheap Chinese meal after crossing to the Left Bank in the Latin Qtr and onto St.G. past "Fair Play" and "Sagamore" to say hello to M. Claude. Raymond was out hankying and pankying and Lola was at dejeuner so we walked back to the Ecole de Medecin and onto Boul’ Mich’ to the Pantheon which was much nicer outside than in.
We endured a tour by the guide of the tombs/cells of the greats: Hugo and Zola, the two greatest humanists share a cell for eternity. We strolled through the Lux’ Gardens and watched the rich boys trying out their new Christmas boats on the goldfish pond and the poorer boys who chase pigeons. The sun peek-a-booed and it was Autumnal.
Back across St.G. to Rue Bonaparte and St.Surplice to St. Germain-de-Pres looking like Times Square. We succumbed to the hoopla and saw a James Bond movie. I came out with a headache, but 2 empirin and an omelet and frites helped.
A walk along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde did the rest and we Metro’d back home.
27 December Friday Villeparisis to Paris to Villeparisis
I am exhausted. The day’s effort of cheering up M, entertaining M and Bea turned my own state to depression and our trudge from Place d’Etoile (now Charles DeGaulle) to The Louvre via the Champs wore my feet up to the knees. M continued to be self-absorbed and reactionless, unshaken by all including La Gioconde, Nike, Venus and the whole sorority, though she showed some signs of getting out of it.
Self-consciousness is something I have been trying to avoid, having spent huge chunks of my life in self-analysis, self-depredation, self-doubt, self-pity or just plain Self. Everyone must do it and not to be aware of one’s SELF is to be a block of wood; but to overdo it is to be miserably ... SELF-INDULGENT.
But there is a problem: how can I be a writer if not self-conscious? Impossible not to be merely dishonestly shallow and rely on clichés. Writers must be observant about themselves especially.
28 December Saturday Villeparisis
We had a beauty of an argument today.
Since M arrived I have stayed out of the way leaving them alone and taking to my privacy. M has so much "soul" to bare to her pal and besides, I can’t stand her inane gushing. Bea’s complaint was that I hadn’t done my share of housework. Bea has done all the shopping with M; M has done dishes at her own request for something to do, much as I did at our gatherings in Greece. Bea has been more annoyed with M and hence more irritable toward me.
This morning they woke early and went to the Flea Market in Paris, something I could live without. Bea came back annoyed; everything was outrageously expensive— she wanted to go back with me to see a mirror with frogs on it that she thinks will be a perfect gift for Laura for $50. I was negative at the thought of buying expensive household furnishings as gifts. I was also supposed to begin a laundry in the morning, but naughtily overslept.
Bea exercised her major vice, something she rarely does, but the one that brings me closer to Wife-icide than any other: she began yelling at me in front of M. With her breathless and tearful hyperbole: "You never do anything." "You always treat me as a slave." Of course, not fair: I sometimes do something; I sometimes treat her as a slave.
29 December Sunday Villeparisis
The Sunday invasion came with more than its usual ferocity. Lola the wife of Bea’s father’s brother, led the assault. It is she, Bea’s family legend says, who drove Bea’s father and mother out of France. It is easy to see how. She is a selfish, strong-willed woman who has succeeded in enslaving her own sister and turning her life to wreckage.
Bea and I have been having a ripping and clawing fight, as yet unresolved, and it left us both exhausted and edgy. Lola, sensing weakness like the old lioness she is, sprang for the guts, cutting and tearing away with petty insults and annoying innuendo. The day as a result was electric and exhausting.
M was no help. For the last two days during our dogfights she has had difficulty in neutral skies. Knowing that her presence triggered the war and that it hampers its resolution has added tension to her already guilt-ridden unstable mind. The day was difficult enough for her. She is somewhat in the position I was in Israel, surrounded by a swirl of conversation that can’t be understood, an uneasy guest among people whose hospitality can’t be refused. She found herself eating the unfamiliar heavy foods which laid heavily on her already heavy heart. As a result, she complained of indigestion, spent the night feverishly throwing up.
I myself must have caught the same bug and spent a sleepless night as well.
30 December Monday Villeparisis
The day of course was shot, spent sleeping most of the day. And groaning, mostly by M who has little sense of humor or perspective of the rhythms of her own body. One usually is able to predict how one’s body will react to common, recurring ailments like headaches, colds, stomach upsets, acne.
But M seems unable to "cope" with even the slightest onset of these problems. Perhaps it is because she has so many mental ones, which are major, or at least she has every right to treat them as such. They are unique for her. But even her treatment of these woes is bizarre. She "self-concentrates" so much that she cannot enjoy even the slightest amount of fun..
With all her deep thoughts she seems to have little real insight into who she is, will not be really honest with herself. She is not really "in touch with her emotions" and breaks into tears unprovoked by outside cause, and is always gray-faced, gloomy, and depressing. She walks under a cloud which is raining on us as well.
Needless to say, she is not much fun to be around.
31 December Tuesday Villeparisis to Fontainbleu to Paris to Villeparisis
Today we drove to Fontainbleu to see the palace and grounds, but were disappointed because despite all the guidebooks and official information to the contrary, it IS closed on Tuesday, a change made six months ago which the government neglected to tell anyone.
So we drove back, Bea and I singing, M sulkily brooding in the rear seat. We had dinner, Bea’s great oregano chicken, which M ate like she was being forced to eat her pet. We then dressed for the New Year’s Ball of the Friends of Radom to which we were invited. The girls scrounged together outfits from their traveling clothes to look as formal as possible and we took off not knowing whether to expect a chic Parisian soiree or a reunion of Polish refugees.
It turned out to be like a bar mitzvah which had overgrown and indeed threatened to burst the seams of the Hotel PLM on Boulevard St.Jacques. Actually it was a lot of hamish fun. The band played Jewish and Parisian and the usual bar mitzvah music, Bea danced with her uncle and I danced with Lola, Hélène, and mostly with Bea which we sorely had missed. I always love the way she looks when we dance, and she was the belle-est of the Bal there. I was proud of her, we stole the dancing show, and had a great campy time of it. We made up the rest of the night and we are fine again — till the next blow.
1 January 1975 Wednesday Villeparisis
I felt three strong urges today: to be entertained rather than to entertain; to hear the English speak their language; and to strangle M. I was unable to do any writing today. This I blame on Marilyn also. She is not at fault, but that is my state of mind, so I am going to enjoy it.
None of my urges were satisfied. Bea and M were unable to accept a reversal of roles and to do anything to amuse me. As is usual when one depressed person is in the company of two happy ones, the result is three depressed people, not three happy ones. I tried desperately to get the BBC, just to hear the clever and precise use of language, even if it is to give the weather in East Anglia, but this too was frustrated. The station faded out often, as though it were coming from Kathmandu rather than just the other side of The Ditch. I was able to get snatches of news, a talk show about literature, a review of English comediennes, and bits of a dramatization of a Henry James short story. Finally, at 1:30 am I managed to find the second half of the live Rose Bowl broadcast on Frankfurt AFR sandwiched between the stronger signals of the opera and Italian rock and roll. It was strange.
I have not gotten over my sports craving as I thought and it made me a little homesick.
2 January Thursday Villeparisis to Chartres to Blois (Chateaudun)
3 January Friday Blois to Chaumont to Amboise to Chenenceaux to Tours
4 January Saturday Tour to Langeais to Ussé to Azay Le Rideau to Chinon to Fontevreault to Saumur to Angers
We have spent three days driving through the Loire Valley, visiting chateaux. I am writing this while relaxing in our somewhat dingy one star hotel room in Angers after the long day's drive. As always, traveling is fraught with the uncertainties of constant decision making, which leads to fatigue. The task is made more difficult by M's diffidence and the winter cold. The winter proves to provide as much frustration as Asian summer. The cold saps energies and gives as much discomfort as the heat. Hotel-finding, sleeping, walking are all as difficult.
Also, the winter affects the appearance of "sights" in strange ways. For the first two days, dense fog, mist and rain hid much of the countryside and even the hillside chateaux from our view. Magnificent castles were out there across the river, but we could not see their domineering presence until we came right up to them.
Yet, the cold and foggy shroud added to our tours of the gothic battlements, the huge, grey rooms. The stone, moss, greyness of the monstrous structures seem to fit the weather. Most were built in the middle ages, a gloomy dank period in which people's lives were shrouded in ignorance, fear and religious goblins. It was the January of man's cycle.
After three days, the castles begin to lose their individuality in the memory, though in fact each is quite distinctive. We began on the 2nd of January, via Chartres where we walked through the cathedral. As in Notre Dame, and Rouen, there was no possibility of failing to feel awe in the immensity, the darkness, the hollowness of the interior.
We continued on through country made bleak by dense fog, past farms of corn, wheat, almost flat land. We lunched near Chateaudun overlooking the Loir – a small tributary of the Loire, then continued south to Blois, passing through occasional towns, each with a great stone church and narrow buildings huddled together against the chill.
The castle of Blois is surrounded now by the town, the houses standing close to its walls as they never would have dared in its time. We were made aware of the history that was made in its apartments, the kings, queens, mistresses, intrigues. In the diversity of its building, one could see the Dark Ages end and the Renaissance begin.
Early next morning, we went into the drizzle and mist, following the Loire whose opposite bank was barely visible, to Chaumont. Again the fog robbed us of our view of the castle on the hill over the river. When we parked and climbed the hill, we were not disappointed. We walked along a path lined with evergreens, large grassy areas stretching beyond our view. It was cold and grey, and easy to imagine Diane de Poitiers riding over the hill, dogs yapping and attendants in pursuit. Our first view of the facade was like a childhood dream: a castle with watchtower turrets on the corners, machicolations and flared stone bases into a moat. We crossed the drawbridge and entered a less forbidding courtyard, one that bespoke of the castle's use as a royal residence bridging into the Renaissance. After touring the cold dark, solemn rooms, we went to the stables, restored in the last century. It revealed a graciousness of life that only money and class can achieve.
Back in the car and on to Amboise, still more bloody history—a railing from which Huguenot plotters were hung, a tower with a winding ramp for horses. And on to Chenonceaux.
Like many others it begins as a castle, with turrets, grey stone and slit windows, but becomes a grand chateau, in appearance and in its history. It is built on the Cher and has an elegance that has been attributed to the fact that women, including Catherine De Medici, wife of Henry II and Mary, Queen of Scots, (married to Catherine’s son, Francois II) lived there and contributed to its design. From there we followed the river to Tours, a big city. We found another nondescript but cheap hotel and had another fairly good dinner. I have decided that anything the French make in a sauce is invariably tasty, no matter what sort or quality of meat the sauce is dumped on.
The 4th saw the fog lift quite a bit, though it remained overcast. Some of the biting chill left with the fog. We drove to Langeais. Arriving at noon we searched for a restaurant for a half hour before finding one open. We had onion soup and I had an omelet, a nice change from our usual car picnic of ham and cheese. We then drove to Ussé and for the first time were treated with the sight of a castle in the perfect setting. It was high on a hill backed by dense forests, a town laid at its feet and a small river winding below. It overlooked the valley of fields and could be seen for miles around in all its fierce grandeur. It is the castle said to be the model for Sleeping Beauty by its author and is certainly right for the part. Langeais, to which we then returned was another which had escaped the Dark Ages, but kept its foreboding exterior face.
The Chinon castle a medieval fortress above the town and river was fought for, sieged, and occupied during the Hundred Years War. Jeanne D’Arc found the Dauphin and made him Charles VII after she convinced him that she had visions. From here, she began her march to Orleans to defeat the British. Eventually, she got lost in the political and religious riptide and wound up in that square we visited a few weeks ago in Rouen.
It was late afternoon by the time we came to Fontevrault Abbey. It contained tombs of Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine and Isabel of Angouleme, wife of King John. The "kitchen" was an architectural masterpiece of its time and the Romanesque church a solemn reminder of the starkness of life there and the enormity of the grounds an example of the great wealth of the Church and aristocracy.
We drove through Saumur, its castle hanging over the town, and landed tiredly in Angers, to spend a sleepless night in a swayback "matrimonial."
Angers Castle, another of the gray-walled evil looking monsters was surrounded by a moat at whose dry bottom deer grazed. Its chapel contained tapestries depicting New Testament scenes. In all the chateaux great tapestries hang, their stories providing color and entertainment for the drab lives of the castles’ residents. The "Apocalypse Tapestry" 75 giant sections telling Bible stories complete with gargoyles, seven headed griffins, beastly devils, were a good example of an anomaly: here a subject evincing supernatural dark beliefs while also displaying skills and problem solving abilities and imagination and scope. Bea marveled at the technical achievements and patience of the workers, embroidering tiny stitch after tiny stitch until the enormous project was completed.
I noted that they had no television back then. So prosaic.
We then drove back to Paris on the Autoroute, the fog having descended again so that it seemed we were driving in a gray tunnel through a time machine across the centuries.
Bea and M went off to Paris at some unearthly early hour to get to the Flea Market. That left me to my own devices and amusements all day. Bea asked me if I would mind very much, knowing damn well how much I would enjoy my solitude. I slept late, a luxury I needed after the sleepless nights during our driving tour. I finished reading "Wuthering Heights" which disappointed me in its juvenile contrivances for the sake of "spirituality"; yet it does have a certain captivating charm of language and mystery. It reminded me a good deal of Poe, in its aura of gloominess, suppressed passions, controlled, intricate language— that is certainly not a new insight I am sure. In fact there is a title for the style of writing: Romanticism— yet it has occurred to me for the first time out of school and that is good enough to serve as "revelation."
I was even able to continue my own writing with flowing success. As I write I realize more and more the limitations of the Wayne Case as narrative and the necessity to find devices to liven what is essentially an actionless story. It requires dramatization because that element is sorely lacking. The major surprise comes at the discovery of Wayne’s truthfulness near the beginning and the rest is talk and much of it boringly technical-legal.
But I still think the story is worth telling and I must write the first draft straight-forwardly as it goes— then worry about effect and craft in a second draft.
I have also been thinking about the Porterhouse Case. The story should be told by Solomon: first section about him, the rest about the case— facts he dug up or researched.
7 January Tuesday Villeparisis
Bea and M went into Paris again in search of more places to buy things having returned empty handed, pockets burning with the itch to spend and have THINGS. Again they came back from the hunt frustrated after tramping in a frenzy all over the city. I spent another calm day reading and trying to write, though less easily than yesterday. It is a frustrating business.
We went into Paris today, the three of us, but had a difficult time. Montmartre was what I had suspected, an area dedicated to rip-offs a la the Sunset Strip / Hollywood Blvd. / 42nd Street and Times Square. I suppose it is better looking at night when the neon flashes and the seediness is hidden in mysterious darkness, but today in the cold and drizzle it was rancid.
Sex shops, "X" movies, the Moulin Rouge, the over-priced cafés were a drag. We funiculared to Sacre Coeur but could see little of the city under a low cloud ceiling. We strolled the little streets, some still looking like Utrillo had done them, except for the cars. In a square, some artists had set up their wares and hawked them to the pitifully few passersby. The brightly colored street scenes were a bit much on this bleak day, and those in brown and white by swishy palette strokes seemed to be machine made.
Lautrec was not to be found.
July 11, 1970 Saturday !2 midnight
Dear, dear Mort,
... I haven’t had a chance to finish this letter until now. Yesterday I went to Montmartre where the Impressionists began. The place is filled with painters still but— each one paints very touristy things—paintings of the Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame, etc. I talked to one of the painters for a while and he told me that he hated to paint outside, but that is where business was. As a souvenir of the day—one of the painters cut out my silhouette without drawing it—the whole masterpiece took him about one minute. I don’t think it looks anything like me—What do you think? (By the way—put it up against white to give it full justice.)
Last night Hélène Gerard and I went to a strip tease show with women making love to each other. The place was filled with Lesbians—quite interesting—to see anyway—I personally prefer you.
Soon Love Bea
9 January Thursday Villeparisis
Bea and M went tromping off to Paris again in search of ways to spend money— it is an irresistible urge to Bea who becomes frantic at the thought that bargains might be out there which she is missing. Our conflict continues because I would rather spend the money staying in hotels that are a notch better or eating in good restaurants and not having to count our centimes, or if possible, even save some for the rough couple of years ahead. Independence is still the name of the game and I can’t get over the fear of possessions. When they returned, Bea had a skirt which had been given her by Mme. Heléne from her wholesale house. M was loaded down with things for herself and for gifts.
After the first couple of dreary weeks, M improved a little half way through the chateaux and became almost bearable.. But now that her return home is imminent she has become glum again. She goes back to all the problems she left and her wonderful wild sex affair with "Bill" who scares the shit out of her though she won’t admit it.
10 January Friday Villeparisis to Airport to Villeparisis
We found our way to the airport— it was light this time so we didn’t get more than a little lost. M had spent the morning packing her suitcase so as to show us she had no room for the few things we asked her to take with her for us.
She is a very selfish person. She came here without calling or writing, assuming we would want her; even though she did not know our condition, she never asked. Then, after staying with us all the time she became upset at our asking her to take some things back. She worried about the weight (turned out to be 8 lbs under). Finally, buying gifts for her friends. She bought nothing for us, not even a token which hurt Bea very much. And when we drove her to the airport she gave me a peck on the cheek and a womanly formal cheek to Bea. A cold fish. Friend, blech.
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