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| Big Ben |
On the road for the last—again that word—time in Europe and God, we are tired. Neither of us slept very well last night, the emotions of leaving from ... and going toward ... were holding our minds too firmly to allow easy sleep.
The road north was dull and green, but gray—the skies still wintrish though the cutting edge in the air is dulled. We drove to Brussels and it didn’t welcome us, so after stopping to see the statue of the Manikin Pis, a fountain of a little boy peeing water into a pot, we went on to Holland which also didn’t exactly throw its arms open, but it didn’t reject us either. At the border, a go-go tourist office lady dangled a hotel reservation before us and in our travel-weakened state, we bit against our better judgment.
We drove through the lowlands into Amsterdam and found our hotel which to our disappointment was somewhat shabby for $15, and our exhaustion was not aided by our room being on the 3rd floor, requiring a painful and awkward shlep with our now heavy bags up narrow and steep staircase.
Later, after a brief rest revived us, we hopped a tram and went to the center of the colorful but slightly sleazy town for rijstaffel (a mild version of Asian, actually Indonesian, spicy dish) with some curry and red sauce which made us laugh, recalling the many "red sauce" meals we have endured and their attendant memories.
14 April Monday Through 18 April Friday Amsterdam to Boat
14 April: At American Express (outside of which hang many of the "hippies" of this open port town) we inquired about car shipping and went with an American guy who wanted to ship his Porsche to the US to De Groot, out in the harbor where we finally assured ourselves (almost) of shipping our car to NY.
Tomorrow we will leave it off and pay the money and hope.
Back at the Am Ex we got our tix for Friday night’s trip to London—via train, boat, train again— it should be one of those frenetic days we barely survived in Asia, BC (before car). But the tix were less than half the price for a plane flight.
We then walked through the Old Town, along the canals and the narrow tilting neat townhouses, through the red-light district with hookers sitting in bay windows like salami; and sex shops with their devices for the more technologically minded. The homosexual sex shops are located on the street which we were told, used to be "the dikes." No comment.
The weather made the town look dreary and the rain became heavy, so we retreated to our hotel room to invent some of our own sex games, to read and to dream of sun once more.
16 April: Last night we went to see "Tommy" which proved to be pure Ken Russell. Vividly imaginative. Visually bold, very exciting and more than a little unnerving. The audience was weird and interesting, too. Very young, as one would expect at a rock musical, long haired and working real hard to be different looking. The crowd was liberal and reacted loudly to a newsreel showing police brutality.
We slept late missing breakfast having instead ham sandwiches and cappuccino at a little shop and spent the afternoon in the new Van Gogh Museum. In spite of his popularity, he remains a miracle for me which Bea shares, constantly exciting and new; each painting conjures something, some strong emotion.
In the evening we had rijstafel at a different place. It was good, but as Bea said: "Nothing to write at home." She is forgetting her English.
My impression of Amsterdam is that it is one of the most interesting cities we have explored. A city of bourgeois comfort and placidity and commercial ugliness as well as tidiness. But also exotic, Eastern and youth influenced; permissive and liberal in sexual attitudes with the most visible red-light district of any city we have seen; and many "drug freaks" wandering the parks and streets. Today I stepped on a heroin cooking spoon on the street.
17 April: Surprise. We woke up to sunshine glowing from a smoky blue sky. We walked across town to the Anne Frank house where she was hidden and wrote her diary. The displays, on the same subject as those of Yad Vashem and Dachau were effective in the argument for humanity. The Dutch are justly known for their defense of Jews and resistence to the Nazis. The town itself has many Israeli and kosher restaurants.
Later we took a tour boat around the canals for an interesting hour, then the tram from the Central Station to our hotel. The day, which had begun in sunshine, had turned gloomy and dismal rain fell as we went to our hotel. It was still falling 3 hours later when we emerged for dinner and continued through the night.
18 April: During dinner tonight at the Rembrandt Restaurant near the Rijksmuseum a few blocks from our hotel, we listed all of the cities in which we have spent at least one night.
It came to 72!
That does not include cities or towns in which we have spent days or parts of days before going off to sleep somewhere else; like Agra, which we visited after a back wrenching bus ride; or Nara, a day’s excursion from Kyoto.
Nor does it include several towns that we drove to and through after deciding they were too dismal or too crowded or too expensive or too arrogant or too much for Bea’s map reading skills or my patience.
Nor does it include the night we lost forever when we flew across the International Dateline to Japan.
And it does not include the two bone-jarring nights on trains in Egypt.
Bea was all too familiar with the joys of that mode of transport, having traveled by Eurail and bus many times in previous trips to Europe. With those experiences we dreaded for a week our night aboard the ship from Hoek van Holland to Harwich, part of our nightmarish train-boat-train itinerary to London. Schlepping our bags was enough after our months in the car, but to confront a sleepless night was adding a ghoulish specter to our nightmares.
So we began the day with angst. We packed after breakfast and carefully eased down the narrow steps to the desk. We paid our bill and were allowed to leave our bags, and walked to the flea market (yes, another one) on Waterloo Plein, bought some block initials from an antique printer box and ate lunch, saw a movie and strolled the town in the afternoon which had become, finally, on our last day on the continent of Europe— SPRING. Balmy and fresh.
We sat in the park and did the crossword, were offered hashish only once and had dinner at the Rembrandt again. At the hotel, the lady called a taxi and we made the hop to the Central Station, gave up our few guilders for cigarettes and chocolate and boarded the train.
We conversed with some Americans and the train ride was swift, leaving us directly at the dock. Through passport to the boat and down to our cabin and it is lovely: clean, neat—not quiet, too near the engines. Bit better than many of the hotel rooms we are used to.
There is an English ambience to the boat and I feel more than a little excited about going there—not just because the next stop is home—but because it is England.
Then again, I remember the Titanic was English, wasn’t it?
19 April Saturday through 20 April Sunday Boat to Harwich to London
19 April: The boat didn’t sink but I wish it had. I would have gotten more sleep. The bed was very comfortable; it couldn’t be nicer, but the vibration and loud noise of the engines kept both of us on edge all night. When we finally dozed, we were awakened 10 minutes before docking with our coffee, giving us no time to take fresh clothes or even wash more than a mere splash on our faces to wake up.
A painful shlep to the train, a long wait and an hour’s train ride across the green county to Liverpool Station. Another shlep, confusion with the phone (the fact that it is in English this time still doesn’t seem to help with phones) a taxi ride to a hotel and our day was to begin.
We found ourselves hungry and went out for ham and eggs. Bea then collapsed in exhausted sleep. But though I was tired and aching, I was too keyed up to sleep. Haven’t felt like that for a long time. Remarkable that this late in the trip after all this time ... But this is England, London! Something so close to my romantic sense of history, identity with values and admiration for culture that it is hard to believe I am here at last.
Bea woke; we took the Tube to Picadilly Circus and walked the streets: Saint James, Lock’s Hatters (who made hats for Nelson, for Crissakes!), Whitehall, Parliament, Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and the day turned sunny and mild and we were completely disarmed and charmed.
20 April: After our breakfast of ham and eggs and toast we hit the Tube for the—of course—flea market. Another outdoor market—no second hand stuff but lots of people everywhere. Then in the Tube again and ½ hour bus wait "in a cue" to a double decker to the zoo, the largest collection of animals I’ve ever seen. The day was beautifully spent, again, and in the late afternoon we walked through Regents Park for the Tube back to the hotel.
21 April Monday through 24 April Thursday London
21 Apr: Last night at Bea’s urging (spelled n-a-g-g-i-n-g) I called Chris Dawson, who we met in Greece. We had spent several boozy nights in his and his wife Denise’s company among the other revelers there, including his sister, Nora. When we had last met, they had said: "Call us when you get to London. We’ll show you our town." I felt it unlikely that the offer was sincere, and considering our and his state of inebriation at the time, I thought it unlikely he would even remember us. His response to me on the phone was less than enthusiastic and made me apprehensive about the appointment we made to meet him and go to their house.
We walked through the ground floor of the British Museum ogling stuff we hadn’t seen in Egypt and Greece (the Elgin Marbles, looted from the Parthenon) and then awed by the manuscript room with letters, autographs, etc. by every one I had ever heard of who had written anything important in England; the Magna Carta; first editions of great and famous books; and stuff like that.
We had lunch in the Museum Tavern and went to Haymarket to Am Ex to pick up our money needed for the next leg of our trip. We wanted to see a session of Commons and waited for 2 ½ hours in a cue while a Bobby kept us amused with one-liners. When finally allowed to enter the Chamber, we could stay only a short time for a stirring debate between Lever and Sir Keith Joseph (who Bea kept calling Keith Richard) about the budget.
We had to scramble to get back in the Tube to meet Chris. He was at the rendezvous and drove us to his house in a suburb, Garard’s Cross. The house is new and has 1/3 acre which Chris gardens. We went to a local pub (where I stupidly ordered "a pint of Bitters" — appalling the innkeeper and corrected to a pint of "bitter") ale, that is.
Chris is an executive with a plastics company. He is conservative in attitudes, but a nice fellow. After the beer, dinner with wine and brandy after, the conversation began to get a bit heavy; Chris is morose, dissatisfied with his lifestyle and disagreed with Denise about every subject.
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| Churchill Statue |
We then took the Tube to The City and walked to the Old Bailey and watched a criminal case (which I was amused to see was not very different from all of my cases, complete with bored judge, low life witnesses, struggling barristers, confused looking jury; only differences, aside from the almost incoherent accents of the witnesses was that the defendant is seated with his solicitor, far from his barrister— a fine seating arrangement from my perspective, because the damn client cannot pester his trial lawyer while he is working—client’s are a nuisance in trials, anyway).
Bea has had a cold, surprise, and was feeling faint, so we ate and then strolled through St. Paul’s, then decided it was foolish to waste such a beautiful day at the Tower. It was more like a rare perfect Southern California day and almost unheard of in London.
We went back to the hotel, changed clothes, bought some food and spent the afternoon in Russell Square Park reading, watching the many Londoners in the park who had the same notion. We sat on beach chairs which are provided gratis, what a civilized place this is.
After a nap, we ate at an Indian restaurant and then bought tickets for a show for tomorrow night and saw a movie, "Young Frankenstein" in Picadilly. The atmosphere was neon and excitingly active, the film lacked something for us. There was too much of an expectation of laughs without Mel Brooks earning them and the jokes, some of them, were stale and predictable. The hunchback says: "Walk this way." Wilder does a take. "Huh?" The line is repeated. Wilder shrugs, walks like a hunchback. William Powell did the same gag in one of the Thin Man films, imitating an old butler.
23 Apr: Amazingly, I am writing this entry with my newly purchased Mont Blanc Diplomat pen. Our search for one at a possible price has continued through Europe ever since Risë put the idea into my head by writing and asking that I look for one for her. That we have finally done, splurging in Burlington Arcade, getting also fine bristle hairbrushes for ourselves. Now we grab a bite and meet Chris and Denise for the show.
...We are back and it was quite an enjoyable evening. We walked to the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane, through the theatre district along narrow streets, alleys, passing a dance school and a carpentry shop making props. We waited at the theatre entrance as the audience arrived for the performance. Chris and Denise arrived. The show, "Billy" a musical adaptation of the film "Billy Liar" was fairly good, entertaining with a lot of cute business by Michael Crawford, who sings passably and can’t dance, but does a lot of it.
We then went to eat at an Italian restaurant and the Dawsons drove us back and we said goodbye to them fondly, deciding that they are very nice and try hard, especially Denise.
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| Dickens House |
We took the Tube to Oxford Street and strolled down the crowded shopping district all the way from Marble Arch (Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner), stopping at Marks and Spencer to buy sweaters for each of us, and Foyle’s, the largest bookstore in the world, for an English copy of "The Little Prince" for Barbara. The weather continued warm and sunny summery rather than merely springy. We then tubed to Baker Street and toured Madame Toussaud’s which was something quite eerie and surprisingly a pleasure.
We were tired by then but walked to Doughty Street and toured Dickens House which has been turned into a museum of Dickensiana. It was 5 blocks from Bernard Street and we went back to the hotel for dinner and packing for our long long day tomorrow.
25 April Friday London to New York
Like many days in the past 10 months, this one began in one country and ended in another. And also, as in other days, this one is long, tiring and a test of nerves and endurance.
We awoke at 7:30 and had a last English breakfast, checked out and hailed a cab for the TWA terminal. After a long wait at Heathrow and a 7 hour flight we arrived at JFK. My feelings were at once, anxious, anticipatory, pre-experiential, nostalgic and melancholy.
Some of those feelings quickly faded on the ride from the airport through the gray, cloudy streets of Queens and the grimy streets of Manhattan by bus and taxi. NY which had once been my home, now seemed alien and threatening; until we came to Eileen, whose hospitality was overwhelming, and then Fredi came with her brand of exuberance and we chatted the night away.
So here it is midnight (5 a.m. London time for us) in muggy, rainy NY.
After all of our fretting over the customs, we declared $350 of our $900 in European buys and wound up paying $6.
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| Trinity Church, Wall Street |
26 Apr: I awoke at 7:30 this morning. Bea and Eileen were still asleep and stayed that way for 2 hours during which I peed, made and drank a mug of coffee, smoked 2 cigarettes, read part of "The Feminine Mystique" and clumsily broke a leg from one of Eileen’s toy elephants. When they did finally stir, I went down and bought a Times and six bialeys. We consumed everything then slowly began to move until we were out into the street.
It was a nice Spring day for NY, sun and clear blue sky because of the wind. We walked to the West Village, Washington Square, Bleeker Street, McDougal Street. The park was cheerful and lively. Bea and Eileen toured the antique shops and finally we bought some food and went to look for a film to see, but there was a daunting line, so we retreated to Eileen’s apartment and watched a bad one on the tube.
Eileen is very sweet, a bright and creative girl / woman with a severe "meeskite complex" which creates the usual vicious cycle and as with most circles it is hard to say which came first, the cause or effect: She is plain looking, has no confidence, no success with men, is lonely and depressed which shows on her face which makes her less attractive ...
She has built up a failure psychology which makes it hard for her to get out of the cycle. She has had many years of psychoanalysis but it not likely that she has gained much insight, not enough to break out. Still she is a generous and good person—and tries hard.
We also went to the Auto Club, got info about our car and a trip tic for New England, DC and across the country, which made me anxious to get under way again.
27 Apr: The Sunday Times. The Guggenheim, the East 80's, a New York Chinese restaurant (won ton soup, egg rolls, fried noodles) a bad film, "Funny Lady."
The most vivid impression was how "dear" everything has become. $4 for the film, 35 cents for the subway, etc. We continue to feel like foreigners, not just out-of-towners but Rip-van-Winkles.
We are marking time until we can get our car and begin traveling again. Meanwhile I am enjoying the novelty of showing Bea a city that I am more familiar with than she. At one point we went into a deli; I ordered my old favorite NY specialty: a corn beef on "club"--- thick Italian bread. Bea ordered a pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise and cole slaw. I gave the counter man a look that denied any responsibility for the alien who stood next to me.
28 Apr: The weather was a little warmer today, quite pleasant. We explored a healthy mix of Lower Manhattan. The car shipper was on Trinity Place, so after our business we walked over to Trinity Church and walked through the graveyard with its tombstones going back to the 1600's, just about the oldest thing you can find on this continent. The magnolias were in blossom.
Back at the apartment, Eileen arrived and we all went out first to Nathan’s (the Manhattan branch) for hot dogs, lobster rolls, fries and root beer. (It was like Ella Fitzgerald—lost something over the years, but still the best.) Then through Washington Square to Soho, the newest "in" district; its old corroded graystone warehouses and lofts now are studded with artist studios, galleries and chic apartments. Some of the facades are interestingly ornate and the lofts are high ceiling and free form, but basically it still looks like a renovated ruin, like much of Manhattan.
29 Apr: This was a day for much needed rest. We have been staying awake or half awake until the early hours talking and waking at the crack of noon. Today I spent just doing nothing while Bea went shopping for shoes and socks and discovered The Village for herself.
In the evening we went over to Fredi’s apartment for dinner. Bunny was there—to me she looked shockingly older and tired; Harold (who we had seen in Paris) still compulsively gabbing about his business; Fredi’s cross-the-hall neighbor, a young girl of 24 who went from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Yale to CBS as a research assistant and was very bushy-tailed and absurdly young.
It was a fun evening in which Freddi’s sparkling sociability shone at its finest; and Bunny performed some of her old, very funny stories which have become in the many retellings, polished routines.
Bea looked stunning and Eileen suicidal.
30 April Wednesday through 4 May Sunday New York to Tenafly, New Jersey
[Bart, Laura’s brother, offered to take us in with him at his home in Tenafly, across the river from Manhattan. We had been imposing on Eileen and Bart and his wife Phyllis were insistent. At this point we were pretty aware of saving expenses, knowing how high everything in Manhattan was we decided to accept the offer. We spent most of the next 4 ½ days at their house, doing not much of anything except listening to Phyllis’ views and examining her way of life. Hester is Laura’s sister, who was and is a writer of comic fiction.MB 15 June 2002.]
I have been reading Hester’s book, a strange experience knowing its author and some of the the people on whom the characters are based. There is a scathing caricature of her brother Bart and his wife Phyllis, particularly Phyllis and their way of life. It is a cheap shot. Like a joke about cripples it goes for the easy laugh, without compassion or humanity. It is a caricature of a cartoon of a stereotype: a cheap trick.
In a few particulars it is right on target. Phyllis is "a trip" in her own little world: unambiguous about her tastes, prejudices, opinions and chosen lifestyle. By our liberal, hip, aware, modern, educated, young standards her taste is awful, her prejudices unbearably backward, her opinions about virtually every subject are wrong headed, dogmatic; her lifestyle sickeningly bourgeois, suburban, regimented and mind-dulling.
Her house reflects her taste: Black velvet iridescent Tijuana paintings in gilt frames in the bedroom, colorless contemporary furniture in a living room where no one lives, a t.v. in every room, and the pre-occupation with constant t.v. watching; parochial views about sex, violence, Blacks, politics, schooling, religion. Reads only best-sellers, gossips about neighbors, bad mouths friends and relatives. The whole bag of values that are so cavalierly demeaned by our crowd of superior thinkers. She accepts all the values that we have rejected and come to take for granted as wrong.
Yet, for all of that, she is an often generous person. Her very certainty is disconcerting for we who have replaced her values with no values that we are sure of. She at least is honest. She freely admits her bigotry, understands it is "morally wrong" but admits that she feels threats to her security—admits she is rich and "they" are poor and desperate and she does not want anyone to take away what she has. She does not try to mask her bigotry. This is much more honest than the "liberal" who spouts slogans and lives in fear—the closet bigot. He is threatened, but feels guilty about these feelings. Phyllis feels no guilt.
She has a built-in bullshit detector which is aided by her skepticism about everyone. She sees through false modesty, pseudo-intellectuality, phony artsiness, super-sensitivity. She can be a brutal castrator. Yet she is aware of her power and does not stoop to gratuitous destruction of weaker people unless she is crossed in some way. Then she can be merciless, crafty, devious, has a strong memory for slights and takes great pleasure in venomous revenge.
Over all, she has a healthy sense of humor, sometimes self-deprecating, often showing an honest self-appraisal, often surprising insights to the truth about other people, events, the world around her.
She is devoted to her children, house, and husband (probably in that order) in an aggressively protective way. Bart seems the perfect husband for her. Relaxed and satisfied, he defers to his stronger wife on almost every whim. On several issues, politics, crime, race, he should know better but he parrots her extreme and often idiotic statements for the sake of keeping peace in the house. He does not want to cross her. The attitude I gather is inherited from his father, Max, who by all accounts allowed his dynamic and vocal wife, Fredi, who was in turn devoted to him. Phyllis knows she has a good thing going with Bart and treads a tightrope, playing on his good nature, prodding him into action and involving him in her battles.
The children are at awkward ages. Wendy, a slim and virginal boy-conscious child. Pam, 14, is not as pretty as her sister, quite shy and sensitive, artistic, doubting. Both girls are wedded to their mother’s interests for them. They are raised to have her attitudes and echo them. Phyllis encourages them to read—what she reads, "safe" best sellers which are "appropriate" for children. One day Phyllis criticized a teacher’s assignment regarding the symbolism of poetry, revealing her own insecurity about her intellect and education. Bea was aghast.
Bea observed that it will be interesting to see what becomes of these kids. She recognized herself in each of the girls. Bea always felt like Pam the outsider, awkward (though in her case it was skinny and tall. She idolized her parents and accepted all of their values. Until she began to seek her own identity, a process which for her came later than adolescence; not until she was mired in a miserable marriage that her parents thought perfect for her. For these girls the rebellion will come and when it does, look out.
...Our car is ready, only a few problems, like a stolen tool kit, and locked brakes ... But we got the kinks out and are thrilled to be free again.
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