Christopher more strongly than any other place he saw on that trip.
They arrived at sunset and went up onto the roof of the church, from which there was a long descending view through a gap in the hills to the coastal plain. Christopher experienced a moment of stillness and calm, sitting on the roof, which he can still dimly recall. He was drunk, as usual, but neither too much nor too little, and he had “that sense, which comes so seldom and so mysteriously, of having reached the right place at exactly the right moment.” (I quote from a magazine article––too slick to be worth reprinting in Exhumations––
which Christopher published in Harper’s Bazaar, June 1947. Caskey’s photographs to illustrate it were rejected. Without consulting Christopher, the editors substituted for them an idiotic would-be-elegant art-posed picture of some gesturing boys and girls on a staircase, which had nothing to do with anything.)
While in Mexico City, Christopher and Caskey spent a good deal of time with a young painter [. . .] and his friend, an architect, whose name I have forgotten. [The painter] had a brother, [. . .]
whom Caskey had known in New York. [The painter] was
attractive, good-natured and “gay in a melancholy way” as so many Mexicans are. One night, when they were all drunk, Caskey kissed ¾ 1947 ¾
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him and Christopher got suddenly jealous and slapped Caskey’s face. [The painter] was delighted. He embraced Christopher, exclaiming, “That’s what we Mexicans are supposed to do––you are a real Mexican!” Back at the hotel, Caskey and Christopher made it up in a highly emotional scene and Christopher fucked him, which was unwise, because Caskey was having an attack of La
Turista. This is the only occasion I can remember in my life when, as they say, I hit the jackpot.
I don’t remember that Christopher got La Turista on that trip, but he suffered at first from the altitude. He had palpitations, which he cured with some drug he was sold by a chemist––I think it was digitalis. Soon after, to his dismay, he felt definite symptoms of an attack of flu. Not wanting to succumb until he had to, he went along with the others to visit the church of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Christopher stood for some time watching the worshippers who
hoped to be healed of their sicknesses, as they approached the shrine inch by inch on their knees, up the nave from the west door. The look on some of the faces moved him profoundly and his eyes filled with tears, but he could never have joined them; he didn’t even feel that what they were asking for was right—according to his own beliefs. . . . It was only much later, when they had gone on to Teotihuacán and were climbing a pyramid and Caskey was saying,
“We don’t have to worry about those human sacrifices—they only use virgins!” that Christopher suddenly realized his flu symptoms had completely disappeared.
On New Year’s Eve, they didn’t go to bed at all, since they were to leave early next morning. They drank and danced at a succession of bars, ending up in one which was called The Paricutín.[*] (“As explosive as its name,” Christopher says politely in his article, but I don’t remember that anything dramatic happened there.)
1947
The 1947 day-to-day diary records that Caskey and Christopher left Mexico City by plane at 6:00 a.m. on January 1; I’m not sure how long the flight to Los Angeles would have taken, according to schedule. Their first stop was at Guadalajara. On the way there, they
[* After the volcano; see below.]
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Lost Years
got a glimpse of the real Paricutín, then a very young and notorious volcano (not quite four years old), smoking furiously. Between Guadalajara and Mazatlán, the plane was caught in a thunderstorm over the mountains and tossed about. I don’t know how much
danger it really was in, but the situation seemed very alarming—
because of the flashes of lightning, the bumps and sideslips, the glimpses of rock through the clouds, immediately below, the cries of passengers and the falling of baggage from the racks (in which it should never have been stowed, anyway). At first, Christopher was only anxious—thanks to the dullness which remained from last
night’s drinking and to the presence of Caskey beside him. (For Caskey was a seasoned veteran of the air. While in the navy, he had gone out on weather planes as an observer and had once circled down over a hurricane.) But now, glancing at him for reassurance, Christopher saw that he too was anxious and maybe even scared—it made him look sulky. Immediately, Christopher became terrified.
And, after this experience, he lost confidence permanently. He has never felt at ease in any plane from that day to this.
When they reached Mazatlán, they were told that the plane had engine trouble—presumably because of the beating it had taken in the storm—and that there would be a delay. They stayed there most of the day, then made a slow calm flight up the western coast, stopping at Hermosillo and Mexicali. They didn’t arrive at Los Angeles till midnight.
Christopher now had less than three weeks before his departure for England. I imagine that he must have been in a considerable flap about this trip and more than half dreading the prospect of it. But such emotions are quickly forgotten. The day-to-day diary is full of names of people he saw—I no longer remember who some of them
were. [Bertolt] Brecht (whom he now definitely didn’t like) is mentioned, Hayden and Rod Owens, van Druten and Walter Starcke,
the Beesleys and their friend Phyllis Morris,1 Cyril Connolly (who 1 Phyllis Morris, an English character actress, was a friend of the Beesleys. They had invited her to come over and stay with them, to recuperate from the wear and tear of the war years. Phyllis was eager to come but she dreaded the journey because she was subject to seasickness. Finally, she decided to fly, reasoning that her agony would be much shorter than on a boat. Once airborne, she discovered however that she was capable of an airsickness so acute that it made the Atlantic flight seem longer than a voyage. When they put down at Gander she was beside herself and felt she could go no farther. So she ran away and hid behind a hangar. They found her there before takeoff. Phyllis begged them hysterically to let her stay where she was and freeze to death, or ¾ 1947 ¾
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must then have been almost at the end of his visit to the U.S.), Charles and Oona Chaplin, Chris Wood, Aldous and Maria Huxley, Jay, Bo and Kelley, Iris Tree, Peggy and Bill Kiskadden, the van Leydens, Tim Brooke, Nicky Nadeau, John Mace. There was also
Swami, whom Christopher visited several times, taking part in the Vivekananda Puja on January 13.
Sometime toward the end of 1946, Christopher started working
with Lesser Samuels on a treatment for a movie story. The story was originally Samuels’s idea and I don’t think Christopher contributed much to it—it wasn’t at all his sort of subject matter. But Samuels was fond of Christopher and evidently got some kind of psychological support from collaborating with him. The story was about a young iceman who invents one of the first automatic refrigerators and a girl art student who falls for him and does a painting of his head attached to a nearly nude body she has copied from a Michelangelo print, thus causing a scandal. Period, the early nineteen hundreds. Samuels gave it the title Judgement Day in Pittsburgh. They finished it on January 6.
On January 17, Salka gave a farewell dinner for Christopher, to which the Huxleys, the Kiskaddens, John van Druten, Phyllis Morris and Garbo came. Garbo may have made this social appearance as a gesture of friendship toward Christopher, or because Aldous and Maria were invited. I don’t remember anything about the evening—
no doubt Aldous gave his expected performance, Peggy was bright with Maria, Bill was courtly with Salka, Phyllis was thrilled to be in such grand company, John was watching Garbo and wondering what she was thinking and what he was thinking about her.