He picked up the book and began to read one lovely sentence after another—
& I said in despair How beautiful, as one might say Look at that feather! Look at the velvet! Look at the fur!
I have naturally often thought that it would be nice to get some money from Liberace for Ludo, and I have sometimes thought that even apart from the money I should tell him. Whenever I think this I think of this conversation and I just can’t.
I would say But he is like a man who plays Yesterday on the piano with Brahmsian amplitude & lushness and so casually kicks aside the very thing which is the essence of the song he is like the Percy Faith Orchestra playing Satisfaction
and he would say Listen to this
and he would read out a sentence which was like Yesterday with Brahmsian harmony or the Percy Faith Orchestra playing Satisfaction by special request
and I would say He is like a man who plays the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata so slowly he makes mistakes, these logical fallacies are more glaring because he has so much the air of taking his time
and Liberace would say But listen to this
and he would read out a lovely sentence full of logical mistakes
and I would say Or rather he is like a man who plays the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata with dazzling virtuosity & complete ignorance of the music, Schnabel’s teacher once told him that he was a musician but he would never be a pianist & this writer is exactly the opposite
and Liberace would say Yes, but listen to this
and he would read out a sentence which was the work of a stupid virtuoso
and he never did seem to see what I meant. Lord Leighton was like this and like that and the other & he was like a man who piles mattresses on a pebble & I was like the princess & the pea, I was not going to say something about English & the American novel to be told I was engaging so I drank my drink and when Liberace had finished reading he talked for a while about Lord Leighton.
Now I am sure or rather I have no reason to doubt that if I had told Liberace about Ludo he would have done some decent thing. And yet— The fact is that 99 out of 100 adults spare themselves the trouble of rational thought 99% of the time (studies have not shown this, I have just invented the statistics so I should not say The fact is, but I would be surprised if the true figures were very different). In a less barbarous society children would not be in absolute economic subjection to the irrational beings into whose keeping fate has consigned them: they would be paid a decent hourly wage for attending school. As we don’t live in that enlightened society any adult, and especially a parent, has a terrible power over a child—how could I give that power to a man who—sometimes I thought I could and once I even picked up the phone but when I thought about it I just couldn’t. I would hear again his breathtaken boyish admiration for lovely stupidity his unswerving fidelity to the precept that ought implies cant and I just couldn’t.
Liberace talked on and on and on. Gradually as we drank more drinks Liberace talked more and more and more and asked more and more if he was boring me, and as a result it seemed less and less possible to leave, because if he wasn’t boring me why would I want to leave?
Then I thought, there must be some other way not to listen to all this, and of course there was a way. Surely Liberace had brought me back here to pick me up. It would be rude to put a hand over his mouth, but if I were to put my mouth on his mouth this would stop him talking just as well without being rude. His eyes were large, a clear glass green, rimmed with black like the eyes of a nocturnal animal; it seemed as though, if I only kissed him, not only would I not have to listen to him, but I would somehow be closer to the animal with these beautiful eyes.
He said something, and paused, and before he could say anything else I kissed him and there was a sudden, wonderful silence. It was silent except for the silly little laugh of Liberace, but once he had laughed it was over whereas there was no end to his conversation.
I was still drunk, and I was still trying to think of things I could do without being unpardonably rude. Well, I thought, I could sleep with him without being rude, and so I responded in a suitable manner as he unbuttoned the buttons of my dress.
This was a terrible mistake.
The wind is howling. A cold rain is falling. The brown paper window pane is flapping in the fierce rain and wind.
We are sitting in bed watching a masterpiece of modern cinema. I sat at the computer for three hours this morning, & allowing for interruptions typed maybe an hour and a half. At last I said I was going upstairs to watch Seven Samurai & L said he would too. L has read Odyssey 1–10; he has read the story of the Cyclops six times. He has also read a voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, three chapters of Algebra Made Easy, and a few pages each of Metamorphoses, Kalilah wa Dimnah and I Samuel following some scheme which I don’t understand, and every single one involves a constant stream of questions.
I know or at least tell myself that it is better than Japanese (since at least I know the answers to maybe 80% of the questions), & I know I told him to do it. It took him a year to read the Iliad so I do not know how I could have known he would read 10 books of the Odyssey in three weeks.
It occurs to me that the Book of Jonah is just four pages long. Questions on Hebrew have got to be better than questions on Japanese. Wonder if it’s too late to say I really meant Jeremiah.
I should be typing Advanced Angling as they want it back by the end of the week, but it seems important to preserve my sanity. It would be a false economy to forge ahead with typing until maddened to frenzy by an innocent child.
Also in the interests of sanity I have written nothing more for posterity in several days. I have been finding this rather depressing to write—writing of Mozart I thought suddenly of my mother blundering through the accompaniment to Schubert lieder with my Uncle Buddy, Jesus, Buddy, said my mother, what’s the matter, you sing like a Goddamned accountant, and slamming down the lid stormed out of my father’s latest half-finished motel & off down the highway while my Uncle Buddy softly whistled a little tune & said nothing much. What’s the use of remembering that?
I then thought of a priceless line I’d read somewhere or other: It is my duty as a mother to be cheerful. It is my duty as a mother to be cheerful, & so it is clearly my duty to watch a work of genius & abandon Advanced Angling & composition.
Kambei is samurai 1. He starts to recruit the rest.
He picks out a samurai in the street. He tells the farmer Rikichi to bring him to a fight. He tells Katsushiro to stand inside the door with a stick and bring it down. He sits inside waiting.
The samurai comes through the door, seizes the stick and throws Katsushiro to the floor. Kambei tells him the deal; he isn’t interested.
Kambei picks another samurai.
Katsushiro stands inside with the stick. Kambei sits waiting.
2 comes to the door. He sees through the trick; he stands laughing in the street.
Gorobei knows the farmers have a hard time, but that’s not why he accepts. He accepts because of Kambei.
I say to L: Kurosawa won a prize for a film he made before this one, called Rashomon, about a woman raped by a bandit; in that one he tells the story 4 times, & it’s different each time someone tells it, but in this one he did something more complicated, he only tells the story once but you see it from about 8 points of view, you have to pay attention the whole time to see whether something seems to be true or is just what somebody says is true.