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THE HUNGER
DIARIES
A writer's
apprenticeship.
LIFE AND
LETTERS
THE HUNGER
DIARIES
A writer's
apprenticeship.
BY MAVIS
GALLANT
In 1950, at
the age of twenty-eight, Mavis Gallant left a job as a journalist in
Montreal
and moved to Paris. She published her first short story in The New
Yorker in 1951
and spent the next decade travelling around Europe, from city to city,
from
hotel to pension to rented apartment, while working on her fiction. The
following excerpts from her diary cover March to June, 1952, when
Gallant was
living hand to mouth in Spain, giving English lessons and anxiously
waiting for
payment for her New Yorker stories to arrive via her literary agent,
Jacques
Chambrun.
THE BORDER, MARCH,
1952
An armed
guard in gray, a church, a wild rocky coast on which rushes a steel
sea. Black
rocks, cliffs, wind, a cold spring sun. Fragile, feathery fruit trees
in pink.
At Portbou, leave the train. A large room, like a drafty baggage depot.
I wait;
my luggage is wrenched open and inspected by insolent guards. Organized
disorder.
Luggage is chalked. People drift to the currency exchange to declare
what they
are bringing in. I am bringing in so little (twelve thousand lire) that
I
expect them to think I am hiding more. We are funneled into a doorway
between
filthy guards to show our passports. I am caught between a quarrelling
French
couple. Evidently bringing the baby was her idea - he knew better from
the
start. A wait, a long one. Inexplicable multilingual confusion, lending
of
pens, filling out of forms. I reach the window. 'Journalist?" says the
arrogant
young man. (Will they all be like this?) "Beautiful, too!" I know
what I must look like after a night and a day and a night in a
third-class
train. On to another window, where something is stamped, and a rush to
the
Barcelona train. They seem old (the carriages) but not shabby, just
high and
rather solid. No compartment doors, thank God, as I have been
suffocating since
Sicily. I share the window with a young girl who wears the
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
uniform-plaid slacks, black shirt, pea jacket, mascara, no lipstick.
Holes in
her socks (the heel is a great grubby-white moon) and she obviously
doesn't
give a damn. She has two addresses for cheap rooms in Barcelona and
Madrid and
writes a note for one, Calle de Hortaleza 7, Madrid. The carriage
fills: an old
woman, who can hardly hide her loathing for Miss Saint-Germain; two
businessmen, who gravely offer each other smoking tobacco and papers
for
rolling; a booted soldier, fat blond wife, two babies. Everyone sleeps.
The
soldier wakes up and says to one of the babies, who is crying, "Si tú no te callas, te tiras por la
ventana," which I immediately write down, as it is the first
sentence in
Spanish I have heard and miraculously understood, though if he had not
pointed
to the window I might not have known about ventana.
BARCELONA,
MARCH
Gray stone
houses, balconies, trolley lines, dust. Like a bourgeois part of Paris
suddenly
deserted, disappearing under grit and sand.
No
restaurants open before ten at night. It rains, it blows, every other
sign advertises
a detective agency. Nothing in the bookshops, just grammars and
technical
books. No one smiles. It is a big city, and dirty and gloomy. A suit
for a man costs
five dollars.
*
Breakfast is
always a cup of warm milk flavored with haricot beans, and a bit of dry
bread.
Orphanage food. The food is very strange and I am bothered by the
people
staring. It isn't the lively Italian curiosity but, rather, heavy and
dull,
like cows in a field.
MADRID,
APRIL
I live on bread,
wine, and mortadella. Europe for me is governed by the price of
mortadella. I
know the Uniprix [department store] in France, the Uniprix in Rome, and
here
the SEPU, all alike, with music piped in. In Madrid, subdued flamenco,
and they
seem to like the airs from Sigmund Romberg operettas.
Went to see
"Oliver Twist," which was dubbed and seemed very strange. In one scene,
when he is beaten, the young people in the audience burst into maniacal
laughter.
*
This flat is
full of sound. There is a squeaky baby I have not yet seen, who cries
like a toy
being pressed. His mother croons and sounds like the Duchess in
"Alice." And then there is the strange dark woman who shouts, and a
very little, dark old creature with a senile face who creeps up to me
and murmurs
in the passage. I talk to her cheerfully in English until someone comes
and
rushes her off to the kitchen. The people are not friendly, but nice. I
think
not accustomed to foreigners.
*
"Mama,
look at the senora smoking," a little
girl cried, staring at me, in a café. Cool wind, fluttering
apricot-colored tablecloths.
At night the sky is deep indigo, the moon a piece of cold metal. Few
city
lights, and so it is almost a country sky. The sound of Madrid is a
million trampling
feet. Its smell is cooking oil. Everything
tastes of it, even the breakfast croissants. This flat is awash in it.
At lunch
I saw a meal being prepared-a bath of oil with something sinister
swimming
inside.
*
Everyone
looks exactly the same, lower-middle-class. Couples pushing carriages,
carrying
bags of diapers. There are babies, little girls in white skirts so
starched
they stand out like lampshades, gold buttons in their ears. I have
never been
in a city where one was so conscious of crowds.
The children
masturbate the way children in other countries skip rope or roller-
skate.
Spanish parents must consider it like teething-they take no notice
whatever. It
is startling to see family groups strolling in the park, dressed as if
every thread
had just been woven and starched, and the little ones tottering along,
quite privately
absorbed. In the afternoon, cafés are stuffed. Little girls, stupid
with beer, slide
off their chairs. They play on the street, sit and roll on the
pavement, even the
babies: no germ phobia here, even though they die like pigeons of
typhoid. Streams
of urine everywhere, under café tables. Unlike Paris, where babies are
held over
the gutters, the parents in Madrid simply take down a child's pants
wherever it
happens to be, without moving. On Mama's feet? Mama doesn't care. Saw a
nurse
with a boy-baby directing the stream (he on her lap) so that the
carriage, a
chair, and his toes were splashed. It is like drinking in a public
urinal.
*
I am haunted
by a man I saw outside a cinema on the Jose Antonio. Elderly, neatly
dressed,
bent-but I saw in his face that he would have begged if he dared. That
face, tragic,
proud, and desperate, I am beginning to recognize here. Wanted to let
him know
I was no better off than he, but my clothes are better and
foreign-looking.
*
I think I am
not eating enough. Twice in the Prado I felt watery and faint. Outside,
the
traffic seemed far away and the cars very small, and I saw those black
molecules
swirling around, as if I were being given ether. I don't feel hungry,
only ill and
tired.
The Monte de
Piedad [a pawnshop] is run like a bank, big, efficient, and clean. I
part with
my typewriter for fifteen hundred pesetas. It turns out that in this
country it
is the most valuable thing I own. The clerk shows me bundles of
clothing, and
somebody's curtains. Beside me on the bench is an old woman with that
straight,
strained gray hair they have, hugging her sewing machine. I smile at
her, but I
realize she is close to crying.
*
Tonight it
rains and the baby cries all night, is soothed by the harsh rocking cry
"Vaya, vaya, vaya." It is after midnight. Traffic rushes on as if it
were high noon. I can hear men laughing and calling in the street. The
little
maids are washing and ironing in the kitchen. All the flats across the
street
are lighted and the sky is like blue paper.
*
Frederick,
wishing to offer me a treat, takes me to "Gone with the Wind," when I
would rather have had a meal. Five hours
in the dark, at the mercy of gigantic faces in color. A crushing waste
of a
day. Either they were eating wonderful American meals or they were
starving and
gnawing raw potatoes. Frederick, very sentimental, says the Southern
civilization
reminds him of Hungary, and he suffers from being uprooted. Having no
roots, I
don't know what he is talking about. I think, but do not say, that if
Hungary
were anything like the South I should want to be out of it.
*
I have no
right to call this [work-in-progress] "a novel" when it is so
abstract. It is an abstract idea I have held, or been held by, rather,
ever
since Austria-six months. Two notebooks stuffed with it-stuffed with an
idea. I
must be mad.
Worked from
coffee to dinner, ate very little, then too tired and ill to work
again. Regret
bitterly having promised to help Frederick with his book, particularly
as I am
doing the dullest part, research and typing. Have typed myself numb,
and then
my own work besides.
Found a place
where I can have a meal for ten pesetas. Brown tiled walls, greasy soup
I can't
get down, but a good cutlet. Place full of single, sad, youngish men,
clerks
from the look of them, gulping greasy macaroni. I glance twice at my
wrist,
forgetting the watch is gone.
*
The novel,
this bird in my mind, I have carried it there since Austria, suddenly
alighted
in Madrid. Sitting in the Café Telefónica, eating a dry bun, I saw one
of those
girls with the long jaw, blackish skin, thin mustache, those girls who
so often
devote their lives to religion, and of course that was the girl in the
book.
*
The stove
went out, and I discovered the alcohol bottle was empty. Disaster.
Waited an
hour with a horrid soup of dried vegetable shreds that looked and
tasted like
floor sweepings and finally cooked it on the kitchen range, where a
great iron
pot of lentils and seafood bubbled slowly. Frederick arrived with some
problem
when I really could not cope, and he suddenly said, in a voice wrung
dry with
bitterness, "Oh, but of course you
are the unselfish person, the most unselfish in the world, and I am the most selfish." It was the
remark of someone who has nothing more to lose.
And now it
is suddenly cold, like March in New York. This place cries to be
written
about-the passive, shuffling crowds, crowds everywhere, leveled off,
everyone
the same. Well-dressed people are the exception, and the gap between
them and
the rest of us can be measured in miles. I am really shabby now: I
noticed it
yesterday when I passed two beautifully groomed women, hair waved, good
suits,
perfume. They brushed by me with the same half- curious, half-impatient
air
they had for the rest of the street. I have only my Austrian shoes
left, very
scuffed, and stockings so full of runs that I can scarcely fasten the
garter.
They're so sheer that the runs don't show. Other clothes very tacky:
everything
needs cleaning. They've stood up well, on the whole. (Mummy's only
advice to
me, ever, in her whole life, was "Don't buy cheap clothes.") Nothing
looks working-class, but just Madrid-level seedy. When I think of my
life
before I came here, it is like someone else's life, something I am
being told.
I can't write to anyone. At the moment, I haven't the postage, but,
even if I
had, what to say? I am not pitying myself, because I chose it.
Evidently this
is the way it has to be. I am committed. It is a question of writing or
not
writing. There is no other way. If there is, I missed it.
*
Frederick
brought, wrapped in a newspaper, six pink crayfish with bulging eyes.
They are
exactly one bite each. The novel now a series of rooms all connected.
Worked all
day, without fatigue. Excited now, daydreamed yards of it. Everything
is separate, wrapped, like pieces of Spain itself. If only I could give
up
Frederick's book and my pupils, but what would I live on? Parted with
Granny's
ring-a most unpleasant thing happened, which I don't want to write
here-and
spent every peseta of it on food. Felt I had not eaten a good meal in
days and
days.
MADRID, MAY
The mother
of the baby never comes out of her room, or leaves the crib. All day
and much
of the night the baby is rocked, clapped at, has little bells shaken
over his
nose. The mother wears a blue housecoat and her eyes are ringed with
pencil.
They listen to musical comedy that sounds like old Nelson Eddy. The
husband
believes in Franco-really believes.
*
Chose cinema
over potatoes. I found myself watching the women's clothes, drinking in
their
texture, appreciating every bite the actors put in their mouths. When
one of
the characters (because of some imbecility of plot) wore old clothes
and
pretended to be poor, I was furious and felt cheated, having chosen
this over a
meal. Now I really understand why the
Italian poor detest De Sica and neorealist films, and why shop girls
like
heiresses and read every line in gossip columns. I mean, I understand
it, and
not just intellectually.
*
Sunshine and
little to eat (potatoes and potatoes). To the Prado, that small
container
overflowing with good things. Back to
Goya. I go back and back, and still he is haunting and terrifying. A
young man
in tweed taps me on the shoulder: a Paris acquaintance. Find myself
with
nothing to say. Young man is stranded in hotel with bill for a hundred
dollars;
however, as he had two hundred pesetas for the bullfight, I couldn't
feel sorry.
We lost each other without regret in one of the galleries, and I made a
quick
turn to the Titians. Later, sitting outside on a stone bench, in the
sun, I wondered
what I would do with two hundred pesetas-or one hundred-or fifty-or
twenty-five. But I have seven and promised Frederick I would give him a
meal.
Hungry and nervous, and went home with a blinding headache. But the day
was
splendid all the same, sunshine in solid blocks of light, a breeze,
trees light
green, deep-green grass, fountains throwing spray every way with the
wind, all
soaked and giddy with light. No birds-are there birds in Madrid?
*
Sold my
clock to get money for breakfast. But later Frederick turned up and had
been
paid a great sum-three hundred and thirty pesetas-and I got something I
was
craving, fresh lettuce.
*
R. [a Spanish
friend] repeats to me what I had told Frederick about settling one's
life before
the age of thirty. R. says we are all rate and he knows I know it. My
heart began
to pound because I never really considered myself one of them and never
thought
my life had foiled. R. said, ''The difference between you and us is
that in the
end something will always arrive for you. We can wait forever but
nothing ever will,"
something like that. Discovered that they think my trips to American
Express, etc.,
waiting for the check from Chambrun, are a kind of mild insanity to
fill my day!
R. also hints that I have rich parents mislaid somewhere. Was filled
with ice-cold
despair because he had touched on the thing I only sometimes let myself
suspect
might be true: that I have gambled on something and have failed.
*
No one is as
real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I
realize
they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness,
looking around
for them, as if the half-empty café were a place I had once come to
with friends
who had all moved away.
*
Today from
the balcony I see a blind man tapping his way along the buildings
across the
street. He reaches a street crossing; everyone watches, silent, and
lets him
walk full on into the side of a building. When he has recovered (for a
moment
he was like a butterfly beating its wings in a box) the spectators just
walk
away. Pure detached curiosity: ''What happens when a blind man collides
with a
wall?" Then, "Only that?"
*
Conversation
with Frederick. Told him I thought I might still be capable of loving
someone
but I felt no one would ever love me again, that I had a premonition.
Said I
might be able to love someone I could trust. But secretly I think even
that is
impossible for me now. I have been so driven inside myself that I don't
think
anyone could see where I am, or care. Frederick then "advises" me
about men-warns me! He says I am
not interesting enough for the kind of mind I seem to want. He says,
'When you
have a novel out you will be much more interesting, because you will be
someone
else. Now, there are many women like you, just as pretty, just as nice.
You
give all, you do all you can, you can fill a man's life, but many women
are
like that. It is not enough."
*
No word from
Chambrun so I went to the flea market, having looked it over the other
day, and
sold a skirt and Frederick's winter coat, which he asked me to sell for
him.
Accosted by Gypsies, sold both for fifty pesetas. Noticed several
blocks away that
string shopping bag was missing. No use going back and am rather amused
at being
taken in by the Romany cousins. I hope Frederick doesn't regret his
coat but he
swears he loathed it.
*
I heard my
own steps climbing the stairs this morning as if I were indifferent and
had
nothing to do with that person. Still nothing from Chambrun, not even a
letter.
I wonder why [Gallant's editor at The New Yorker, William] Maxwell
hasn't written
me and why I haven't seen the proofs. I suppose I could write directly
but it
would be asking about money and even with an empty stomach I can't do
it. This is-I
was about to write "a nightmare" but no, my dreams are not like that.
No, it is the failure of the novel and the awful hope that it hasn't
failed,
and then the waiting, and no one, absolutely no one, I can talk to
about any of
it. I never rid myself of the hope, though, God knows, after this last
year I
ought to be shot of it. Sometimes I want to hit the sides of the
buildings in the
street with my fists and tear at the tree trunks or anyone passing by.
Nobody knows
this. Nobody knows the pain in my chest and throat and how I can't
swallow. I
thought it was only the basic fear of not having anything to eat, but
now it is
a fear I can't analyze. Somehow I do eat and even feed others, selling
my
clothes a little at a time and pawning things. There is still my tweed
coat,
and the green suit. So, I can get bread and coffee and cigarettes. I
hang on
the edge of hunger. We are all as pale as this paper. I can't wear my
blouses
because they are dirty and I haven't soap for them and for me and it
has to be
me. I look at that after I've written it and I wonder if it is myself I
am describing.
Sometimes, catching sight of myself in a glass on the street, I am
bewildered
at what I have become-even my expression seems shabby, as if I were one
with
the street now.
*
No letter,
so gathered up all books and got forty pesetas. Luxury greater than
food is a
foreign newspaper but as I paid for it I saw that my pocket had been
picked.
What a fool to have put the money in a pocket. Lunched very
inadequately and
later sold my tweed coat, because of the mishap, which had left me with
thirteen pesetas. Later I sat on a bench facing a green little square
with a
monument to a cardinal (I think). Children playing in the dirt by the
side-walk,
building something complex and important. Boys and girls. They pour
water to
make mud. No quarrels, the big ones tender with the babies. Suddenly a
thin,
nervous, shabby man approaches and shouts that they have no right to
play in
the street. He is unemployed, I guess from his dress and manner. The
little
girls run away but the boys go on building, stubborn and silent, and
the man
puts out his foot and rubs to a muddy ruin the beautiful complex city,
the
canals and bridges and boulevards. The little boys look at the ruin
silently. No one cries
or speaks or glances up, and the man walks off and sits on a bench.
What a day.
*
I had again
that second of pure joy I sometimes experience. It came, as always,
without
warning, and vanished nearly at once. I was on my way to the bakery
with exactly
eleven pesetas left. It is difficult to define
and perhaps I shouldn't try. It must be the highest and sharpest point
of all
the senses, or the mind, I don't know. Remembering, I see myself and
the street
in a clear but blurry light, static, like a film abruptly stopped. I
remember
thinking suddenly these words, "Now I shall know," then, when the
rush of feeling I can only describe as pure joy was pulling away, these
words:
"This is why one lives." It was like a wave and an inner explosion of
light all at once, and not physical in any way.
MADRID, JUNE
Looking
through the tangle of unfinished stories I carry with me everywhere, I
find
only three worth going on with, and am suddenly overcome by such a load
of
depression that I put the lot away. So much to finish and so much to
keep me
from it, like a wall of glass between myself and the page. The greatest
inhibition is that Chambrun says he has sold only one story in twenty
months. I
wonder why no one liked "The Legacy" [a story published in June 26,
1954, issue of The New Yorker]' I am
revolted at the idea of exposing any more of the things I write. I have
always
despised the people who write "for themselves"-who keep things in a
trunk as if they would fade or disintegrate in the light and air. Now I
begin
to understand it. Each story means as much to me as the one before. I
think of
each one as honest. If they are bad,
that is something else. I wish there were someone who could say "yes"
or "no," "keep on writing" or else "give it up."
As long as there is no one but myself I shall of course keep on, but
can I be
trusted? And how could I trust an editor? Is he free to trust himself?
*
A hot dusty
day. Spent most of it under the plane trees on the Prado watching the
Cibeles
fountain, and remembered the little fountain at Salzburg, the gauzy
spray blown
everywhere in the wind, and the thin smell of autumn there. Lunched
very quickly in the
cheaper of the two cheap restaurants on a few bites of meat and
potatoes, but
the meat was rotten and I was afraid to finish it, remembering how I
nearly
died of that kid stew in Sicily. In the corner, a poor madman who never
stops
moving or chattering through his broken teeth. His wife, in a pretty
mantilla,
smiles pathetically and with a kind of apology when anyone looks. The
man holds
his head to one side, takes out a very sharp knife. He combs his hair
with it,
and then splits open a small loaf into which he pours meat and potatoes
from
his plate. Everyone looks, but not with amusement, as they would in
America:
they look with a suspension of all attitudes; watchfulness; they hold
their
forks in midair. Behind their eyes is the thought: "How marvelous this
is!
How much worse can it be?" I am made ill. When I pick up my wine I feel
a
madman has touched it. His is the insanity of devils.
*
Wasted day.
Wrote letters to avoid the novel. It is all there, and, once I begin
working, I
am submerged, but the plunging in frightens me. The people in it
aren't as
immediate as they were. I can't see them on the street anymore. They
are real
people, but only I know what happened to them. Sometimes when I write I
feel I
am watched by, what-ghosts? Ghosts of people
I have invented? If anyone comes in unexpectedly while I am working I
am
terrified.
*
Extraordinary
déjà vu today. Decided to sell the green suit and as I spread it out on
the bed
had the giddy feeling of a mistake in time. It came back the day I
bought it in
New York, not quite two years ago, and spreading it on the bed so John
[Gallant,
Mavis's ex-husband] could see it as he came in the room. I thought I
would see
on his face exactly what he thought of it, no matter what he said. His
opinion was
so important to me, but mine was not to him. I don't mean it was
indifference;
it probably never occurred to him to wonder what I thought. Couldn't
bear to
sell it, suddenly, though I hope not for sentimental reasons: I wasn't
sentimental
about Granny's ring. It is my last "good" thing.
*
Today I have
no money and no food. Frederick came and I took what I had and we had
coffee
and a bun apiece. The
important thing when you don't eat is not to get tired. In any case,
the mind
takes over. If I think about food I am physically revolted.
*
R. comes
with ice cream in a covered plate melting down to something like an egg
powder
omelette. We eat it out of the same plate but not with the same spoon.
He also
returns the fifty pesetas, which he leaves without a word on the bed. I
pick it
up and put it on the table and say, "You must not be so delicate. It is
all right to talk about money." Spanish pride gets on my nerves. He
wasn't
ashamed to ask for it. Also, the gesture of money on a bed is
disgusting, like
someone paying a tart. R. says that Frederick said to him that anyone
could get
anything from me. He said, ''You must appeal to her maternal feelings,
to her
sense of guilt, and, remember, she is very Protestant and will not help
you if
you do not seem to be working at something. But also she is like all
the
Americans: she gives in the long run what is not needed."
*
I can
scarcely write this. Today there was a letter from The New
Yorker. When I saw "One Morning in June" [a story
published in the magazine on June 7,1952], I wrote about the change of
title
and the mistake in spelling of the Cap Martin monument. They write,
"Dear
Miss Gallant, Thank God you had occasion to write me because you
evidently not
only haven't been getting your mail from Mr. Chambrun but from The New Yorker as well. The last address
he gave us was American Express, Capri .... " It goes on, 'What is more
to
the point, have you been getting checks? We sent Mr. Chambrun $790 for
The
Picnic' [a story published on August 9, 1952] and $745 for the Cap
Martin
story." Also they sent a copy of the letter sent to Capri (and returned
to
them), which is dated May 5. "I had the great pleasure, last Thursday,
of
sending off to Mr. Chambrun $1304.75 with $230.25 to come for the two stories. Mr. William Shawn, The New
Yorker's new editor, remarked in a memo that he did not know how much
you had
been encouraged but that he thought it ought to be a good deal."
I could not
take it in all at once. "The two
stories!" And if the Cap Martin story had not been published I would
never
have known. I could not take in that Chambrun had had this money from
the beginning
of May, simply could not admit that anyone would do this to me. I felt
and
still feel sick. I walked out of American Express like a person in
shock and
turned, I don't know why, into the SEPU. People shuffiing around trying
on carpet
slippers and choosing fans. I realized I could not even buy a cake of
soap. The
sensation of disgust was curious, as if a colony of flies were stuck to
me.
Then I saw something so disgusting I can't write it here, and that was
a symbol
of what had happened and what people could
be like.
*
Told
Frederick I no longer believe in the novel. He said, 'Write it whether
you believe
in it or not." It is like watching a plant die. Something in me was
lacking, or I would have kept it alive. Death in the grain. The shape
of the
leaf in the seed, and the death. Then, everything was decided? That
must be
what is frightening me. Say, that I was not meant to exist (as I often
believe)
or to have anything or anyone; that it was decided within the cell.
Say, with
the death of my father; my failed marriage; loving a married man. The
end with
John H. was in the beginning. We
heard a child cry and he said expertly, "That's a tired cry." I knew from then that he had everything and I
had nothing, that we were not equal because of that. It was not love,
but a
situation. It was implicit in the beginning, in the grain. Frederick
said,
"If you stay with him, you complement his life. He cannot fill
yours." True. "You will never be a writer. You will spend your time
scheming and struggling to see him and think how clever you are." True.
"You will never have anything of your own." True. When John spoke of
his children, I felt humiliated. It was a situation. Then, what?
Cross-purposes: as I walked away he said, 'With you goes my youth." But
no-it
was mine. I felt I was leaving a situation
behind, not a man. All I could see was his blue raincoat.
*
Chambrun has
sent four hundred dollars and says he will send the rest later. The
first thing
I bought was good white bread. +
THE NEW YORKER,
JULY 9 & 16, 2012