238.

what the complaint is. The Nepalis don't molest the creatures and well
they shouldn't since there's so much refuse around to be pecked at and
somewhat devoured.

Yesterday from a hill girl I bought a tiny little temple made of
bamboo cuttings, like a small doll's house. Last night I placed the mini-
bronze of baby Krishna in it, and this morning I find it dabbed with puja
powder (red and yellow) and a large rose petal on Krishna's peacock feather
crown—I'd spied Govinda in the garden when he plucked the rose petal from
the rose, but I didn't know what he intended to do with it, I'd assumed
he was going to place it somewhere on the wooden statue of Buddha in the
dining area (downstairs). I must say the Krishna statuette looks adorable
with his rose petal cap, a gesture on Govinda's part which endears him to
me (but will it save him from being sacked?) I really don't care how much
he eats as long as he proves worthy of his keep, whether he does or not
I'll leave to my Krishna's judgment, if I can extract a judgment from him,
at times he's noncommittal beyond the call of duty.

Govinda is a good boy but rather stupid. I enter kitchen un-
expectedly, find both gas burners going full force, I raise hell, Krishna
gives me his irresistible smile, I cool off. Biralo, full of rice pudding,
dozes on my stomach.

Krishna tells me that Chandra, when he left in a rage that day,
removed from his jacket the butterfly patch I'd given him. Chandra's a
false one and has got to go for good. Krishna's my faithful reporter, more
faithful to me than he is to his countrymen. Krishna is mine, all mine.
I'm not trying to convince myself, only reveling in the conscious recording.

239.

Onto the mainline—the mainline of American literature—Henry James.

And that is part of
Our joy in his art—its first
Purpose was itself.

When Gertrude Stein asked, 'Who else is there?'—that is, besides Herself and Shakespeare, she was forgetting the Master.

To enjoy the winter or pine for spring? ... a rich sophistication is ... a gradual growth.

Enjoy what you get.
You're not going to get any
More than you get.

Nick the Greek precludes that Manolis (Manny) will be out after serving only half his sentence—although a big black mark against him (and will the word black ever be redeemed by the blacks, how can it be) is the beating up of the guard ... Genius! Hero! Pauvre enfant. ... something quite ragged and graceless,' writes Henry, as though the two words went together. Some of the most graceful figurations in this environment are the male figures, of all ages, in almost lace-like rags. Masks without faces.

When savages are noble they are hardly savages.

Creating a work
Of art—giving form to what
Is already there.

A passionate dedication, do I have one now. My New York show.
I'm certainly not at it day and night, as Haydn was with his Messiah.

240.

Krishna, to whom do you beautifully belong? Do I have to be tempted by
that short seemingly circumcized cock of Govinda's? No. Henry James,
describing some country boys: '...an almost envied liability to warts on
hard brown hands.' He could depict attractiveness quite effectively, and
we share his perceptiveness ... 'glamor as of envied privilege and strange
experience,' he gave them ... 'they mixed, to the great sharpening of the
edge of their wit, in the wild life of the people.' Like that Puerto Rican
stock clerk at Key Foods, whom I took to a party at the Hotel Chelsea but
never made it with him. 'All boys, I rather found, were difficult to play
with,' writes Henry.

Someone comes in the door downstairs. 'Krishna coming,' I say to
Biralo who answers with a meow. We hear the milk bottles rattle.

Henry writes of a Kentucky family, neighbors of the James family
for a couple of winters in New York '...the sausage mill kept turning
and the molasses flowing (i.e., for hot cakes) for all who came; that was
the expression of their southern grace. . . '

...a rush of memories and a stir of ghosts. . . .

Mother, she did have that southern grace, quite a bit of it, it
never left her, a soothing memory for me to look back upon. But didn't it
leave her when she took the whip or stick or whatever she was going to use
to give me that whipping. . . . She never tried to whip me again—that day,
I took the rod or whatever from her hands and broke it in two. End of
Childhood.

But you don't go back to seek out the southern grace you can some-
times nostalgically recall. You go on to strange climes and unfamiliar recall.
You go on to strange climes and unfamiliar races.

241.

The day has twenty-four
Hours, no more, no less.
The night is imposed.

Govinda shows me an entangled insignia, like an interlocked labyrinth, drawn with the colored crayons I gave him. Did it come from his head or did he copy it? He's sweet but dumb and that's all there is to it.

The start of the long
Crawl towards the upward days of
Summer. Hide your gaze.

It was pleasant living among the Italians—while they lasted.
And can't I say the same of the Greeks? I never really lived, for long
periods, 'among' the French—my longest exposure to them perhaps was the
summer of '39 when Sasha and I took that villa (a former inn, three floors,
room numbers still above the room doors), on Lake Annecy, St. Jorioz,
Haute-Savoie. A pleasurable experience it was too in every snese of the
senses, we had a superb cook and I had Gustave, who was in a boys' camp
nearby, and would have returned to visit us, after camp broke up. But
Hitler's war broke out and we had to leave. Gustave was a torrid tough
blackphaired fifteen—and I had no compunction about going down on him.
'In France,' he said, 'we have women to do this. ..!' (Country lusts
of quite unquenchable demands.) Weekend guests included Virgil Thomson,
looking green under a green visor set in his white canvas hat.

A most delinquent summer, during which I did nothing but enjoy it,
bicycling to the lake every day and eating lake trout.

Guessing game. Complete this expression of Henry James beginning:

242.

'on its in after. ..' Massacre of the ants. They found my honey jar. Krishna and Govinda are playing a game on a printed piece of paper—from here it looks like the Nepali pastime of Goats and Tigers. Now I ask myself if Krishna wouldn't be missing Govinda's company—but how to get the truth from Krishna.

The goddamn toilet is stopped up—either Sylvia dropped her cunt rag or Govinda used too much toilet paper.

Lenny, unlike Aaron, doesn't tire me. When he speaks he has something to say. He and Sylvia (poor cow) are taking me to a shop this morning (if we don't go to the Botanical Gardens) to show me a jacket (old) of Chinese brocade (blue) which they think would become me. Govinda shamelessly asks for what he wants—within the domain of possibility. He points to my toothpaste and toothbrush in the bathroom—'Sir,' to draw my attention—'buy'—and I say O.K. Yes, it was Sylvia's doing stopped the lou yesterday. She gave out that she'd had on the Tampax (when it gets blood-soaked it's a well known toilet stopper).

The shopkeeper's son couldn't find the Chinese brocade jacket so we continued in same cab to Thimi for clay figurines, clay candlesticks and Ganesh (elephant) masks. When we got back to the Hermitage there was Chandra lolling on the bamboo settee (what a work example he sets the others!), Krishna and Govinda standing by, sun on them. 'Looks like a boys' reformatory here!' Sylvia exclaimed; and indeed I do reform them. I had to call Govinda down about pissing on the bathroom floor instead of hitting the toilet bowl. I could wish his pecker were not so stubby, it's a good thickness and pleasant shape (the head is nice) but it's not long enough. The balls are *there*. He's erotic-minded, the little wretch, and

243.

gentle too, his voice rather touching, between changes. Sylvia's rasping
voice disturbs my solar plexus.

Chandra showed me the knife, new acquisition, he wears at his belt.
During lunch yesterday he said he'd spend the night (and his upper arms
are beautifully and muscularly rounded) but I said there's not enough
cover. I've learned my lesson with him—not worth cultivating. He looked
preoccupied at the lunch table and not particularly sympathetic, the
atmosphere rather strained, nothing to talk about—which means that au fond
he's ennuyeux, principally because his mind is _always_ somewhere else. The
minds of Krishna and Govinda are _here_.

Chandra said he'd sleep in Govinda's bed. Too small, I said, and
when he asked Govinda about the cover Govinda said it wasn't big enough for
two so Chandra finally changed his mind about staying overnight. He'd
brought another plant for the garden, always a present, it seems, but he
expects remuneration nevertheless.

Acquired yesterday, a rare Tibetan necklace, rosary of bones from a
skull, and, hanging by a thread, a small skull in silver. 'Auspicious, '
said the Bhutanese shopkeeper. I'm delighting in the worldwide energy
crisis and oil shortage—zero growth is what we need.

v

Eliot's Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock was a thrill before I was
turned on by the surrealism in a wild mag with uncut pages that came out
of Paris: _transition_. After which Prufrock existed no more. My sights
were set on Paris, where, once there, I made Surrealist Poet Paul Eluard

244.

very nervous by running down the Stalinist party—I had sided with Andre Breton's view that Trotsky avait raison. Breton was pleased to have me, young American poet, as his admirer at the end of the Thirties, before the war with Germany broke out. But our mutual amiability, if not admiration, faded away with the Forties, when Breton was in New York (with what was left of the Parisian clique) and refusing to learn English. What a frustrating period that was for the Surrealist Dictator. One day I put a necklace of coins, hung with an animal's tooth, around his neck. He had a gash in the middle of the top of his head, yet unhealed. Could Clement Greenberg have hit him there? I wondered.

Evocation, evocations, real and imagined. And speaking, or thinking of Manny, 'I have his exotic and above all his bold, his imaginably even "bad," young face, finely unacquainted with law, before me at this hour quite undimmed—announcing, as I conceived it, and quite as a shock, any awful adventure one would, as well as something that I must even at the time have vaguely taken as the play of the "passions."' (It is part of Henry James's magic that he seems actually to bestow meaning on words.) When I think of all I put into the Chania house, and then abandoned it— and abandon it I should have, in the light of what happened three and a half months after my departure. Movement is all, as Henry Adams discovered.

Boys difficult to play with? And so he played with girls? I know I played with paperdolls, having fastidiously, almost obsessively cut out quantities from magazines and catalogs, up to an inordinately advanced age—at the end of relinquishing such a pleasant occupation I was aware of being too old to continue.

This house was built lavishly (space-wise) but cheaply. Mud floors

245.

under whatever covering (in my bedroom, at the moment, linoleum imitating wood) and resting on improvised beams and these on improvised square pillars of brick covered with plaster (three in the kitchen-dining).

Starved for learning, that Krishna. He sees and hears learned ones all about him and his mind is not sleepy. Eyes and brain have been brightened since living with me. <u>...</u>the whole perfect Parisianism I seemed to myself always to have possessed mentally—even if I had but just turned twelve!

Krishna (I must do something soon about his passport) has so much savoir faire or at least discretion of behavior—it's instinctive, considering his constricted experience. He behaved perfectly at Sylvia's Boxing Day party yesterday, and also showed a playful and even exuberant side—manifested in the way he dominated Chandra, directing a few faux punches towards him—and I saw then that he's not one to be pushed around.

<u>...</u> that air of the poetic shaken out as from strong wings when great presences, in any one of the arts, appear to alight.

Govinda stands in the window of the upper floor foyer sunning himself instead of getting to the sweeping.

One tends to surmise that the expectations of others parallel our own—but others are mostly concerned with and absorbed in their daily doings. Awaiting the comet's spectacle and Nixon's no less spectacular downfall would seem to be the outstanding expectations of the American public—but are they anything more than images in an agenda. I've never experienced the pleasure of touch to a greater extent than when I touch Krishna's cheek. And to think he was once there for me to move my hand over his entire body! <u>...</u>not yet aware of style <u>...</u> but we were aware

246.

of mystery which indeed was one of its forms... Biralo lazing in the sun, for everything will come to him without his asking.

Pasang came by before dinner and stayed to eat (more than his share, as usual). He lay on my bed while Krishna was out for the milk (Govinda was prowling in Kathmandu), and I took his lips in mine, put my hand in his pants and before I knew it he had come. Foreplay with him and the play is over. He wanted to know, 'Where is my face cream, my shampoo—?' as though my supplying him were a foregone duty.

...dangles ... the conditions on which so pretty a person may enjoy every comfort.

Dancing on Life. The point of living is to enjoy it and if you're not enjoying it wherever you are then that's not where you ought to be. Yesterday was the first day, since I've been within these walls, that I didn't go out at all—either on foot or bicycle. It's a nice house but it's only just begun to be made lavish. Just as Krishna has only just begun to be the marvelous person he can be, under my creative care. 'Today no woman talking,' he says about the news broadcast which has begun with the voice of a nasal-voiced man.

> Oh the garbage of bodies.
> In some way, always,
> The death fits the life.

It's always food for thought how many experiences one doesn't want to repeat. The Greek Experience was becoming repititious—so I wouldn't want to repeat that precisely as I've known it. Living for a season in Greece with Krishna might be something else, but I think Sis is right when she senses that my life in Crete, as once I lived it, is over.

247.

I _think_ I'll be able to have my way of ways with Krishna once I get him out of Nepal. I take joy in him, regardless. So why do I insist on sex with him when it's his personality I've loved all along?

vi

Puppy barks its unwanted
Head off but the head, alas,
Doesn't fall.

'Happy New Year,' I say and he replies, 'Yes. New Year.' His English does not include the word happy but unhappy he is not. . . Krishna, an experiment with the East. I'm trying it. I shall succeed or I shall fail. It is good that he's not whorishly yielding, I'll have to work and contrive for his love. The New Year brings light.

I've just fired Govinda—again!—but I don't know if it's going to hold. He's not a worker, he's a pretty, lazy, sweet, rather dull-headed child. Oh well, I'll see what I can do with him.

But the more indulgence I show, or the more affection, the more he will ask for—already dreams of being taken to 'America.' Please be human (meaning consciously kind). He's an aesthetic little thing, I don't want him to feel that I don't love him. Petting him in the afternoon and abusing him in the morning will not do. At the same time, he mustn't think he's on the same level as Krishna, who seems reluctant to play the boss. The extraordinary thing is that in Krishna I've found the ideal boy—how could I be lucky enough to find another. I treat Govinda as a cat who has only reactions, no ruminations.

Pasang's tutor gets paid eighty rupees a month for giving him

248.

lessons in three subjects (three hours a day, including Saturday). So
why should she charge Krishna fifty rupees a month for one hour a day, six
days a week. Pasang says that teaching Krishna is more difficult because
he has no basic knowledge of Nepali grammar (never having gone to school).
I asked Pasang what the teacher's impression of Krishna is and he said
she finds that he has a capable mind. Am I going to regret that I'm not
a fiction writer? No I'm not. I'm going to regret <u>as little as possible</u>.
One brings one's own tranquility with one—Lenny says I'm the only
Westerner he knows here who's not on hash.

I feel better during a period of continence. The intensity of
love is more intense. I let the little beast fondle me to orgasm. Was that
necessary? No, it only disturbed the calm of my psyche. Govinda seems
to think that everything Krishna has (from me) <u>he</u> should have too. No
sense of proportion and difference in status. I was stupidly unjust to
him this morning. I should have let him have his little study period
together with the more privileged Krishna. But you feel what you feel—
at the time. His prick is pretty. If it were ugly I'd be less inclined
to keep him on the job. Through thick and thin, I guess I'll retain him.
Retainers eat bananas.

And now let me enjoy this <u>solitary singleness of production</u>
<u>unperturbed</u>. This is where I shall be living and breathing—mostly—for
the rest of my life . . . <u>rare distinction and precious attribute . . .</u>
<u>a refuge from summer heats . . . possibilities for hibernation</u>. Much of
my peace of mind I owe to Krishna . . . <u>anything in the least finely</u>
<u>charming above all, immensely counted, claimed tendance and protection,</u>
<u>almost claimed, or at any rate enjoyed, worship</u>. Worship is almost the

249.

word. Krishna's the choice I've made, I'll take him with me, and he wants to go. He knows to whom he beautifully belongs! A talent for happiness. I had the equivalent of this feeling with Sasha, when we first moved into the penthouse at 360 East 55th Street, New York—1940—for what was to extend into a ten-year stretch. Beginnings are benevolent. Heartfelt installations. . .

His solicitude for me is a form of requited love . . . what I see, and . . . all I want to see. . . .

One of the felicities of being here, let's not forget, is that I have a creative project going and the abode is adapted to aiding and abetting what I have to do. Without such an activity my restlessness might get the better of me—simply creating a place to live wouldn't be enough, even with Krishna.

He says the house was invaded in the middle of the night by a huge cat, at first I thought he meant he'd seen one in a nightmare—from his gesture you'd have thought a wildcat had been in the kitchen. I had heard, a commotion, saw lights, my watch said twenty to two, had it stopped, was it six o'clock, time to get up? And then there was a conflag with Govinda, I didn't know what was going on.

That stupid Rana grandson is down in the garden with his B.B. gun, shooting at birds, how annoying.

...imponderable extract . . . loitering summers of youth . . . every occasion . . . seemed to stay to be gathered and tasted. . . . Lake Garda and Giovanni—not the first experience of boys and summer, enjoyed by Sasha and me (we had been in a hotter Spain, Fuengirola, the summer