Some of My Lives by Rosamond Bernier Page A

or not he could find no forgiveness in his heart for it, even if he never knew precisely—and alas!—what he had done. But to have betrayed someone who had befriended him as unselfishly as had Riley and Peggy, finding him drunk and penniless there writing poems in the Siete Mares, and then buying
him clothes, … succouring him as well as they could for the reason which above all others should have secured his loyalty, that they believed in his talent, … feeding him, … offering him their car, even at the very end, their car—the warm-hearted, generous kindliness of these two people who could have been friends all his life: and who were indeed as husband and wife so well matched, … singing on their guitar together, swimming together, celebrating their anniversary every month: where were they now? Had he done, he wondered, any permanent damage—to say the least—to that relationship? … There had not been excuse for, when R’s back was turned, trying to rape her—though had he? He would never know.

    Malcolm disappeared from our life with that bus to Cuernavaca. Many years later, in 1947, when I was living in Europe, I read about the publication of a tormented novel, Under the Volcano .
    Only then did I learn more about him. He had begun drinking at fifteen. He confided in his diary, “Secretly I had decided that I would be a drunkard when I grew up.” He came from a substantial English family who sent him money regularly via bankers who rationed the handouts, but nevertheless it invariably was spent on drink. He was in and out of jails and mental institutions on three continents and was constantly being evicted for drunkenness. He managed to get into Cambridge—probably through family pull—but did poorly.
    Out of all this turmoil emerged a splendid if flawed novel, Under the Volcano .
    Malcolm died in 1957 at a cottage in Ripe, East Sussex. He was not yet fifty. Mystery always surrounded his death. Two causes were reported: one was that he had committed suicide; the other, acute alcoholism. A broken gin bottle was near the body sprawled on the bedroom floor.

Paul and Jane Bowles
    A aron Copland introduced me to Paul and Janie Bowles in 1937. Lew and I were newlyweds; so were the Bowleses.
    Janie was a small sprite, crop-haired, snub-nosed. “What’s it like being married, for you?” she asked me. Since Janie was a lesbian and Paul a homosexual, their marriage was not exactly a mirror image of ours. She called Paul, most inappropriately, Fluffy or Bubbles.
    She limped. As an adolescent, she had had tuberculosis of the knee. Her mother took her to a Swiss sanatorium, where she was put in traction for many months. She then went to school in Switzerland. As a result, she spoke fluent French and knew some bawdy French songs.
    She never wanted people to know she was lame. She always put a small Band-Aid on her knee, as if she had just had an accident.
    Paul was short, compact, very blond. At that time he was known as a composer to a small group that included Virgil Thomson. Writing and The Sheltering Sky came later. He wore a truss, an object of great shame. It was to be ignored. Once Janie picked it up. “You touched it,” he accused her. Never again.
    Paul was involved in helping a theater group from an all-black YMCA in New York. We are in the late 1930s; there would not have been an integrated group in those days. One of the members had written a play that involved two white lynchers.
    This presented a bit of a problem. They appealed to Paul. He appealed to Lew and me. Of course we agreed to participate.
    We showed up for rehearsal. Our part consisted of rushing onstage looking menacing and rushing off.
    We did this on the great night, to great acclaim.

    We were feted at a dinner given after the performance; with Paul we were the only whites.
    This was my first and only experience in the theater.
    Paul and Janie thought of going to Mexico. We