This Above all
Date with a celebrity
KHUSHWANT SINGH

I happened to have met Norman Mailer who died on November 10 at the age of 84. I don’t recall exactly when it was—probably some 40 years ago, at an international conference of writers in Edinburgh. He was already a celebrity. I was still at the stage of trying to claim to be a writer by dropping names of celebrities whose hands I had shaken. There were quite a few at the conference. I was a non-entity but had drawn some attention at a meeting open to the public where invitees had been asked to make short speeches.

While others spoke extempore and had very little worthwhile to say, I had rehearsed my speech for several weeks and drew loud applause. I was in next morning’s papers. That gave me access to some I wanted to meet. Mailer was high on the list. When I introduced myself to him, he patted me on the shoulder and said: "You buggered the audience yesterday, bastard." That was his way of paying me a compliment. I had read that kind of language in his first novel, The Naked & the Dead, which had given him the status of a mega star.

Mary McCarthy... popular novelist of her times Norman Mailer... made it to Harvard University at 16

My other success was Mary McCarthy, whose novels I had enjoyed. She was then a beautiful middle-aged woman living in Paris with her second husband. She accepted my invitation to dinner. I didn’t know she disliked Mailer. I understood why. While we were at dinner, Mailer came by and said to her: "Mary, you’ve found somebody to keep you warm in Edinburgh’s cold nights". Or words to that effect. Mary hissed back: F`85 off, you big-mouthed ape". Or words to that effect.

The next morning it so happened that while I was at breakfast, Mary, seeing I was alone, joined me. Mailer came round. Undeterred by the ticking off he had got the evening before, he said to her: "So, Mary, what was he like?" thereby insinuating that we had been together between dinner and breakfast. Mary gave him a disdainful look, turned to me and said loudly enough for him to hear: "Didn’t I tell you he is a bastard?’’

I tried to maintain good relations with both of them. I wrote to Mary McCarthy in Paris. She answered my letters in a few lines, indicating that she was not keen to keep up correspondence. When I said goodbye to Mailer, he said in an off-hand manner: "Look me up if you happen to be in Noo Yok". A few months later I happened to be in New York. I rang him up. He asked me to drop in for a drink.

By then I had picked up more information about his past. He was the son of well-to-do Jewish parents living in Brooklyn. His mother Fanny doted on him as he did on her. He was a brilliant student standing first in every exam he took. He made it to Harvard University at the age of 16. In his doting family he was known as the genius.

After a short period of military service, he decided to become a writer. His novels—The Naked & the Dead and The Armies of the Night—made it to the top of the bestsellers’ list.

He won the Pulitzer Prize twice and had literary honours showered on him. He was also a compulsive womaniser. Besides six wives he had innumerable mistresses and cheated all of them. But he could not tolerate being cheated by them or anyone who slighted his mother. It was the adoration he got at home which impelled his first wife to say, "all the women in the family thought Norman was the cat’s meaow".

He was prone to violence and almost murdered one of his wives. He used coarse language, espoused Leftist causes and was often in trouble with the police. Despite the huge royalties he earned, he was unable to pay alimony to his divorced wives and owed huge amounts to his literary agents and publishers from whom he had taken advances. He led a chaotic life, and lived it.

He received me in his spacious sitting room with large bay windows looking out at the sea. I could see the Statue of Liberty from where I sat. There was a lot of coming and going of women. He did not bother to introduce anyone. They said "hi" to me. I said "hi" to them. After an hour of chit-chat about nothing in particular, I asked permission to leave. "I’ll walk with you round the block", he said.

We stepped out together. It was a warm summer, Sunday afternoon. The pavements were crowded with people out for a stroll. Almost everyone recognised Mailer and exchanged greetings with him. Though my meetings with him were brief, I sensed that Norman Mailer was an extraordinary combination of egoism and generosity as well as vulgarity and refinement.

Nightmare

When in Kasauli, I keep a torch, candle and matchbox on the table by my bedside. One never knows when the lights go off, nor when they will come back. Blackouts can last from five minutes to five hours. One night before switching off I went to my bathroom to brush my teeth and empty my bladder. Suddenly, I was plunged into darkness. To my ill-luck, it happened to be a moonless night. It didn’t worry me too much as I had done the bedroom-bathroom-bedroom, a 10-yard stretch, thousands of times over the years. I proceeded to grope my way along the wall.

Instead of the door leading to the bedroom, I found myself trying to open the door meant to let in the sweeper. I started all over again. This time I bumped into the lavatory seat. I changed direction and tried a third time. I hit my forehead against a wall. My legs began to give way. I shouted for help. My servants had retired. My son was out for dinner. I groped further and found the lavatory cistern to rest on. I felt desperate. Would I have to stay in the bathroom till my son returned? If I had laid down on the cold floor, I knew I could not have got up unaided.

Suddenly, the lights came on. I realised I had been going round and round the bathroom without finding the door to the bedroom. No fool like an old fool. I resolved in future I will always carry at least a matchbox in my pocket whenever I am in Kasauli.

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