The afternoon with Beauvoir had been so emotionally overloaded that I was recovering as I usually did, at the Dôme with a ritual glass of white wine in a window seat, scribbling furiously in my notebook. Every question she had answered had only given me another half dozen to worry about, each with the potential to upset her further. As I thought about this, I raised my head to look at the people on the street and saw a man with a familiar craggy face dressed in a sheepskin jacket and turtleneck Irish sweater. But I had to do a double-take, because he walked slowly and carefully, and looked so old and bent that I thought perhaps I was confusing someone else with Beckett. After a few moments, I had no doubt that it was indeed Samuel Beckett.
I had not written to Beckett before I made this trip because I did not want to have any contact with him. My head was so full of things I needed to do in connection with Beauvoir’s biography that I did not want anything else to clutter it. I did not want the anxiety that always consumed me before the actual meeting with Beckett, the insomnia the night before, the nervous stomach the day of, and the mental exhaustion once it was over. Nor could I spare the time for him or for most of the many good friends I had made in Paris while I was writing his biography. Unless they had some connection to Beauvoir, I had to politely decline their hospitality and could just chat briefly on the phone. If I could not see the people with whom I could relax and enjoy myself, I could not withstand a meeting with Beckett.
I could have avoided him on this particular evening just as easily as I had done one year earlier. I did not know then that it would be the last time I was in Samuel Beckett’s company, so I can’t claim that I wanted one last meeting. My session with Beauvoir had left me frustrated but neither confrontational or defensive, so I can’t properly describe the particular attitude that made me hail him. Perhaps the unexpected sight of him provoked a sudden and spontaneous reaction that gave me no time to think about what I was doing when I stood up and waved. He saw me, and seemed unsure about who was waving at him.
He stood near the doorway to the Dôme, so I went out to the sidewalk to meet him and offer apologies for not letting him know I was in Paris. I think he said something like, “No doubt you are here to work with her.” (I distinctly remember that he did not say Simone de Beauvoir’s name: shades of his old animosity.) He told me he was taking a short walk before dining at Aux îsles marquises, a fish restaurant he liked because the staff always ensured his privacy, and he asked if I wanted to join him. The invitation was unexpected, and I had no ready excuse for why I would not because I never made dinner engagements after a session with Beauvoir, so that I could spend the rest of the evening alone, remembering and making notes on what we had talked about.
His invitation caught me off-guard, because in all the years we were working together, I never actually had a meal with Samuel Beckett. We always had drinks, coffee usually, wine sometimes, perhaps some light bar snacks. I always arranged it that way because I knew I would have been too nervous to eat, as I knew I would be on this evening. I lied, blushing as I did so, saying that I was meeting friends later for a casual supper. He suggested that we share an apéritif in the Rosebud (another of his usual haunts), just around the corner.
It was a long, slow walk there, as years of heavy smoking had taken their toll and he was breathing heavily. Once we were seated, I noticed that, for the first time, he had no cigarettes or matches with which to fidget. He asked about the progress of “her book,” but once I had given him the answer I gave whenever I did not want to talk about it—everything was fine, moving right along, publication very soon, all well indeed—he shifted the conversation to me personally. Was I still teaching? My children must be fully grown by now; were they finished with university? Did I still live in Philadelphia? He knew from various German scholars that I had been spending a great deal of time in that country speaking about his work at various conferences and symposia, and he knew that I was scheduled to return shortly for another conference. He asked how I found it to work there.
Suddenly I found myself blurting out all the indignities—the hell, actually—that I had gone through since publishing his biography. I gave a highly edited and sanitized version, but at some point my derogatory term “the Becketteers” slipped out. I can still see the expression on his face: I think it stunned him. He did not repeat it and neither did I, but I knew it sank in. I think he said something like how “unfortunate” it was, but I can’t remember the exact context, whether he meant their behavior or my various “agonies,” as I half-jokingly termed what they had put me through. I do remember, however, that he told me how he had decided early on that he would never respond to his critics. He did not advise me to follow his rule, but I am sure that was his implication. And then he changed the subject entirely to tell me that he was “working with Jim now.”
It took me a moment to comprehend that he was talking about James Knowlson, who was writing a biography that would not be published until after Beckett’s death. Just as I had a lot to say about the Becketteers, I found that I had a lot to say about other biographies besides mine, and I launched into it. I said I welcomed any future books that would be written about him because there were obviously so many incidents, events, and relationships that I had only managed to touch upon and that needed fuller exploration. Slyly, and with gleeful purpose, I also said I thought it would be good for readers to have his and Knowlson’s “authorized” biography as opposed to my “designated” one. I could not resist telling him that authorized biographies sometimes bore the taint of “the gospel according to the subject, written by the earnest supplicant.” As mine had been written independently and was already out there, no doubt Knowlson would have to acknowledge it, if only to rebut or reject my findings. It was almost too bad that he would be metaphorically looking over his shoulder at me and my book all the while that he wrote his. How smug I was as I said this, and how much I relished saying it! Samuel Beckett, true to form, said nothing.
I talked so much that my wineglass was left mostly untouched, but it was getting late, so I started to gather my things. Until then he had not said anything specific about the Becketteers’ behavior, but I think he was alluding to it when he volunteered one of the last things he ever said to me: “You must never explain. You must never complain.” Indeed, there have been many times since then when I have been ready to lash out in retaliation for a bad review or an unkind comment, but every time I have remembered these words and I have never explained and never complained.
I did not know then that it was the last time I would be in Samuel Beckett’s company. The unexpected encounter was so highly charged and emotional that I had to replay it in my mind and make notes about it in the DD for many days afterward. At the time I thought about how all my pent-up emotions had burst out, and I marveled at how quietly, graciously, and thoughtfully Beckett had received them. Later, when I became a seasoned biographer, I wished I had taken the time to send him a letter explaining how much it meant to be able to tell him all that had happened to me since the moment when he asked if I would be the one to reveal him as a charlatan. I wished that I had told him how grateful I was for allowing me to reveal him as the extraordinary man I believed him to be, and what an honor and a privilege it had been to know him.
I left Simone de Beauvoir in a very good mood when my Paris sojourn ended. The rest of 1985 had the usual interruptions, albeit welcome ones, of giving lectures and writing articles about Beckett. Mostly, however, I went to my desk every morning and stayed there until early evening, putting what I thought were finishing touches on an almost finished book. By the end of the year, I knew I was ready to publish, because no one was telling me anything new. That was, and still is, the moment when I know the research is finished. It is also the moment when the nonfiction writer’s worst fear arose—that some new and unexpected and possibly upending information will come to light that might destroy the entire thesis or premise of the book. I felt secure, however, that I had covered all my bases, and I thought I was ready to go to Paris for my final fact-checking trip before publication.
I scheduled the trip for one month, the last two weeks of February and the first two of March 1986, timed to coincide with another of Hélène’s vernissages, the opening of a large show of her paintings hosted by Yvette Roudy at the Ministry for the Rights of Women. It was a bittersweet evening for me, as my enjoyment of the paintings was diminished by the need to spend time apologizing to so many wonderful women about why the Penn conference had failed.
Hélène was thrilled and delighted with her evening, particularly because she was sharing it with the sister she idolized. If Simone reciprocated these warm feelings, she did not show it. I kept comparing it to my own attitude toward my younger sister when we were children, the little fly who buzzed around me in adoration while I swatted her away, the little pest. I would revise my thinking about Simone’s behavior several days later, when I learned that she had been ill and was exhausted by the activity connected with Hélène’s eight-day stay as her houseguest, the constant comings and goings of their many feminist friends, and having every journalist in Paris imploring to photograph and write about the famous sisters.
Hélène was especially delighted to see me because she knew that, like her, I had been invited to participate in a conference at Stanford University in April arranged by the Center for Research on Women and the American Simone de Beauvoir Society, where her paintings would be exhibited as soon as the Paris show ended. Simone walked over to us as we were having this discussion and gave me quite a scare: she appeared to have trouble recognizing me, and I had to say my name twice. I wondered if something might be seriously wrong.
After all our years of intimate conversation, to have to tell her who I was and remind her that we had an appointment for the very next afternoon was disconcerting, to say the least. It was even more perplexing when she said no, no, she could not see me for at least the next eight days, since she would be fully occupied with her sister. We had corresponded before my departure and laid out a schedule for many more meetings than usual, agreeing that our first order of business was to get the manuscript in final shape. The room was overheated and overcrowded, hot and noisy, and I had landed the day before with a terrible cold that gave me an excruciating headache. I left fairly early, distressed by Beauvoir’s behavior but too sick to do more than crawl into bed and try to sleep.
The next morning I was awakened early by the ringing telephone. It was Beauvoir, apologizing for her behavior the night before. She said the room had been too hot and there had been too many flashbulbs going off and people pressing her with things they wanted her to do. She had not been herself last night, and of course we must keep to our schedule. She would see me at the usual time that afternoon, four o’clock, and I could have as much time as I needed throughout my stay. I was greatly relieved.
There were no arguments or disagreements that month. I saw her several times each week, we spoke on the phone on other days, and when I thought I needed more information about some of her recent feminist activity, she phoned some of the women she worked with and arranged for me to meet them. She was in good spirits and fine fettle throughout, even doing something she almost never did: making jokes. She had always been serious and professional with me, on guard to make sure all my questions written on the little cards were asked and answered. My two-word phrase for my rapport with her was “strictly business.” It was unusual to see her relaxed, smiling, and offering a refill of the ritual scotch. And when I left her on the last day that I saw her, she made the most unusual gesture ever. Tall woman that I am, short woman that she was, she clutched at my arms just above the elbows and gave me a slight shake. I liked to think that it was her way of giving me a hug, and I was thrilled to have it.
I flew home, ready to put the finishing touches on the book before the Stanford conference, and I told Jim Silberman and Ileene Smith, the young woman who had been assigned to edit it, that they would have the manuscript as soon as I returned from Stanford, probably by the first of May.
Instead I went to Simone de Beauvoir’s funeral in Paris in April.