After their brief stay with Señora Mangada, Plath and Hughes rented a house at 59 Tomas Ortunio for the remainder of their honeymoon in Benidorm, Spain. Some of Plath’s journal entries from this period are drafts for short stories and articles, including ‘Sketchbook of a Spanish Summer’.
Benidorm: July 22:1 Sunday morning
It is only a little after eight thirty in the morning, and already we are becoming accustomed to our growing strict routine in the new house. Ted and I woke about seven, swatted at the hovering flies, listened to the bells of the donkey carts and the cry “Ya hoi” of the agreeable little bread woman with her basket of sugared rolls. Then I got up and took the milk we’d boiled yesterday, put it on to heat for my coffee con leche and Ted’s brandy-milk, which we had with bananas and sugar. After cleaning up the kitchen and bedroom, I join Ted in our great spacious dining room which we consecrate solely to writing. The clean white plaster walls and immense dark oaken table and the cool stone tile floor and wide airy windows make it an ideal place to work without disturbance. My typing table by the little window looks out over our front porch, through the hanging leaves of the shady grape arbor to the hill of white pueblos slanting away from us.
The joy of exchanging the noisy, green neon-lit tourist boulevard by the sea, with the expensive hotels and depressing sight of idle, bored crowds, expensively dressed, sitting and dawdling over drinks as they watch other idle bored crowds pass along the promenade – – – the joy of exchanging all this for our native quarter, increases daily. Our hill road climbing up from the sea is lined with white worker’s pueblos. Old tanned wrinkled women sit out in chairs at the cool of the day far into the twilight, their backs to the street, weaving thick rope nets or fine sardine-mesh. They are clad completely in black: stockings, dress, shoes, and even, for town shopping, a black mantilla.
Every morning and evening we hear the bells which herald the herd of elegant stepping black goats; yesterday I saw children clustering around the barn where one of the goats was being milked. Saturday market is the fullest of the week. Ted and I went about 8:30, the earliest we’ve been yet, and found all fresh and crowded and thriving, which abashed us for the lazy days we’d arrived at noon to find dried, withered vegetables. Every stand was loaded with produce, and as we passed, the saleswomen hawked their wares, crying out apples and peppers. For daring, we bought part of a large yellow summer squash (which I’d never cooked) called a calabash, I think, and two shiny purple vegetables which I imagined might be called zucchini, but not being sure, shall try to cook today according to zucchini recipe. Also loaded down with potatoes, tomatoes, eggs. The market, spread out on the beaten dirt square, included petrol stoves, all sorts and sizes of frying pans and table-ware, towels, aprons, lace shoes, coat-hangers. There was a wire cage full of nibbling brown and gray rabbits and another of clucking black and white chickens. We filled our straw market basket, feeling very proud; also bought some new fish, pescadillo, which I fried in egg and flour batter with great success.
Our new house is magnificent. We keep marveling that we bought it for the summer at the same price Widow Mangada was charging for her noisy small room, bad dirty bathroom, ant infested kitchen (all to be shared with “les autres”, the piggy Spaniards) and terrace overlooking the sea (the honking staring gawking crowds on the boulevard, rather) which turned out to be the worst, not the best, feature. Ted was driven to retreat to the beds in the dark inner room, while after 10 in the morning, I was more conscious of being stared at on the balcony than of the typewriter in front of me. Now, there is utter peace. No fussy actress rushes into my new kitchen to snatch potatoes out of my hand and show me how to peel them her way, or peers under the lids of my frying pans on the petrol stove. We are left utterly tranquil. The first two days we were still recovering from our month of exterior business-rush living and the emotional turmoil of the week at the widow’s; workmen hammered continually in the kitchen and bathroom, putting in the water motor for the shower, toilet and faucets. Finally, yesterday, they finished, plastered up the holes, and we have clean sparkling water, cold, but wonderful, much better than the widow’s ancient faulty plumbing and wiring.
The whole house is almost an embaras de richesse: we’ve closed off two bedrooms, and don’t use the sitting room at all. Our grand bedroom is large, cool, with a sturdy enormous dark wood bed and triple wardrobe with floorlength mirror of the same dark polished wood; against the bare white plastered walls, the effect is pleasant, spacious. The whole floor is paved with stone tiles, giving the effect of living at the cool bottom of a well. The large kitchen and pantry is my delight. Never did a new bride queen it over her deep-freeze, washing machine, pressure cooker, et. al. as I do over my one-ring petrol stove, single frying pan, cold water sink, tangles of straw for cleaning, and iceless storage pantry, where I keep my vegetables, bottles of oil, wine and vinegar, and all my cooking preparations. Yesterday I read through the vegetable section of my blessed Rombauer, mouth watering, to cull all the sauteed dishes: we have chiefly potatoes, eggs, tomatoes and onions, from which, during the summer, I hope to pull enough variety to keep Ted from roaring protest. How I love to cook; the delectable recipes in the book, with all the right touches of seasoning, and always the one ingredient which I don’t have, make me long for the time when I can cook with modern range, icebox, and a variety of food. At least, if I manage on this narrow leash, I should be in heaven with the most modest of American kitchens.
Everything is going beautifully in this new place. I have a strong feeling that it is the source, and will be in the 10 full weeks to come, of creative living and writing. Yesterday Ted read me three new fables he’d just written for his fine animal book about how all the animals became:2 the Tortoise one was the funniest and dearest yet; the hyena, more serious about a bitter perverted character, and the fox and dog alive with plot and marvelous Sly-Look and Four-Square. I have great hopes for this as a children’s classic. Even as I write, Ted is working at the main table on the elephant and the cricket stories. Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative, I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever. I also feel a new direct pouring of energy into my own work, and shall break the jinx on my story writing this week, trying the bull-fight story and perhaps one on Widow Mangada (funny?) along with chapters in my new novel that might do for articles for Harper’s; also an article, with sketches, on Benidorm for the Monitor. Must learn Spanish and translate French, too.
Never in my life have I had conditions so perfect: a magnificent handsome brilliant husband (gone are those frayed days of partial ego-satisfaction of conquering new slight men who fell easier and easier), a quiet large house with no interruptions, phone, or visitors; the sea at the bottom of the street, the hills at the top. Perfect mental and physical well-being. Each day we feel stronger, wider-awake.
The other night we climbed our road, Tomas Ortunio,3 for the first time. As we went up, the rows of white pueblos gave way to green orchards; we broke open the green fruit on one of the trees and found that we were in the midst of almond groves. The kernel was pale, bitter, undeveloped as yet. The soil turned dusty and reddish, spiked with dry yellow grass; an unfertile, unfriendly place, all stones and stunted twisted scrub pines. As we climbed, the sea spread out beneath us, a wide rim of blue, and the island looked closer, with sea behind it. We crossed the tracks of the little railway station, where hens scrabbled and scratched, and sat under a large pine where the wind soughed, watching the sea darken as the sun sank lower behind the purple hills at our back. Clouds scudded across the pale thin brightening white moon, which laid a paving of platinum-light on the ocean. The little green neons on the waterfront came on, and the weariness struck us as the bells of the town were striking nine. So we descended.
Yesterday, while we were marketing in the evening for wine and oil, a rain shower fell, and the lighting effects were startlingly beautiful: looking into the sun, which was shining, we saw through a silver sheet of rain a blinding shining street between dark pueblos; in the other direction, against dark clouds, the white pueblos shone, arched over by the most perfect complete rainbow I’ve ever seen, one end rooted in the mountains, the other in the sea. We bought a loaf of bread at our new shop, and, somehow elated by the rainbow, made our way through the fresh goat droppings to our white house with its bright border of pungent red geraniums.
Benidorm: July 23 (continued)4
Alone, deepening. Feeling the perceptions deepen with the tang of geranium and the full moon and the mellowing of hurt; the deep ingrowing of hurt, too far from the bitching fussing surface tempests. The hurt going in, clean as a razor, and the dark blood welling. Just the sick knowing that the wrongness was growing in the full moon. Listening, he scratches his chin, the small rasp of a beard. He is not asleep. He must come out, or there is no going in.
Up the hilly street come the last donkey carts from the village, families going home up the mountain, slow, the donkey bells jangling. A couple of laughing girls. A skinny little boy with a lean dog on a leash. A French-speaking family. A mother with a fussing white-lace frilled baby. Dark and quiet, completely still then under the full moon. A cricket somewhere. Then there is his warmth, so loved, and strange, and the drawing in to the room where wrongness is growing. Wrongness grows in the skin and makes it hard to touch. Up, angry, in the darkness, for a sweater. No sleep, smothering. Sitting in nightgown and sweater in the diningroom staring into the full moon, talking to the full moon, with wrongness growing and filling the house like a man-eating plant. The need to go out. It is very quiet. Perhaps he is asleep. Or dead. How to know how long there is before death. The fish may be poisoned, and the poison working. And two sit apart in wrongness.
What is wrong? he asks, as the sweater is yanked out, wool slacks, and raincoat. I’m going out. Do you want to come. The aloneness would be too much; desperate and foolish on the lonely roads. Asking for a doom. He dresses in dungarees and shirt and black jacket. We go out leaving the light on in the house into the glare of the full moon. I strike out hillward toward the weird soft purple mountains, where the almond trees are black and twisted against the flooded whitened landscape, all clear in the blanched light of wrongness, not day, but some beige, off-color daguerrotype. Fast, faster, up past the railway station. Turning, the sea is far and silver in the light. We sit far apart, on stones and bristling dry grass. The light is cold, cruel, and still. All could happen; the willful drowning, the murder, the killing words. The stones are rough and clear, and outlined mercilessly in the moonlight. Clouds cross over, the fields darken, and a neighboring dog yaps at two strangers. Two silent strangers. Going back, there is the growing sickness, the separate sleep, and the sour waking. And all the time the wrongness growing, creeping, choking the house, twining the tables and chairs and poisoning the knives and forks, clouding the drinking water with that lethal taint. Sun falls off-key on eyes asquint, and the world has grown crooked and sour as a lemon overnight.
In the station,5 Marcia had revived over a steaming mug of coffee con leche, and she found the Spanish train a complete and refreshing change in atmosphere.
Their compartment filled quickly with two Spanish soldiers, sweating in their heavy green uniforms and patent-leather hats, like pillboxes with a brim flap turned up in back; several workmen, and a dapper, ebullient chap with a small, clipped mustache who sat next to Marcia and attempted to flirt continually during the trip. Early on, one of the workmen brought out a worn leather flask filled with lukewarm wine, and passed it around to the company. Each man tilted his head back and neatly, with one hand, squirted a jet of wine into his mouth. One of the soldiers offered the flask to Tom, and Marcia was oddly proud that he managed to gulp down his jet without spilling a drop. Not wishing to refuse hospitality, Marcia, too, had taken up the flask, chorused on by the Spaniards. Tipping her head back, she managed to hit her mouth but neglected to stop squirting when she shut it, sending a spout into her eye. Everyone burst out laughing sympathetically, and Marcia felt accepted. After that, she took a drink each time the flask went round, and when she finally managed not to spill a drop there was hearty applause. The dandy next to her did tricks, making the wine run down his mustache into his mouth, swaying the jet from side to side. At each train stop, a different man got out to re-fill the flask. Marcia passed around the cheese and bread she’d bought before leaving Paris, and one of the workmen opened his rucksack and divided up tomatoes. By expressive gestures and occasional words from Marcia’s pocket dictionary, they managed to hold a lively conversation with the Spaniards. One of the soldiers offered to buy any nylon stockings Marcia had with her; another commented on the passing scenery.
Feathery-gray French towns gave way to clusters of blinding white pueblos; small green fields fanned out into hot yellow plains of rye. Overhead, the noon sky blazed blue-white, and against the flat stretches of grain moved the dark figures of tanned workers in sombreros and their donkeys. Marcia exclaimed over storks nesting in church steeples, donkeys circling wells to draw water, and shepherds with crooks guarding flocks of delicately stepping goats. Occasionally they passed a herd of black bulls, roaming free and grazing at will on the open plains. Later, the land grew rocky, with queerly shaped pine trees rising on slender trunks, tapped for resin, to explode in dense, compact puffs of greenery. Tom reached for Marcia’s hand across the aisle and grinned at her, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. They’d been wanting to come to Spain, both of them, long before they’d met. And now, at last, on their honeymoon, they’d managed to scrape up enough money for a few days in Madrid and a week at the growing resort fishing-village of Benidorm, down the coast from Valencia.
By about four o’clock, the heat in the compartment was unbearable. Marcia, who usually turned to the Cape Cod sun like a plant, found herself telling Tom: “It’s not the heat I can’t stand, it’s the dirt and the smells.” The bottle of cold milk which she had brought, impractically, in her carrying-bag had soured immediately and, at a jerky stop, spilled out in a slosh of white curds on the floor; banana peels and cherry pits littered the compartment, and the stench of sweat and cheap tobacco from the workmen’s hand-rolled cigarettes hung heavy in the stagnant air. For the rest of the trip, Marcia stood beside Tom in the hallway on the shaded side of the car, looking across at the white mesas lying like low-hanging clouds in the distance. Leaning out of the train window, she let the wind dry the perspiration and grime on her face, wondering if she might be condemned by some sophisticated heavenly order to wander through eternity in this present limbo – – – always dirty, hot, fatigued, longing only for a distant paradise of cold showers and clean sheets. By twilight, she was sheathed in a protective coat of numbness. Then, as she stared dull-eyed at the rocks, bare, deserted, purpling with shadow, the train swung all at once around a bend and, miraculously, a turreted palace sprang up before her. Even the Spaniards were crowding to the windows, jabbering excitedly among themselves.
“Must be the Escorial,” Tom said. The palace seemed part of the natural landscape, hewn from the mauve rocks. A whole village spread out beneath it. Within an hour they were pulling into the station at Madrid.
[Appendix 10 contains Sylvia Plath’s 4 August 1956 description of waves (entry 23) and Sylvia Plath’s 13 August 1956 description of the bay at Benidorm, Spain (entry 26) – ed.]
Benidorm: August 14:6 Tuesday
Woke in cool of morning with that usual dazed feeling, as if crawling out from a spider’s web, fought upright, and revived over coffee and bananas with milk and sugar. Ted shopped for fish, bread and wine while I dressed: black linen skirt, white jersey, red belt and polka-dotted scarf to be bright and wifely for Alicante. We walked down the street, threading through fresh horse manure and the delicate peppering of goat droppings; sky blue and clear; mountains purply and cloudy-secret through favorite vista of knife-bladed green palm fronds. Old El Greco madman, thin, cadaverous, in faded red and white striped shirt, sitting as usual by water faucet. Donkey cart loading barrel of fresh water and four jugs full. Warm fresh bread smells from panaderia.
Walked past watermelon shop and wine shop to outskirts of town to begin hitching to Alicante. Bay mild blue, streaked with glassy patches of calm; boats drawn up along shore; sun beginning to heat up. Stood in dust in spotted shade at roadside; no cars for a while; bicycles and motorbikes only; bikes with box of red-crested cocks loaded on back; large hunk of swordfish steak; bundle of green-leaved branches. Crowded cars, then. Finally, two Spaniards, dark, not talking or trying to communicate to us, stopped; man next to driver got out and opened door as if he were chauffering us. Cool, pleasant ride to Villajoyosa through dusty reddish hills; overtaking donkey carts. Got out at their last stop: square of Villajoyosa, dusty, slummy; past tenements, held together by morning glory vines and geranium roots in gaudy pots; houses painted bright blue and red with white borders around windows
Villajoyosa more industrial; passed lots of garages; business just starting; plasterers casually tossing trowels of cement on wall, turning to stare at couple strolling down road; Ted in fine new khaki cotton shirt and dark pants, face pinked with sun; me tripping in wicked black heeled toeless shoes. Heat blazing now, no shade. Walked far out of town to almond groves thick with ripe nuts: green furry pods split on trees, showing brown pocked shell of nut; group of almond-pickers, their bamboo poles leaning up in trees, sitting in shade over wine-break: dungarees and sombreros; black-clad women; stared curiously too. Beyond them, we shook down a few almonds and Ted cracked them open between two stones. We sat on dusty wall and munched, rising to thumb cars; either too full or snobby; guardia civil in black patent-leather helmet & heavy green uniform biked past; we hid nuts. At last, as heat grew, a bleached blonde French couple with curly black poodle stopped to pick us up, going through Alicante.
We sat in back patting poodle, observing glimpses of blue sea through dusty red hills; reckless French driver, queer, soft, in delicately striped-textured white long-sleeved shirt, colored sunglasses and close-cropped metallic blond curly hair, looking very bleached. Wife, pretty, rounded chic French type, much bleached blonde hair, grown out dark at roots, pulled untidily back with several tortoise shell combs; narrow gold wedding band; browned with sun; arched plucked eyebrows and lively brown eyes; very merry and chichi. Man asked in accented English if we were English, and advised us that we’d have to hitch inland after Alicante, there were no coast roads.
We squealed around danger curves, passing lunbering trucks and two-wheeled donkey carts into the outskirts of Alicante: ancient fortress on hill overlooking city; clothes drying on bushes; then, beach, short, packed with people so thick under gaudy striped umbrellas that you couldn’t see water; cheap garages; noisy avenue of palms; shrunk to biteable size after nightmare of first arrival, traumatic night walk along quais, and sleepless blaring room. Got out of French car, they wishing us bon voyage, and turned right on main avenue by white-coated policeman and little yellow streetcars. Vox,7 two flights up, cool office; pleasant dark curly haired French-speaking man at information desk; Ted began making out new application; auspicious day; young blond, slender-chinned English teacher arrived in khaki cloth suit and khaki and white pin-striped sport shirt; told us, with Spanish accent, that his mother was Spanish, father English. German boy arrived, also teacher; tall, handsome, blond sun-bleached streaks in brown curly hair; dark eyes. Came from near Hamburg; studied a year in America at U. of Illinois; taught English at Vox, also one class of German; showed me about teaching rooms, dark tables and chairs in U-shape about small blackboards; discreet blue-sea and green-tree travel posters. Most chivalrous chap; everybody very nice, encouraging about job in Madrid. Left feeling weight gone; optimistic. Concrete efforts, plans at becoming self-supporting on the way.
Began hitching just past beach; almost immediately, as we stood in shade of palms, long green German bus-car, vaguely familiar, stopped; going to Benidorm, full of fat stocky Germans. We got in third row of seats, saw blond red-cheeked little girl lying on second seat; stocky driver father turned, apologized for smell of child’s urine pot, which he held up, covered, said she’d been sick. Rooted up fragments of German to talk to plump, concerned, pleasant mother who watched over child; second woman – – – grandmother? – – – fat, grizzled, neck thick as elephant’s leg, sat silent in front.
Little girl, feverish, tossed in sheets, held finger; sweet child; mother explained she’d vomited, had diarrhea, convulsions – – – expressive rolling of eyes and tremors to illustrate this; they’d rushed to doctor in Alicante who said children got this sickness from the wind. Or the sun. Fine drive along shore road for first time; observed white and reddish stone houses on lonely sea front; San Juan beach; new era of projects beginning; me wanting to teach; both of us feeling world ready to sprout at fingertips, eager to work; got out at edge of Benidorm with an Aufwiedersehen.
Changed out of sweaty things to bathingsuit; tomato, pepper, onion and eggs fried for lunch; deep, exhausting nap; rose, feeling blackjacked, to recover slowly over coffee. Went across the street to get some more milk for supper; past lovely vista, white fence with plants, into house; old house, weathered peasant said milk would be ready soon. Glimpse of blue sea through fig trees, with wide green scalloped leaves, thick with green fruit; we decided to wait, Ted finding ant-track;8 half an hour spent playing god.
Trail of black ants carrying straw grains or fly wings to hole; we lifted rock portal of house, threw confusion into clan; much bunching at break of new earth, retreats and fumblings. Saw two ants apparently stitched with cramp; almost transparent, beige, earth-colored spider running wildly around them, trussing them up with invisible web; ants struggling, slower; spider quick, running clockwise, counterclock wise; we tossed him another ant, bigger, which he looped in. Gave ants big dead fly, which they took with pincers, an ant to a leg, and stood, pulling? Saw still group of black ants; looked closer; all trussed to rock, twitching feebly and slowly, while black ant-spider guarded from rock, like robber baron. Big black silly beetle blundered over ants, like a rusty gentleman in pin-striped suit clambering up sand cliff.
Ancient black-clad woman, with one tooth, sunken gums baring it to the root, came to see what we were peering at; “muchos,” she said, seeing the ants. Just then, a tinkling, and the flock of black and gray aristocratic goats rounded the wall of the corral with the little leprechaun of a blue-eyed milkman, in patched faded dungarees, rope sandals, and sombrero; he looked happy and pleasant; let us come into corral; new world; his world. Goats at home in bare, neat yard, drank out of water pails; black and white spotted kid. Two goats butted; one rising on hillock as if strung up from neck, poised, hung, butting down on other; playing.
Milkman’s dog, still pup, tied up under fig tree; friendly, tight brown fur, floppy ears, loving and nuzzling. Goats butting again; milkman whirled, dropping stone in dead center, breaking up struggle; clucked and shooshed goats into shack: “their little house.” We followed him in; dark, musky, dry, pleasant; ground cushioned with confetti-like strips of seaweed, “muy fresca”; wire netting overhead to protect from animals; milkman took goat’s dug and squirted thin powerful stream with hiss, ringing into bottom of my aluminum pail. His big, pleasant, ugly black-clad wife, very broad-beamed, came out. Said she also milked goats; described frisky games of little kid with hand motions. Moon brightening through clouds as we left, clear-cut pine tree jagged against sky. Man happy, own world, out of earth; brother kept three cows on hill beyond railroad station. Left feeling good day; light yellow-green eyes of goats.
Benidorm: August 17:9 Friday
Sat by bayside all morning after shopping for rabbit and myriad garnishes for gala stew. Sun hot on bare back; bay sheltered by high white cliff topped by white stucco and plaster pueblos, cubist study with colored clothes drying on lines on many leveled porches; cave-dwellings made of salt-crystal; sound of tubs of water being poured down cliff; dirty dish water sloshing in dark wet patches on sandy cliff; women lugging large pails of garbage: egg shells, melon rinds; fish heads, to empty in ocean along mole of rugged stones stretching sheltering arm into bay; water blazing blue in the sun, dark prussian streaks; smell of dead fish; confetti strips of seaweed drying in hummocky banks; burning sand under footsoles, beach pebbled black with creosote along water line.
In calm sheltered bay, small green and white motor boats and rowboats dipped; several large fishing boats moored; sardine boats drawn up in row on shore: full of coiled rope; three to four large global lights strung in loose wire mesh hung from metal rods above stern of boats; drew three boats in black line design; blotted out memory of maliciously blurred drawing yesterday; small square sails, gaff rigged boats; large rotting hulls, splayed open like fish skeletons in varying stages of decomposition; bubbles of creosote melted in sun; smell of tar, dead fish.
Clock bells striking hour and half hour from moorish castle. Keyhole blue-mosaic windows of house on cliff; sand strewn with feathery gray flakes of seaweedstrips, prickly grass clumps; mountains faint, misted, cloud white hung over tops; structured by sun to dimension. Cries of children swimming, fishing.
Fishermen’s boys: skinny legged, lean, brown; bold and shy; loveable puppies: scrambled up behind me sitting perched on scalding deck of boat, nudged, chattered, pushed each other over boat edge; I turned and grinned at the littlest, with big brown eyes and peeling nose, pink and brown patches of skin, tow head, husky voice; he catapulted back into a bank of dry seaweed on the afterdeck and the other little boys laughed; big, bright awake eyes, dancing, merry; curious, and shy too; patched faded overalls; lean and brown and agile; pokes and fisticuffs. Mice and squirrel and cocker spaniel faces.
Fisherman coming in, coiling lines; wealthy German taking color photographs of his catch, laid out flapping and glistening in flat box: fish of all shapes and sizes: Fish: sheened and wet in sun, colored and speckled and striated like rare glistening shells: small tight-fleshed fish with black streaks on shimmering pale blue sides; spined ugly mouthed brown speckled fish; wicked black Moray eel with triangular head, black nasty eyes and gorgeous yellow brocaded back; red and pink shots of light from fins. Swimmer wading out of sea gripping squirming small octopus which twined and writhed long hanging legs; absurd bullet head; cracked octopus down on shore, legs piling and coiling, gift to fisherman.
Strolled past rows of cabanas: fat tan bulging women, lipstick, earrings, rubbing oil into mounds of flesh packed into tight black bathingsuits; bandy legged, paunchy staring hairy men; very pale fat woman in dark glasses and florid two piece yellow flowered bathing suit rubbing lotion into double layered fat of midriff; old woman in vile pale lavender suit washing toes warped with bunions in wash of waves on shore; fat swarthy little boy with greasy black hair and religious medal around neck bobbing on rise and fall of waves in red inner tube. Ginger-headed albino man with dead white skin, edged with painful pink, sitting swathed to the waist in striped beach towel, large sunglasses.
Tuna and beans in cream sauce for birthday lunch; new green honeydew melon: not as good as yesterday (probably, by freak of fortune, the best most delectable melon in the world), wild cold honey-flavored melon-flesh; creamy texture, refreshing, sweet the way sunlight would taste, coming through the clear glassy green bulk of waves.
Tonight: long deep nap, dropping of end of pier into hypnotized sleep, plummeting deep into dark with rock around ankles; groggy dazed doped waking, spinning warm sick giddiness; cleared head with washing and cold drink of water; sweaty, reserve of energy growing. Gulped scalding coffee, like surgeon before difficult new operation to be performed for first time. Got out ingredients from larder: Ted lit carbon fire, glowing to red coals in black oven, after much smoking and glowering clouds; scraped carrots naked, cut onion, squushy tomato; cooked down strips of salt pork, floured pink tight rabbit flesh; seared rabbit to savoury brown, chunked in big kettle; made rich dense gravy from drippings, adding flour, salt, boiling water, two packets of condensed soup – – – vegetable and beef and chicken, glass and a half of wine at Ted’s insistence; added sauce to kettle with can of peas, onions, tomato & carrots. Boiled and bubbled, savoury, steaming and delectable. Presents: ponky-pooh chocolate for breakfast; pink-flowery-wifely-wrapped suave Madrid tie: gold & black for lunch; Hemingway leather wine flask, full, for dinner.
Mr. and Mrs. Ted Hughes’ Writing Table:
In the center of the stone-tiled dining room, directly under the low-hanging chandelier with its large frosted glass bowl of light and four smaller replica bowls, stood the heavy writing table of glossy dark polished wood. The table top, about five feet square, was divided lengthwise down the center by a crack which never stayed closed, into which a drop-leaf might be inserted. At the head of the table, Ted sat in a squarely built grandfather chair with wicker back and seat; his realm was a welter of sheets of typing paper and ragged cardboard-covered notebooks; the sheets of scrap paper, scrawled across with his assertive blue-inked script, rounded, upright, flaired, were backs of reports on books, plays and movies written while at Pinewood studios;10 typed and re-written versions of poems, bordered with drawings of mice, ferrets and polar bears, spread out across his half of the table. A bottle of blue ink, perpetually open, rested on a stack of paper. Crumpled balls of used paper lay here and there, to be thrown into the large wooden crate placed for that purpose in the doorway. All papers and notebooks on this half of the table were tossed at angles, kitty-corner and impromptu. An open cookbook lay at Ted’s right elbow, where I’d left it after finishing reading out recipes of stewed rabbit. The other half of the table, coming into my premises, was piled with tediously neat stacks of books and papers, all laid prim and four-squared to the table corners: A large blue-paper-covered notebook, much thinned, from which typing paper was cut, topped by a ragged brown covered Thesaurus, formed the inner row of books, close to Ted’s red covered Shakespeare, on which lay the bright yellow wrapping paper with a black-inked rhyme which served as birthday wrapping for a chocolate bar. Along the edge of the table, from left to right, were a plaid round metal box of scotch tape, a shining metal pair of sleek scissors, an open Cassell’s French dictionary on which also opened, an underlined copy of Le Rouge et Le Noire in a yellow-bound ragged-edged paper-back edition, a bottle of jet black ink, scrupulously screwed shut, a small sketch book of rag paper atop Ted’s anthology of Spanish poems, and a white plastic sunglasses case sewn over with a decorative strewing of tiny white and figured shells, a few green and pink sequins, a plastic green star-fish and rounded, gleaming oval shell. The table top jutted over a border carved with starry flower motifs and the whole stood on four sturdy carved legs, alternating squared pieces carved with the diagonally-petaled flower motif and cylindrical rings, two of each; On two sides, the legs were joined by a fence of wooden pillars, four in all, and a carved medallion in the center depicting a frowning bearded face with handlebar moustache.
[Appendix 10 contains Sylvia Plath’s 18 August 1956 description of Benidorm, Spain (entries 27–28) – ed.]
Paris: August 26:11
Ile de la Cite: down steps, out to green empty park; eight a.m.: early gray morning after rain, dark stains on pavement drying light gray; sit on quai by bank and drink from leather wine-skin; fisherman drops line, lets float go down with slow river Seine, draws in flipping silver gudgeon, puts in white cloth sack. Across river, barges moored on opposite bank; woman in flat shoes, yellow sweater and blue dress drops aluminum bucket over edge of boat into water, jerks cord, sloshes it about, draws it up spilling water; swabs deck with mop, throws dirty water over side; hangs up washing. Bookstalls are opening; green sycamores in spotted leopard yellow light.
Exhausted; lifted skirt under bridge, behind truck, secure in noise of falling water and urinated on sidewalk; ate greasy good last of tuna sandwich. Fatigue growing; back to hotel, up Rue de Buci to buy fruit. Stood before stand of peaches, moustached dark man rapidly filling bags. Little impatient gray-haired woman behind: Advancez, messieur-dame. We demanded a kilo of red peaches. Ladedum, toute le monde demande les rouges, chanted the oily man, rappidly filling our bag with green peaches. I looked in the bag while his back was turned to take the money; I found a solid rock-hard green peach; I put it back and took a red one. The man turned just as the hostile little woman made a rattling noise of furious warning to him, like a snake about to strike. One is not allowed to choose, the man raged, grabbing the bag back and rudely dumping the hard green peaches on the counter. We fumed, sick at the outrage, meanness and utter illogic; bought a kilo of delicious yellow pears touched with red, and another kilo of peaches at the nearest corner stand.
At the hotel, at twelve ten, our room was not ready; the mellow, full-lipped feline faced concierge made little moues of regret: they are americans and I cannot wake them; I have called. We sprawled in stiff wooden chairs, upholstered in red-flowered material. Near tears. Only a bed. The stiff cramped limbs of the train ache and return. Concierge brings two little glasses: “I saw you had a bottle of milk,” she placates. We drink a bottle down. Slimy dark curly Jewish Americans saunter down, expensive tweed jackets; “let’s sneak out and not pay.” The culprits. To bed, deep dream sleep. Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets. Rain and nip of autumn in air; nostalgia, itch to work better and bigger. That crisp edge of autumn. Must work and produce in print before return. Several stories And articles.
[Appendix 10 contains Sylvia Plath’s 26 August 1956 description of the Hôtel des Deux Continents, Paris (entry 30) and notes from her September 1956 visit to Yorkshire (entries 31–32) where she probably wrote the following draft of an article about her experiences in Benidorm, Spain – ed.]
Sketchbook of a Spanish Summer12
After a bitter British winter, we sought the heart of sunlight in the small Spanish fishing village of Benidorm on the Mediterranean sea for a summer of studying and sketching. Here, in spite of the tourist hotels along the waterfront, the natives live as simply and peacefully as they have for centuries, fishing, farming, and tending their chickens, rabbits, and goats.
We woke early each morning to hear the high thin jangle of goat bells as the goatherd across the street led his flock of elegantly-stepping black goats to pasture. “Ya hoi!” came the shout of the little bread-woman as she strolled by with a great basket of fragrant fresh rolls over her arm. Daily, after breakfast, we walked downtown to shop at the peasant market. (Kitchens in Spain are a far cry from those in America: only the wealthy possess iceboxes, which are proudly displayed in the livingroom; dishes are washed in cold water with tangles of straw; and a one-ring petrol stove must cope with everything from café con leche to rich rabbit stew.)
The open air peasant market begins at sunup. Natives set out their wares on little wooden tables or straw mats at a hilly crossroads between white pueblos that sparkle like salt crystal in the sun. Black-clad peasant women bargain with the vendors for watermelons, purple figs wrapped in their own scalloped leaves, yellow plums, green peppers, wreathes of garlic, and speckled cactus fruit. Two straw baskets hung on a balance serve as scales and rough stones are used as weights. Live rabbits crouch in wire cages, with silken brown fur and noses quivering, to be sold for stew. One woman holds a squawking, flapping black chicken upside down by the legs while she calmly goes about the rest of her shopping. Strung up on wires against the pueblo walls are gaudy striped beach towels, rope sandals, and delicate white cobwebs of handmade lace. Higher on the hill, a man is selling petrol stoves, earthenware jugs and coathangers.
The fish market is a fresh adventure every day, varying according to the previous night’s catch. Every evening, at dusk, the lights of the sardine boats dip and shine out at sea like floating stars. In the morning, counters are piled with silvery sardines, strewn with a few odd crabs and shells. Strange fish of all shapes and sizes lie side by side, speckled or striated, with a rainbow sheen on their fins. There are small fish with black streaks on shimmering pale blue scales, fish glinting pink and red, and a Moray eel with wicked black eyes and a splendid yellow brocade patterning its dark back. We never quite had the courage to select our dinner from the pile of baby octopuses, their long legs tangled and twined like a heap of slippery worms.
All our food and drink came from the farms around us. When we needed extra milk for supper one evening, we crossed the street to wait for the goatherd. Soon a musical tinkling sounded in the distance, and the flock of aristocratic black goats rounded the wall of the corral, followed by the goatherd, who resembled a smiling Spanish leprechaun in patched, faded dungarees, rope sandals, and a sombrero. He invited us into the corral to watch the milking. The goatherd’s pup, with tight brown fur and floppy ears, yipped greeting from the shade of the fig tree where it was tied. The goatherd clucked and shooed his goats into what he called “their little casa.” Following him into the dark, musky, pleasant interior, we found the ground softly carpeted with with confetti-like strips of freshly dried seaweed. Then the goatherd began to milk one of the black goats, squirting out a thin powerful stream of milk which hissed and rang in the bottom of our aluminum pail.
Modern innovations in Benidorm have not disturbed the rhythm of native customs. Although motor-scooters and a few large, grand tourist cars now crowd the narrow streets, the main traffic is donkey carts, loaded with vegetables, straw, or jugs of oil, wine and water. Delivery men continue to bicycle along on their routes, one with a crate of red-crested cocks, another with a large slab of swordfish in his basket. While drinking water is drawn from wells in the more modern houses, on our hill, the natives still congregate to fill their great earthenware jugs from the town pump.
By noon, the glare of the Spanish sun is so bright that it is difficult to raise one’s eyes. All glitters white: sky, streets, and houses seem to glow with an inner radiance. From three to five, after a late lunch, all shops are closed and work halts for siesta time. Later, in the cool of the day, the old tanned, wrinkled women sit outside their doorways in wooden chairs, backs to the street, weaving nets of thick rope or fine mesh. In spite of the heat, they are always clad completely in black: shoes, stockings, dresses, and, for town shopping, often a black mantilla.
Only once in our whole summer of clear blue sunny days did a rain cloud pass. During the sudden, brief shower the lighting effects were startlingly beautiful. Looking toward the sun, which was still visible, we saw through a silver sheet of rain a dazzling drenched street between dark pueblos; in the opposite direction, against a backdrop of dark clouds, white pueblos shone under the arch of a perfect rainbow, one end rooted in the mountains, the other in the sea.
Every vistas in Benidorm was brilliant with color. From the front porch of our house, latticed by an arbor of purpling grapes and green leaves, we could glimpse an azure corner of the Mediterranean, glossy as peacock feathers. Behind the village the encircling hills, rose in a scrim of mist against the still blue sky. Our garden itself was like a painter’s palette: white daisies and pungent red geraniums sprouted under the jagged green fronds of a palm tree, while vivid indigo morning glories hung like a tapestry along the wall.
Late one afternoon we walked up into the hills for a twilight view of the sea. The rows of white pueblos gave way to almond groves, each tree thick with ripe nuts; the green furry pods split open, showing the pocked brown shell inside. We shook down a few nuts, cracked them between two stones, and munched the kernels as we went along. Farther on, the dusty reddish soil was spiked with dry yellow grass and scattered with stones; twisted scrub pines grew on the bare summits of the hills. As we climbed, the bay of Benidorm spread out beneath us, a wide crescent of blue.
Crossing the tracks of the little railway station where hens scrabbled and scratched, we sat under a large pine, listening to the wind sough in the branches and watching the sea darken as the sun sank lower behind the purple hills at our back. Clouds scudded luminous across the brightening white moon which laid a paving of platinum light on the ocean. The little green neons on the waterfront blinked on and the bells of the clock tower were striking as we descended.
Now, back in the midst of a chilly British autumn, with drifting gray mists and bleak winds, the memory of this Spanish summer turns in our mind with a blaze of color and light like an inward sun, to warm us through the long winter.
[Appendix 10 contains Sylvia Plath’s October 1956 descriptions of Cambridge, England (entries 33–34), as well as ideas for novels and poems (entries 35–36) – ed.]
