“I’m a wife. It’s her FRIEND that talks to me”
Commuting from home to work takes almost one and a half hours, and generally, I employ this time reading a book, or at least I used to do that before winter arrived in Poland and the sunshine hours no longer coincide with my commute on the company bus –as my Canadian advisor used to say: “les jolies de l’hiver”, so I instead listen to two literary podcasts: one in spanish from “La cadena ser” entitled “un libro una hora” and the second in french from “France culture” called: “Comment les livres changent le monde”. I should say that if you don’t like spoilers before reading a new book, these podcasts aren’t for you. In my case, I become more motivated after listening to podcasts and I have ended up reading books that I would otherwise never have considered. Curiously, one of the last editions of “un libro una hora” was not about a book, but about an author: Ernest Hemingway. I have never read a book by him, and my only contact with his literature was due to the authors of the Latin American boom who, inspired by the writers of the so-called lost generation, moved to Paris to become real writers.
The 1st of January in Warsaw was a very atypical day, we had a temperature of 18 degrees, a sunny day, and smiley people in the street –quite atypical behavior in winter, I should say–. I was in a bar with my friends on December 31st and I just got home at 5:00 am the next day, so my plan was to stay in my bed slowly dying and answering the best wishes messages I received from across the pond. However, I didn't count on the cunning of my landlady, who was already at my door at 10:00 am knocking and yelling: “open the door, have you seen how nice the weather is today, is a sin, a deadly sin, stay at home in a day like today, open the door!”. My plan was to pretend to be asleep until she got tired and left, but my landlady is a special human being, and just after two minutes without an answer she said: “I’m respecting your privacy by knocking, but asserting my authority as your landlady by coming in anyway!” After some arguing, she convinced me –of course, she did it– to go out, but first I drunk a coffee and I had a shower. When I was leaving the bathroom, my landlady was reading the book about the six women living in Paris in the ’40s that I just forgot I had.
–Bunny, have you already finished this book? One of the women here is Gertrude Stein, I’ve got curious (yes, my landlady calls me “bunny”).
–Gertrude Stein? is she a celebrity? I have never heard of her, how do you know about her?– I asked her with some disdain.
– Well, I’m not an expert, but she appears in this movie by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris, I think she’s a writer, and she was a friend of Picasso, Ezra Pound, and Fitzgerald–.
– Are you serious? This woman was a friend of the authors of the lost generation! How is possible I never heard of her, it is not possible– I indignantly complained.
– As I told you, I am not an expert, but check the book’s synopsis, even here is written: “a woman who doesn’t need an introduction…”– she read aloud.
– You know, I really hate when authors do this, I feel like I’m the most ignorant person in the world, in physics is very common, you’re reading about some deductions of an equation and the author writes: “it’s evidently that (sometimes, it’s immediately evident that)...” and the result appears, but when you’re going to do this immediately evident steps, it’s like pages of calculations. Don’t be this kind of person honey, we’re better than this”–. Once more, I indignantly complained (and yes, I call my landlady “honey”).
– You’re getting more polish by the day bunny, you’re complaining about everything now, anyway, we should take the most of this weather go go go!
During the next few days, the name Gertrude Stein wouldn’t get out of my head, so I stopped all my readings and started to read the book my friend lent me. Fortunately, the story about Stein was in the first chapter. In fact, the story is about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, her lover and lifelong companion. In the book, there is no clear data on the first meeting between James Lord (the author) and the two lovers, but it should be around 1944 or 1945 because the couple had already returned to Paris after the Nazi liberation. Stein dies in 1946 and, at least, according to my reading, the author didn’t establish a friendly relationship with the couple, at least not with Gertrude. In his first chapter entitled: “where the pictures were”, despite a contextualization of who Gertrude was, the author relates only two conversations with her, the first, a thirty-minute walk when they met, and the second, an irreconcilable argument about an unexpected visit to Gertrude’s house. The real story that the author wanted to highlight in that chapter, from my point of view, was how Alice spent her days after Gertrude passed away. The couple had been together for 38 years, but they were not “husband and wife”. Alice was, as their friends used to call her, Gertrude’s FRIEND, and this, combined with the way Stein wrote her will, considerably complicated Alice's financial situation after her death. Reading Alice's story triggers me personally because I have known friends who have had similar problems with their FRIENDS.
Gertrude Stein settled in Paris in 1903 and with the guidance of her oldest brother, she began to amass a modern art collection of her own. In 1907 she met Alice Toklas, with whom she had almost immediate chemistry. Gertrude and Alice were 34 and 30 years old, respectively. Three years later, in 1910, they start living together in Gertrude's house, the 27 rue de Fluerus, where during “Les Années folles” a steady stream of expatriate artists such as Hemingway, Matisse, Juan Gris, Apollinaire, Vaslav Nijinsky, Fitzgerald, and Picasso, among others, found their way to her soirees. When couples came to visit their house, Stein generally had conversations with the men, while the wives were shuttling off with Alice. This fact is also commented on by Hemingway in his book of memoirs, “A moveable feast”, where after a conversation with Gertrude he got home and told his wife: "You know, Gertrude is nice, anyway. Of course, Tatie. But she does talk a lot of rot sometimes. «I never hear her», my wife said. «I'm a wife. It's her friend that talks to me» .” (small parenthesis… Yes, I’ve started my reading project: the authors of the lost generation). In 1914, with the outbreak of the war, they volunteered for war work with the American Fund for French Wounded. They spent the war years shuttling supplies and soldiers to and from lines and billets. During the second world war, when Germany invaded France, both women were of advanced age –not to mention that both came from Jewish families–, so being war volunteers wasn’t an option this time. The women left the occupied Paris. However, they stayed in France in a small village close to the Swiss border. During this time they managed to survive the hardships and rationing of the war years, supported by the villagers who kept their presence as Jews a secret. At this time, Gertrude translated some of the speeches of Philippe Pétain, chief of the Vichy France, which were intended for an American audience. This fact would be used by her detractors in the future to accuse her of being fascist and friendly with Nazi Germany. In 1944, after Paris' liberation by the allies, Gertrude and Alice moved back to Paris, and it’s at this point that James Lord met the couple thanks to Picasso, as he would, later on, write in: “where the pictures were”, the first chapter of the book my friend lent me and that aroused my curiosity about these two women.
The details of Alice's life after Gertrude and why her friend Janet Flanner once commented: “she was the most widowed woman I ever saw” is very well described in the book of James Lord – That I really recommend if you like stories about strong and successful (in italics, because there are controversies about what constitutes success) women. What remains after reading this chapter is the question: would Alice's life have been smoother after Gertrude's death if their marriage had been legal? The answer to this question belongs now to the realm of speculation, but I have experienced through friends the problems of having a legally unaccepted relationship, or as Hemingway says through his wife in his book of memoirs: “It’s her FRIEND that talks to me”. I want to clarify that when I wrote a legal marriage, I mean, a marriage that has the support and rights of a straight marriage, not the acceptance of a community, the latter, although important, it’s irrelevant. Once I was watching an interview with a Peruvian journalist –for whom I have the highest respect–, about egalitarian marriage, and his opinion surprised me, I couldn’t believe that someone as smart as him said:
“If homosexuals want to get married, let them do it, I don't care, but seeing how the divorce rate is increasing, I don't understand why they want to get into this madness, they should be thankful that their partner is not going to fuck them with it”.
Instead of thinking that this journalist is actually an idiot or simply, a closeted homophobe, pretending to be gay-friendly just to be liked - because let’s face it, nowadays it’s trendy to be gay-friendly, just like being an atheist or a feminist, it seems to magically make you a more intelligent and interesting person -, instead, I preferred to believe that, because he isn’t gay, it’s hard for him to understand why activists and the LGBTQIA+ community continue fighting in favor of egalitarian marriage, and just like him there are a lot of people out there with similar thinking. After this brief rant, I’d like to finish this post with two stories (maybe slightly less scintillating than the life story of Gertrude and Alice, two women that together lived through two world wars - c'mon, that's hard to beat) of friends of mine who came like me to Poland to work or to obtain a Ph. D. and because in Poland egalitarian marriage isn’t recognized, they had to pass through hard situations, which sadly, are quite common among people who are homosexuals.
In my circle of friends, I have only one lesbian friend, she’s also a physicist, but her research is in quantum information. I think she’s my friend just because she sees people who work with condensed matter physics as a chemist, and for her chemistry is like an unexplored land, very far from her understanding and she thinks that by being my friend she could learn a bit of chemistry from me (If she knew that a few weeks ago I had asked my office mate to help me convert grams to moles… Tough times!). My friend moved to Poland to improve her CV studying in a European country and with the hope to find a better life here. She had a girlfriend before coming to Poland, a girl who was doing a master's in Latin American literature. This is a common situation, I saw several friends of mine who received a job offer, very well paid and in a first-world country. Since most parts of them were in a relationship and finishing their postgraduate studies, they married and together traveled to a new destination to have a new life (by the way, the change of country is smoother when you are not alone). However, my friend got a Ph. D. position in Poland, where egalitarian marriage is not legal. Thus, she was forced to choose between her career and her relationship, of course, at that moment she thought she could have both, a long-distance relationship and a Ph.D. position, but life is not easy and doing a Ph. D. in physics, adapting to a new country and a new language, in addition to the time difference and the insecurities that arise in every relationship, especially a long-distance relationship, condemned their love. And my friend had to separate from her partner for many years and face loneliness while continuing alone in a country where people don't understand what she says and in an elitist career that demands exclusive dedication if you want to find a job by the time you finish your Ph.D. I am not trying to say that if egalitarian marriage was allowed in Poland her life will be easier, or their relationship wasn’t over, but clearly, she had an extra tough time just because this “madness” of equal rights isn’t allowed in Poland. You don’t have to be an activist for gay rights to notice that this isn’t ok, it’s not fair, she’s here as every other ex-pat, she pays her taxes, she does her work, she respects the laws, then why she is not allowed to have the same rights? Fortunately, now she’s ok, with a polish girlfriend (a lovely girl, with whom I’m trying to be closer just to say someday I have more than one lesbian friend =P ). They live together, by the way. And my friend is going to Canada now as a part of her studies, and the good news is they can go together because, in Canada, they are wives. The second story, is from a Colombian guy, in fact, he’s a friend of a friend of mine, but we met at a party last year. He’s from Colombia and got married three years ago. He was living with his husband in Colombia and he received a Job offer in Poland with a considerably better salary than his previous one. Thus, he decided to come here to work. But again, the same problem, according to Polish law, they are not married and the husband cannot stay in Europe for more than three months, and later he should leave and wait at least six months to be able to visit him again. This is of course, unfair. And as if that were not enough, God forbid, if a serious accident should happen to either of them, the other would be unable to make any decision because they are not a close relative or husband and wife, they are just FRIENDS. Again, just because this “madness” of equal rights isn’t allowed in Poland. I remember I met a gay guy here and we were arguing about this and he told me, you’re creating a drama for nothing if the other guy asks kindly the nurses and doctors will let him take the decision and will allow him to visit. That day I was very upset, I couldn’t believe a gay guy was saying this to me. It is not about the goodwill of others, it is a right, if they decided to be together as husband and wife, as wives, or as husbands, their rights should be respected equally. Not like the gay guy told me: "if he behaves himself the doctors will understand and let him be close by". Sadly this level of irrationality exists even in the gay community. As I wrote before, reading the book of James Lord triggers me, because it’s a topic that cares for me personally as a gay guy and after reading I feel a necessity to write this. I also hope to help some of my friends, who have never even given a thought to egalitarian marriage, realize the life-changing impact that not being recognized as partners by a state can have in our lives.
I’d like to finish (now I’m really finishing hahaha) the post with some references I read or watched during my research about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
This link describes chronologically Stein and Toklas's relationship, it is very nice and very instructive too.
This one is more about Gertrude and her writing achievements.
The book of James Lord, of course, is an important reference that triggers me to write this.
The movie midnight in Paris and another one: "Final portrait". A movie that portrays a moment in the life of James Lord with the painter Alberto Giacometti. The story sets in 1964, then have nothing to do with Gertrude and Alice, but it is a good approach for the author of the book.
And last but not least The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein.
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ReplyDeleteNice post my friend. It's a very important topic to be discussed it in our society. You did a great approach relating that with the James Lord's book and makes me interested for reading that history. Keep doing posts like this.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, I really appreciate your comment =P
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