Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

Until one day they killed her and ate her and the years went by.

Marmosets

The first time we had a marmoset was just before New Year’s. We were without water and without a maid, people were lining up to buy meat, the hot weather had suddenly begun — when, dumfounded, I saw the present enter the house, already eating a banana, examining everything with great rapidity, and with a long tail. It looked like a monkey not yet grown; its potentialities were tremendous. It climbed up the drying clothes to the clothesline, where it swore like a sailor, and the banana-peelings fell where they would. I was exhausted already. Every time I forgot and absentmindedly went out on the back terrace, I gave a start: there was that happy man. My younger son knew, before I did, that I would get rid of this gorilla: “If I promise that sometime the monkey will get sick and die, will you let him stay? Or if you knew that sometime he’d fall out the window, somehow, and die down there?” My feelings would glance aside. The filthiness and blithe unconsciousness of the little monkey made me responsible for his fate, since he himself would not take any blame. A friend understood how bitterly I had resigned myself, what dark deeds were being nourished beneath my dreaminess, and rudely saved me: a delighted gang of little boys appeared from the hill and carried off the laughing man. The new year was devitalized but at least monkey-less.

A year later, at a time of happiness, suddenly there in Copacabana I saw the small crowd. I thought of my children, the joys they gave me, free, unconnected with the worries they also gave me, free, and I thought of a chain of joy: “Will the person receiving this pass it along to someone else,” one to another, like a spark along a train of powder. Then and there I bought the one who would be called Lisette.

She could almost fit in one hand. She was wearing a skirt, and earrings, necklace, and bracelet of glass beads. The air of an immigrant just disembarking in her native costume. Like an immigrant’s, too, her round eyes.

This one was a woman in miniature. She lived with us three days. She had such delicate bones. She was of such a sweetness. More than her eyes, her look was rounded. With every movement, the earrings shook; the skirt was always neat, the red necklace glinted. She slept a lot, but, as to eating, she was discreet and languid. Her rare caress was only a light bite that left no mark.

On the third day we were out on the back terrace admiring Lisette and the way she was ours. “A little too gentle,” I thought, missing the gorilla. And suddenly my heart said harshly: “But this isn’t sweetness. This is death.” The dryness of the message left me calm. I said to the children: “Lisette is dying.” Looking at her, I realized the stage of love we had already reached. I rolled her up in a napkin and went with the children to the nearest first-aid station, where the doctor couldn’t attend to her because he was performing an emergency operation on a dog. Another taxi—“Lisette thinks she’s out for a drive, mama”—another hospital. There they gave her oxygen.

And with the breath of life, a Lisette we hadn’t known was revealed. The eyes less round, more secretive, more laughing, and in the prognathous and ordinary face a certain ironic haughtiness. A little more oxygen and she wanted to speak so badly she couldn’t bear being a monkey; she was, and she would have had much to tell. More oxygen, and then an injection of salt solution; she reacted to the prick with an angry slap, her bracelet glittering. The male nurse smiled: “Lisette! Gently, my dear!”

The diagnosis: she wouldn’t live unless there was oxygen at hand, and even then it was unlikely. “Don’t buy monkeys in the street,” he scolded me; “sometimes they’re already sick.” No, one must buy dependable monkeys, and know where they came from, to ensure at least five years of love, and know what they had or hadn’t done, like getting married. I discussed it with the children a minute. Then I said to the nurse: “You seem to like Lisette very much. So if you let her stay a few days, near the oxygen, you can have her.” He was thinking. “Lisette is pretty!” I implored.

“She’s beautiful!” he agreed, thoughtfully. Then he sighed and said, “If I cure Lisette, she’s yours.” We went away with our empty napkin.

The next day they telephoned, and I informed the children that Lisette had died. The younger one asked me, “Do you think she died wearing her earrings?” I said yes. A week later the older one told me, “You look so much like Lisette!”

I replied, “I like you, too.”

Caixa Postal 279, Petrópolis

Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

January 22nd, 1963

Dear Mrs. Stevenson:

I have just received a letter from Marianne Moore in which she says that you would like some information about me for the “Twayne Publishers Author Series…” I can’t seem to remember what this is, although I probably should know — will you tell me something about it? She quotes you to the effect that I “despise professionalized criticism”. But I don’t think I do, and I wonder where that idea came from? (Unless “professionalized” means something very bad!) Anyway — if I can be of any help, I’ll be glad to. Sometimes letters take a long time; sometimes only four or five days—

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Bishop

Caixa Postal 279, Petrópolis

Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

March 18th, 1963

Dear Mrs. Elvin:

After reassuring you about the comparative speed of the mails here, of course I happenned to be away “in the interior” as they say — on the coast, actually — for a long stay over Carnival, where I can get no mail. I shall get off just a note to you today to tell you I did get your letter, and a second installment will be along this week.

Thank you for sending me the Twayne’s U S Author Series rules & regulations. I am enlightened, but not very much! I wonder who is the editor of the contemporary poets, what other poets are being written, up, etc? Do you think that Mrs. Bowman would be good enough to send me one or two of the books already published? Please don’t think I am interfering or am going to be difficult — but I am naturally curious.

I’d like to read your analyses of my poems very much. Are you intending to publish something in a magazine, perhaps, before the book appears?

In any case — I have another book ready—20–25 poems, some of which you may have seen in magazines — and I think you should have a copy of this as soon as possible. The title is QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL, from one of the poems, and if all goes well Farrar, Straus & Cudahy shd. be publishing it this year. I’ll write and have them send you a copy — unless I can find a complete MMS here this week. I think if you write to Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy they will surely send you a free copy of THE DIARY OF HELENA MORLEY ( Minha Vida de Menina ), the Brazilian book I translated a few years ago. (I’ll write my agent* about the poems and mention this, too) The English title was against my wishes — very poor, I think; the best review I saw was Pritchett’s in The New Statesman & Nation. My introduction might be of some interest to you, as a critic — the diary perhaps only as the mother of a daughter!

The biographical note in Who’s Who is correct — or was, the last time I saw it. I never lived in Worcester, however — I left before I was a year old and spent only a few months there when I was 6–7, with my father’s parents. The rest of my childhood I spent with my mother’s parents in Nova Scotia — mostly long summers, although I started school there — and with a devoted aunt, in or near Boston, until I went away to school at 16. I also went to summer camp on Cape Cod for 6 summers. I’ve never lived in Newfoundland — I took a walking trip there one summer when I was at Vassar. Since Vassar I’ve lived in New York, Paris, Key West, Mexico, etc. — mostly New York, and Key West until about 1948.—Then since late 1951 Brazil — with several trips back, of course, one of 8 months or so. I was very much amused by the clipping from the Worcester paper … (I’ve also read 2 or 3 times that I was born in Maine, or lived there — I can’t imagine where that came from. I’ve stayed various times on Deer Isle (or is it Island?) visited Robert Lowell in Castine, etc. — that’s all.) I have two published autobiographical stories, GWENDOLYN, & IN THE VILLAGE. This last is in the recent New Yorker anthology — and sticks to the facts — compresses the time a bit. Robert Lowell compressed it even more, recently, into a very short poem that was in Kenyon Review, called “The Scream”. I could give you a great deal more information if you want it! — However, for your purposes it may not be necessary. I am 3/4ths Canadian, and one 4th New Englander — I had ancestors on both sides in the Revolutionary war. My maternal grandparents were, some of them, Tories, who left upper N. Y. State and were given land grants in Nova Scotia by George III. One of my great grandfathers was an owner-captain of a ship — bark, I think — and was lost at sea off Sable Island in a famous storm when 40 or so ships went down. (I have also been to Sable Island, via the Canadian Lighthouse Service) That line of my family seems to have been fond of wandering like myself — two, perhaps three, of the sea-captain’s sons, my great uncles, were Baptist missionaries in India.