From Lynne Tillman and an essay on Paul and Jane Bowles:
I greedily listened to Bowles’s stories about Jane and himself. In 1943, during the war, when Jane was living in New England with her lover, Helvetia, he told us, he was in Mexico. He was still writing music and needed one of his instruments—a drum. But he couldn’t remember where it was. He wrote Jane and asked if it was in Staten Island, or with her in New England, or in their apartment in New York? There was some urgency to his request, and Jane Bowles sent a telegram in return: Drum not in basement, not on Staten Island, not in New York. Drum can’t be found. The day after, the doorbell rang at Jane’s residence. It was the FBI.
FBI: Your husband was in Morocco in the spring of 1942? Jane: Yes.
FBI: And in South America in the fall of that year?
Jane: Yes.
FBI: He’s in Mexico now?
Jane: Yes.
FBI: Why does he travel so much? Jane: I guess he’s restless.
By now Helvetia, at Jane’s request, was burning some of their papers in the fireplace, though it was the summer. But after questioning her a little longer, the FBI was mollified. It turned out that there was a colonel in the army named Drum, and her telegram had been intercepted—all telegrams were read during the war. The FBI thought they might have uncovered an underground group plotting to assassinate Colonel Drum.
In Bowles’s darkened living room, above the couch, was a single bookshelf. On it were all of Jane Bowles’s books, all the editions, in all the languages into which they’d been translated. The shelf was a shrine to her, and I felt her presence in his life and in the room through her books. I plucked up the courage to question him about her novel. Why had Jane Bowles named one of the serious ladies Miss Goering? Bowles looked amused and said: That was Jane’s little joke.
I remember saying, tentatively: I think I’ve got an idea for another novel. Bowles nonchalantly said, I haven’t had an idea in twenty years.
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