Diary of an Old Man

by Chaim Bermant

'Diary of an Old Man' is a real tour de force. It covers one winter month in the life of an old man living on a tiny pension. The prosaic events which are recounted - keeping warm, finding accommodation, cooking, reading papers in the local library - conceal an extraordinary feat of imagination on the part of the author.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[AdiTurbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartfelt look into the loneliness of old age, with social commentary and wonderful humor. The characters feel so real, and the writing is perfect - stark and poignant, no embellishments, super-realistic but full of emotion and compassion. No sentimentality, only humanity. Beautiful novel.

[Paul Chafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typical Bermant and totally absorbing.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As droll as the best of Waugh, Orwell or Henry Green. The absurd dialog is priceless.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his review (published in The Saturday Review in 1967) Nicholas Samstag called this book “a little masterpiece” which he qualified by saying:

Mr. Bermant has written here a superb fantasy disguised as a realistic novel. Into his dreary tapestry he has managed to work threads of gold, crimson, and lettuce green, expressing gallantry, gusto, gaiety, and a human goodness that I wish I believed in. For a little while, experiencing that suspension of disbelief which only the most artful of fantasists can create, I was convinced that all those heartening things really could accompany extreme old age. I expect you'll believe it briefly, too—unless you're too old.

I have to agree with him only now I’d have to call the book a forgotten masterpiece which is a shame because, according to the biography on his webpage Bermant was “a prolific novelist, who never seemed to receive anything but good reviews.” I knew that he was a Glaswegian writer—he graduated in economics from Glasgow University—and that was what piqued my interest—not too many Jewish writers in Scotland that I know of (in his obituary in The Independent Gerald Jacobs describes Bermant as “quintessentially Jewish”)—but I seemed to have picked the odd one out of the bunch because this short book is set in London and although Jews get a passing mention they’re certainly not its focus. Senescence is.

The book’s diarist is the eighty-four-year-old Cyril although, according to his landlady, she “wouldn’t have thought [he] were a day over eighty-three.” “Men,” according to the redoubtable Mrs M, “can go on for ever. Some men don’t begin living till they’re about seventy. That’s about twenty years after most women have stopped.” I’m not sure ‘living’ is a word Cyril would apply to his existence; ‘surviving’, perhaps, slouching towards oblivion. In a conversation with his upstairs neighbour he says…

    ‘In the good old days when the National Health began I used to come away with an arm-load of things on my prescription, but they charge you two bob a time now, two bob. You can get a tin of pilchards for that and have enough left over for a pan loaf. It’s gone up again you know, bread has, halfpenny a loaf. May not be much, but it mounts up. Think of the loaves of bread you can eat in a lifetime. If I’m in good fettle I can go through a loaf a week, that’s fifty-two loaves a year. Supposing you live to be a hundred, how many weeks is that?’
    ‘Five thousand two hundred.’
    ‘It’s a lot, isn’t it? I suppose you get used to it. It’s the first four thousand weeks that’s the worst, but after that you can go on living for ever. People live longer now than they used to, you know. I suppose it’s the cold weather. It keeps them fresh.’

The book opens with the death of his friend Harry. He begins the book’s first entry—dated February 12th—as follows:

They buried old Harry this morning. I don’t know why I call him old Harry, but old Harry it’s been for as long as I’ve known him. He was 74 tried to make out he was only 73, but he was 74 if a day, and a nice old soul, but he didn’t wear well. Some men don’t begin to straighten out till they get widowed as if the wife kept them from the sun; others fall apart. Harry was a faller-apart

Harry was not Cyril’s only friend but with his death all he’s left with is factious George, well, they’re left with each other since the only other thing George seems to care about is his rubber plant, sorry, his Ficus Elastica. Cyril’s wife died when he was still relatively young and since then he’s shown no interest in rushing back to the altar besides if had had any enthusiasm in that direction he’s probably left it too late now anyway. There was a fourth old gentleman, Dick, but apparently he’d passed away the year before, “almost to the day.” No Tom however.

Apparently Bermant spent some time in London in the early fifties which is when this book is set, 1951 if the dates in his diary are correct. It’s academic. What he captures is the prevalent mentality, the zeitgeist. If racism offends you then this might not be the book for you but I read it as simple ignorance and the norm for the time. Had the old men—and, remember, these are old men with outdated ideals—had they behaved differently it would’ve been unrealistic. When his landlady tells him that a new tenant is moving in above him the first question Cyril asks is…

    ‘Is he black?’ I said.
    ‘Is he?’
    ‘Black.’
    ‘Black? Well, now you come to mention it, he’s a bit tanned. Comes from a hot climate. You’d be black if your people had lived in India for the past I don’t know how long. Being black or white or yellow is just a matter of climate.’
    ‘And is he going to use my lavatory?’
    ‘Blacks are human same as anybody else you know. They’ve got bowels and bladders same as you and me. What did Shakespeare say? If we’re pricked don’t we bleed? And if we drink don’t we piss? It’s just’ What’s the matter, Cyril, don’t you want your tea?’

The young man turns out to be of Indian extraction but that doesn’t stop Cyril taking a “bottle of Jeyes” down to the communal toilet to clean the seat before he uses it. In time, however, he gets to know the young man and even finds himself seeking him out. As I said, not a bigot, merely ignorant.

We don’t learn a great deal about Cyril’s past. Mostly the book focuses on the humdrumness of his existence, the radio shows he listens to, the trips to the library, the frugal meals he makes, his concerns about the soaring price of electricity. He has no aspirations, secular or spiritual. That he wakes up day after day seems enough. As Samstag put it in his review, “Their problem, of course, is to make the time pass as easily as possible until they die—which, expressed perhaps too bluntly, is the problem of us all at any age.” Impossible—impossible for me at least—not to see something of Didi and Gogo here (or at least their prototypes Mercier and Camier).

This is as unsentimental as it gets. We’re used to seeing films and TV programmes from that era showing how hard it was to find accommodation in Britain: no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. You could add to that: no unmarried mothers and certainly no single mothers with babes in arms. And no old farts apparently. Towards the end of the book Cyril is compelled to find alternative accommodation and one interview is related in detail. After asking if he owns any “livestock” (by which she means “Pets. Dogs, cats, hamsters, white mice, budgerigars”) and confirms he won’t be bringing women up to his room she asks…

    ‘[A]re you continent?’
    ‘Am I what?’
    ‘Continent.’
    ‘No. English born and bred.’
    ‘Yes, that is a blessing, so very few people are. But I don’t think you quite grasped my question. Are you in full command of your bowels and bladder?’
    ‘My bowels and bladder?’
    ‘What I mean is, do they function when you want them to function, or are they of an independent disposition?’
    ‘I haven’t thought about it. I suppose they function when I want them to function.’
    ‘You suppose?’
    ‘I don’t leak if that’s what you mean.’

I have to say I loved this book. It’s terribly funny in an often deadpan way if it’s possible to describe writing as deadpan. I’m only fifty-seven and yet I found myself empathising strongly with Cyril. Not sure anyone much younger would appreciate the book as much as I did but that’s no reason not to read it because with the wonders of modern science being what they are most of us can look forward to reaching our eighties and the world we end up living in might not be bad like it was in fifties London but it’ll likely still be bad in its own unique way.