Memories

FULL TEXT OF MY INTERVIEWS WITH MICHAEL POSNER FOR HIS BOOK "LEONARD COHEN: UNTOLD STORIES"   --  with corrections added and highlighted in yellow.

 A

 

Did anyone ever mention that he would glitter in conversation? It was like something took him over that was very shiny. Those were the moments I learned to distrust the most. —Ann Diamond

ANN DIAMOND: He seemed oppressed by a weight of some sort. He’d entertain you, but you’d sense something burdening him. He’d talk a lot about his depression and how unhappy he felt—this “veil of tears,” this “disaster that we’re living in.”

ANN DIAMOND: I had started running into Leonard that summer. He’d stop me and look like he wanted to talk, but I didn’t have a very good feeling about him. The second or third time, I felt bad about it and told Peter Katountas, and he said, “I’ll give him your phone number.” PETER KATOUNTAS: That afternoon, I’m walking home and who’s coming along but Leonard? I said, “Apparently you were casing out this girl I know. She’d like to meet you. There’s one thing I should tell you. She’s a little crazy.” He says, “I like them crazy.” I said, “She screams a lot.” “Screams?” he says. “No one’s going to scream around my house. I’ve got neighbours.” 

 

( Just to be clear, in my mid-twenties I used to scream during sex. I didnt have a regular partner, but over the summer of 1975 I had a brief affair with Peter. It was over by 1977 when he introduced me to Leonard. Generally I'm quiet spoken and my screaming was limited to the bedroom. I never screamed with Leonard so it never became a problem. His next door neighbour Hazel did most of the screaming on St Dominique)

 

ANN DIAMOND: Then it happened—early November. He called at nine o’clock and said, “We have to stop meeting like this.” He invited me over for tea. I thought,“He probably won’t like me. We’ll probably argue about politics.” And we did [argue] for the first hour. But then something happened and our egos fell away and I started to really like him. He became self-deprecating, which was his way of winning people over. I felt he liked me, too. He pulled out his guitar and made me sing along to “Red River Valley.” He and Suzanne were estranged and avoiding each other. But he had a painting of a large ladybug crawling up a vase into a bouquet of ugly flowers. She’d given it to him and said, “You’re the bug.” His mother called while I was there. He listened, but moved the receiver away from his ear. It was like, “I’m dying and it won’t be much longer.” He said later, “My mother’s the most boring person I know.” He was quite devoted in his own way. It was a love-hate relationship. Diamond spent the night, the start of a torturous relationship. Their lovemaking, she recalls, “Was very much an exchange of energy. It was physical—three times or four times in the beginning and once or twice after. But it was mainly kind of tantric. The next morning, he took me to Beauty’s for breakfast and drove me to work at the Bank of Montreal.” Cohen called again the next night.

 

(The phone call from the Main Deli was a week or two later, not the next night. In the meantime, I received a call from Leonard on November 11, the Friday after the Monday when he called me the first time. That meeting is described in the blog 'Memories' below. Cohen seemed to have the ability to hypnotize people... I wonder how many women he used it on.)

 

ANN DIAMOND: I was trying to meditate. He said, “Hi, darling. Hope I’m not interrupting. Were you meditating?” I was happy to hear from him, but not so happy that he seemed to know what I’d been doing. So I decided to test him by lying. “Actually, I was reading a book.” Pause. “Are you sure you weren’t meditating?” “No, I was reading.” Another beat. “Okay. So I’m outside the Main Deli about to have a smoked meat. Would you like to join me?” I was a vegetarian, but said I’d be there in twenty minutes. Then I heard the receiver drop and heard him yelling, “No! Stop! Oh no!” Thieves had just hijacked his rental car outside the restaurant. 

 

 (There's more on this incident in my memoir The Man Next Door. I arrived at the scene of the car jacking to find Leonard talking to two Montreal cops who are taking down a report. He seemed so obsequious, speaking in English and addressing them as 'Officer' in what I felt was exaggerated deference as if he feared authority figures. I was embarrassed. The car by then was probably en route to some garage in Laval to be repainted and never found.)

 

Later, at his place, he said, “You sit. I’m going to do a deep meditation, because this has been a very weird night.”

 

He went into meditating and I could feel the energy he generated. He seemed to go into a deep trance. Then he told me how, earlier, he’d been at Night Magic, and the Indian bracelet he wore had suddenly broken and fallen off his wrist, and he felt liberated from an old predicament. Finally, he said, “What do you think I should do?” I said, “Why don’t you just give up?” I meant give up the occult stuff. He looked taken aback. I felt I was delivering a message that he didn’t particularly want to hear.

ANOTHER COHEN FRIEND TALKS ABOUT THEIR FIRST MEETING: The luncheon, she says, “served as the launchpad for a relationship based on total honesty. I had no agenda. He was just hysterically funny, very droll. There was never any discomfort. He was free to be himself. He didn’t have to be Leonard Cohen.” The same could not be said for his nascent romance with Ann Diamond. Back in Montreal, he went with her for dinner with Hazel Field and Peter Katountas at Buraka, a Moroccan restaurant with a casbah décor. Patrons sat around low tables on leather cushions, while mint tea was poured into glass cups from a height of two feet. PETER KATOUNTAS: Hazel and Ann seemed to be going on and on. At one point, Leonard suddenly blew up. “What’s the matter with you? For the last half hour, I’ve been listening to you bitch and bitch. You should praise the Lord that we’re not in the concentration camp right now.” 

 

(What Leonard actually said was more like: "At least they're not breaking down our doors and dragging us from our homes at night." I completely agreed with him. It was rude to argue over dinner but there seemed to be a relentless hostility underpinning this odd 'double date' with Hazel.)

 

ANN DIAMOND: Hazel challenged me constantly with feminist statements I didn’t agree with. She was ruining everyone’s dinner. But she was addressing me directly, so I felt I had to answer. I remember Leonard being very annoyed. After that, I sensed he was hiding the fact [of seeing me] from Hazel. It had to be kept secret because it upset her. Her sense of owning him increased with time. It became more like a job. BARRIE WEXLER: Hazel may have exercised her position as his confidante more than I was aware of. There’s no question she was proud—even protective—of their friendship, and helped sort out his affairs, especially when he was out of town. 

 

In December, Diamond gave Cohen a genuine scare: she thought she might be pregnant. PETER KATOUNTAS: He was begging her not to have the child, because it would destroy him.

ANN DIAMOND: I missed a period. I remember him joking, “At least there’ll be someone tall in the family.” I went to Toronto and [ate] a toxic spinach pie, threw up, and had diarrhoea all night. In my mind, that ended the “pregnancy,” which might well have been one. Before I left Montreal, I had told Leonard I was meeting a woman who believed prostitution should be state-funded. He said, “Tell her I’ve paid very dearly for my miserable orgasms. My frequent miserable orgasms.”

 

(I don't know where Peter heard "he was begging" me not to have the child. It was just a late period at that point, I talked it over with Leonard a day or two before I left for Toronto to interview feminist Margo St James, leader of the "Wages for Sex Work" movement out of San Francisco. I said I wasn't sure and would let him know. He looked concerned. Then I told him I had been using astrological birth control and he was not thrilled about that. I think this was probably what ended our sexual relationship, a month after it began. I had other suitors who I thought were much better prospects as life partners. I wrote Leonard later that I preferred to know him as a teacher or friend. In response, late in December, he sent me a post card of a woman in a 50s-style bathing suit, on a beach, dipping her toe into the sea. On the back he had typed one line: "Call me next time I am in town" and signed it "L" in ballpoint pen. He did not want me to have a souvenir that could be used as proof of knowing him. I understood his caution -- at least in principle ) 

******

With the album complete, Cohen flew to Greece in early August. 

 

ANN DIAMOND: (Before I left Montreal in May to go traveling, Leonard told me he would be on Hydra in June with his kids, and gave me a list with names of friends to look up if I went there: Bill Cunliffe, Anthony and Christina Kingsmill, George Liallios, Despina Politou. I arrived from Crete in late May and quickly met Bill, Anthony, and George. I connected well with Anthony, who offered me his house for a month. In July I moved into Albert Insinger's little house high on the hill overlooking the port of Hydra. It was a very hot summer, and Suzanne had arrived with the kids in mid June. Leonard kept phoning from Los Angeles saying he was still in production with his new album, Recent Songs. There were delays and he kept postponing, week after week, causing a lot of tension on the island.)   It was intense. Suzanne wanted to be off on Lesbos with Christian, and to leave the kids to Leonard. That had been the agreement. He’d been expected earlier. She was angry. She felt he was irresponsible. From the outside, Lorca seemed unloved and neglected. She wore these ragged underpants to the beach. Gossip swirled, with people taking sides. Mostly they were against Suzanne.

ANN DIAMOND: There was so much hero worship and blind adoration of Leonard, girls arriving, hoping to meet him. People told cultish stories of his ESP powers, his all-encompassing wisdom, funny remarks people remembered for years. All the women were in love with Leonard, bleeding all over each other. It was grim and absurd at the same time.

ANN DIAMOND: Leonard once told me, “I only sleep with the women who take care of my children.”

 

(He told me that early in 1981 when I was living in Kamini, writing a novel on a grant from the Canada Council. I had no need or desire to become another nanny. I had no experience taking care of children and motherhood was never a priority. Neither was marriage.)

 

One evening, Cohen invited Diamond for dinner. ANN DIAMOND: We bought groceries and went back to his place. Gina made dinner. Everything was going very well. His German tour manager had arrived and wanted to have a drink to plan the fall tour. Cohen went to the port to see him, and the children went to bed. Then a German woman named Anna Drews turned up. ANN DIAMOND: She was psychic, extremely well educated, but funny. Leonard came back about eleven and was not happy to see her. He said, “Hello,” and then something like “This isn’t really appropriate. I think you should leave.” She said, “I’ve come with information I need to give you.” GINA ALLAIN: She’d come from India, claiming that her guru had said Leonard was to be the one to succeed him when he died. 

 

ANN DIAMOND: He said, “I’m not interested in your information. I’m only interested in ordinary human contact.” And she left. I went into the next room. He lit a mosquito coil for me and got into bed with me, a single bed—nothing happened. He fell asleep right away. I lay awake the whole night wondering, “What’s going on here?” 

 

Diamond claims Drews told her she had come to Hydra to arrange a marriage between Diamond and Cohen. 

 

(Incorrect. Anna aka "Annu" came to Hydra after receiving a burst of psychic messages from her Indian guru, Baba ji - who appears on the cover of Sergeant Pepper so was somewhat well known although i had never heard of him until then. He was a Shiva avatar while Annu demonstrated some amazing powers of her own. Lightbulbs would blow out when she entered a room. She could read past lives and and discuss European spiritual traditions and eastern mysticism like a serious scholar. She had been told to look for Leonard on Hydra on a certain date, and sure enough, she arrived the same day he did. She heard there was to be a "Big Wedding" and at first thought she would be the Bride, as she had toured with Leonard in 1974 as a pianist and singer during his "Jew and the Gypsies" European tour. However, that cold reception now dissuaded her, and also after meeting me she decided I was the intended one. She went about arranging it. She was so impressive, I went along for the ride.

On the morning after my sleepless night in the library, which Leonard mostly spent upstairs with Gina and the kids, I found him making coffee in the kitchen. It was around 7 am and with that glittering grin he started singing  "Chapel of Love" to me - with 'speedboat' substituting for 'chapel' because we were invited for a picnic on a speedboat with his German tour manager. 'Going to the speedboat and we're -- Gonna get married."  Just then 6 year old Adam came clattering downstairs shouting "Hey dad! Don't forget the fucks! Remember to bring the fucks on the speedboat!" Which kind of spoiled the moment. Also there was a real irony in Leonard wooing me with a Phil Spector tune since he hated Spector,

 

ANN DIAMOND: The wedding was to be on the eighth day the eighth month. We got dressed up and went to his house at eight o’clock. He’d just received the tape of his new album. Other people were there and more started arriving. The first song on the album, of course, was “The Guests.” Cohen had found the song’s melody earlier—he called it “the nicest song that ever happened to me”—but only completed the lyrics after meeting Khadija Marcia Radin, a Sheikha in the Mevlevi Order of America (the Whirling Dervishes), founded by the Persian poet Rumi. Cohen said he considered Rumi “in the same league as King David.” There was, of course, no marriage to Diamond. 

 

ANN DIAMOND: Magically, everything was happening as Anna said it would, though we never got around to the marriage. After that, there was a big falling out. 

 

(The very moment Annu and I arrived at his street door at 8 pm on the 8th of the 8th, Leonard put Recent Songs on the record player. He was inside in the library so I don't think he heard us at the front door. The music surrounded us as we climbed the steps: 'One by one the guests arrive." So it seemed very synchronistic and magical, yes. Annu led me into the library where we found Leonard sitting on the love seat with 15 year old Laurie, the American nanny replaced by Gina after Suzanne left the island. Down in the port we had passed Gina and the kids having souvlaki and Gina said "Something is going on up there" meaning at the house. Before the song finished, Anthony Kingsmill stuck his head in, climbed through the window and took a seat. Then came Mihaela Chrispin, all dolled up in her black and white sundress with its plunging neckline. Song after song, and when it was over Leonard asked us all to leave, Annu motioned me to stay seated while Laurie disappeared upstairs. I was mortified -- I wanted out of there. By this time, Gina had come in with Adam and Lorca, and they were all up in bed. Leonard told Annu that our energy was keeping his kids awake. So at last we left and went down to the Pirate Bar and talked til 2 a.m.  The next day I was a mess. Nobody had asked me if I wanted to marry Leonard -- I had gone along with the plan because Annu was so brilliant and persuasive Now I felt like collateral damage in a spiritual war between Shiva and Jehovah. Annu tried to console me, saying Leonard was not my teacher. I think she was shocked by the presence of the 15 year old on my 'wedding night'.

 

The next afternoon I went down to see Leonard. He was alone in the kitchen and welcomed me in. He made me a cheese and tomato sandwich with two slices of Melba toast -- so things were back to normal. He told me I should not have let Annu stay at my house. Then he showed me a drawing of a horse and rider that Laurie had made, and pointed out that the rider was standing beside the horse, not having mounted her ... yet. Then he said he was going to the beach for a sunset swim. At the crossroads, I turned up the hill to go home. He nearly shouted, "Have it your own way then!" as  he headed for the beach. I was hurt since he hadn't invited me along and I assumed he had plans. Arriving home in a sour mood, I told Annu I needed to be alone to think. She understood and moved to a hotel the next day. I also gave her some money as I had just received a small writing grant, and she had spent all her savings coming to Hydra.

 

After that, I managed to stub and fracture my little toes on both feet, so I couldn't go anywhere for several days. The Pownalls __Bill and Francesca -- visited, probably keeping tabs on me for Leonard. I really had no idea what had just happened and just wanted some time to figure things out.)

 

I saw Leonard in the bar one night—I’d almost been bitten by a snake—and told him how the snake had left two drops of venom on my hand. And he said, “I have two drops of venom in my heart.” 

 
DON LOWE: Ann was stalking him—chased him for years, infatuated. I remember coming out of Bill’s Bar one night after drinking with Leonard and Anthony, and out of the shadows [she] came. That’s how she’d do it. No matter where he went. 

 

(That's total nonsense cooked up by Don's fertile imagination, which feeds off cliches. He never saw me with Leonard, and Leonard avoided him because he was the island's worst blowhard and bore. Don doesnt know me from a hole in the ground and made up the "stalker" story to gain listeners. It worked, apparently. 

 

****

 

 I felt I had unfinished business with Leonard. By October 1979 I was enrolled in a Masters program in Creative Writing in Montreal while taking care of my invalid mother. On John Lennon's birthday I had some dreams telling me to go look for Leonard who had just begun the "Field Commander Cohen Tour" in Europe.)

 

In early December, Diamond flew to England to meet him. It is, she maintains, the sole occasion for which she might fairly be accused of stalking him. She tracked him down in a Manchester hotel. 

 

(It was not "stalking" by any stretch, especially not in the legal sense of criminal harrassment. I followed my intuition in taking off for London in those days before internet. I happened across the storefront for his London publisher Alfred Deutsch, and the secretary told me Leonard and the band had headed north after the London concert. It took two days to track the tour down to a hotel in Manchester, and meet up with him. I had a message for him, from Baba Ji -- which I delivered. That seemed to pave the way for a reunion.)

 

ANN DIAMOND: I sat in the lobby and a few minutes later he was there. “What are you doing here,” he asked. “Do you want to come on the tour?” He paid for my room for the night and said I could share with Mitch Watkins. Twin beds—nothing happened. Diamond then accompanied the band to Glasgow, Preston, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Brighton.

 
(Leonard instantly welcomed me and invited me along, paid all my expenses. He was very generous. He didnt have to do that and I didnt expect it. We had a mostly wonderful time. The band was great, Jennifer and Sharon were lovely, and I enjoyed being backstage and attending all the shows. The trip of a lifetime, really, with a few odd twists -- which I write about in The Man Next Door.

 
ANN DIAMOND: In Brighton, Marty Machat joined the tour. I was at breakfast with Leonard, and Marty said, “You’ve made one hundred thousand dollars after expenses.” Not a lot of money. Leonard’s jaw nearly hit the table. My soft-boiled egg splattered all over. Leonard said, “Are you kidding?” Marty said, “No, that’s what it is. I’ve seen the books.”

STEVE MACHAT: All I know is my dad and Leonard played games, no different than anyone else. You protect your ass. If you have a family, you’re going to do what any animal would do—protect your future and steal and pretend you’re protecting.

ANN DIAMOND: We drove into London, stopped at the airport, the Americans got off, and then it was just me, Leonard, and twin girls from Poland, fifteen or sixteen, according to Leonard. We get to the hotel—luxurious—and Leonard says, “I’m just going to show the girls upstairs. Wait there.” Diamond left, but called him a few days later.

ANN DIAMOND: It was almost Christmas Eve. He says, “Oh, Annie, how have you been? Nice of you to keep in touch. Do you want to come over?” I go over and there are hypodermic needles with orange liquid in them in the ashtray. He looked pretty good, very rested. The suite was full of Christmas presents for his children. He was flying to France soon. He tried to play “Silent Night” for me on the guitar. He tried over and over and he couldn’t get it. He kept making mistakes.

 

(Back in Montreal, a few weeks later he phoned me up and asked me to pick up some smoked meat sandwiches for dinner that evening at Morton Rosengarten's. When I walked in the door, I saw him in profile, wearing the fedora, and felt an enormous sense of distance that lingered all evening.

 

I was staying with my mother who had fallen and broken her hip.  

 

Diamond says Cohen invited her to join the next leg of the tour as well.

 

(In late February Leonard phoned me at my flat and my roommate Charlotte answered. He was in Texas with his band Passenger and they were asking me to come to Australia. Charlotte told him I was at a funeral and would phone him back.  

ANN DIAMOND: I said my mother had just died. That was the denouement. I felt like a mascot (on tour, for unknown reasons he seemed to see me as a good luck charm).

 

*****

 

My mother died on February 23 1980. I had to dismantle her apartment, and handle her affairs. By summer I was ready to go traveling again. I had missed the summer in Greece and dreamed of returning to Hydra, the scene of so many strange events only a year earlier.

I still didnt know what to make of my relationship with Leonard.

 

It felt real because he was persuasive. He’d say, “Some relationships last a lifetime and ours is one of those.” Or, “We’re getting married.” Why would he lie? So cognitive dissonance describes this situation. [With Leonard], you’d have no idea what came after you left. One day, he’d say we would always be together, and the next, he’d be with [another] woman.

 

 

GINA ALLAIN: Ann and Birgit [Reinke] came and sat at Leonard’s house and would not leave. They wanted to move in. Leonard asked them to leave in the end. I also know that Leonard never cleanly ended relationships, always left an opening that kept lots of women interested.

 

This is not accurate at all. Gina never witnessed me and Birgit at Leonard's house, let alone our refusing to leave. She's confusing details she heard from her sister, Mandy, about a traumatic evening

September 21, 1980. I had landed on Hydra that morning and late in the day I knocked on Leonard's door but he had left on the early hydrofoil with Gina and the kids, for New York.

I found Birgit there, closing up the house. She let me in and reluctantly allowed me to stay. Later that night, Gina's sister Mandy arrived with her baby having fled Kamini where she lived with Don Lowe, who was often violent. In fact, Don used to say men had every right to beat their wives -- a tradition in Greece. Mandy phoned Leonard in New York - he had just arrived and picked up the call. He agreed she could stay for one night. Mandy left in the morning and I left two days for Patmos and Samos where I spent a wonderful month with some Germans who had a sailing school. Then I flew to Cairo and traveled around Egypt, taking a taxi and bus to Jerusalem in late November 1980. 

 

Diamond met the band’s plane in Israel. 

ANN DIAMOND: It was a bit rocky, because I was trying to reconnect (after several months). But I was invited to hang out with the band, go to the concerts. Leonard was talking about the Stern gang, his admiration of Menachem Begin and the blowing up of the King David Hotel [British military headquarters in 1946 Palestine].

AT THE CONCERT AND AFTERWARDS I SPENT TWO DAYS IN TEL AVIV, MOSTLY HANGING WITH THE BAND AND WITNESSING JOURNALISTS AND OTHER VISITORS COMING AND GOING.  THE SECOND TOUR IN A YEAR WAS NOW OVER AND LEONARD WAS IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH HIS MUSICIANS. THIS 1980 TOUR HAD NOT BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL AND THE MOOD WAS QUITE NEGATIVE.

 

BEFORE LEAVING ISRAEL FOR GREECE ON NOVEMBER 26, I TOLD LEONARD I WAS GOING TO SPEND THE WINTER ON HYDRA.  I had a $9000 Canada Council grant to write a novel and I had decided to do it by isolating myself in a room, in the mistaken belief that a winter on Hydra would be idyllic -- )

HE WISHED ME WELL AND BOARDED A PLANE THE NEXT DAY. I FLEW TO GREECE. TWO DAYS LATER LEONARD SHOWED UP ON HYDRA. I WAS SURPRISED AND DELIGHTED. WE WENT OUT FOR DINNER THAT NIGHT.

 

 I SAW HIM SEVERAL TIMES THAT WEEK, COOKED HIM SUPPER, HELPED HIM REPAIR CRACKS IN THE UPSTAIRS FLOOR --  HIS KIDS WERE ABOUT TO ARRIVE FOR THE HOLIDAYS AND HE WANTED TO BLOCK COLD DRAFTS COMING UP INTO THEIR BEDROOOM.  I ASKED IF I COULD SPEND THAT NIGHT WITH HIM BUT HE BRUSHED ME OFF BY SAYING HE WAS 'WAITING FOR A VERY IMPORTANT PHONE CALL AND NOBODY ELSE CAN BE HERE WHEN IT COMES.'  

 

I SAID, 'WHO ARE YOU? JAMES BOND?' I THOUGHT IT WAS A LAME WAY TO GET RID OF ME.

 

ONE NIGHT IN MY RENTED ROOM IN KAMINI, I HAD A SUDDEN PANIC ATTACK AND BEGAN SHIVERING UNCONTROLLABLY UNDER MY DAMP BLANKETS. AS IT WASNT YET MIDNIGHT AND HE WAS A NIGHT OWL, I DECIDED TO GO OVER TO LEONARD'S -- THINKING HE WOULD MAKE US  AN OVOMALTINE, THE HOT BEVERAGE HE DRANK AT BEDTIME. INSTEAD I FOUND THE HOUSE IN DARKNESS. I CALLED OUT HIS NAME. HE SHOUTED FROM THE UPSTAIRS WINDOW: 'LEAVE ME ALONE! I NEED MY SLEEP!' THIS WAS VERY UNLIKE HIM. I RAN HOME THINKING I WOULD NOT EVER VISIT HIM AGAIN UNINVITED.

THAT WAS THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 5. 

 

ON DECEMBER 8, 1980 JOHN LENNON WAS ASSASSINATED.

Cohen decompressed on Hydra for a week, then flew to France to see his children, renting a flat at the Queen Anne of Austria, a seventeenth-century mansion. Then he went to London, staying at the Montcalm Hotel in Marylebone. He saw Felicity Buirski, a British actress with whom he’d been episodically involved for two years, and proposed marriage, saying, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever considered marrying.”

 

(THIS IS WHERE POSNER DEPARTS RADICALLY FROM THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE IN BOTH BIOGRAPHIES. BOTH SYLVIE SIMMONS AND IRA NADEL PUT LEONARD IN NORTH AMERICA RIGHT AFTER THE TEL AVIV CONCERT. THIS IS INCORRECT -- HE SPENT MOST OF THE NEXT TEN MONTHS ON HYDRA, AT TIMES WITH HIS CHILDREN, SOMETIMES ALONE.)

 

I DIDNT SEE LEONARD AGAIN UNTIL THE AFTERNOON OF DECEMBER 14 WHEN I PASSED THROUGH THE PORT JUST AS HE WAS GETTING OFF THE  FLYING DOLPHIN WITH HIS KIDS AND THEIR FRENCH NANNY, CORINNE KAISER. SINCE OUR LAST MEETING HE HAD LOST  A LOT OF WEIGHT, GROWN A BEARD, AND LOOKED EXHAUSTED. I FIGURED HE MUST HAVE CAUGHT A BAD FLU, AND HAD BEEN INTO ATHENS TO COLLECT THE CHILDREN. UNCERTAIN OF WHERE WE STOOD, I CONTINUED ON MY WALK, BUT HE CAME TO TALK TO ME. HE ASKED WHAT I HAD BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST 9 DAYS AND SEEMED RELIEVED WHEN I SAID I HAD BEEN IN MY ROOM THE WHOLE TIME WRITING.

'SO YOU'VE BEEN ON THE INSIDE, HAVE YOU?' HE WALKED ME OVER TO A SHOP WINDOW WHICH WAS EMPTY EXCEPT FOR SOME OLD GREEK MILITARY MEDALS.

 

I SAID THE FIRST THING THAT POPPED INTO MY HEAD: 'LEONARD, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU DESERVE A MEDAL.' HE SEEMED STARTLED BY THAT, AND QUICKLY WENT BACK TO OVERSEE THE LOADING OF A DONKEY WITH HIS FAMILY'S LUGGAGE. 

A FEW DAYS LATER HE WALKED INTO THE CAFE WHERE I WAS SITTING WRITING IN MY JOURNAL

 

Back on Hydra, that December, Cohen met Diamond in a café and handed her a copy of Newsweek with Reagan on its cover. 

 

(Somehow, Posner forgets the headline in Newsweek: REAGAN'S IN, LENNON'S OUT. Reagan was President and John Lennon had been shot in New York on December 8 as Ronald Reagan addressed a crowd at the Waldorf Astoria to celebrate his victory.

 

 ANN DIAMOND: He began saying Reagan was his hero and would change everything. I thought he was joking. As he waxed more eloquent on law and order and the need for a more hawkish foreign policy to protect Israel, I started to realize he meant it. It came as a complete shock. I’d always assumed he shared the liberal left-wing politics of my generation. Apparently, he only allowed his audience to think that. He was a rigid neocon before neocons were even a thing. He refused to listen to opinions that differed significantly from his own. He would shut you down or talk over you.

The Newsweek article included a poem Reagan had written in high school. ANN DIAMOND: He read each iambic verse aloud. By now tears [were] streaming down my face. “He’s a fascist. I didn’t know that!” [Then] he explained that the Kabbalah states the messiah will come either in an age of total holiness or total corruption. Then he switched to the cowboy theme, as if to prove his appreciation for Reagan was all about songs and poetry, two kindred souls in love with the American ideal. I could not imagine being in love with a man who could have voted for Reagan.

For Diamond, the winter of 1980–81 on Hydra proved traumatic. ANN DIAMOND: It was cold and wet and I wasn’t getting on with Leonard. In January, he again began telling me we were getting married, [but] he was having serial affairs with his twenty-three-year-old French nanny, Corinne; Michele, a Belgian woman who had an eighteen-month-old child; and, later, Dominique [Issermann]. His revolving door was always open. Basically, he was practising polygamy while using the rhetoric of spiritual union. That was the fraud. I don’t know why people don’t see this for what it was. The relentless charm, hospitality, is partly genuine, partly an act refined through practice. A public relations triumph covering a disaster in his inner life. People would say he could not be with the same person because he couldn’t be faithful. But I would say he could not be with the same woman because he could not be the same person from day to day.

Meanwhile, Ann Diamond resolved to again confront their limbo relationship. One night, she climbed the hill to his home and waited. Cohen soon appeared—with Virginia Yelletisch, Albert’s estranged wife. 

 

(Not exactly. I had been visiting Leonard and once again he started telling me we were getting married -- this was totally unnecessary and I found his sincere tone strange and puzzling. I thought maybe he just does this to control and neutralize women. On my way back to Kamini I decided to put it to the test, rather than live in a fantasy. That night I went for a walk and sure enough, there was Leonard sitting in Bill's Bar staring into the eyes of a dark-eyed beauty. I walked to his house -- he never locked the front door. I went upstairs and got into his bed. After 15 minutes I hear them approaching in the dark. Leonard is giggling "Oh, Virginia -- I gotta piss!" I hear him urinating on a wall. Then they reach his front door and stagger up the stairs. "Oh Virginia, thank you for your kind attention." Then they're climbing the stairs. The lights in the bedroom come on, then go off again. He slams the door. "There's someone in there." Bang bang bang on the stairs. Now they're in the kitchen. I hear her arguing in a tiny voice. "Sorry Virginia, you'd better go home." I hear her leaving, the garden door click, then silence. After a few minutes I get out of bed and go downstairs. He's sitting in the kitchen. I say, "Leonard I just made a vow that I needed to tell you: I am going to devote my life to assisting all beings in finding enlightenment." He says, "Annie, thats great." Before I leave, he reads me a Sufi story from his library.)

Among the many women in Cohen’s life, very few emerged from their relationship with negative sentiments of him, even those who were hurt emotionally. Diamond is among the exceptions. In time, her disappointment led to anger and bitterness—and a bizarre conspiracy theory that depicted Cohen as some sort of CIA asset. Indeed, she subsequently decided that his attachment to her actually derived from a shared trauma; both, she claimed, had been subjects in MKUltra—codename for CIA-funded research involving electroconvulsive therapy and drugs designed to test mind control and torture techniques. MKUltra was real enough: Without the informed consent of patients, such tests were conducted at Montreal’s Allan Institute by Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron in the late 1950s and early ’60s. During his student days at McGill, Cohen did undergo sensory deprivation, in a test conducted by psychologist Donald Hebb. At one point, he asked Diamond if she’d ever been in a flotation tank on LSD.

ANN DIAMOND: I said, “Of course not.” He said, “Well, I have and I loved it. I went travelling through the whole universe. You should try it sometime, Annie.” But Cohen’s participation in MKUltra remains conjecture, and its records were destroyed by the CIA in the 1970s.

DAWN BRAMADAT: I know from a lot of people who were victims of the CIA or other programs—what Ann is proposing is not as bizarre as you might think.

Around Cohen, a coterie of supporters had formed, friends protective of his privacy and alert to potential threats. Among these were Charlie Gurd, Bill Fury, Hazel Field, Elaine Malus, and her husband, Dr. Michael Malus; Lee Taylor, a British woman who was first his nanny and, after Gary Young, administrator of his Montreal affairs; and Birgit Reinke, who had met Cohen in 1971 on Hydra. Inside the tent, one flourished—outside, not so much.

VIOLET ROSENGARTEN: It was a difficult little neighbourhood to be a part of. A lot of gossip and complaining about each other. I remember when Michel Garneau left—he said he was going to start “a grown-up life.”

ANN DIAMOND: Birgit was discreet, elegant, well-dressed, sewed her own clothes. She had a nun-like demeanour, a fantastic beauty, a Virgin Mary.

That fall, Ann Diamond rented a house on St.-Dominique, kitty-corner to Cohen’s house. The properties actually shared a backyard fence. His entourage believed she had moved there deliberately. She insisted that finding the apartment—it rented for $75 a month—had been serendipity; she had rented it sight unseen, from California, without knowing its address.

 
(Leonard had told the Roshi he would pay for my training as a Zen nun. Roshi was keen to send me to Japan, but then I got a phone call out of the blue from a friend in Montreal who offered me the lease to his apartment on St Dominique -- he didnt know it was right next to Leonard. I instantly agreed. As soon as I saw it, I realized no one would ever believe such a bizarre concidence was even possible.  It was ironic, because I had spent a painful month in New Mexico with the Roshi, deciding my relationship with Leonard was really over for good and I was moving into the next phase of my life. Much as I benefited from Zen practice, I really didnt want to become a nun. I wanted to write. And then comes this phone call, and an offer I couldnt refuse. )

 
PETER KATOUNTAS: Ann became a thorn in his side.

SANDRA ANDERSON: She was pursuing him, always. Somebody just happened to call and say I have a cheap apartment for you next door to Leonard? I don’t think so. She used to haunt his place.

(Since I was living next door, there was no need to "pursue him" or "haunt his place". In fact, I made an effort to keep my distance. I never mentioned him to anyone in the neighborhood, never inquired about his whereabouts, was very busy with friends, going out in the evenings, and working from home during the day. Apart from the gangstalking nextwork next door, it was a great neigborhood off the Main, and there were musicians on all four sides -- a Senegalese drummer, a Pogues cover band, Michel Pagliaro, and Leonard next door. Plus a beautiful garden. All for $75 a month).

ANN DIAMOND: People say I stalked him. I went to Baldy, to Hydra, to New Mexico. But in each case, he told me to go—and went into detail about why I should go, especially to see the Roshi. In peaceful interludes, I was treated like a friend. When tensions rose, I seemed to become a pariah.

Cohen himself seemed ambivalent about Diamond, at times welcoming, at others, aloof. One night, he took her to see Frank and Marion Scott, in Westmount.

ANN DIAMOND: I felt like a prop for a ceremonial visit. The Scotts were in their eighties. Marian and I sat in the kitchen while the men talked in Frank’s study. Marian made tea and took me on a tour of her paintings, which she said were done on LSD in the 1960s. On the way home, Leonard drove so slowly it was almost comical. He was gripping the steering wheel and kept repeating the same sentence over and over again: “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.” He must have said it five or ten times. On other occasions, they’d meet at the Portuguese diner near his house.

ANN DIAMOND: It was cordial, though there were moments when he’d be upset. I was angry because I didn’t know why he’d misled me, but I wasn’t verbalizing it. He would not talk about anything personal. So we’d discuss spiritual things or he’d tell jokes or just be silent. It was not a sexual relationship [at that point]. I had told him I didn’t use birth control—I used astrological birth control. “Well,” he said, “we can’t have that.” So from his friends, there was attitude. But from him, I think you could call it gaslighting—feeding a false idea interfering with my sense of reality. At some point, Diamond wrote Cohen a series of unanswered letters—“not exactly pleading, poetic, maybe analytic.” His nanny, Lee Taylor, returned some of them “with a really disdainful look.”

ANN DIAMOND: I also sent him a one-line note that read, “I’m a woman, not a crutch,” which he called hurtful. But after you’ve watched a string of women go crazy, it might be time for tough love. He saw himself as the victim of disasters he left for others to clean up. This behaviour was hardwired into him. Only a masochist would go on loving under those conditions.

Back in Los Angeles, Cohen took Ann Diamond to see the movie Frances, starring Jessica Lange, about the actress Frances Farmer who, in the 1940s, had been confined to a mental institution and, allegedly, lobotomized and raped.

ANN DIAMOND: When he drove me back to the Zen Center, I started to cry. I said, “I don’t know why you took me to see that. It’s not about me. I’ve never been psychotic.” He just looked at me. Earlier, he gave me this book, Kassandra and the Wolf, by Margarita Karapanou, a Greek writer, about a little girl being sexually abused. I would say on both occasions, he was trying, indirectly, to trigger [my] memories, of being a child in MKUltra experiments at the Allan [Institute]. Leonard always knew, as high-functioning as I was, there was a volcano underneath.

GRACE MORROW: Roshi—I honestly did not know what to make of him. Others found him brilliant but, one-on-one, I wasn’t so taken. When he realized Leonard was interested in me, he encouraged me to move into Leonard’s cottage. Roshi wanted to keep Leonard there as long as possible—that was part of it. Ann was there, and she wanted to be with him. But Leonard was always very clear—he never wanted to be married. He told her they’d be married? That does not sound like Leonard. 

 

BARRIE WEXLER: He proposed marriage to all the girls—it was his go-to pickup line. 

 

GINA ALLAIN: There must be heaps of women he said that to—or something similar, to make them think that they were the One. 

 

SANDRA ANDERSON: He did that to everybody, including me, even though we had no physical relationship.

ANN DIAMOND: Either you could say he put on a wonderful act or there were many different people in there doing really different things. People would say he could not be with the same person because he couldn’t be faithful. But I would say he could not be with the same woman because he could not be the same person from day to day.

KELLEY LYNCH: He called me from Montreal. He was having a meltdown. I’m not sure what was going on, something with psychiatric medication. He literally told me he was homicidal and had to lock himself in his house. He said, “Don’t tell Marty. I’m going to Paris to see Dominique.” He was really unhinged. Valenzuela left Montreal on March 17, alone, leaving a note that read, “Leonard, thank you for letting me bind myself to you.” Other women, too, remained convinced he was bound to them. One day that spring, Albert Insinger dropped by. 

 

ALBERT INSINGER: He looked very depressed. I asked him what the matter was and he said, “I just received a letter from Ann Diamond—ten pages. She thinks we are married.”

 

(That was probably in 1986 because I was still living in the upstairs part of my building next door, at 4312 St. Dominique. I had a sudden urge to write and demand a serious talk. The pressure of neighbourhood gossip was becoming too much --I felt there was too much unspoken from the past that needed to get cleared. So I wrote the letter -- 10 pages - but probably no more than 100 words total, because as I wrote my handwriting started to become huge ... until the last page had only one or two giant words on it. I guess I put it in his mailslot. I hadnt spoken to him in months and had no idea what was happening next door, which apparently was Valenzuela -- who had just left when Albert came over?  I never knew about her until Posner's book came out.

So Leonard reads my letter and comes next door, and we sit in the garden on my back steps. He says "I don't love you." I say, "I know." We sit there another minute. He says "Is that all?" I say, "I think so." I considered that final.)