Erik Dorn

Erik Dorn, by Ben Hecht

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Title: Erik Dorn
Author: Ben Hecht

Release Date: August 19, 2007 [eBook #22358]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DORN***
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ERIK DORN
by

BEN HECHT

G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press
1921
Copyright, 1921 by Ben Hecht
Printed in the United States of America

To
MARIE

CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I
SLEEP 1
PART II
DREAM 75
PART III
WINGS 173
PART IV
ADVENTURE 277
PART V

SILENCE 369

ERIK DORN

PART I
SLEEP
CHAPTER I
An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda
chair he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown
small with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden
under his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a
smile on his face.
He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. His
feet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late this
weariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.
Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.
Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left him
sitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sight upon
familiar objects.
As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always
more motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his
twig-like hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers
crawling vaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.
The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old
man's sleep, and he found himself once more looking out of his eyes
and occupying his clothes. His attitude remained unchanged except for
a quickened movement of his fingers. Life returned to him as gently as
it had left. The stars were still high over his head and the night, cool
and murmuring, waited for him.

He lowered his eyes toward the street beyond the lawn. People were
straying by, seeming to drift under the dark trees. He could not see
them distinctly, but he stared at their flowing outlines and at moments
was rewarded by a glimpse of a face--a featureless little glint of white
in the shadows: dark shadows moving within a motionless darkness
with little dying candle-flame faces. "Men and women," he thought,
"men and women, mixed up in the night ... mixed up."
As he stared, thoughts as dim and fluid as the people in the street
moved in his head. But he remembered things best not in words. His
memories were little warmths that dropped into his heart. His cold thin
fingers continued their fluttering. "Mixed up, mixed up," said the night.
"Dark," said the shadows. And the years spoke their memories. "We
have been; we are no more." Memories that had lost the bloom of
words. The emaciated lips of the old man held a smile beneath the
white beard.
This was Isaac Dorn, still alive after eighty years.
The music from the house ended and a woman's voice called through
an open window.
"I'm afraid it's chilly outside, father."
He offered no answer. Then he heard Erik, his son, speak in an amused
voice.
"Leave the old man be. He's making love to the stars."
"I'll get him a blanket," said Erik's wife. "I can't bear to think of him
catching cold."
Isaac Dorn arose from his chair, shaking his head. He did not fancy
being covered with a blanket and feeling Anna's kindly hands tucking
its edges around his feet. They were too kindly, too solicitous. Their
little pats and caressings presumed too much. One grew sad under their
ministrations and murmured to oneself, "Poor child, poor child." Better
a half-hour under the cold, amused eyes of his son, Erik. There was

something between Erik and him, something like an unspoken
argument. To Anna he was a pathetic little old man to be nursed,
coddled, defended against chills and indigestions, "poor child, poor
child." But Erik looked at him with cold, amused eyes that offered no
quarter to age and asked for nothing. Good Erik, who asked for nothing,
whose eyes smiled because they were too polite to sneer. Erik knew
about the stars and the mixed-up things,