Erik Dorn | Page 7

pretended that she had understood something he had not said,
something that lay beneath his words. Dorn pointed at the women
moving by them.
"Poems in shoe craft, tragedies in ankles and melodramas in legs," he
announced. "Look at their clothes! Priestly caricatures of their sex.
You're still drawing?"
"Yes. But you don't like my drawing."

"I saw one of your pictures--an abominable thing--in some needlework
magazine. A woman with a spindly nose, picking flowers."
He glanced at her and caught an eager smile in her eyes. She was
someone to whom he could talk at random. This pleased him; or
perhaps it was the sense of flattery that pleased him. He wondered if
she was intelligent. They had met several times, usually by accident.
He had found himself able to talk at length to her and had come away
feeling an intimacy between them.
"Look at the windows," he continued. "Corsets, stockings, lingerie.
Shop windows remind me of neighbors' bathrooms before breakfast.
There's something odiously impersonal about them. See, all the way
down the street--silks, garments, ruffles, laces. A saturnalia of masks.
It's the only art we've developed in America--over-dressing. Clothes are
peculiarly American--a sort of underhanded female revenge against the
degenerate puritanism of the nation. I've seen them even at revival
meetings clothed in the seven tailored sins and denouncing the devil
with their bustles. Only they don't wear bustles any more. But what's an
anachronism between friends? Why don't you paint pictures of real
Americans?--men hunting for bargains in chastity and triumphantly
marrying a waistline. If that means anything."
He paused, and wondered vaguely what he was talking about. Vivid
eyes and dark lips, a face that belonged elsewhere. He was feeding its
poignancy words. And she admired him. Why? He was saying nothing.
There was a sexlessness about her that inspired vulgarity.
"You remind me of poetry," she answered without looking at him. "I
always can listen to you without thinking, but just understanding. I've
remembered nearly everything you've said to me. I don't know why.
But they always come back when I'm alone, and they always seem
unfinished."
Her words jarred. She was too naïve to coquette. Yet it was difficult to
believe this. But she was an unusual creature, modestly asleep. A
fugitive aloofness. Yes, what she said must be true. There was nothing
unreasonable about its being true. She made an impression upon him.

He undoubtedly did upon her. He would have preferred her applause,
however, somewhat less blatant. But she was a child--an uncanny child
who cooed frankly when interested.
"I can imagine the millennium of virtue in America," he went on. "A
crowd of painted women; faces green and lavender, moving like a
procession of bizarre automatons and chanting in Chinese, 'We are pure.
We are chaste and pure.' A parade of psychopathic barbarians dressed
in bells, metals, animal skins, astrologer hats and Scandinavian
ornaments. A combination of Burmese dancer and Babylonian priest. I
ask for nothing more."
He laughed. He had half consciously tried to give words to an image
the girl had stirred in him. She interrupted,
"That's me."
He looked at her face in a momentary surprise.
"I hate people, too," she said. "I would like to be like one of those
women."
"Or else a huntress riding on a black river in the moon. I was trying to
draw a picture of you. And perhaps of myself. You have a faculty of ...
of ... Funny, things I say are usually only reflections of the people I talk
to. You don't mind being a psychopathic barbarian?"
"No," she laughed quietly, "because I understand what you mean."
"I don't mean anything."
"I know. You talk because you have nothing to say. And I like to listen
to you because I understand."
This was somewhat less jarring, though still a bit crude. Her admiration
would be more pleasant were it more difficult to discover. He became
silent and aware of the street. There had been no street for several
minutes--merely vivid eyes and dark lips. Now there were

people--familiar unknowns to be found always in streets, their faces
withholding something, like unfinished sentences. He had lost interest
and felt piqued. His loss of interest in his talk was perhaps merely a
reflection of her own.
"I remember hearing you were a socialist. That's hard to believe."
There was no relation between them now. He would have to work it up
again.
"No, my parents are. I'm not."
"Russians?"
"Yes. Jews."
"I'm curious about your ideals."
"I haven't any."
"Not even art?"
"No."
"A wingless little eagle on a barren tree," he smiled. "I advise you to
complicate life with ideals. The more the better. They are more
serviceable than a conscience, in which I presume you're likewise
lacking, because you don't have