Erik Dorn | Page 8

to use them. A conscience is an
immediate annoyance, whereas ideals are charming procrastinations.
They excuse the inanity of the present. Good Lord, what do you think
about all day without ideals to guide you?"
Dorn looked at her and felt again delight with himself. It was because
her interest had returned. Her eyes were flatteries. He desired to be
amusing, to cover the eager child face beside him with a caress of
words.
"I don't think," she answered. "Do people ever think? I always imagine
that people have ideas that they look at and that the ideas never move

around."
"Yes," he agreed, "moving ideas around is what you might call thinking.
And people don't do that. They think only of destinations and for
purposes of forgetting something--drugging themselves to
uncomfortable facts. I fancy, however, I'm wrong. It's only after telling
a number of lies that one gets an idea of what might be true. Thus it
occurs to me now that I can't conceive of an intelligent person thinking
in silence. Intelligence is a faculty which enables people to boast. And
it's difficult boasting in silence. And inasmuch as it's necessary to be
intelligent to think, why, that sort of settles it. Ergo, people never think.
Do you mind my chatter?"
"Please ..."
A perfect applause this time. Her sincerity appealed to him as an
exquisite mannerism. She said "Please" as if she were breathless.
"You're an entertaining listener," he smiled. "And very clever. Because
it's ordinarily rather difficult to flatter me. I'm immensely delighted
with your silence, whereas ..." Dorn stumbled. He felt his speech was
degenerating into a compliment.
"Because you tell me things I've known," the girl spoke.
"Yet I tell you nothing."
He stared for an instant at the people in the street. "Nothing" was a
word his thought tripped on. He was used to mumbling it to himself as
he walked alone in streets. And at his desk it often came to him and
repeated itself. Now his thought murmured, "Nothing, nothing," and a
sadness drew itself into his heart. He laughed with a sense of treating
himself to a theatricalism.
"We haven't talked about God," he announced.
"God is one of my beliefs."

She was an idiot for frowning.
"I dislike to think of man as the product of evolution. It throws an onus
on the whole of nature. Whereas with a God to blame the thing is
simple."
She nodded, which was doubly idiotic, inasmuch as there was nothing
to nod to. He went on:
"Life is too short for brevities--for details. I save time by thinking, if
you can call it thinking, en masse--in generalities. For instance, I think
of people frequently but always as a species. I wonder about them. My
wonder is concerned chiefly with the manner in which they adjust
themselves to the vision of their futility. Do they shriek aloud with
horror in lonely bedrooms? There's a question there. How do people
who are important to themselves reconcile themselves to their
unimportance to others? And how are they able to forget their
imbecility?"
They were walking idly as if dreamily intent upon the spectacle of the
avenue. The nervous unrest that came to Dorn in streets and fermented
words in his thought seemed to have deserted him. Assured of the
admiration of his companion, he felt a quiet as if his energies had been
turned off and he were coasting. He recognized several faces and
saluted them as if overcome with a desire to relate a jest.
"Notice the men and women together," he resumed easily, almost
unconscious of talking. "Observing married couples is a post-graduate
course in pessimism. There's a pair arm in arm. Corpses grown together.
There's no intimacy like that of cadavers. Yet at this and all other
moments they're unaware of death. They move by us without thought,
emotion, or words in them."
"They look very proud," she interrupted.
"It's the set expression of vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem
mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else--a sort
of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring after

them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the street
from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have
something more to say about them if you'll not look so serious. Your
emotions are obviously infantile. I can give you a picture of marriage:
two little husks bowing metronomically in a vacuum and anointing
each other with pompous adjectives. Draw them a little flattened in the
rear from sitting down too much and you'll have a masterpiece. It's
amusing to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick were once in love
with each other!" Dorn laughed good-naturedly. "Fancy them on a June
night ten