Part 15 (1/2)
”Oh, Erik!” She embraced his arm with both her hands. Under the table she pressed her thigh trembling against him.
The music from the platform had changed. Cornets, banjos, saxophones, again. The boom and jerk of voices arose as if in greeting. Foreheads of diners glistening with a fine sweat. Sweat on the backs of women's necks, on their chins, under their raised arms; gleaming on the cool intervals of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, white and bulbous b.r.e.a.s.t.s peeping out of a secret world.
”If I may, Anna....”
Eddie was taking her away. The plot was working. Dorn's heart warmed toward the man. A rescuer, a savior. He nodded his head at his wife. He must make it look as if he were sorry it wasn't he going to dance with her; smile with proper wistfulness; shake his head sadly.
Anna, suddenly beside herself, laughed, and, leaning over touched his hair quickly with her lips. d.a.m.ned idiot, he'd overdone it! No. Perhaps she was guilty. Apologizing for impulses away from him toward Meredith?
He sat hoping feverishly, caressing a diagnosis as if he could establish it by repeating it over and over.
Tesla again, this time on art. Art of the proletaire. d.a.m.n the proletaire and Tesla both! He had a plot working out. Would their hands touch, linger, sigh against each other? Of course. They were human--at least their hands were. And then, dances every night. What a miserable ba.n.a.l plot! Another day-dream. Forget. Beyond Tesla's soft voice ... an opening and shutting of mouths swollen in delicious discomforts. Look at them. Identify mouths. Tell himself the angles they made. People ...
people ... a wriggling of bodies in a growing satiety of tepid l.u.s.ts.
”True art, Dorn, is something beyond decoration. Dreams made real. But the right kind of dreams--things that touch people. The other art was for sick men. That is--men sickened of life. The new art will be for healthy men, men reaching out of everything about them. And we must give them bread, soup, and art.”
Yes, that might as well be true as anything else. Anything was truth.
Anything and everything. Here he was in a scene that had no relation to him. Yet he wasn't detached.
”Speaking of art, Dorn, we've found a new artist, a wonder. She's going to do some things for _The Cry_. I got her interested. I must tell Meredith about her. Maybe you know her--Rachel Laskin. One of her things is coming out in the next issue. I'll send you a copy.”
Coolly, amazedly, Dorn thought, ”What preposterous thing makes it possible for this man to talk of Rachel as if she were a reality ...
like the people in the cafe? To him she's like the people in the cafe.
He knows her like the people in the cafe.”
He answered carelessly, ”Oh, yes; Miss Laskin. I remember her well. That reminds me: you don't happen to have her address? I've got some things she left at the office we can't use.”
Tesla dug an address out of a soiled stack of papers. His pockets seemed alive with soiled papers. Rachel's address was a piece of soiled paper like any other piece of soiled paper. Mumbling silently, Dorn sighed.
Just in time. Anna again, and Meredith. He looked at them, recalling his plot. Were they in love? Tesla--the blundering idiot--”I was telling Dorn of a new artist I've found, Eddie. Rachel Laskin, a sort of Blake and Beardsley and something else. Thin lines, screechy things. You'll like them.”
”Oh, yes, I always like them,” Meredith smiled.
And Anna, ”Oh, I know Rachel Laskin well. We're old friends. She's a charming, wonderful girl. I liked her so much. Where is she?”
”In New York.”
”I'll have to look at her work,” Meredith added. ”That's me. Always looking at other people's work and saying, fine, great, and never knowing a thing about it. Ye true art collector, eh, Emil?”
Anna went on, ”Erik was amused with her. She is rather odd, you know, and sort of wearing on the nerves. But you can't help liking her.”
An amazing description of a face of stars. Dorn smiled.
Tesla said, ”I only saw her once. A nervous girl, and she seemed upset.”
More from Anna: ”I hope she'll come back to Chicago. She was such fun. I really miss her....”
All mad. Babbling of Rachel. Dorn stared cautiously about him. The torment in him became a secret swollen beyond its proper dimensions.
They would look at him now and understand that he was not Erik Dorn, but somebody else huddled up, burning and flopping around inside. Love was a virulent form of idiocy. It meant nothing to people outside. Everything inside. Anna talking about Rachel started a panic in him. She was playing with memories of Rachel. Do you remember this? and that? As if he, of course, had forgotten her. Yes, there was an ”of course” about it. A gruesome ”of course.” Gruesome--an excellent word. It meant Anna petting and laughing over a knife that was to plunge itself into her heart. When? Soon ... soon. He had an address copied from a soiled piece of paper.