Part 18 (1/2)

There was nothing to translate. It was an alien, superfluous world. That was the difference between them. To Erik it was not alien or superfluous. Even in their ecstasies there was still a world for him, like some mocking rival laughing at him, saying, ”You can embrace Rachel. But what can you do to me? See if you can embrace me and swallow me with a kiss....”

That's why he stayed away till eight o'clock, moving among men, writing, talking, doing work on the magazine. But there was nothing for her to do. She inhabited a world named Erik Dorn, a perfect world in which there was no room even for thought.

Erik had written her a note from the office once ... ”my heart is a dancing star above the graves of your absence....” But that was almost a lie because it was true only for one moment. Things occupied him that could not occupy her.

Another block. Four more blocks. Noisy aliveness of streets that meant nothing. She thought, ”People look at me and envy me because I'm in a hurry as if I had somewhere important to go. People envy everybody who is in a hurry to get somewhere. Because for them there are no destinations--only halting places for their drifting. Perhaps I should go home and paint something so as to have it to show him when he comes; or sit down somewhere and think up words to give him. I won't be able to talk to-night. I must just be ... without thinking ... of anything but him. Why doesn't he sometimes mention Anna? Is he afraid it might offend me to remind me of Anna? Would it? No. Many people live in the world.

Another woman lived in Erik Dorn and he was unaware of her as the sky is unaware of me. And she died. But she isn't dead. Only her world died.

Her sky fell down....”

Tears came to Rachel's eyes. Her hands clenched.... ”Anna, Anna, forgive me! I'm so happy. You must understand....”

She felt a revulsion. She had thought something weak, silly. ”Who is Anna that I must apologize to her? A woman. A woman Erik never loved. Do I ask apologies of her for having lived with him--kissed him?”

There was a luncheon appointment with Mary James. Mary would bring a man. Perrin, maybe. Mary always brought a man. Without a man, Mary was incomplete. With a man she was even more incomplete. Mary insisted on lunching. Rachel hurried toward the rendezvous. She thought, ”People can make me do anything now. Mary or anybody else. I was able once to walk over them. Now they lead me around. Because nothing matters. And people don't sicken me with their faces and talk. They're like noises in another room that one hears, sometimes sees, but never listens to or looks at. They ask questions. And you sit in a secret world beyond them with your hat and dress, properly attentive.”

Here was the hotel for the rendezvous. Mary out of breath,

”Rachel! h.e.l.lo! Wait a minute. Whee! What do you think you're doing?

Pulling off a track meet or something? Been tryin' to catch up to you for an hour.”

Rachel looked at her. She was a golden-haired monkey full of words.

”Charlie's at the Red Cat.” A man. ”We're going to lunch there. What in G.o.d's name's the matter with you?” A pause in the thick of the crowd.

”Heavens, Rachel, are you well? I mean....”

Rachel laughed. If you laughed people thought you were making answers.

They arrived at the Red Cat. Small red circular tables. Black walls. A painstaking non-conformity about the decoration. A sprinkling of diners saying, ”We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emanc.i.p.ated from normal surroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity.”

Mary led the way to a table occupied by a tall, broad-shouldered youth with a crooked nose and humorously indignant eyes. He resembled a football player who has gone into the advertising business and remained a football player. Mary referred to him with a possessive ”Charlie.”

Charlie said, ”Why do you always pick out these joints to eat in, Mary?

Been sittin' here for ten minutes scared to death one of these females would begin crawlin' around on the walls. There's a waiter here with long hair and two teeth missin' that I'm goin' to bust in the nose if he doesn't stop.”

”Stop what, Charlie?'

”Oh, lookin' at me....”

The luncheon progressed. Olives, watery soup, delicate sandwiches....

An air of breathlessness about Rachel seemed to discommode her friends.

Charlie, piqued at her inattentiveness, essayed a volubility foreign to his words. He was not so ”nice a young man” as Hazlitt. But he boasted among friends that girls had had a chance with him. They could stay decent if they insisted but he let them understand it wouldn't do them any good so far as marrying them was concerned because he wasn't out for matrimony. There was too much to see.

Mary interspersed her eating with quotations from advanced literature, omitting the quotation marks. A slim, s.h.i.+ning-haired girl--men adored her hair--pretty-faced, silken-ankled, Mary had a mission in life. It was the utilizing of vivacious arguments on art, G.o.d, morals, economics, as exciting preliminaries for hand-holding and kissing with eyes closed, lips murmuring, ”Ah, what is life?” Technically a virgin, but devoted exclusively to the satisfying of her s.e.x--a satisfying that did not demand the completion of intercourse but the stimulus of its suggestion, Mary utilized the arts among which she dabbled as a bed for artificial immoralities. In this bed she had managed for several years to remain an adroitly chaste courtesan. Her pride was almost concentrated in her chast.i.ty. She guarded it with a precocious skill, parading it through conversation, hinting slyly of it when its existence seemed for the moment to have become unimportant. Her chast.i.ty, in fact, had become under skillful management the most immoral thing about her. She had learned the trick of exciting men with her virginity.

The thing had become for her an unconscious business. After several years of it she evolved into a flushed, nervous victim of her own technique. She managed, however, to preserve her self-esteem by looking upon the perversion of her normal s.e.xual instincts into a species of verbal nymphomania as an indication of a superior soul state. Radical books excited her mind as ordinarily her body might have been excited by radical caresses. Amateur theatricals, publicity work for charitable organizations, an allowance from her home in Des Moines, provided her with a practical background.

Charlie was her latest catch. Later he would hold her hand, slip an arm around her, press her b.r.e.a.s.t.s gently and with a proper unconsciousness of what he was doing, and she would let him kiss her ... while music played somewhere ... preferably on a pier. Then she would murmur as he paused, out of breath, ”Ah, what is life, Charlie?” And if instead of playing the game decently Charlie abandoned pretense and made an adventurous sortie, there would ensue the usual denouement ... ”Charlie ... Oh, how could you? I'm ... I'm so disappointed. I thought you were different and that love to you meant something deeper and finer than--just that.” And she would stand before him, her body alive with a s.e.xual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the words, ”Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, will you marry me?”

These were things in store for Charlie. But he must listen first. There were essential preliminaries--a routine of the chase. Her trimly shod foot crawled carefully against his ankle. There were really two types of men. Men who blushed when you touched their ankle under the table, and men who pretended not to blush. Charlie blushed with a soup-spoon at his lips. He glanced nervously at Rachel but she seemed breathlessly asleep with her eyes open--a paradoxical condition which baffled Charlie and caused him to withdraw disdainfully from further consideration of her.