The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (8 page)

Why were you away from school? said the teacher. Where were you?

I was in the country, I said, walking.

Now the laughter was greater than ever, and I saw the girl I secretly loved laughing with the others, as if I meant nothing to her, as if I hadn’t made her a part of myself. I began to feel ill and defiant, and there was warm perspiration on the palms of my hands.

The teacher stood over me, trembling. One must, perhaps, be a teacher to be able to appreciate precisely how angry she felt. For years she had been asking boys why they had been absent from school, and for years the boys had replied that they had been at
home, ill. She had known that in most cases they had not told the truth, but the tradition had been maintained and everything had remained solid in her world. Now everything was being shattered, and she was standing over me, trembling with rage. I think she tried to shake me, and I would not let her do it, holding myself solidly. For a moment she budged at me, hating me, and then she said, You Armenians, you, you . . . and I thought she would burst into tears. I felt sorry for her, for the stupidity she had preserved in herself after so many years of trying to teach school, a woman almost fifty years of age.

And I hadn’t meant to hurt her. That hadn’t been my object at all. I had meant simply to tell the truth. I had meant to reveal to the girl my true face, the face which had been shaped by the dignity and simplicity of man and which she had helped to shape, and I had meant to reveal to her the truth of my presence on earth. And then her laughter, just like the laughter of the others . . . it mangled something in me, and I stood in the midst of the noise, embarrassed and bewildered, bleeding, and breaking to pieces. God damn it, I thought. This is not true. God damn it, this is a lie.

But I knew that I was deceiving myself. And I knew that I would never be able to speak to the girl about my love for her, and the meaning of that love to me, and to the earth and the universe, and to man.

I was sent to the principal of the school, and he stood over me, grumbling in a deep voice. You, he said, you are a disgrace to this school. You are a disgrace to your own race. You break rules. Then you
come to school flaunting your crime. What have you to say for yourself.

Nothing, I said.

Why did you do it? he asked.

I wanted to walk, I said.

You could have waited till Saturday, he said.

No, I said. I had to walk yesterday.

Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t strap you? he asked.

That’s up to you, I said.

I was angry. I felt bitter about the girl, and I wasn’t afraid of the principal, or of the strapping I knew he would give me. It was all over. I would have to walk alone with the secret. I would have to accept the sickness in me that the girl had made by laughing, but the truth would remain whole and I would have it to keep forever, walking alone, in the secrecy of my heart.

The strapping made me cry, big as I was, strong as I was. While I cried, though, I knew that it wasn’t the strapping that was hurting me . . . it was this other thing, this incredible blindness everywhere. I cried bitterly, and when I returned to class my eyes were red and I was ashamed, and the whole class was laughing at me, even the girl.

After school, walking alone, I tried to heal the wound in my heart, and I began to think again of the swift and bright truth of being, the truth I had earned for myself by walking alone through the silence of the earth, and walking, thinking of it, I could feel myself becoming whole again, and I could hear myself
laughing through the vastness of the secret space I had discovered.

The truth was the secret, God first, the word, the word God, out of all things and beyond, spaceless and timeless, then the void, the silent emptiness, vaster than any mortal mind could conceive, abstract and precise and real and lost, the substance in the emptiness, again precise and with weight and solidity and form, fire and fluid, and then, walking through the vineyards, I had seen it thus, the whole universe, quietly there in the mind of man, motionless and dark and lost, waiting for man, for the thought of man, and I felt the stirring of inanimate substance in the earth, and in myself like the swift growth of the summer, life emerging from time, the germ of man springing from the rock and the fire and the fluid to the face of man, and to the form, to the motion and the thought, suddenly in the emptiness, the thought of man, stirring there. And I was man, and this was the truth I had brought out of the emptiness, walking alone through the vineyards.

I had seen the universe, quietly in the emptiness, secret, and I had revealed it to itself, giving it meaning and grace and the truth that could come only from the thought and energy of man, and the truth was man, myself, moment after moment, and man, century after century, and man, and the face of God in man, and the sound of the laughter of man in the vastness of the secret, and the sound of his weeping in the darkness of it, and the truth was myself and I was man.

I was living next door to the high school. In the evenings the lights would go on and I would see men and women in the rooms. I would see them moving about but I wouldn’t be able to hear them. I could see that they were saying something among themselves and I thought I would like to go among them and listen. It was a place to go. I didn’t want to improve my mind. I was through with all that. I was getting a letter from the Pelman Institute of America every two weeks. I wasn’t taking their course. I wasn’t even opening the envelopes. I knew exactly what they were saying. They were saying Chesterton and Ben Lindsay had taken their course and now had fine big brains,
especially Chesterton. I knew they were telling me I too could have a fine big brain, but I wasn’t opening the envelopes. I was turning the matter over to my niece who was four years old. I was thinking maybe she would like to take the course and have a brain like the wise men of the world. I was giving the letters to my niece, and she was taking them and sitting on the floor and cutting them with a pair of scissors. It was a fine thing. The Institute is a great American idea. My niece is cutting the letters with a small pair of scissors.

It was a place to go at night. I was tired of the radio. I had heard NRA speeches, excerpts from Carmen, Tosti’s “Goodbye” and “Trees” every night for over a year. Sometimes twice a night. I knew what would happen every night. It was the same downtown. I knew all the movies, what to expect. The pattern never changed. It was the same with symphonies even. Once a lady conducted, but it was the same. Beethoven’s Fifth, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “The Blue Danube Waltz.” It’s been going on for years and years. The thing that worries me is that my great-grandchildren are going to have to listen to “The Blue Danube Waltz” too. It’s gotten so that even when the music isn’t being played, we hear it. It’s gotten into us. Years ago I used to like these fine things, but lately the more pathetic things interest me.

I thought I would go among the people at the night school and listen to them. Going to the school was like walking from one room into another, it was so close. I liked the idea of walking headlong into a
group of people who were either very lonely or pathetically ambitious.

The night I went was a Tuesday. The classes were English for Foreigners, Sewing, Dressmaking and Millinery, Leather Work, Wood Work, Radio, Arithmetic, Navigation, Theory of Flight, Typewriting and Commercial Art. I had the printed schedule.

I went to the class in Commercial Art. Beauty with a motive. Practical grace. I didn’t know what to expect, but I walked in and sat down. There was a fat woman who gasped when she talked, and always talked. She was the teacher, and she had memorized a number of things from books about art and when I was in hearing distance I heard her gasp, “There are five arts, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry.” She was telling this to a middle-aged, dried-up little lady who was amazed, almost astounded. The little lady had just come to class, and she hadn’t heard. It was news to her, and she was amazed that there were five arts. It appeared as if she believed one might have been sufficient. There was a sheet of white paper on the table before her, pencil, bottle of ink and pen. She was delighted with the whole idea. She began to draw a picture of Marlene Dietrich. She had a tencent movie magazine to copy from, but her sketch didn’t look like Marlene Dietrich. Everything was out of proportion. It looked like a very good Matisse. Only a very shrewd art critic would have been able to tell that it was not an original Matisse. It had all the artless subtlety. It was certainly the face of a woman. The dried-up lady couldn’t think of anything else to draw. There were three other women drawing pictures
of Marlene Dietrich. It was part of the course.

The men were painting display cards. They were thinking of increasing their incomes.

I heard the women talking about inspiration, and one of the younger women actually looked inspired, but I suppose she was slightly ill.

One of the men was making a pen and ink sketch of Lincoln. He was
absolutely
inspired. The instant I saw him I could tell he was aflame with wonderful sentiments. Every student of art draws Lincoln. There is something about the man. If you start to draw him, no matter how poorly you draw it will look exactly like Lincoln. It’s the spirit, the inspiration. No one remembers how he looked. His face is like a trademark. The man had worked his sketch to the point where it was all but finished, and he was amazed. He was a man in his late thirties, and he wore a small Hitler-style moustache. I have reason to believe, however, that he was not a Nazi. It is simply that people, unknown to one another and separated by oceans and continents, are apt, now and then, to come upon the same sort of revelation in regard to some great human problem, such as sex, or to grow the same style of moustache. There is the well-known case of Havelock Ellis and D. H. Lawrence, beards and all. I sat at the table behind the man with the Nazi moustache. The teacher had said that she would be with me in a moment. I sat and watched the man who was sketching Lincoln. He was looking about nervously to see if anyone was noticing what he had done. He expected something to happen. He hadn’t known he had had it in him. The others were mere sign painters.

There was a young girl on the opposite side of his table. She was doing a charcoal portrait of a pretty girl. I thought it was someone she knew. It was Clara Bow. I hadn’t noticed the movie magazine she was copying from. She had already made her sketch of Marlene Dietrich. All over the class it was this way.

The man who was sketching Lincoln wanted the girl to notice what he had done, but she was busy putting the finishing touches on Clara Bow. Finally, with the will and impetuosity of the true artist, he got up and walked past the girl to get to the pencil sharpener. He wasn’t using his pencil. He was making a pen and ink sketch of Lincoln. On his way back to his seat, he stood over the girl, studying carefully her sketch of Clara Bow. The girl couldn’t draw with the man looking over her shoulder. She couldn’t move her hand. She was embarrassed. The man said her sketch was very good, but that she hadn’t shaded the eyes just right. Having made a sketch of Lincoln, he had become a graduate art critic. He wanted to talk about art first. The girl didn’t know what to say. She said something I didn’t quite hear. It was something apologetic and not well articulated. I felt sorry for the man. His idea hadn’t worked. He had expected something to happen. He had expected a warm interest in him from the girl. He had hoped she would ask to see what he had done, and then he would have thrilled her with his sketch of Lincoln. It hadn’t worked. He sat down sullenly and began to put the last touches to Lincoln. Then he signed his name to the work and ran a heavy line beneath his name, giving it force and character. When the roll was taken I
found out that the girl’s name was Harriet. I didn’t get the last name. She looked to be a clerk in the basement of some big department store. She was probably lonely too.

Now the teacher was free to introduce me to art. She stood over me and gasped, and I got a strong odor from her. She began with the five arts and kept on. She had a schedule. She enjoyed going through the schedule, or else it was simply that, like so many teachers, she was unmarried and had to do something, had to talk at least. The first thing I began listening to was about line. It took me that long to get used to her odor.

“By line,” she gasped, “we mean the boundaries of shapes. A vertical line denotes activity and growth. A horizontal line denotes rest and repose.” She had it pat. “A straight line is masculine,” she said. “A curved line is feminine.” She went on gasping. I couldn’t tell what pleasure she got from it. I certainly hadn’t encouraged her. “A vertical line,” she said, “slightly curved is considered a line of beauty.” There was an exclamation mark in her voice.

“Considered?” I said. “How do you mean?”

Then she understood that I was a radical, and that I was out for no good. She became confused for a moment, then blushed with bitterness, then walked away to get me paper and a pencil. She placed the paper and pencil before me and told me I could draw anything I liked. I tried to draw the dried-up lady who had been amazed about art, and while I was doing so I could hear the teacher gasping to someone else, “There are three fundamental forms. They are the
sphere, the cone, the cylinder, or modifications of them.” My sketch of the amazed lady was very poor. I hadn’t been able to get her amazement into it.

After an hour there was a short recess. Everyone sighed and went into the hall or out on the school steps. I offered the man who had sketched Lincoln a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, but he got to talking. He talked in a low dreary voice. We stood on the school steps and I listened to him while I smoked a cigarette. It was February. The evening was mild. I was standing there smoking, listening to the man. I didn’t get a word of what he was saying. I told him his sketch of Lincoln was as good as the one he had copied it from, maybe better. When the bell rang we walked back to the room and sat down again.

The genius of the class came at eight for the second period only. She was a woman of about forty with a well-rounded body and gold teeth in her mouth. She wore a green sweater tight, and she was the only artist in the class who worked standing. She stood at the front of the class with her legs apart, one of those forty-year-old women who have young bodies. She was sketching a small plaster reproduction of a nude Grecian youth. With her back to me I could admire her, and there are women who are lovely from this point of view and unbearable from any other. One could sit and look at her for a long while, thinking about lines and which were feminine and which masculine, which denoted activity and which repose. It was a thing to do, a way to kill time. She had an old face, but from where I sat I couldn’t see her face.

It felt splendid to be among such a group of people,
and walking home after class I decided I would go back the next evening and find out more about the man who had sketched Lincoln, and the girl he secretly loved, and the lady in the green sweater, and the amazed one, and the fat teacher who gasped. It would be something to do for a while, a place to go in the evening.