The Fires of Spring (55 page)

Sometimes she would become maudlin drunk and pat David on the arm in a way that reminded him of the Gonoph. “You mark my words!” she would sniffle. “Some day I’ll be studied at Columbia University. Why? Because I was the only friend Claude ever had.” She stumbled about her very neat room and found one of the poet’s books, printed at her expense. “You ever seen snow in Greenwich Village, after it’s been on the streets a couple of days?” She became belligerent. “How would you describe it? You’re no poet! But listen to that bearded goat.” She fumbled with the pages and then read: “I shuffle through the worn-out snow.” She put the book down and stared antagonistically at David. “I read that crap you wrote for
Fashion
. Boy, did that stink! Here, you can borrow this for a while. Knock off work and study it.”

She sent David to his room with the slender volume. These days he was not even trying to find a job, content with his make-believe janitor’s position. He stayed in his room for days analyzing Claude’s peculiar verse. He found Claude’s work amazingly compact. Words were used as scalpels to cut into the meaning of life. He had never thought of using words in that precise and restricted manner. He lay on his bed, nothing to do, no work, no prospect of any, and thought about writing.

Words seemed to him the sacred instruments through which the spirit’s finest messages were conveyed. It was well and proper for the Metropolitan to boast of having acquired a
picture worth $200,000. David was sure the glowing canvas was more valuable than that, for it was rare and spoke of the world’s vast beauty; but what, he mused, would a nation pay for the only copy of
Don Quixote?
Let’s suppose there were no printing presses or monks to copy manuscripts. How would the bidding go for a book like
The Way of All Flesh?
Or
Hamlet?
Who could price such works? Or a solitary copy of
The Eve of St. Agnes?
Or the King James Version?

Unemployed, he lay on his bed and tried to think of nothing. The hunger for Alison was still with him, but he put her out of his mind. He forced himself to ignore stricken Morris Binder, and he thought no more of jobs. His head became a whirl of nothingness, and after a while he found himself staring out of his window at the solid brick wall. He realized to his astonishment that he had never before seen that wall. It filled his window. Nothing else was there, but he had not seen the wall.

Each brick was of a subtly different color. Between the bricks the mortar was also as varied as life. During each hour of the day the wall changed its appearance. Each change of the sun’s position illuminated the fine texture of brick in new ways. Here a fragment of plaster clung to one brick and shot a long shadow across three other bricks, so that their desert-brown shapes turned to purple. There a jagged crack lay blood red to the sun. As the day faded there was vivid motion of light along the face of the wall. Flecks of gold danced upon each irregular shape, and sandy colors, mingled with red and purple and gold and yellow, shone evanescent in the late afternoon.

Night fell, and the heavenly pantomime ended. Purple shadows, like spent blood, swept across the bricks, and David lay palpitating with emotion. In his life the moment had come, the breathless moment that has no name. It was the instant of dedication, when the illimitable and yet finite future lay ahead as brilliantly clear as the bricks had been. He said: “Writing is like that. Seeing what no one has ever seen before and writing it down so simply that everyone will say, ‘Of course! I knew that all along.’ If I can see, I can write. If I took a book and wrote down just one thing each day that I had actually seen …” The words stopped, for there were no words to describe the difference between looking and actually seeing. He fumbled with his ideas for a moment and said: “If I could see into the core of some one thing each day, say a horse eating oats, or a ferryboat, or the way a
chair stands on the floor, I’d soon be so terribly filled with material that they couldn’t stop me from writing. Not even with machine guns.” In his dark room he saw with utmost clarity that art is merely the organization of things understood, and seeing is the heart of understanding. He said: “There’s no reason why I couldn’t write as well as Balzac …” Then he became ashamed of having made such a comparison, but it returned. “No! Damn it all!” he cried. “There is no reason why I couldn’t!”

The darkness was about him, and the illuminating wall was gone, but within his own mind a light showed that would never go out. This was the moment without a name, when a young man stood alone and soberly acknowledged what he might accomplish. He could not guess it then, but he was sharing the fragile and explosive instant that comes with shocking and disrupting force to fumbling young men: “Why, I could be President!” “If he wrote an opera, why couldn’t I?” “Why shouldn’t I be the best architect?” “Somebody’s going to marry her, why not me?”

Violently, he snapped on his light and attacked his typewriter as if it were his enemy. He would describe those bricks exactly as he had seen them, but as he wrote he was interrupted by Mom’s strident voice: “Hey! Dave!”

“What’s up?” he shouted.

“Someone to see you!” Then, in a lower voice, Mom said, “Go on up.”

From the stairs below David could hear the approach of soft steps. Now his visitor was rounding the first landing, now approaching the last dark flight. David peered into the shadows and slowly perceived the emerging form of a woman. It was Mona Meigs.

“Hello, Dave,” she said prosaically.

“Mona!” he cried in confused emotion. It was unbelievable, seeing her in his hallway. She wore a beret and a soiled blouse. She had on well-tailored slacks and a man’s belt. She wore saddle shoes and rolled-down brown socks. She had no make-up on and seemed pallid. She was thinner than before and somewhat unkempt.

“I got to have a place to stay,” she said directly. “I’m broke.”

“Where’s Cyril?” David asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “We washed up months ago,” she said. “Company folded.”

“Well, come in.”

Mona paused in the doorway and surveyed his room. “Not much of a dump,” she said.

“I’m out of work,” he explained.

A look of anguish came into Mona’s face. “Oh, hell!” she cried. “Don’t anybody have a job?”

“I’ll put you up, somehow,” he said.

“You’ve got to stake me!” she pleaded.

“I’ll find some place to sleep …” he began. But when he said this a look of horror came into Mona’s face. She had intended coming as a queen to dispense her favors, but she saw that David could not consider such an arrangement. Her shoulders sagged and she went to his mirror. There she saw her stringy hair, the greasy beret and the unwashed blouse. Her face was a mask, still beautiful, but her eyes were sunken. Not even her perfect breasts showed to advantage, and she saw how wretched she had become.

“I have a hot lead on a picture,” she said. Then she pointed at herself in the mirror. “I got to find a place to repair that,” she said with a tone of disgust.

“You can stay here,” David said. He went downstairs to Mom’s sitting room. “I feel like a damned fool,” he began, apologetically.

Mom interrupted him. “I always figure a man has an inalienable right to make a horse’s ass of himself once a year. I figure that’s the actress you told me about.”

“That’s Mona Meigs,” David said.

“And she wants a room. And she has no money. I’m the last person in the world’s got a right to give anybody advice, considerin’ the clown I’ve been. But if I was you, Dave, I’d tell her to haul tail out.”

“How could I do that?” David asked.

“OK. You’d share your last dime with her. So we’ll do it this way. You can have that room. She can have it. Or you and she can have it together.”

“Can I sleep in the restaurant?”

“The fire inspector says no! No more bums sleepin’ down there.”

“I’ll take her junk upstairs,” David said. “I’ll find a place to stay somewhere.”

“Dave,” Mom said quietly, “you’re usin’ up this year’s quota. You’re bein’ a prime, A-1 Kansas City horse’s ass.”

“I said that first,” David replied. He climbed back to his room and reported, “Mom says you can stay here for a while.”

“What about you?” Mona asked.

“I’ll find a place somewhere.”

Mona pulled off her beret and tossed it onto the bed. She ruffed out her hair and combed it with her fingers. “I suppose the john’s out in the hall?” she queried distastefully.

“That’s right,” David answered and went downstairs.

He left the restaurant and went to a bench in Washington Square. On the opposite side he could see Alison’s house, a handsome red-brick structure with clean white trim. It looked like its inhabitant, and David thought how different Alison was from Mona in her present condition. He recalled how Mona had been offended when he had said that he would not stay with her, and her brash assumption that he would still want to love her infuriated him. Mona was cheap and tough and he wanted nothing to do with her. Inwardly, he admitted that he was glad she looked so drab, because that fortified his resolution.

But the more he thought of her, lying on his bed, the more excited he became. “I better go see Alison,” he finally decided. Against his own judgment he crossed the Square to her cold, white building and rang her bell. When the door clicked he hurried up the carpeted stairs.

Alison waited at the top, but when she saw who it was she cried, “Oh, it’s Dave. I don’t want to see you.” She retreated into her room and slammed the door. In the quiet and thickly carpeted hallway David banged on the door and cried, “Alison! I’ve got to talk with you. Mona Meigs came back.”

“How dandy!” came the bright young voice from behind the door.

“Could she stay with you? For a while?”

“What’s the matter with her fancy actor?”

“I don’t know. They broke up.” There was a long silence and finally the door opened slightly. Alison peered through the chink and David said with appalling frankness. “I don’t want to fool around with Mona. Seeing her made me know how much I need you.”

The intensity of this statement made Alison catch her breath, and she admitted David into her room, but when he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away. “Now we start all that again,” she groaned.

She sat David on her expensive davenport and he tried not to study the room like a peasant, but it impressed him. He looked away from the rich furnishings to where Alison sat
primly in a Chippendale chair. “I can’t throw Mona out,” he pleaded.

“I know you can’t,” Alison agreed. “In a way, I admire you.” Then, suddenly, words bubbled forth and she said, “The crowd I have to go with make me sick, Dave. They’re so phony! The people they make jokes about are twice as good as they are.”

“Then why do you bother with them?” David asked.

“Because … Well, it’s my job.” The barrenness of this reply shocked David and he betrayed his disappointment.

“I didn’t think you were the one who compromised,” he said. “I do, but …”

“I don’t compromise!” she said defiantly. “I study them like guinea pigs. You’ll see them in my book. It’s almost done.” Then her tone became icy again and she inquired, “What have you accomplished?”

“Not much,” he admitted. “I got fired as you predicted. I’ve done some sketches.”

“Sketches!” the slim girl exploded, jumping to her feet. “You’re starving in an attic and all you do is sketches! Dave,” she pleaded, bending down and placing her hands in his, “believe me! I’ll upset heaven and hell at
Fashion
to make them take articles from you. Do us something flashy or woman stuff …” Then she saw that she was using the wrong words. Angrily she turned from him and walked toward the window, but she stopped and stood with her hands upon her finely tailored hips.

“You may not believe it from things I’ve done to you, Dave, but you’re terribly important to me. You were the first intelligent person to tell me I could be a writer. I wish … I wish to God we had been meant for each other. Because for all your dreaming nonsense, I can respect you. But I’m going to be a writer. You watch! I’ll never let anything interrupt, and when we’re old people, we’ll meet and talk about it while we sit in the sun.”

She held out her beautiful hands, but David kept his in his lap. He sensed that this was the last time he would ever talk with Alison. He said, “I’ve walked the streets with my heart pounding for you, Alison. I know you’re not tough. I know it’s a pose, because I know how scared you are down inside that you won’t be first rate. And how do I know? Because I feel the same doubts.” His voice grew intense, and he said, “I shall write good books, too. They’re bursting within me. I can see whole sections written out in my mind …”
The fury of words was on him and he paced nervously. “I’ll write as I never dreamed of writing before. I’m going to drag experience right into …”

“Have you actually written any of it yet?” Alison asked quietly.

“As I said, some sketches.”

“And from that you can be sure?”

“Yes,” David said.

“Well, I’ll pray for you,” Alison concluded. She allowed him to kiss her good-bye, the last kiss they would ever know, and for a moment he thought: “She’s a warm, human person, after all.” Thus encouraged, he asked impulsively, “Could you possibly lend Mona a hundred dollars?”

But as he looked into her bright face, her eyes grew remorselessly hard. “No,” she said, and she closed the door forever.

He returned to Mom Beckett’s, where he slipped into the restaurant and propositioned Claude. “How about letting me sleep on chairs for a couple of nights?” he begged.

The poet bit his lip for a moment and said, “You know Mom’s been having trouble with the inspectors.” But that night he arranged a rickety bed upon which David slept for five successive nights. In the daytime he worked feverishly at Claude’s typewriter, banging out a
Fashion
story about the Taos Indians. He built a hard and glossy patina into the words, and at last his pages had the tight and stylized
Fashion
quality. When it was done he took it uptown himself and asked the girl at the desk to deliver it to Miss Webster.