The Outsider (34 page)

He saw now that those who, in trying to rationalize their fears of Communism, had said that the practice of Communism was contrary to human nature were naïve or blind to awful facts which they had not the courage to admit; for, as Cross could see, there was not perhaps on earth a system of governing men which was more solidly built upon the sadly embarrassing cupidities of the human heart and its hunger to embrace the unembraceable. Of course, this system of sensualization of the concept of power did not prevail alone in the Communist or Fascist worlds; the Communists had merely rationalized it, brought it nakedly and unseemingly into the open. This systematization of the sensuality of power prevailed, though in a different form, in the so-called capitalistic bourgeois world; it was everywhere, in religion as well as in government, and in all art that was worthy of the name. And bourgeois rulers, along with the men of the church, had forged through time and tradition methods of concealing these systems of sensual power under thick layers of legal, institutionalized, ritualized, ideological, and religious trappings. But at the very heart of this system were the knowing and conscious men who wielded power, saying little or nothing of the real nature of the black art they practiced, the nameless religion by which they lived.

He knew instinctively that such subjects could not readily be explored in discussions with others, for its very victims—if, in strict sense it could be said that they were victims—would deny its reality perhaps more vociferously than those who held in their hands the reins of this system of power. Cross's insight into the functioning of the emotions of a Gil or a Hilton enabled him to isolate his own past actions and gain some measure of insight into them; it had been the blind coercions of a hungry sensuality that had made him try to
hug delusions to his heart when he had suspected the malevolence of the innocent and had tried to posit upon the unknowing motives that they could not possibly have had. He rolled over and sat up in bed, his mouth open. He was seeing a vision, but at long last it was not an unreal one. This vision made reality more meaningful, made what his eyes saw take on coherence and depth. For the first time since that snowy evening in Chicago when he had decided to flee, when the waters of desire had drained off the world and had left it dry of interest, meaning began to trickle back again in drops, rivulets…He was, in his mind and feelings, isolating this central impulse of informing action by which he and other men lived. There was a hunger for power reaching out of the senses of man and trying to say something in symbols of action. What message, if any, was written in those hieroglyphics of energy? That these actions were far more basic than the mere arrangements of economic relations obtaining between rival social classes, he was convinced. Maybe…

A light knock came upon his door.

“Lionel!” It was Eva calling.

“Yes?”

“Lunch is waiting—”

“Coming.”

He washed up and went into the dining room and sat at the table, facing Eva who now, though friendly, still seemed to avoid his eyes.

“I don't know what you like to eat,” she said, smiling.

“Anything'll do me, Eva,” he told her, seeing her now in the light of his ponderous reflections of a moment ago.

“I suppose you and Gil went over a lot today. You'll see that Gil has a grip on life,” she said in a strained matter-of-fact tone devoid of any boasting.

“He has indeed,” Cross agreed merely to keep the talk going.

As she served him he studied her and was amazed to find that she looked even younger without rouge on her lips and artificial coloring on her cheeks. How did this child—for there was an undeniable childishness about her—fit into his dark broodings and interpretations of Gil's politics? He longed to ask her how she had come to marry Gil, for every move she made and every word she uttered belied her being his wife.

“Are you a native New Yorker; that is, born here, I mean?” he asked.

“Yes; I'm one of those rare ones. I was born about three blocks from here,” she said, laughing, keeping her eyes down.

“Did you grow up in the Communist Party?”

“Oh, God no. I was an orphan…I encountered the Party when I met Gil.” She still did not look at him.

“Oh, I see.”

“Do you like music?” she asked.

He had hoped that she would discuss politics; but either she did not want to or she evaded the subject because of its lack of interest for her.

“It's the one thing I know least about, I'm ashamed to admit,” he confessed. “I've heard some classical music and liked it; but my level is jazz and folk songs, I'm afraid.”

“Really?” She was surprised and thoughtful for a moment. “The reason I asked is that we have stacks of symphonic records over in the left-hand corner of the living room and you are free to play them if you like.”

As the lunch progressed, she spoke in a quietly melodious voice of her love of music, painting, poetry, and the beauty of France which she had seen last summer.
Without seeming to, she avoided all mention of herself and made no political observations whatsoever. The simplicity of her manner made him doubt the validity of the theory he had hatched out a few minutes ago. Yet she lives in this communist world and she must know, he thought.

“Say, what was behind that little scene at Bob's last night?” he asked boldly.

“What scene?” She looked startled.

“I'm referring to Hilton's laying down the law to Bob—”

“Oh,
that…
” She frowned and murmured, “I'm afraid that Gil will have to explain that.”

Either she did not know or she did not want to tell. He did not wish to create the impression that he was fishing for information and he quickly assumed an attitude of naïveté.

“There's so much to learn,” he said wistfully. “I must be patient.”

“I was
once
as bewildered as you are,” she said meaningfully.

It was definite that she was evading him; he sensed reserves of emotion in her and he cast about for a way to make her open up.

“Look, don't think I'm nosey, but are you active in the Party?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I paint.” She was frowning.

“Oh, really? Social subjects?” He encouraged her to talk.

A flicker of dismay darted across her face. She's afraid to talk, he thought. She bit her lips and her long eyelashes shadowed her cheeks. She took up a slice of bread, broke it nervously, then put it aside as a sudden impulse came to life in her.

“No. I'm a nonobjective painter,” she said modestly.

Cross stared. The wife of a Communist leader painting nonobjectively?

“You don't like nonobjective painting, do you?” she asked, putting a soft challenge in her voice.

“But I do; absolutely,” he answered honestly. “Say, I've a theory about it—”

“You have?” she said, but she did not look at him. She was evidently struggling with herself. Then impulsively: “I'd like to hear it.”

“Well, you see, maybe my notion is kind of farfetched,” he began, glad that they had at last found some common ground. “Nonobjective painting expresses the dominant consciousness of modern man…Sounds corny, hunh? But I mean it.” He hesitated, wondering what approach would get beneath her reserve. “Modern consciousness is Godlessness and nonobjective painting reflects this negatively. There is really no nonobjective painting without either a strong assumption of atheism or an active expression of it, whether the nonobjective painter realizes it or not…”

“We agree so far,” she said as though thinking of something else.

“I mean Godlessness in a strict sense,” he argued. “There is nothing but
us, man
, and the world that
man
has made. Beyond that, there's nothing else. The natural world around us which cradles our existence and which we claim we know is just a huge, unknowable something or other…We may find out how it works, discover some of its so-called laws, but we don't know it and can't know it…Nature's not
us
; it's different. A part of us is nature, but that part of us that's human and free is opposed to nature. What there is of the natural world that seems human to us is what we have projected out upon it from our own hearts. We created cities, roads, factories, etc. Sunsets, waterfalls, and landscapes
are but a few accidental aspects of nature that we happen to like, that somehow reflect moods of ours…So we are prone to forget all of the other phases of nature that are terrible, inhuman, alien to us…Now, my notion is that since this is true, that the world we see is the world we make by our manual or emotional projection, why not let us be honest and paint our own projections, our fantasies, our own moods, our own conceptions of what things are. Let's paint our feelings
directly
. Why let objects master us? Let's take forms, planes, surfaces, colors, volumes, space, etc., and make them express ourselves by our arrangement of them. It's an act of pure creation…”

“You've said it,” she exclaimed looking fully at him for the first time. “I'm surprised.”

“Why?”

“Not many people feel like that,” she said. “I'd not have thought that a colored person would like nonobjective art. Your people are so realistic and drenched in life, the world…Colored people are so robustly healthy.”

“
Some
of us,” he said.

“And you're not? How did that happen?”

“It's a long story,” he said. “Some people are pushed deeper into their environment and some are pushed completely out of it.”

“Do you feel
that
much aloneness?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes; and you?”

“Yes,” she said simply and was silent.

“I'd like awfully to see your work.”

“All right. But…”

“But what?”

“I'd rather you didn't tell Gil we talked about this,” she said, reddening.

“I see,” he said. What's she afraid of…?

After lunch she took him into a cluttered, dusty room behind the kitchen; it reeked of oil and turpentine. She stood timidly behind him as he looked at walls covered with canvases; more were stacked in corners. The power of her work was immediately apparent; a bewildering array of seemingly disassociated forms—squares, cubes, spheres, triangles, rhombs, trapezes, planes, spirals, crystals, meteors, atomistic constructions, and strange micro-organisms—struggled in space lit sombrely by achromatic tints. Cross advanced to the canvas upon which she was evidently working and which rested upon a huge easel. Between irregular volumes and planes was a feeling of tremendous tension created by points of quiet and steady light, a light that seemed hardly there, yet tying all of her space into one organic whole. Out of a darkly brooding background surged broken forms swimming lyrically in mysterious light stemming from an unseen source. The magical fragility of this light, touching off surprising harmonies of tones, falling in space and bringing to sight half-sensed patterns of form, was Eva, her sense of herself…In her work she seemed to be straining to say something that possessed and gripped her life; she spoke tersely, almost cruelly through her forms. Her painting at bottom was the work of a poet trying to make color and form sing in an absolute and total manner. There was a blatant brutality about her volumes, some of which were smashed, cracked, and presented a tactile surface carrying an illusion of such roughness that one felt that the skin of the hand would be torn by touching it…He wondered what life experiences made her paint such images of latent danger…?

“Have you exhibited?”

“Yes; last year. Just before I married—”

“You have enough for another exhibit now.”

“I shan't exhibit again soon,” she said.

“How was your work received?”

“Very well,” she muttered.

“And why aren't you going to exhibit again soon?”

“Oh, Lionel, I must go,” she said hurriedly, ignoring his question. “Stay and look at them as long as you like…Here are the keys to the apartment; one's for the downstairs and the other's for the front door up here. I'm off to do some shopping and then I'll do a concert.” She flashed him a quick smile. “Come and go as you like. But watch out for Herndon downstairs…”

She left him and a few moments later he heard the front door open and close. She had not wanted to talk to him, but what she had seemed too shy to say in words shouted and pled for her in images. For two hours he looked at every canvas in the room, placing them in the light, examining them from far and near. He had the illusion, while studying them, of standing somehow at the center of Eva's ego and being captured by the private, subjective world that was hers, a world that was frightening in the stark quality of its aloneness; and he knew that it was out of a sense of aloneness that these bold, brutal images, nameless and timeless, had come with the force of compulsions. At least she's lucky to be able to say her terrors and agonies in form and color, he said a little enviously to himself.

With a cigarette glowing in his lips, he went back into the apartment and wandered aimlessly from room to room, probing and idly searching. He smiled, feeling the presence of Eva and Gil as he spied among their belongings. Why did they have two separate bedrooms? Twin beds were all right, but two bedrooms? He recalled the little, pecking kiss that Eva had given Gil when she had come in from her shopping and he
was certain that there was something wrong between them.

He ended up in Eva's bedroom, prowling in drawers and desks. At the bottom of a pile of dusty sheets of music lying on the floor of a clothes closet he came across a stack of bound notebooks; he opened one. They were Eva's diaries…Ought he risk peeking a little into one? He glanced guiltily over his shoulder. When would she be back? To be surprised reading her intimate diary would be awful…He stepped into the hallway and saw that there was a safety night-chain on the door. Yes; he had it…He would put the night-chain in place and if Gil or Eva returned suddenly, he could always say that he had put it on in order to be on guard if Herndon came up…He chained the door and went back into Eva's bedroom and picked up a volume of the diary that dated back six months of that year. He began reading the small, clear, schoolgirlish handwriting: