Unconsciously my gaze drifted to the portrait of Gerro on the table. The lamp was tilted so that the light fell upon it and left the rest of the table in gloom. His strong, vital look exerted a queer pull upon me. I half shut my eyes, and once again I could hear his voice saying: “I have a job to do. And all the things I want will never be possible for me unless I do this thing first. The world is willing to give you, not what you tear from it, but what you put into it.”
I remembered him saying: “You are big enough to do with a little less, to help—— Thank you, it was more than anyone else gave——Strange you should have grey in your hair——Only by working together can we earn the things we all desire—— To live in the world as men, among men and with men——”
I came out of my reverie when Marianne spoke. “What are you thinking about, Frank?” I half smiled, still looking at Gerro’s portrait. “Him.”
She followed my glance to the painting. “I thought so,” she said. “You had an expression on your face as if he were talking to you.”
“Maybe he was,” I said. “Maybe he was giving me some good advice.”
I put the pipe down and lit a cigarette. As it burned down I came to a decision. I would never smoke the pipe again. And once I thought that, another thought came to my mind. “Marianne.”
She got out of her chair, came over to me, sat down on the floor at my feet, placed her arms around my legs, and pressed herself against me. “Yes, darling,” she said.
“I’m going to get a job.”
She looked at me closely. “Is that what you were thinking about?” “Yes,” I answered.
“But, darling,” she protested, “why waste yourself on little, piddling things when you don’t have to? Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have everything you want?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but—I feel useless, so out of things, out of touch with what goes on around me. I never felt like this before.”
“What do you care what goes on around you? It’s not pleasant, anyway,” she argued. “It’s so much nicer here: just the two of us in our own little world, no one to bother us, to inflict us with their troubles, their petty little problems. Don’t you love me?”
I looked down at her. Her head was resting, her chin on my knees looking up at me. “Of course I love you,” I said, “but that has nothing to do with it. I love you, I adore you, I’m very happy with you; but that isn’t all there is to it.” I cast around in my mind for something that would make her understand what I was trying to say. “Look,” I said. “Supposing you didn’t have your painting to occupy your mind, then how would you feel?” “That’s different,” she said. “That’s art. It’s a feeling, an absorption. It’s something
beyond you, something you can’t help. It’s not just work.”
“But it’s work, nevertheless,” I said, “and you would feel quite empty if you didn’t have it. What I want to do may not be art, as you call it, but it brings to me the same sort of satisfaction your work does to you.”
She got to her feet and looked down at me. Her voice had taken on a little edge that I had learned to recognize. She didn’t like to be differed with. “I’m beginning to believe he was really talking to you.”
I was curious about that remark. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Did he ever say that to you?”
She didn’t answer right away. She was thinking. “Yes,” she finally answered, “many times. I begged him to do as I asked, begged him not to throw away our chance for
happiness, but that was just what he did. And it was so silly, so terribly futile—after all, we had all we could ask for. And yet he wasn’t satisfied. And look what he got as repayment for his ideals. And now you want to do the same thing—destroy our happiness.” She sat down in her chair and began to weep.
I went over to her and put my arms about her. “Don’t cry, sugar. I’m not trying to destroy us. I just want to make myself whole again. Now I’m only a shell with no inside. I feel so wasted when I walk down the street and see men going and coming from work. I feel so empty when I spend my afternoons in the movies, watching pictures on the screen go through the motions of living. I just want something to do, something to keep myself busy.”
She stopped crying. “Then why not do something here at home?” she suggested. “Why not do as Gerro did? Try to write. You are expressive, you can say what you want; why not try to write?”
I couldn’t keep from laughing at that. It was so absurd. Me —write! “No,” I said, with a laugh, “I don’t think I will. It’s sweet of you to think that I can, but I know better. No dice! I’m going out and get me a job.”
But jobs were no easier to get at that time than they had been before. It was getting colder now, and I would come back from looking for work, chilled and angry with myself for my failures.
And she would stop her painting, or whatever work she happened to be doing at the moment, and come to me. “Any luck?” she would ask.
And I would shake my head. “None.”
“Why don’t you stop torturing yourself and put an end to all this wasted effort on your part?” she would tell me. “Sit back, take it easy. We have enough of everything.”
I would look at her and not answer. But, bit by bit, hope faded from me, and in a month I stopped looking for work and began to stay home again.
Marianne was happy about that, but I was bitter. It galled me to think that I couldn’t even land a lousy two-bit job. I would sit in the big chair and stare at Gerro’s picture, and it would stare back at me. I would sit there for hours on end looking at it and going over my failures in my mind.
One day while I was sitting there in the chair looking at the portrait and Marianne was working over her newest painting, a voice within me began to whisper: “You’re through. You will never be anything. You will live on hand-outs the rest of your life.”
The voice was so real and so strong that involuntarily I answered it aloud: “I will not.” My voice was loud and rough, and shattered the stillness of the room.
Marianne threw her brush and palette on the table furiously. I had broken her mood of concentration on the painting. “Didn’t I tell you a thousand times to be quiet when I’m working?” she screamed at me.
I looked up at her almost in surprise. I had forgotten she was in the room. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry!” she mimicked me nastily. “He’s sorry, he says! You fool, do you know what you’ve done? You’ve ruined my painting—that’s what you’ve done. I’ll never get it now.”
Suddenly I was angry too. It was like a spark thrown to dry tinder. I blazed up before I knew it. My voice went flat and hard with the rage that was in me. “No,” I said, “I’m not sorry —not really. I won’t take the blame for you if you find that you’re trying something outside your reach. You can’t blame your inadequacy on me.”
“Inadequate, am I?” she shouted. “Who are you to tell me I’m inadequate?” She turned, picked up a palette knife from the table near her, and advanced on me threateningly.
I laughed coldly, “You’re not going to try that?” I asked contemptuously.
She stopped short and looked at the knife in her hands and then at me. She threw the knife to the floor. Rage and shame seemed to flow over her face, one chasing the other like clouds across the face of the moon. “You no-good son-of-a-bitch!” she yelled. “You dirty, rotten swine!”
I could feel the blood leave my face in a rush. I felt cold and white and taut with anger. For a moment I could have murdered her, but we stood there and stared at one another while the seconds ticked by. I could feel a pulse beating madly in my forehead. My hands were clenched.
Suddenly I opened them and could feel them at my side, wet with sweat and trembling. I turned, snatched my hat and coat from the hall tree, and stamped out the door. I could hear her voice calling after me: “Frank, Frank, come back!”
It followed me as I went down the hall into the street, ringing in my ears with the oddly fearful sound of her saying after me: “Where are you going?” and the slam of the door, and the words, “Please come back!” as if torn from the bottom of her soul and filled with a fear of losing me.
I knew I would be back, but for the while I felt a savage glee in making her suffer and feel pain and humiliation as I did.
It was late when I came back, and I was drunk for the first time in my life; but not so drunk that I didn’t know what I was doing —that is, not altogether know what I was doing. I paused a moment outside the door before I went in and listened. I heard no sound, and put the key in the door and went in.
I staggered over to the table and picked up Gerro’s portrait. “Gerro, my frien’,” I whispered, “my frien’, I mish you,” and began to weep drunken tears. I slumped towards my chair and fell into it, still holding the picture. I held the picture up and looked at it, still weeping. “My frien’, tell me what to do. I feel sho losht.”
The bedroom door opened and Marianne stood before me in her négligée. I could see the black nightgown she wore beneath it. “Marianne,” I cried, holding the picture to her, “he won’ talk to me.”
She looked at me speculatively for a moment. Then she took the picture from my hands and put it back on the table. She helped me to my feet and led me into the bedroom and undressed me. I lolled helplessly on the bed while she took off my shoes.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered, as she unbuttoned my shirt and then helped me into my pyjamas, “why did you do it? It’s all my fault—my bitchy temper.”
I looked up at her. She was never so beautiful as then, her face furrowed with small lines of worry and remorse. “Marianne,” I said solemnly, “you’re a bitch, but I love you,”
and rolled over on my stomach and fell sound asleep.
I
T
was a Thanksgiving party given by one of her friends that really began to break us up. Time moved on slowly, and while I wasn’t completely satisfied. I was fairly content with letting things go as they were. Marianne had become possessive about me. I didn’t object to it. Matter of fact, I liked it. I loved her, loved the way she spoke, walked, acted. I loved the way she held her hands, her feet. I loved the way she pressed against me when we danced that made it seem so intimate, so personal, so daring.
But this was another party and the usual crowd and the usual thing. Marianne and I alone were one thing—close and warm and understanding—but Marianne and I and a group of people were another. She would gravitate naturally to her crowd of fellow artists and talk shop. I would be excluded from such conversations—not intentionally, but naturally—as I could offer nothing in the way of talk on that subject. So I would stand around, drink in hand, and wait, bored and tired and left out, until the party would break up and we could go home.
Going home was a silent affair. We would cut through Washington Square, where the double-decker buses waited for their passengers, our breath cutting frostily into the chill night air, and wouldn’t talk until we got home. Then Marianne would say: “Nice party, wasn’t it?”
I would grunt: “Unh-hunh.”
And she wouldn’t answer. She probably knew that I didn’t care for them but would never admit it.
This party was no different from the others. Marianne got busy talking and I held up the wall. The evening dragged by. About ten o’clock a few new people came in and more groups formed. I was beginning to get fed up with my silent role, and thinking about walking out and going home. I put down my drink and started over to Marianne to tell her I was leaving. Someone caught me by the arms. I turned to see who it was.
It was a model who occasionally worked for Marianne. “Remember me?” she asked, smiling.
“Why yes, of course,” I said, pleased to have someone to speak to. “How are you?” “Stiff,” she said flatly. “The party stinks.”
I laughed. It made me feel good to know that someone else felt the same way about it as I did. “Why do you come then?” I asked her.
“Have to,” she answered, succinctly. “My business—I have something to sell.” Her hands made a gesture down her body.
“Oh,” I said, “I see.” I sure did. She had something to sell. “Dance?” she asked.
I nodded. We moved off together in a corner where the radio was playing. She danced well and made me look better at dancing than I actually was. Several of the people stopped talking and watched us. From the corner of my eye I saw Marianne and her group fall quiet as we danced by them.
“They make an unusual couple,” I heard one of them say to Marianne. “Why don’t you do them?”
We moved out of hearing and I didn’t hear Marianne’s reply. “Why do you?” the blonde was asking.
“Do what?” I asked, looking down at her.
“Come to these parties?” she said. “You’re like a fish out of water.” I shrugged my shoulders. “There’s nothing better to do.”
“I see,” she said, knowingly, looking over my shoulder at Marianne. Her meaning was plain enough—orders from the boss.
Suddenly I had enough of dancing. I was a little angry with myself. “How about a drink?” I asked.
We stood against the wall watching the others. I could see Marianne looking at us—a quick glance and then away—as we stood there.
After a while I couldn’t take that any more. “How about some air?” I asked the girl.
She nodded and we took our coats and went out. We walked silently through the park and then around it. Once we stopped and looked up at the people getting into the bus. We didn’t talk, we just walked, her hand on mine.
Then we started back. At the door of the party I stopped. “I’m not going in,” I said.
They were my first words since we started to walk.
She looked at me. “I don’t feel like it either,” she said, “but I have to. Someone I promised to see about some work tomorrow.”
I got the impression that, if I asked her, she wouldn’t go back at all. I didn’t say anything.
She stood there a moment watching me, then she smiled and stepped back. “Moody cuss, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. She turned and went into the building, and I went home.
I sat down in the easy chair at home and read the morning papers. A little after one o’clock Marianne came in. “Hello,” I said, “how’d ya like the party?”