LITMIR.BIZ

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of such a passion the man knows only total surrender. As for the woman who is the object of such love, to uphold this love she must exercise nothing short of spiritual legerdemain. It is her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that it is inspired.

      But if the object of this sublime adoration be not worthy! Seldom is it the man who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt. Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in evidence. With such creatures, particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty, though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and lineaments of the loved one.

       6

      For days the aftereffects of Ricardo’s visit hung over me. To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas Day always found me in the bosom of the family—the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.

      Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event—if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!—I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday.

      A most unexpected visit from Stanley, who had discovered our whereabouts by accident, only increased my distress, my inner uneasiness. True, he hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough, however, to leave a few lacerating barbs in my side.

      It was almost as if he had come to corroborate the picture of failure which I always presented to his eyes. He didn’t even bother to inquire what I was doing, how we were getting on, Mona and I, or whether I was writing or not writing. A glance about the place was sufficient to tell him the whole story. “Quite a comedown!” was the way he summed it up.

      I made no attempt to keep the conversation alive. I merely prayed that he would leave as quickly as possible, leave before the two of them arrived in one of their pseudo-ecstatic moods.

      As I say, he made no attempt to linger. Just as he was about to leave, his attention was suddenly arrested by a large sheet of wrapping paper which I had tacked on the wall near the door. The light was so dim that it was impossible to read what was written.

      “What’s that?” he said, moving closer to the wall and sniffing the paper like a dog.

      “That? Nothing,” I said. “A few random ideas.”

      He struck a match to see for himself. He lit another and then another. Finally he backed away.

      “So now you’re writing plays. Hmmm.”

      I thought he was going to spit.

      “I haven’t even begun,” I said shamefacedly. “I’m just toying with the idea. I’ll probably never write it.”

      “My thought exactly,” he said, assuming that ever-ready look of the gravedigger. “You’ll never write a play or anything else worth talking about. You’ll write and write and never get anywhere.”

      I ought to have been furious but I wasn’t. I was crushed. I expected him to throw a little fat on the fire—a remark or two about the new “romance” he was writing. But no, nothing of the sort. Instead he said: “I’ve given up writing. I don’t even read anymore. What’s the use?” He shook a leg and started for the door. Hand on the knob, he said solemnly and pompously: “If I were in your boots I’d never give up, not if everything was against me. I don’t say you’re a writer, but. . . .” He hesitated a second, to frame it just right. “But Fortune’s in your favor.”

      There was a pause, just enough to fill the phial with vitriol. Then he added: “And you’ve never done a thing to invite it.”

      “So long now,” he said, slamming the gate to.

      “So long,” said I.

      And that was that.

      If he had knocked me down I couldn’t have felt more flattened. I was ready to bury myself then and there. What little armature had been left me melted away. I was a greasespot, nothing more. A stain on the face of the earth.

      Re-entering the gloom I automatically lit a candle and, like a sleepwalker, planted myself in front of my idea of a play. It was to be in three acts and for three players only. Needless to say who they were, these strolling players.

      I scanned the project I had drawn up for scenes, climaxes, background and whatnot. I knew it all by heart. But this time I read as if I had already written the play out. I saw what could be done with the material. (I even heard the applause which followed each curtain fall.) It was all so clear now. Clear as the ace of spades. What I could not see, however, was myself writing it. I could never write it in words. It had to be written in blood.

      When I hit bottom, as I now had, I spoke in monosyllables, or not at all. I moved even less. I could remain in one spot, one position, whether seated, bending or standing, for an incredible length of time.

      It was in this inert condition they found me when they arrived. I was standing against the wall, my head against the sheet of wrapping paper. Only a tiny candle was guttering on the table. They hadn’t noticed me there glued to the wall when they burst in. For several minutes they bustled about in silence. Suddenly Stasia spied me. She let out a shriek.

      “Look!” she cried. “What’s the matter with him?”

      Only my eyes moved. Otherwise I might have been a statue. Worse, a stiff!

      She shook my arm which was hanging limp. It quivered and twitched a little. Still not a peep out of me.

      “Come here!” she called, and Mona came on the gallop.

      “Look at him!”

      It was time to stir myself. Without moving from the spot or changing my position, I unhinged my jaw and said—but like the man in the iron mask—: “There’s nothing wrong, dearies. Don’t be alarmed. I was just . . . just thinking.”

      “Thinking?” they shrieked.

      “Yes, little cherubs, thinking. What’s so strange about that?”

      “Sit down!” begged Mona, and she quickly drew up a chair. I sank into the chair as if into a pool of warm water. How good to make that little move! Yet I didn’t want to feel good. I wanted to enjoy my depression.

      Was it from standing there glued to the wall that I had become so beautifully stilled? Though my mind was still active, it was quietly active. It was no longer running away with me. Thoughts came and went, slowly, lingeringly, allowing me time to cuddle them, fondle them. It was in this delicious slow drift that I had reached the point, a moment before their arrival, of dwelling with clarity on the final act of the play. It had begun to write itself out in my head, without the least effort on my part.

      Seated now, with my back half-turned to them, as were my thoughts, I began to speak in the manner of an automaton. I was not conversing, merely speaking my lines, as it were. Like an actor in his dressing room, who continues to go through the motions though the curtain has fallen.

      They had grown strangely quiet, I sensed. Usually they were fussing with their hair or their nails. Now they were so still that my words echoed back from the walls. I was able to speak and to listen to myself at the same time. Delicious. Pleasantly hallucinated, so to speak.

      I realized that if I stopped talking for one moment the spell would be broken. But it gave me no anxiety to think this thought. I would continue, as I told myself, until I gave out. Or until “it” gave out.

      Thus,

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