The World Behind the Door Read online

  "Yes, Werner," said Dali decisively, "you are just the man for me. I can't believe I found you so soon after talking with . . . with my friend." He put his pencil away and shoved the finished sketch across the table to Heisenberg, who picked it up and studied it.

  "It is an excellent likeness," said Heisenberg. "May I keep it?"

  "Of course."

  Heisenberg handed the sketch back to Dali. "Would you sign it, please? Otherwise no one will believe that I own an original Dali."

  "You will own a better one, done in oils, before the summer is out," Dali promised as he signed the napkin and returned it to Heisenberg, who folded it neatly and inserted it in a breast pocket.

  "But I have performed no service for you, nor based on what you've said will I be able to," protested Heisenberg.

  "I don't know if you will be able to, either," admitted Dali. "But I know that if anyone can, you are the man."

  "I still don't know what you want."

  "I want to close a certain door and open others," said Dali. He lowered his voice. "The problem is, I don't know if the door is real."

  "Well, here we have the basic difference between realism and surrealism," said Heisenberg. "I would say that a door is real or it is not. You would say that it is possibly or occasionally real."

  "We really are not in disagreement," said Dali. "If it's real, it is always real." He paused. "I just don't know if it is. But if it is, you must teach me how to keep it locked."

  "With a key, of course."

  "This is a unique door, and it will require a unique key, one that I suspect only you can supply."

  "This is all very interesting, Salvador, but it is late, I am getting tired, and you keep speaking in riddles. Perhaps you will lay out the problem in terms a realist like myself can understand?"

  "You will think me crazy."

  "I already do," said Heisenberg with a smile. "Are you?"

  Dali shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Well, you must either tell me what this is all about or let the subject drop. I am through trying to guess what you are getting at."

  "What would you say if I told you that there is another world," began Dali, "a world where the most amazing things occur, where cause often follows effect, where many of the things I've painted actually exist?"

  "I would say that you have an overactive imagination," answered Heisenberg. "But of course, it is that imagination that has helped make you world-famous."

  "What if I told you I paint what I see, not what I imagine?"

  "I would not believe you," said Heisenberg. "Although," he added thoughtfully, "I suppose it is possible that you believe it."

  "Very good," said Dali. He leaned forward suddenly, almost knocking over his brandy. "What if I told you I could take you there?"

  "To this world you are talking about?"

  "Yes."

  "I would not believe it."

  "I have a final question, friend Werner," said Dali.

  "Then ask it."

  "Will you humor me and let me try to show you this world? I will still paint your portrait, regardless of what happens."

  Heisenberg stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged and smiled. "All right," he said. "Where is your spaceship?"

  Dali returned his smile. "In my studio."

  Heisenberg's expression said it all: The man is as crazy as a loon.

  "Gala—my wife—will not be home for another three hours," continued Dali. "Can your driver take us there now? By tomorrow you may have second thoughts."

  "I have second thoughts right now," said Heisenberg. "But you seem harmless enough. I do have a question, though. Why can your wife not be present?"

  "I do not share this world with her."

  "So no one else knows about it except you?"

  "One person does," replied Dali.

  "Who?"

  "You will meet her," said Dali. Unless I am truly insane, which is somewhere between possible and probable.

  "All right," said Heisenberg, getting to his feet. "Let's get this over with. And you do not have to paint my portrait for free. I cannot hold a madman to such a promise."

  "Wait two hours and then tell me if I am still a madman."

  They went out to the limo, awoke the chauffeur who had been napping in the front seat, and reached Dali's house in ten minutes.

  "Wait for me here, Bernard," said Heisenberg to the chauffeur. "I suspect I will not be very long."

  "Yes, sir."

  Dali unlocked the front door, turned on a light in the foyer, waited for Heisenberg to enter, and then closed the door behind him.

  "Where is it?" asked Heisenberg.

  "Follow me," said Dali, leading him to the studio.

  "I see no spaceship here."

  "It is not a ship, but a portal to another world," replied Dali.

  "And where is this portal?"

  "In the back of the closet."

  Heisenberg gave him a look of total disbelief. "The back of the closet?"

  Dali nodded. "Yes."

  "All right," said Heisenberg with a sigh. "I've come this far. Another few feet can't hurt."

  "Right this way," said Dali, walking into the closet. He moved aside all the things he had piled there to hide the door from Gala. "Do you see this door?"

  "Yes," said Heisenberg.

  "Open it."

  "You're sure this doesn't lead to the attic?"

  "If it does, you'll know it soon enough."

  Heisenberg shrugged, opened the door, and stepped through.

  Chapter 19: Disintegration

  Dali stood beside Heisenberg, surveying the world he had come to know so well. Here was the purple mucous swamp, there the forest of singing trees, off in the distance the herd of talking burning giraffes. He looked around for Jinx, and was surprised that he didn't see her.

  "Well?" asked Dali. "What do you think now, friend Werner?"

  "It's an attic," said Heisenberg.

  "You are joking!" exclaimed Dali.

  "It's an attic," repeated Heisenberg.

  Dali scanned the landscape. "Look!" he said, pointing. "Do you not see the lion with the face of the beautiful woman?"

  "I am sorry, Salvador," said Heisenberg, "but what I see are rafters."

  And as the word left his mouth, the lion vanished.

  "No!" cried Dali. "It is a trick of the sunlight!"

  Heisenberg stared at him sympathetically. "There is no sunlight, Salvador. There is no light at all, except that which is coming from your studio."

  "Look there!" said Dali, pointing. "Surely you can see the forest! The trees are singing, and all their limbs are human arms! It is as plain as day."

  "Salvador, we are in an attic," said Heisenberg. "There is no forest."

  And the forest disappeared.

  "This can't be happening!" shouted Dali desperately. "I am not imagining these things! Look, Werner! Forget the animals. You must see the weeping castle on the hill!"

  "No."

  "Look harder. It's windows are eyes, and tears roll down its walls."

  "I wish I could see it, Salvador, but I cannot."

  The weeping castle vanished.

  Dali began shaking uncontrollably. How can this be? I often said I was insane, but until this instant I never believed it! His eyes narrowed. If I don't suggest it, if I don't tell him what's there, maybe then he can't tell me what's not there.

  Dali looked down at the swirling golden grass that had paused briefly in its migration between empty pasturelands. "What are we standing on?" he said.

  "A wooden floor. Why?"

  The grass disappeared.

  No! I didn't say we were on grass! How can you vanish if he doesn't deny I see you?

  Dali swayed dizzily, and Heisenberg put an arm around him to support him.

  "You're not well, Salvador. Let me take you back into your studio. You need to sit down."

  Dali looked ahead, and saw Jinx coming over a hill, waving at him.

  Oh, my God! Go away!
Don't let him not see you!

  He weakly held up a hand, as if to stop her physically, though she was still a quarter mile away.

  "What is it?" asked Heisenberg.

  I can't tell you, or you'll make her vanish. We've got to get back to my world before you guess that she's here, and then she won't be. I can't let you reason her out of existence!

  "The studio!" he gasped. "Please hurry!"

  "Yes, of course," said Heisenberg, helping him turn and half-carrying him back to the studio.

  "The door!" mumbled Dali. "Close it."

  Heisenberg did so, and a moment later Dali sat, exhausted, on his chair.

  "Can I get you anything, Salvador?" asked Heisenberg. "A cold compress? Or perhaps some cognac?"

  "No, Warner," said Dali. "I will be all right in a moment."

  "You had me worried there."

  "You really saw nothing?"

  Heisenberg shook his head. "No." He stared at Dali. "And you really did?"

  "I thought I did. I must be as crazy as they say I am."

  "Perhaps."

  "And now you are humoring me."

  "Not really," said Heisenberg. "There is an old saying that in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Perhaps those of us who are not artists are blind in a way. What you saw was not real to me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't real to you."

  "You are being kind," said Dali, "but if it is only real to me, then it is not real at all."

  "I am a scientist. I believe what I see, what I can prove. You are an artist; you believe what you can imagine. I saw an attic. I believe there is nothing there but an attic. But if what you saw could inspire work such as The Persistence of Memory, then I would call it a fine madness and I would do nothing to cure it."

  Dali shook his head. "I asked you here to show me how to eradicate the world behind the closet—except that when you did, I was overwhelmed by horror and regret."

  "When I did what?"

  "Every time you couldn't see something I pointed to, it disappeared," said Dali. "The experience was shattering, first because it means I am truly mad, and second because I had not realized the destruction of my dream world would be so painful."

  "Perhaps you are seeking to destroy the wrong thing," said Heisenberg.

  "What are you suggesting?" asked Dali.

  "That you do not want to put a world, whether real or imaginary, to death, but to write fini to your own romance with surrealism."

  "Yes, of course—but how?" asked Dali, confused.

  "Your greatest painting is The Persistence of Memory, is it not?"

  "Yes."

  "You created it," continued Heisenberg. "Perhaps it is time to un-create it."

  "Are you suggesting I sneak into the museum and destroy the canvas?"

  Heisenberg shook his head. "There are thousands of prints. It has been reproduced in numerous books. Destroying the original will alter nothing, nor prepare you for the next step in your artistic evolution."

  "Then I don't understand what you are suggesting."

  "If you think about it, you will," said Heisenberg. "And now I must take my leave of you." He walked to the door, stopped, and turned back to Dali. "I pledge to you that I will mention this episode to no one. I think it would be best if you would do the same."

  Then he was gone.

  Chapter 20: Resurrection

  It took Dali almost an hour to regain his composure. Then he picked up a print of The Persistence of Memory and began wondering how he could possibly un-create a work he had already painted.

  Well, let me see, he thought, picking up a pencil. Heisenberg is a mathematician and a scientist. He lives in a precise world, so of course he would see the painting as part of that world. He wouldn't make it vanish, because that would be an act of magic and not of science. So to un-create it, he would show, in precise mathematical terms, exactly how it was created. Those soft forms, those rounded shapes, would be broken down to their molecular level and then slowly begin disintegrating, showing the lines along which they were seamlessly joined.

  He began drawing over the print, and his excitement grew. If I do this and this, if I do not change the subject matter, but turn it from surrealism into science . . .

  By morning he knew exactly what he wanted to do, and that day he began work on The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory. It took Dali, who had once turned out paintings in days, even hours, two years to finish it, but when he was done he knew it would be generally acknowledged to be his greatest painting in almost two decades.

  The day it was completed, Dali should have felt elated. He knew what he had accomplished, but he was overwhelmed by a bittersweet regret—not for surrealism, which he had (he hoped) grown beyond, but because he would never see Jinx again. He missed her smile, her curiosity, even her criticism. He hoped she was happy in her world, which he would never visit again, and that she was still working at her painting.

  He took Gala out to dinner to celebrate finishing the painting, listened with glazed eyes as she listed all the people she wanted him to meet and all the things she wanted to buy, and then returned to the seaside villa he had bought Gala on Spain's Port Lligat.

  Gala was tired and went directly to bed, but Dali was restless. He walked into his studio, took another look at The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, then went out onto the patio that overlooked the water.

  I should be elated, he thought. Why do I feel this sense of loss?

  He looked out at the water, watching the moonlight reflecting off the gentle ripples.

  "It is a very good painting," said a soft voice from behind him.

  He turned to see a familiar red-headed face.

  "I was afraid I would never see you again," he said, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Gala.

  "You can't get rid of me that easily, my old friend," said Jinx. "We still have work to do."

  "Yes," said Dali, feeling enormously relieved. "Yes, we do."

  "And we will do it together," she continued. "You should never have invited your friend to my world. He couldn't understand."

  "No, he couldn't," agreed Dali.

  "From now on, it will be just the two of us," said Jinx.

  "Just the two of us," he promised happily.

  "And great things lie ahead of us," she said.

  "Great things," echoed Dali, feeling complete again.

  -The End-

  Dali’s Life and Art

  He was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech on May 11, 1904, in the small Spanish farm community of Figueres. But he was not the first Salvador Dali born to his parents. He had been preceded by a brother of the same name, who died at 21 months of age. Probably because he bore the name, he grew up feeling that he was a substitute and was driven to prove his own worth.

  He showed artistic talent early on. He was only 14 years old when he had his first small exhibit, and 21 when he had a major exhibit in Barcelona after attending Madrid's San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts.

  His fame was limited to Spain until 1928, when three of his paintings were displayed in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. He held a one-man show in Paris in 1929, joined the Paris Surrealist Group, and met and fell in love with Gala Eluard, the wife of the French poet Paul Eluard. Gala soon became his lover, his business manager, and frequently his inspiration and model. They were married in a civil ceremony in 1934.

  Dali had been acknowledged as the greatest surrealist painter in the world with the creation of The Persistence of Memory. But he had no interest in politics, and clashed with the other members of the surrealistic movement, who wanted his paintings to reflect their political views. They actually held a trial in 1934, and expelled him from the movement, which was absolutely ludicrous, since in his own words and the public's opinion, "Le Surrealisme c'est moi!"

  Still, by 1940 he felt he had carried surrealism as far as he could, and was looking for new challenges. He found some of them in Hollywood after he and Gala
fled to America to escape World War II, and while he labored at cinema, photography, writing and etching, Gala made sure the public was aware of his flamboyance, booking him into any venue that would have him, and encouraging the public display of the most bizarre aspects of his personality.

  After returning to his beloved Port Lligat after the war, Dali also returned to the Catholic faith he had abandoned as a young man, and he and Gala were married (or re-married) in a religious ceremony in Spain in 1958.

  Two Dali museums opened during his lifetime, one in Spain, one in Florida, and the prices paid for his painting soared to astronomical levels.

  Gala died in 1982, and Dali's health began to fade immediately thereafter. He was badly burned in a fire in 1984, he had a pacemaker inserted in 1986, and he finally died of heart failure in a Spanish hospital on January 23, 1989.

  His art practically defines surrealism. An absolute master of technique and perspective, Dali pulled images out of his mind, bizarre images than no one had seen before, but that nonetheless struck a responsive chord.

  His most famous work was unquestionably The Persistence of Memory, and rare is the collection of Dali art book that does not also include The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, the two forming a 23-year Moebius trip through surrealism that brought him back to the imagination that brought him his greatest fame.

  Dali put Gala in dozens of his paintings. Less often mentioned is the fact that he also put exceptionally strange and bizarre versions of himself in many paintings as well. His images of the Spanish Civil War (Soft Construction with Boiled Beans), of Jesus looking down from a cosmic cross at the Virgin Mary as represented by Gala (Crucifixion), of an elephant on enormous stilt-like legs (The Space Elephant) . . . well, nothing like these things had ever been seen. and like much of Dali's best work, once seen could never be forgotten.

  His standing in the world of art? Well, Picasso will probably always be considered the greatest and most famous artist of the 20th Century, but a strong case could be made for Dali as the runner-up in both categories. And when you come to surrealism, his primacy is assured. There is Dali, and there is everyone else. It's really as simple as that.