The World Behind the Door Page 6

  "I am flattered," said Jinx. "What shall we discuss?"

  "Many things," answered Dali. "It is finally time to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality."

  "You have been thinking about what I said," replied Jinx happily.

  "I have. It is time for a break with my past. When I created the film, Un Chien Andalou, the Surrealists accepted me as one of their own—but I am not like them, any more than I am like Picasso, or for that matter Michelangelo. I am Dali, who must be like no one else." He got to his feet. "I grow weary of my world. It is time to visit yours once more."

  "Why?"

  "I have an idea of what I want to paint, but I feel I need to see it once more." He paused. "Will you be my guide?"

  She nodded her assent. "Of course. Otherwise you might get lost and never find your way back."

  "You never get lost on my side of the door," he noted almost enviously.

  "That's because I have a logical mind," answered Jinx. "You are a brilliant man, but logic is not one of your virtues."

  She held out her hand and led him to the closet, then through the door at the back of it, and a moment later he was once again in Jinx's world, where cause followed effect, up was down, and black was white.

  "Hi, there, Jinx," said a voice. "I see you've brought a friend."

  Dali turned and found himself facing a giraffe.

  "Was that you?" he asked.

  "Most assuredly," said the giraffe.

  "But giraffes can't make any sound at all," said Dali. "Everyone knows that."

  "Silliest thing I ever heard," replied the giraffe. "Or do you think I'm not making any sounds."

  "I apologize," said Dali. "Clearly I was the victim of false doctrine." He stared at the creature. "I think I saw you the last time I was here."

  "It's possible. I live here."

  "But you were on fire then."

  The giraffe shrugged. "It was a hot day."

  "That's not a valid reason," protested Dali. "After all, you aren't covered with snow today."

  "I don't like snow."

  "Are you saying you like being on fire?"

  "You've been standing here talking to me," replied the giraffe. "Did I say that?"

  "No, but . . ."

  "Jinx, maybe you should knead your friend's brain the way you might knead a loaf of bread. It's much too rigid."

  "Then tell me what you represent when you're on fire," said Dali.

  "What I represent?" repeated the giraffe. "You make it sound like I've got a constituency that votes for me because I catch on fire."

  "That's not what I meant," protested Dali.

  "A giraffe's life is too busy to worry about what you meant."

  And with that the giraffe ran off.

  "He's right, you know," said Dali after a moment's thought.

  "About what?"

  "I am too rigid. Surrealism is just another discipline, and if one can call it a discipline, then it is already suffering hardening of the arteries. This brief interlude with the giraffe reminds me that I have come here to free myself of all my preconceptions. I would like it to be said someday that the only difference between Dali and a madman is that Dali is not quite mad."

  He began walking through the strange and ever-changing landscape, peering intently into the distance.

  "What are you looking for?" asked Jinx at last.

  "Something I saw the last time I was here."

  "Things change," responded Jinx. "My world is much like yours in that respect. Perhaps if you'll tell me what you're looking for . . ."

  "Those limp clocks."

  "They're not here."

  "You're sure?"

  "You saw them days ago. They weren't keeping time fast enough to make it all the way up to today." She paused. "They'll probably be here next week—but of course, you'll be a week ahead of them."

  "That is wonderful!" exclaimed Dali.

  "That you can't see what you came here to see?" she asked, confused.

  "That you gave me a totally nonsensical answer that makes absolute sense to me," he said.

  "I don't understand."

  "All the better," said Dali. "All right, we can go back to my side of the door."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. If I stayed here, I'd be the most realistic painter of this world. I'd rather be the least realistic of my own—and with the very same paintings."

  "Why did you want to see the clocks?" she asked as they began walking through the dreamlike, angular landscape.

  "Just to study them."

  "What about them interests you?"

  "I don't like Time," said Dali. "It robs us of our youth and beauty. Eventually it burdens us with so many years that we can barely carry them on our backs. The load becomes so heavy that we walk stooped over or with a cane, and eventually we cannot bear the weight of our years any longer. As far as I am concerned, Time is a villain."

  "An interesting way of looking at it," Jinx admitted.

  "I want to create a painting in which Time loses all meaning, where the rigid ticking of seconds and hours and years becomes as soft as, I don't know, as overripe cheese." He paused, considering the concept. "Yes, I think that the limp watches will represent the camembert of Time."

  "Then that's it?" asked Jinx, obviously disappointed. "You're going to create a painting that contains nothing but limp watches?"

  "No," answered Dali. "But they are a start, a theme. Everything else will support that theme, strengthen it, add to it."

  "And what will this 'everything else' be?" asked Jinx as the closet door suddenly appeared in the middle of a dark purple sand dune some quarter mile away.

  "That is what we have to talk about, isn't it?" answered Dali, heading toward the door.

  Chapter 10: The Greatest Villain

  "You see?" said Dali, briefly sketching the limp watches. "I cannot do an entire painting of just the watches. If it is to have any meaning, I must show . . . what?" He looked at the sketch. "It must be staring me in the face, but I do not see it. Yet I have the methodology now that I've read and spoken to Freud."

  "You do?"

  He nodded absently, still studying the sketch. "I call it my paranoiac-critical method, which is really a tip of the hat to my friend Sigmund, who gave me the word 'paranoiac.' Your world gave me the rest."

  "What exactly do you think my world gave you that you didn't have before?" asked Jinx.

  "You'll get mad if I tell you."

  "Perhaps—but unlike Gala, I won't hit you."

  "Freud has pointed out in his work that hallucinations are very much like dreams: they are the mind's way of giving some shape or form to secret fears and longings. Clearly I have learned to induce psychotic hallucinations myself, for what else could your world behind the closet possibly be?"

  "It is my home," she said. "And if I have to kick you again to prove that I am real, I will."

  "I told you that my answer would make you mad," said Dali with a knowing smile.

  "Would you like proof that my world exists?" asked Jinx.

  "Why not?" he said, then hastily added: "I do not consider inflicting physical pain an acceptable proof."

  "Fine," she said promptly. "Call your friend Lorca, the writer, and invite him over. Or better still, this Picasso you keep talking about. Don't tell them what they're about to see, so when they enter my world you can't claim the observations were due to the power of suggestion."

  "No!" he said so harshly that it startled her. She stared at him expectantly but said nothing. "If it is not real, they will lock me away for my own good."

  "No, they won't," replied Jinx. "They already think you're somewhere between eccentric and half-mad, and they leave you alone. What is the real reason?"

  "I won't share it with another artist!" he shouted.

  "Lorca isn't a painter, he's a writer."

  "He's a literary artist."

  "Well, at least you're honest. But just as people have different perc
eptions of your world, I think your friends would see things that you do not see, and miss things that are very plain to you."

  "But you don't know it, do you?" he persisted.

  "No, Salvador, I don't know it. Both our worlds change and evolve, but mine does so a lot faster. Even I am confused by it from time to time."

  "As I am confused by mine," he said. Suddenly he smiled. "I think that's it."

  "That is what?"

  "That is part of the answer I have been seeking for my painting."

  "I don't understand," said Jinx.

  "We remember the way our worlds were the last time we experienced them," he said. "But they change, however subtly, with the passage of time. That's why the world can be so confusing. Because I remember it as it was, but as I said, Time is a villain. It deludes us, and I will show that with the limp watches."

  "I'm not following you."

  "Who is Time deluding? Who remembers things as they were, and has difficulty adjusting to things as they are?"

  "Everyone."

  "But everyone isn't creating the painting," he pointed out. "I am."

  "Then you are going to be the subject of your own painting?" she asked.

  He shook his head impatiently. "I will be in the painting, but the subject is Time, and the way it fools memory—and just as Time will be represented by watches that are as soft as overripe cheese, watches that are losing their structural integrity, that is the way I myself must be represented."

  "I don't understand," said Jinx, frowning. "Why must you also be soft?"

  "More than soft," answered Dali. "I must be almost shapeless."

  "Still why?"

  "If I painted myself as I am, I would be saying that Time has no effect on me, that no matter how inaccurate my memories become with the passage of Time, I am exactly the same man I would be if Time did not pass at all."

  He leaned forward and began sketching a grotesquely misshapen body. Finally he finished and leaned back.

  "What do you think?" he asked Jinx.

  "I don't like it," she said. "No one will ever know it's a human, let alone that it's you."

  "They don't have to know it's me, as long as I know it," he said. "But I agree. I can't put in the details I want if I use my entire body. I think I'll just use a hugely-distorted head."

  He sketched again, then stopped and stared at what he'd done.

  "It doesn't look like a head," said Jinx.

  "It has eyelashes and a nose," noted Dali. "What else could it possibly be?"

  "In a world with limp clocks? It could be anything."

  "Then I will provide it with another facial feature, perhaps two," said Dali. "But first I will have to consider what features to use."

  "And where will the watches be?" asked Jinx.

  "Good question," he said. "I have been thinking about it, and I believe I have the answer."

  "What is it?"

  He pointed to a corner of the studio. "Stand over there."

  She did as he asked.

  "Now count to three."

  "One. Two. Three."

  "Very good," he said. "Now go stand by the door to the kitchen."

  She did so.

  "Count again."

  "One. Two. Three."

  "Well, there you have it," said Dali, nodding his head in satisfaction.

  "There I have what?" asked Jinx, puzzled.

  "Don't you see?" said Dali. "Time doesn't exist just in the corner, or just by the door, or here at the easel. It's everywhere at once."

  "I knew that."

  "Sometimes the things we know are the least obvious to us," said Dali. "Since Time is everywhere at once, what I must do is create a landscape, to show that Time is not merely a villain in my studio, or whatever museum or private home in which the painting eventually hangs. To show the universality of the theme, I must show a large landscape."

  "You could show the watches in outer space, or on Mars," suggested Jinx.

  "An intriguing suggestion," he said, suddenly interested. Then he shook his head. "No, I do not know for a fact that Time is a villain on Mars. Probably it is, but I have never been to Mars or outer space, so I can't be sure. I will paint the watches on Earth—but in a landscape that cannot be identified as Spain or anywhere else. That will show that it is true everywhere." He paused to consider the painting further, then continued: "I think the landscape must be bleak beyond imagining, to show the detritus of Time's march through the world. Perhaps I will even hang one of the watches on the leafless limb of a dead tree, to emphasize that fact." He paused. "Yes, that will work. And I will use no undiluted primarily colors, which will further lend to the effect." He frowned briefly. "But I still need something else, something to hold the attention."

  "Don't you think limp watches and a barely-human face will hold the attention?" asked Jinx.

  "They will capture the attention. But I must add something more, something small, to hold the attention. Something that is not obvious at first, but which they will see when they study the painting and which will force them to study it further." He sighed deeply. "I am still not considering all the facets of this painting. Time affects more than the memory. Eventually it will kill you and me and every living thing. Even rocks will decay in the fullness of time. Time is not only a villain, but a murderer. I must make that clear."

  "How much bleaker can you make it?" asked Jinx curiously.

  "In that direction lies disaster," replied Dali. "That would make the painting so bleak, so lifeless, that no one would look at it for more than a few seconds before they were overcome by hopelessness and depression. No, the answer lies elsewhere." He turned to her. "And of course you know what it is."

  "Why should you say that?"

  "Because, my precocious young lady, every other aspect of the painting is due to your input, so surely you know what else is needed to make it perfect."

  "I never told you to paint limp watches and a misshapen face," said Jinx. "They're your own ideas."

  "But it was you who convinced me to search for such unique ideas," answered Dali. "Who else in all the world would paint a limp watch? Who else would paint an elephant on stilt-like legs, which I shall certainly do one of these days. No, Jinx, you may not have said 'Paint this!' or 'Draw that!', but you were the one who convinced me to look for things that only I can see and paint. So," he concluded, "what is the answer? What more must I put into the painting?"

  "I really don't know," said Jinx.

  "And if you did, you wouldn't tell me anyway, would you?" said Dali.

  "Probably not," she admitted. "But I really and truly don't know."

  "Then I must study it further and come up with the solution myself."

  He turned back to the sketch and sat motionless in front of it for the better part of an hour.

  "Bah!" he said. "I need air. I am going out for a walk."

  "I'll come with you."

  "Well," he said, putting on a satin cape and grabbing a silver-headed cane, "let's go, then."

  "It's quite warm out," she said. "You don't need the cape."

  "I don't wear it for me," he said disdainfully. "I wear it for them."

  "Them?"

  "The same people I use the cane for, the same people I will cultivate the mustache for. In brief, everyone but me."

  "And me," added Jinx.

  "And you," he agreed, opening the door for her.

  Chapter 11: The Finishing Touch

  They had walked through the empty streets for perhaps an hour. Twice they passed men Dali knew. Both times the men grunted a greeting, but never mentioned Jinx. As they continued their stroll, Dali became silent and seemingly morose, lost in his thoughts about the painting. Jinx hummed a bouncy tune, stopped to pet a stray dog, sketched a pigeon that perched on a window ledge.

  "Why are you so happy?" asked Dali at last.

  "Why shouldn't I be?" she said. "It's a beautiful day, the sun is out, and I am finally getting used to this world, to the patterns of its streets and bu
ildings, to the way every single person bears such a striking resemblance to every other person. You don't always find that in my world."

  "I know," he said. "Perhaps that is why I prefer painting your world to my own."

  "Have you come up with any ideas yet?"

  "Either sixty-three or sixty-four, I lost count." He grimaced. "Each was worse than the last."

  "Well, cheer up. It will come to you."

  "I wish I had your confidence."

  They walked another block, and suddenly she stopped humming.

  "Oh, that's so sad!" she said.

  "What is?" asked Dali distractedly.

  She pointed to a small cat that lay dead in the street some forty yards ahead of them. "I think a car must have killed the poor thing. Probably it happened last night and the driver never saw it."

  "Unless it happened today and the driver hated cats," shot back Dali, whose inability to solve his problem was making him argumentative.

  "No," said Jinx with certainty as they walked closer to the cat. "It was killed last night."

  "Let me guess," said Dali sarcastically. "You've read another mystery novel and you're practicing your detection."

  She shook her head. "It's just common sense." She pointed to the cat. "It's covered by ants and flies. If it had just been killed, that many insects wouldn't have discovered it yet."

  Dali stopped and stared at the cat for a long moment. Then he uttered a surprised laugh and thrust a fist triumphantly above his head.

  "What a blessing you turned out to be!" he said happily.

  "I don't understand."

  "I need to suggest death and decay," he said, "but if I make the painting any bleaker people will turn away from it, you've convinced me of that. But," he added, "what if I have insects crawling across the faces of the watches? People are fascinated by them because they are as different from us as any living things can be. They are disgusted by them, too, because sooner or later everyone has seen insects doing exactly what they are doing to the remains of that cat. But if there is no life in the painting, that will mean Time has won, and what is left are the insects. They will have nothing to eat, so they will be crawling across the faces of the watches, just as they have crawled across the face of the world for hundreds of millions of years. Things come and things go, but they remain, the one constant among Nature's creations."