The World Behind the Door Page 7

  "I think it'll look creepy," offered Jinx.

  "Yes, it will," agreed Dali. "But that will fascinate the viewer, rather than so depress him that he walks away."

  "So that's the answer—insects?" said Jinx dubiously. "You're going to use dull colors to paint a bleak, barren landscape, a misshapen face, some limp watches, and some insects. And that's it?"

  "It sounds terrible, doesn't it?" said Dali with a smile. He tapped his temple with a forefinger. "But when I see it in here, I know that it will be the greatest thing I have ever painted, maybe the greatest I ever will paint."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. And I owe it all to you and Freud."

  "Before you go thanking anyone, perhaps you should paint it first and see if you're still pleased with it," suggested Jinx.

  "The actual painting is the easy part," said Dali. "Trust me on this. This work will become the talk of the art world. It will secure my future as an artist."

  "Just watches and insects and a face?"

  "And a vision," he added. "My vision."

  "What will you call it?"

  "I expect you to vanish when I finish it—don't kick me! I haven't figured out how an imaginary girl manages to do that yet—but I shall be eternally grateful to you, and I will never forget you. And since the painting is about Time anyway, I will combine the two notions call it The Persistence of Memory."

  "I like it," she said. "I wonder if anyone else will."

  She had her answer a month later.

  Chapter 12: The Persistence of Gala

  12. The Persistence of Gala

  The painting was an instant sensation. Critics of every type, no matter what their tastes, acknowledged it as a work of genius. Not all of them agreed on its meaning, and Dali, making the most of it, gave each a different interpretation when asked. It made no difference; he had moved from being a very good painter to being an acknowledged master with a single painting.

  Publicly Dali was self-assured. Of course he knew audiences would love his painting. No, he never doubted its effect. Yes, he knew from the first instant what he was going to put in the painting and what it meant.

  Privately, he was alternately surprised and bitter—surprised that a single painting had made his name known throughout the world, even among people who had no interest in art; and bitter, because he was convinced that he'd been producing paintings of almost the same quality for years and had been ignored by the world beyond the art colony.

  "Well," he concluded one evening when he and Jinx were taking their solitary walk along the seashore, "at least one thing will come of the painting, other than notoriety. I will be rich enough and famous enough for Gala to finally leave her husband and marry me."

  "You really want that?" said Jinx, who had a difficult time understanding his relationship with this woman she had never seen.

  "I love her more than life itself," said Dali. "If I could, I would spend the rest of my life covering her hands and feet with kisses. I would face the brave bulls in the arena for her. I would don the uniform of the soldier and languish in the trenches for her."

  "You'd do all that for her?" asked Jinx.

  "Absolutely," Dali assured her. "She is the heart of my heart and soul of my soul." He paused uncomfortably. "I just wish I wasn't so frightened of her."

  "She's not going to harm the meal ticket that produced The Persistence of Memory," said Jinx.

  "She will be after me night and day to produce an even greater painting, and then one that is greater still."

  "Perhaps she just wants the best for you," said Jinx. "Or for her."

  "Her only flaw is that she is just a bit too possessive," said Dali. "She does not like me to spend time with any of my friends, and she seems as jealous of men as of women, though of course she has no reason to be."

  "All right, she's possessive," said Jinx. "We all have our faults. That's not a terrible one."

  "No, of course not," said Dali. "There are worse things than being possessive. And domineering. And jealous. And domineering. And occasionally violent."

  "She must have some good qualities," said Jinx, who had yet to hear Dali mention any.

  "She loves me," he replied. "What better quality could one want." He sighed. "Of course, she doesn't love me enough to marry me until I have more money than her current husband—but an exquisite creature like that needs to have gifts and money showered upon her."

  "I thought you were going to put her face in every painting you did?"

  "Her face or her body," he acknowledged. "Well, perhaps not every one. She won't mind if she is not in each painting. What will enrage her is if I put someone else in a painting." He looked at her. "Like you, for instance."

  "Well, then you shouldn't paint me."

  "That's what we have to talk about."

  "Painting me?" she asked, surprised.

  "No. But what to paint next. I think it's time I visited the world behind the closet again."

  "I don't think so."

  "What?" demanded Dali in panicky tones.

  "You have been there twice. If you go back there every time you want to create another painting, you will never paint your own world."

  "My own world is incredibly dull. I have made my reputation for all time by painting your world."

  "They are the same, you know."

  "Ridiculous!" snapped Dali. "I have been to your world. It is nothing like mine."

  "You yourself explained it the first day you taught me to paint," answered Jinx. "The difference is perspective. I have a home and a family, I have friends and pets, we have farms and cities, trees and flowers. You have the same things. Each world simply imposes a different perspective on its inhabitants."

  "I shall have to think about that," said Dali. "It is a very interesting observation."

  Jinx glanced out the window. "You have something more immediate to think about, Salvador."

  "What is that?"

  "Based on the drawings of her you have shown me, I would say that Gala has come to pay you a visit."

  "Omygod!" whispered Dali, ashen-faced. "What am I to do with you?"

  "Introduce me as your cousin."

  "She knows all my cousins! Quick, go back through the closet!"

  "She's at the front door right now. She'll hear me moving through the closet."

  "The bathroom—fast!" said Dali desperately, giving her a shove in the right direction, then racing to the front door just as Gala knocked at it.

  "Why, Gala!" he said. "What a surprise! I did not know you had returned from Paris."

  "All they can talk about in Paris is your painting," she said, turning her head and offering him a cheek to kiss. He chose instead to kiss her hand. She pulled it away with an expression of distaste when he had finished.

  "May I offer you some wine?" asked Dali.

  "No, thank you," said Gala. "Why are you so breathless and red of face?"

  "It is entirely due to the pleasure of seeing you, of course," he answered.

  "You seem nervous, Salvador," she said.

  "Me?" he asked innocently.

  "Have you been seeing another woman while I was gone?"

  "Certainly not. I have been painting my masterpiece while you were gone."

  She walked to the bedroom and stared at the neatly-made bed, then went to the studio, turned to face him, and spoke: "I'll believe you—for now." She glanced at some half-finished canvases. "How many commissions have you gotten since you produced The Persistence of Memory?"

  "Four."

  "For how much?"

  "What difference does it make?" responded Dali. "I will never hurt for money again."

  "What difference does it make?" repeated Gala. "Are you mad? Overnight you have become the preeminent artist on the continent, the only man mentioned in the same breath as Picasso. You must demand payment equivalent with your status. Now, how much were you offered?"

  He named a figure.

  "You are worth three times that much," said Gala. "I
think I will become your manager as of right now. And the first thing we will do is renegotiate those fees."

  "But I have already begun preliminary work on two of the paintings," protested Dali.

  "Don't you understand?" said Gala. "You are Salvador Dali! If these men don't agree to the new fees, then I will sell them on the open market for even more!"

  Dali shrugged, feeling overwhelmed as he always did in Gala's presence.

  "And now you will take me out to the best restaurant in Madrid," said Gala.

  "Are you hungry?" asked Dali.

  "Why else would I go to a restaurant?" she said.

  To see and be seen, he thought, but he merely shrugged again and said nothing.

  "Let me just step into the bathroom and fix my make-up and we'll leave," announced Gala.

  Dali instantly grabbed her arm. She turned to face him, and for an instant he thought she might hit him.

  "It's a mess," he said. "I was washing paint off, and it's all over the sink and mirror. I'll clean them later. Come on, let's go and you can put on your face at the restaurant."

  Her nose wrinkled. "I don't smell any oil or turpentine," she said. "Perhaps it's not as dirty as you think."

  She took a tentative step toward the bathroom, and he retained his hold on her arm.

  "I was using water colors as a preliminary medium," he said. "That's why it doesn't smell—but it's filthy. You have such a lovely suit on, I would hate to see it ruined."

  The thought of ruining her suit convinced her to listen to him, and they headed for the front door.

  As they did, a blue eye watched them through the keyhole of the bathroom door.

  Poor man, she thought. You have many faults and many weaknesses, but you deserve better than this.

  Chapter 13: Wedded Blitz

  The change occurred almost overnight. Suddenly every painting Dali produced was eagerly awaited, endlessly analyzed, and sold for sums that had seemed impossible to him only a year earlier. Critics began to see certain themes recurring in his work, and offers came in not only for paintings but speaking engagements and even an autobiography. The editors of two art magazines actually got into a fistfight over the meaning of the limp watches, and a woman Dali had never seen before wrote an article insisting that she had been the model for the misshapen face. (No one believed her except Gala, who was certain that the woman was Dali's secret mistress and screamed at him so loudly and so long that he actually lost the hearing in his left ear for a full day.)

  But as Dali's star ascended, Jinx reported that she had problems of her own. She hoped they were the same problems Dali had had as a young man, so that he might be able to tell her how best to cope with them. It seemed that her peers on her side of the door thought she'd gone off the deep end. After all, who had ever heard of a square room or a level floor? Why did all the horses have the same dull manes and tails, and all the dogs the same number of legs? Why did rain and snow come down, when everyone knew they were just as likely to float up?

  "Are you being true to your inner vision?" said Dali when she put the question to him during one of her increasingly infrequent visits.

  "It's not a matter of an inner vision," answered Jinx. "I paint what I see, and when I am here I see things that make my friends think I am crazy." Her face reflected her concern. "What can I do about it?"

  "Revel in it!" said Dali. "Anything that makes you unique is good. Everyone thinks I am crazy; well, everyone except Freud, anyway—and all that has done is enhance the value of my work." Suddenly he smiled. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't I learn that from you?"

  "It works for you," answered Jinx, "but I don't want to be unique. I am just a girl, and all I want to do is paint the things I see. You are the one who was striving to find things that matched your bizarre mental images, not I. You came to my world; I didn't come to yours."

  "I was drawn to it," said Dali, feeling defensive without knowing why.

  "That doesn't alter the fact that it was you who sought out the unusual and the bizarre, not me," said Jinx. "I merely stumbled upon it when I escorted you back to your side of the door."

  "All right," said Dali with a shrug. "If you won't brag about the bizarre visions you capture on canvas, if you won't take full credit for it, then the only alternative is to ignore the critics."

  "They're not critics, they're my friends," she said. "I'm just a girl, remember?"

  "Now that I come to think of it, that's very curious," said Dali.

  "What is?"

  Dali walked slowly around her, staring at her intently as he did so.

  "Very curious indeed," he repeated. "I hadn't noticed it before, or at least I hadn't paid any attention to it, but you haven't aged a minute since I first met you."

  "Time enslaves your world, not mine," she answered. "It is much more elastic on my side of the door."

  "And there is something else I never noticed until right now," continued Dali. "Except for the hair color, you could be Gala's younger sister. In fact, you could be Gala at age thirteen."

  "I hope that's not why you befriended me," said Jinx. "I am my own person."

  "No, that's not why I befriended you," said Dali, "though it has become obvious to me that I am drawn to women and girls with Gala's features. It is just an interesting observation." He paused, still studying her face. "I have never asked you before, but based on what you know of her, what is your opinion of Gala?"

  "Why do you ask?" she said suspiciously.

  "Because," said Dali, looking more apprehensive than excited, "we have set a date for our marriage."

  "I hope the two of you will be very happy together," said Jinx, trying to keep the doubt out of her voice.

  "I shall be ecstatically happy," he replied without much assurance.

  Funny, she thought. I never knew you were a masochist. I wonder what your friend Freud would make of it. Aloud she said, "Then I am ecstatically happy for you."

  "It means that you and I will have to be even more discreet in our meetings," he continued.

  "If she loves you enough to marry you," replied Jinx, "she should love you enough to believe you when you tell her that we are just friends."

  Dali sighed deeply. "You do not know Gala. She is absolute perfection, of course—but she is not always reasonable. Still, I love her desperately and I need her even more. There are so many things I cannot do. I cannot cook, or clean my clothes, or manage my money. She will take over all these functions and free me to paint."

  "You are free to paint right now," noted Jinx.

  "Ah, but Gala says it is time to grow up."

  "Doesn't that mean that it's time to learn to handle money and feed yourself?" she asked innocently.

  "You are too young to understand," he said uncomfortably. "Someday you will grow up."

  "Someday you may, too," said Jinx.

  "I resent that!"

  "Then I apologize," she said with obvious insincerity.

  "I have but a single fear," said Dali after a moment's silence.

  "Only one?" asked Jinx. "I should think you would have many." All inspired by Gala, she added silently.

  "No, just one," said Dali. "This place is not fitting for a woman of Gala's breeding and quality, and she has explained that it is even less fitting for a man with my current income and prospects. So I think I may be moving after the wedding." He grimaced involuntarily. "That means that I will not be able to visit your world again."

  "I wouldn't be too sure of that," said Jinx.

  "Oh?"

  "Of course, I don't know it for a fact, but I think the doorway will follow you wherever you go."

  "What makes you think so?" he asked hopefully.

  "I don't know. I just have a feeling that the doorway is yours rather than the closet's. I've asked around, and no one remembers seeing the door before you moved into this place, and now everyone sees it plain as day."

  Dali closed his eyes, an expression of enormous relief on his face. "I pray that you are right."r />
  "We'll know soon enough," said Jinx. "Now let me see what you have been working on."

  Chapter 14: Escape

  Gala and Dali took up residence in a bigger place, though it was another two years before they were actually married.

  In the meantime, she began separating him from his friends, one by one. She was jealous of women, but she was also jealous of men, children, dogs, cats, anything that took Dali's attention away from her.

  The one exception was his painting. She knew a good thing when she saw it, and she never interfered with his methods, his subject matter, or anything else concerning his art—except to suggest, as prolific as he was, that he become even more so, that popularity didn't always last and the more paintings he could sell now, the better.

  She also encouraged his public eccentricities. She helped wax and train his mustache, and within two years it had become his trademark, as famed throughout the world as his painting was.

  She even wrote out some answers for him, after finding out some of the questions that were to be asked in an interview. Examples:

  Question: Why do you wear a mustache?

  Answer: In order to pass unobserved.

  Question: What is surrealism?

  Answer: Surrealism is myself.

  Question: It has been suggested that your paintings are great jokes, done at the expense of the critics. Is there any truth to that?

  Answer: It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

  By the time of their wedding in 1934, Gala had turned him into the public's favorite celebrity, the probably insane genius of Madrid. Then she decided that the press was taking up too much of his painting time, as well as too much of the time he spent with her, and she severely limited its access to him.

  This actually made him even more of a celebrity, the mad recluse who emerged every month or two with a new painting that the critics could argue about until the next one appeared.

  His new studio, a huge room off the living room, had a small closet to hold his supplies—and the day they moved in he found a door at the back of it. He covered it with blank canvases, and since Gala's sole interest was in his finished work, not in the production of it, she never opened the closet.