The World Behind the Door Page 9

  He didn't visit it very often any more, but he was always happy to see Jinx, who still seemed not to have aged since the day he first met her. Her visits were few and far between, but whenever they were together they discussed art. In fact, while Dali lectured on art to anyone who would pay his exorbitant fees, and pontificated on it to members of the worshipful press, he found that he never actually discussed it with anyone except Jinx.

  "What about Gala?" asked Jinx one afternoon when Dali made mention of the fact.

  "She discusses how to get the best price for my art, and how to make me even more famous, but she never actually talks about art with me," said Dali. "Do you know that after I agreed to paint one of her friend's portraits, she told him I would add a burning giraffe for another ten thousand dollars?"

  "Did you agree?" asked Jinx, curious.

  "Not at first."

  "But finally?"

  Dali grimaced at the memory. "Gala has her own methods of persuasion."

  "I'm sorry."

  "There are two sides to every issue," responded Dali. "If it weren't for Gala, no one would want a Dali portrait with or without a burning giraffe." He decided to change the subject. "You haven't mentioned my mustache lately," he said, stroking it gently with his fingertips. "How do you like it?"

  "It looks like the ends are vines reaching to the sky," answered Jinx. "It is very distinctive."

  "I don't think there is another like it anywhere in the world," said Dali with a touch of pride.

  "I think you're probably right," said Jinx.

  There was an uneasy silence.

  "Would you like some tea?" asked Dali after a moment. "Or better still, a Coke or a Pepsi?"

  "What is a Coke or a Pepsi?" she asked, puzzled.

  "Uniquely American drinks. I have some of each in the icebox."

  "There's no alcohol in them?"

  "None."

  "All right, I'll have one."

  "I'll be right back," he said, heading off to the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a twelve-ounce bottle in each hand and handed one to her.

  "I like it," said Jinx, after taking a taste. "By the way, where is your latest work? I couldn't find any new canvases."

  "I am expanding my repertoire," he announced.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Have you ever seen a moving picture?"

  "I saw The Andalusian Dog."

  "They have progressed enormously since then. Now they have words and music."

  "You mean like a play where everyone sings and dances?" she asked.

  "Well, they can do that, too," he said. "But for the most part, the moving pictures use music for background and emphasis. And one of the greatest directors is a man named Alfred Hitchcock."

  "You are making a movie?"

  "Not exactly," said Dali, making no attempt to hide his excitement. "But Hitchcock is making a film titled Spellbound, about a man who might or might not be insane . . ."

  "Based on you?" she asked.

  "No," he said. "Though it would make a better story if it was. Anyway, the film will show this man's fantasies and delusions, and I am designing the sets for that part of it. It is very exciting."

  "How long will it take you?"

  He shrugged. "I have never done it before, so I don't know. Maybe half a year, maybe a little longer."

  "That's between five and ten paintings you won't do, Salvador," she pointed out.

  "I know," he said. "But I think my best work as a painter is behind me. I need to expand, to move into other fields, fields that my genius has not touched yet."

  "You are a painter, Salvador," insisted Jinx. "You should paint."

  "I am an artist," he replied. "I should create art. I can create it on canvas, but I am also learning to create it on photographic plates, and Hitchcock has hired me to create it on celluloid."

  "Time is very elastic in my world," said Jinx, "but it is fixed and rigid in yours. One second in Virginia is exactly the same duration as one second in Spain or Italy. Time is the one commodity you cannot replace, so it is the one commodity you cannot afford to waste."

  "I am not wasting my time," he said defensively. "I am expanding my horizons."

  "You are the man who created The Persistence of Memory and The Inventions of the Monsters and all the others. How much farther can your horizons expand?"

  "I don't know," he admitted. "But I have almost reached my creative limit as a painter. It is time to apply my talents in other directions."

  "I think you are making a mistake."

  "You are just a girl."

  "Have I ever misled you before?" said Jinx.

  He stared at her thoughtfully. "No," he said at last. "No, you have not."

  "I am not misleading you now," said Jinx, walking back to the door in the back of the closet. "Will you at least think about it?"

  "I promise you," said Dali as she returned to her own world. "I will consider it."

  Chapter 17: Antidotes

  He thought about it, as he promised he would, but he decided to continue his association with the cinema, and Gala was of course thrilled to be making new contacts among the Hollywood elite.

  Jack Warner took time off from battling with his headstrong stars, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis, to commission a portrait by Dali, and to introduce him to a number of powerful Hollywood executives. The friendship ended when Dali delivered his portrait, Warner ordered him to repaint one of his hands and the wall behind him, and Dali explained in no uncertain terms that Warner could edit all the Warner Brothers films he wanted, but that no one edited a Dali portrait.

  One of the men Warner had introduced him to was fascinated by his art and his ideas, and that man was Walt Disney. Disney wanted to collaborate with Dali on a cartoon, not one for children but something with artistic ambitions such as his earlier Fantasia. Dali moved to California and showed up every morning at the studio, bubbling over with new ideas and dozens of drawings each day—but eventually Disney lost interest and dropped the project.

  Dali painted almost nothing after the end of World War II. When he wasn't courting Hollywood or letting Hollywood court him, he dabbled again in photography, he began writing scores of articles and even completed his autobiography, and—with Gala's urging and direction—he perfected his performance art decades before the term "performance art" came into being.

  Soon almost all of his time was occupied with merely being Salvador Dali for a public that couldn't get enough of half-crazed painter with the unique mustache. His output of paintings diminished, nothing he created for Hollywood except Spellbound was made, and he proved to be far less brilliant as a photographer than as a painter.

  He took a new interest in religion, and combined it with an old interest in Gala. Whenever he painted the Virgin Mary, or any female saint, she almost always bore Gala's face. Before long even the critics who had fallen in love with his work were finding it a little too predictable.

  He was sitting alone in his studio on a September evening—Gala spent less and less time with him, and more and more time among her Hollywood and socialite friends—and he was reading yet another review suggesting that the madman of Spain had lost his touch, that perhaps he was becoming too sane to create the kind of work that had captivated the world for close to twenty years.

  "That's a very cruel review, and not at all accurate," said a familiar voice, and he turned to see Jinx standing behind him, reading the review over his shoulder.

  "The man is right," said Dali unhappily. "I have lost whatever I had. I took surrealism as far as it could be taken. It was not a dead end, but there is nothing further that I can do with it except repeat myself."

  "Well?" said Jinx.

  "Well what?" he replied irritably.

  "Who says you have to keep being a surrealist?"

  "What are you talking about?" demanded Dali. "You live in a surreal world."

  "It is not surreal to me," she said. "But that is neither here nor there. You are a supremely talented paint
er. If you feel you have gone as far as you can in one direction, then perhaps it is time to go in another."

  "In what direction?" he said. "Am I to paint happy children and loving grandparents and thoughtful doctors? Norman Rockwell is already doing that. Should the great Dali stoop to painting the covers for pulp magazines?"

  "Of course not," answered Jinx. "Although I would love to see what you would do with a science fiction magazine. No, the choice is not between copying Norman Rockwell and painting pulp covers and you know it."

  "Yes, I know it," he said unhappily. "But I sit before a canvas, and I am lost. I know what I must not paint, but I don't know what I should paint. Take yourself, young Jinx. Toulouse-Lautrec would paint you one way, Picasso another, Magritte a third, even Norman Rockwell would paint you in his own distinctive manner. But the only distinctive style I have is surrealism, and I am sick of it."

  "You'll think of something," she said.

  "I doubt it."

  "Of course you will," she said encouragingly. "How did you come to surrealism?"

  "My friend Freud," answered Dali. "And you, of course. But he's been dead for years, and even if he were here he would just tell me to paint what my subconscious says to paint, and you are unable to suggest any alternative."

  "Then perhaps you will have to find another Freud," offered Jinx.

  He frowned. "Another Freud? You mean another student of the mind, like Jung?"

  "Probably not," she said. "You've plundered your subconscious for twenty years now. It's time to find a way to lock it off, and open other doors."

  He studied her intently. "What have you in mind?"

  "Nothing. I am not unhappy with my art."

  "I will not let you off that easily," he insisted. "You know something. What is it?"

  "I?" she said innocently. "I am not in search of an antidote to Sigmund Freud."

  "An antidote?" he said, and considered the notion. "An antidote," he repeated, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice. "Yes, that might be the answer: an antidote to Sigmund Freud."

  Suddenly Dali got to his feet and entered the closet. At first Jinx thought he was going to enter her world again, but instead he grabbed his satin clock and silver-headed cane and came back out.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "The world is my pharmacy," he announced. "Somewhere in it I will find the antidote I seek."

  Chapter 18: Heisenberg

  Portraits, thought Dali, as he walked down the street. No one expects anything special from portraits. In fact, when I try to give them something special, as I did with Jack Warner, they object. I suppose I can keep doing portraits while hunting for this antidote.

  He stopped at a corner newsstand, where he noticed a poster for a speech being given that night by Werner Heisenberg. Dali checked his watch. He had time to get to the auditorium, and who would make a better subject for the great Salvador Dali than the creator of quantum mechanics and Heinsenberg's Uncertainty Principle?

  Uncertainty Principle, he mused. It even sounds like a Dali painting.

  He walked the six blocks to the auditorium. The manager recognized him instantly, and insisted that Dali be his guest, bowing obsequiously and escorting the artist to the front of the audience, where he was offered a seat in the first row. Dali couldn't remember whether he was supposed to tip managers as well as waiters and cab drivers, and before he could decide the manager was gone.

  He could hear the whispers in the audience behind him. "It's Dali!" "No it isn't!" "It must be. Look at the mustache!" "But doesn't he live in Spain?" "Go ask him!" "You go ask him!" Dali could have spent the whole evening contentedly sitting there with his back to the audience, listening to the awed whispering, but then the lights went down and an announcer came out, explaining that the greatest theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein was about to speak.

  A moment later Heisenberg came onstage. He began with a joke that elicited polite, rather than enthusiastic, laughter, and then quickly moved into the body of his speech, most of which dealt with quantum mechanics and went right over the audience's head.

  But not Dali's.

  He didn't understand most of what he heard, but he understood that this man was the polar opposite of Freud. If it couldn't be proved, Heisenberg didn't believe in it. If something wasn't logical, then it was clearly wrong and just as clearly worthless.

  The more he spoke, the more excited Dali became. He hadn't felt like this since that first day he had encountered Freud. Freud had opened a door for him, had shown him the power of his psyche, of his dreams and fears and longings. Heisenberg clearly had no use for such things. Dreams were something men were meant to outgrow, fears were to be overcome, longings were to be approached in the most logical manner.

  This man could be my salvation!

  The speech lasted for ninety minutes. By the end, more than half the audience had left, and the man sitting right behind Dali was snoring gently, but Dali sat as if mesmerized. Finally he got to his feet, applauding wildly, and the remaining members of the audience were shamed into giving Heisenberg a standing ovation.

  Then, as Heisenberg was walking off the stage Dali raced up to him.

  "I must speak to you!" he said excitedly.

  "You are Salvador Dali, are you not?" asked Heisenberg, peering at him through thick glasses.

  "Yes."

  "I have long admired your mastery of your technique, your use of color and perspective," said Heisenberg. "I do not pretend to understand your subject matter, but then, I don't imagine you understand mine either."

  "But I want to!"

  "The great surrealist?" said Heisenberg with an amused smile. "Now, that is interesting."

  "When can we speak together?" asked Dali.

  "There is a charming bar in my hotel. They have provided me with a chauffeur and a limousine, so why don't you join me and he will drive us both there."

  Dali eagerly agreed, and a few minutes later they were sitting in the bar, awaiting their drinks.

  "I was surprised to see you in the audience, Senor Dali," Heisenberg was saying. "This is the seventh city on my tour, and mostly what I get are mathematics and physics professors. I am quite flattered to have an artist of your reputation attend one of my lectures."

  "I will be honest with you, Dr. Heisenberg . . ." began Dali.

  "Call me Werner."

  "And you may call me Salvador," replied Dali. "I will be honest with you, Werner. I did not come to hear your lecture. At least, not initially. I came to see if I wanted to paint your portrait, and to see if you would like to commission it—but you have opened my eyes. The portrait, if you will pose for it, will be yours for free."

  "You make more from one painting than I make in a year of lecturing," said Heisenberg. "Surely my lecture wasn't that interesting."

  "It was not your lecture," replied Dali. "It was you, Werner."

  Heisenberg frowned. "I do not understand, Senor Dali."

  "Salvador, please," Dali corrected him.

  "I understand your name," replied Heisenberg. "I do not understand your motives."

  The waiter arrived with their brandies. Dali had no idea what to pay him, or indeed which of the two men should pay. Then he decided that since he was the supplicant, the obligation was his, so he pulled a bill out of his pocket and handed it to the waiter. The young man tucked it in his pocket and began walking away.

  "He'll want change," Heisenberg called after him.

  "I will?" asked Dali.

  "About eighteen dollars' worth," said Heisenberg, staring at him curiously.

  "How much are the drinks?"

  "It is a fine brandy," said Heisenberg, as if explaining it to a child, "so they cost a dollar apiece. You gave him a twenty-dollar bill."

  "And I will get change from that?"

  "Are you quite sure that I am the man you wish to see?" asked Heisenberg.

  "Yes," said Dali. "I sense that you are my antidote."

  "I beg your pardon?" said Heis
enberg, looking at him as if he might start foaming at the mouth any second.

  "You are the counterbalance to Freud."

  "Sigmund Freud?"

  Dali nodded. "It was he who opened the door to surrealism for me. Now I need someone to close that door, to lead me down another path, to substitute logic for the irrationality in my paintings."

  "This may be a request beyond my poor powers," said Heisenberg. "The irrationality lies within you, Salvador. I really don't see how I can eradicate it."

  "What if I were to show you, to prove to you, that I am not mad and not irrational," said Dali, "that I actually paint what I see?"

  "I would say you are more desperately in need of help than I thought—and not the kind of help that I am capable of giving to you."

  Dali smiled. "That is a very good answer, Werner."

  "It pleases you that I cannot help you?"

  "Oh, you can help me," replied Dali happily. "It pleases me that you do not believe me, that you insist everything must be logical and rational. If you did not, then indeed you would be unable to help me."

  "I suppose it will not surprise you to know that I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about," said Heisenberg.

  "But you will," said Dali. "We are going to become friends, you and I."

  Dali unfolded his paper cocktail napkin, pulled out a pencil, and began sketching his companion's face.

  "I have always admired such a skill," said Heisenberg, as Dali's hand moved faster and faster. "Doubtless because I have a total lack of skill in that area. Poor manual dexterity, poor hand-eye coordination. Given time I could create a mathematically-precise representation of you, but"—he sighed—"it would not be art."

  "Have you never had the desire to express what you feel rather than what you see?"

  "Of course," said Heisenberg. "I have expressed my horror at the Nazis, my love for my wife, my admiration for—"

  "That is verbally," Dali interrupted him. "Have you no desire to express it any other way?"

  "As I said, I am totally without skill in all areas of art," answered Heisenberg, "and I have yet to discover a formula or lemma that expresses emotion."