The World Behind the Door (7 page)

      
"You shouldn't have frightened me."

      
He began drawing rapidly, "Let me see if I can approximate it before I totally forget what it looked like."

      
His hand moved faster and faster, becoming a blur of motion. In less than a minute he stopped and looked up at her.

      
"I lost it," he said unhappily. "Next time I tell you not to move, don't move."

      
"May I see it?" she asked, extending her hand.

      
"It's not very good."

      
"I'd like to see it anyway," she said. "After all," she added with a half-smile, "I posed for it. Sort of."

      
"All right, but don't judge it too harshly," he said apologetically. "It's just a spur-of-the-moment sketch, and a failed one at that."

      
She took the sketchbook from him and studied it intently. Finally she looked up.

      
"Possibly you should see an ophthalmologist," she said at last.

      
"It's not
that
bad!" he said harshly.

      
"It's not bad at all," she said, handing it back to him. "But it's not true."

      
"Explain."

      
"You tell me your friend Picasso sometimes puts both eyes on the same side of the nose. Is that the way I appear to you when you look at me?"

      
"No, of course not."

      
"Then why are you drawing second-hand Picasso sketches instead of first-hand Dali sketches?"

      
"You don't understand," said Dali. "Drawing a face that way is a very popular convention."

      
"And is that what you wish to be?" persisted Jinx. "A very popular conventional artist?"

      
"No," he admitted.

      
"Well, then?"

      
He ripped the sketch into tiny pieces.

      
"And when I get home, I will do the same with the painting," he promised her.

      
"You painted people with both eyes on the same side of their heads in that, too?" she asked.

      
"No, but there are other conventions I subscribed to. What I must do is rid myself of all preconceptions, and create works that do not build on what has gone before, that do not borrow from the current trends, but which become artistic first causes in themselves."

      
"What is an artistic first cause?" she asked curiously.

      
"You are aware of cause and effect?"

      
"No."

      
"But you must be!" insisted Dali. "For every cause, there is an effect."

      
"Not in my world," said Jinx.

      
"But there is in mine," he said. "Each effect in turn becomes a cause for the next effect, for whatever follows. This indeed is how Saint Thomas Aquinas proved the existence of God. For every effect there is a cause, and when we come to the First Cause, that which existed before anything else, we call it God."

      
"Are you equating what you want to paint with God, then?" asked Jinx curiously.

      
Dali shook his head impatiently. "Of course not. I am simply saying that I do not want my paintings to be derivative, to be the effect of other artists' causes."

      
"Yes, I suppose that makes sense."

      
"Oh, it makes perfect sense," said Dali bitterly. "The trick is
how
to accomplish it."

      
"That's easy enough," said Jinx.

      
"All right, my young genius. Suppose you tell me how to do it."

      
"That would be cheating."

      
"What are you talking about?" he demanded irritably.

      
"If I told you, then you'd never be sure it was your own idea—and in fact you'd be right," said Jinx. "Sooner or later you'd convince yourself it was just the whim of a young girl, and you'd abandon it. You'll be much happier if you come up with it yourself."

      
"When?" he growled. "When I am eighty and half-blind?"

      
"Oh, you'll figure it out sooner than that," she assured him.

      
"How comforting," he said sardonically.

      
"It's like the next-to-last chapter in a mystery novel," she said.

      
"What do you know of mystery novels?"

      
"I read one in your house while you were sleeping," she replied.

      
"Fine. How is it like a mystery novel?"

      
"You already know everything you have to know. Now you just have to put it together."

      
He was still pondering that when he went to bed a few hours later.

 

 

 

Chapter 7: An Angry Figment

 

      
"Maybe we should go back through the closet," suggested Dali the next evening.

      
"Why?" asked Jinx.

      
"Don't you miss your world?"

      
"Come on, Salvador," said Jinx. "You don't care whether I miss my world or not. What's your real reason?"

      
"Has anyone told you that you are an annoying little girl?" said Dali irritably.

      
"I thought I was a young lady."

      
"Only when you are not annoying me."

      
"
I
am not annoying you," said Jinx. "
You
are."

      
"So now you not only aspire to be a painter, but to take Sigmund Freud's place and tell me what I am to think?"

      
"I would never tell you what to think, Salvador," she replied. "I would only tell you to be true to your thoughts."

      
Dali sighed. "I am surrounded by the mundane and the boring. Why should I expect anything but platitudes from a girl who is barely into her teens?"

      
"Do you find me mundane and boring?" she asked.

      
"No," he admitted. "You are perhaps the one thing in my life, besides Gala, that does not bore me." He stared at her. "But you torment me, young Jinx. You know what I need to know, and yet you will not tell me."

      
"It is too pleasant an evening to argue," she said. "The last rays of the sun will soon be gone, the moon is rising, and there's finally a gentle breeze. Shall we take a walk?"

      
"Through the park."

      
She smiled. "Are you afraid someone will see us?"

      
"I love the motion of moonlight on water," he answered noncommittally.

      
He walked to the door and opened it for her. She went out, then waited for him.

      
A pudgy woman was the only other person in the park, walking rapidly along a stone path, and Dali made sure they stayed far enough away that she couldn't see them clearly.

      
"Why are you avoiding her?" asked Jinx.

      
"She is a fat cow," said Dali.

      
"She is not responsible for how she looks."

      
"We are
all
responsible for how we look," Dali corrected her. "And she is a most unpleasant woman, an obese spinster who pokes her nose into everybody's business. If she could see you clearly, within an hour everyone I know would think you were my new mistress." He glared at the woman. "The fat cow," he repeated.

      
"How would you paint her?" asked Jinx.

      
"As she looks," he said. "Gross, ugly, with that mole the size of a thimble on her chin." Suddenly a smile. "Well, on
one
of her chins, anyway."

      
"That's interesting," remarked Jinx.

      
"Why? How would you paint her?"

      
"Exactly the way you just described her," answered Jinx.

      
"Then why is it interesting that I should do the same?" he asked.

      
"Because I see her as a woman, and you see her as a cow," said Jinx.

      
"Then you would have me paint her as a cow?" asked Dali, frowning.

      
"
I
wouldn't have you paint her any way," she replied. "It's how
you
would paint her."

      
"A cow," mused Dali. Then, "No, not a cow. That would be ludicrous. But a woman with definite bovine features . . .
 
Interesting
." A pause. "I wonder what Freud would say?"

      
"What difference does it make?" asked Jinx. "He's no artist."

      
"There you are wrong, young lady," said Dali. "He is as much an artist of the mind as I am of the brush and canvas."

      
"But the two are different disciplines."

      
"At their highest level there comes a point at which they merge," said Dali with absolute certainty.

      
She looked at him curiously.

      
"I have been giving some thought to all the things you have said to me," he continued. "If I don't see two eyes on the same side of the nose, if I don't see a man or a woman with blue skin, then it is dishonest to paint it. It is not dishonest for Picasso. His paintings are done with such skill and such certainty that it is clear that
is
what he sees. But I don't, and I can't waste my time copying what Freud would find on the inside of Picasso's head if he were ever to examine it. I must paint what
I
see in my head."

      
"It makes sense to me," said Jinx noncommittally.

      
"It made sense to me, too—but everything I see is so, well, mundane," said Dali. He kicked at some dirt, lost in thought. Finally he looked up. "But filtered through
my
mind, even the mundane can become wondrous and unique," he said. "Like a bovine woman. Like a boring landscape that my imagination can turn into something"—he groped for a word—"
Daliesque
."

      
"I think maybe you're onto something, Salvador," said Jinx.

      
"You
know
I am," said Dali. "You pointed the way to me. When I see something truly unique, like your world beyond the closet, I will paint it naturalistically, with photographic accuracy. But when I find something dull and ordinary in my own world, rather than reproduce it as it is, or ignore it totally, I will filter it through my mind and paint what I think it
should
be, what it
would
be if it were on
your
side of the door."

      
Suddenly he laughed in amusement.

      
"What is it?" asked Jinx.

      
"Freud would say I was exorcising my demons, but in fact I shall be capitalizing on them. Everyone has dreams and nightmares, me more than most. Freud made his reputation by expunging them from his subjects, but I will cherish mine, for they will bring me worldwide fame. Who else would be so bold and so innovative as to share his most secret longings, lusts and fears with the viewing public?"

      
"So you will paint what you see?"

      
"No, young Jinx," he said happily. "Or, rather, yes, I will paint what I see—but more to the point, I will paint what no one else sees, what no one else will ever see!"

      
"Except me," she reminded him.

      
"Except you what?" he asked, confused.

      
"You will paint what no one sees except you and me."

      
"It would be nice if you saw it," he said with a shrug. "It would be nice if you were here, but . . ."

      
"But what?"

      
"I have concluded that you don't exist," said Dali with a confident smile.

      
"What are you talking about?"

      
"It's all very Freudian," he said. "I invented you, because I could not approach the conclusion directly. I needed you to point me in the right direction. I don't know why, because it now seems to simple. But I was stymied, mired in mediocrity. Then I spent an afternoon with Freud, I read his books and monographs—and suddenly here you were, an impossible girl from an impossible world, who was created by my subconscious for one reason and one reason only: to point me in the right direction as an artist. I don't know why I couldn't see it myself, but the mind is a strange instrument, and mine required you."

      
"So that is your conclusion?" said Jinx. "That I am a figment if your imagination?"

      
"Absolutely."

      
"I am going back through the door to my world now, Salvador," she said. "But you owe me painting lessons, and I will be back for them."

      
"You are never coming back," he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "You have served my subconscious mind's purpose, and now you will return there."