The World Behind the Door (9 page)

      
"I have a home, you know."

      
"I don't really know it," answered Dali. "I have a feeling I might still be imagining you." Suddenly he tensed. "No! Don't kick me again!"

      
She laughed. "All right, you're safe. For the moment." She stared at him. "You didn't wash your face after lunch."

      
"Oh?"

      
"You've got something on your upper lip."

      
"
That
," he explained with some dignity, "is the beginning of my mustache."

      
"Why are you growing a mustache?" she asked.

      
"To make myself unique, as we discussed."

      
"Maybe it has escaped your attention," said Jinx, obviously unimpressed, "but millions of men have mustaches."

      
"Not like mine will be," answered Dali confidently. "It may take me a year, it may take me five years, but when I am done it will be the most recognizable mustache in the entire world. The ends of it will be four inches long, and I will wax them and train them to stand straight up."

      
"It'll be distinctive, that's for sure," said Jinx. "What will Gala say when she sees it?"

      
"What do I care?" Dali shot back. "It is
my
mustache." He paused uncomfortably. "Besides, I will make sure she sees it from a distance first."

      
"Or perhaps in a crowd?" suggested Jinx.

      
"That would not deter her," he replied grimly.

      
"Deter her from what?"

      
"Don't ask."

      
"You make me very afraid of her," said Jinx.

      
"Welcome to the club," he said wryly.

      
"Then why do you keep seeing her?"

      
"Because while I may occasionally fear for my life in her presence, the fact remains that I love her more than life itself," answered Dali.

      
"I hope it doesn't come to a choice," said Jinx.

      
"Between what?" he asked, confused.

      
"Between Gala and life itself."

      
"She only wants what is best for me," said Dali defensively. "Just as you do."

      
"Then why are you not afraid of me?" asked Jinx.

      
"Let us change the subject."

      
"Whatever you wish."

      
"I wish to discuss some ideas with you," said Dali.

      
"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 perceptions 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."