Perhaps it is the mention of death itself that is cryptic. Or those times at that café, I go on, I forget the name of it now — and our arguments about New Criticism with the social realists. This in turn reminds me of a recent argument I had with Roger. He believes that a work of art’s greatness can be measured by the difficulty with which it can be copied. Gwen finds this viewpoint hilarious, as do I. Roger claimed, repeatedly, as if speaking to a dead man, that a Vermeer couldn’t be copied. But I won the argument by insisting that a Jackson Pollock would be much harder to copy, as it was executed not by the careful application of paint but by employing randomness. How, I said to him, my voice mounting in vehemence, just how would you copy, exactly and precisely, a splat? A three-dimensional splat at that? Gwen salutes me.
I prefer Picasso to Pollock, though Gwen doesn’t. Quel stupid is your Roger, says she. How do you stay here, she asks again, if you have to engage in boring arguments like that? Please, Gwen, I answer, with more annoyance than I mean to show, let us decide that this subject is off season, shall we? I am here, that is all. You are in New York and from what you report, it is not so marvelous there either, and we will not have a pleasant time together if you keep harping on this place and its obvious inadequacies. I enjoy these inadequacies. And why not, I think to myself, enjoy them. All right, Lulu, Gwen nods, and studies me in her inimitable way. All right, Lulu, you win. You witness the demise of a scold. She suggests that we drink to our inadequacies, which we do. The matter is as much as resolved. An understanding has been reached on the subject.
The rest of the night speeds away. Somehow, attempting to envision it now, I see an image, myself lying on the floor absolutely still — I am pretending to be a log. This may have had to do with Gwen’s wordplay about letting sleeping logs lie, and so forth. I seem to recall something like that. Or it may have had to do with another mention of our dead friend Timbers. Or it may have been produced when I was laughing and rolling like a log.
In the morning Gwen’s pumps are still on the floor under the chaise longue. She is nowhere in sight and Yannis too has disappeared. With her shoes there, it’s as if she’d melted into thin air, like the city of Oz or, more ominously, like the Wicked Witch. Melting has a mysterious and fluid quality to it that attaches itself to Gwen, who has a wonderful plasticity to her. She can fit herself into so many scenes, as John might put it. But Gwen is not magical in the way that Helen is, I mean, not as mysterious to me. Mystery might have its roots in magic. Gwen has her feet on the ground, even if she abandons her shoes. As for Yannis’ absence, about this I experience some trepidation. On the other hand, John will come soon, and would I really care to have Yannis hanging about being surly?
Part 2. The Strange Disorder
Chapter 10
It occurs to me that part of this story transpired before certain revelations, before some events occurred which disturbed my peace and the pace of this narrative, such as it is, which I was in no way able to predict or even to imagine. Looking back on it, the life I lived and am recording had been orderly and relatively contained. But at the time I lived it, I sensed myself, inarticulately, to be not quite in it, holding on rather tentatively, threatened by something, a presence or other who might be waiting in the wings, and who might make me lose my way, lose my grip. I was always at the brink of that, staving it off. Dante expresses it so elegantly: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura / chè la diritta via era smarrita. Yes, “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to my senses in a dark forest, for I had lost the straight path.”
I did not see Helen as an impediment, but took her for a miracle, my Beatrice, if you will. She existed outside my world, and so was a delicacy, an entity delicious in it, drawn into it but separate from it. I embraced her without reservation. To me she was unaccountable and yet, within limits, delightfully unmanageable. Now I see that my habits were designed precisely to control my world. And that I deigned to do so was typical of my approach to life before a certain dramatic break in my thinking, perhaps not dramatic, but one of import to me, and one which necessarily affected my daily routines. And surely one might — I will — call that dramatic.
John is due to arrive at noon. Yannis is nowhere to be found. I have already spent most of the morning writing, which included invitations to the soirée for Gwen. Yannis has not been home for several hours, not counting the evening hours. Yet this is not terribly unusual. He must have gone home to visit his mother, a widow. I believe he shares with her some of the money I give him, and that is perfectly all right with me, though he never tells me precisely what he does with his allowance. Nor do I ask. I assume he thinks I would not like it, were I to know, but in fact I do, very much, as I feel my largesse supports those who need it. This in turn supports me in feeling worthy and virtuous. After all, I am the scion of Calvinists and Puritans, an upbringing that still adheres, in some respects. In addition I have heard that Beauvoir and Sartre support the people around them, their adopted family, and I admire that greatly.
John appears. He is late but he looks beautiful. I would say as usual, but this afternoon he has a glow on. That is how my English friend Duncan might put it. Duncan would sleep with him right off, without so much as a by-your-leave. He would know just how to seduce a supposedly non-homosexual lad into his bed and into imagining that just this once made no difference whatsoever, that, no matter what, he was as good as new, still a man, that life goes on, and in fact it may not make a difference and life does go on. Duncan with his lime-green eyes and catlike cunning — Duncan would simply charm and charm and then pounce. But Duncan is younger than I, and even when I was younger, I never pounced. I am not the pouncing type. I am cautious, unless I am drunk, and then I don’t care, and no one else does either, I should think.
John glances about my rooms with no hint of self-consciousness. He takes them in and I drink him in, a rich brew, a heady tonic. Some such idea wafts playfully in my mind. He is quite playful too; I am sure he is flirting with me in earnest. He measures the wall against which I want to place two bookcases. He moves gracefully and with assurance. He is a lissome lad, I think contentedly. And he seems to know what he is doing. He is even direct when it comes down to it — the nuts and bolts of daily life, the practicalities. We discuss the size of the shelves and whether I would want them all to be of equal height. I decide to have the top ones built for oversized books. John even appears interested when I explain how my library will be ordered and how it will differ in plan from that of the Dewey decimal system. Libraries reflect their collectors, and each library, I tell John, has a life and mind of its own.