“Then it happened that the part of my eyes absently looking outward came — as the most commonplace lover’s eyes might have come — on a picture of her which stood on the little table with the walnut stain, and at that point I shifted my attention from the airplane inside me to the picture outside. When I tried to return to the airplane it had vanished into the clear space. I told myself, ‘It’ll be back in a while — the delay is because it’s being loaded.’ But when it reappeared it didn’t just seem loaded — it wasn’t the same airplane. And it seemed to be headed straight toward me, toward my stupid self of that moment, and all I could think of doing was to pull out a cloth from some other part of my mind and try to wave it past. . But instead I must have flagged it down because it came and smashed right into me, blowing up my head and all the hidden places of my stupid self.”
I think it will be a long time before I can get over my amazement at what happened to me today: I spoke to the young man of the story and he told me he doesn’t want to go on writing it and may never feel like taking it up again.
Too bad he feels that way, because after gathering so much information that I find interesting I won’t be able to make use of it for this story. But I’ll be sure to keep these notes, because they will always tell another story — the one that took shape in reality when a young man tried to capture the one in his mind.”
The Daisy Dolls
To María Luisa
I
Next to a garden was a factory, and the noise of the machines seeped through the plants and trees. And deep in the garden was a dark weathered house. The owner of the “black house” was a tall man. At dusk his slow steps came up the street into the garden, where — in spite of the noise of the machines — they could be heard chewing on the gravel. One autumn evening, as he opened the front door, squinting in the strong light of the hall, he saw his wife standing halfway up the grand staircase, which widened out into the middle of the courtyard, and it seemed to him she was wearing a stately marble gown, gathered up in the same hand that held on to the balustrade. She realized he was tired and would head straight up to the bedroom and she waited for him with a smile. They kissed and she said:
“Today the boys finished setting up the scenes. .”
“I know, but don’t tell me anything.”
She saw him up to the bedroom door, ran an affectionate finger down his nose and left him to himself. He was going to try to get some sleep before dinner: the dark room would divide the day’s worries from the pleasures he expected of the night. He listened fondly, as he had since childhood, to the muffled sound of the machines, and fell asleep. In a dream he saw a spot of lamplight on a table. Around the table stood several men. One of them wore tails and was saying: “We have to turn the blood around so it will go out the veins and back through the arteries, instead of out the arteries and back through the veins.” They all clapped and cheered, and the man in tails jumped on a horse in the courtyard and galloped off, through the applause, on clattering hooves that drew sparks from the flagstones. Remembering the dream when he woke up, the man in the black house recognized it as an echo of something he had heard that same day — that the traffic, all over the country, was changing from left- to right-hand driving — and smiled to himself. Then he put on his tail coat, once more remembering the man in the dream, and went down into the dining room. Approaching his wife, he sank his open hands in her hair and said:
“I always forget to bring a lens to have a good look at the plants in the green of your eyes. I know how you get your complexion, though: by rubbing olives in your skin.”
She ran her forefinger down his nose again, then poked his cheek, until her finger bent like a spider leg, and answered:
“And I always forget to bring scissors to trim your eyebrows!”
As she sat down at the table he left the room, and she asked:
“Did you forget something?”
“Could be. .”
He came right back and she decided he had not had time to use the phone.
“Won’t you tell me where you went?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t tell you what the men did today.”
He had already started to answer:
“No, my dear olive, don’t tell me anything until after dinner.”
And he poured himself a glass of the wine he imported from France.
But his wife’s words had dropped like pebbles into the pond where his obsessions grew, and he could not get his mind off what he expected to see later that night. He collected dolls that were a bit taller than real women. He had had three glass cases built in a large room. In the biggest one were all the dolls waiting to be chosen to compose scenes in the other cases. The arrangements were in the hands of a number of people: first of all, the caption writers (who had to express the meaning of each scene in a few words). Other artists handled settings, costumes, music, and so on. Tonight was the second show. He would watch while a pianist, seated with his back to him, across the room, played programmed works. Suddenly the owner of the black house remembered he must not think of all this during dinner. So he took a pair of opera glasses out of his pocket and tried to focus them on his wife’s face.
“I’d love to know if the shadows under your eyes are also plants.”
She realized he had been to his desk to fetch the opera glasses, and decided to humor him. He saw a glass dome, which turned out to be a bottle. So he put down the opera glasses and poured himself some more wine from France. She watched it gurgle into his glass, splashing black tears that ran down the crystal walls to meet the wine on its way up. At that moment, Alex — a White Russian with a pointed beard — came in, bowing at her, and served her a plate of ham and beans. She used to say she had never heard of a servant with a beard, and he would answer that it was the one condition Alex had set for accepting the job. Now she shifted her eyes from the glass of wine to the man’s wrist, where a tuft of hair grew out of his sleeve, crawling all the way down his hand to his fingers. As he waited on the master of the house, Alex said:
“Walter” (the pianist) “is here.”
After dinner, Alex removed the wineglasses on a tray. They rang against each other, as if happy to meet again. The master, half-asleep — in a sort of quiet glow — was pleasantly roused by the sound and called out after him:
“Tell Walter to go to the piano. He mustn’t talk to me as I come in. Is the piano far from the glass cases?”
“Yes, sir, on the other side of the room.”
“Good. Tell Walter to sit with his back to me, to start on the first piece in the program and keep repeating it without stopping until I flash the light at him.”
His wife was smiling. He went up to kiss her and for a moment rested his flushed face on her cheek. Then he headed for the little parlor off the big show room. There he started to smoke and sip his coffee, collecting himself: he had to feel completely isolated before going in to see the dolls. He listened for the hum of the machines and the sounds of the piano. At first they reached him in what seemed like watery murmurs, as if he were wearing a diver’s helmet. Then he woke up and realized some of the sounds were trying to tell him something, as if he were being singled out from among a number of persons snoring in the room. But when he tried to concentrate on the sounds, they scattered like frightened mice. He sat there puzzled for a moment, then decided to ignore them. But suddenly he realized he was not in his chair any more: he had gotten up without noticing it. He remembered having just opened the door, and now he felt his steps taking him toward the first glass case. He switched on the light in the case and through the green curtain he saw a doll sprawled on a bed. He opened the curtain and mounted the podium, which was actually a small rolling platform on rubber casters, with a railing. From there, seated in an armchair at a little table, he had a better view of the scene. The doll was dressed as a bride and her wide open eyes stared at the ceiling. It was impossible to tell whether she was dead or dreaming. Her arms were spread in an attitude of what could be either despair or blissful abandon. Before opening the drawer of the little table to read the caption, he wanted to see what his imagination could come up with. Perhaps she was a bride waiting for the groom, who would never arrive, having jilted her just before the wedding. Or perhaps she was a widow remembering her wedding day, or just a girl dressed up to feel like a bride. He opened the drawer and read: “A moment before marrying the man she doesn’t love, she locks herself up, wearing the dress she was to have worn to her wedding with the man she loved, who is gone forever, and poisons herself. She dies with her eyes open and no one has come in yet to shut them.” Then the owner of the black house thought, “She really was a lovely bride.” And after a moment he savored the feeling of being alive when she was not. Then he opened the glass door and entered the scene to have a closer look. At the same time, through the noise of the machines and the music, he thought he heard a door slam. He left the case and, caught in the door to the little parlor, he saw a piece of his wife’s dress. As he tiptoed over to the door, he wondered whether she had been spying on him — or maybe it was one of her jokes. He snatched the door open and her body fell on him. But when he caught it in his arms it seemed very light. . and he recognized Daisy, the doll who resembled her. Meantime his wife, who was crouching behind an armchair, straightened up and said: