The World Behind the Door (13 page)

      
"It isn't suffering," she said at last. "It seems to be almost happy."

      
"It is the spirit of war," answered Dali. "It revels in death and destruction. That is another reason I have given it a second title: it may be inspired by the Spanish Civil War, but it is the hideous spirit of
all
wars."

      
"You were right," said Jinx. "It
is
frightening."

      
"It is supposed to be."

      
"When will it be done?"

      
"I don't know," he replied. "I may wait another year, perhaps even two, to finish it. I need to distance myself from the war to properly represent it. I had to get that face on canvas, but the rest can wait."

      
"Not for long," said Jinx. "Not if you stay here."

      
"It's the
Spanish
Civil War, not the French," said Dali.

      
She sighed. "How can you be such a genius in some ways, and so uninformed in others?"

      
"Are we expecting a French Civil War?" he asked. "I thought they had that in 1789."

      
"There will be war, and Paris will almost certainly fall, but it will not be a civil war. In fact, it will be a world war."

      
"A world war?" he asked, puzzled.

      
"A war fought by all the nations of the world—or almost all."

      
"Like the Great War?"

      
"Worse."

      
"Let me guess," said Dali. "You think it will be caused by that German painter."

      
She nodded. "And others. Mostly by him."

      
"What is going on?" he mused. "How did the world come to be even more bizarre than my paintings?"

 

 

 

Chapter 15: Big Town

 

      
Dali found a copy of
The New Yorker
in his studio. He picked it up, thumbed through it, and tossed it in a corner, then went back to painting.

      
A few minutes later Gala entered the room.

      
"Where is the magazine?" she asked.

      
Dali shrugged and pointed to it.

      
"What is it doing there?" she demanded.

      
"It was in the way."

      
"But I wanted you to read it!"

      
"The whole thing?" he asked distastefully.

      
"Look at the material toward the front," she said. "All the theatre, all the art exhibits, the hundreds of elegant restaurants. Look at the ads for Saks and Brooks Brothers."

      
"Why must I look?"

      
"It seems a sophisticated and interesting city," she replied. "It is filled with precisely the kind of people we need to meet."

      
"All seven million of them?" said Dali.

      
"Spare me your feeble attempts at humor. I think we should take a trip to America."

      
"Well, we would be farther from that crazy German painter," said Dali.

      
"We would meet people of wealth and breeding, people with money."

      
"I thought America was responsible for the Depression. Are you suggesting that it is no longer suffering from it?"

      
"Not every American is poor and hungry," answered Gala. "And most of those who aren't are living in New York."

      
"Fine," said Dali. "Now, what's the
real
reason?"

      
"We need money. You need to expand your audience, and we need to expand our social circle."

      
"I thought we were making so much money we could barely count it," said Dali, frowning.

      
"We made some poor investments, and some of the exchange rates on the sales of your paintings were very usurious. New York is filled with expensive art galleries and rich patrons."

      
"And you base this conclusion upon reading one issue of
The New Yorker
?" he asked. "Are you sure it's accurate?"

      
"Certainly," answered Gala. "It has a worldwide reputation."

      
"So does the little German," said Dali.

      
Gala's face hardened. "We're going, and that's that."

      
And that was that. Almost.

      
They had enough for third-class passage on a less than top-of-the-line steamship, but they would have reached America without a penny. Dali refused to ask any of his friends for money, but somehow Gala got word to Pablo Picasso, who sent them a gift of five hundred dollars.

      
"This is dreadful!" said Dali upon hearing the news. "How can I ever face him again?"

      
"It is wonderful," she corrected him. "Now we can go where there is fresh money, where people will pay to see you."

      
"You mean to see my paintings."

      
"I mean what I said," she replied. "I have hired an agent to arrange a series of lectures for you."

      
"But my English is very poor!"

      
"You'll have two weeks to practice it aboard the ship," she said with a total lack of concern.

      
"How long will we be there?" asked Dali.

      
"I haven't decided," answered Gala.

      
"What you are trying to say is that we don't have return fare," said Dali accusingly.

      
"Don't worry about it," said Gala. "Your job is painting. Mine is paying the bills."

      
He could tell that further discussion was fruitless, so he sighed and began packing.

      
The trip was dull and uneventful. Dali kept opening his closet whenever Gala was out on the deck, hoping to find a door to Jinx's world in the back, but there was nothing but the bulkhead. He took to sitting alone in the bar at three in the morning, hoping Jinx would sense that Gala was asleep and show up so he could voice his concerns about the trip to her.

      
Well,
he thought on his last night at sea, trying to ignore his disappointment,
she's got her own life to live. Besides, if I entered her world without her to guide me, I'd never find my way back out.

      
They docked in the morning, and a few moments later they were in a taxi, heading to their hotel. Dali was stunned by the size, the sheer
energy
, of the city. London had been as big, but nothing he'd ever experienced was as vibrant.

      
He felt small and lost, but Gala was in her element. She dragged him to one social function after another. He was so annoyed at having to attend that his behavior was more aberrant than usual—but his reputation had preceded him and everyone
expected
him to act like a mad artist.

      
He gave his lectures, and found that he enjoyed the power he had over his audience. After all, he knew what he was trying to say, but he mangled the language so much that they had to pay close attention in order to understand him. And at least once each lecture, he'd pull something out of his pocket—a mouse, a snake,
something
—and treat it like a pet to give them something further to talk about when they spoke to their friends of the lecture.

      
Gala convinced a few galleries to display his work, and in the first week alone he sold twelve paintings for more than five thousand dollars at a time when the average American was making fifteen dollars a week. He wanted to send Picasso his five hundred dollars, but he had never learned how to write a check, and Gala wouldn't let him mail cash.

      
The first thing Gala did with the money was move them to better quarters—a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. After the bellhop had brought their luggage to the room and waited for Gala to tip him, she announced that she was going out to wrangle an invitation to a very posh party the next night.

      
Dali waited until she'd been gone for five minutes—long enough to make sure she wasn't coming back for something she'd forgotten—and then opened the door to the walk-in closet in the bedroom. Sure enough, there was the door to Jinx's world.

      
He didn't want to enter it alone, so instead he opened it in the hope she would see it. He sat down on an easy chair to wait for her. Belatedly it occurred to him that one of the stranger and more dangerous creatures he'd seen in her world could simply walk through the door into the Waldorf suite. He got up to close the door, but just as he got to his feet Jinx stepped through it.

      
"Hello, Salvador," she said. "I am so glad to see that you've moved to America. It's the safest place to be." Suddenly she smiled. "Well, except for Antarctica."

      
"We're returning to France the day after tomorrow," said Dali.

      
"That is foolish. Can't you see what's going to happen?"

      
"That's for politicians and generals to worry about," he replied. "My only concern is my painting."

      
"I would think a major concern would be to live long enough to keep on painting."

      
"If you're just here to argue, forget it," said Dali. "Gala does it better."

      
"No," she said. "I am here to show you a painting I am very proud of, and to get your honest opinion."

      
"Then I shall be happy to evaluate it for you," said Dali. "Where is it?"

      
"I'll get it," she said. "I wasn't sure you'd be here."

      
She walked back through the door to her own world, then returned a moment later with a small canvas in her hand.

      
"All right," said Dali. "Let me see it."

      
She handed it to him. He took it, glanced at it, frowned, and studied it carefully.

      
"Why did you choose to paint Gala?" he asked at last.

      
"
You
paint her all the time," answered Jinx. "Why shouldn't I?"

      
"Because you are not married to her."

      
"Have you never painted anyone you are not married to?"

      
"You have done a very fine, very naturalistic painting of her," said Dali, still frowning. "But why does she appear so harsh? Why those lines in her face? Why the hint of a sneer about her lips? Have you ever seen her look like this?"

      
"No. It is merely the way I imagine her."

      
"Well, it is all wrong."

      
"That's why I am here," she said, handing him a charcoal. "Show me how to correct it."

      
Dali took the charcoal, seemed about to draw a line, paused, thought better of it, held the charcoal above another part of the painting, considered it again, then finally sighed and handed both the charcoal and the painting back to her.

      
"I was mistaken," he said. "It requires no improvement. That is the way she looks—from time to time, anyway."

      
"Thank you."

      
"You are becoming quite good, you know."

      
"I have a good teacher," said Jinx. "I wish he had enough brains not to return to Europe."

      
"The Spanish Civil War took place in my homeland," explained Dali, "but what is going on in Europe doesn't concern me. I am a non-combatant."

      
"I don't think bullets and bombs differentiate between combatants and non-combatants."

      
"France possesses the Maginot Line, the most impenetrable military defense in the world, and England possesses a fleet second to none. Mussolini has made Italy's trains run on time." said Dali. "I think you are being an alarmist. There is no cause for worry."

      
"I've been studying American history since you came here," said Jinx. "I'll bet America's General Custer said those very words right before he reached the Little Big Horn."

 

 

 

Chapter 16: Alternatives

 

      
The world didn't get any safer. Dali and Gala moved to France, then to Mussolini's Italy. They didn't stay long in either place, and finally they fled to the United States to sit out the war in relative comfort.

      
They took up residence in Virginia, where Dali kept turning out paintings. Some were brilliant, more weren't, but all of them bore his distinctive touch and all sold, some for truly outrageous prices.

      
Gala kept up all her society contacts, and encouraged Dali to behave even more outrageously, which served to make him even more of a celebrity—and if there was one thing Americans loved, it was a celebrity. After all, Gala explained, far more Americans admired Babe Ruth and Billy the Kid than Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, and Dali's wildly eccentric behavior, some of it legitimate, much of it staged, proved that she was right.