The World Behind the Door (16 page)

      
"Where is it?" asked Heisenberg.

      
"Follow me," said Dali, leading him to the studio.

      
"I see no spaceship here."

      
"It is not a ship, but a portal to another world," replied Dali.

      
"And where is this portal?"

      
"In the back of the closet."

      
Heisenberg gave him a look of total disbelief. "The back of the closet?"

      
Dali nodded. "Yes."

      
"All right," said Heisenberg with a sigh. "I've come this far. Another few feet can't hurt."

      
"Right this way," said Dali, walking into the closet. He moved aside all the things he had piled there to hide the door from Gala. "Do you see this door?"

      
"Yes," said Heisenberg.

      
"Open it."

      
"You're sure this doesn't lead to the attic?"

      
"If it does, you'll know it soon enough."

      
Heisenberg shrugged, opened the door, and stepped through.

 

 

 

Chapter 19: Disintegration

 

      
Dali stood beside Heisenberg, surveying the world he had come to know so well. Here was the purple mucous swamp, there the forest of singing trees, off in the distance the herd of talking burning giraffes. He looked around for Jinx, and was surprised that he didn't see her.

      
"Well?" asked Dali. "What do you think now, friend Werner?"

      
"It's an attic," said Heisenberg.

      
"You are joking!" exclaimed Dali.

      
"It's an attic," repeated Heisenberg.

      
Dali scanned the landscape. "Look!" he said, pointing. "Do you not see the lion with the face of the beautiful woman?"

      
"I am sorry, Salvador," said Heisenberg, "but what I see are rafters."

      
And as the word left his mouth, the lion vanished.

      
"No!" cried Dali. "It is a trick of the sunlight!"

      
Heisenberg stared at him sympathetically. "There is no sunlight, Salvador. There is no light at all, except that which is coming from your studio."

      
"Look there!" said Dali, pointing. "Surely you can see the forest! The trees are singing, and all their limbs are human arms! It is as plain as day."

      
"Salvador, we are in an attic," said Heisenberg. "There is no forest."

      
And the forest disappeared.

      
"This can't be happening!" shouted Dali desperately. "I am not imagining these things! Look, Werner! Forget the animals. You
must
see the weeping castle on the hill!"

      
"No."

      
"Look harder. It's windows are eyes, and tears roll down its walls."

      
"I wish I could see it, Salvador, but I cannot."

      
The weeping castle vanished.

      
Dali began shaking uncontrollably.
How can this be? I often said I was insane, but until this instant I never believed it!
His eyes narrowed.
If I don't suggest it, if I don't tell him what's there, maybe then he can't tell me what's not there.

      
Dali looked down at the swirling golden grass that had paused briefly in its migration between empty pasturelands. "What are we standing on?" he said.

      
"A wooden floor. Why?"

      
The grass disappeared.

      
No! I didn't say we were on grass! How can you vanish if he doesn't deny I see you?

      
Dali swayed dizzily, and Heisenberg put an arm around him to support him.

      
"You're not well, Salvador. Let me take you back into your studio. You need to sit down."

      
Dali looked ahead, and saw Jinx coming over a hill, waving at him.

      
Oh, my God! Go away! Don't let him not see you!

      
He weakly held up a hand, as if to stop her physically, though she was still a quarter mile away.

      
"What is it?" asked Heisenberg.

      
I can't tell you, or you'll make her vanish. We've got to get back to my world before you guess that she's here, and then she won't be. I can't let you reason her out of existence!

      
"The studio!" he gasped. "Please hurry!"

      
"Yes, of course," said Heisenberg, helping him turn and half-carrying him back to the studio.

      
"The door!" mumbled Dali. "Close it."

      
Heisenberg did so, and a moment later Dali sat, exhausted, on his chair.

      
"Can I get you anything, Salvador?" asked Heisenberg. "A cold compress? Or perhaps some cognac?"

      
"No, Warner," said Dali. "I will be all right in a moment."

      
"You had me worried there."

      
"You really saw nothing?"

      
Heisenberg shook his head. "No." He stared at Dali. "And you really did?"

      
"I thought I did. I must be as crazy as they say I am."

      
"Perhaps."

      
"And now you are humoring me."

      
"Not really," said Heisenberg. "There is an old saying that in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Perhaps those of us who are not artists are blind in a way. What you saw was not real to me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't real to you."

      
"You are being kind," said Dali, "but if it is only real to me, then it is not real at all."

      
"I am a scientist. I believe what I see, what I can prove. You are an artist; you believe what you can imagine. I saw an attic. I believe there is nothing there but an attic. But if what you saw could inspire work such as
The Persistence of Memory
, then I would call it a fine madness and I would do nothing to cure it."

      
Dali shook his head. "I asked you here to show me how to eradicate the world behind the closet—except that when you did, I was overwhelmed by horror and regret."

      
"When I did
what
?"

      
"Every time you couldn't see something I pointed to, it disappeared," said Dali. "The experience was shattering, first because it means I am truly mad, and second because I had not realized the destruction of my dream world would be so painful."

      
"Perhaps you are seeking to destroy the wrong thing," said Heisenberg.

      
"What are you suggesting?" asked Dali.

      
"That you do not want to put a world, whether real or imaginary, to death, but to write
fini
to your own romance with surrealism."

      
"Yes, of course—but how?" asked Dali, confused.

      
"Your greatest painting is
The Persistence of Memory
, is it not?"

      
"Yes."

      
"You created it," continued Heisenberg. "Perhaps it is time to un-create it."

      
"Are you suggesting I sneak into the museum and destroy the canvas?"

      
Heisenberg shook his head. "There are thousands of prints. It has been reproduced in numerous books. Destroying the original will alter nothing, nor prepare you for the next step in your artistic evolution."

      
"Then I don't understand what you are suggesting."

      
"If you think about it, you will," said Heisenberg. "And now I must take my leave of you." He walked to the door, stopped, and turned back to Dali. "I pledge to you that I will mention this episode to no one. I think it would be best if you would do the same."

      
Then he was gone.

 

 

 

Chapter 20: Resurrection

 

      
It took Dali almost an hour to regain his composure. Then he picked up a print of
The Persistence of Memory
and began wondering how he could possibly un-create a work he had already painted.

      
Well, let me see
, he thought, picking up a pencil.
Heisenberg is a mathematician and a scientist. He lives in a precise world, so of course he would see the painting as part of that world. He wouldn't make it vanish, because that would be an act of magic and not of science. So to un-create it, he would show, in precise mathematical terms, exactly how it was created. Those soft forms, those rounded shapes, would be broken down to their molecular level and then slowly begin disintegrating, showing the lines along which they were seamlessly joined.

      
He began drawing over the print, and his excitement grew.
If I do this and this, if I do not
change
the subject matter, but turn it from surrealism into science
. . .
 

      
By morning he knew exactly what he wanted to do, and that day he began work on
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
. It took Dali, who had once turned out paintings in days, even hours, two years to finish it, but when he was done he knew it would be generally acknowledged to be his greatest painting in almost two decades.

      
The day it was completed, Dali should have felt elated. He knew what he had accomplished, but he was overwhelmed by a bittersweet regret—not for surrealism, which he had (he hoped) grown beyond, but because he would never see Jinx again. He missed her smile, her curiosity, even her criticism. He hoped she was happy in her world, which he would never visit again, and that she was still working at her painting.

      
He took Gala out to dinner to celebrate finishing the painting, listened with glazed eyes as she listed all the people she wanted him to meet and all the things she wanted to buy, and then returned to the seaside villa he had bought Gala on Spain's Port Lligat.

      
Gala was tired and went directly to bed, but Dali was restless. He walked into his studio, took another look at
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
, then went out onto the patio that overlooked the water.

      
I should be elated
, he thought.
Why do I feel this sense of loss?

      
He looked out at the water, watching the moonlight reflecting off the gentle ripples.

      
"It is a very good painting," said a soft voice from behind him.

      
He turned to see a familiar red-headed face.

      
"I was afraid I would never see you again," he said, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Gala.

      
"You can't get rid of me that easily, my old friend," said Jinx. "We still have work to do."

      
"Yes," said Dali, feeling enormously relieved. "Yes, we do."

      
"And we will do it together," she continued. "You should never have invited your friend to my world. He couldn't understand."

      
"No, he couldn't," agreed Dali.

      
"From now on, it will be just the two of us," said Jinx.

      
"Just the two of us," he promised happily.

      
"And great things lie ahead of us," she said.

      
"Great things," echoed Dali, feeling complete again.

 

 

-The End-

 

 

Dali's Life and Art

      
           

      
He was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech on May 11, 1904, in the small Spanish farm community of Figueres. But he was not the first Salvador Dali born to his parents. He had been preceded by a brother of the same name, who died at 21 months of age. Probably because he bore the name, he grew up feeling that he was a substitute and was driven to prove his own worth.

      
He showed artistic talent early on. He was only 14 years old when he had his first small exhibit, and 21 when he had a major exhibit in Barcelona after attending Madrid's San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts.

      
His fame was limited to Spain until 1928, when three of his paintings were displayed in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. He held a one-man show in Paris in 1929, joined the Paris Surrealist Group, and met and fell in love with Gala Eluard, the wife of the French poet Paul Eluard. Gala soon became his lover, his business manager, and frequently his inspiration and model. They were married in a civil ceremony in 1934.

      
Dali had been acknowledged as the greatest surrealist painter in the world with the creation of The Persistence of Memory. But he had no interest in politics, and clashed with the other members of the surrealistic movement, who wanted his paintings to reflect their political views. They actually held a trial in 1934, and expelled him from the movement, which was absolutely ludicrous, since in his own words and the public's opinion, "Le Surrealisme c'est moi!"