The World Behind the Door (4 page)

      
Dali stared disbelievingly at the tree. "
You
said that?"

      
"Of course I said that."

      
"I've got to get out of here!" said Dali.

      
"Just like a human," said the tree. "No apology, no remorse, no thought for the discomfort you've caused me. Your only thought is for yourself."

      
"But you're just a figment of my imagination," protested Dali.

      
"Do you really think so?" asked the tree curiously. "I could have sworn you were a figment of mine."

      
"Stop teasing him," said a feminine voice. "Can't you see he's a stranger here?"

      
Dali spun around, fearful of what he might confront, but he found himself facing a rather pretty girl, barely into her teens. Her hair was bright red, shoulder-length, with a little swirl at the end of it, and she wore a yellow satin bow in it. Her face was lightly freckled, her eyes a clear blue, her nose on the small side. She wore a plaid dress that came down halfway between her knees and her ankles, and she had a bracelet of some bone-like material Dali had never seen before.

      
"You look . . . real," he said lamely.

      
"I
am
real," she replied. She extended a hand. "My name is Jinx. Please don't be mad at my tree. It was just having a little fun with you."

      
Dali stared at her hand but seemed afraid to touch it, to find out that she was something other than the young girl she seemed to be. "But I should make amends," he said. "After all, I hurt it."

      
"Not a bit," answered Jinx. "It doesn't feel pain. If you really want to upset it, tell it how pretty the maple tree over there is."

      
Dali made no reply, but just stood there silently, trying to absorb what he was experiencing.

      
"Why are you staring at me?" asked Jinx. She quickly ran her fingers lightly over her face. "All the pieces are there—eyes, nose, mouth, ears." Suddenly she looked worried. "Is there more? Am I missing something?"

      
"No," said Dali. "You're the first normal thing I've seen here."

      
"Normalcy can be a pretty tricky thing, you know," said Jinx. "For example, normal dress at a nudist camp isn't normal dress at a high tea. And speaking of normal, it's not normal to go around pulling the bark off trees. Are you
that
hungry?"

      
"I'm not hungry at all," answered Dali. "I didn't want to eat it; I wanted to draw on it. I am an artist."

      
Suddenly her face came alive with interest. "You are?" she said enthusiastically. "
I
am an artist too! What is your name?"

      
"Salvador Dali."

      
"May I call you Salvador?"

      
"Please do."

      
"Do you have any of your art with you, Salvador?"

      
Dali shook his head. "No. I don't know how I got here, or even where I am. All my art is back in my studio."

      
"May I see it?"

      
"If you can show me how to get back, you can
have
some of it," said Dali.

      
She stared at him as if considering her next statement. Finally she spoke.

      
"If I show you how to get back, indeed how to come and go whenever you want, will you give me lessons?"

      
"It's a bargain!" said Dali eagerly. He was about to extend his hand to shake on it, but at the last moment he thought better of it. "This is a very unusual place you live in," he continued after a moment. "Everything is so strange here."

      
"Not as strange as my paintings," said Jinx.

      
"Birds walk, snakes fly, rivers flow upstream, chipmunks and trees talk . . . what could be stranger than that?"

      
"There's nothing strange about that," replied Jinx. "It's the natural course of things. If you want strange, you should see my art. It upsets everyone who sees it."

      
"That's not a terrible thing," said Dali.

      
"It isn't?"

      
"At least they remember it. If it's unique, if no one else paints like it, then it will always be identified with you."

      
"Is that a good thing?" asked Jinx.

      
"Do you want to just be another painter, interchangeable with all your peers?" said Dali. "Or do you want your work to stand out, to be like no one else's?"

      
"It already stands out, and nobody except me understands it," said Jinx.

      
Dali smiled. "I feel an affinity with you, Jinx. I don't know where I am or how I got here, but I'm glad we met, and I hope the next time I fall asleep or get drunk I meet you again."

      
"You won't, you know," said Jinx.

      
"Oh?"

      
She shook her head. "When you sleep, you dream. I am not a dream. You can visit me whenever you want, and I hope you will let me visit you, but only when you're awake."

      
"You're sure I'm awake?"

      
"Yes."

      
"It
is
the middle of the night, though," he continued, looking at his wristwatch. Suddenly he noticed Jinx staring at his watch in rapt fascination. "What is it?" he asked.

      
"I've never seen anything like it before," she said.

      
"You've never seen a watch?"

      
"I've seen lots of watches. But never one like that."

      
"I don't understand," said Dali.

      
"It doesn't change."

      
He held it out for her. "The hands move."

      
"But the watch doesn't change. It's fixed and rigid. It was flat and circular a minute ago, and I suspect it will be flat and circular an hour from now."

      
"Of course it will."

      
"That's what's so strange. The world changes with each passing second. I have never heard of a watch that didn't change too, to show the passage of time."

      
"You are a very interesting young lady," said Dali. He smiled. "And a very pretty one, with just the right number of eyes and noses."

      
"Thank you," she said. "If you like, I will pose for you." She paused. "But I won't take my clothes off."

      
"I haven't asked you to."

      
"But you would have. All artists like to see what's beneath the clothing. I would disappoint you: just arms and legs. No snakes, no insects, no white bones."

      
"Good God!" exclaimed Dali. "What do the people of this world look like?"

      
"It's your world too, you know," said Jinx. "And they look just like people."

      
"I am losing my mind," he said. "For a few minutes there everything seemed to make sense, but clearly I have gone over the edge."

      
"The edge of what?" she asked curiously.

      
"Of sanity."

      
"I think I had better take you home, Salvador, before you convince yourself that you've gone mad." She reached out and took him by the hand. "Come this way."

      
She walked ten paces to the left, then ten to the right. Then she led him in a large circle.

      
"But we're right back where we started," said Dali, puzzled.

      
"Do you really think so?" asked Jinx.

      
"It's obvious," said Dali.

      
"Then why are you standing next to the door at the back of your closet?"

      
He turned and was astonished to find the door, standing all by itself, about ten feet from the birch tree. He reached out tentatively, half-expecting it to be an illusion, and his hand made contact with the knob.

      
"It's a door!" he whispered in awe.

      
"Of course it is," said Jinx. "I told you I'd take you back to your home."

      
He opened it, stepped through, and found himself standing in his closet. "Come along," he said to Jinx, waiting for her to join him before closing the door.

      
"This is a very strange place," said Jinx.

      
"In what way?" asked Dali.

      
"The rooms are square, the walls are straight, and all the rooms have ceilings," said Jinx, frowning in puzzlement. "It's like a very weird dream."

      
"It is?"

      
"Absolutely," she said. "I'll bet your chair doesn't even talk to you."

      
"No, it doesn't."

      
"And the rug—why is it so big?"

      
"To cover the floor," said Dali.

      
"Is the floor that ugly?"

      
"No."

      
"Then why don't you have a little rug, maybe the size of a pillow?" she asked. "You could just order it to keep moving under your feet whenever you walked, so you wouldn't have to walk on the wood floor unless you wanted to."

      
Dali had been listening intently. Finally he smiled.

      
"Can I get you something to eat or drink?" he asked solicitously. "I have a feeling we've got a lot to talk about."

 

 

 

Chapter 5: When the Ludicrous Isn't

 

      
Dali prepared tea for Jinx and poured himself a glass of wine from two different bottles, one red, one white.

      
"Why do you drink that?" she asked, indicating his miscolored wine, when he rejoined her in the studio. "It can't taste very good."

      
"I drink it because no one else does."

      
"But maybe there is a reason why no one else does," she persisted.

      
"Reason and consistency are the twin hobgoblins of little minds," he replied disdainfully. "I do not smoke my cigarettes through a twelve-inch holder because it makes them taste better, or because it is easy to manipulate. I do it because it adds to all the things that make me Dali." He paused. "I do many such things. Once when I saw the carcass of a bat in the park, I ran over, picked it up, and took a bite, just to see what it tasted like."

      
"How could that possibly help you as a painter?"

      
"I must experience things than no one else experiences if I am to paint things no one else paints."

      
"It sounds good," she admitted. "But I really don't see the connection."

      
"You are very young."

      
"Will a dead, rotting bat taste better when I am older?" asked Jinx.

      
"I do these things to be regarded with awe, not to be imitated," said Dali.

      
"I thought you painted to be regarded with awe."

      
"That, too," he said. "You've had a few minutes to look at them. What do you think?"

      
"These are good," she said, indicating his two most recent efforts.

      
"Thank you," said Dali, surprised that he actually cared about a young girl's opinion—and such a strange girl from such a strange place. To his surprise, he briefly found himself wondering if she was even real.

      
"Yes," she said. "Nice use of color. Excellent brush strokes. They are very good first efforts."

      
"I beg your pardon!" said Dali heatedly.

      
"Why?" she asked innocently. "They don't offend me. They show great promise." She paused. "I wish I knew why men had such an overwhelming urge to paint naked women."

      
"Suppose you tell me what's wrong with them?" said Dali, trying to control his temper.

      
"With naked women?" she asked.

      
"With the paintings."

      
"Don't you know?" said Jinx.

      
Dali stared at the paintings, and all the energy seemed to leave him. He slumped down on a chair, deflated. "Of course I know," he said. "They are exquisite examples of the mundane. They are fine displays of the current state of painting on the European Continent, and they could have been painted by any of fifty men I could name."

      
"See?" she said with a smile. "You
do
know."

      
"Knowing what's wrong is a far cry from knowing how to improve them," said Dali unhappily.

      
"True," she said. "But it's a first step—and like they say, every journey begins with one."

      
"I am already in my twenties," he replied. "If it has taken me this long to take one step, how am I ever to achieve anything of lasting value?"