The World Behind the Door (8 page)

      
"I have one question for you before I go back into your brain, Salvador," said Jinx.

      
"What is it?"

      
"Could a figment of your imagination do this?"

      
She kicked him as hard as she could in his left shin.

      
He howled in anguish and fell over, his hands clutching his leg as she walked back to his house in solitary splendor.

      
Seven hours later his shin still hurt, it had turned an ugly share of purple, and he was forced to the rueful conclusion that whatever had kicked him, it wasn't an imaginary girl.

 

 

 

Chapter 8: New Perspectives

 

      
There was a knocking at the door, and Dali raced to open it, hoping it was Jinx, fearful it was Gala with blood in her eye. It turned out to be Ramon the iceman.

      
"Good morning, Senor Dali," he said, bent under the weight of the ice block he carried on his back.

      
"Good morning," said Dali, escorting him into the kitchen, where he gently lowered the block of ice to the table, then opened the icebox and began positioning it inside the ice compartment.

      
"It's a very nice day," said Ramon. "They had predicted rain, but the sun is out, and the weather is pleasant and mild." He looked at the items in the icebox. "You are keeping more fruit and meat than usual."

      
"I expect guests," said Dali.

      
"I'll stop by again tomorrow and see if you need more ice," said Ramon. "By the way, have you heard the news?"

      
"What news are you referring to?"

      
"I heard on the radio at Gregorio's taverna that no less than six American businessmen committed suicide this month."

      
"The Depression," said Dali knowingly.

      
"They should have been here," said Ramon. "We've been depressed for so long that they'd have developed an immunity to it."

      
He laughed at his own joke and walked to the front door, then stopped.

      
"What is it?" asked Dali.

      
"I thought I heard a noise from
there
," he said, pointing in the direction of Dali's studio and bedroom. "You must be mistaken," said Dali uncomfortably.

      
"Could be mice," continued Ramon. "Your fruit is quite ripe. You might check your closets. Mice love to hide in them."

      
"I'll check as soon as you're gone," said Dali.

      
"I could help you, Senor Dali."

      
"No," said Dali. "That won't be necessary. I wouldn't want to delay you."

      
"It's no trouble. I'd be happy to help a famous painter like you."

      
"I appreciate the offer, but I won't have someone else's food spoil because of your good intentions."

      
"You're sure?"

      
Dali nodded, and Ramon finally left.

      
The painter walked into what he thought of as "Jinx's closet," faced it, and raised his voice. "You can come out now, Jinx."

      
The door opened and the redheaded girl approached him.

      
"Welcome back."

      
"I told you I would be here for my lesson."

      
"I half-thought . . ." he began.

      
"Would you like more proof that I'm real?" she asked with a smile.

      
"No," he said promptly, his hand moving instinctively toward his shin. "No, that will not be necessary."

      
"Good," she said. "My toes are still sore from where I kicked you."

      
"You could have just slapped me, you know."

      
She shook her head. "It wouldn't have left a bruise," she explained, "and by now you'd have convinced yourself it was all your imagination."

      
"Probably," he admitted.

      
"You have a remarkable imagination, Salvador," continued Jinx seriously, wandering over to look at his latest canvas. "You should make it serve you, rather than hindering you."

      
"I'm all through doubting your existence," said Dali. "But I'm also through with guessing games. Let's proceed with your lesson. If you want to tell me something about myself or my painting, tell me. If not, not. But no more hints."

      
"All right, Salvador," she agreed.

      
"Good," he replied, getting to his feet. "Now sit," he said, gesturing to his stool.

      
She sat down. He then covered the canvas on which he'd been working on with a large sheet of blank paper and handed her a piece of chalk.

      
"We will begin," he announced, "with perspective."

      
"Why?"

      
"Because every artist experiences reality differently than his peers, and you can alter reality more with perspective than with anything else."

      
"Explain, please," said Jinx.

      
"Let me give you an example," replied Dali. "The other night I was awakened by the buzzing of a bee as it flew around a pomegranate. And during those last few seconds of sleep, I dreamed that I was fishing, and I had hooked a small fish—but as I pulled on my line, the fish opened its mouth and out sprang a full-sized tiger which had been living inside the fish, and it turned out that it was the tiger, rather than the fish, that had really taken my bait."

      
"It sounds very strange."

      
"It was—and very frightening," said Dali. "And quite impossible, wouldn't you say?"

      
"Yes."

      
"I agree," he said. "Now draw it."

      
"I can't."

      
"Why not?"

      
"How can you show a large tiger emerging from a small fish?" replied Jinx.

      
"I thought you'd never ask," said Dali with a smile. "You do it with perspective. Here, I will show you."

      
He took the chalk from her, began sketching furiously, and stood back a moment later.

      
"Amazing!" said Jinx.

      
"Perspective," said Dali with a shrug, as if to say:
It's so simple a child can do it.
"That is what I like about the world behind the closet. Its creator, assuming it has one, uses perspective exactly as I have done here."

      
"I still must master perspective, and mixing paints, and even such simple things as preparing a canvas," said Jinx. "But you are beyond all that."

      
"Yes, I am," said Dali, watching her curiously. "I assume you have a point to make?"

      
"There isn't much meaning in a tiger jumping out of a fish's mouth," she said. "So while I must learn almost everything, what
you
must learn is where to find meaning and how to incorporate it in your painting. For example, drawing the fat cow as a fat cow would be meaningful to you, and now to me, but would it mean anything to anyone who didn't know her, or hadn't heard what you called her?"

      
"Is it important that it mean anything to anyone but the artist?" retorted Dali, clearly unconvinced.

      
"If you want an audience, of course it is," she said. "You are a painter. Why did you make that movie?"

      
"
The Andalusian Dog
?" he said.

      
"Yes."

      
"I'm surprised you are aware of it."

      
"I have studied your life and your work during the time I've been here. You made a movie. It shocked audiences everywhere. I've never seen it, but I gather at one point someone's eyeball gets slit open with a razor."

      
"
That
woke them up," said Dali with a chortle.

      
"It's not funny to do that to someone's eye."

      
"You don't think we
really
cut a man's eye open, do you?" asked Dali. "It was like . . . like painting old Senora Mendez as a fat cow. She's not really a cow, and no one sacrificed an eye to make the movie."

      
"Then why did you do it?"

      
"To shock the audience, of course," said Dali. "To remind them they're alive, to make them emotional participants rather than mere observers."

      
She pulled out her sketch book, and showed him drawings of the park, his own furniture, a dog sleeping on the lawn, and a bird nesting in a nearby tree.

      
"These aren't as good as yours, of course," she said. "But even if I had your skills, I didn't create these to shock anyone, but to please them."

      
"Not so, young Jinx," said Dali.

      
"But look at them. They're not very good, I admit, but they're naturalistic. This is the way the subjects appeared to me."

      
"And where do you intend to show them?" he asked. "In your world or mine?"

      
"In mine, of course. I live there; I am just a temporary visitor here."

      
"Will these be uncontroversial, pastoral pictures in your world?" asked Dali.

      
"No, probably not," she admitted. "But the artist's purpose is not to shock, but to please. Regardless of the effect, they were drawn—or when I get better they
will
be drawn—for an audience." She walked over to a bookcase and withdrew a volume. "The author of this book wanted it to be read by others. If not, he could simply recite stories to himself in the shower and save all that wear and tear on his fingers and his typewriter. By the same token, you paint because you want to share your vision with the rest of the world. Admittedly it has to be a unique vision to be of any lasting worth, but if it is
so
unique that only you can understand it, why should anyone care to look at it?"

      
"People have always been fascinated by the bizarre," answered Dali. "They would look at the fat cow simply because they have never seen a cow, fat or otherwise, walking erect, wearing a dress, bursting out of a girdle, and carrying a purse."

      
"That is true," agreed Jinx. "Paint anything bizarre and they will look, just as they watched an eye being cut open. Draw a man with two heads or a nude woman with three breasts, or a baby that is bigger than yourself and they will look. But such paintings would just be curiosity pieces, just like
The Andalusian Dog
, which is already forgotten by almost everyone. Such paintings would not touch or move your audience, because they would be tricks. They would have nothing of
you
in them."

      
"But I
am
bizarre," said Dali.

      
"You pretend to be."

      
"How could I not be?" he insisted. "I am a replacement for my dead brother. My father killed my mother and I have said so publicly. I had my first art exhibit when I was 15, while all the other boys my age were busy playing soccer. Everything about me is strange and bizarre."

      
"Then you must paint bizarre things that have meaning to your audience."

      
Dali couldn't quite repress a smile. "Have you been talking to Freud?"

      
"Why?" she asked. "Do I sound like him?"

      
"Very much."

      
"I've never met him," Jinx assured him. "But you talk about him incessantly."

      
"He has had a profound effect on my thinking," replied Dali. "He's taught me that the visions I see, the images that come to me, have meaning if I can just comprehend them. He has encouraged me to explore all the hidden corners of my mind—my dreams, my fears, my lusts, my longings, my nightmares—and since they are all essential parts of myself, he tells me that I should find ways to use them in my art. And you, young Jinx, have told me much the same."

      
"Then perhaps there's something to it," she said.

      
"I know there is," said Dali. "But what?"

      
"I'm sure Dr. Freud would say that is for you to decide."

      
"It is very confusing," he admitted. "The other day we were discussing limp watches. The day I met you I saw a red elephant walking on twenty-foot-tall stilt-like legs. I know I am to find meaning in the images that I see and that I imagine—but what meaning is there such a beast, or a burning giraffe, or a limp watch?"

      
"Do you know what I think?" said Jinx.

      
"What?"

      
"When you know the answer to that, you'll be ready to paint them and stun the world."

 

 

Chapter 9: The Camembert of Time

 

      
"Good afternoon, Salvador."

      
"Good afternoon, young lady," said Dali, looking up from the newspaper he had been reading. "Where have you been these last two days?"