Erik Dorn Part 23

The old man extended thin fingers and nodded his head. Dorn entered a large room that reminded him of a tombstone factory. Figures in clay, some broken and cracked, cluttered up its floor and walls. In a corner partly hidden behind topsy-turvy busts and more figures was a cot with a blanket over it. Dorn after several minutes of silence, looked inquiringly at his friend. The works of art, despite an obvious vigor of execution, were openly ba.n.a.l.

"He's got some more in the bas.e.m.e.nt," announced Lockwood with an air of triumph. "And there's some stuck away with the family upstairs. The whole street here's full of his works."

The old man nodded.

"He doesn't talk much English," went on Lockwood. "But I'll tell you about him. I got the story from him. He's the greatest artist in the world."

As Dorn moved politely from figure to figure, the old man like a museum monitor at his heels, Lockwood went on explaining in a caressing sing-song:

"This old boy came to New York when he was in his twenties. And he's been living here ever since and making statues. He's working right now on a statue of some general. Been working for fifty years without stopping, and there's n.o.body in this town ever heard of him or come near him. Get this picture of this old boy, Erik, buried in this hole for fifty years making statues. Working away day after day without anybody coming near him. I brought a sculptor friend of mine who kept squinting at some of the things the old boy did when he first came over and saying, 'By G.o.d, this fella was an artist at one time.' Get the picture of this smart-aleck sculptor friend of mine saying this old boy was an artist."

The eyes of Warren Lockwood grew hard and seemed to challenge. He extended his arm and waved his hand gently in a further challenge.

"The fools in this town let this old boy stay buried," he whispered, "but he fooled them. He kept right on making statues and giving them away to the folks that live around here and hiding them in the bas.e.m.e.nt when there wasn't anybody to take them."

Lockwood grasped the arm of his friend excitedly and his voice became high-pitched.

"Don't you get this old man?" he argued. "Don't you get the figure of him as an artist? Lord, man, he's the greatest artist in the world, I tell you!"

Dorn nodded his head, amused and disturbed by the novelist's excitement.

The old sculptor was standing in the shadow of the figures piled on top of each other against the wall. He wore the air of a man just awakened and struggling politely to grasp his surroundings.

"A sort of altruistic carpenter," thought Dorn. "That's what Warren calls an artist. Works diligently for nothing."

The respect and awe in the eyes of his friend halted him.

"Yes, I get him," he added aloud. "Living with a dream for fifty years."

Lockwood snorted and then with a quiet laugh answered: "No, that isn't it. You're not an artist yourself so you can't quite get the sense of it." He seemed petulent and defeated.

They left the old man's studio without further talk. It had started to rain. Large s.p.a.ced drops plumbed a gleaming hypotenuse between the rooftops and the streets. They paused before a bas.e.m.e.nt restaurant.

"It looks dirty," said Lockwood, "but let's go in."

Here they ordered dinner. During their eating the noise of thunder sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty bas.e.m.e.nt windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got something the matter with him."

Gradually an uneasiness came over the novelist, his sensitive nerves responding to the disquiet in the smiling eyes opposite.

"You're kind of crazy," he leaned forward and whispered as if confiding an ominous, impersonal secret. "You've got the eyes of a man kind of crazy, Erik."

He sat back in his chair, his hands holding the edge of the table, his chin tucked down, as if he were ruminating, narrow-eyed, upon some involved business proposition.

"I get you now," he added slowly. "I'll put you in a book--a crazy man who kept fooling himself by imitating sane people."

Dorn nodded.

"Insanity would be a relief," he answered. "Come on."

He stood up quickly and looked down at his friend.

"Let's keep going. I've got something in me I want to get rid of."

In the doorway the friends halted. The grave, melodious shout of the rain filled the night. The streets had become dark, attenuated pools.

The rain falling illuminated the hidden faces of the buildings and silvered the air with whirling lines.

As they stood facing the downpour Dorn thought, "Rachel's waiting for me. Why don't I go to her? But I'd only make her sad. Better let it get out of me in the rain."

Holding his friend's arm he stood staring at the storm over the city.

Through the sparkle and fume of the rain-colored night the lights of cafe signs burned like golden-lettered banners flung stiffly into the downpour. About the lights floated patches of yellow mist through which the rain swarmed in flurries of gleaming moths. There were lights of doors and windows beneath the burning signs. The remainder of the street was lost in a wilderness of rain that bubbled and raced over the pavements in an endless detonation.

He spoke with a sudden softness: "I didn't get your artist, Warren, but you don't get this storm. It's noise and water to you."

The novelist answered with a sagacious nod.

"There's something alive in a night like this," Dorn went on, "something that isn't a part of life."

He pulled his friend out of the doorway. They walked swiftly, their shoes spurting water and the rain dripping from their clothes. Dorn felt an untightening. His eyes hailed the scene as if in greeting of a friend. He became aware of its detail. He smiled, remembering the way in which he had been used to hide his longing for Rachel in the desperate consciousness of scenes about him. Now it was something else he was hiding. Beneath his feet he watched the silver-tipped pool of the pavement. Gleaming in its depths swam reflections of burning lamps, like the yellow script of another and wraith-like world staring up at him out of a nowhere. The rest was darkness and billowy stripes of water. People had vanished. Later a sound of thunder crawled out of the sky. A vein of lightning opened the night. Against its blue pallor the street and its buildings etched themselves.

"Stiff, unreal, like a stage scene," murmured Dorn. "Another world."

The rain flung itself for an instant in great ghostly sheets out of the lighted s.p.a.ces. He caught a glimpse in the distance of a hunched, moving figure like some tiny wanderer through tortuous fields. Then darkness resumed, seizing the street. A wind entered the night outlining itself in the wild undulations of the rain reaching for the pavements.

Dorn forgot his companion, as they pressed on. Disheveled rain ghosts crowded around him. The fever that had burned in him during the day seemed to have become a part of the storm. The leap and hollow blaze of the lightnings gave him a companions.h.i.+p. His eyes stared into the inanimate bursts of pale violet outlines in the dark. His breath drank in the spice of water-laden winds. The stumble of thunder, the lash and churn of rain were companions. The something else that haunted him was in the storm. He turned to Lockwood, who seemed to be lagging, and shouted in his ear:

"Great, eh? Altar fires and the racket of unknown G.o.ds."

Lockwood, his face filmed with water, grunted indignantly:

"Let's get out of this."

The night was growing wilder. Dorn's eyes bored into the vapors and steam of the rain.

"We're in a good street," he cried again. "A n.i.g.g.e.r street."

A blinding gust of light brought them to a halt. Thunder burst a horror of sound through its dead glare. Dorn stiffened and stared as in a dream at a face floating behind the gla.s.s of a door. A woman's face contorted into a stark grimace of rapture. Its teeth stood out white and skull-like against the red of an open mouth.

Silence and darkness seized the street. Rain poured. The sound of a laugh like some miniature echo of the tumult that had torn the night drifted to them. Lockwood had started for the door.

"Come on," he called, "this is crazy."

Dorn followed him. The streaming door opened as they approached and two figures darted out. They were gone in an instant and in pursuit of them rushed a rollicking lurch of sound. Dorn caught again the shrill staccato of the laugh, and the door closed behind them.

Dancing bodies were spinning among the tables. Shouting, swinging noises and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From here they watched in silence.

A can-can was in progress. The dancers, black and white faces glued together, arms twined about each other's bodies, tumbled through the smoke. Waiters balancing black trays laden with colored gla.s.ses sifted through the scene. At the tables men and women with faces out of focus sat drinking and shouting. n.i.g.g.e.rs, prost.i.tutes, louts. The slant of red mouths opened laughters. Hands and throats drifted in violent fragments through the mist. The reek of wine and steaming clothes, the sting of perspiring perfumes and the odors of women's bodies fumed over the tumble of heads. Against the scene a jazz band flung a whine and a stumble of tinny sounds. n.i.g.g.e.r musicians with silver instruments glued to their lips sat on a platform at the far end of the room. They danced in their chairs as they played, swinging their instruments in crazy circles. A broken, lurching music came from them, a nasal melody that moaned among the laughters.

Dorn's fingers lay gripped about the arm of his friend. His senses caught the rhythm of the scene. His eyes stared at the dancing figures, blond heads riveted against black satin cheeks; bodies gesturing their l.u.s.ts to the quick whine and stumble of the music; eyes opening like mouths.