Maxwell Bodenheim

“ A woman’s leg becomes a fat blasphemy and within its shaking famous jelly you can spy a saint, writhing in the effort to free himself. A young man’s shoulders are two, dead, delicate thoughts caught in a bulging tomb, with their ghosts speaking through each unconscious movement of his arms. The street-pavement lives and is a hard, detached hatred, sapping the strength of those who have enslaved it.... Sometimes I’ve returned to this room, not to rest, for weariness springs only from that thick weakness of imagination known as flesh, but to find you here before the final emphasis of your death. ”

“ As Alvin Tor watched her, tendrils of peace gradually interfered with the blankness on his face. His lips sustained an unpremeditated repose. A sensitive compassion dropped the sparks of its coming into his eyes. His clothes became a jest upon an inhuman body; the earth of him effortlessly transcended itself in the gesture of his arm flung out to the woman.
“Impalpable relic of a soul, the spirit you held must have severed its shadow to preserve you forever from the waves,” he said, his face blindfolded with ecstasy, “for you grasp the water with immortal relaxation. ”

“ Every shade of this scene was an accurately friendly answer to Carl’s mood and he squandered the brooding light of his eyes upon all of the visual details outside of the train window. The mask of careless bitterness upon his face said its hello to the cowering and sinister apathy of the houses and people, and viciously he longed to leap out of the window and join the unashamed animal rites which these hovels and human beings were parading. Here an alien race was standing amid clouds of evil-smelling squalor and staring at its broken longings and dreams—staring with a wild hopelessness. ”

“ She answered the teasing remarks of the man beside her with abstracted monosyllables, and watched another couple—a tall, dark, negro youth, with the face of a proud falcon, and an ample-bodied white woman in her early thirties, with a round face void of cosmetics but like an angelic mask that could not quite hide the jaded sensuality underneath it. She leaned closely against his side while he stroked one of her arms and looked at her with an almost scornful longing on his face. Blanche gazed intently at them—this was an exception. ”

“ Just as its melancholy was heaving toward a climax Helma Solbert strode up the cinder walk leading to Mrs. Kildrick’s abode.
She was a woman of thirty with a body whose dying youth amply derided middle-age. Her ovally impertinent face spoke to the first warnings of dissolution and told them that their coming had been ill-advised. Weary but tenaciously merry, her gray eyes were close to those of one who has made the dagger in his side a cajoling saint. Her little nose was a straight invitation to her widely ripe lips and they turned upward as if to reach it. ”

“ Then you give a moderate vigor to your senses and your mind, and the substance breaks into hosts of shapes. You have attained the perceptions of an ordinary, living person and you find that you are walking on a street. During all of this time you have held back the strength of your imagination, which is alone real, but now you release it and it shoots from you and follows the commands of your desires. An old man’s whiskers change to a weedy sprouting of thought, and each hair is the dangling of a different idea. ”

“ He gave her a glance and feasted upon her fear, for her shrinking attitude was falsely and deliciously persuading the ghost of himself that it still held a potency over other people.
Sometimes a song crazily drifted to Carl’s ears from one of the negro cottages—a song that was weighted with loosely undulating sadness—and he listened with a stern greediness. Music is a huge, treacherous sound made by thoughts and emotions to console them for their feeling of minute mortality, and after it has given them its dream of permanent size it disappears, slaying the illusion with silence. ”

“ Sobe
I do not know. I know only that a woman whose beauty feeds upon the shadows of death, must amuse us with a miracle.
Maldor (softly)
The virtue of this poison does not appeal to me. The miracle you promise is cluttered with subtle doubts. Death, betrayed, may blindly wander. Let us rather return to our pathetically certain poisons and revel in the final froth-sprinkled caperings of life. Ah, the powdered hair of the white caterpillar, steeped in moon-light, will cause the eyes to swell out of their sockets, and the tongue to burst.
Sobe (gently)
Where is Fana? ”

“ RELIGION ALVIN TOR sat in his floating row-boat and read the Bible. Green waves died upon each other, like a cohesive fantasy. Each small wave rose as high as the other and ended in a swan’s neck of white interrogation. Sunlight blinded the water as style dazes the contents of a poem and the blue sky lifted itself to symmetrical stupor. The air fell against one like a soothing religion. The bristling melancholia of pine trees lined the wide river. But Alvin Tor sat in his floating row-boat, reading the Bible. He read the Songs of Solomon, and a sensual pantomime made a taut stage of his face. ”

“ The late spring night, with its warm air that had the barest threat of coolness in it, and its cloudless sky dotted with stars and a moon at which you could glance now and then with the feeling that they were pretty and a bit mystifying, and the more immediate lights around you, with their warm, come-on-and-see-what’s-under-me winks, and all the sounds of pleasure-seeking traffic—these things brought Blanche a light-hearted, knowing mood. She was a girl, young and rather handsome, and there was nothing that she [30] couldn’t make men do if she had only cared enough about it. ”

“ I’m not so sure that a poet doesn’t need praise. It’s part of his task to change the polite praise around him to an understanding appreciation, and that can be very necessary and exciting.”
“To a poet the appreciation of other people must be like a glass of lukewarm wine taken after work,” said Carl.
“Well, I know that it means a great deal to me,” said Clara Messenger. “It reassures me that I’m speaking to the hearts and minds of the people around me and I’d feel very unimportant if at least a few people didn’t like my work. One can’t live in a vacuum, after all.” ”

“ People streamed out—a regiment disbanded after a lonely and forced conflict with thought in uncomfortable seats, or with diluted chatter that fascinated their inner emptiness. They were the people whose vast insistence and blundering control of the earth made him doubt the reality of the woman whom he loved. Oh, to feel once more certain that she was human—that her incredibly tenuous aloofness could stoop to the shields of flesh! ”

“ Flower scents filtered through Carl’s open window, like softly dismayed sins and the cool repentance of a summer night glided into his room upon a pathway of moonlight. For a while he sat absent-mindedly burnishing the knives that had divided his evening. After he had undressed he fell upon his bed like one hurriedly obliterating an ordeal. His consciousness played with a black hood; then a crash mastered the room and the door swung open. His blanched face paid a spasmodic tribute to the sound and his grey eyes greeted the darkness as though it were an advancing mob. ”

“ Fana
What does he do?
Maldor
He frightens me with a mockery of death.
Fana
What did he say of beauty?
Maldor
Fana, go before he returns.
(Maldor quickly walks to the right entrance, draws aside the portieres, and peers cautiously out. He returns quickly to Fana.)
Maldor (speaking quickly)
He has a poison to make you beautiful.
Fana
Ah!
Maldor
Go!
Fana
Is he weary of my ugliness?
Maldor
No. He has no thought for you. He seeks to enslave his master, Death.
Fana
But I did hear him speak of beauty.
Maldor (desperately)
He means to make you the flowered tomb of beauty. ”

“ When she reached Margaret’s studio, Helgin and Oppendorf had already arrived and were immersed in a game of dice for dimes, while Margaret finished her toilette. The studio had a low, broad couch covered with dark green taffeta and batik cushions, and gaudily painted furniture, and a little kitchenette and bathroom adjoined it. Helgin greeted Blanche in the affable boyish way which he could affect for moments—the miraculous atom of humility sometimes flitting to the surface of his poised urbanities. ”

“ Then she heard a mingled rustle and splash and saw that the man was rising to his feet. He stood with bent knees over the mud of the ditch, his black clothes garlanded with slime, his face twitching into life beneath its stiff mask of earth. With a squeal of fright she scrambled to her feet and ran down the road. The man in the ditch, Carl Felman, felt that something was still evading him and once more experienced the hunter’s frenzy that had tumbled him over the night. Gripped by a superhuman agility, he transcended his stiff joints and pursued her down the road. ”

“ How could she ever make something out of herself if she had to work hard every day, and give half of her limited dollars to her family, and listen to their naggings and pesterings? Of course, she did not love Campbell, and the thought of continuous physical relations with him was not as pleasant as it had once been—somehow, when you began to “see through” a man’s blusterings and boastings, his hands and his kisses lost part of their thrill—but still, he was physically agreeable to her, and it might be idle to hope for more than that from any man. ”

“ ETHICS ETHEL CURN was an acrobat with Hearn’s Twelve Ring Circus, but her bones were riveted together by a precariously brittle dignity as she paraded down the field of daisies to a cliff at the edge of the sea. Perhaps acrobats walk stiffly during their leisure hours because their bodies become ascetic when released from an unreal, sensual agility. Ethel Curn sometimes stooped to pick a daisy and her body received motion in a deliberately ungallant manner, as though greeting an unwelcome mistress. Her face was an indiscreetly torn screen for emotions that had been dead for many years ”

“ It becomes a last garment that you have neglected to unfasten because you wish to pretend that you belong to the earth. The cupped appeal of your breasts is the subtle lie with which something infinitely abstract evades the weight of a world. There is a surprised element attached to your legs and they never seem assured in their task of supporting your torso. And yet, when your body is beyond my actual sight your reality is still doubtful, for then I lack even the uncertain evidence of your flesh. ”

“ Fana
My eyes are like madly swinging torches.
{81}
Sobe
Your mouth....
Fana
My mouth is like the little red door to a palace.
Sobe
Your hair....
Fana (eyeing the mirror still)
My hair is like a misty pageant.
Sobe
Your body....
Fana
The wine of my body drenches my clothes.
Sobe
You grow more beautiful.
Fana (becomes exultant)
My beauty gathers over me like rose-flooded armor.
Sobe (whispering)
Death slashes at your armor.
Fana (exultant)
I cannot die.
Sobe
The poison glides softly through your blood.
Fana (she speaks softly)
I cannot die. ”

“ As he looked at this woman Carl noticed that her eyes were not those of the usual flesh trader—shifting and infantile—but were filled with a tense distraction. The mere sullen aftermath of whiskey, or the departure of a man? No, it almost seemed that she was actually brooding over emotions that had removed her leagues from the bench against which her body was pressed. Eyes are often unwitting traitors and they tell the truth more readily than the rest of the face, or words, since human beings are not so conscious of what their eyes are announcing. ”

“ A tall, jaunty, colored youth whisked Margaret away, and a portly, courtly man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles sat down beside Blanche and began to tell her all about an immortal play which he had written, but which the managers were hesitating over because it hadn’t strolled into the box-office. The playwright was garrulous, using his arms as a sweeping emphasis for his remarks, and Blanche wondered whether she was listening to a genius or an untalented boaster. Some day she’d meet a man who didn’t claim to be superb in his particular line ... ”

“ The masked rush of their bodies deprived them of a divided sexual appearance and lure—men and women, touching elbows without emotion, were swept into one lustreless sex which darted in pursuit of a treacherously invisible reward. The entire structure around them—buildings, signs, and iron slabs—stood like a house of cards carefully supported by an essence that rose from the rushing people, and Carl felt that if these men and women were to become silent and motionless, in unison, the house of cards would instantly lose its meaning and tumble down. ”

“ The jazz-band sat just below the stage, between the carpeted runways on which the performers descended to the dance floor. Men and women, half of them in evening clothes, chattered and laughed at the surrounding tables, with a macabre heartiness that sometimes lessened to betrayals of the underlying dullness.
The whisky began to knock about in Blanche’s heart to a cruelly victorious feeling—Campbell thought he was so darn smart, didn’t he? Well, he’d have to go some to get her, just the same. Girls were always falling for a celebrity of his kind, and she’d treat him to a novelty. ”

“ The complacent roughness of his voice, divided by the shallow wisdoms of the underdog, destroyed the feeling of tired communion which Carl had been sheltering, and his exhaustion began to creep apart from the man, like a tottering aristocrat. He was once more a proudly baffled creator, shuffling along after a day of useless movements, and his hatred for human beings awoke from its short sleep and brandished a sneer on his loose and dirt-streaked face.
He walked into a corner saloon with Petersen and gulped down a glass of beer. ”

“ A pretty, well-shaped girl could always affect a man, in a purely physical way—he wasn’t trying naively to delude himself on that score—but just the same he intended to try his damnedest to remain faithful to Blanche. She invaded and stirred him as no other woman had, and if he consorted with other girls now, it would be a taunting and unanswerable aspersion against the depth and uniqueness of his love for her. ”

“ They sat in a hammock on the porch, and Carl suddenly kissed her with the theatrical intensity of one who is trying to shake off a deliberate role. The gasping expostulations of her voice were contradicted by the limpness of her body, and sighing at this prearranged incongruity, Carl kissed her again, still feeling like a skillful charlatan and still hoping to lure himself into a tumultuous spontaneity. This time she was silent but gripped his shoulders with both hands, while little shades of fright and desire gambled for her face. ”

“ To Blanche, they were an emptily hilarious lot, out for the usual things that men and women wanted from each other, and merely laughing and idling on the way to them—not at all interested in the big, serious things of which she had had a revealing glimpse—but they were funny at times, and it was pleasant to be a young woman patently desired by men, and the chance to be amused and self-forgetful for one night was not to be sneezed at. She joined in the repartee between Kossler and Donovan. ”

“ Since Carl almost never voiced his actual thoughts and emotions to people, he grasped, as usual, the luxury of speaking to himself.
“Electric light is only the molten fear of men,” he said, as he strode through the unreal haste of the crowds. “Men are afraid to look at the night and they have given it eyes as stiffly frightened as their own. Underneath the comforting glare of this second blindness they protect themselves. ”

“ A deliberate friendship rose between these men, like a translucent wall through which men can see each other without touching, for each one knew that the other held a baffling insincerity of imagination and was afraid that he might be deftly ridiculed if he failed to measure his words. Kone admired the nimble restlessness of Carl, a quality which he was compelled mechanically to imitate, while Carl liked the explosive way in which Kone evaded himself. ”

“ The lives of some men represent a scale of gradually increasing compromises with, or victories against, the forces surrounding them, while other men crowd their decision into one early moment and walk swiftly down an unchanging road. The boy with Carl died upon the bed in his room and the fumbling, stiffly vindictive beginning of a man rose and walked into the street, with an evil smile petrifying the softness of his face. ”

“ No girl ever got off that easy when a strapping fellow had her cornered and was out to do her wrong! But still, the story was a glimpse into another fabricated world, far more enticing than her own, and in her eagerness to forget the immediate facts in her life, Blanche devoured the colossal unreality of the film with only an occasional qualm. Afterwards, as she walked down Ninth Avenue, she had an odd mood—too tired to be discontented, and yet carrying the suggestion that life was purposeless and that there was “nothing much to it.” ”

“ In a dim light men and women could not easily escape from each other, for the darkness would tend to press them together, but in this violent stare of light they are divided by a self-assured indifference. Watch them as they stride along with an air of gigantic, amusing importance. The crowd is really a single symbol of many isolations joined to a huge one. It sees only those people who are unpleasantly conscious of the electric glare, and who hurry through it with gestures of alert dislike, or with a slow and morbid desire for pain. ”