Maxwell Bodenheim

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a girl didn’t want you to spend anything on her, and yet desired to be with you, it was an exquisitely promising sign, and perhaps Blanche had begun to fall in love with him. They sat on one of the stone benches in front of the Public Library building and beneath one of the huge carved lions that guard its portals, and they looked out at Fifth Avenue, with its endless stream of crawling, shiny, smoothly soulless automobiles and busses. ”

“ His apartment consisted of two rooms and a kitchenette, and after he had placed Blanche on a couch in one of the rooms, he closed the door and changed to his slippers and a dressing-gown. Then he sat down in an armchair and grinned, in a sneer at himself, as he lit a cigarette. This was exactly like one of the impossible climaxes in a cheap movie-reel. The handsome hero had the proudly beautiful girl at his mercy, but nobly and honorably refused to compromise her. Oh, rats, why not walk in and take the only crude, gone-to-morrow happiness that life seemed to offer. ”

“ 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 brass bed, the magazine-posters of pretty women against the pink-flowered wallpaper, the red plush chair with the most infinitely smug of shapes, the white chintz, half-dirty curtain and dark green shade at the window—all of them seemed to be meanly contending against the youth and life of her body.
She was fairly tall, with most of the weight of her body centered below her waist and with an incongruously small torso, but this effect was not as clumsy as it might have been, since it was relieved by a bold approach to symmetry. Something of a child and an amazon met in her body. ”

“ Blanche felt a little scornful and a little inquiring as she listened to him. Who ever heard of saying that people shouldn’t work—what would become of them if they didn’t? Besides, what did he get out of all his reading and this “think-ing” of his? He was a boob in many respects, and in a way she was wasting her time with him. She could have been in the company of men who could show her an actual good time—high-class cabarets and automobile parties, and the best theaters and restaurants. Yet, after she went out with these men for a while she always grew tired of them. ”

“ As Blanche changed to a kimono, she tried to feel sympathetic toward Harry, but she could not down her sneaking satisfaction at his misfortune. Somehow, it was difficult to engender affection toward this rough-neck, never-seeing, cocksure brother of hers. Of course, a man wasn’t a man unless he used his fists and his voice with a hard efficiency, but Harry carried his masculinity to an overbearing extreme, and never paid any attention to your side of the question, and seemed to have a meanness—a go-to-hell spirit—which could instantly be awakened by the slightest opposition. ”

“ After they were seated at a table in The Golden Mill and had finished half of their highballs, she said: “Joe, I’m going to talk serious to you. I was just in a silly mood when I said last time I’d think about living with you. It wouldn’t work out—it never does unless two people really love each other. ’F I ever fall hard in love with you, Joe, I’ll do it in a minute. I’m not afraid, but I don’t love you now. Besides, it’s not just a question of some man, with me. I’ve made up my mind to try and be an artist or an actress—don’t laugh now—and I wonder whether you could help me any.” ”

“ Helgin rose and joined a group, while Vanderin sat down and conversed with Blanche. He fascinated her as he told her grotesquely humorous, slightly bawdy anecdotes of Harlem’s night life and spoke of cabarets where negroes and whites danced and frolicked with a savagely paganish abandonment, and described the motives and longings behind negro music and writing. According to Vanderin, negroes were pouncing upon the restrained and timorous art of America and revitalizing it with an unashamed sensuality, and more simple and tortured longings, and a more grimly questioning attitude of mind. ”

“ Blanche felt an enormous pity for him—he was physically weak but he was not a coward, and she wished that she could love him, for he certainly deserved it. She had a sense of guilt at having caused him all this pain and trouble, and she became confused at the impossibility of making any amends to him. More kisses and huggings?—they would only lead him to an eventual disappointment. Only her love could make him happy, and that couldn’t be manufactured, no matter how much you respected a man. ”

“ As Blanche listened to her sister, a disapproving sadness welled up within her—same old Mabel, not a hairbreadth changed. People seemed to be born in one way and to stick to it for the rest of their lives. She herself had never been quite like Mabel, even when she, Blanche, had been much more stupid than she might be now. ”

“ Whenever Oppendorf liked a woman he treated her at times with a whimsical pretense of courtliness and deference, merrily overdone enough to make the whimsicality apparent.
“How easy it would be to believe you,” she responded, with a sigh that carried off the vestige of a smile.
“Emotions are never false—even the masquerade must become real before it can be persuasive,” Oppendorf answered, quickly changing to a mien of abstracted, impersonal challenge. “When the reality survives for a long time it is called sincere and true, and [192] people have faith in it. ”

“ He had the desire to make Blanche worthy of him, and to give her the knowledges and bystandish rebukes toward life on which he prided himself. He told himself that he was an idealist in sexual matters and that he was waiting for a girl who could show him a clean, aspiring, beautiful love, free from all coquetries and hagglings, and he used the impressive adjectives to serenade his sense of sexual frustration. ”

“ Margaret said, as she slid into his arms. “Just as a person begins to depend on you ... you flit away ... I know.”
“Why does a woman hate a man when he departs with an honest abruptness?”—Oppendorf shifted to the inquiry of a distressed child. “Or, why do men hate women for the same reason? I am immersed in you at present because you contain qualities which I cannot find in the other women around me. To-night, perhaps, or in a month from now, I may meet another woman who does possess them, together with other qualities which you lack. ”

“ To Blanche, dancing was the approved, indirect way in which you could relieve your sex without compromising it, and as she was hugged tightly against Rosenberg, he became desirable to her because the music and steps transformed him and cast a rhythmical glamor upon his body. She had the same feeling with any man with whom she danced, unless he was old or inept, and when she danced with a man who was physically attractive off the dance floor as well, the sensation rose to an all-conquering and haughty semiecstasy. ”

“ No, Blanche was too inhumanly honest for that—even if she had wanted to lie, she could never have induced herself to put the words on paper. If he were wrong in this belief, then he would lose all of his faith in his ability to peer into human beings, and would call himself a fool for the remainder of his life! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He met tens of women every night down at Tony’s, and among all of them it would be easy for him to find a quick-minded, tempting girl—perhaps one of his own race, who would not lead him into staggering troubles and difficulties.
She sat on a bench facing the greenish-gray swells of dirty water, and watched the bobbing boats, and the laboriously swaying barges, and the straining, smoky tugs. A mood of plaintive, barely wounded peace settled about her, in spite of the jealous ranklings underneath. ”

“ Urged by a perverse whim, he invited Blanche to come with him to a party which he had promised to attend on the following night. The affair was to be a gathering of literary and theatrical celebrities and near celebrities, together with their latest fads and fancies in human form, and it might be amusing to bring this blunt, would-be highbrowish, young hair-dresser and see whether the assembled pedestals would overwhelm her. ”

“ Blanche had become a stunned child, scarcely daring to believe in the compensations which were ruffling her blood to something more than music, and yet desperately guarding them, incoherently whispering over them, endlessly testing them with her fingers and lips, lest they prove to be the cruellest of fantasies. ”

“ In the twenties, years slip by with the flimsy rapidity of soap-bubbles blown from the breath of time, unless the person experiencing them has found an unusually cloistered or passionless existence. As Blanche sat in the Beauty Parlor where she worked as a hair-curler, she remembered that she was twenty-two and that her birthday was only twenty-four hours distant. ”

“ Something in the weary contempt of his words should have suggested to her that he was pleading his own cause, but her delighted immersion in him made her oblivious, and she mistook his words for those of a rarely unprejudiced white man. How eloquently and clearly he talked! He had an unassuming but fervent way that was far more attractive than Helgin’s suave, superior jovialities, or Oppendorf’s tired belligerency, or any of the other postures which she had noticed in different men at the party. Was she really beginning to fall in love with this Eric Starling? ”

“ As Blanche listened to his silkenly baritone voice she reproached herself for her lack of a warm response toward this persuasive, exotic man. His mind intrigued her but her heart still beat evenly. She seemed to sense something of a huge, amiable, carelessly treacherous cat within him—one who lazily and perversely hunted for distractions and amusements, without allowing anything or any one to move him deeply, and who could become cruel or disdainful in the tremor of an eyelash. Why did all of the mentally luring men she had ever met fail to overpower her emotions? ”

“ She felt herself growing steadier, and the mists in her head changed to a swaying ache in which her thoughts regathered, and her emotions became sullen and self-contemptuous.
“You’re some boob, you are, letting Joe Campbell dose you up with booze and get you to come to his place,” she said to herself. “He almost put one over on you this time, you conceited dope. How much respect would he have for you if he got you this way? Say, don’t make me laugh.”
In spite of the sick giddiness that still remained within her, she became morosely determined to leave the apartment and return to her home. ”

“ Margaret replied.
“But it’s much deeper than that,” Blanche said slowly. “We’re both perm’nently in love with each other, we really are. It’s a big, precious thing, and [245] not just ... well ... not just wanting to have a few parties, you know. I’m going to live with him for years and years, and maybe marry him right now. It’s the first time I’ve ever loved any one.”
“But, Blanche, you’re going to let yourself in for an endless nightmare, if that’s the case,” Margaret replied, sorrowfully. “Your people will simply raise the roof off, if they’re anything like you say they are. ”

“ Vanderin excused himself to greet some new arrivals, and Margaret dropped into his chair.
“How do you like the hectic fricassee?” she asked, half waving her hand toward a boisterous group of negroes and whites, who stood with arms interlocked.
“I’m very confused about it,” Blanche said. “One part of me, now, it says, ‘Come on, Blanie, be a good sport and don’t be prejudiced,’ but there’s another part, you see, and it sort of shrinks away, and wonders, well ... and wonders how they can kiss and hug each other.” ”

“ God, sex could be a wild, clean, naked, beautiful thing, and people were always hurling mud and denunciations at it, or slinking with it behind closed doors, damn them. But he didn’t want just a flitting affair with Blanche ... he was sure of that now. He had been afraid that the encouragement of night, and the highballs, and the party, might have caused him to throw a false radiance around this girl—he had done the same thing before, though never so severely. But now he realized that his feelings for her were made of more solid stuff—realized it just after he had finished reading her sketch. ”