Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 11

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They drove back to Hollywood, and to the Beachcomber’s: all bamboo and raffia, dimly lit through Japanese colored-glass net floats, with soft Hawaiian music whimpering in the air, exotic Asiatic food, and treacherously delicious rum drinks. Erskine was amusing and she was grateful to him for taking her from the boredom of the cocktail party. And after the two martinis she had there, and a pair of rum drinks with curious names—a Donga, one was called, and a Sumatra Kula—which she allowed herself here, she found herself more than usually relaxed and inclined to laugh very easily at things which really were not so very funny.

But enjoying herself seemed to be the main object at the time, and so when they finished their dinner of strange Chinese and Hawaiian dishes, she took a third rum drink at his smiling urging—a Don’s Pearl this time, with a little seed pearl at the bottom. You had to drink it to the bottom to get the pearl, and she laughingly was determined to do so, and did.

By then she felt slightly dizzy and a little reckless, and when he suggested again his studio, she agreed without any particular hesitation. The night was very warm, as the day had been, and perhaps that had something to do with the way the drinks affected her, but she remembered only foggily that they drove up one of the steep narrow roads in the Hollywood Hills and stopped before an old pseudo-Spanish house overlooking the neon signs of the city.

“This is it,” said Erskine. And when he ushered her into the house and switched on a light, “It’s rather a mess, but you may be interested in some of my things.”

She sat down, feeling a little unsteady on her feet, and gazed around. The room was quite large and evidently designed for a living room, with false beams and a sloping Spanish fireplace; but it was Erskine’s studio and it was wildly disarrayed. An easel covered with a paint-daubed cloth stood near a window, and canvases, finished or unfinished, were stacked along the walls. The furniture was old and shabby and upholstered in red. The walls, too, were a dull brick red. To her the colors seemed to swirl and pulse.

He pointed to a large sideboard, painted red like everything else—a rather dreadful magenta red in this case. “I did that myself. Color is everything. That’s not a cozy red—it’s not a strong virile red—but it’s rather a treasure—don’t you think?”

She nodded.

“When I work I like harsh colors about me,” he went on. “They stimulate me, stir me. Don’t you feel it, too?”

His voice seemed insistent, almost quivering, as if this were a very important tenet with him. The rum drinks sang in her ears, and she felt airy, her head and heart light, careless of thought or ordinary matters. She nodded again, acknowledging that the fierce blare of colors acted on her as Erskine said, beating at her emotions and senses like bludgeons of light.

On the wall opposite hung a painting—a nude, evidently, of a strange deep fuchsia-pink, with montane breasts and legs thick and heavy, the face a blob as if a child had daubed it.

“Lush, isn’t she?” asked Erskine, following her glance.

“You painted it?”

“Yes. Empirical—très empirical. Sensual. The way I felt at the time. Emotional.”

So this was the kind of work he did. She found the thing repellently ugly, yet in her mood oddly, almost mesmerically fascinating to her gaze.

“What does it say to you?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I’m not ... sure.”

“Oh! You don’t like it!” It was an accusation.

She said, “I didn’t say I didn’t like it——”

“The trouble is you won’t let yourself like it!”

She felt defensive and groped for her thoughts. “Perhaps I—just don’t understand it.”

“You needn’t understand it!” he exclaimed. “In art that’s the least essentiality. No two souls feel alike—ever. But if you just let it enter you, touch you, take possession of you, it will mean something to you—something immense and creative, like the sensation the artist felt, and the model felt with him, when they were doing it together!”

She wanted to ask if he actually used a model for that, but felt it would be impertinent since obviously he had.

“Feel—you must feel!” he insisted. “To feel nothing, or even to feel little, is like death. Only when we begin to feel acutely do we begin to grow!”

She stared at the painting and the colors seemed to run together in tones and designs almost harmonic. She wished to feel, she wanted to understand, the great creative thrust Erskine had experienced when he painted that—it must be godlike, an otherworldly exhilaration.

The rum drinks were more potent than she realized. She shifted her gaze to him, sitting opposite her, swinging a leg rather jauntily over a chair arm, slender, with a cigarette in his fingers, and he seemed to her compelling and powerful in the thoughts he was expressing to her. Her mind, with the pleasing, irresponsible glow of the alcohol, was willing to be dominated, whereas when it was sober it was unwilling for such domination.

I wonder if he knows I’m a little drunk, she thought. And an inner voice said, Knowledge that a woman is a little drunk is an advantage men frequently seek to improve upon.

As if fearing to have the conversation stop she spoke almost faintly.

“I think I see now what you’re achieving, Erskine.”

Words, meaningless words, an excuse to gain time and summon order in the maze of her thoughts.