January 7
ADLERT'S bureau is sending him to San Francisco for two weeks. H. e is leaving tomorrow.
Our talk will have to be put off.
John P. arl writes of an exhibit of his pictures at a women's dub in New York.
It was not a success. For want of space they crowded his things into the dining room, then held so many Red Cross luncheons that n) one could get in.
He sold nothing. A lady who admired a still life wanted to order a flower painting for her daughter's bedroomthree flowers in a blue vase.
"Only three? A fourth flower will cost you twenty-five dollars more. It'll fill the picture out. That's very reasonable." She pondered this but in the end she decided three would be enough. Her husband grew peonies; she would have the flowers and a vase sent over. "I'm sorry," Johnny said.
"I thought we were talking about roses. Peonies are too big for the price. I'll have t0. harge ten dollars extra for each flower. It's the standarl rate for flowers with a three-inch diameter. A lemon will be ten dollars more, unpeeled.
Half-peeled, fifteen dollars."
"Are there rates for everything?" she said. She had become suspicious.
"In a manner of speaking, there are. They're a little lower than the ones I quoted you. The Jones Street Convention of 1930 set them lower. But, with inflation @?
Here she fled.
"Ethel said it was nasty of me, but the woman was so serious I could not resist joking. I didn't think it would lose me the commission."
He still has his job with the advertising agency, drawing "cartoon faces of bilious men and headachy office girls." And that, he goes on, serious all at once, "is the adult, commonsense, wise world. I am exhilarated by the tremendous unimportance of my work. It is nonsense. My employers are nonsensical. The job therefore leaves me free. There's nothing to it.
In a way it's like getting a piece of bread from a child in return for wiggling your ears. It is childish.
I am the only one in this fifty-three-story building who knows how childish it is. Everybody else takes it seriously. Because this is a fifty-three-story building, they think it must be serious "This is life!" I say, this is pish, nonsense, nothing! The real world is the world of art and of thought. There is only one worth-while sort of work, that of the imagination."
It is an attractive idea, it confers a sort of life on him, sets him off from the debased dullness of those fifty-three stories. He is not making this up. I know him. He has no reason to lie to me. He is telling me what he feels: that he has escaped a trap. That really is a victory to celebrate. I am fascinated by it, and a little jealous. He can maintain himself. Is it because he is an artist? I believe it is. Those acts of the imagination save him. But what about me? I have no talent for that sort of thing. My talent, if I have one at all, is for being a citizen, or what is today calle. d, most apologetically, a good man.
Is there some sort of personal effort I can substitute for the imagination?
That, I am unable to answer. But certainly he is better off. There he is in New York, painting; and in spite of the calamity, the lies and moral buggery, the odium, the detritus of wrong and sorrow dropped on every heart, in spite of these, he can keep a measure of cleanliness and freedom.
Besides, those acts of the imagination are in the strictest sense not personal. Through them he is connected with the best part of mankind. He feels this and he can" never be isolated, left aside, lie has a community. I have this six-sided box. And goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. I, in this room, separate, alienated, distrustful, find in my purpose not an open world, but a closed, hopeless jail. My perspectives end in the walls. Nothing Of "the future comes to me. Only the past, in its shabbiness and innocence. Some men seem to know exactly where their opportunities lie; they break prisons and cross whole Siberias to pursue them. One room holds me.
When the Italian General Bergonzoli (i think it was Bergonzoli) was captured in Libya, he would not discuss military matters or the strategy that led to his defeat, but said, "Please!
I am not a soldier. I am primarily a poet!" Who does not recognize the advantage of the artist, these days?
January 11
THE OTHER night Ira was searching through the shelves for a book she had put away months before and was musing aloud about its disappearance.
I was trimming my nails, listening absently, guiding the tiny crescent shears away from the quick, and was, as I can become in small matters, preoccupied with the gathering up of the clippings, when suddenly I remembered that I had lent Kitty Daumler a book.
"What did you say you were looking for?"
"Didn't you hear me before? A small, blue book, Dub- liners. Have you seen it?"
"It must be around."
"Help me look."
"It's probably buried among the others. Why don't you read anothe book? There're plenty."
But Ira would not be so easily dissuaded. She went on searching, piling books on the floor near my chair. "You won't find it," I said after a time.
"Why not?"
"These things have a way of dropping out of sight and turning up months later. It may have fallen behind the case."
"Let's move it."
"Not I. Next time Marie holds a general cleaning." I picked up the clippings in pinches and threw them into the wastebasket. "I ought to bury them, by rights."
"Those? Why?" She stood up, in her blue figured wrap, to ease her back against the wall. "I can't stay bent over very long. Old age."
"Nails, hair, all cuttings and waste from the body. Fear of sorcery."
"The door's been locked for days; he couldn't have taken it. Anyhow, what would he do with Dubliners?"'"
"Vanaker?"
"Yes." Ira was still sure he was responsible for the disappearance of her perfume bottles. I'll dig the book up tomorrow," I said. "But it should be here."
"Very well, it should. But if it's not, it won't appear, no matter how determined you are."
"You mean it isn't in the room?"
"I'm not saying that."
"Then "I meart you'd rather waste an evening looking for it than read another book."
She said indignantly: "You told me to read it yourself. You insisted."
"But that was long ago, months and months ago. You should have read it in a few hours."
"Yes," she said. "And it's months and months since you took an interest in me. Lately, for all you care, I might just as well not be here. You pay no attention to what I say. If I didn't come home for a week you wouldn't miss me."
I received this charge in silence. "Well?" she said aggressively. "
"Ah, that's all foolishness."
"That's no sort of answer."
"Iva, it's this situation we're in. It's changed us both. But it isn't permanent."
"You mean you'll go away soon, and that'll be the end of it."
"Ohea8I said, irritated, "don't nag. It is the situation. You know it is."
"It certainly has changed you."
"Of course it has; it would change anyone."
Rising, I took my coat from the hanger and went to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To get some air. It's stuffy here."
"Can't you see it's raining? But I suppose even that's better than spending the evening with a nagging wife."