CHAPTER I

THE ISLAND IN THE MOON

“SCHWARZ--_You’re just making believe!_ LULU--_You’re making believe yourself, it seems to me. I make believe? What makes you think that?_ I never needed to do that.”

FRANK WEDEKIND--_“Erdgeist”_ (_Trans. S. A. Eliot, Jr._)

1

Home again! Liberty drowning in the harbor, Manhattan mushrooms sprouting in the haze (lower Broadway dividing them like a gash), murky snakes of water curling round the low island--the big ship slouches up to the pier. Tiny tugs and thin hawsers tease her into the slip, and gently and imperceptibly she is captured, bound helpless to the land. High above, on the upper deck, Howard and Em silently watched the waiting crowd on the dock. No familiar face. Em shivered slightly.

“Cold? Suppose we go on shore here.” Howard’s tone was careless. He did not look at her.

Bustle, luggage, customs inspector, porters.

“Get me a taxi.”

“Here you are, sir.”

Streets of New York. Clanging cars, autos, whish! trucks thundering, screaming fire-engine, scattering people, black crowds, all dead, tramp, tramp, thud, thud, something steady and awful. Over all, this giant rhythm. A dark face in the mass on the sidewalk, Dhas Mitra, “Elephants!” Through Em’s mind stride the lines of a young New York poet.

_“With huge diaphanous feet, March the leaden velvet elephants, Pressing the bodies back into the earth.”_

And the sky overhead was dull, the buildings stood stiffly, remote and unfriendly amid the impudent din. The throbbing beat grew dim again. To Em the city seemed vague. It belonged to Les. She and Howard did not speak until the taxi drew up before Howard’s apartment.

“We’ll stop here, for the present at least,” he said. Dead gray walls, Matisse etching, two priceless Japanese prints, conspiring degradation and fear. Em was dumb. Did I ever belong here? Howard pointed to a door. “Take off your things in there.”

Em entered the bedroom and looked with wretched interest in the mirror. Her chin seemed more pointed, her cheek-bones accentuated. She had almost no color.

2

Em and Howard at Esther’s. Dingy cellar restaurant, flaring orange curtains, tables with rickets, spineless chairs, green candles, bad drawings by habitués. Skimpy table-of-the-host dinners, demi-celebrities. The place now favored by emotional dilettantes.

Conversation nine feet high!

“Dada is a snort--_junge Kunst_, pooh!--all art is music--Kokoscha--instead of giving you people gives the feeling people give him--” Howard seldom tried his brilliance on Em now. She ate laxly, almost without hearing him. But others were listening. His voice was raised a little. “Matthias Grünewald--de Sade with a brush--necrophiles--wax tears on a coffin--beauty is digestion--Renoirism--tra, la, la, la, la, la--don’t you think so, Em?”

“What did you say, Howard?”

“Why don’t you listen? Might learn something.” His voice, keyed lower, was hard. Something ached in her. The smell of Greenwich Village revolted her. Chicago. I wonder if I loved everything he did, she was helplessly musing. Not like Howard’s contemptuous understanding. “_Indépendants_--André Lhote--sugar teats--_refusés_--” The monologue across the little table became indistinct to her again. “Intransigents--_communards_--painting with a broom--_blague_--” Howard’s voice had become saw-like. “Why in hell don’t you pay some attention to what I say, Em?”

“I’m sorry, Howard.”

His face cleared at her unpassionate tone. Howard was just back from Europe.

“Cezanne--form and color have no--” he resumed complacently.

“You’ve said that before, Howard. I don’t care about the pathos of the artist’s expression, or impression. I can’t paint now.” Cezanne again! She longed for the liquid darkness outside. Les would--

“It’s because you’re losing your interest in it. Good thing. Art’s a perversion in women, anyway.” Howard laughed. Em bit her lips. He offered her a cigarette but she shook her head without looking at him. He was ashamed for her recent failures. When she did well, something in him hurt in resentment, but he boasted of her to others. He despised the blatant conceit of other men in sex. He wanted a woman who did him more subtle credit. “You ought to etch. Give you outline. You need it.” He lighted his own cigarette contentedly. “What did you think of what I said about Kokoscha?”

Her voice had stiffened.

“The same thing I thought the last time you said it. I can’t understand your idea that color and form are different things. I don’t care whether Kokoscha gives you people or the feeling people give him--you give me neither.”

Howard flushed.

“I’ll take back what I just said. What you need is a new man.”

“I need something besides what I get from you,” she flamed.

“Ditto,” said Howard viciously. He was a little frightened at his own words.

Life was more concrete to Em. She was glad of pain. It was definite and familiar.

3

Two days later they ran into a large group of Howard’s friends uptown. Too late to evade them.

“Of course you know Miss Tyler. She was nice enough to lunch with me today.” No implication that it was not a casual occurrence.

Em remembered that twice recently when the door-bell rang Howard had refused to answer. She wondered how many people he had written to about their relationship while they were abroad. She greeted his acquaintances distantly. Howard’s eyes menacing.

“Come right with us!” invited Carmen Stubbs raucously. Whorey-aired goodsoul, she was a perpetual virgin, yet kind. “It’s Celia’s twentieth birthday. We were just going into Boutelle’s here. We can get hooch. They know _me_. Just got paid for a bum story and I’m going to spend some of it on the dear child.” Pale delicate-featured Celia St. John did not even smile.

“All right,” acquiesced Howard without glancing at Em.

The party filed into the restaurant. Two tables in an alcove were pushed together.

“Me at the head of the board for once,” announced Carmen huskily. She patted the chair at her right. “And the blessed damozel must sit here.” Celia seated herself composedly. “Come up here, you.” Carmen beckoned to the Great Modern Critic, who had again honored the occasion with his presence. He glanced apprehensively around, visibly relieved at the absence of the Hungry Soul. The Critic seats himself at Carmen’s left.

Howard is next to Celia, Em between him and Jobson, the novelist. Mitra, at Jobson’s side, produces an olive-colored crumpled cloth from his coat pocket and calmly winds it about his head as a turban.

“And I go to the foot of the class for once.” The rafters ring with bullofbashan little Stieg’s proclamation. He seats himself impressively opposite Carmen. None of the others notice him. A passionate poetess, very fat and with hairy upper lip, is at Stieg’s right. Next her is Tanaka, smiling and silent. Les’s girl acquaintance sits between the Jap and the sculptor, Pierre Gouvain. She has candid eyes. There is considerable chatter and laughing as the party settles round the tables. Gouvain turns to the Critic.

“It wass you who haf said zat my weemen are fat, eh?” He rumples his black hair reproachfully.

The Critic (more impressive than when he spent the evening of Howard’s party in the clutches of the Hungry Soul) turns his blue fish-eyes on Gouvain, but his reply is inaudible in the general prefatory discussion of food. The ancient ascetic waiter, in full keeping with the faded hangings and shabby dignified furnishings, is bending discreetly over Howard and Em. Howard has ordered liberally. She shakes her head.

“Madame cares for nossing?”

Howard answers shortly.

“You bring the food and we’ll decide who’s to eat it.”

Synthetic cocktails, eagerly gulped by all save Em, the two Orientals and the Critic. Stieg breaks out (stentorian tones).

“All modern fiction can be traced to the influence of three men--my next book on Stendhal, Dostoievsky and--” (_The_ GREAT CRITIC _is beginning to speak and the company frowns resentfully at_ STIEG. CARMEN _says_, “Sh-h-h.” STIEG, _evidently overawed for the time, subsides_.)

CARMEN.--(_Smiling to her left._) Shoot again, please.

CRITIC.--(_Speaks quietly and insolently. His first words are heard only by those near him, but the others soon listen in silence._) The revolt against naturalism, through the neo-Stendhalians, such as, for example, Bourget, while a psychologic throw-back to Stendhal, still clings to the pseudo-scientific manner of Zola. The revolt is, of course, wider than this, and may be seen, too, in the--(_The company grows restive. Whispering at the other end of the tables._)

PASSIONATE POETESS.--(_Known to her friends as P. P. Is heard audibly repeating her last verses to_ TANAKA.)

All his desire Lisped in his yearning blood, His hungry hands upon her gleaming thighs--

CELIA.--(_Laughs musically, her face like a Botticelli angel._) How much farther did he go? (_The P. P. glowers._ TANAKA _stops smiling for the first time during the meal_.)

HOWARD.--(_Smiles at_ CELIA, _replies to something the_ CRITIC _has said during the confusion_.) Sternheim! Pooh! The expressionists belch instead of write!

(EM, _her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stares steadfastly at her plate_.)

CRITIC.--(_With hauteur, raising his voice slightly._) In order intelligently to understand a movement one cannot overlook its genesis. The wave of naturalism that routed the Goethe-Heine romantic lyricism split up, as I see it, under three principal influences: Whitman, Nietzsche and the Russians--

STIEG.--(_Eager, voice like a hallo._) A new book of mine, three--

CARMEN.--(_Hoarsely._) Be still, Stieg. (_Adds briskly with cajoling cheerfulness._) Why won’t you kids listen?

(EM _has not touched the food_ HOWARD _has insisted on placing before her. Her face suggests vicious despair. The novelist, his mouth full, addresses her._)

JOBSON.--(_Enigmatically._) Good royalties! (_This is his sole remark during the whole course of the meal._ EM _glares at him without reply._ Jobson _bends obliviously over his plate again. His Hindoo neighbor adjusts turban and exclaims explosively._)

MITRA.--Elephants! (_Then, leaning behind the busy_ _Jobson_, _he whispers caressingly to_ EM.) Little tiger! (EM _does not appear to hear_.)

CRITIC.--(_Resuming Johnsonian sway with practiced hand._) All Russian literature is pre- or post-Pushkin. When he, with Gogol and Lermontov, brought--

STIEG.--(_Almost screaming._) The three--

HALF A DOZEN VOICES.--Shut up! Down, Fido! Chloroform! etc.

GOUVAIN.--(_Clasping his head wildly._) What ze hell! I shall go--how you say?--dement.

(_During the mêlée, the girl with candid eyes leans over the table and speaks to_ EM. HOWARD _is intent on a whispered conversation with_ CELIA, _and does not hear._)

“How is Mr. Drane? I haven’t seen him for weeks.”

Em was very pale.

“He’s in Chicago.”

Stieg’s feelings were evidently hurt, because the P. P. was cautiously consoling him with more verse. The Critic held the floor again.

“In Italy the reaction away from the grandiose gestures of Carducci, D’Annunzio and Pascoli--” (Stieg trembled at the mention of a trinity, but the P. P. soothed him) “the spiritual voracity of Papini and the fanatical ethicism of Croce--”

Em ceased to hear the cadenced tones. Brrh! Not their equal in sophistication, not Howard’s equal! _He_ trying to reduce me as an artist! Never himself except in jest. This is their Bohemia! Bloodless. Cynical. Ugly and false life. Death of art. I’m more than all of them. I’m honest--not--I’m--I’m--I wonder how well Les knows that girl with nice eyes. Les. He’s the only one good--A burning wave flooded her. Les! Where are you--She breathed quickly and her eyes were suffused with unshed tears. Mad--better to die--The people and sounds all grew