Harry1 Greener’s condition didn’t improve. He remained’ in bed, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded on his chest.
Tod went to see him almost every night. There were usually other guests. Sometimes Abe Kusich, sometimes Anna and Annabelle Lee, a sister act of the nineteen-tens, more often the four Gingos, a family of performing Eskimos from Point Barrow, Alaska.
If Harry were asleep or there were visitors, Faye usually invited Tod into her room for a talk. His interest in her grew despite the things she said and he continued to find her very exciting. Had any other girl been so affected2, he would have thought her intolerable. Faye’s affectations, however, were so completely artificial that he found them charming.
Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish3, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque4 situations would have made him squirm with annoyance5, but because he saw the perspiring6 stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle7 of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed.
He found still another way to excuse her. He believed that while she often recognized the falseness of an attitude, she persisted in it because she didn’t know how to be simpler or more honest. She was an actress who had learned from bad models in a bad school.
Yet Faye did have some critical ability, almost enough to recognize the ridiculous. He had often seen her laugh at herself. What was more, he had even seen her laugh at her dreams.
One evening they talked about what she did with herself when she wasn’t working as an extra. She told him that she often spent the whole day making up stories. She laughed as she said it. When he questioned her, she described her method quite willingly.
She would get some music on the radio, then lie down on her bed and shut her eyes. She had a large assortment8 of stories to choose from. After getting herself in the right mood, she would go over them in her mind, as though they were a pack of cards, discarding one after another until she found the one that suited. On some days, she would run through the whole pack without making a choice. When that happened, she would either go to Vine Street for an ice cream soda9 or, if she was broke, thumb over the pack again and force herself to choose.
While she admitted that her method was too mechanical for the best results and that it was better to slip into a dream naturally, she said that any dream was better than no dream and beggars couldn’t be choosers. She hadn’t exactly said this, but he was able to understand it from what she did say. He thought it important that she smiled while telling him, not with embarrassment10, but critically. However, her critical powers ended there. She only smiled at the mechanics.
The first time he had ever heard one of her dreams was late at night in her bedroom. About half an hour earlier, she had knocked on his door and had asked him to come and help her with Harry because she thought he was dying. His noisy breathing, which she had taken for the death rattle11, had awakened12 her and she was badly frightened. Tod put on his bathrobe and followed her downstairs. When he got to the apartment, Harry had managed to clear his throat and his breathing had become quiet again.
She invited him into her room for a smoke. She sat on the bed and he sat beside her. She was wearing an old beach robe of white toweling over her pajamas13 and it was very becoming.
He wanted to beg her for a kiss but was afraid, not because she would refuse, but because she would insist on making it meaningless. To flatter her, he commented on her appearance. He did a bad job of it. He was incapable14 of direct flattery and got bogged15 down in a much too roundabout observation. She didn’t listen and he broke off feeling like an idiot.
“I’ve got a swell16 idea,” she said suddenly. “An idea how we can make some real money.”
He made another attempt to flatter her. This time by assuming an attitude of serious interest.
“You’re educated,” she said. “Well, I’ve got some swell ideas for pictures. All you got to do is write them up and then we’ll sell them to the studios.”
He agreed and she described her plan. It was very vague until she came to what she considered would be its results, then she went into concrete details. As soon as they had sold one story, she would give him another. They would make loads and loads of money. Of course she wouldn’t give up acting17, even if she was a big success as a writer, because acting was her life.
He realized as she went on that she was manufacturing another dream to add to her already very thick pack. When she finally got through spending the money, he asked her to tell him the idea he was to “write up,” keeping all trace of irony18 out of his voice.
On the wall of the room beyond the foot of her bed was a large photograph that must have once been used in the lobby of a theatre to advertise a Tarzan picture. It showed a beautiful young man with magnificent muscles, wearing only a narrow loin cloth, who was ardently19 squeezing a slim girl in a torn riding habit. They stood in a jungle clearing and all around the pair writhed20 great vines loaded with fat orchids21. When she told her story, he knew that this photograph had a lot to do with inspiring it.
A young girl is cruising on her father’s yacht in the South Seas. She is engaged to marry a Russian count, who is tall, thin and old, but with beautiful manners. He is on the yacht, too, and keeps begging her to name the day. But she is spoiled and won’t do it. Maybe she became engaged to him in order to spite another man. She becomes interested in a young sailor who is far below her in station, but very handsome. She flirts22 with him because she is bored. The sailor refuses to be toyed with no matter how much money she’s got and tells her that he only takes orders from the captain and to go back to her foreigner. She gets sore as hell and threatens to have him fired, but he only laughs at her. How can he be fired in the middle of the ocean? She falls in love with him, although maybe she doesn’t realize it herself, because he is the first man who has ever said no to one of her whims23 and because he is so handsome. Then there is a big storm and the yacht is wrecked24 near an island. Everybody is drowned, but she manages to swim to shore. She makes herself a hut of boughs25 and lives on fish and fruit. It’s the tropics. One morning, while she is bathing naked in a brook26, a big snake grabs her. She struggles but the snake is too strong for her and it looks like curtains. But the sailor, who has been watching her from behind some bushes, leaps to her rescue. He fights the snake for her and wins.
Tod was to go on from there. He asked her how she thought the picture should end, but she seemed to have lost interest. He insisted on hearing, however.
“Well, he marries her, of course, and they’re rescued. First they’re rescued and then they’re married, I mean. Maybe he turns out to be a rich boy who is being a sailor just for the adventure of it, or something like that. You can work it out easy enough.”
“It’s sure-fire,” Tod said earnestly, staring at her wet lips and the tiny point of her tongue which she kept moving between them.
“I’ve got just hundreds and hundreds more.”
He didn’t say anything and her manner changed. While telling the story, she had been full of surface animation27 and her hands and face were alive with little illustrative grimaces28 and gestures. But now her excitement narrowed and became deeper and its play internal. He guessed that she must be thumbing over her pack and that she would soon select another card to show him.
He had often seen her like this, but had never before understood it. All these little stories, these little daydreams29 of hers, were what gave such extraordinary color and mystery to her movements. She seemed always to be struggling in their soft grasp as though she were trying to run in a swamp. As he watched her, he felt sure that her lips must taste of blood and salt and that there must be a delicious weakness in her legs. His impulse wasn’t to aid her to get free, but to throw her down in the soft, warm mud and to keep her there.
He expressed some of his desire by a grunt30. If he only had the courage to throw himself on her. Nothing less violent than rape31 would do. The sensation he felt was like that he got when holding an egg in his hand. Not that she was fragile or even seemed fragile. It wasn’t that. It was her completeness, her egglike self-sufficiency, that made him want to crush her.
But he did nothing and she began to talk again.
“I’ve got another swell idea that I want to tell you. Maybe you had better write this one up first. It’s a backstage story and they’re making a lot of them this year.”
She told him about a young chorus girl who gets her big chance when the star of the show falls sick. It was a familiar version of the Cinderella theme, but her technique was much different from the one she had used for the South Sea tale. Although the events she described were miraculous32, her description of them was realistic. The effect was similar to that obtained by the artists of the Middle Ages, who, when doing a subject like the raising of Lazarus from the dead or Christ walking on water, were careful to keep all the details intensely realistic. She, like them, seemed to think that fantasy could be made plausible33 by a humdrum34 technique.
“I like that one, too,” he said when she had finished.
“Think them over and do the one that has the best chance.”
She was dismissing him and if he didn’t act at once the opportunity would be gone. He started to lean toward her, but she caught his meaning and stood up. She took his arm with affectionate brusqueness — they were now business partners — and guided him to the door.
In the hall, when she thanked him for coming down and apologized for having disturbed him, he tried again. She seemed to melt a little and he reached for her. She kissed him willingly enough, but when he tried to extend the caress35, she tore free.
“Whoa there, palsy-walsy,” she laughed. “Mamma spank36.” He started for the stairs.
“Good-bye now,” she called after him, then laughed again.
He barely heard her. He was thinking of the drawings he had made of her and of the new one he would do as soon as he got to his room.
In “The Burning of Los Angeles” Faye is the naked girl in the left foreground being chased by the group of men and women who have separated from the main body of the mob. One of the women is about to hurl37 a rock at her to bring her down. She is running with her eyes closed and a strange half-smile on her lips. Despite the dreamy repose38 of her face, her body is straining to hurl her along at top speed. The only explanation for this contrast is that she is enjoying the release that wild flight gives in much the same way that a game bird must when, after hiding for several tense minutes, it bursts from cover in complete, unthinking panic.
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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amateurish
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| n.业余爱好的，不熟练的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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perspiring
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| v.出汗，流汗( perspire的现在分词 ) | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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bogged
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| adj.陷于泥沼的v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的过去式和过去分词 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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orchids
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| n.兰花( orchid的名词复数 ) | |
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flirts
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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daydreams
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| n.白日梦( daydream的名词复数 )v.想入非非，空想( daydream的第三人称单数 ) | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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rape
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| n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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humdrum
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| adj.单调的，乏味的 | |
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caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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spank
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| v.打，拍打(在屁股上) | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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