by Nagai Kafu
So saying, he pulled out his watch and said, “We are almost there. We’ll soon be in a village called Kirkwood in the woods. Once we pass it, we will be in Highland.”
Even as he was talking, we seemed to pass the village he mentioned, with its large stone churches and people’s homes looming, again amid bright green trees; after that, the road went up and down for a while, and then S— patted me on the shoulder and said, “Here we are!”
When I got off the car, I saw that it was indeed a quiet village where practically all one saw were the indigo-colored sky and green foliage; in contrast to St. Louis and other large cities where the fierce summer temperatures were over one hundred degrees, here it was cool, with breezes whispering among the tree leaves. In the meadows visible beyond the woods, cattle were mooing languidly in the summer afternoon, while in the fields at the back of nearby houses, hens were starting to cackle. It was as if I were in a dream, recalling the hustle and bustle of St. Louis that I had left behind only one hour earlier.
“It is a little far from the Fair, but we can get there in forty minutes by train. So why don’t you stay in this area like me?” S— asked.
How could I object? In the villages around there, just about every farmer’s house was making the best room available to rent to summer vacationers from the cities and, especially this year, to Fair visitors. So I decided to stay in a room two houses down from where S— was renting his own.
The very next day, we started going to the Fair. But before any sightseeing, I had first to visit S—’s exhibit.
Together with him, I take the train to the rear entrance of the Fair and, walking past a grove, we come right away to the art gallery in three separate buildings. The central building is for art from the United States, and he tells me his work is on display there. I ask him to take me in immediately. He goes ahead of me, passes through a number of exhibition rooms, and eventually enters a rather narrow, elongated room. “There,” he says, stopping to turn back toward me and pointing to a painting of a nude hanging on the west wall.
He must have used a woman from Egypt or Arabia as a model. A buxom woman with black hair and black eyes is lying on her back on a couch, barely twisting her head toward the front and holding a half-emptied wine glass in her hand. Her large, bright black eyes appear already leaden from exquisite tipsiness, but they have an indescribable expression, as if she were gazing at something. For a while S— remained silent, facing his nude beauty, and then said, “I had so much trouble with those slightly tipsy eyes, of course. But I worked even harder on the skin color of a colored race, although people have not much appreciated this. I thought to myself, the whole body is permeated with the warmth of the wine, while inside her veins arise the passions of the so-called tropical climate. . . . The meaning of this I think I managed to convey not so much with the expression of her eyes as with the tone of her skin bathed by lamplight. What do you think? Don’t you agree?”
I could not give a definite answer and continued to gaze at the painting in silence, but he resumed right away, “It may be that such a subject shouldn’t be included in art. Actually, I thought of trying some such work when I heard a true story about a certain former French friend of mine.”
He wanted to go on, but at this moment a group of several women entered the room, talking loudly, so he glanced at them and said, “Why don’t we take a look around? In the galleries, some works by British and French masters like Millet and Corot are on display.”
We walked in that direction. After viewing most of the exhibited works in the central pavilion, we entered the east pavilion and looked around at the paintings sent from England, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and other countries. Time passed amazingly fast, and soon it would be six o’clock, closing time. So we decided to come back on another day for the offerings from France, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Portugal, and Japan among them in the west pavilion, and exited the east pavilion with the crowd of people. Exhausted, we sat down on a bench at the foot of the grand concert hall [Festival Hall], in front of which cascades were overflowing from three staircases and a large basin.
This area has the most spectacular prospect within the Fair grounds, the circumference of which is more than seven miles. It looks down in one sweeping view over the far-off main entrance and the plaza with a tall monument and numerous statues. Among the huge buildings standing like castles, one can see a spacious pond, looking almost like a lake, into which cascades of water fall, running from the towering basins above us and down the tall flights of stairs. Even small ships and gondolas of various sizes that float around the tremendous water fountain can be seen from where we are.
This much is already an amazing sight, but wait till bells begin to toll somewhere in the Fair grounds and, simultaneously, the sun sets completely beyond the woods in the background; then every last snow-white building is illuminated in blue, red, and other colored lights, so that the many nude statues standing under the pale blue sky look as though, having absorbed these lights, they have just now awakened from a sleep of death and are floating out from around the staircases and roofs of various buildings, ready to start dancing to the band music that begins to be heard here and there.
An extraordinary nightless city! This surely is one of the magical worlds created by the wealth of the Americans.
I was simply dumbfounded and looked around as if in a daze, but as for S—, he was busily chewing tobacco and watching the crowd of people as they came climbing upstairs; whenever a particularly young and beautiful woman passed, he nodded to himself and closely watched her, even as she walked away.
“Is there anyone you could use as a model?” I asked, to which he replied as he spat out the tobacco unceremoniously, “Those are rather rare. But it is a lot of fun to watch buxom young women, even if they may be no good as models. This pleasure is a great privilege God has bestowed on us, so we men have a duty to devote our whole lives to the study of women. It’s hard to beat a Frenchman when it comes to this. I had a very close friend, a journalist who had come from France. He was avidly studying how much pleasure a male body could receive from a woman, but he died a young man while in the middle of his research. He had sacrificed himself. This happened some time ago, but I have always wanted to express one of his experiences in my own work. That is why I finally made that particular painting. . . . Have I told you its title? The slightly inebriated naked beauty. It’s called The Moment Before a Dream.”
I have forgotten to mention that this S— is very much a Francophile, but he has never been to France and doesn’t know much of the language, either. But he believes, arbitrarily, that since his ancestors were pureblooded Frenchmen who came to the new continent about a century ago, and especially since his grandfather married an actress from France, it is certainly in his blood to become an artist. Moreover, he has concluded that strong-willed and excessively clearheaded Americans are not likely to succeed as artists.
Having spat out all his tobacco, he pulled out some cigars this time, and, offering me one, he continued, “That man’s research was really quite valuable for us. Monsieur Mantéro was his name. When he first came to America, he was often grumbling that he could not stand such a drab and uncivilized country, that apart from some chic-looking women, all you saw were Jews with their pointy noses and Negroes with thick lips, or that there was not a single place where you could have a pleasant dinner. But strangely enough, soon he became infatuated with a woman of mixed breed, with some Negro blood in her.
“The reason was that, one evening, after he had had dinner at a restaurant in town, he started walking aimlessly and passed a dingy little theater. At the entrance there were various painted posters and photos, including a painting of a plump woman kicking her leg up high and dancing. In France, the birthplace of such pictures, one can encounter hundreds, even thousands of them in an hour in the streets, so M. Mantéro hadn’t paid much attention. But instead of walking away, he bought a ticket and went in.
“It was the kind of vaudeville one s
ees in any American city. After some acrobatics, burlesque dancing, and rapid playing of various musical instruments, a woman with a substantial amount of black blood in her veins—one could see she must have been the subject of the poster at the entrance—dashed out from backstage and started dancing energetically, with her short hair parted in the middle and wearing a short costume exposing her upper torso. But to his eyes this was nothing unusual. He could barely stifle the yawn that was already welling up in his throat, but he could not just avert his eyes, so he continued to look vaguely in the direction of the stage. But then suddenly he realized how plump her frame was—perhaps this was typical of a young black woman—and said to himself that it would be worth studying how such a frame differed from that of a white woman, something he had never given much thought to. . . . So he began paying closer attention to the stage, where the woman, each time she came to rest after a dance number, would beckon passionately to the spectators with her large dark eyes. His interest was aroused anew. That look in her eyes, he thought, does not really belong to us civilized humans. Rather, it reminds one of a domestic animal begging his master for food. Thus thinking, Mantéro could no longer suppress his curiosity—or rather, as he was wont to force such curiosity out of himself, he did not hesitate to return to the same vaudeville show for three more evenings or so. And it was all too easy; they shook hands, and within less than an hour they were already arm-in-arm like old acquaintances and heading toward her lodging for fun.
“And here he readily discovered something: unlike a woman of a civilized country, this woman of mixed blood did not have the least desire to enjoy herself by trifling with men’s feelings, using artistic gestures and manners or suggestive conversations with hidden meanings. Rather, from the slightest quivering of her eyelashes to the subtle movements of her fingertips, she seemed to be trying to feel all the pleasure she could obtain for her bodily senses.
“It so happened that this was a cold winter night, and she shut her room up completely as she built a big fire. She then drew up a soft sofa with velvet upholstery; the two of them stretch themselves on it while she warms the tips of her toes and the soles of her bare feet, already rid of shoes and stockings. Next she crosses her arms behind her head as if she were holding it, and as all parts of her body gradually warm up, she forcefully stretches herself and twists her body here and there; once she feels that all her muscles have been sufficiently softened, for one last time she flexes her whole body from her fingertips to the tips of her toes. Then, drawing a long breath, and already limp, she quickly throws down her upper body upon him and, as she slowly smokes a fragrant Turkish cigarette, she intensely watches its blue smoke, which hangs motionlessly in the light of a lamp covered with a pale red chimney.
“After a while, she finishes smoking a couple of cigarettes with him and empties in one gulp a glass of champagne, which to her is even more precious than jewelry. All at once, the blood within her whole body seems to boil with tremendous force, caused by the warmth of the wine inside and the fire of the hearth outside. Her eyelids look leaden, as if she is too weary to open her eyes even halfway. Still, she stares at him and around the room intently. But this lasts only a moment, and in no time she drops one arm from the sofa to the floor as though her body has lost all its bones, and she dozes off. That very moment of entering dreamland, she believes, is nothing short of earthly paradise.
“This curious discovery must have given great satisfaction to Mantéro, for he kept visiting her room for three months, without skipping a single night. But, as is usually the case with such a person, as soon as the weather changed he began craving something different. Now he made up his mind to see her for one last time and even told her unambiguously, before he took his leave, ‘I am going to be busy with my work for a while and won’t be able to come.’ Yet the following evening, as he came out of the restaurant where he always had dinner, he noticed the lights radiating beautifully from the lamps above the city streets, and he thought the women passing to and fro seemed even more suggestive than during the day. He paused at a corner of an intersection for a while, but a strange sensation, something he had never experienced before, made him feel impatient and compelled him to walk fast, faster, to what destination he didn’t know. But when he came to himself, to his amazement, he found himself in front of the house where that woman lodged.
“It is too late to turn back now. So he knocks on the door of her room. She greets him and, far from showing either surprise or happiness at seeing him after he had just told her the previous night that it was going to be their last, just takes his hand, as she has always done, and leads him to the sofa where they have been accustomed to sitting together. It is as if she had already known he would come.
“He recalls that the previous night, when he told her he would not be able to come again, she had not betrayed any sorrow at parting but had said, quite calmly, ‘Oh, is that so?’ Maybe this already suggested that she knew all along that he was destined to come back. That memory frightened him for some reason and, thinking he should dash out of the room, he was about to rise when immediately she grabbed his hand and threw her heavy body onto his lap.
“The woman’s body is so hot that it is like a fire. He feels the heat directly with his hand she has clasped, and besides, within less than a minute, his heart starts to pound painfully, and he feels as if all his body heat is steadily being sucked away by her. At that moment, she looks intently into his face with her large, deep, dark pupils, and says in a calm voice, ‘So you are not coming back after tonight?’. But he no longer has any energy left to respond.
“The eyes fixed on him seemed to express fierce and powerful emotions . . . as if to say, ‘you may struggle to run away from me, but once I have marked you, I will never let you go.’ He felt a shudder run through his whole body. And he could not help becoming aware of a sense of hopeless resignation welling up from the bottom of his heart, the feeling that there was nothing he could do, that he was this woman’s prey—just like a mouse facing a cat, or a lamb transfixed in front of a wolf.
“Pity him! Mantéro had been so self-confident because he was a man, the master who had loved and flirted with her as if she were a docile domestic pet, but in time, consciously or unconsciously, he had come under the invisible power that enveloped her body and could never free himself from it. The story may sound familiar to you. For instance, in an old Persian or Turkish legend, the story is often told of an animal that is so infatuated with a young, beautiful queen that it kills her. Maybe this French gentleman too had become the object of infatuation of a Negro girl who had more animal than human blood.
“He became thinner and thinner, with only his eyes glaring; and the more desperately he struggled to get away from her, the closer he was drawn to her. It was, I think, about a year later that he fell gravely ill and so, in order to avoid the cold winter of the United States, he first returned to France and then proceeded to the warmer climate of Italy. But there he became sick from the febrile disease that is often brought with the southern winds. As he was so debilitated, it was more than he could bear, and he ended his life there.”
S— finished his story, smiled at me, and continued, “What do you think? Mantéro died doing what he wanted to do, just like a warrior dying in war, so I applaud him even as I am saddened.
“It’s getting late. Let’s emulate his example tonight and savor as much tasty meat and tasty wine as the nerves of our tongues can take. If we are happy, so will be the God who created us. Which restaurant shall we choose? Come, let’s be on our way.”
S— stood up from the bench where he had been sitting a long time. I followed him, and we both went down the wide stairway step by step, underneath several large nude statues.
In the coolness of the summer night, countless couples were in the plaza, near the pond, and under the trees. The nightless city glittered with lights and stood amid the uproar created by every kind of music and joyous voices. (The end.)
Long Hair
Unlike in the countryside, where the coming of spring is heralded by blooming flowers and singing birds, in New York, which is made of stone, iron, bricks, and asphalt, one knows that spring is not far away by the latest models of women’s hats being displayed inside the glass windows of the millineries.
As the windy month of March passes and April comes with its occasional afternoon showers, Easter Sunday is the customary day to change to spring clothes so that even if the weather is unpredictable and the day may be too cold, women of New York who have been impatiently waiting hastily discard their ornate winter garments and ride in carriages and cars in high spirits, fluttering the skirts of their chic thin garments.
I am one of those who love the fashions of this country, so rich in their variety of colors, so I decide to take advantage of the fine weather one day in order to watch the crowds of people. Around three o’clock in the afternoon, I take up a slender cane and walk, all alone, from Fifth Avenue to the tree-lined paths of Central Park. The sight of numerous carriages and cars, one after another, moving slowly in the serene spring sunlight is like Paris’s Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon, which I have seen in pictures.
Onlookers of this grand spectacle are sitting on rows of benches on both sides of the tree-lined street, and I soon find a seat for myself. Alone, looking at each occupant of the passing cars, I comment endlessly on the person’s choice of fashion and degree of tastefulness.