PULL
DOWN VANITY!
439
shoulder his grave, pallid face, whose fixed paleness seemed a mask or
the make-up of a silent movie comedian. His back tapered classically
to his narrow waist with an impressive ripple of muscles under his
sweat-soaked shirt. I wondered what he thought of me.
After two more quick, stiff drinks, Judith began to laugh, almost
hysterically, "How silly I am-how silly I am! Why you're just human,
after all. . . ."
"I can't answer for Milton," Fenton said. "As for me I'm prepared
to demonstrate on demand."
"But what the hell
is
wrong with Carl Sandburg? I like him," Hank
cried suddenly, wheeling around. It was a continuation of our discussion
the night before, during which Hank had said nothing, only stared from
face to face, turning his head with the conversation as if it were some–
thing really passing through the air, a pingpong ball, a shuttlecock. "He's
real-full
of power and truth-the real America. My America. I know
it." He held up his two large knotted fists under our noses, as if for
inspection, as if they were the real America.
"Out of the quarrel with ourselves poetry-out of the quarrel with
others, rhetoric." It was Fenton quoting, but he was not really interested,
merely responding mechanically to cue.
For me and Hank, though, it was a real discussion, in code, of
course, for neither of us yet knew exactly what was at stake between
us. "He's not a poet, that's the only thing wrong with him! He doesn't
make forms or music-just speeches. He's not real at all; he gives you
only words-tough words, but still words. Where are 'hands that can
grasp, eyes that can dilate. . . .'''
" 'Hair that can rise if it must. .. .''' Fenton capped my beginning,
glad to be playing the old game.
"Should I put on some music. I have the Brahms Fourth-" Judith
had risen and was straightening her skirt over her full thighs; she must
have put on weight recently, for the cloth was pulled too tight, a seam
on her right flank opening. Beneath her skirt, her legs, white, hairless
and slender, tapered so quickly that they seemed almost too thin. I
could feel tingling in my hands how it would be to touch her high up
under the darkness of that too-tight skirt, the smooth doughy pallor
of her inner thigh where it met the first crisp, damp wisps of hair.
"Hands that can grasp ..."
"He's
real,
for God's sake! It's you fellows who are word merchants,
aesthetes- Raw experience! that's why you don't understand him. It
hurts
too much to understand him." I had never heard Hank talk at
such length, and I was amazed that Judith, searching through a pile
