In a Yellow Wood

by Gore Vidal

  “I think,” said Carla, “that you can become free. You can get free in art and you can get free in love. Money hasn’t much to do with it. You can’t go anywhere alone. I don’t think it’s possible to be sane alone, without love.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Lewis sincerely and sadly, allowing the now soft music to dissolve his mind into an emotional waste out of which, of course, came art. “I think you have explained all the tragedies in the world.”

  “And all the happiness,” murmured Carla, looking at Holton. Holton smiled then. It was the first time that Lewis had seen him smile and he was struck by the gentleness and beauty of his face. He was beginning to see the person under the rather rigid mask and he understood now why this quite wonderful woman was in love. Holton was about to say something when the band made a crescendo and the lights on the stage went up. The show was about to begin.

  A slender little man, ineptly painted, appeared on the stage and welcomed the audience to the night club.

  He then motioned and the lights in the room went out leaving only the stage with its curtain backdrop lighted. The band began to play a current song and the master of ceremonies proceeded to sing, using new dirty lyrics which made the audience laugh. He then told a joke about fairies. The audience laughed loudly at this, reveling in exposure; often their masks became too tight, too heavy. He removed them.

  Finished with his joke, he bowed and several persons came onto the stage. They were probably men. They wore dresses and several of them had faces of great beauty. They danced, parodying women, transcending the single sex. And in the audience people looked at one another and nodded and looked again at the stage, smiles on their faces.

  When their dance was finished they left. There was much noise from the audience.

  Then a thin young man swayed onto the stage, took the microphone in his hands and sang a sexual funny song.

  “Who is that?” asked Carla, turning to Lewis.

  “Our waiter, darling,” whispered Lewis; “all the performers are waiters, too. Isn’t it exciting?”

  Carla said nothing. Lewis looked at Holton. There was little light in the room and he couldn’t make out his expression. Holton was sitting motionless, one hand on the table, one hand touching Carla’s.

  Their waiter was so well received that he sang another song.

  More dancers appeared. This time they were real women and the men who came out with them were dressed as men. They did a serious near-ballet but, because they didn’t know how to dance very well and because they didn’t particularly care, the dance was funny and Holton laughed. Lewis and Carla didn’t laugh: for different reasons.

  Suddenly in the middle of the dance a voice off stage announced loudly, “Jerry!” and a girl dressed in a fake tiger skin ran onto the stage. The audience whistled and stamped and a table of girls near the stage applauded hysterically. The girl’s face was square and smooth and hard, without expression. Her body was strong and slim and startlingly white. One shoulder and most of one breast were bare.

  She moved in a stylized jungle fashion among the other dancers who ran from her, simulating fear as they did. Finally she was left alone on the stage. She danced then, showing as much of her hard white body as she could. Her face never changed expression, however. She always looked straight ahead without smiling, her square face rigid.

  And, at last, as a climax, she unfastened the tiger skin and with a quick gesture pulled it off and for a moment let the audience see her white hard body. Then the lights went off and she disappeared as the women in the audience shrieked their delight and the men, catching some of the hysteria, applauded loudly.

  The lights came on again and the stage was empty. The band played uncompelling music. “What,” asked Lewis, turning to Holton, “did you think of her? Isn’t she a perfect savage?”

  “No, I don’t think she is,” said Holton seriously. “I don’t think she was good at all, did you?”

  “Why, yes, I thought she had something. A certain...how shall I say...banked fire?”

  “I agree with Bob,” said Carla. “I don’t think she’s a savage; I don’t think she’s natural.”

  “Just prejudice,” said Lewis lightly, gesturing with his hand. “Just prejudice; anyway, the girls here love her.” He pointed to a table of women. The dancer, wearing a dressing gown now, was sitting on the lap of one.

  Holton chuckled.

  “What amuses you?” asked Lewis but Holton wouldn’t answer him.

  Carla told them of a dancer in Paris, like this dancer, and as she talked the lights went off in the room and the band began to play. Suddenly a spotlight was turned upon the stage and the room became quiet as the people waited to see the thing they had heard of, the thing they had come to see.

  Softly the orchestra played.

  A boy with blond curling hair and a smooth white face walked onto the stage, turned his back to the audience, and hung a round silver moon from a hook attached to the low ceiling. He stood back a moment, looking at the moon, and then, satisfied that it was right, he stepped off the small stage and sat down on a bench near the wings.

  The silver moon shone dully, dominating the stage and the room. In the middle of the moon there was a mask: a painted mask, enticing, sexual, ambiguous, a youth or a woman. From this mask long veils of pink and blue silk quivered gently, stirred by the now-excited breathing of the audience. They watched this mask and, watching, waited for the dance to begin.

  A voice came startlingly into the room from a loud-speaker. Said the voice: “We take great pride in introducing the star of our show, the one and only Hermes de Bianca. To the music of a Tchaikovsky concerto he will do a dance symbolic of the struggle between the material and the spiritual natures of man. Introducing MR. HERMES DE BIANCA!”

  The band began to play the concerto. More lights, multicolored lights, were turned upon the stage. The veils of the moon fluttered and Hermes de Bianca entered.

  A long sigh came from the audience as he appeared and began to dance.

  He wore a thin silk costume, mysterious and black, with flowing sleeves. He was fat, not grossly fat like a man, but rather the plump voluptuousness of an old belle; his skin shone white through the semi-transparent costume.

  His hips were heavy and feminine. His hands and feet were tiny; he was very proud of them, for he gestured with his hands and pirouetted on the tips of his dainty feet. His breasts were the breasts of a woman.

  Methodically he danced. With an obscene grace he moved about the stage, moved like a yielding woman exulting in her passivity.

  His face:

  There are the faces of men and there are the faces of women and there are also the faces of children, but this was yet another face.

  The skin was smooth and silken-looking. The face was beautiful; his eyes were widened with paint and across the upper eyelids rows of shining, diamond-like stones were glued, making his slightest expression glitter in the light.

  As he danced he would touch his hair from time to time, using the most common of feminine gestures. His hair was dark and oiled, with an artificial peak over the forehead. And, most striking of all, streaks of gray had been painted at the temples.

  The music then became sad and, as it did, his dance became slower, more sensual. His wide painted mouth was never still, always working, always moist, the lips never without expression; now parted, showing desire, now petulant, now commanding, always enticing young men to love.

  He moved with great lightness, handling his heaviness gracefully as he advanced upon the moon, making love to the mask.

  Then, as the music became louder, more compelling, he whirled and twisted among the veils of the moon, wrapping himself in them, surrendering to the mask, approaching and retreating, always attracted to the painted mask.

  But, finally, he was the one conquered, the one who surrendered, the passive one. And he stood there, the sounds of music all about him, engulfing him, his back arched, his head thrown back and his plump white stomach sh
uddering beneath the dark material of his costume.

  And then, as the music reached a climax, he whirled in the center of the stage, violent, obscene in a desire to be possessed.

  The music stopped.

  There was silence in the room—no sound save the unheard thundering of many quick-beating hearts. The ones who understood were too moved to speak and the ones who did not understand were embarrassed and sickened, aware of their danger, and afraid.

  He bowed to the audience now, his moist red mouth smiling brilliantly, the mouth of an actress awaiting applause. The applause came, destroying the silence in the room, creating another less frightening mood, replenishing his ego.

  Smiling, he walked in triumph off the stage.

  The lights were turned on at last and the orchestra played a popular song.

  The boy took down the silver moon and the painted mask and as he walked away he took the reality of the dream with him and couples began to dance on the stage where Hermes de Bianca had danced. Yet as they danced, close to one another, there was a certain fear within each of them, an uncertainty and a dread.

  “What do you think of that?” asked Lewis.

  He was breathing quickly, Carla noticed. His face was flushed and he was excited, more excited than she had thought he could possibly be.

  “It is very...erotic,” she said, knowing how inadequate that word was.

  Holton was sweating when she turned to ask him what he thought. He looked angry.

  “Did you like it, Bob?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. He took out his handkerchief and dried his face. “Christ, but it’s hot in here. Why don’t we go?”

  “In a moment,” said Lewis, now recovered. “You must meet dear Hermes. I’ll go back stage and get him.” He stood up, looked around the room to see if he were being watched; then, satisfied that he was, he went back stage.

  “You don’t care for this?” Carla asked.

  “I guess I don’t. I never saw anything like this before. I used to hear a lot of stories but I didn’t think there were really such places.”

  “There are many a lot worse,” said Carla. “Of course I’m used to it. You see my husband is....”

  He smiled. “I guess you were right about not coming here.”

  “You don’t regret it?”

  “It’s interesting.”

  “I think it was a very good idea for you to see something of this world. Perhaps you can understand me better now, knowing that I’m living with people like these, married to a person like Lewis.”

  He frowned and looked very serious and she was happy to see him concerned. “Can’t you leave him, can’t you leave Bankton?”

  “Where would I go? He’s a charming person and I like him. I’d have to find someone else before I could leave.”

  “Yes,” he said, not understanding her, “I see what you mean.”

  George Robert Lewis returned leading Hermes, still in costume, by the hand.

  Everyone was polite. Hermes lisped that he was glad to meet them and he shook hands squashily with both Holton and Carla. Then they sat down at the table.

  Lewis was excited. “You know Hermes has made the most dreadfully big decision? He’s going to Rome!” Trumpets did not blow at that moment in the band; they should have, though.

  Carla was puzzled. “You mean he’s going to Italy?”

  “No, darling, he’s becoming a Roman Catholic. Isn’t it the most thrilling thing!”

  “I suppose so,” she said. “I used to be a Catholic myself.”

  “What happened?” asked Hermes in a lisping little girl’s voice.

  “I seemed to’ve gotten out of the idea. I married a Protestant, of course.”

  “What a pity,” murmured Hermes, looking at Holton admiringly; “I think it’s the only answer, really the only answer. Almost everyone I know is going over to Rome so there must be something in it.”

  “Perhaps there is,” said Carla. “I think in Italy we take the Church too much for granted.”

  “I do wish,” said Lewis, “that I could get interested in it. There seems to be such a rush for rosaries today. But I’m dreadfully afraid I’m just a hedonistic pagan.” He put his hand on Hermes’ plump little hand. “I’ve always felt that somewhere there is a faith that I could grasp onto.” With his other hand he took a drink out of his recently filled glass. “Sometimes one feels so lost, so homeless. I think there must always be a womb-longing in each of us, a desire to go back where we came from. I used to think that art was enough but I suppose I was wrong because I never had much real satisfaction from it. Carla here will say it is love that gives us a reason, but I don’t think so. I’ve always been in love. Occasionally with my own image, I must admit, but there have been others. No, I never got much out of love. Hermes here has his dancing, but I don’t think that was enough for him either....”

  “Perhaps you’ve never given enough of yourself to another person,” said Carla.

  “Vampire,” chuckled Lewis. “Our identities are the only real things we have in this shadowy world.” He was in good form now and he was becoming drugged with his own facility. “No, we must try to obtain a faith, or at least a medium, to carry out our search for immortality, or should I say perpetuation? Women, normal women, seem to have less fear of death because they have the function of child-bearing. They are able to experience their own perpetuation; and in their primitive way they feel a part of all mankind and there are no real mysteries for them, no need of logic. But man is different. The act of procreation is a pleasure and not painful and, therefore, he does not observe that in that function his own image is mirrored through eternity. He turns then to art (the sensitive talented man, I mean now) and in making pictures or books, playing at creation, he hopes to survive death but he is never really convinced: at best he is hypnotized, he is drugged by his art and in desperation he tries to make meaning out of his own creations: playthings, in reality. And so he finds himself in the end with chisel and mallet in his hands making a statue and no nearer perpetuation, closer only to death.”

  “How beautiful!” exclaimed Hermes. “But that’s why we all have to go to Rome.”

  “Perhaps that’s the answer.” He began to speak again, his flat voice rising and falling without emotion in it. Carla looked at Holton questioningly. He nodded.

  “Bob and I have to go now,” she said.

  “Oh, you must stay a little longer,” he pleaded.

  “We really have to go,” said Holton, rising. They thanked him (Lewis insisted on paying the bill) and said good-bye. George Robert Lewis was still talking to Hermes as they left.

  Chapter Eleven

  “HOW COOL IT IS!” SAID CARLA, AS THEY WALKED ALONG THE STREET. “I couldn’t breathe in there.”

  “It was a crazy place,” said Holton, looking straight ahead as he walked, following the traffic lights. Carla occasionally drew him off the curb and into the street but he always managed to obey the green lights.

  They decided to walk uptown, to walk to Times Square.

  Carla felt light and happy now that Lewis had been left behind.

  “I like the air in New York,” she said.

  “The air?”

  “It’s exciting and silly and everyone is busy doing things they don’t want to do but still it’s stimulating.”

  “I suppose so.”

  She hadn’t decided yet whether he tried to be noncommittal or whether he had nothing to say. No, he had something to say: she was sure of that. He was shy and he felt things very much but he was afraid to say them. She remembered now that he had told her things about himself in Florence. He had told her about his parents and his life, though he hadn’t told her what he wanted to do. He still would not tell her that and, if he knew, she would have to discover it.

  “How long are you going to be in town?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A month perhaps, I don’t know. I think Bankton will be coming over soon. They’re going to give him a big show he
re.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “He’d like to meet you, too.” She laughed. “I might lose you to him.” She stopped herself quickly. She shouldn’t have said “lose” because they were supposed to be just casual friends; at least, that was the basis he seemed to want. She mustn’t frighten him. “I don’t think you’d like him,” she said easily, in control now. “He’s rather jealous and disagreeable.”

  They crossed more streets, dodged more cars, bumped into more and more people and, finally, they came to Times Square.

  At Forty-second Street they stopped and Carla looked at the lights for a long time.

  It seemed as if all the commercialism in the world had decided to concentrate itself in one place, as if by blazing colored lights and moving signs it could justify itself.

  At one end of the square a giant sign exploded colors, advertising cigarettes. Another cigarette advertisement had a man puffing smoke; it was most realistic because real smoke or something like smoke came out of his mouth. Soft drinks and chewing gum and cigarettes—all the small things—were displayed in the most magnificent manner. There was an almost religious appeal in the brightness of the lights, the cathedral-like splendor of the signs which supported countless colored bulbs of light: everything was so large, so magnificent, so desperately appealing.

  “Such wonderful strength,” murmured Carla, “so much misguided energy.”

  “It’s very nice to look at,” said Robert Holton, speaking self-consciously for America.

  They stood pressed against a building while hundreds of people pushed by them in a thick stream. Carla studied the lights, mesmerized by their colors: red passionate ones and glittering greens, blue and yellow glowing, and moving figures; they even had the lights turn on and off in such a fashion that silhouetted men appeared to dance and animated animals had adventures. The lights were most splendid and nowhere in the world was so much grandeur hung against the sky. Carla watched the lights.

  Yellow taxicabs clattered by them and everyone moved quickly. Everyone had at least a destination and that was a hopeful sign. She didn’t care to think what their destinations might be.