The World Behind the Door

by Mike Resnick

  The World

  Behind the Door

  An Encounter with Salvador Dali

  by

  Mike Resnick

  © 2007, 2011 by Mike Resnick

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  ISBN: 978-1-61417-025-9

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  Thank You.

  THE WORLD BEHIND THE DOOR

  An Encounter with Salvador Dali

  By Mike Resnick

  http://mikeresnick.com/

  To Carol, as always,

  And to my daughter Laura,

  Once more, with feeling

  PREFACE

  The unusual and the bizarre have always fascinated me. That's probably why I became a science fiction writer.

  Science fiction boasts a number of fine writers, but over the years it has had an almost equal number of outstanding artists, artists who could give form and structure to the wildest imaginings of the writers: Frank Frazetta, Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton, Kelly Freas, Ed Emshwiller, Virgil Finlay, a number of others.

  But I persist in believing that the greatest of all science fiction and fantasy artists, even though he never illustrated a science fiction book or magazine, was Salvador Dali.

  The first art book I ever bought, back when I was in high school just about half a century ago, was a collection of Dali's paintings. So was the second. And the third. The man's work was so different, so hypnotic, so unlike anyone else's, I just couldn't stop looking at it.

  And a lot of it was science fictional. What else could you call The Space Elephant, or Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening, or Suburb of the Paranoic-critical Town?

  It wasn't long before I began studying Dali. How could I not? He himself was as interesting as his paintings. His mustache was longer than most men's beards. His clothing was outlandish, his behavior even more so. His statements were unbelievable—except that when challenged, he often managed to prove that he was telling the truth. He was the world's first great performance artist, long before the term "performance art" even existed.

  And that was the key to my fascination. Dali was actually better-known than any of his paintings, as famous as The Persistence of Memory and the others were. Everyone had heard of Picasso, who was probably the greatest of the modern, 20th Century artists—but if you were standing next to him in line at the bank or the movie theatre, you'd have no idea who he was. The same holds true for Norman Rockwell, and every other famous painter of the just-ended century—except for Dali. You'd not only know him if he was standing next to you, you'd know him if you saw him across the street, or two blocks away . . . and if you didn't recognize him, he'd probably do everything short of a striptease to capture your attention in such a way that there could be no doubt of who he was.

  His descriptions of himself and his art grew more and more bizarre. It was hinted many times—often by Dali himself—that he was insane. Those who knew him socially were never sure . . . but those few who worked with him on a daily basis, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, often said the bizarre eccentricities were just an act, that when they were working with him behind closed doors he was a total (and totally sane) professional. Others swear that Dali had pulled the wool over Hollywood's eyes, that his madness came and went and the movie moguls caught him during his very few sane periods.

  So which was he?

  I didn't know when I started studying him all those years ago, and I don't know today.

  But when the nice people at Watson-Guptill asked me to write another book in their Encounters series, I jumped at the chance to write about Dali and perhaps find out just how sane or mad he really was. I had done a book on Leonardo, who was a scientist, a painter, and an all-around genius; and I'd done one on Toulouse-Lautrec, an embittered and driven man. But I understood both of them, and I understood their work, whereas I would continue to learn about Dali and what inspired his strangest images as I researched and wrote The World Behind the Door.

  Was Dali sane?

  Was he mad?

  Was there ever someone like Jinx?

  Read the book. Then you can tell me.

  – Mike Resnick

  You can find The Persistence of Memory here:

  http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79018

  and Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory here:

  http://www.artinthepicture.com/paintings/Salvador_Dali/The-Disintegration-of-the-Persistence-of-Memory/

  Chapter 1: Reality is a Bore

  The elephant stands at least thirty feet high, its huge red body supported on incredibly thin, stick-like limbs.

  Dali stares at it, curiously unafraid. There is a howdah on the elephant's back, but it's too far away for him to see who, or what, is riding in it. He should be concerned about what kind of creature could tame such an elephant, could bend it to his will, but instead he finds he is more interested in how the rider got into the howdah. Dali has never seen a ladder that high. Did he fly?

  He hears a growl off to his left, and turns to look. There is a woman standing there, quite the loveliest woman he has ever seen, wrapped in a thin white shroud that flutters in the breeze. Standing next to her is a huge black-maned lion, glaring at him with baleful, bloodshot eyes.

  "I hope he's under your control," Dali says to the woman . . . or, at least, that is what he tries to say. But what comes out is a nursery rhyme:

  "One, sir, two, sir,

  Who are you, sir?

  Three, sir, four, sir,

  Tell me more, sir.

  Five, sir, six, sir . . ."

  Dali stops. He can't remember the next line, the one that rhymes with "six," and besides, he feels incredibly silly uttering the rhyme in the first place. He decides that it was a momentary aberration and tries again. He opens his mouth to speak, and suddenly gibberish comes out. Well, not quite gibberish; at some deep level he knows he is speaking a logical, coherent language, but it is not one that he recognizes. He wonders if he's making any sense at all.

  The woman smiles and opens her mouth to answer—but instead of words there is another roar, louder and more frightening than the first one.

  "I hope she is not distressing you," says the lion in exquisite Spanish.

  Dali stares dumbly at the huge cat.

  "I just washed her," continues the lion, "and now I can't do a thing with her."

  "Why is she roaring?" Dali manages to say.

  "You hurt her feelings by being more interested in the elephant," answers the lion.

  "But I didn't know she was here when I saw the elephant," protests Dali.

  "Where else would she be?" replies the lion.

  "This is sillier than most of my dreams," says Dali. "I've got to wake up."

  The lion shrugs. "Y
ou can if you can."

  "What does that mean?" asks Dali.

  The lion begins to answer him, but every time it tries to speak the woman's roars drown it out.

  "I guess you'll just have to wake up without my help," apologizes the lion at last, and the woman smiles, yawns, and stretches like a cat.

  "Why are all my dreams like this?" asks Dali.

  "Like what?" inquires the lion.

  "There's no shred of reality in them," he explains, puzzled. "Elephants so tall they could walk right over the Tower of Pisa and not scrape their bellies, rivers that flow upstream, birds that walk and fish that fly, and now a woman who roars and a lion who speaks calmly and rationally. The world is not like this, so why are my dreams?"

  "Have you considered the obvious?" asks the lion.

  "What do you mean?"

  "That what you are experiencing at this moment is reality, and when you sleep you dream that you are a talented painter whose work shows some promise but is totally derivative."

  "No," says Dali firmly. "I am a painter. This much I am sure of."

  The lion shrugs. "I'm sure I'm a lion."

  "No," says Dali. "Lions can't talk."

  "You're certain of that?"

  Dali nods his head vigorously. "Yes."

  "I'm sure I am, you're sure I'm not. One of us must be wrong."

  "One of us is," says Dali. "You are."

  "So I am a mock lion, an ersatz lion?"

  "Yes."

  "Let us pretend for a moment that you really are a painter, over in that dull country you call reality. Here I am: head, fangs, mane, flanks, loins, claws, tail. How would you paint me to show that I am not a lion?"

  Dali stares at him for a long moment, considering his question. "I don't know," he admits.

  "If you cannot paint the difference between a real and a false lion, what makes you think there is a difference?"

  "Either something is real or it is not," insists Dali.

  "All right," says the lion. "Paint me. Capture every detail exactly as you see it. When you are done, is the lion in your painting real or not?"

  "I don't understand," says Dali, frowning.

  "Can it bite you? Can it move? Can it roar?"

  "No, of course not. It is just a painting."

  "Then it is not real."

  "The painting is real," says Dali irritably.

  "What if you are right and this is a dream and you have imagined me, and when you wake up you paint the very same picture. Now is it a painting of a real lion?"

  "I don't know," admits Dali.

  The lion smiles a very human smile. "You see?" he says. "Reality is a lot trickier than you think. We will have to discuss it further."

  "Right now?"

  The lion shakes his head. "No, right now you are about to wake up. Of course," he continues, "there is the possibility that this is reality, and you will waken into an incredibly boring dream world in which you live in an imaginary country called Spain."

  "It is very confusing," says Dali.

  "It is more than confusing," says the lion. "It is a conundrum."

  "Will anyone ever solve it?" asks Dali, suddenly aware of the pillow beneath his head.

  "There is one man who can," says the lion.

  "Who is it?" asks Dali. "Will I ever meet him?"

  Suddenly the woman begins laughing. The giggles become wild peels and shrieks as she gasps for breath. Dali wonders what he has said that is so amusing, and finds himself back in his bed, staring at the ceiling of his Madrid apartment.

  He gets up, puts on his slippers, pulls his brocaded satin robe around him, and wanders out of the bedroom, past the small kitchen, and into the studio, where he pauses before the easel and surveys the canvas that sits there, clearly a work in progress but far enough along that he knows exactly what the final painting will look like. He is not pleased with it. There's nothing especially wrong with it; it's just, well, not exactly dull, but . . . he doesn't know. It lacks something, though he can't put his finger on what's missing.

  Probably the best work he has done to date is the painting he has titled Madrid Slums. He walks over to where it hangs and studies it. Good lines, good muted colors, very competent composition. Yes, the critics were right: it's good, there's no question of it. His mastery of technique is unquestioned. And certainly a Madrid slum is a more interesting subject than yet another portrait or landscape.

  But there is nothing of him in the painting, nothing that speaks up and says "This is the unique vision of a man named Salvador Dali, and no one else in the world could possibly have painted it because no one else sees the world in remotely the same way." It's not naturalistic; no one will ever mistake it for a photograph. But no one will ever look at it and say, "Of course it's by Dali," either.

  Picasso could have painted it in an afternoon, and all the details would be the same, but it would nonetheless be uniquely his own. Dali frowns. Picasso can create twenty paintings a week if he feels like it, and every one of them is clearly by him and no one else. What is the secret? He himself is as unique a human being as Picasso, but his paintings, though well received, don't shout at the world, "I am by Dali and no one else!"

  He hasn't admitted it to himself before tonight, but clearly he is trying to, in his dreams.

  A strange dream, that one. Strange, but familiar, too, as if he's had it dozens of times, forgetting it each time he awakens, but feeling strangely comfortable every time he falls asleep and revisits that dreamscape.

  He shakes his head, as if that will shake off his uncomfortable analysis of his work. It doesn't.

  Maybe it's his subject matter, he thinks. Anyone can walk through a slum. Maybe he needs to see things no one else has ever seen, and paint them.

  But what has no one else seen?

  Well, then, maybe he should take the commonplace and turn it into something no one's ever seen. Take his father, for instance. What if he painted a huge spider with his father's face?

  He grimaces. He knows exactly what would happen, and there is not the slightest chance that he might live through it.

  No, that's not the answer. He's clearly missing something, though. What could Picasso bring to a painting of a Madrid slum that he couldn't? There's no question in Dali's mind that in terms of technique he can match Picasso brushstroke for brushstroke. So what is the real difference?

  He has a feeling that if he knew the difference, it would show up in his paintings.

  Am I just a dull, uninteresting man, he wonders, destined to paint very well-crafted, dull, uninteresting paintings?

  He doesn't know. He hopes not.

  Finally he shrugs, and walks out of the house to enjoy the first rays of the rising run. He stops at a nearby fruit stand, buys a pomegranate, and nods to a couple of bypassers he knows.

  Enough self-pity and self-doubt, he thinks. Tomorrow is a brand-new day, filled with mystery and promise. In fact, here it is tomorrow, and I will spend the entire day painting.

  Well, not the entire day, he reminds himself. He has been offered tickets to a lecture by that little man from Vienna, the one whose work continues to stir up so much controversy.

  Well, if he gives an interesting talk, maybe I'll offer to paint his portrait, thinks Dali. It's not likely, but one never knows. What was his name again?

  Dali searches his cluttered memory. He's read about the man, even discussed him with friends. What in the world was his name?

  And finally he remembers.

  It is Sigmund Freud.

  Chapter 2: The Dubious Hypnotic

  The two men sat in comfortable leather chairs in a corner of the elegant, wood-paneled hotel bar.

  "I appreciate your paying for the drinks, Senor Dali," said Sigmund Freud, taking a sip of his brandy, "but it really wasn't necessary. Your work is not unknown to me. I have been aware of it and admired it for a few years now."

  "It is dreck," replied Dali contemptuously, putting a Turkish cigarette into a foot-long jeweled holder and lighting it
. "Utter dreck."

  "How can you say that?" asked Freud curiously. "You have had several successful exhibitions, you have won some awards, your reputation extends to my own Vienna, and I am told your art brings respectable prices."

  "It dabbles on the surface of things," said Dali. "Your lecture this afternoon has opened my eyes. There are worlds undreamed-of . . . and yet I dream of them every night. I thought I might be going mad, and perhaps I still am, but at least I know now that I am not the only one whose nightmares repeat themselves again and again."

  "Our dreams are like escape valves," explained Freud, setting his brandy snifter down on the table between them. "When an engine builds up so much steam that it seems it must explode, there will always be a small value that allows the steam to escape. That is what our dreams do. For example, do you ever dream about your family?"

  "How did you know?" asked Dali.

  "It's really not at all unusual. Which member dominates your dreams—your father or your mother?"

  "Neither."

  "Then who?"

  "Salvador Dali."

  "But that is you."

  "It is also my father, but I speak of neither of us." His mouth twitched uncomfortably. "I am not the first Salvador Dali born to my parents. Three years before my birth they had a son, and they named him Salvador. He died before he was two years old." Dali paused, trying to order his thoughts. "I suppose if I behave eccentrically at times, it is to prove that I am me and not that other Salvador, that I am my own unique person."

  "And you have been having these dreams for how long?" asked Freud.

  "All my life."

  "And you have been behaving eccentrically . . . ?"

  "All my life."