The Man in the Tree

by Damon Knight

  When Gene's clay figure was done, Avila came over and looked at it, turned the stand to see the other side, turned it back. The head was simple and stylized; Gene had made it a bald old man in order to emphasize the domed shape of the skull, and also to avoid the problems of hair. He had built up the head with bits of clay, then smoothed them with his fingers until all the curves flowed into one another: the arched nose, the cheekbones, the brow.

  Avila said, "This your idea of an old man? Jesus Christ!" He dug his strong fingers into the clay, pulled it off in great lumps, threw it back in the bin. "Take your sketchbook, go over to Washington Square, for God's sake, draw some old men."

  Gene dutifully went out with the sketchbook, came back with many drawings, and started afresh. When the second piece was done, Avila said, "Better? A little, maybe." He threw the clay in the bin.

  Gradually he came to understand what Avila meant by art: it was a flowering of form that could only come about by working and reworking the material until the original shape had been transformed through many deaths and rebirths into something that had never existed before and could not have come into being except by this torment. A sculpture by Avila was a multidimensional object, shimmering with self-references, containing in itself the vanished forms of previous conceptions, and at the same time it was integral, itself and nothing more, as self-explanatory as a flower or a shell.

  One morning he found Avila at his bench playing with some little brass shims, tilting them against each other to make tent-shapes, stacking others on top until they fell down. His eyes were vacant; he did not seem to be watching what his fingers were doing.

  Later Gene saw him cutting the shims with a pair of tinsnips, making narrow rectangles of various sizes. After lunch he began cementing the pieces together to make curving shapes like staircases, or like fanned-out playing cards. At the end of the day he had assembled these into a standing hawk-headed figure, a bird-man or man-bird whose arms seemed in the process of turning into wings, or the wings into arms. The next day he took it apart and started over.

  "That was beautiful," Gene said. "Why didn't you keep it?"

  "Not what I want," Avila grunted. He spent the next two days building up another figure, larger and more complex than the other, and took it apart. The third version occupied him for a week. It had horns now, ending in little brass balls, and it stood in a haif-crouching position as if prepared for flight.

  The next day, while Gene watched in fascination, he made a two-piece rubber mold around the figure, then a plaster shell to cover the mold. When the plaster was dry, he took the shell and the mold apart, carefully inspected them, and put them back together. He melted beeswax in a pot, upended the mold in its shell, supporting it in a bucket of sand, and poured the hot wax in. After a few moments he poured it out again, leaving a thin coating on the inside of the mold. When he took the mold apart, he had a hollow wax image of the figure, but the tips of the horns were missing.

  "No good," he said. "I worry about that." He broke up the wax, dropped it back into the pot and melted it again. This time, before he put the mold together, he brushed hot wax into the pieces that would make the horns. The wax image came out complete and perfect. Then for two days he worked with the wax, smoothing irregularities, sharpening edges with a knife, adding bits here and there.

  "Couldn't you work in wax to begirt with?" Gene asked.

  "Sure, but the wax has to be hollow or there will be too much bronze, too heavy. Watch what I do now." He dipped his fingers into the cooling wax-pot, formed the soft wax into little bails, rolled them into cylinders. He carefully attached these to the figure to make vents and pipes. Two narrow ones went from the head to the tips of the horns. "If I don't do this," he explained, "the same thing will happen with the bronze. Better to make your mistakes in wax."

  The pipes were to carry the molten bronze to various parts of the figure, and the vents were to allow air to escape. "Otherwise you get bubbles. The first time I cast in bronze, there was a. big bubble right in the belly. And a big pain in my belly, too. If you make a mistake, it's your fault, not the foundry, and you pay them just the same."

  Avila made him build a clay figurine, then copy it in wood. The wood carving was a botch, because he had tried to follow the shape of the clay too faithfully. Avila smiled when he saw it. "Now you have learned something."

  Another time Avila had him construct a wooden armature of soft pine, into which he had to drive curving rows of little brads until the armature bristled with them like the body of St. Sebastian. The heads of the brads, Avila explained, had to represent the surface of the clay figure he was to make; he would be allowed to cover them with a sixteenth of an inch of clay, no more; and for three days Gene turned the armature around and around while he stared at it, trying to visualize the clay volume which did not yet exist. Again and again he tapped some of the brads a fraction of an inch deeper, pulled others out and started over. When at last he added the clay, the figure was stiff, mechanical; he tore it apart himself, without waiting for Avila to do it, and threw the clay back in the bin. But from this, too, he learned something.

  Chapter Ten

  Corrupt and abrading, I desire your smoothness You cool to my hot, tender to my rough You integral, one curve, I channeled and weathered. How can you know yourself if not through me? Let me pay tribute under your skin Before worm, rot and canker topple us both Into the luxury of silence --Gene Anderson

  One evening in October there were six of them sitting around the oil stove -- Avila, Gene, Darío and Peggy, Gus Vlismas and a girl he had brought; her name was Lillian. They were all bored and restless; rain was tapping the windows out of an ink-blue sky.

  "Let's play los cadáveres exquisitos," said Dario, stubbing out his cigarette. "żQuieren?"

  "Oh, not that again," said Peggy without looking up. She was tearing a cigarette apart with her fingernails, dropping the shreds of tobacco into an ashtray and smoothing out the paper.

  Darío turned on her. "Just because I say do it, you say no."

  "God," she muttered. "Do it, then."

  "I don't know what it is," Lillian said. "How do you play?"

  "It's a game." Darío went to a cabinet, brought sketchpads and handed them out. "Like this, you fold the paper in three parts, then in the top part you draw a head, any kind of head. You don't show anybody. Then you fold it over so nobody can see it, but you leave the neck showing, okay? Then the next person, he draws the body and folds it over, and the last one draws the legs."

  Silence fell as they worked on their drawings. Gene drew the head of a snail with eyes on stalks, and put a top hat on it. He folded it, passed it to Avila. After a moment Lillian handed him her folded paper. Presently everyone was done with the heads except Darío.

  "What are you doing, making a masterpiece?" Gus demanded. "Finish it already."

  "Wait, be patient," Darío said. He was grinning with amusement.

  Gene drew a bird's body with outspread wings; he folded it, leaving four short lines to show where the legs began, and passed it on.

  Lillian handed over another folded paper; Gene drew two hairy legs with enormous feet. "Everybody finish?" Darío asked. "Come on, Peg."

  "Just a minute. I'd be done now if you hadn't taken so long."

  When they unfolded the pictures, it was easy to see who had done each part. Avila's drawings were bold, sketchy, and powerful, Darío's fussily detailed, Lillian's bland. The head Darío had drawn was a satiric portrait of Gene, with childish lips, eyes like a doll's. Under it Gas Vlismas had made a female torso with enormous dark-nippled breasts, and Peggy had given it chicken feet. Darío laughed until tears stood in his eyes. "Perfect!" he said. "Now whoever made the head has to give it a title."

  They passed the papers around again. Under the snail head Gene had drawn was a seal's body wearing an old-fashioned collar and tie, and under that two barber-pole legs. He titled it "A Little More Off the Top."

  Darío had entitled his portrait of Gene 'El pollit
o sin huevos,' "little chicken without balls." Gene wanted to crumple it and throw it on the floor, but instead he passed it to Avila. Their eyes met; Avila shook his head slightly.

  Darío leaned back and began talking to Gene about his work. "You always make figures of men, never women," he said. "Why is that? They don't have women models in life classes Where you go?"

  "No, they didn't."

  "Maybe because they think it would make a scandal, if they let you see a naked woman."

  "It's better to begin with the male body," Avila said. "If the man is well made, you see all the muscles very easily. In a woman they are covered up."

  "That's true, Manolo, but still, how can a man be an artist who has never seen a woman?" He turned to Gene. "You should do a female nude in clay. Don't you think so, Gus?"

  "Sure."

  "What's wrong with right now?" Darío said, swinging around to Gene again. "Peggy here will pose for you -- right, Peggy?"

  She glanced up at him with a faint smile. After a moment she put out her cigarette. "Why not," she said.

  "There, you see? How about it, kid, let's see how good you are."

  "I'd have to make some sketches," Gene said. "I haven't got an armature."

  "Armature?" cried Darío. He swung up out of his chair, crossed to the shelf, came back with a wire armature in his hand. "Here you are, just the thing, all ready." He set the armature down on a modeling stand. It was the skeletal framework of a human figure, standing with pelvis thrust out, hands on hips. Darío turned on the overhead lights, then crossed to the bin, came back with a lump of clay the size of a baseball, slapped it down on the base of the armature. "Clay and everything," he said. "See how easy we make it for you? Come on, Peggy."

  "He doesn't need me for the first part," she said, still looking down at the ashtray.

  Gene looked at Avila, who would not meet his eyes. "You do what you want," he said. "I'm going to bed." He got up and went around the bedroom partition.

  "Okay, kid, let's go, we're waiting," said Darío.

  Gene got up unwillingly and approached the modeling stand. He picked up the ball of clay, tore off a lump, pressed it into the wires where the figure's torso would be.

  The others sat quietly and watched him while he built up the torso, the arms, legs, head. Once he heard Darío and Gus muttering together, then the sound of suppressed laughter.

  The figure was roughed out, a crude sketch in clay.

  "All set, Peggy?"

  When he turned, she was standing up with a glass of wine in her hand. She drank the wine in one long swallow, set the tumbler down, and took off her sweater. She unbuttoned her blouse, pulled it down over her arms, laid it on top of the sweater. She unfastened her skirt and stepped out of it. The others were watching her silently. She reached behind her, unfastened her brassiere and removed it, then her panties. She sat down a moment to take off her shoes, then stepped up onto the dais and assumed the model's position, legs apart, pelvis forward, hands on her hips. Her heavy breasts rose and fell with her breathing; her hips swayed a little, almost imperceptibly, from side to side.

  Always before, in life classes, there had been something entirely impersonal in the silence between the model and the students. This was not like that. Peggy's breasts, her pelvis, thrust themselves toward him with an insinuating provocation; as she swayed, the muscles of her thighs tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed.

  Gene pulled off lumps of clay, began pressing them onto the figure to round out the thighs, hips, breasts. "Who's timing this?" Peggy asked after a moment.

  "I am," Darío said. "You want to do half an hour?"

  "Okay."

  The others were muttering together; Gene could not make out the words, but he knew what they were saying. 'Bet you ten bucks he comes in his pants.'

  He concentrated on the work he was doing, the clay in his fingers. Gradually it got better. "Would you move your left foot a little?" he said.

  "Which way?"

  "Out. Yes, like that." He worked on the legs, trying to get the figure balanced properly, weight a little more on one leg than the other. The figure's breasts were too big; he pared them down with a wire tool, built them up again. "Turn around," he said.

  Peggy turned her soft buttocks to him, took the pose again. "Like this?"

  "Left foot out a little more. Little more forward. Okay."

  The room was still. He blocked in the buttocks, built up the round muscles of the thighs.

  "Time?" said Peggy after a while.

  "Thirty-four minutes. Sorry, Peggy, I forgot to look."

  She got down from the dais. "Hand me a robe, somebody." Gus got her a flannel dressing gown; she belted it on and came over to look at the figure. "Not bad," she said after a moment. "Am I as skinny as that?"

  "I'd rather build it up than take it off," Gene said. Her scent was in his nostrils. "Anyhow, that's enough for one session."

  "Ah, come on," said Darío loudly. "You're not tired, are you, Peg? The evening is early."

  "I can do another half hour. Give me a cigarette first." She sat down on the edge of the dais, smoked a cigarette, and drank a glass of wine. Darío and Gus were arguing about something in low voices.

  She stubbed the cigarette out, took off the robe again and stepped up on the dais. "Which way now?"

  "Sidewise." He glanced at his watch. "Give me your left profile."

  He worked on the figure, adding clay and taking it away, trying to get the cant of the torso right. "Elbow a little forward." Standing under the lights with her body in profile, she was no more now than a model; he could not see her eyes, but her expression had changed.

  "Time," said Darío.

  Peggy stretched, picked up her robe, and came down off the dais.

  Darío and Gus were muttering together. "Listen," said Darío, "we're going down to Tony's and get a table. Come on down when you get dressed."

  "Okay."

  When they were gone, there was a deep silence in the loft. Gene became intensely aware of the darkness around the lights, the emptiness. Peggy was putting her underwear on. Gene sat on a high stool and watched her, unable to look away. She buttoned her blouse, stepped into her skirt and adjusted it, pulled her sweater over her head. She rummaged in her bag a moment, found a comb and pulled it through her hair. When she was done, she put the comb back, picked up a compact and lipstick. Staring intently into the little mirror, she carefully drew the shape of her upper lip. She closed the lipstick, dropped it and the compact into her open bag. She moved toward him, rubbing her lips together, then separating them with a smack.

  "That's really not bad," she said, looking at the figure. She was standing so close to him that her hip touched his thigh; he could smell the scent of her lipstick. She turned to face him; now her expression had changed again. There was a faint smile on her lips, and her eyes were narrowed. "You don't like girls?" she asked.

  "I like girls."

  "Do you?" She moved still closer, and her hand came up between his legs. Gene tried to squirm away, but he was trapped by the stool and her body. "Don't -- " he said. "Let me -- " He put up his hand; she brushed it aside. She was standing so close now that her thighs were pressed against his, while her hand, between them, went on stroking him through the cloth. Gene realized suddenly that he could not hold back any longer, and then it was too late: he felt a painful contraction and a spurt of wetness.

  She kept her hand there a moment longer, then patted him and moved away. Through a haze of tears, he saw her pick up her purse. When she was almost at the door, he said, "Why did you do that?"

  She turned and looked at him across the loft. "I don't know," she said. "Sweet dreams." The door closed behind her.

  Gene looked at the clay figure. He took it in both hands, Squeezed the clay, ripped it off the armature and threw it in the bin. When he turned, Avila was standing there, his face mournful.

  "John, I am so sorry," he said. "It is my fault, I should have prevented it."

  Gene's muscle
s were twitching; a sob came up into his throat like a fist. "She -- she -- "

  "I know." The older man's arm came warmly around him. "It was Darío, he does it to hurt me, and Peggy -- maybe to hurt him, who knows? Come on." He led Gene to the sink at the end of the room. "Take your pants off." He ran water on a washrag, squeezed it, gently mopped away the stickiness on Gene's leg, then dried him with a towel. When Gene reached for his trousers, Avila said, "Leave them, they'll be dry in the morning. Come on." They were in the bedroom. "Now the shirt, I'm going to rub your back. Go ahead, take it off. Now lie down on your belly."

  In a moment the mattress sagged with Avila's weight. "This is just some oil," his voice said. There was a shock of coolness between Gene's shoulders; then Avila's strong hands were kneading the muscles of his neck and shoulders, loosening and relaxing them, molding them as if his body were sculpture. The tension ebbed; Gene began to feel a delicious comfort and drowsiness.