Ladders to Fire

THIS HUNGER

LILLIAN WAS ALWAYS in a state of
fermentation. Her eyes rent the air and left phosphorescent streaks. Her large
teeth were lustful. One thought of a negress who had found a secret potion to
turn her skin white and her hair red.

As soon as she came into a room she kicked off
her shoes. Necklaces and buttons choked her and she loosened them, scarves
strangled her and she slackened them. Her hand bag was always bursting full and
often spilled over.

She was always in full movement, in the center
of a whirlpool of people, letters, and telephones. She was always poised on the
pinnacle of a drama, a problem, a conflict. She seemed to trapeze from one
climax to another, from one paroxysm of anxiety to another, skipping always the
peaceful region in between, the deserts and the pauses. One marveled that she
slept, for this was a suspension of activity. One felt sure that in her sleep
she twitched and rolled, and even fell off the bed, or that she slept half
sitting up as if caught while still talking. And one felt certain that a great
combat had taken place during the night, displacing the covers and pillows.

When she cooked, the entire kitchen was
galvanized by the strength she put into it; the dishes, pans, knives,
everything bore the brunt of her strength, everything was violently marshaled,
challenged, forced to bloom, to cook, to boil. The vegetables were peeled as if
the skins were torn from their resisting flesh, as if they were the fur of animals
being peeled by the hunters. The fruit was stabbed, assassinated, the lettuce
was murdered with a machete. The flavoring was poured like hot lava and one
expected the salad to wither, shrivel instantly. The bread was sliced with a
vigor which recalled heads falling from the guillotine. The bottles and glasses
were knocked hard against each other as in bowling games, so that the wine,
beer, and water were conquered before they reached the table.

What was concocted in this cuisine reminded one
of the sword swallowers at the fair, the fire-eaters and the glass-eaters of
the Hindu magic sects. The same chemicals were used in the cooking as were used
in the composition of her own being: only those which caused the most violent
reaction, contradiction, and teasing, the refusal to answer questions but the
love of putting them, and all the strong spices of human relationship which
bore a relation to black pepper, paprika, soybean sauce, ketchup and red
peppers. In a laboratory she would have caused explosions. In life she caused
them and was afterwards aghast at the damage. Then she would hurriedly set
about to atone for the havoc, for the miscarried phrase, the fatal honesty, the
reckless act, the disrupting scene, the explosive and catastrophic attack.
Everywhere, after the storms of her appearance, there was emotional
devastation. Contacts were broken, faiths withered, fatal revelations made.
Harmony, illusion, equilibrium were annihilated. The next day she herself was
amazed to see friendships all askew, like pictures after an earthquake.

The storms of doubt, the quick
cloudings
of hypersensitivity, the bursts of laughter, the
wet furred voice charged with electrical vibrations, the resonant quality of
her movements, left many echoes and vibrations in the air. The curtains
continued to move after she left. The furniture was warm, the air was whirling,
the mirrors were scarred from the exigent way she extracted from them an ever
unsatisfactory image of herself.

Her red hair was as unruly as her whole self;
no comb could dress it. No dress would cling and mould her, but every inch of
it would stand out like ruffled feathers. Tumult in orange, red and yellow and
green quarreling with each other. The rose devoured the orange, the green and
blue overwhelmed the purple. The sport jacket was irritated to be in company
with the silk dress, the tailored coat at war with the embroidery, the everyday
shoes at variance with the turquoise bracelet. And if at times she chose a
majestic hat, it sailed precariously like a sailboat on a choppy sea.

Did she dream of being the appropriate mate for
the Centaur, for the Viking, for the Pioneer, for Attila or Genghis Khan, of
being magnificently mated with Conquerors, the
Inquisitioners
or Emperors?

On the contrary. In the center of this turmoil,
she gave birth to the dream of a ghostly lover, a pale, passive, romantic,
anaemic
figure garbed in grey and timidity. Out of the very
volcano of her strength she gave birth to the most evanescent, delicate and
unreachable image.

She saw him first of all in a dream, and the
second time while under the effects of ether. His pale face appeared, smiled,
vanished. He haunted her sleep and her unconscious self.

The third time he appeared in person in the
street. Friends introduced them. She felt the shock of familiarity known to
lovers.

He stood exactly as in the dream, smiling,
passive, static. He had a way of greeting that seemed more like a farewell, an
air of being on his way.

She fell in love with an extinct volcano.

Her strength and fire were aroused. Her
strength flowed around his stillness, encircled his silence, encompassed his
quietness.

She invited him. He consented. Her whirlpool
nature eddied around him, agitating the fixed,
saturnian
orbit.

“Do you want to come…do you?”

“I never know what I want,” he smiled because
of her emphasis on the “want,” “I do not go out very much.” From the first,
into this void created by his not wanting, she was to throw her own desires,
but not meet an answer, merely a pliability which was to leave her in doubt
forever as to whether she had substituted her desire for his. From the first
she was to play the lover alone, giving the questions and the answers too.

When man imposes his will on woman she knows
how to give him the pleasure of assuming his power is greater and his will
becomes her pleasure; but when the woman accomplishes this, the man never gives
her a feeling of any pleasure, only of guilt for having spoken first and
reversed the roles. Very often she was to ask: “Do you want to do this?” And he
did not know. She would fill the void, for the sake of filling it, for the sake
of advancing, moving, feeling, and then he implied: “You are pushing me.”

When he came to see her he was enigmatic. But
he was there.

As she felt the obstacle, she also felt the
force of her love, its impetus striking the obstacle, the impact of the
resistance. This collision seemed to her the reality of passion.

He had been there a few moments and was already
preparing for flight, looking at the geography of the room, marking the exits
“in case of fire,” when the telephone rang.

“It’s Serge asking me to go to a concert,” said
Lillian with the proper feminine inflection of: “I shall do your will, not
mine.” And this time Gerard, although he was not openly and violently in favor
of Lillian, was openly against Serge, whoever he was. He showed hostility. And
Lillian interpreted this favorably. She refused the invitation and felt as if
Gerard had declared his passion. She laid down the telephone as if marking a
drama and sat nearer to the Gerard who had manifested his jealousy.

The moment she sat near him he recaptured his
quality
ofa
mirage: paleness, otherworldliness,
obliqueness. He appropriated woman’s armor and defenses, and she took the
man’s. Lillian was the lover seduced by obstacle and the dream. Gerard watched
her fire with a feminine delectation of all fires caused by seduction.

When they kissed she was struck with ecstasy
and he with fear.

Gerard was fascinated and afraid. He was in
danger of being possessed. Why in danger? Because he was already possessed by
his mother and two possessions meant annihilation.

Lillian could not understand. They were two
different loves, and could not interfere with each other.

She saw, however, that Gerard was paralyzed,
that the very thought of the two loves confronting each other meant
dea

He retreated. The next day he was ill, ill with
terror. He sought to explain. “I have to take care of my mother.”

“Well,” said Lillian, “I will help you.”

This did not reassure him. At night he had
nightmares. There was a resemblance between the two natures, and to possess
Lillian was like possessing the mother, which was taboo. Besides, in the
nightmare, there was a battle between the two possessions in which he won
nothing but a change of masters. Because both his mother and Lillian (in the
nightmare they were confused and indistinguishable), instead of living out
their own thoughts, occupying their own hands, playing their own instruments,
put all their strength, wishes, desires, their wills on him. He felt that in
the nightmare they carved him out like a statue, they talked for him, they
acted for him, they fought for him, they never let him alone. He was merely the
possessed. He was not free.

Lillian, like his mother, was too strong for
him. The battle between the two women would be too strong for him. He could not
separate them, free himself and make his choice. He was at a disadvantage. So
he feared: he feared his mother and the outcries, the scenes, dramas, and he
feared Lillian for the same reason since they were of the same elements: fire
and water and aggression. So he feared the new invasion which endangered the
pale little flame of his life. In the center of his being there was no strength
to answer the double challenge. The only alternative was retreat.

When he was six years old he had asked his
mother for the secret of how children were born. His mother answered: “I made
you.”

“You made me?” Gerard repeated in utter wonder.
Then he had stood before a mirror and marveled: “You made this hair? You made
this skin?”

“Yes,” said his mother. “I made them.”

“How difficult it must have been, and my nose!
And my teeth! And you made me walk, too.” He was lost in admiration of his
mother. He believed her. But after a moment of gazing at the mirror he said:
“There is one thing I can’t believe. I can’t believe that you made my eyes!”

His eyes. Even today when his mother was still
making him, directing him, when she cut his hair, fashioned him, carved him,
washed his clothes, what was left free in this encirclement of his being were
his eyes. He could not act, but he could see.

But his retreat was inarticulate, negative,
baffling to Lillian. When she was hurt, baffled, lost, she in turn retreated,
then he renewed his pursuit of her. For he loved her strength and would have
liked it for himself. When this strength did not threaten him, when the danger
was removed, then he gave way to his attraction for this strength. Then he
pursued it. He invited and lured it back, he would not surrender it (to Serge
or anyone else). And Lillian who suffered from his retreat suffered even more
from his mysterious returns, and his pursuits which ceased as soon as she
responded to them.

He was playing with his fascination and his
fear.

When she turned her back on him, he renewed his
charms, enchanted her and won her back. Feminine wiles used against woman’s
strength like women’s ambivalent evasions and returns. Wiles of which Lillian,
with her straightforward manly soul, knew nothing.

The obstacle only aroused Lillian’s strength
(as it aroused the knights of old) but the obstacle discouraged Gerard and
killed his desire. The obstacle became his alibi for weakness. The obstacle for
Gerard was insurmountable. As soon as Lillian overcame one, Gerard erected another.
By all these diversions and perversions of the truth he preserved from her and
from himself the secret of his weakness. The secret was kept. The web of
delusion grew around their love. To preserve this fatal secret: you, Lillian,
are too strong; you, Gerard, are not strong enough (which would destroy them),
Gerard (like a woman) wove false pretexts. The false pretexts did not deceive
Lillian. She knew there was a deeper truth but she did not know what it was.