The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

THE ORANGE MOTH

I.

A hot, sticky August evening. Almost six o’clock. The freckled young man, whose name was Cooke, had his watch before him on the table where he was writing. His sleeves were rolled up, showing thin freckled arms with sparse blond hairs, and he had taken off his collar, which lay on the top of the bookcase. He looked down through the tall open window into Twenty-third Street and saw, across the way, the latticed saloon door perpetually swinging. A man in his shirt-sleeves, carrying his pale alpaca coat over his left arm, fanned his red face with a panama. He said something to the woman, then disappeared through the swinging door. A girl came out carrying a tin pail brimful of beer—“rushing the growler.” A dingy terrier briskly trotted round the corner, trotting obliquely, carrying its hindquarters well to starboard. He peered under the swinging door, with one paw lifted, and the cat, crouched on the brown steps next door, began to arch her back. Then a green-and-white street car, crowded, cut off his vision, and Cooke again regarded, somewhat wearily, his manuscript. He was using yellow paper—he had bought a thick block of it in a Ninth Avenue shop, hoping that yellow would make him more prolific. But it didn’t seem particularly to help him. At the top of the page “Beauty” was written, and twice underscored. Below it was one long paragraph, disordered with cancellations and interpolations. He completed the sentence: “but to stare at Beauty, to attempt to track it down, to set snares for it, to turn a powerful glare of consciousness upon it, is almost inevitably to frighten it away. Beauty is the chimera which exists only in imagination. It is the mirage, born of drought, which the more it is approached, the more it dissolves. It is the gold and purple Phoenix which is reborn only out of ashes.…” No, this wouldn’t do at all. He crossed it all out, peevishly. This, as he had only just finished learning at college, was a mere purple passage. He wanted something purple, certainly, but not this frayed and mothy purple as of the old stage-robes of the player King. Something like “the eastern conduits ran with wine”: that was what he wanted. He opened De Quincey again—it had been helping him, or discouraging him, all afternoon—and read a page, opened to at random; while he read, he kept pulling at his shirt, which was soaked through with perspiration, to detach it from his body. Damned discouraging—he would never capture the secret of that style.… Perhaps it would be better if he tried red ink, like Flodden, who had the next room, and whom he could hear moving on his bed.… Or should he go back to blank-books?… He opened his latest blank-book, where an uncompleted poem ended with the lines:

“Like Erisichthon, by a sad mischance,

Gnawest thou at thine own enfeebled limbs?”

Well, by God, that was pretty good! He would go on with it: the glamour of life was renewed in him by something connected with those lines: twilight, soft music, women’s faces—white under arc-lamps. He felt melancholy. After all, it was wonderful, living in a dirty boarding-house in the great city. He thought of the girl he had seen at Child’s in Madison Square the day before: she wore a lavender-colored soft dress and a wide straw hat. After lunch he had followed her irresolutely as far as Brentano’s. Then he had gone into Brentano’s—to read all the foreign magazines. He looked everywhere for clues to beauty, to some short-cut by which he could learn to write as he wanted to—with power and subtlety and magnificence. But what he wrote was always commonplace.

The six o’clock whistles began to blow. The tom-tom downstairs in the basement, where the dark dining room was, began its soft swelling clamor, ending in a brazen crash. He heard Billington, in the room over his head, push back his chair which screeched on the bare floor, and take several soft steps. Flodden’s bed began creaking agitatedly. The iron gate in the front yard clanged, and looking down he saw Mr. Ezra D. Ramsden, the detective (sour-faced idiot), walking up the path. He was carrying a paper package under his arm, and looking at the red headlines of a newspaper: the creaking of his shoes was audible and the basement door rang automatically as he went in.… Two fingernails ticked the door, and Flodden entered, his white Hapsburg face grinning, his bad teeth showing, and black gums.

“Alas,” he cried, “what boots it with incessant care: to strictly meditate the thankless muse?… Were it not better done, as others booze, to sport with Phyllis at the Palisades?”

“The Palisades tonight? Too damned hot.”

“Out in the vestry, too damned hot,” sang Flodden. He shuffled to the window in his red carpet slippers, and spat neatly to the path below. “It’s too hot for anything but cold baths and naps. That’s what I’ve been doing all afternoon, one after another. When I wasn’t in the bath, Mother Ramsden was; when Mrs. Ramsden wasn’t, I was; and vice versa and et cetera ad infinitum. And when I wasn’t either soaking or sleeping, I read the Lake, as being the coolest book I could think of.… Certainly the coolest of Moore’s! Ha, Ha.”

“Papa Ramsden is back from the Wild West with his disguise under his arm.”

“More likely it’s a touching little gift for the missus. Sister Susie, being in hopes, read the works of Marie Stopes. Now she’s in a sad condition because she read the wrong edition.”

“How delightful! Where do you pick up these engaging trifles, Flod!”

“Solicit not thy thought with matters hid: leave them to Flod. I wonder if the mail’s come. I’m expecting a check for a thousand dollars from the Smart Set. If it’s come I’ll treat you to a dinner at the free lunch over the way.”

“What have you sold to the Smart Set?”

“The usual cynical little triangle story. I turn them out by recipe. Take one sweet, tired, gingham wife in a Long Island village: one successful climbing husband, who wants to build him more stately mansions, O my soul, but finds his wife still feeding the chickens—come, chick, come, chick! add one deep-dyed chorus girl recuperating in the country from housemaid’s knee. Stir till thick. Separate them. Sprinkle with Belasco sauce. And there you are.… I cut all the descriptive passages out of the newspapers. Much easier than trying to grasp the contemporary style myself.”

He knocked out his pipe on the window-sill, humming. While Cooke was fastening his collar, Billington came in.

“I say, where are we going to hog it, tonight?… Shall we go to that new Chinese place in Sixth Avenue?… No, let’s go to Keen’s.… No, Schwartz’s would be better—pig’s knuckles and cold beer. No, I feel like something really subtle. What about Leveroni’s and a lobster?…”

He beamed, leaning on a massive walking-stick almost as long as himself: pirouetted around it, excited.

“One at a time, Steel-trap!”

“I don’t feel like eating at all,” said Cooke, jerking his striped tie.

“Cooky’s romantic,” laughed Flodden. “Waitah! Waitah! Bring me, please, the underdone uvula of a bat—and waitah, one moment, please—I’ll have just a half-portion, please, just a half-portion.”

“Dry up, Flod! You make me sick.”

“Well, if we’re going out in serious quest of food, I’ll have to take off my beautiful slippers.”

“Go barefoot, Flod,” said Billington, his black eyes glittering. “Wrap a sheet around you and carry a lily.”

“Tush,” said Flodden, and disappeared into the hall.

II.

On the way downtown, Cooke said little to his two companions, feeling that they irritated him. They were older than he. They were fairly successful hack-writers, knew the ropes, talked esoterically of the editors they knew. Certainly, they fascinated him. He liked living with them. But why the devil did they chatter so incessantly? How could they keep up, as they did, their clever patter? There seemed to be nothing serious in them—they were always laughing and smirking. Cooke, from the window of the elevated train, stared out, peered into all the house-windows. All those lives, in there! Secret, rich, mysterious. He liked to see the people moving there, inside, folding newspapers, taking pots from stoves, turning back bed covers, reaching up arms to light the gas. He liked the heavy Jewesses leaning out into the evening, apathetic, their massive breasts spread out on the cool stone, their faces like the faces of oxen. The street swarmed with children; children ragged and noisy. The vast multiplicity thrilled him and made him melancholy. There it was, so close to him, so immediate, yet he could do nothing with it! Some poison in his brain turned it all to dullness, to mud—no, worse than that, to a kind of lifeless simulacrum, a mechanical formula—as soon as he tried to touch it. Why was it? Oh, God, if he could only get hold of beauty! It was so simple a thing—this tawny evening light flung slantwise from the west through dirty streets—streets of wholesale warehouses strewn with broken crates and straw—ash cans and blown papers.

“Ah, Paree!!” Flodden exclaimed, as he stepped off the iron stairs and tapped the sidewalk with his malacca stick. Billington was laughing.

“No, seriously, Flod! How did you do it? You aren’t beautiful, you know.”

“Cookie, he says I’m not beautiful.… A thing of duty is a boy for ever. That’s the secret of my success.”

Billington took Cooke’s arm.

“He won’t tell me how he got his gallery of mistresses in Paris. You know, those photos in his room. ‘Votre Petite Amie, Dolorine.’ ‘To my dear little cabbage, with all my heart, from Goo Goo.’ And so forth.”

“Never-never!” cried Flodden. “Betray the little darlings? Grossly indelicate.”

They all laughed.

“All the same, Flod, I believe you bought the whole collection—of pictures, I mean—for a franc.”

“Half a franc. There was nothing indecent in them, so they went cheap.”

In the dark French restaurant, with its bare polished tables, its winy smell, and rows and rows of bottles and great casks, bottles tiered all the way to the ceiling, Flodden chuckled.

“My dear Bill, my poor Bill, I understand you perfectly, and sympathize with you deeply. Yes, you lack that something, that je ne sais quoi, which brings the bird to your hand. If you really want to know how I did it, it was like this. When I wanted a mistress, I went into the Magazin du Louvre, or the House of a Thousand Shirts, pretending to seek a hat for Madame—Madame Flodden. The hat girls are usually very pretty. Flirtations. Discreet innuendoes. Flattery. And there”—he snapped his fingers—“it was.”

Anchovies—crabmeat salad—Amer Picon—how romantic! thought Cooke. He was excited by the conversation between Billington and Flodden, but was ashamed to ask questions. He would have liked to know everything about it—everything. How unbearably hot it was in here. Electric fans whirled their colored ribbons of paper. Did Flod really do that? The photos on Flod’s bureau had agitated him—soiled and scented trophies of six months in Paris. Flod was lucky. Once or twice he had talked seriously about Dolorine, who had lived with him on Montmartre. They had been on a picnic together to some place near Paris where there were houses in trees. They sat in a sidewalk café drinking beer under a chestnut tree which was in bloom. Dolorine had a sad sensual face, was pale, had a habit of putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands. “Monsieur,” she said, “monsieur, monsieur.” How astonishing to climb the dark tenement stairs at night with Dolorine, a French girl. Dolorine struck a match, lit the gas, and squealed. Ah! those devils! they have forgotten my milk. Oh, Toto! Your poor coffee! You will have no coffee. She squealed again, when Toto—Flod—kissed her, tipping her hat to one side and getting a feather in his eye. The bed was by the window.

Billington was talking excitedly, as he always did, his eyes sparkling and darting about, never resting anywhere for long. “It’s perfectly true—I do lack something, I do. I don’t know what it is—I don’t really! I’m shy, but just the same women stimulate me simply extraordinarily, and I can talk to them—oh, infinitely better than I can with men. And yet I don’t make the slightest impression on them! Not the slightest. Now this afternoon I went to see Celia Daggert—you know, the miniature painter. She lives on Sixty-second Street. She attracts me very much, and I should like immensely to make her fall in love with me—in which case I’d fall in love with her. Well. This afternoon she had a terrific effect on me—absolutely terrific. She has a quick mind—she has a kind of tired prettiness, if you know what I mean. And really, she intoxicated me. I never talked so brilliantly before in my life. I talked like a genius—like a genius! I showered epigrams—I was a chandelier-tree, showering crystal. I was conscious of my power—I used it up to the last notch—I was like a magician, making strange and beautiful things come out of words. I was so excited that I couldn’t sit still. I stood in the middle of the floor and talked to her. Really, I’m not exaggerating at all—I’m quite detached about it. And Celia was amazed—and that was the end of it. Now how do you explain it? It’s most tiresome.”

“Wasting your sweetness on the desert air,” said Cooke. “I think it’s a mistake—you probably frightened her. I think what women like best is to have you confide in them.”

Flodden slapped the table.

“Oh, Cookie, you’re so nice and young! Ha, ha! What do you confide in them, Cookie? Come, now, tell us. Can’t you just hear him, Bill, confiding in a sort of throaty, hesitating voice, you know, with his dear face turned a little away, sadly—‘Nellie, if you only knew how unhappy I am!—but there! I mustn’t bore you by talking about myself.’”

“The foul fiend fly away with you,” growled Cooke, blushing, “and pick your pox-pit bones.”

Flodden’s remark hurt him and made him angry; he was silent; but he reflected that it was for just this sort of remark that he most cherished Flodden. His utter recklessness of other people’s feelings and, so often, the sharpness of his perceptions! Just the sort of sharpness he himself lacked. Arrows dipped in dragon’s blood. It was curious, just the same, that Flodden didn’t write any better—all his ability was on the surface. Dull, facetious little pot-boilers. The humor of the comic strips. He sipped his Amer Picon.

“You haven’t had your bat’s uvula,” said Flodden. “Waitah!” he cried, but not too loud. Then a thought struck him. “By George! I forgot to tell you, Cookie, you have an admirer—a great man admires you. Not a woman, I regret to say—no stage queen. But old man Butler, the portrait painter. I was talking with him at the Petit Pas the other night. ‘Who was the boy,’ he said, ‘in Bill’s room the other day—with the honest blue eyes? A lovely face! And of an innocence inconceivable.’ He wants to meet you again—he wants you to sit for him.… Look at him blush! By God, he is innocent.”

When they had finished their dinner they strolled down to the Battery. Flodden, swinging his stick, walked ahead, singing, as if he had forgotten them. At the water’s edge they sat, dangling their feet. They took their coats off, sat in silence watching the Staten Island ferries. Lights rippled on the water, and a faint east wind cooled their faces.

III.

Cooke liked to feel the strong draught blowing through the subway express, with its rubbery underground smell. A gale in a cellar. Escaped newspapers floated like ghosts from car to car, crashed against the doors, wrapped themselves round people’s legs, flapped, wheeled, spread themselves out flat. Bill was talking about some poet he knew and his prowess as a swimmer. Flagrant plagiarism from Byron and Swinburne. “Powerful! I never saw anything like it. He beats the waves with tremendous, imperious arms. Yodles in the water, wallows there like a monster, like a leviathan! By God, it’s wonderful to watch him. We went to Midland Beach. He absolutely subjugates the sea.… And when he comes out, hairy and immense, he runs up the sand, dances, sings, stamps, exults like a god!”

Flodden laughed.

“All the same, his poetry is rotten. Just what you’d expect, too—he wallows like a monster in a sea of spurious ecstasy—yodles a froth of evaporated cream.”

Twenty-third Street, dark, was still far from quiet. A long freight train clanked slowly, red-lighted, along Death Avenue. A street car, nearly empty, brilliantly lighted, rattled under the elevated. In the arc-lighted yard, under the mangy ailanthus tree, the detective and his wife sat, silent, watching the cat sharpen its claws against the smooth bark. “Hot night,” said Ezra D. Ramsden.

In the stifling room, Cooke dipped his pen and held it over the yellow page. Out of all this, out of all this, wasn’t it possible to catch a single thing? He took a new blank-book from the shelf and opened the fair unspotted page. Perhaps that would be better. But it was no use—all he could think of was Flodden saying “of an innocence inconceivable,” and “honest blue eyes.” De Quincey didn’t help him—neither did Pater. He was a failure. He’d give it up—he’d get a job. After meditating for a long while he undressed and went to bed, drawing over himself a single sheet. He heard the Ramsdens murmuring in the yard. “Well, I tell you, things like vegetables are cheaper there, but that’s all.” Presently he slept. He dreamed that an orange-colored moth flew heavily in through the window, and settled with wide velvet wings on the opened page of the blank-book. The orange wings covered the two pages completely. He sprang up, shut the book, and the beautiful thing was caught. When he opened the book, he found that the pages were soft orange moth-wings; and incredibly fine, indecipherable, in purple, a poem of extraordinary beauty was written there.