FORMATTED FOR READING ON CELL PHONE ONLY
Love Flees From Us Like A Frightened Bird.
Greenwich Village New York, 1912-17
To be published in 2011.
The Poet's Train
1
What it costs..
What it always costs
Everything
Faith.. Hope.. Love
But the greatest of these is love
There is only love.
Love costs everything
A train is rattling through the night. The full moon is casting silver on the high clouds as she watches them. Evelyn St. Charles McKay is coming home.
The world is full of darkness, it is light that is rare..
Darkness is the norm
Darkness is all around us, waiting to engulf us..
It is glorious light that is the jewel of the universe.
Evelyn St. Charles McKay is coming home with dread in her belly as the train rushes her through the darkness towards New York City in the breaking spring of 1916.
And we must never shy away from creating light.. We must radiate it..
If we are alive at all it is only in the light that we are able to radiate. And then only for a brief moment before we fall dark again. And in this brief moment we must create our art out of ourselves. Courageously and freely. Generously and voluptuously. While we are still luminous and glowing with life.
She sits alone in a wooden train compartment staring out at the dark countryside. Coming home. Filled with dread. Her fountain pen slack in her hand over her notebook. She is imagining his face turning towards hers once more. His eyes on hers. His smile on hers. Once again.
My beautiful Nolan. My Irish poet and angel. How could any man compare with his genius and wit. His gentle piercing eyes..
His strong and tender hands stroking over my body..
How I long to be naked before him again. To smell his scent on me.
Oh how he makes me shiver so..
She feels the longing seeping through her body. From her breasts to her belly like a smoldering in her flesh. Turning her liquid.
He simply must take me back. And he shall. I shall fall to my knees and beg him unashamedly if I must..
Love is not proud.
Life without him would be intolerable. Without him there will be no more poems from my pen. The public will wait in vain for another fine little poetry book from Evelyn Charley McKay.
Without love there will be no more poetry and I shall simply fade away. Like ink dissolving..
They will take my photograph down from their college room walls and wonder what has become of me..
She laughs, a small musical laugh, The laugh of a woman far away, a woman drifting in a world where there is no dread over coming home. A world where there are mermaids singing songs of love to the poets who adore them.
Charley McKay is dead for love they will say..
Died for love. So tragic. The death of the poetess. The awful way she jumped from the great steel girders of the Brooklyn Bridge. For the love of a mere mortal man..
She smashed the chains of the Victorians away for all womanhood, for all time. And then smashed herself for love..
And he will still have his young girls and women throwing themselves at him. The great poet of the age. How they adore to have his hands on them, as if his genius will pass into them through their very skin..
But there is only way genius passes into another..
Charley stares into the darkness, smiling. Her reflection is visible in the glass of the train window but she does not see it.
He is a genius of the theater but what good does it do him? He is shrouded only in pain, not in joy..
I am not like him. I am not drawn to the darkness, I am not nurtured by it. I am born to the light, nurtured by the song, by the bird in flight. I am born to soar. To live fully as a free woman and an artist and a lover. That is my destiny..
And I shall make it mine always..
And the world will tremble at the sight of such a magnificent and authentic free woman.
Charley sighs softly for love and picks up her pen and writes in her notebook. He is
ahead and Mexico is behind and what will be will be.
It is lucky the country does not know the nature of the experiment taking place in Greenwich Village. It is entirely beyond their comprehension. The churches would surely rise up and burn us all at the stake as witches. This is a nation of hypocrites. I renounce the entire nation. I reject their so called civilization. I am a citizen of the Village and I shall always remain so. Free speech, free love , free expression.. This is the credo of my true country.. The country of my heart..
But Charley cannot keep her thoughts away from him, from her love and her life in the Village which she thought was crushing her inspiration and made her run so foolishly away to a place where there was quiet but no inspiration.
How wonderful it will be to be back in the Village again..
How I have missed them all and their laughter and energy.
I shall never be so foolish as to leave again. I will never again wander out into these United States of rolling emptiness and stark oppression. The people of the Village are my only true compatriots. How I adore them.
And soon I shall see everyone again. They will surely all be at the party. There will be dancing and drinking and many new love affairs to hear of. How foolish of me to imagine that there was anywhere else in the country that could compare. That would accept someone such as me..
And my darling Nolan will be there..
He will be tender and forgiving or he will be harsh and resentful. I have treated him shamefully..
I will not deny it. I will tell him I simply went mad and had to escape him and the whole world of the Village for a time.
She checks her watch. In another hour she will know whether her life is to end tonight or whether it will begin anew in the arms of her beautiful Irish poet once again.
I will not be bound by America’s limited ideas of human existence. I have liberated myself from their provincial moralities and I shall not ever return. I have escaped and I am free. I will not surrender myself to their constraints. To any institution or any man.. I will not be caged. I will live for art and I will dance naked in the moonlight and I will love as I choose..
It is a woman’s right.. It is a person’s duty..
Every one of us.
To truly live before we are called upon to die..
To exalt the spirit of life..
Gloriously.. Magnificently.. Incandescently..
For a moment Charley shudders when she wonders if Nolan has somehow come to hear that she ran away not only out of madness, but because she had to go alone to the desert and rid herself of their baby growing inside her.
2
In a taxicab heading from the train station through the quiet night city, downtown towards Greenwich Village, Charley leans back on the leather seat and closes her eyes.
It is now or never..
She wishes she was deliriously drunk. For a moment she wonders if the driver might know of a respectable saloon which might serve alcohol to a woman alone without accusing her of loose morals and prostitution.
Love is a savage creature.. Wild and merciless.. It tears at us like a hungry animal.
Poetry will not protect me tonight if Nolan does not love me.
Evelyn St. Charles McKay has always been known as Charley, ever since her sisters began calling her it as a child. She was always simply too wild a girl to be an Evelyn. Always too full of laughter and high spirits and provocation. Always the smartest and the liveliest, always fighting and weeping and hugging. Exhausting everyone with her energy and imagination and her passions. Now she is a radiant woman in her mid-twenties, twenty-six and in her prime. She feels it. A glorious prime of beauty and inspiration, of spirit and luminous sensuality. And she is already celebrated all around the world for her divine poetry. Already at twenty-six, she is a role model for a new generation of romantic young woman and men who wish only to smash the Victorian past and make a grand new future free of limiting social constraints. And nobody knows more about smashing social constraints than she. Charley McKay was born to it.
Charley is celebrated across the nation as a poetess and a feminist and a social revolutionary, but also as a divine beauty and unrepentant voluptuary. If anyone carries the optimistic hopes of youth for a great and intoxicating future, it is Charley McKay. And she carries them lightly, she cares nothing for the admiration of people and they admire her all the more for it. She thinks them very foolish for worshiping her so unreservedly, she thinks them a generation of romantics.
In the last six years since she burst on the literary scene with her first great poem, Resurrection, until now with the coming of the new free verse style, her poetry has been considered the most modern of all and is quoted by the youthful and romantic all around the world. Already before she has hardly begun, they are discussing her place among the immortals of poetry. For several years she has been a sensation, epitomizing the radiance and energy of a new generation breaking away from the crushing Victorian past. And it has not hindered her career that she is also so beautiful and feminine a creature, that her photograph is to be seen on the walls of student apartments and dorm rooms across the country and around the world.
Now in the taxicab Charley looks out of the window. They are approaching Washington Square Park, the very heart of the Village. She tells the driver to pull to the curb.
I will walk to my executioner..
3
The party at the Liberal Club hall is packed with drunken Greenwich Villagers dancing madly to frantic ragtime music. Laughter and high spirits fill the air with joy and optimism and friendship. These are people who are changing their country and they know it and glorify in it. They are artists and revolutionaries and most of all, committed bohemians. The future of the world is glorious and they know it is theirs. It is a new century and the world can be made anew by those with the courage to dare it.
The men at the party are long-haired, their hair touching down to their shirt collars, their suits unpressed and disorderly, as if they have more important matters on their minds. The women have their hair cut shockingly short and bobbed, they are wearing lipstick and loose clothing in the jarring modern Fauve style of yellows and purples, the brighter the better. They wear neither the corsets of their mothers nor the respectability to hide their ankles from view, despite their education in the best colleges of the country. To the respectable women of the nation they look immodest and slatternly. And that is precisely why they dress so, to openly declare their contempt for the past.
At the side of the hall, Nolan O’Brian, is drinking deep from his glass of whiskey, smiling as he watches the joyous dancers swirling together. He adores the women of the Village and their free spirit, he admires the men of the Village and their committed idealism. He is finally at home here after a life in which he has felt dislocated from everything. In his soul he knows that this is his true country, not the respectable America out there, which is still mired in colonial detritus. Which is still longing to be like civilized England, even after a hundred and thirty years of independence.
Nolan believes that these people dancing around him are the greatest minds and finest people in the country. And they are his friends. He has not the slightest doubt that this is an important place at an important time. Or that it is a great privilege for him as a writer, to witness such a thing and bathe in its inspiration.
Nolan O’Brian is a virile and handsome man of black Irish stock, the son of an immigrant from the old country. Like all his people, he loves to drink and sing and fuck when he is drunk. He knows how to laugh and to rage and he knows how to weep. He is a fiercely loyal friend and a tender lover. He is proud that he has the sensitivity to feel and to know how to express what he feels. People call him a rising genius of the theater for it, but he thinks of it as simply being human, simply being a complete person who is sentient and alive. To him nothing else is worth being, anything else is an insult to God. The gift of life must be respected most of all, and he adores those who exalt it.
Nolan is in his early thirties now, and he is finally beginning to create the literary work he has always dreamed of creating. It has been a long struggle, and he knows it is not over yet, but now, for the first time, he can see a horizon with light pouring over it, a horizon that he will someday approach, that will be a great work of enduring drama. A drama that is equal to the finest literature.
As Nolan watches the dancers and empties his whiskey glass, John Ross suddenly appears at his side, casually handing him a fresh drink.
‘Here, I brought you a fresh drink,’ Ross says, scanning the hall for women who look like an exhilarating dance might loosen them up enough for seduction.
Nolan pats him on the shoulder affectionately and takes the new glass. Somehow even though there is no money, there is always whiskey flowing freely. For Nolan it is still another reason to love the Village.
Ross is Nolan’s closest friend in the Village, a true comrade in the struggle for revolutionary change, his truest friend apart from Charley, who has ruined his life by disappearing and taking the poetry away from his life with her.
Ross slaps Nolan’s back enthusiastically, ‘Isn’t it great to be alive and here in the Village Nolan! Isn’t it just marvelous?’
Nolan laughs, Ross always gets friendly and exuberant when he is drunk. And he is always happy when he is wandering around among flirtatious young women who are drinking enough to loosen their already rather loose morals.
Ross is thirty years old and is beginning to look his age, losing the flush of youth he had about him at Harvard. Still though, he is bright and charming and well-liked, one of the leading lights and energies of the Greenwich Village community. His youthful outlook has been tarnished by alcohol and the wars and strikes and jails he has seen on his way to becoming an acclaimed journalist. But through it all Ross has not lost his idealism and Nolan admires him for that. No-one is a more committed socialist revolutionary than Ross, even now he is still more political a man that Nolan ever was.
Nolan has always believed in art more than politics. Even when they were at Harvard together, Nolan preferred the stage to the podium.
Nolan smiles at Ross, aware that within a few more drinks they will be standing at the piano, singing together about revolutions fought and won, and women fought and lost.
‘The world is changing Ross. Everything is going. All the old dust is being shaken away. At last.’
Ross laughs happily, ‘Yes it is my friend, and we’re changing it! You and me and
these marvelous people. There’s a revolution coming, it’s in the air. I can feel it!’
Nolan smiles, envying Rosses optimism, every time he has a few drinks he smells a revolution brewing for the country.
‘I’d settle for writing a good play.’
‘You already wrote a good play Nolan. Did you hear the applause tonight? I heard
that the critic from the New York Times, Van Fechten, is going to praise you to the skies in tomorrow’s paper.’
‘The play was a piece of crap,’ Nolan says earnestly, ‘If the theater is going to be taken seriously it’s going to have to be better than that. A lot better. I want to turn the theater drama into a new literature..’
‘And you will my friend,’ Ross says confidently, ‘But first we are going to get very drunk and get ourselves a little piece of a nice bohemian girl. The tail I’d say. We deserve it.’
‘Well, I know I do.’
‘Me too!’ Ross laughs, ‘ I had a damn hard day trying to unionize steelworkers. Then I had to watch a play full of alcoholics weeping and committing suicide all over the stage.. Written by a depressive Irish playwright who doesn’t know when he has it good. I’d say I sincerely deserve a little tail.’
Nolan laughs, ‘That’s what you always say.’
‘Can I help it if women find me charming? They think I’m like a lost dog. So they
take me home to feed me. What can I do?’
‘Ask your wife, she’ll know.’
Rosses face darkens with alarm, ‘Jesus don’t say that so loudly! Louise doesn’t want anyone to know we’re married! It’ll kill our reputations as free thinkers. We’ll be run out of the Village.’
‘You don’t act married Ross.’
‘Well neither does Louise.’
Ross looks at Nolan, directly into his eyes, and for a second Nolan can see it through the alcohol.
He knows.
Nolan has been having a tumultuous affair with Rosses wife, Louise, for several months and, until this moment, he has never been quite certain whether Ross knows or not. But he does, it is there in his eyes now. A sorrow.
Nolan thinks that it would probably be like Louise to tell him, part of her belief in free love and feminism. But he and Ross have never mentioned it, always carefully turning away when their conversation arrives at the point of confession, as if their friendship has suddenly been pricked on a thorn.
Nolan hesitates now, but before he can decide whether to say anything, to risk their friendship in the saving of it, he sees Louise coming towards him smiling, and he feels grateful.
Louise McKay stops and stands before them, smiling at them both. She is always beautiful and now she glows like a woman in love. She loves both these handsome men and she will have them both, it is her right as a free woman.
‘So how’s the new genius of the Village?’ Louise says to Nolan, her warmth too visible, ‘Still geniusing away?’
Nolan hates it when she flirts with him in front of Ross. Whenever she does it he is always careful to be cool and reserved in response. And when she does it, Ross always looks like a dog without a goddamn tail.
Louise is tall and powerful and self-confident. Even though she is only in her late twenties, she knows what she wants and she likes to get it. Louise loves Ross deeply but she is passionate about Nolan. It is Nolan who makes her heart flip.
Nolan holds her gaze calmly, ‘You know me Louise, I never have a dull thought. I can hardly stay awake with the excitement of it.’
‘I thought you were talking to me there Louise when you said genius..’ Ross says, sounding to Nolan as if he is desperate that she give him her attention.
But Louise speaks without even looking at Ross, ‘Oh sweetie, you know I think you’re a genius, it’s nothing new.’
Ross turns to Nolan, ‘Never marry them Nolan. They lose all respect for you immediately.’
Louise laughs and smiles at Nolan, as if it was his remark, ‘Come and dance with
me. It’s high time you learned to Turkey Trot properly.’
Her love for Nolan is showing on her eager face. He can sense the stab of disappointment running through Ross beside him.
Sorrow in his eyes.. The hurt of a spurned lover..
Before Nolan can think of an excuse, Louise forcefully pulls him away by the arm, leaving Ross behind, alone. Nolan shrugs helplessly at Ross and goes with her. Louise is a hard woman to refuse.
Ross loves them both dearly and it hurts when they leave him behind like this. But here in the Village, possession, even of a wife, is scorned upon. The Village runs on free love, even when it is paid for by the one left behind. Ross wonders again how long their affair will last, how much pain he will still have to endure before she returns to him. Without Charley, Nolan is like a ship without a rudder.
On the crowded dance floor Louise wraps her arms around Nolan and begins dancing, immediately feeling relaxed and intimate in his arms, heedless of Ross watching her.
Nolan is still careful, he can feel Rosses eyes on them, and he can imagine the hurt in them. Ross adores Louise and Nolan knows he should never have slept with her, even though she insisted and flirted until she finally seduced him. Most of all he should never have let her fall in love with him. That was utterly foolish.
But Louise is a feminist and a political radical, a suffragist and birth-controller. She goes her own way, resolutely independent of her husband. If there is any women’s cause in the whole of New York City that is political, Louise is a central part of it. In her secret heart Louise sees herself as a woman of the age. More than her sister Charley. Charley might have the talent and the beauty and the popularity, but Louse believes it is she who has the strength of character. Charley might be a revolutionary poetess, but she will not make a political revolution. Louise is the woman for that.
Nolan pushes her body away from him, he can feel her breasts rubbing across his chest, the nipples already hardening under her shift.
‘I feel like a heel,’ he says.
Louise shrugs, ‘Don’t worry, he has his share of women.’
‘I want to quit this. It’s not fair to Ross..’
‘You keep saying that sweetie but you keep coming back for more.’
Nolan feels the anger rising in him, she will not accept the blame for anything. ‘You keep on undressing in front of me Louise. I’m only flesh and blood.’
She smiles flirtatiously and presses her breasts to his chest again, ‘And such a nice lump of it too. Come and make love to me downstairs in Polly’s kitchen.’
Nolan sighs, Louise is beautiful and so very willing. It’s a combination that is hard to resist. And he is weak now that he is alone. Sometimes in Louise he sees a flash of Charley. In the creasing of her brow, the crinkling of her eye, the lifting of the corner of her mouth. Each time is like a stab in the heart.
‘They’ll be playing poker down there. It’ll ruin their betting if we fuck on their table.’
Louise laughs, as she always does at almost anything Nolan says when he is not angry at her.
‘We won’t disturb them. They can deal us in.’
‘I’m serious Louise. We shouldn’t be treating Ross like this. He’s my best friend and I value that.’
‘He’s my best friend too.’
‘We’re just not good people,’ Nolan says guiltily.
‘Speak for yourself. I can only be true to my feelings. That’s what makes a
person worthwhile. Integrity, not hypocrisy. It’s only our bourgeois socialization that makes us think we have to hide our love in the first place.’
Nolan has never been able to stand Louise’s self-righteousness, he has always found it a flawed characteristic of both the the religious and the politically committed. All moral lapses can be justified using the convenience of faith.
‘Is this love Louise?’ he asks her wearily. Already knowing the answer.
Louise hesitates, for her it is certainly love, but he has never ever declared love for her. And Louise fears the reason. Now she seems uncharacteristically nervous.
‘I’d like to think so..’
‘I don’t see much of an excuse for it otherwise,’ Nolan says, feeling the void in himself where love should be when a woman is offering herself so freely.
Louise hardens, she is upset at the idea that he might not love her. And she feels the truth of it in her bones.
‘You love the guilt Nolan, that’s what excites you.. The spice of wickedness, it’s your Irish Catholic upbringing.’
Nolan watches her, he can see the bile and nastiness rising in her. Everything can be justified for faith. Or for love.
‘Sometimes I think that if it wasn’t for Charley you wouldn't even be interested in me at all..’ she says.
It is always Charley she envies..
Nolan sighs, hiding his anger. You really can be a little bitch you know.’
She senses the truth of it..
Louise’s face hardens, ‘You’re thinking of Charley again. I’m the nice one in the family.’
Nolan hates the way she attacks Charley, there is simply never any recovering from the childhood struggle for family attention. Not in any family and certainly not in theirs.
‘It’s not much of a family is it?’ he accuses her, ‘Nothing but unfaithful women. You’re a lousy friend to Ross. And you are a lousy wife..’
Louise suddenly flares up in anger, ‘I think you’re talking about Charley again. And I don’t think it’s any of your business how Ross and I conduct our relationship. We’re both free people, we can do as we choose. Even with lousy friends like you. Don’t forget you’re cheating on him too buster.’
Suddenly Nolan pushes her violently away, as if he wants to be rid of her once and for all. As he walks away, Louise watches him, upset. She begins to weep as she hurries off the dance floor. That was not love.
Across the room Ross is watching them. He has seen it all. How they quarrel like lovers, deep in intimacy. How they hurt each other so freely, as only lovers do. He turns away and drinks deeply from his glass. They are breaking his heart.
4
Charley is walking alone and unafraid down the dark and narrow empty streets
leading towards the party. Greenwich Village is quiet and peaceful, a compact district of meandering streets and alleys, low buildings and red brick houses with courtyards that make it seem more like Europe than soaring skyscraper and steel America. The Village was once a center for poor immigrants coming to lower Manhattan, but now that the immigrants have spilled over to crowd Little Italy and the Lower East Side, the Village has become home to the youthful and well-educated poor of bohemia. The voluntarily poor. They came here for the cheap rents and stayed for the wildness and freedom of it.
Charley can already hear the party at the Liberal Club before she even turns from Washington Square into MacDougal Street. The noise is spilling from the club windows, laughter and ragtime and unrestrained joy. It lifts her spirits which are already soaring with anticipation.
Turning the corner she can see the light and the people spilling out on to the sidewalk outside the Liberal Club hall above Polly’s basement restaurant. She can hear the quick ragtime music going mad inside and sending the dancers spinning with exhilaration. It all seems magical.
I am home again..
She feels ease welling up in her at the thought of being back home, among people who understand her and who believe what she believes, that people are free and the world needs to be changed and that art is capable of changing it and making it blossom into a better world.
I adore the sound of their laughter spilling out into the night..
Laughter dancing on the bouncing ragtime..
Full of kisses and song.
How she loves it all, how she has missed it. She promises herself she will never leave this place again. These are her comrades and her friends. Everywhere else in the world is a desert to her.
As soon as she is outside the shabby Provincetown Players theater, where once Nolan first kissed her and then slowly undressed her in the doorway until she felt limp with desire, drunken voices call out from across the street to her.
‘Charley McKay!.. Is that you?’
‘Yes it’s me!’ Charley calls back across the street, feeling at once the simple truth of it.
It is me..
‘Yes I’m back thank God..’
When she hears her voice aloud she is surprised by the emotion in it.
In front of the entrance to the Liberal Club, two drunk young men are facing off, ready to fight one another. Over a girl or an ideology or a poet, some madness caused by too much wine and too few women. Now Charley can hear them arguing like debaters.
‘Are you saying I’m not a revolutionary? Is that what your saying!’
‘You’re a bourgeois!’
In the Village this is the ultimate insult. A fierce punch is thrown and one of the men goes down on to the sidewalk immediately.
‘How bourgeois is that my friend? That’s revolutionary!’
Charley laughs when she hears them, she knows one of the men. It is a storm in a teacup, every night there are drunken brawls here over opinion on politics or art or both. First fighting with the tongues and then fists and then sharing a bottle of liquor to finish the debate as friends.
‘A lovely swing George..’ Charley says, strolling past.
‘Oh hello Charley. Yes it was wasn’t it? It was a revolutionary punch. No question. I’d say I deserve a kiss for that, wouldn’t you?..’
Charley laughs as she goes inside the hall. Her kisses are not for George tonight.
Inside the hall the music is loud and exciting, the crowd is drunk and spirited and noisy, the air is warm and thick and sensuous. Charley feels a sense of comfort soothing through her, it is the same old Liberal Club with its bare painted walls and the simple wood furniture painted bright yellow and orange. On the walls, the same old Fauve and Cubist paintings, on the dance floor the same old Turkey Trot and couples passionately entwined, shimmying and pressing themselves together in ways unthinkable in good society, ways unknown outside outside the cheapest of low class dance halls. And the same old gorgeous rollicking ragtime she so adores.
As soon as Charley comes in, people stare at her. She has been away for several months and some of them are new in the Village and have never seen her before, except perhaps in her photograph on their college walls. People are coming every day to this place from all over the country, the finest and most idealistic of people, the artists and revolutionaries and those who imagine they can become so. And all of them have dreamed of standing alongside Charley McKay.
The young dancers step aside and stare at her, as if she is a star of the vaudeville
or the moving pictures. She is everything they would wish to be, beautiful, famous, divinely talented. People murmur her name as she passes and she smiles when she overhears them. They are so foolish.
Charley is relieved to see the women have not changed their styles while she has been away, there are still the same long-haired men and short-haired girls in brightly colored clothes. All wearing cotton batiks and sandals and lipstick like fallen women. All dressed like Charley McKay.
Suddenly Ellie Millay rushes up laughing and sweeps Charley up in her arms, she is so petite and light her feet are swept from the floor. Charley is delighted to see her, even before she left the Village she longed to see Ellie again after so long.
‘Ellie! Oh Ellie, you’re back from Europe!’
Ellie puts her down and looks at her, ‘Yes sweetie, I’ve been back for months already. Since February..’
Charley hugs her fondly again, ‘Oh it’s so nice to see real people again! The Village is four square miles of heaven! Out there in America it’s a such a bourgeois nightmare. I am disgusted with the hypocrisy of it..’
Ellie looks at Charley as if she is her favorite child, ‘I was so disappointed to hear you ran away before I arrived..’
Charley shrugs, ‘Oh I don’t know what happened.. I went mad. Ellie I felt like a prisoner and I panicked.’
Ellie smiles at her indulgently, like a mother who adores her. Charley feels a peaceful glow rising in her.
Ellie Millay is Charley’s friend, mentor and advisor. She is a literary star of the previous generation, now more than forty-five years old, but once the voice of wild poetic expression, just as Charley is now. Ellie too was a beauty and an idol to a new generation of artists, that once included Charley.
Charley studied Ellie’s work with admiration in college, and now they are great friends. When Charley first burst on the literary scene some years ago with her first great poem, Resurrection, an epic poem so mature and enduring in its vision than many thought such a young girl could not possibly have written it, there was talk that it was a prank and that Ellie Millay herself had written it. No-one else in the country was thought capable of a poem with such timeless power.
But Charley wrote it and it made her famous and Ellie took her under her wing, knowing what horrors of publicity and public exposure awaited her, knowing the dangers of such grand success from having lived through them herself. There was no-one ever wilder than Ellie Millay, famous in all Europe for her libertinism, no-one more talented and seductive, no-one a more expressive and poetic woman. Not even Charley.
Ellie strokes Charley’s cheek tenderly, ‘I don’t see what’s so mad about running away to the sunshine with two handsome young men?..’
Charley laughs gaily, her musical laugh full of the promise of delight. Ellie remembers now that when Charley laughs, her mouth curls up at the corners with charm, as if it is too wide and she still cannot contain the pleasure that is inside her. She is ravishing when she is lit up with the spirit of joy that is in her.
‘It cheers me just to see your lovely face again Charley..’ Ellie says tenderly.
‘How is Nolan? Is he all right Ellie?’ Charley asks quietly.
Ellie nods, ‘He seems all right. I haven’t seen him much. I think he has been avoiding me because I remind him of you sweetie..’
Charley nods sadly, upset that Nolan has been hurt. ‘I was so stupid.. I can’t tell you how much I regret it now..’
Ellie brightly changes the subject, it is not time for Charley to be despairing over Nolan, ‘So tell me sweetie, how was Mexico?..’
Charley smiles wickedly, ‘How was Paris? You tell me..’
‘You first! I asked first.. Everything was so dull here without you. Spring
took forever to arrive.. And how was Mexico then?.. Dreary and dull?.. I doubt it!’
Charley laughs brightly, she loves Ellie’s vivacity, she prays that she will still have it at Ellie’s age, ‘Nothing to do but screw and write. I don’t know which I did the most of.’
‘Oh it sounds wonderful already!’
‘Do you have any money Ellie? I’ve been on the train for five days from Mexico and I have nothing left..’
‘Of course sweetie, I’m selling so many poetry books now I can hardly keep up. They’re making all the college boys study me nowadays. It’s one of the few advantages of getting old. They have to read me. It’s marvelous. They all think I’m a goddess of poetry.’
‘Usually you prefer to study the college boys.’
‘I can assure you my researches into the subject aren’t yet nearly complete sweetie..’
They laugh and Charley spots her sister Louise standing alone, drinking at the bare table set up as a bar, with many liquor bottles on it for the taking.
‘Oh there’s Louise, I must say hello..’
‘Get yourself a drink. After five days on a train you must be desperate..’
‘I am.’
Ellie hugs her affectionately, ‘Come and have dinner with me as soon as possible sweetie.. I’ll tell you all about Paris. I almost never was so passionately screwed in my life. Half of the time I was covered in wet oil paint. The new young artists are so virile.’
Charley laughs, Ellie is still a libertine and she still adores sex almost as much as Charley.
‘Has Paris changed since you lived there? Was it wise to go back after all?..’
Ellie sighs philosophically, ‘It was wonderful to see my friends, I have a letter from you from Emma Rouen.
‘Is she well?’
‘Yes very. She has sent you the new book she has written, I told her how much you admired her last.’
‘So Paris is still the same for you?’
‘Paris never changes. Only we do. I’m getting so old now.. ‘
‘Oh you look fine. The same as always.’
Ellie has always been beautiful, now her beauty is turning into an elegant handsomeness, a mature, distinguished look of experience that is attractive.
‘In Paris I felt as old as the buildings. All my old haunts were exactly the same,
Montmartre is still lovely.. Everything was still the same except the view in the mirror.’
‘Oh you are so dramatic! Have you no shame?’ Charley laughs, ‘Just write a wonderful poem about it.. About the pain of a woman aging..’
Ellie laughs, ‘Have you been writing well?’
‘Fairly well.. I hope.. I think I’m giving up poetry though..’
Ellie’s eyes widen, Charley is the poet of the new age, ‘Oh no sweetie!’
Charley shrugs, ‘Now that the Imagists have killed rhyme, there’s no skill to it any
longer.’
‘We surely don’t need rhyme? Not someone like you?..’
Charley laughs, ‘Perhaps not. But I’m good at it and it’s not fair to take that away
from me. I was struggling enough as it was.’
Ellie laughs. And Charley laughs too, they have always had such a fine easy contact, from the very first moment they met.
‘I have written a stage play.. I’ll tell you everything over a long dinner at the Brevoort Hotel,’ Charley promises.
Ellie is surprised and pleased, ‘Yes, you certainly must.. A dramatist, good Lord..’
Charley nods, ‘As soon as possible. Ellie I might need a place to stay tonight..’ she says, suddenly feeling her vulnerability. If Nolan will not have her back she will have nowhere to go.
Ellie nods sympathetically, she understands that if Charley arrives at her house later tonight, it will be with a broken heart.
‘That’s fine. Just come round any time if you need to. Waken me up..’
Charley hugs her in gratitude. Ellie smiles at her.
‘You are so beautiful Charley, it lifts my heart just to see you.’
Charley smiles fondly back at her, remembering how she always loved to lie naked in Ellie’s secure arms after they had spend themselves so completely in tender lovemaking.
At the bar Louise gasps with a surprise approaching shock when she sees Charley is almost upon her.
‘Charley!’
Louise hugs her tightly, they are friends as well as sisters.
‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? You should have written me!’
Louise is an older sister and greatly relishes the role. Even though they are long since adults, she has no intention of giving it up. Being two years older she feels even in adulthood that she still has the right to question everything Charley does. This irritates Charley deeply but she tries to let it pass as best she can. Now she is only pleased to see Louise.
Charley kisses her, ‘I didn’t know myself until five days ago. I’ve been on the train since then.’
‘So how was Mexico darling?.. Tiring I imagine..’
‘It’s so marvelous to be back among the wonderful pagans of the Village. It’s a different country out there, among the bourgeoisie of America. Greenwich Village is such an island of freedom.. Mexico was alright I suppose..’
Louise laughs, ‘With two handsome and rich young men, I’d say so. You were the talk of the Village. Too bad you missed it.’
Charley laughs too, she has always adored being the talk of the Village.
‘Frankly I left there because I was bored and missed the Village. There was nothing to do but write and screw. It turns out there’s a limit to how much you can do of either in a given day. It was exhausting being the prize and the field of competition at the same time.’
Louise smiles at her, Charley has always had too much fondness for sex, too much hot blood in her veins and romantic poetry in her head.
‘I can imagine. Young men can be so dull in conversation.’
Louise would rather argue politics than make love, although she has had more than enough lovers in her time. Men always respond to the challenge of seducing her, and Louise issues the challenge very casually for a married woman.
Charley nods, ‘I left them a letter behind and departed graciously. Probably by now they are screwing each other..’
Louise laughs, no-one is as bright and witty as Charley. Louise has always loved her company, even though it is often troublesome and pales her own feminine dazzle.
‘You look very well. Mexico must agree with you.’
‘I was so pleased to get your letters Louise. I missed everyone so awfully..’
‘We missed you too darling.’
Louise feels a flash of guilt, she knows how many times she has wished that Charley would never return and that she would always have Nolan as her lover. They both fall silent a moment, reflecting on each other. Charley has seen the flash of emotion cross Louise’s face and wonders what it means.
‘Is Nolan here?..’ Charley says instinctively, as if reading Louise’s thoughts.
‘Yes he is, he’s somewhere with Floyd..’
Charley nods, relieved to hear it. She is sure she saw Louise stiffen for a second..
‘That’s good..’
‘Will you go back to him?’
Louise can hardly hide the fear in her voice, on her face.
‘If he’ll have me.’
Now Louise can’t keep her bitterness inside any longer. Charley has always had everything she desired.
‘He would be a fool if he did. You’ll only leave him again.’
‘I love him Louise.’
Suddenly Charley sees that Louise looks hurt and full of dread. It is in her eyes, the wanting.
She is fearful of something..
Charley deliberately changes the subject to a more casual one. There will be time later to investigate the thing in Louise’s eyes.
‘So how’s marriage sweetie? I am sorry I wasn’t there..’
Louise looks alarmed, ‘You haven’t told anyone have you!’
‘No, of course not. I’m too ashamed of you..’ Charley says, laughing at Louise’s wild reaction. Nothing could be worse for Louise than to be considered bourgeois.
Louise laughs too. As girls they both swore they would never marry, and nobody else in the Village ever has, even though Louise was married before she came to the Village. Somehow she has forgotten it completely and now thinks of herself as never married..
‘It’s alright being married. Mother was upset over it though. She doesn’t care
for Ross much. She saw in the New York Times that he was called a Bolshevik agitator..’
‘Ross is a fine fellow.. Although I must say I don’t know why you had to get married though?..’ Charley asks, with an air of disapproval.
Louise is immediately irritated by the remark, Charley has always had a way of needling her, with her bottomless confidence which Louise has always lacked.
Louise raises her eyebrows irritably, ‘Why?.. Now you feel you have to get married too?..’
Charley laughs and Louise begins to laugh now too, both of them recognizing their lifelong game of sisterly competition.
Finally they hug each other, they have always loved each other deeply.
‘It’s so great to be home sweetie..’ Charley says fondly.
As they laugh Ross comes up and affectionately hugs Charley immediately,
‘Evelyn St Charles McKay! Good God!’
‘Hello Ross..’ Charley smiles at him, they have always been friends and now they are family.
‘Just what we need, some inspiration about the place.. Here..’
Ross puts his own tall glass of liquor in her hand. He is delighted to see her again, he has always adored Charley and now that she is back, he knows it will mean an end to Louise’s affair with Nolan. Things could not be better.
Charley takes the drink, she loves Rosses generosity of spirit, he is a political ideologue but, unlike most, he has the heart to also live it out in his personal life.
‘So how’s the socialist revolution coming along Ross?..’
‘Wonderful, wonderful. All the better now you’re back here. I don’t know why you went to Mexico in the first place. I hated it when I was there.’
Louise takes his arm, ‘You were reporting on a revolutionary war sweetie. It’s not the same as being on vacation in a beach villa with two rich young adoring boys..’
Ross shrugs, he never cares for Louise’s sharp tongue when it is turned against him in public, it shows a meanness in her he has never liked.
‘Have you seen Nolan yet? He’s here somewhere..’ Ross says, watching Charley’s face closely for signs of what will be.
‘No..’ she says nervously.
‘You should, he’s been a pain in the ass since you abandoned him.’
Charley laughs, Ross is such a good spirit.
‘And before also..’ he adds laughing.
‘Is he alright?..’ Charley asks earnestly, making Ross earnest too. All of them care deeply for one another and if one of them is hurt, then the others are damaged also.
‘He is now..’ Ross tells her sincerely, ‘ It took a while.. He was drinking. You shouldn’t hurt him again Charley. If you don’t want him then leave him alone..’
Charley shrugs to hide the sorrow she feels that Nolan has been hurt.
‘I can’t leave him alone Ross..’
Louise looks stung, she turns away and pours herself a drink to hide it from them both. It is already clear, Charley will take him away from her.
At the other side of the hall, amid the milling crowds, Nolan is leaning against the cast iron wood stove talking to Floyd Williams.
Floyd is in his mid 30s, he looks so weedy and comically harmless that people feel the need to protect him. But Floyd is a sharp writer and a political activist of some note. He is a senior editor at The Masses magazine, the most left wing periodical in the country, a publication closely watched by the authorities who are gradually becoming concerned by its message and the social and political unrest it deliberately seeks to incite
across the country.
Floyd is great friends with both Nolan and Ross, with whom he works at the magazine. He is a well known and much admired figure in the Village, so popular that once even Charley took him as a lover, some years ago, before Nolan came to town with the Provincetown theater players and stole her heart away forever.
Floyd admires Nolan, secretly he thinks that Nolan will probably be the man of the age, the one who will be remembered when all the fuss had died down and the scandal of Greenwich Village is forgotten. Then the true scores will be tallied and the work being done now will be coldly evaluated. Then reputations will rise and fall and he suspects that Nolan will settle at the top of everything, as the one indisputable genius who walked these streets. Even above Charley McKay, whose reputation has easily outstripped him in the past.
‘So how are you enjoying your success?..’ Floyd asks Nolan, glad that he is finally having some success at last.
Nolan shrugs, ‘I wouldn’t call that much success, 140 people on wooden bleachers in a bare parlor theater. It’s still a long way to Broadway from here.’
Floyd is surprised to hear him mention Broadway, the huge theaters uptown show nothing of interest to anyone but the rabble, only vaudeville and variety shows, nothing ever resembling art. They are only a casual entertainment to pass an evening, like the moving pictures, not remotely capable of anything which might be called literature.
‘I had no idea you wanted to get to Broadway Nolan. That’s very disappointing
to hear my friend..’
‘I’m going to take Broadway by the throat and make it into a place where art can be made on a commercial American stage. I’m not going to Broadway, I’m going to make Broadway come to me.’
Nolan seems quite certain about it, and Floyd is pleased to hear it, even though he doesn’t understand how it might be possible.
‘Well that’s different. That should only take you about a hundred years I’d say.’
‘I’ll do it if it kills me. It’s time we had something worth seeing on the popular stage. It’s time for this country to grow up.’
Floyd raises his glass to Nolan in a toast, ‘Liberty or death!’
Nolan laughs, ‘Let’s not get carried away here Floyd.’
Floyd suddenly gasps and hides behind Nolan, ‘It’s the Baroness Elsa!’
Nolan looks at him in surprise, he turns around to see a woman walking away from them with a flashing red automobile tail light on the bustle of her dress, drawing deliberate attention to her bottom.
Nolan has never seen anything like her. Her hair is short and cut like a helmet, her features harsh and weatherbeaten. She moves athletically, boyishly, even though she must be at least forty years old. On her head she appears to be wearing a coal scuttle as a hat, with a long handle that protrudes stylishly sideways from her head. On each cheek she has a single postage stamp stuck on for decoration.
She looks like a madwoman, just staring at her makes Nolan feel lightheaded, as if he has fallen into another parallel world where anything may exist, no matter how strange. She looks like a moving work of art, stupefying those who gaze upon her, as if they have fallen under the influence of an exotic drug.
‘What the hell is that?..’ Nolan exclaims, staring at her utterly stunned. She is a woman but no longer a woman. She is a creature.
‘That is Baroness Elsa..’ Floyd says admiringly, ‘She is quite unique in the city.. Or anywhere else.. She has recently moved to the Village. From Berlin I believe..’
‘Does she know she has a damn flashing light on her tail?’
‘She’s one of the new Dadaist group who just arrived. They are to be seen at Walter Arsenberg’s salon now. I met them last week for the first time. They’re all quite mad, and rather interesting. Half of them are from France, they came here to get away from having to fight in the war in Europe..’
As they watch her, fascinated, Baroness Elsa crosses the room to stand listening to two men talking together, Marcel Duloc and Walter Arsenberg. Another attractive young girl is with them, listening to the men very intently, but never speaking.
Nolan stares at the Baroness, as a playwright Nolan is a man who creates people, out of nothing, like a little God. But this Baroness is too exotic a creature even for the stage.
Floyd speaks of the Dadaists with admiration, ‘Walter took them in, especially that one he’s talking to now, Duloc. He’s quite famous for his art already. He did that naked woman on the stairs painting at the Armory Show a couple of years ago, it was quite a sensation. They’re very interesting people actually. We should go and meet them.’
‘Well the Baroness certainly seems unique. There’s no doubt about that..’ Nolan says, wondering how he might include such a woman in a stage play.
‘I think she’s wonderful. I am going to seduce her at the earliest opportunity..’
Nolan looks at him as if he’s mad. Floyd has the taste for dangerous and exotic women, unique creatures like Charley.
‘We’re talking about the woman with the frying pan on her head?’ Nolan says, hoping to dissuade him from certain disaster. Floyd has had more disastrous love affairs than anyone in the Village.
‘Yes..’ Floyd says calmly, ‘She’s a real baroness you know. By marriage.’
Nolan laughs, Floyd is a comically hopeless case, he has the romantic touch of a leper, ‘I didn’t know you were attracted to the aristocracy.’
Floyd laughs too, even he can see the idiocy of such a romantic pursuit..
‘I’m going to photograph her.’
‘That sounds like a worthwhile idea,’ Nolan agrees. And they begin to laugh
As Nolan stands laughing, he suddenly notices that Charley is standing right in front of him, only four feet away and staring at him. Seeing her angelic face again hits him like a blow to the stomach.
Floyd notices Nolan’s shocked reaction and turns and sees her. He immediately stops laughing and hurries off, patting Charley’s shoulder fondly as he passes her. He knows he doesn’t belong here now.
‘Lovely to see you Charley,’ Floyd says without stopping.
Now there is silence as Charley and Nolan stand staring at each other. Nolan is filled with emotion to see her again. He feels his legs weaken as if he might fall to the floor. His thoughts are tumbling through his mind in a chaos.
She is so beautiful
Like a wild creature
Smiling like an angel
Beautiful and wild
Like a soaring bird
She captures my heart with her smile
They stand staring silently at one another for a long time, both too vulnerable to speak. As if a single word might be a dangerous thing, any word the wrong one.
As she stares at him she feels as if she is being filled to the brim with laughter. As if it will lift her off her feet and take her floating into the air. As if she is simply full of bright bubbles of laughter and happiness.
He is so handsome..
If he does not want me I will die..
And die and die and die..
When Charley tries to speak her voice is quiet and shy. There is nothing to hide any longer. Not the vulnerability, not the pain, not the love.
‘Can you forgive me?..’
Nolan gazes at her, feeling himself drowning in love, as if he has fallen into a whirlpool of it in her eyes.
‘When I look at you I can forgive anything.’
Charley smiles at him with luminous joy.
I will live again..
Nolan smiles at her, making her radiance glow.
She is made of light.
It will never be over between us..
She moves to him and puts her arms around his neck, her cheek against his. Resting herself there against him. Holding on so that she will not float away.
Nolan stands and lets her hold him.
Her cheek so soft and smooth
Her scent like the scent of our bed
She is made of poetry and song
Nolan closes his eyes in relief as she hugs him. He can feel his long nightmare slipping away from him. At last she is home. He feels a weight slipping from his heart.
And Charley whispers his name in a voice soft with longing.
I am home..
Copyright Lee Vidor, 2010. All rights reserved.
Love Flees From Us Like A Frightened Bird.
Greenwich Village New York, 1912-17
To be published in 2011.
