The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [239]
Eugene lifted one hand, vaguely caressing the air in front of the Spaniard. He tried to bring up a woman before him. Perhaps the Spaniard could produce a beautiful mistress he had somewhere, one he enjoyed and always went straight to, while in San Francisco: the strangely marked Negress, wouldn't she exactly do? And Eugene envisioned some silent (and this time, foreign) movie with that never spoken-in-love word, "enjoy," dancing for an instant upon the bouquet of flowers he'd be taking her. His own hand held an invisible bouquet, but the Spaniard looked right through it.
Eugene sank his cheek on his hand and looked across at his guest, who was good-humoredly spitting out a bone. It was more probable that the artist remained alone at night, aware of being too hard to please—and practicing on his guitar.
Yet these moments seemed so precious!
Why waste them? Why not visit a gambling house? A game of chance would be very interesting. With those red-nailed fingers (only—and Eugene's hope fell—they were not red now) the Spaniard would be able to place their chips on lucky numbers, and with his sharp and shaming ear listen to the delicate, cheating click of the ball in the wheel. Eugene usually only pressed his lips together—to part them—at the idea of such places, but with the Spaniard along—! For them, as for young, unattached, dashing boys, or renegade old men far gone, the roulette wheel all evening in some smoke-filled but ascetic room ... how would it be?
Suppose he, Eugene, found himself in San Francisco for only a day and a night, say, and not for the rest of his life? Suppose he was still in the process of leaving Mississippi—not stopped here, but simply an artist, touring through. Or, if he chanced not to play the guitar or something, simply out looking: not for anyone in particular; on the track, say, of his old man? (God forbid he'd find him! Old Papa King MacLain was an old goat, a black name he had.)
From right here, himself stopped in San Francisco, Eugene could have told the artist something. This city ... often it looked open and free, down through its long-sighted streets, all in the bright, washing light. But hill and hill, cloud and cloud, all shimmering one back of the other like purities or transparencies of clear idleness and blue smoke, lifting and going down like the fire-sirens that forever curved through the place, and traveling water-bright one upon the other—they were any man's walls still.
And at the same time it would be terrifying if walls, even the walls of Emma's and his room, the walls of whatever room it was that closed a person in in the evening, would go soft as curtains and begin to tremble. If like the curtains of the aurora borealis the walls of rooms would give even the illusion of lifting—if they would threaten to go up. That would be repeating the Fire—of course. That could happen any time to San Francisco. It was a special threat out here. But the thing he thought of wasn't really physical....
Eugene slowly buttered the last crust of bread. There was nothing to change his mind about the Spaniard—to make him think that this sedate man, installed on the lighted stage with his foot on a rest the way he liked to present himself, hadn't a secret practice of going out to a dark and shady place on his own, and wouldn't seek out as a further preoccupation in his life some stranger's disgrace or necessity, some marked, designated house. For it was natural to suppose, supposed Eugene, that the solidest of artists were chameleons.
What mightn't this Spaniard be capable of?
Eugene felt untoward visions churning, the Spaniard with his great knees bent and his black slippers turning as if on a wheel's rim, dancing in a red smoky place with a lead-heavy alligator. The Spaniard turning his back, with his voluminous coat-tails sailing, and his feet off the ground, floating bird-like up into the pin-point distance. The Spaniard with