Ladders to Fire Read Free

which she crossed
the street with every privilege granted her, of not being hungry, of not being
imprisoned or tortured, all these privileges were a subtler form of torture.
They were given to her, the house, the complete family, the food, the loves,
like a mirage. Given and denied. They were present to the eyes of others who
said: “You are fortunate,” and invisible to her. Because the anguish, the
mysterious poison, corroded all of them, distorted the relationships, blighted
the food, haunted the house, installed war where there was no apparent war,
torture where there was no sign of instruments, and enemies where there were no
enemies to capture and defeat.
    Anguish was a voiceless woman screaming in a
nightmare.
    She stood waiting for Lillian at the door. And
what struck Lillian instantly was the aliveness of Djuna :
if only Gerard had been like her! Their meeting was like a joyous encounter of
equal forces.
    Djuna responded
instantly to the quick rhythm, to the intensity. It was a meeting of equal
speed, equal fervor, equal strength. It was as if they had been two champion
skiers making simultaneous jumps and landing together at the same spot. It was
like a meeting of two chemicals exactly balanced, fusing and foaming with the
pleasure of achieved proportions.
    Lillian knew that Djuna would not sit peacefully or passively in her room awaiting the knock on her
door, perhaps not hearing it the first time, or hearing it and walking casually
towards it. She knew Djuna would have her door open
and would be there when the elevator deposited hr. And Djuna knew by the swift approach of Lillian that Lillian would have the answer to her
alert curiosity, to her impatience; that she would hasten the elevator trip,
quicken the journey, slide over the heavy carpet in time to meet this wave of
impatience and enthusiasm.
    Just as there are elements which are sensitive
to change and climate and rise fast to higher temperatures, there were in
Lillian and Djuna rhythms which left them both
suspended in utter solitude. It was not in body alone that they arrived on time
for their meetings, but they arrived primed for high living, primed for flight,
for explosion, for ecstasy, for feeling, for all experience. The slowness of
others in starting, their slowness in answering, caused them often to soar
alone.
    To Djuna Lillian
answered almost before she spoke, answered with her bristling hair and
fluttering hands, and the tinkle of her jewelry.
    “Gerard lost everything when he lost you,” said Djuna before Lillian had taken off her coat. “He lost
life.”
    Lillian was trying to recapture an impression
she had before seeing Djuna . “Why, Djuna , when I heard your voice over the telephone I thought
you were delicate and fragile. And you look fragile but somehow not weak. I
came to…well, to protect you. I don’t know what from.”
    Djuna laughed. She
had enormous fairy tale eyes, like two aquamarine lights illumining darkness,
eyes of such depth that lit first one felt one might fall into them as into a
sea, a sea of feeling. And then they ceased to be the pulling, drawing,
absorbing sea and they became beacons, with extraordinary intensity of vision,
of awareness, of perception. Then one felt one’s chaos illumined, transfigured.
Where the blue, liquid balls alighted every object acquired significance.
    At the same time their vulnerability and
sentience made them tremble like delicate candlelight or like the eye of the
finest camera lens which at too intense daylight will suddenly shut black. One
caught the inner chamber like the photographer’s dark room, in which
sensitivity to daylight, to crudity and grossness would cause instantaneous
annihilation of the image.
    They gave the impression of a larger vision of
the world. If sensitivity made them retract, contract swiftly, it was not in
any self-protective blindness but to turn again to that inner chamber where the
metamorphosis took place and in which the pain became not personal,