Rafael Yglesias - Hide Fox, and All After

The poetry of their movements was outlined clearly against the harsh lighting and bare stage. The invisible tide that carried them, the rhythm of their moods, flowed impossibly on. The performance had an unbearable vitality for Raul. The contact with the audience was, at times, so thorough as to move him, emotionally, more than he had ever been.

Alec and he were on the high surge of this tide. They sculptured the tension of the play to greater and greater points of tolerance, until it seemed miraculous that it had not climaxed. And gleefully, marvelously playing the trick on the audience, it did not climax, but vanished. Like the withdrawing tide.

The curtain fell. Alec and Raul embraced, laughing, running to separate wings for the curtain call. They laughed and smiled to each other as the cast went out, individually, for their reward. As more and more of the principles went out, the applause rose higher, sometimes lower, slightly, for a specific actor. Alec and Raul grinned maliciously at this. Al Hinton walked out, the applause plateauing on the level for Davis. And Raul began to move, oceans with him. As he stepped out onto the stage, the audience broke out louder. It was as if hundreds were calling his name, and he felt complete.

Alec walked out, the audience maintaining, incredibly, its hysteria. He and Raul clasped hands mid-stage, stepping out of the line for their individual bows. The curtain came down, both of them cackling and stopping abruptly as it went up again. Down, and up again, until finally it ended.

With the curtain down, the stage lights were on full. Raul and Alec swung about, leaping into each other’s arms, shaking hands, laughing, screaming with joy. The cast milled about, Alec standing as if in a trance, Raul running about the stage, trying to rid himself of the unbearable energy and joy that possessed him.

In minutes people were coming backstage and soon it was crowded. Miller came over to Raul and Alec, putting a hand behind Raul’s head, giving it a good shake, saying it was great. “Even Fred liked it,” Raul yelled.

One after another people came to Raul and Alec, congratulating them. The sense of ego was overpowering. Some said it was better than the Broadway production. “Surely an exaggeration,” Alec said, smiling.

“Not at all,” a man replied. “The production as a whole certainly wasn’t. However, the two of you, I think, were more effective than Broadway.”

“Thank you in any case,” Raul said.

Bowden and Henderson came by, obviously very pleased with Raul. “You see how well it has turned out,” Henderson said.

“Yes,” Raul said, beaming.

“Have patience in the future. Good luck.” He shook Raul’s hand. There was little joy in this. But parents kept coming, countless hands were taken and compliments given.

Raul and Alec stood together regally receiving the line of well-wishers. The students’ admiring eyes were the most satisfactory, but to see adults so respectful was joyous. They laughed within at their modestly gracious thank yous.

As the crowd thinned, they ran to the dressing rooms, taking off their make-up. Because of Raul’s pleading, Miller allowed them to keep their costumes on. “You’ll have to pay for them if you ruin them.”

“Fred,” Raul said, a leg thrust forward arrogantly, “I would no more tear these than I would my soul.”

They were boisterous in the dressing room, arranging with the self-important, obese Black to be driven to the cast party. Raul was pleased that Black, usually so arrogant, became servile with them. He turned away others, saving room for Alec and Raul in his car.

Capes billowing, boots resounding on the pavement, they went out into the black clear night. They lit cigarettes, Raul’s parched, hungering throat mad for the taste. They rolled all the windows down to be in contact with the wild air, yelling at the top of their lungs.

Driving with blind reckless force, they tried to drown their energy in suicidal haste. Arriving at a fashionable East Side apartment house, they strutted in, full-blown from the vital air.

The noise of the party stopped, startled by their presence. They were surrounded, in moments, by people. Sandwiches and drinks paraded before them. Within ten minutes they were up in the emergency staircase smoking grass.

Soon they returned, delivering their obscure epigrammatic lines. Their parts were more than second natures now: they had replaced real life. No joy was insupportable or lasting, no sorrow withstood the degenerating process of dramatic self-pity. Only the exuberance and vitality of performance controlled them. Emotion became a ghost, called to life briefly, intensely, disappearing again to phantasm.

They exhausted themselves as degenerate artists, at once cruel, mocking, and whimsical of human convention. Proudly arrogant, they flaunted their talents before the audience of this world. Nothing could weaken their strength of unity in acting. They slept badly, ate worse, abusing and exploiting their bodies, but this seemed to add to their energy.

This climaxed their relationship, their superb coordination. Their arrogance and power did not arise from charlatanism, but from a firm belief in their own worth. Their lives, for them, were not mere lives, but history.

A marvelous purity descended upon Raul as he spent the days in his high-ceilinged scholarly room after the play was over. For the first time in quite a while he was not seized by intense longings for an answer, to create. He could — and he was amazed — find joy in simple occupation.

He slept peacefully, at a regular hour, eating well and spending his days reading and listening to music.

What are you doing? he was asked. I’m on vacation. The words were wondrously simple and true.

The two-week spring vacation had begun the day after the last performance. Alec had gone off somewhere, so the two didn’t see each other.

Alec called after a week or so.

“Where are you?” Raul asked.

“Skiing.”

“Ah, your first love. Well, not really. After theater and fucking.”

“I’m only without one.”

“Ah-hah! Who is she?”

“A blonde named Carol.”

“A blonde nymphomaniac, or just occasionally horny?”

“Can’t tell. Has quite a talent, though.”

“In what area?”

“Blowing.”

Raul laughed. “A very rare area.”

“Oh, that was awful.” Alec laughed loudly. “You’re obscene.”

“I do it just to see how shocked people are. Any particular trait that is endearing, besides her body?”

“Her free use of it.”

“Naturally.”

“And an affection for lying naked and smoking grass.”

“Hey, that’s very charming.”

“In a hotel room.”

“The atmosphere is superb.” Raul paused thoughtfully. “Quite good, really quite marvelous — I like the image.”

“I knew you’d approve. What have you been doing?”

“Relaxing. I’ve never been so relaxed in my life.”

“Good.”

“I’ve been writing poetry.”

“Really? Anything good?”

“My style’s changed. It has become very simple. I mean that in a good sense — direct and charming. Yes, if I had to describe it, my poetry has become charming.”

“I shall read it when I get home. What else?”

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. And I started reading Henry James.”

“You’re making me feel ashamed.”

“What? You mean by my productivity?”

“Yes.”

“That’s silly. What you’ve done, you’ve done. Your activities’ worth is concrete. Mine can only be judged by time, and even then the verdict will probably be ambiguous. I’ll burn my poetry in a few months, and in a week or so I’ll be criticizing James from head to foot and never read him again. As it is, I’ve become wary of him. This is the third short story I’ve read that ends in a female suicide.”