The Story of Mary MacLane/January 18
AND meanwhile—as I wait—my mind occupies itself with its own good odd philosophy, so that even the Nothingness becomes almost endurable.
The Devil has given me some good things—for I find that the Devil owns and rules the earth and all that therein is. He has given me, among other things—my admirable young woman's-body, which I enjoy thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond.
A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is feminine in every fiber.
You may gaze at and admire the picture in the front of this book. It is the picture of a genius—a genius with a good strong young woman's-body,—and inside the pictured body is a liver, a MacLane liver, of admirable perfectness.
Other young women and older women and men of all ages have good bodies also, I doubt not—though the masculine body is merely flesh, it seems, flesh and bones and nothing else. But few recognize the value of their bodies; few have grasped the possibilities, the artistic graceful perfection, the poetry of human flesh in its health. Few have even sense enough indeed to keep their flesh in health, or to know what health is until they have ruined some vital organ, and so banished it forever.
I have not ruined any of my vital organs, and I appreciate what health is. I have grasped the art, the poetry of my fine feminine body.
This at the age of nineteen is a triumph for me.
Sometime in the midst of the brightness of an October I have walked for miles in the still high air under the blue of the sky. The brightness of the day and the blue of the sky and the incomparable high air have entered into my veins and flowed with my red blood. They have penetrated into every remote nerve-center and into the marrow of my bones.
At such a time this young body glows with life.
My red blood flows swiftly and joyously—in the midst of the brightness of October.
My sound, sensitive liver rests gently with its thin yellow bile in sweet content.
My calm, beautiful stomach silently sings, as I walk, a song of peace.
My lungs, saturated with mountain ozone and the perfume of the pines, expand in continuous ecstasy.
My heart beats like the music of Schumann, in easy, graceful rhythm with an undertone of power.
My strong and sensitive nerves are reeking and swimming in sensuality like drunken little Bacchantes, gay and garlanded in mad revelling.
The entire wonderful, graceful mechanism of my woman's-body has fallen at the time—like the wonderful, graceful mechanism of my woman's-mind—under the enchanting spell of a day in October.
"It is good," I think to myself, "oh, it is good to be alive! It is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal living on this charmed earth."
After I have walked for several hours I reach a region where the sulphur smoke has not penetrated, and I sit on the ground with drawn-up knees and rest as the shadows lengthen. The shadows lengthen early in October.
Presently I lie flat on my back and stretch my lithe slimness to its utmost like a mountain lioness taking her comfort. I am intensely thankful to the Devil for my two good legs and the full use of them under a short skirt, when, as now, they carry me out beyond the pale of civilization away from tiresome dull people. There is nothing in the world that can become so maddeningly wearisome as people, people, people!
And so, Devil, accept, for my two good legs, my sincerest gratitude. I lie on the ground for some minutes and meditate idly. There is a worldful of easy indolent, beautiful sensuality in the figure of a young woman lying on the ground under a warm setting sun. A man may lie on the ground—but that is as far as it goes. A man would go to sleep, probably, like a dog or a pig. He would even snore, perhaps—under the setting sun. But then, a man has not a good young feminine body to feel with, to receive into itself the spirit of a warm sun at its setting, on a day in October,—and so let us forgive him for sleeping, and for snoring.
When I rise again to a sitting posture all the brightness has focused itself to the west. It casts a yellow glamor over the earth, a glamor not of joy, nor of pleasure, nor of happiness—but of peace.
The young poplar trees smile gently in the deathly still air. The sage brush and the tall grass take on a radiant quietness. The high hills of Montana, near and distant, appear tender and benign. All is peace—peace. I think of that beautiful old song:
In thy bosom of shade."
But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty and fifty. I am waiting for my Experience.
I am awaiting the coming of the Devil.
And now, just before twilight, after the sun has vanished over the edge, is the red, red line on the sky.
There will be days wild and stormy, filled with rain and wind and hail; and yet nearly always at the sun's setting there will be calm—and the red line of sky.
There is nothing in the world quite like this red sky at sunset. It is Glory, Triumph, Love, Fame!
Imagine a life bereft of things, and fingers pointed at it, and eyebrows raised; tossed and bandied hither and yon; crushed, beaten, bled, rent asunder, outraged, convulsed with pain; and then, into this life while still young, the red, red line of sky!
Why did I cry out against Fate, says the line; why did I rebel against my term of anguish! I now rather rejoice at it; now in my Happiness I remember it only with deep pleasure.
Think of that wonderful, admirable, matchless man of steel, Napoleon Bonaparte. He threw himself heavily on the world, and the world has never since been the same. He hated himself, and the world, and God, and Fate, and the Devil. His hatred was his term of anguish.
Then the sun threw on the sky for him a red, red line—the red line of Triumph, Glory, Fame!
And afterward there was the blackness of Night, the blackness that is not tender, not gentle.
But black as our Night may be, nothing can take from us the memory of the red, red sky. "Memory is possession," and so the red sky we have with us always.
Oh, Devil, Fate, World—some one, bring me my red sky! For a little brief time, and I will be satisfied. Bring it to me intensely red, intensely full, intensely alive! Short as you will, but red, red, red!
I am weary—weary, and, oh, I want my red sky! Short as it might be, its memory, its fragrance would stay with me always—always. Bring me, Devil, my red line of sky for one hour and take all, all—everything I possess. Let me keep my Happiness for one short hour, and take away all from me forever. I will be satisfied when Night has come and everything is gone.
Oh, I await you, Devil, in a wild frenzy of impatience!
And as I hurry back through the cool darkness of October, I feel this frenzy in every fiber of my fervid woman's-body.