A Time To Be Born | The Wicked Pavilion

This was no time to cry over one broken heart. It was no time to worry about Vicky Haven or indeed any other young lady crossed in love, for now the universe, nothing less, was your problem. You woke in the morning with the weight of doom on your head. You lay with eyes shut wondering why you dreaded the day; was it a debt, was it a lost love?—and then you remembered the nightmare. It was a dream, you said, nothing but a dream, and the covers were thrown aside, the dream was over, now for the day. Then, fully awake, you remembered that it was no dream. Paris was gone, London was under fire, the Atlantic was now a drop of water between the flame on one side and the waiting dynamite on the other. This was a time of waiting, of marking time till ready, of not knowing what to expect or what to want either for yourself or for the world, private triumph or failure lost in the world's failure. The longed-for letter, the telephone ringing at last, the familiar knock at the door—very well, but there was still something to await—something unknown, something fantastic, perhaps the stone statue from Don Giovanni marching in or the gods of the mountain. Day's duties were performed to the metronome of Extras, radio broadcasts, committee conferences on war orphans, benefits for Britain, send a telegram to your congressman, watch your neighbor for free speech, vote for Willkie or for Roosevelt and banish care from the land.

This was certainly no time for Vicky Haven to engage your thoughts, for you were concerned with great nations, with war itself. This was a time when the true signs of war were the lavish plumage of the women; Fifth Avenue dress-shops and the finer restaurants were filled with these vanguards of war. Look at the jewels, the rare pelts, the gaudy birds on elaborate hair-dress, and know that the war was here; already the women had inherited the earth. The ominous smell of gunpowder was matched by a rising cloud of Schiaparelli's Shocking. The women were once more armed, and their happy voices sang of destruction to come. Off to the relief offices they rode in their beautiful new cars, off to knit, to sew, to take part in the charade, anything to help Lady Bertrand's cause; off they rode in the new car, the new mink, the new emerald bracelet, the new electrically treated complexion, presented by or extorted from the loving-hearted gentlemen who make both women and wars possible. Off to the front with a new permanent and enough specially blended night creams to last three months dashed the intrepid girl reporters. Unable to cope with competition on the home field, failing with the rhumbas and screen tests of peacetime, they quiver for the easy drama of the trenches; they can at least play lead in these amateur theatricals.

This was a time when the artists, the intellectuals, sat in cafés and in country homes and accused each other over their brandies or their California vintages of traitorous tendencies. This was a time for them to band together in mutual antagonism, a time to bury the professional hatchet, if possible in each other, a time to stare at their Flower Arrangements, Children Bathing, and privately to weep, "What good is it? Who cares now?" The poet, disgusted with the flight of skylarks in perfect sonnet form, declaimed the power of song against brutality and raised hollow voice in feeble proof. This was no time for beauty, for love, or private future; this was the time for ideals and quick profits on them before the world returned to reality and the drabber opportunities. What good for new sopranos to sing "Vici d'arte, vici d'amore," what good for eager young students to make their bows? There was no future; every one waited, marked time, waited. For what? On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street hundreds waited for a man on a hotel window ledge to jump; hundreds waited with craning necks and thirsty faces as if this single person's final gesture would solve the riddle of the world. Civilization stood on a ledge, and in the tension of waiting it was a relief to have one little man jump.

For more excerpts of Dawn Powell's work, explore her work.