DN23

Irene's "Last Tribute"

December 10, 1940, Tuesday evening

I came in this evening very weary. Sat before the fire and a laborious sleep fell upon me. Had that twisting sort of headache. It is possible that that headache first came to me as a fight between two dominant desires -- one to let down and one to take hold of myself. It might explain some of the terrible headaches in which it seemed as if one part of my mind was being pulled one way and the other part another. These headaches first came when I was frightened into keeping my body tense, and the doctor started giving me opiates. 

I awoke after a while -- still a headache, and then suddenly it ceased. Prepared dinner, ate, fed Caliban, waxed my floor because I saw marks where one of the boys worked this evening. Read the paper before the fire. Thinking . . . . Listening to the slow unfolding of the New Orleans Civic Symphony and for some reason started thinking of Irene -- Maybe because Cherrie asked me who it was that had painted the picture. He thought Lawrence Jones had painted it.

I began thinking where had she got the model from. The chair makes me doubt that it was she, but I remembered that glass she had. An unframed long, tall glass. I became suddenly struck with the idea that she had been unusually persistent in wanting me to take the picture. She said that she had a special reason for wanting me to have it -- I believe -- but never said why. Insisted upon my taking it one night, helped me to wrap it up.

The body has always seemed vaguely familiar to me. Struck with the idea, I went and took down the looking glass on the vanity, placed it at an angle, my foot, huge and gigantic hit in the middle of the bottom line of the picture. My knee seemed muscular and prominent, my body seemed far removed from the picture. My knee hit almost in the same position of my waist that the picture seemed.

I have little doubt now that it was a self-portrait and she used the unframed mirror to put her body, dark, upon paper, that some part of her might dwell in this house forever. When I looked and compared the body with certain parts of her body, the hips, the large legs, the belly, arms, and fingers, a feeling came over me, and I dropped my head. "Last Tribute," I whispered, as I dropped my head before it.

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