Yarns Without Threads 

The proprietor of one boite de nuit offered Evangeline a job if she would play the guitar without any clothes on. She replied that it was impossible.

"But the guitar, he is quite decent," protested the purveyor of cultured pleasure. "Evidemment, you could not

play the violin, or the flute, but the guitar-!"

Evangeline regretted that even the offer of the big drum would be insufficient to make her change her mind.

"Have another drink," said Joyce, hurrying past with a tray of glasses.

Evangeline took it, but her head was already dizzy. ...

... such people-the artistic cosmopolitan coteries of Paris, for example-transfer their exhibitionism to another plane; the spiritual gives place to the physical, soul yields to body. In a word, they tend, when under the influence of drink, to undress themselves, a curious phenomenon which, at Pierre Fort's party, had already begun to happen.

Some of the guests, moved by the warmth of the night or foreseeing, perhaps, the nature of the party, had come in pyjamas. They now, men and women, began by discarding the jackets. Evangeline, remembering Pedro, was disinclined to follow their example. After all, it was Joyce's party, and Joyce could hardly be expected to approve. When next that hard-worked woman passed, however, it was plain that she had no such scruples, for her costume was now reduced to a skirt. None the less, she went about her hospitable task with a seriousness and an application in which Evangeline saw the inherited social instincts of many generations. She was simply, Evangeline decided, setting her guests at ease, or else, having embraced the artistic life, was determined to go through with it.

She heard a click of heels behind her and turned to see the young German, escaped from the Nihilist conversation of Vladimir, bowing jerkily and asking her to dance. Obediently, she held out her arms, and they moved off as best they could over the crowded floor. Dancing was difficult, for several of the guests were lying on the floor in the way of the traffic, and the German youth danced stiffly, accentuating the rhythm with jerky movements of his body, which Evangeline found somewhat exhausting.

When he halted opposite the buffet and offered her a drink, she was glad to stop dancing. ...

"What have you been doing," she said, "since we met at the Dome?"

The German frowned. "Wasting my time, like everybody else in this town."

"Don't you care for Paris?"

"In Paris," said the German solemnly, "I feel myself sodden with sex."

Evangeline glanced at him sharply. Was this young man trying to make love to her? If so, it was one of the stranger opening gambits.

"Sodden with sex?" she repeated.

"Yes! Paris seems to me to mean nothing else. The very air is tainted with patchouli; every glance is ambiguous, every smile a provocation. Clothes are designed solely to outline the figure, to tempt the eye, to set the imagination working. We should all be much better without any clothes at all."

In the middle of the studio two young women were dancing in their underclothes, one in a diaphanous chemise, the other in a pantalon of black lace, her adolescent torso marble-white under the harsh glare of the lamps.

"Your ideal seems to be almost realized here," she said.

"No!" replied the young German earnestly. "On the contrary, those two women are sex mad. You can see it for yourself."

"Still, they are not wearing many clothes."

"They are wearing too few or too many. Complete nudity is chaste, but a transparent dentelle is the very

opposite of nudity. Nudity an sich-"

But Evangeline, after the excitement of the day, felt too weary for a philosophic discussion.

"What's the solution?" she asked. "We can't go about without any clothes at all."

"Why not? There is no reason at all why we shouldn't. Have you ever heard of Himmelheim?"

"No. Where is it?"

"It's about a hundred miles north of Vienna. Among the pine woods, with lakes where one can bathe."

"And what happens there?"

"Freikorperkultur!''

"What on earth is that?"

"Freikorperkultur" said the young man, with the air of a pastor conducting a Sunday-school class, "means living a natural life, without alcohol, without tobacco, without meat, and without clothes. It promotes the health of the body, and even more surely the health of the soul."

Evangeline made a wry face. She had had a little too much soul-culture while living with Alexei. But perhaps the health of the soul meant that one ceased to notice it. She began to be interested in her German apostle.

"Isn't it very cold?" she began.

"We stifle here, do we not?"

"We do, indeed."

"In the woods of Himmelheim we shall not stifle.

The air there-"

"We shall not stifle? Are we going there together, then?"

If the young German had been serious before, he grew doubly so now.

"Why not?" he said. "I had already decided to leave this festering plague-spot, this neurosis factory of Paris- I don't know why I ever came here-and go back to Himmelheim. Why should you not come, too?"

He began to hum a dreamy tune. He was evidently somewhat sentimental, and Evangeline, after the hard glitter of Deauville and the squalor of Montparnasse, was ripe for a little sentimentality.

"All right," she said. "When do we go?"

With German efficiency a time-table was immediately produced from a waistcoat pocket.

"There is a train from the Gare de l'Est at eight o'clock to-morrow morning-no-this morning." He glanced at his watch, while Evangeline's eye searched for Alexei. His lips were pressed to Joyce's naked shoulder.

"It is nearly six o'clock now. What about your luggage?"

"One handbag. I could pick it up on the way. But I have no money."

"We will travel third class, and I have enough for both. Living at Himmelheim is very, very cheap."

"Good," said Evangeline, "and now will you please tell me your name?"

The doors at Himmelheim had neither locks nor bolts, and Evangeline, led by Heinz-for that was the young German's name-passed without hindrance into the largest of the huts. They crossed, a kind of hall and entered what was evidently the communal dining-room of the colony, for a girl was engaged in setting mugs and platters upon a large deal table. In spite of what Heinz had told her, Evangeline could hardly restrain a gesture of astonishment, for the girl, a well-made brunette of about eighteen, was completely naked.

She turned at the sound of their shoes on the wooden floor, and seeing Heinz, rushed towards him with a cry of welcome. The young man introduced Evangeline, and the girl shook hands with her warmly, without a trace of embarrassment.

"I will show you your room," she said, "as soon as I have finished setting the table. Then you'll be able to get rid of your travelling things and be comfortable."

It was a constant astonishment to Evangeline during her pilgrimage to note how completely the ordinary social formulas fitted circumstances for which they could never have been intended. The phrase of welcome she had just heard might have been used by any English hostess welcoming a guest to a house-party. "You will be able to get rid of your travelling things, and then you'll be comfortable." In spite of herself, Evangeline was not so sure.

She followed, however, obediently enough, while her guide led her up a steep wooden staircase, or rather ladder, to a small room on the first floor. It was furnished very simply with a bunk-like bed, a small cupboard in which unneeded-that is to say, all-clothes could be stored during the stay at the colony, a petrol lamp of an exceedingly modern form, and on a table a small pile of large books.

"You will be quite comfortable here," remarked the girl, and disappeared down the ladder. "If you want anything let me know."

"Danke," said Evangeline. But what could she want? Women in house parties frequently lend one another clothes. They can hardly lend one another nudity. That, at least, Nature had provided in ample measure. Evangeline laughed, and picked up one of the books from the table. It was Havelock Ellis's monumental work on modesty. She opened it and turned the pages idly. ...

For lighter reading there was Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, and a smaller work by Dr. Kirchwasser entitled Gesunde Nacktheit-"Healthy Nudity." Evangeline remembered that Professor Kirchwasser, Heinz had told her, was the resident chief of the colony. He evidently believed in the wedding of precept and practice.

Evangeline sat on the edge of her bunk and tried to think. Broadminded as she was, and convinced of the Tightness of the ideals of Himmelheim, she yet felt a curious reluctance at the prospect of undressing for dinner. How puny is an intellectual conviction confronted with an inherited instinct! For hundreds of years her female forebears had bared their shoulders and their throats before sitting down at table, but perhaps two thousand years had passed since they bared their breasts. Two thousand years are not to be retraced in a moment, and so Evangeline found. But at last she reflected on the unworthiness of her hesitations, and taking off her clothes, folded them and laid them neatly on the rough pine-wood shelf above her head. Then cautiously, as one enters a swimming pool, preoccupied with the problem of how not to knock one's ridiculously sensitive toes against rough surfaces and hard corners, Evangeline descended the steep staircase to the dining-room.

She was relieved to find it empty, or almost empty, for a white form lay curled up in the window seat. This form belonged to a girl who had been watching with interest the new-comer's hesitating descent. The legs, she thought -for these came into view some time before the rest of the body-seemed both strange and vaguely familiar. The body baffled her completely; she was certain that she had never seen it before, but when the face was at last visible she gave a glad cry of recognition.

"Evangeline!"

Evangeline, startled by this unexpected greeting, bumped her head sharply against the front edge of the hole through which the staircase descended, and came down the few remaining steps in a run.

"Bertha!" she ejaculated.

It was indeed her old friend of the pension, still with the same round, sleepy face and the same friendly smile.

"Whoever would have thought-" exclaimed both together. They kissed with genuine affection.

The presence of Bertha was certainly a great comfort. Somehow it made all the difference to Evangeline's feelings about her own nakedness. And Bertha would be able to help her over the first awkward moments; would be able to explain the running of the colony, and what one was expected to do.

"Have you come straight from England?" asked the German girl.

"No! not exactly. I have been staying at Deauville with-er-friends, and in Paris too. But I got tired of that sort of life and came on here with Heinz. He promised to show me Himmelheim. He's such a nice boy-but I forgot. You know him?"

"He's my cousin," explained Bertha. "He told me about this place too."

"Did you come alone, then?"

"No! I came with my aunt. She's enthusiastic about Nacktkultur. But she caught cold and went home again."

Evangeline could only murmur: "But you wanted to come?"

"Well, not very much at first. But I'm very glad I did. I'm not at such a disadvantage here as I was at the pension-"

"I don't understand.

"You see," said Bertha, humbly, "I discovered long ago that I was not very attractive. Nearly every woman has something-legs, ankles, shoulders, throat-with which to attract men, and all fashions are designed to make the most of one or other of these features. I had nothing, and so I always wore those long frocks you used to think so dowdy; but even they could not hide my thick ankles. I used to feel men looking at them in the streets or in railway trains. The fact that they could see nothing else only concentrated attention on what I was most anxious to hide. I used to cry at night trying to think of a solution of my problem."

Evangeline patted Bertha's naked shoulders with a reassuring gesture, but the German girl laughed merrily.

"I have solved it," she cried. "No one looks at my ankles now."

As she spoke a group of young men entered. They joked with Bertha and shook hands solemnly with the new arrival. Their complete self-possession put Evangeline at her ease, and she was soon chattering to them in her schoolgirl German.

After all, it was pleasant to be free at last from the usual feminine preoccupation with whether one was dowdy or not. It was nice to be sure that one was looking one's best.

When Evangeline awoke, a pale light came through the open window and silvered the rough hairiness of her blanket coverlet. It seemed faintly green, the light, as though filtered through innumerable leaves. The air was sharp, so that she drew the bed-clothes round her chin and then, turning away from the window, slept again. But the untroubled sleep of the night was not to be recaptured. She plunged no more into the depths but floundered in the shallows, ever and anon emerging into semi-consciousness. The pale green light penetrated to her beneath the surface, and she turned, and twisted, and almost awoke. The elusive sensations of the last few days crowded into her dreaming mind, incoherent and vaguely disquieting. She felt that her body had become huge and swollen, naked and dappled with red. She walked lumbering, her head bent forward, heavy with horns. She was a cow, among a herd of cows, and the hairy arm of Dr. Kirch-wasser brandished a stick behind her to make her take the road he wanted. In his other hand he carried a horn from which, putting it to his lips, he blew a sustained and melancholy note: "Hoo-oo-oool" And again, in a different key: "Hoo-oo-ooo!"

Evangeline was awake, but the strange horn still continued; only now its message seemed more insistent, indignant even. "Hoo-oo-oo-ooh!" She went to the window and looked out. On the level grass, in front of the hut, stood the athletic figure, naked in the early sunlight, of a tall young man with a long cow-horn to his lips. He was blowing the camp's reveille.

While Evangeline hesitated, Bertha came running, soft-footed, up the stairs.

"Come on," she cried. "We must bathe before Frühstuck."

Evangeline followed. The grass outside the hut was still wet with dew, cold to the feet and strangely exhilarating. From every hut, white figures came running, shouting guttural greeting, hurrying to the bathing pool for the morning dip. Evangeline's breath grew shorter. She was sadly out of practice; but she was determined not to be left behind; and just as she felt she must give up or faint, her second wind filled her lungs. Naked bodies jostled her as she ran, and the whole party of thirty or forty men and women rushed forward like one huge monster, bursting a path through the forest, until, reaching a sudden declivity, it plunged headlong down it, and Evangeline found herself up to the breasts in water, the monster splashing round her,,with a hundred hands. It was thrilling! It was glorious!

The pool was icy, but the run had warmed the blood so that she hardly felt it. Heinz's face suddenly appeared before her in the tumult. "Guten Morgen" he shouted.

Then, far away, the cow-horn called again. The well-disciplined monster emerged, shaking its limbs, and its hundred feet were already pounding along the fallen pine needles of the track before the turmoil of the water had subsided, before the last bubble on its surface had burst. Evangeline was dry long before she reached home, but a rub with a coarse bath-towel clothed her as in a fur coat of purring warmth as she sat down at the rough table in the hut and reached eagerly for the steaming coffee and the brown rolls.

When breakfast was over the whole colony was drawn up in military formation on the large grass square in front of the huts. A voice, sonorous if slightly metallic, seemed to come from nowhere.

"Stillstand!"

The squad sprang to attention.

"Heels raise."

"Knees bend."

The Professor, with the thoroughness of his race, had had a record made by the leading physical-training expert in Berlin and was now broadcasting the same to his disciples from the privacy of his hut.

"He has a periscope, too," whispered Bertha proudly. "He can see everything that is going on."

"Wouldn't it be easier for him to come out and see?"

Bertha was genuinely shocked at so reactionary a remark, but the voice of the invisible mentor cut short her reply by the curt order:

"Head backwards bend."

Evangeline did not appreciate physical training much. It was altogether too mechanical-not to say Prussianized -for her taste, but she liked the games that followed: follow the leader, leap-frog, relay-racing. Some of the hardier spirits or tougher skins attempted tree-climbing, but the roughness of the bark against the body was sufficient to deter any but the most fanatical new recruit.

In the afternoon there was a picnic followed by another bathe, and in the evening a concert with guitars and concertinas and the choral singing in which young Germans excel. Evangeline was quite ashamed of her lack of talent. Should she, she wondered, offer to recite. In her childhood she had done a lot of reciting, but had always been very nervous about it and had annoyed her nurse by crumpling her pinafore into knots while saying her piece. Instinctively she felt now for the reassuring pinafore, and was quite put out when she remembered that she hadn't any. No! reciting was obviously out of the question. She was quite content to listen to the others.

So the days passed, so quickly that Evangeline lost count of them, aware only of a growing physical well-being, the placid contentment of a healthy open-air life. Her first sensation emerging naked from the shelter of the hut into the undergrown woods of Himmelheim had been a consciousness of the prickliness of the world. She picked her way delicately over pine-needles, she avoided stones, she sought for the mossy edges of paths, and, unable to keep her foothold on them, bruised her ankles and cut the delicate soles of her feet. When her companions flung themselves down carelessly on the ground, she lowered herself gently, in fear of spiky grasses and sharp pebbles. But the inconveniences of the natural life soon passed.

In a week she could run easily through the glades of the forest; in a fortnight she stretched her lithe body at full length among the bracken, heedless of the brittle stalks. Her skin grew tougher and more elastic, and gradually changed its colour; the white phantom became a brown gazelle. The flesh grew firmer, the joints more supple, the separate parts of her body took on a life of their own. She was conscious of her own legs running, like the movement of a horse beneath her; her hair sang as she bounded forward. When she stopped for a moment to listen she had the strange fancy that her two breasts were listening too; they seemed to hold their breath, while beneath them the heart pounded, and the blood coursed intoxicatingly through her veins. The sensation of touch, which in ordinary life is narrowed to the tips of the fingers, spread over her whole body. Her thighs stirred, the belly rose from its long sleep in darkness, the hidden flanks awoke.