Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

iced tea with rum in it.
    â€œMore and more,” said David, feeling again for a few moments that repose of pure sympathy and well-being he had with Jenny now and then—not long enough or often enough for any continuous illusion, but good when it happened—“more and more I am convinced it is a great mistake to do anything or make anything for the view of strangers.”
    â€œLet’s not ever,” said Jenny, in a glow still from their foolish escapade along the beach. “Let’s have a wonderful private life that begins in our bones, or our souls even maybe, and works out.”
    She hesitated and then spoke the word “soul” very tentatively, for it was one of David’s tabus, along with God, spirit, spiritual, virtue—especially that one!—and love. None of these words flowered particularly in Jenny’s daily speech, though now and then in some stray warmth of feeling she seemed to need one or the other; but David could not endure the sound of any of them, and she saw now the stiff, embarrassed, almost offended look which she had learned to expect if she spoke one of them. He could translate them into obscene terms and pronounce them with a sexual fervor of enjoyment; and Jenny, who blasphemed as harmlessly as a well-taught parrot, was in turn offended by what she prudishly described as “David’s dirty mind.” They were in fact at a dead end on this subject.
    After a dismal pause, David said carefully, “Yes, of course; always that precious private life which winds up in galleries and magazines and art books if we have any luck at all—should we go on trying to fool ourselves? Look, we live on handouts, don’t we? from one job to the next, so maybe we should look at all this monument stuff like this—every one of them meant a commission and a chance to work for some sculptor.”
    â€œBut what sculptors,” said Jenny intolerantly, “such godforsaken awful stuff. No, I’ll do all the chores I can get, but there is something you can’t sell, even if you want to, and I’m glad of it! I am going to paint for myself.”
    â€œI know, I know,” said David, “and hope that somebody else likes it too, likes it well enough to buy it and take it home to live with. There’s simply something wrong with our theory of a private life so far as work is concerned.”
    â€œYou are talking about public life,” said Jenny. “You’re talking about the thing on the wall, not when it’s still in your mind, aren’t you?—I want good simple people who don’t know a thing about art to like my work, to come for miles to look at it, the way the Indians do the murals in Mexico City.”
    â€œThat was a great piece of publicity all right,” said David, “you good simple girl. These good simple Indians were laughing their heads off and making gorgeously dirty remarks; then they went out in the Alameda and scrawled pubic hair on the copy of Canova’s Pauline Bonaparte—that elegant marble dream! Didn’t you ever notice any of this? Where were you?”
    â€œI was there,” said Jenny, without resentment. “I expect I was looking and listening for something else—I saw and heard a lot of other things, too. I don’t blame the Indians really. They have something better of their own, after all.”
    â€œBetter than what? Canova? All right. But better than Giotto let’s say or Leonardo? It’s not better than a lot of things, even things they’ve done themselves. It’s debased all to hell now—after all, they find their really good stuff in buried cities. But I do like it, too, and it’s plain they prefer it to anything else. But look, Jenny angel, what good does all this do us? We are on our own; let’s not go fake primitive, we couldn’t fool even ourselves …”
    â€œDavid, just because I don’t do any underdrawing is