Ask The Dust (10 page)

'Not for ten million,' he said.

I walked back to the shadows and watched him deliver the telegram. She was amazed to get it. I saw her finger point at herself, her face dubious. Even after she signed for it she stood holding it in her hand, watching the telegraph boy disappear. As she tore it open I locked my eyes shut. When I opened them she was reading the telegram and laughing. She walked to the bar and handed the wire to the sallow-faced bartender, the one we had driven home the night before. He read it without expression. Then he handed it to the other bartender.

He, too, was unimpressed. I felt a deep gratitude for them. When Camilla read it again, I was grateful for that, too, but when she took it to a table where a group of men sat drinking my mouth opened slowly and I was sick. The laughter of the men floated across the street. I shuddered and walked away quickly.

At Sixth I turned the corner and walked down to Main.

I wandered through the crowds of seedy, hungry derelicts without destination. At Second I stopped before a Filipino taxi-dancehall. The literature on the walls spoke eloquently of forty beautiful girls and the dreamy music of Lonny Killula and his Melodic Hawaiians. I climbed one flight of echoing stairs to a booth and bought a ticket. Inside were the forty women, lined against the opposite wall, sleek in tight evening dresses, most of them blondes. Nobody was dancing, not a soul. On the platform the five-piece orchestra banged out a tune with fury. A few customers like myself stood behind a short wicker fence, opposite the girls. They beckoned to us.

I surveyed the group, found a blonde whose gown I liked, and bought a few dance tickets. Then I waved at the blonde.

She fell into my arms like an old lover and we beat the oak for two dances.

She talked soothingly and called me honey, but I thought only of that girl two streets away, of myself lying with her in the sand and making a fool of myself. It was useless. I gave the cloying blonde my handful of tickets and walked out of the hall and into the streets again. I could feel myself waiting, and when I kept looking at street clocks I knew what was wrong with myself. I was waiting for eleven o'clock when the Columbia closed.

I was there at a quarter to eleven. I was there in the parking lot, walking towards her car. I sat on the burst upholstery and waited. Off in one corner of the parking lot was a shed where the attendant kept his accounts. Over the shed was a neon clock in red. I kept my eye on the clock, watched the minute hand rush towards eleven. Then I was afraid to see her again and as I squirmed and writhed in the seat my hand touched something soft. It was a cap of hers, a tam-o-shanter, it was black with a tiny fluffy knob on the crown. I felt it with my fingers and smelled it with my nose. Its powder was like herself. It was what I wanted. I stuffed it into my pocket and walked out of the parking lot. Then I climbed the stairs of Angel's Flight to my hotel. When I got to my room I took it out and threw it on the bed. I undressed, turned out the light, and held her hat in my arms.

Another day, poetry! Write her a poem, spill your heart to her in sweet cadences; but I didn't know how to write poetry. It was love and dove with me, bad rhymes, blundering sentiment. Oh Christ in Heaven, I'm no writer: I can't even put down a little quatrain, I'm no good in this world. I stood at the window and waved my hands at the sky; no good at all, just a cheap fake; neither writer nor lover; neither fish nor fowl.

Then what was the matter?

I had breakfast and went to a little Catholic Church at the edge of Bunker Hill.

The rectory was in back of the frame church. I rang the bell and a woman in a nurse's apron answered. Her hands were covered with flour and dough. 'I want to see the pastor,' I said.

The woman had a square jaw and a hostile pair of sharp grey eyes. 'Father Abbot is busy,' she said. 'What do you want?'

'I have to see him,' I said. 'I tell you he's busy.'

The priest came to the door. He was stocky, powerful, smoking a cigar, a man in his fifties. 'What is it?' he asked. I told him I wanted to see him alone. I had some trouble on my mind. The woman sniffed contemptuously and disappeared through a hall. The priest opened the door and led me to his study. It was a small room crammed with books and magazines. My eyes bulged. There in one corner was a huge stack of Hackmuth's magazine. I walked to it at once, and pulled out the issue containing
The Little Dog Laughed.
The priest had seated himself. 'This is a great magazine,' I said. 'The greatest of them all.' The priest crossed his legs, shifted his cigar. 'It's rotten,' he said. 'Rotten to the core.' 'I disagree,' I said. 'I happen to be one of its leading contributors.'

'You?' the priest asked. 'And what did you contribute?' I spread
The Little Dog
Laughed
before him on the desk. He glanced at it, pushed it aside. 'I read that story,' he said. 'It's a piece of hogwash. And your reference to the Blessed Sacrament was a vile and contemptible lie. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

84

JOHN FANTE

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Leaning back in his chair, he made it very plain that he didn't like me, his angry eyes centred on my forehead, his cigar rolling from one side of his mouth to the other.

'Now,' he said. 'What is it you wish to see me about?'

I didn't sit down. He made it very clear in his own way that I wasn't to use any of the furniture in the room. 'It's about a girl,' I said.

'What have you done to her?' he said.

'Nothing,' I said. But I could speak no more. He had plucked out my heart.

Hogwash! All those nuances, that superb dialogue, that brilliant lyricism - and he had called it hogwash. Better to close my ears and go away to some far off place where no words were spoken. Hogwash!

'I changed my mind,' I said. 'I don't want to talk about it now.'

He stood up and walked towards the door.

'Very well,' he said. 'Good day.'

I walked out, the hot sun blinding me. The finest short story in American Literature, and this person, this priest, had called it hogwash. Maybe that business about the Blessed Sacrament
wasn't
exactly true; maybe it didn't really happen. But my God, what psychological values! What prose! What sheer beauty!

As soon as I got to my room I sat down before my typewriter and planned my revenge. An article, a scathing attack upon the stupidity of the Church. I pecked out the title:
The Catholic Church Is Doomed.
I hammered it out furiously, one page after another, until there were six. Then I paused to read it. The stuff was awful, ludicrous. I tore it up and threw myself on the bed. I still hadn't written a poem to Camilla. As I lay there, inspiration came. I wrote it out from memory:
86

JOHN
FANTE

I have forgot much, Camilla! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put the pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick with an old passion, yes, all the time, because the dance was long; I have been faithful to thee, Camilla, in my fashion.

Arturo Bandini

I sent it by telegraph, proud of it, watched the telegraph clerk read it, beautiful poem, my poem to Camilla, a bit of immortality from Arturo to Camilla, and I paid the telegraph man and walked down to my place in the dark doorway, and there I waited. The same boy floated by on his bicycle. I watched him deliver it, watched Camilla read it in the middle of the floor, watched her shrug and rip it to pieces, saw the pieces floating to the sawdust on the floor. I shook my head and walked away. Even the poetry of Ernest Dowson had no effect upon her, not even Dowson.

Ah well, the hell with you Camilla. I can forget you. I have money. These streets are full of things you cannot give me. So down to Main Street and to Fifth Street, to the long dark bars, to the King Edward Cellar, and there a girl with yellow hair and sickness in her smile. Her name was Jean, she was thin and tubercular, but she was hard too, so anxious to get my money, her languid mouth for my lips, her long fingers at my trousers, her sickly lovely eyes watching every dollar bill.

'So your name is Jean,' I said. 'Well, well, well, a pretty name.' We'll dance, Jean. We'll swing around, and you don't know it, you beauty in a blue gown, but you're dancing with a freak, an outcast from the world of man, neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. And we drank and we danced and we
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drank again. Good fellow Bandini, so Jean called the boss. 'This is Mr Bandini.

This is Mr Schwartz.' Very good, shake hands. 'Nice place you got, Schwartz, nice girls.'

One drink, two drinks, three drinks. What's that you're drinking, Jean? I tasted it, that brownish stuff, looked like whiskey, must have been whiskey, such a face she made, her sweet face so contorted. But it wasn't whiskey, -it was tea, plain tea, forty cents' a slug. Jean, a little liar, trying to fool a great author. Don't fool me, Jean. Not Bandini, lover of man and beast alike. So take this, five dollars, put it away, don't drink, Jean, just sit here, only sit and let my eyes search your face because your hair is blonde and not dark, you are not like her, you are sick and you are from down there in Texas and you have a crippled mother to support, and you don't make very much money, only twenty cents a drink, you've only made ten dollars from Arturo Bandini tonight, you poor little girl, poor little starving girl with the sweet eyes of a baby and the soul of a thief. Go to your sailor boys, honey. They don't have the ten dollars but they've got what I haven't got, me, Bandini, neither fish, fowl nor good red herring, goodnight, Jean, goodnight.

And here was another place and another girl. Oh, how lonely she was, from away back in Minnesota. A good family too. Sure, honey. Tell my tired ears about your good family. They owned a lot of property, and then the depression came. Well, how sad, how tragic. And now you work down here in a Fifth Street dive, and your name is Evelyn, poor Evelyn, and the folks are out here too, and you have the cutest sister, not like the tramps you meet down here, a swell girl, and you ask me if I want to meet your sister. Why not? She got her sister.

Innocent little Evelyn went across the room and dragged poor little sister Vivian away from those lousy

JOHN FANTE

sailors and brought her to our table. Hello Vivian, this is Arturo. Hello Arturo, this is Vivian. But what happened to your mouth, Vivian, who dug it out with a knife?

And what happened to your bloodshot eyes, and your sweet breath smelling like a sewer, poor kids, all the way from glorious Minnesota. Oh no, they're not Swedish, where did I get that idea? Their last name was Mortensen, but it wasn't Swedish, why their family had been Americans for generations. To be sure. Just a couple.of home-girls.;

Do you know something? - Evelyn talking — Poor little Vivian had worked down here for almost six months and not once had any of these bastards ever ordered her a bottle of champagne, and I there, Bandini, I looked like such a swell guy, and wasn't Vivian cute, and wasn't it a shame, she so innocent, and would I buy her a bottle of champagne? Dear little Vivian, all the way from the clean fields of Minnesota, and not a Swede either, and almost a virgin too, just a few men short of being a virgin. Who could resist this tribute? So bring on the champagne, cheap champagne, just a pint size, we can all drink it, only eight dollars a bottle, and gee wasn't wine cheap out here? Why back in Duluth the champagne was twelve bucks a bottle.

Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.

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But this was expensive. Take it easy, Arturo; have you forgotten those oranges?

I counted what was left. It was twenty dollars and some cents. I was scared. I racked my brains over figures, added everything I had spent. Twenty dollars left

- impossible! I had been robbed, I had misplaced the money, there was a mistake somewhere. I looked over the room, burrowed into pockets and drawers, but that was all, and I was scared and worried and determined to go to work, write another one quick, something written so fast it had to be good. I sat before my typewriter and the great awful void descended, and I beat my head with my fists, put a pillow under my aching buttocks and made little noises of agony. It was useless. I had to see her, and I didn't care how I did it.

I waited for her in the parking lot. At eleven she came around the corner, and Sammy the bartender was with her. They both saw me from the distance and she lowered her voice, and when she got to the car Sammy said, 'Hi there,' but she said, 'What do you want?'

'I want to see you,' I said.

'I can't see you tonight,' she said.

'Make it later on tonight.'

'I can't. I'm busy.'

'You're not that busy. You can see me.'

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She opened the car door for me to get out, but I did not move, and she said,

'Please get out.'

'Nothing doing,' I said.

Sammy smiled. Her face flared.

'Get out, goddamnit!'

'I'm staying,' I said.

'Come on, Camilla,' Sammy said.

She tried to pull me out of the car, seized my sweater and jerked and tugged.

'Why do you act like this?' she said. 'Why can't you see I don't want to have anything to do with you?'

'I'm staying,' I said.

'You fool!' she said.

Sammy had walked towards the street. She caught up with him and they walked away, and I was there alone, horrified, and smiling weakly at what I had done.

As soon as they were out of sight I got out and walked up the stairs of the Flight and down to my room. I couldn't understand why I had done that. I sat on the bed and tried to push the episode out of my mind.