Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online
Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (40 page)
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Cats were a not inconsiderable source of income to Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc. They were chloroformed, the blood drained, and embalming fluid and color mass injected in the venous and arterial systems. These finished cats were sold to schools for study of anatomy.
When an order came in for, say, twenty-five cats, there was only one way to get them, since the ASPCA will not allow the raising of cats for laboratory purposes. Ed would circulate the word among the small boys of the neighborhood that twenty-five cents apiece would be paid for cats. It saddened Ed a little to see how venially warped the cat-loving small boys of Monterey were. They sold their own cats, their aunts’ cats, their neighbors’ cats. For a few days there would be scurrying footsteps and soft thumps as cats in gunny sacks were secretly deposited in the basement. Then guileless and innocent-faced little catacides would collect their quarters and rush for Wing Chong’s grocery for pop and cap pistols. No matter what happened, Wing Chong made some small profit.
Once a lady who liked cats very much, if they were the better sort of cats, remarked to Ed, “Of course I realize that these things are necessary. I am very broad-minded. But, thank heaven, you do not get pedigreed cats.”
Ed reassured her by saying, “Madam, that’s about the only kind I do get. Alley cats are too quick and intelligent. I get the sluggish stupid cats of the rich and indulgent. You can look through the basement and see whether I have yours—yet.” That friendship based on broad-mindedness did not flourish.
If there were a complaint and a recognition Ed always gave the cat back. Once two small boys who had obviously read about the oldest cheat in the world worked it twice on Ed before he realized it. One of them sold the cat and collected, the other came in crying and got the cat back. They should have got another cat the third time. If they had been clever and patient they would have made a fortune, but even Ed recognized a bright yellow cat with a broken tail the third time he bought it.
Everyone, so Ed said, has at least one biologic theory, and some people develop many. Ed was very tolerant of these flights of theoretic fancy. A strange group flowed through the laboratory.
There were, for instance, the people who suddenly discovered parallels in nature, like the man who conceived the thought that tuna, which is called commercially “Chicken of the Sea,” might be related to chickens, because, as he said, “Their eyes look alike.” Ed’s reply to this man was that he rarely liked to make a positive statement, but in this case he was willing to venture the conviction that there was no very close relation between chickens and tunas.
One day there came into the laboratory a young Chinese, dressed in the double-breasted height of fashion, smelling of lily of the valley, and bringing a mysterious air with him. He was about twenty-three and his speech was that of an American high-school boy. He suggested darkly that he would like to see Ed alone. Ed happily joined the mystery and indicated that I was his associate and the sharer of his secrets. We found ourselves speaking in heavy, pregnant whispers.
Our visitor asked, “Have you got any cat blood?”
“No, not right now,” Ed replied. “It is true I do draw off the blood when I inject cats. What do you want it for?”
Our visitor said tightly, “I’m making an experiment.” Then, to prove that we could trust his judgment and experience, he flipped his lapel to show the badge of a detective correspondence school. And he drew out his diploma to back up the badge. We were delighted with him. But he would not explain what he needed the cat blood for. Ed promised that he would save some blood from the next series of cats. We all nodded mysteriously back and forth and our visitor left quietly, walking on his toes.
Mysteries were constant at the laboratory. A thing happened one night which I later used as a short story. I wrote it just as it happened. I don’t know what it means and do not even answer the letters asking what its philosophic intent is. It just happened. Very briefly, this is the incident. A woman came in one night wanting to buy a male rattlesnake. It happened that we had one and knew it was a male because it had recently copulated with another snake in the cage. The woman paid for the snake and then insisted that it be fed. She paid for a white rat to be given it. Ed put the rat in the cage. The snake struck and killed it and then unhinged its jaws preparatory to swallowing it. The frightening thing was that the woman, who had watched the process closely, moved her jaws and stretched her mouth just as the snake was doing. After the rat was swallowed, she paid for a year’s supply of rats and said she would come back. But she never did come back. What happened or why I have no idea. Whether the woman was driven by a sexual, a religious, a zoophilic, or a gustatory impulse we never could figure. When I wrote the story just as it happened there were curious reactions. One librarian wrote that it was not only a bad story but the worst story she had ever read. A number of orders came in for snakes. I was denounced by a religious group for having a perverted imagination, and one man found symbolism of Moses smiting the rock in the account.
I shall mention only a few other of the mysteries. There was the persecution with flowers, for example. Someone who must have been watching the laboratory waited until we were out on several occasions and then placed a line of white flowers across the doorstep. This happened a number of times and seems to have been meant as a hex. Such a curse is practiced by some northern Indians to bring death to anyone who steps over the flowers. But who put them there and whether that was the intention we never found out.
During the time when the Klan was spreading its sheets all over the nation the laboratory got its share of attention. Small red cards with the printed words, “We are watching you, K.K.K.,” were slipped under the door on several occasions.
Mysteries had a bad effect on Ed Ricketts. He hated all thoughts and manifestations of mysticism with an intensity which argued a basic and undefeatable belief in them. He refused to have his fortune told or his palm read even in fun. The play with a Ouija board drove him into a nervous rage. Ghost stories made him so angry that he would leave a room where one was being told.
In the course of time Ed’s father died. There was an intercom phone between the basement and the upstairs office. Once after his father’s death Ed admitted to me that he had a waking nightmare that the intercom phone would ring, that he would lift the receiver and hear his father’s voice on the other end. He had dreamed of this, and it was becoming an obsession with him. I suggested that someone might play a practical joke and that it might be a good idea to disconnect the phone. This he did instantly, but he went further and removed both phones. “It would be worse disconnected,” he said. “I couldn’t stand that.”
I think that if anyone had played such a joke, Ed would have been very ill from shock. The white flowers bothered him a great deal.
I have said that his mind had no horizons, but that is untrue. He forbade his mind to think of metaphysical or extra-physical matters, and his mind refused to obey him.
Life on Cannery Row was curious and dear and outrageous. Across the street from Pacific Biological was Monterey’s largest, most genteel and respected whorehouse. It was owned and operated by a very great woman who was beloved and trusted by all who came in contact with her except those few whose judgment was twisted by a limited virtue. She was a large-hearted woman and a law-abiding citizen in every way except one—she did violate the nebulous laws against prostitution. But since the police didn’t seem to care, she felt all right about it and even made little presents in various directions.
During the depression Madam paid the grocery bills for most of the destitute families on Cannery Row. When the Chamber of Commerce collected money for any cause and businessmen were assessed at ten dollars, Madam was always nicked for a hundred. The same was true for any mendicant charity. She halfway paid for the widows and orphans of policemen and firemen. She was expected to and did contribute ten times the ordinary amount toward any civic brainstorm of citizens who pretended she did not exist. Also, she was a wise and tolerant pushover for any hard-luck story. Everyone put the bee on her. Even when she knew it was a fake she dug down.
Ed Ricketts maintained relations of respect and friendliness with Madam. He did not patronize the house. His sex life was far too complicated for that. But Madam brought many of her problems to him, and he gave her the best of his thinking and his knowledge, both scientific and profane.
There seems to be a tendency toward hysteria among girls in such a house. I do not know whether hysterically inclined types enter the business or whether the business produces hysteria. But often Madam would send a girl over to the laboratory to talk to Ed. He would listen with great care and concern to her troubles, which were rarely complicated, and then he would talk soothingly to her and play some of his favorite music to her on his phonograph. The girl usually went back reinforced with his strength. He never moralized in any way. He would be more likely to examine the problem carefully, with calm and clarity, and to lift the horrors out of it by easy examination. Suddenly the girl would discover that she was not alone, that many other people had the same problems—in a word that her misery was not unique. And then she usually felt better about it.
There was a tacit but strong affection between Ed and Madam. She did not have a license to sell liquor to be taken out. Quite often Ed would run out of beer so late at night that everything except Madam’s house was closed. There followed a ritual which was thoroughly enjoyed by both parties. Ed would cross the street and ask Madam to sell him some beer. She invariably refused, explaining every time that she did not have a license. Ed would shrug his shoulders, apologize for asking, and go back to the lab. Ten minutes later there would be soft footsteps on the stairs and a little thump in front of the door and then running slippered steps down again. Ed would wait a decent interval and then go to the door. And on his doorstep, in a paper bag, would be six bottles of ice-cold beer. He would never mention it to Madam. That would have been breaking the rules of the game. But he repaid her with hours of his time when she needed his help. And his help was not inconsiderable.
Sometimes, as happens even in the soundest whorehouse, there would be a fight on a Saturday night—one of those things which are likely to occur when love and wine come together. It was only sensible that Madam would not want to bother the police or a doctor with her little problem. Then her good friend Ed would patch up cut faces and torn ears and split mouths. He was a good operator and there were never any complaints. And naturally no one ever mentioned the matter since he was not a doctor of medicine and had no license to practice anything except philanthropy. Madam and Ed had the greatest respect for each other. “She’s one hell of a woman,” he said. “I wish good people could be as good.”
Just as Madam was the target for every tired heist, so Ed was the fall guy for any illicit scheme that could be concocted by the hustling instincts of some of the inhabitants of Cannery Row. The people of the Row really loved Ed, but this affection did not forbid them from subjecting him to any outrageous scheming that occurred to them. In nearly all cases he knew the game before the play had even started and his hand would be in his pocket before the intricate gambit had come to a request. But he would cautiously wait out the pitch before he brought out the money. “It gives them so much pleasure to earn it,” he would say.
He never gave much. He never had much. But in spite of his wide experience in chicanery, now and then he would be startled into admiration by some particularly audacious or imaginative approach to the problem of a touch.
One evening while he was injecting small dogfish in the basement, one of his well-known clients came to him with a face of joy.
“I am a happy man,” the hustler proclaimed, and went on to explain how he had arrived at the true philosophy of rest and pleasure.
“You think I’ve got nothing, Eddie,” the man lectured him. “But you don’t know from my simple outsides what I’ve got inside.”
Ed moved restlessly, waiting for the trap.
“I’ve got peace of mind, Eddie. I’ve got a place to sleep, not a palace but comfortable. I’m not hungry very often. And best of all I’ve got friends. I guess I’m gladdest of all for my friends.”
Ed braced himself. Here it comes, he thought.
“Why, Ed,” the client continued, “some nights I just lay in my bed and thank God for my blessings. What does a man need, Eddie—a few things like food and shelter and a few little tiny vices, like liquor and women—and tobacco—”
Ed could feel it moving in on him. “No liquor,” he said.
“I ain’t drinking,” the client said with dignity, “didn’t you hear?”
“How much?” Ed asked.
“Only a dime, Eddie boy. I need a couple of sacks of tobacco. I don’t mind using the brown papers on the sacks. I like the brown papers.”
Ed gave him a quarter. He was delighted. “Where else in the world could you find a man who would lavish care and thought and art and emotion on a lousy dime?” he said. He felt that it had been worth more than a quarter, but he did not tell his client so.
On another occasion Ed was on his way across the street to Wing Chong’s grocery for a couple of quarts of beer. Another of his clients was sitting comfortably in the gutter in front of the store. He glanced casually at the empty quart bottles Ed carried in his hand.
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