The Road to Los Angeles (6 page)

They wouldn't give me a ride. He killed crabs, that fellow up there ahead. Why give him a ride? He loves paper ladies in clothes closets. Think of it! So don't give him a ride, that Frankenstein, that toad in the road, that black spider, snake, dog, rat, fool, monster, idiot. They wouldn't give me a ride; all right — so what! And see if I care! To hell with all of you! It suits me fine. I love to walk on these God-given legs, and by God I'll walk. Like Nietzsche. Like Kant. Immanuel Kant. What do you know about Immanuel Kant? You fools in your V-8s and Chevrolets!

When I got to the plant I stood among the others. They moved about in a thick clot before a green platform. The tight faces, the cold faces. Then a man came out. No work today, fellows. And yet there was a job or two, if you could paint, if you knew about transmissions, if you had experience, if you had worked in the Detroit plant.

But there was no work for Arturo Bandini. I saw it at a glance, and so I wouldn't let them refuse me. I was amused. This spectacle, this scene of men before a platform amused me. I'm here for a special reason, sir: a confidential mission, if I may say so, merely checking conditions for my report. The president of the United States of America sent me. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he sent me. Frank and I — we're like that! Let me know the state of things on the Pacific Coast, Arturo; send me firsthand facts and figures; let me know in your own words what the masses are thinking out there.

And so I was a spectator. Life is a stage. Here is drama, Franklin old Kid, old Pal, old Sock; here is stark drama in the hearts of men. I'll notify the White House immediately.

A telegram in code for Franklin. Frank: unrest on the Pacific Coast. Advise send twenty thousand men and guns, population in terror. Perilous situation. Ford plant in ruins. Shall take charge personally. My word is law here. Your old buddy, Arturo.

There was an old man leaning against the wall. His nose was running clear to the tip of his chin, but he was blissful and didn't know it. It amused me. Very amusing, this old man. I'll have to make a note of this for Franklin; he loves anecdotes. Dear Frank: you'd have died if you'd have seen this old man! How Franklin will love this, chuckling as he repeats it to members of his cabinet. Say boys, did you hear the latest from my pal Arturo out on the Pacific Coast? I strolled up and down, a student of mankind, a philosopher, past the old man with the riotous nose. The philosopher out of the West contemplates the human scene.

The old man smiled his way and I smiled mine. I looked at him and he looked at me. Smile. Evidently he didn't know who I was. No doubt he confused me with the rest of the herd. Very amusing this, great sport to travel incognito. Two philosophers smiling wistfully at one another over the fate of man. He was genuinely amused, his old nose running, his blue eyes twinkling with quiet laughter. He wore blue overalls that covered him completely. Around his waist was a belt that had no purpose whatever, a useless appendage, merely a belt supporting nothing, not even his belly, for he was thin. Possibly a whim of his, something to make him laugh when he dressed in the morning.

His face beamed with a larger smile, inviting me to come forward and deliver an opinion if I liked; we were kindred souls, he and I, and no doubt he saw through my disguise and recognized a person of depth and importance, one who stood out from the herd.

"Not much today," I said. "The situation, as I see it, grows more acute daily."

He shook his head with delight, his old nose running blissfully, a Plato with a cold. A very old man, maybe eighty, with false teeth, skin like old shoes, a meaningless belt and a philosophic smile. The dark mass of men moved around us.

"Sheep!" I said. "Alas, they are sheep! Victims of Comstockery and the American system, bastard slaves of the Robber Barons. Slaves, I tell you! I wouldn't take a job at this plant if it was offered me on a golden platter! Work for this system and lose your soul. No thanks. And what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

He nodded, smiled, agreed, nodded for more. I warmed up. My favorite subject. Labor conditions in the machine age, a topic for a future work.

"Sheep, I tell you! A lot of gutless sheep!" His eyes brightened. He brought out a pipe and lit it. The pipe stunk. When he took it from his mouth the goo from his nose strung after it. He wiped it off with his thumb and wiped his thumb against his leg. He didn't bother to wipe his nose. No time for that when Bandini speaks.

"It amuses me," I said. "The spectacle is priceless. Sheep getting their souls sheared. A Rabelaisian spectacle. I have to laugh." And I laughed until there wasn't anymore. He did too, slapping his thighs and shrieking to a high note until his eyes were filled with tears. Here was a man after my own heart, a man of universal humors, no doubt a well-read man despite his overalls and useless belt. From his pocket he took a pad and pencil and wrote on the pad. Now I knew: he was a writer too, of course! The secret was out. He finished writing and handed me the note.

It read: Please write it down. I am stone deaf.

No, there was no work for Arturo Bandini. I left feeling better, glad of it. I walked back wishing I had an aeroplane, a million dollars, wishing the seashells were diamonds. I will go to the park. I am not yet a sheep. Read Nietzsche. Be a superman. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Oh that Nietzsche! Don't be a sheep, Bandini. Preserve the sanctity of your mind. Go to the park and read the master under the eucalyptus trees.

Chapter Seven

ONE MORNING I awoke with an idea. A fine idea, big as a house. My greatest idea ever, a masterpiece. I would find a job as a night clerk in a hotel — that was the idea. This would give me a chance to read and work at the same time. I leaped out of bed, swallowed breakfast and took the stairs six at a time. On the sidewalk I stood a moment and mulled over my idea. The sun scorched the street, burning my eyes to wakefulness. Strange. Now I was wide awake and the idea didn't seem so good, one of those which comes in half-sleep. A dream, a mere dream, a triviality. I couldn't get a job as a night clerk in this harbor town for the simple reason that no hotel in this harbor town used night clerks. A mathematical deduction — simple enough. I went back up the stairs to the apartment and sat down.

"Why did you run like that?" my mother asked.

"To get exercise. For my legs."

The days came with fog. The nights were nights and nothing else. The days didn't change from one to the other, the golden sun blasting away and then dying out. I was always alone. It was hard to remember such monotony. The days would not move. They stood like grey stones. Time passed slowly. Two months crawled by.

It was always the park. I read a hundred books. There was Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Kant and Spengler and Strachey and others. Oh Spengler! What a book! What weight! Like the Los Angeles Telephone Directory. Day after day I read it, never understanding it, never caring either, but reading it because I liked one growling word after another marching across pages with somber mysterious rumblings. And Schopenhauer! What a writer! For days I read him and read him, remembering a bit here and a bit there. And such things about women! I agreed. Exactly my own feelings on the matter. Ah man, what a writer!

Once I was reading in the park. I lay on the lawn. There were little black ants among the blades of grass. They looked at me, crawling over the pages, some wondering what I was doing, others not interested and passing by. They crawled up my leg, baffled in a jungle of brown hairs, and I lifted my trousers and killed them with my thumb. They did their best to escape, diving frantically in and out of the brambles, sometimes pausing as if to trick me by their immobility, but never, for all their trickery, did they escape the menace of my thumb. What stupid ants! Bourgeois ants! That they should try to dupe one whose mind lived on the meat of Spengler and Schopenhauer and the great ones! It was their doom - the Decline of Ant Civilization. And so I read and killed ants.

It was a book called Jews Without Money. What a book that was! What a mother in that book! I looked from the woman on the pages and there before me on the lawn in crazy old shoes was a woman with a basket in her arms.

She was a hunchback with a sweet smile. She smiled sweetly at anything; she couldn't help it; the trees, me, the grass, anything. The basket pulled her down, dragging her toward the ground. She was such a tiny woman, with a hurt face, as if slapped forever. She wore a funny old hat, an absurd hat, a maddening hat, a hat to make me cry, a hat with faded red berries on the brim. And there she was, smiling at everything, struggling across the carpet with a heavy basket containing Lord knew what, wearing a plumed hat with red berries.

I got up. It was so mysterious. There I was, like magic, standing up, my two feet on the ground, my eyes drenched.

I said, "Let me help."

She smiled again and gave me the basket. We began to walk. She led the way. Beyond the trees it was stifling. And she smiled. It was so sweet it nearly tore my head off. She talked, she told me things I never remembered. It didn't matter. In a dream she held me, in a dream I followed under the blinding sun. For blocks we went forward. I hoped it would never end. Always she talked in a low voice made of human music. What words! What she said! I remembered nothing. I was only happy. But in my heart I was dying. It should have been so. We stepped from so many curbs, I wondered why she did not sit upon one and hold my head while I drifted away. It was the chance that never came again.

That old woman with the bent back! Old woman, I feel so joyfully your pain. Ask me a favor, you old woman you! Anything. To die is easy. Make it that. To cry is easy, lift your skirt and let me cry and let my tears wash your feet to let you know I know what life has been for you, because my back is bent too, but my heart is whole, my tears are delicious, my love is yours, to give you joy where God has failed. To die is so easy and you may have my life if you wish it, you old woman, you hurt me so, you did, I will do anything for you, to die for you, the blood of my eighteen years flowing in the gutters of Wilmington and down to the sea for you, for you that you might find such joy as is now mine and stand erect without the horror of that twist.

I left the old woman at her door.

The trees shimmered. The clouds laughed. The blue sky took me up. Where am I? Is this Wilmington, California? Haven't I been here before? A melody moved my feet. The air soared with Arturo in it, puffing him in and out and making him something and nothing. My heart laughed and laughed. Goodbye to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and all of you, you fools, I am much greater than all of you! Through my veins ran music of blood. Would it last? It could not last. I must hurry. But where? And I ran toward home. Now I am home. I left the book in the park. To hell with it. No more books for me. I kissed my mother. I clung to her passionately. On my knees I fell at her feet to kiss her feet and cling to her ankles until it must have hurt her and amazed her that it was I.

"Forgive me," I said. "Forgive me, forgive me."

"You?" she said. "Certainly. But why?"

Ach! What a foolish woman! How did I know why? Ach! What a mother. The strangeness was gone. I got to my feet. I felt like a fool. I blushed in a bath of cold blood. What was this? I didn't know. The chair. I found it at the end of the room and sat down. My hands. They were in the way; stupid hands! Damned hands! I did something with them, got them out of the way somewhere. My breath. It hissed for horror and fear of something. My heart. It no longer tore at my chest, but dwindled, crawling deep into the darkness within me. My mother. She watched me in a panic, afraid to speak, thinking me mad.

"What is it? Arturo! What's the matter?"

"None of your business."

"Shall I get a doctor?"

"Never."

"You act so strange. Are you hurt?"

"Don't talk to me. I'm thinking."

"But what is it?"

"You wouldn't know. You're a woman."

Chapter Eight

THE DAYS WENT on. A week passed. Miss Hopkins was in the library every afternoon, floating on white legs in the folds of her loose dresses in an atmosphere of books and cool thoughts. I watched. I was like a hawk. Nothing she did escaped me.

Then came a great day. What a day that was!

I was watching her from the shadows of the dark shelves. She held a book, standing behind her desk like a soldier, shoulders back, reading the book, her face so serious and so soft, her grey eyes following the beaten path of line under line. My eyes - they were so eager and so hungry they startled her. With a suddenness she looked up and her face was white with the shock of something dreadful near her. I saw her wet her lips, and then I turned away. In a while I looked again. It was like magic. Again she twitched, glanced around uneasily, put her long fingers to her throat, sighed, and commenced to read. A few moments, and once more I looked. She still held that book. But what was that book? I didn't know, but I must have it for my eyes to follow the path her eyes had followed before me.

Outside it was the evening, the sun spangling the floor in gold. With white legs as silent as ghosts she crossed the library to the windows and raised the shades. In her right hand swung that book, brushing against her dress as she walked, in her very hands, the immortal white hands of Miss Hopkins, pressed against the warm white softness of her clinging fingers.

What a book! I've got to have that book! Lord, I wanted it, to hold it, to kiss it, to crush it to my chest, that book fresh from her fingers, the very imprint of her warm fingers still upon it perhaps. Who knows? Perhaps she perspires through her fingers as she reads it. Wonderful! Then her imprint is surely upon it. I must have it. I will wait forever for it. And so I waited until seven o'clock, seeing how she held the book, the exact position of her wonderful fingers that were so slim and white, just off the back binding, no more than an inch from the bottom, the perfume of her perhaps entering those very pages and perfuming them for me.

Until at last she was finished with it. She carried it to the shelves and slipped it into a slot marked biography. I ambled by, seeking a book to read, something to stimulate my mind, something in the line of biography today, the life of some great figure, to inspire me, to make my life sublime.