Joe stopped looking at them and watched a rusty tramp come in. She had a heavy list to port and you could see the hull below the waterline green and slimy with weed. There was a blue and white Greek flag on the stern and a dingy yellow quarantine flag halfway up the fore.
A man who had come up behind him said something to Joe in Spanish. He was a smiling ruddy man in blue denims and was smoking a cigar, but for some reason he made Joe feel panicky. “No savvy,” Joe said and walked away and out between the warehouses into the streets back of the waterfront.
He had trouble finding Maria’s place, all the blocks looked so much alike. It was by the mechanical violin in the window that he recognized it. Once he got inside the stuffy anise-smelling dump he stood a long time at the bar with one hand round a sticky beerglass looking out at the street he could see in bright streaks through the beadcurtain that hung in the door. Any minute he expected the white uniform and yellow holster of a marine to go past.
Behind the bar a yellow youth with a crooked nose leaned against the wall looking at nothing. When Joe made up his mind he jerked his chin up. The youth came over and craned confidentially across the bar, leaning on one hand and swabbing at the oilcloth with the rag he held in the other. The flies that had been grouped on the rings left by beerglasses on the oilcloth flew up to join the buzzing mass on the ceiling. “Say, bo, tell Maria I want to see her,” Joe said out of the corner of his mouth. The youth behind the bar held up two fingers. “Dos pesos,” he said. “Hell, no, I only want to talk to her.”
Maria beckoned to him from the door in back. She was a sallow woman with big eyes set far apart in bluish sacks. Through the crumpled pink dress tight over the bulge of her breasts Joe could make out the rings of crinkled flesh round the nipples. They sat down at a table in the back room. “Gimme two beers,” Joe yelled through the door.
“Watta you wan’, iho de mi alma?” asked Maria. “You savvy Doc Sidner?” “Sure me savvy all yanki. Watta you wan’ you no go wid beeg sheep?” “No go wid beeg sheep . . . Fight wid beeg sonofabeech, see?”
“Ché!” Maria breasts shook like jelly when she laughed. She put a fat hand at the back of his neck and drew his face towards hers. “Poor baby . . . black eye.” “Sure he gave me a black eye.” Joe pulled away from her. “Petty officer. I knocked him cold, see . . . Navy’s no place for me after that . . . I’m through. Say, Doc said you knew a guy could fake A.B. certificates . . . able seaman savvy? Me for the Merchant Marine from now on, Maria.”
Joe drank down his beer.
She sat shaking her head saying, “Ché . . . pobrecito . . . Ché.” Then she said in a tearful voice, “’Ow much dollars you got?” “Twenty,” said Joe. “Heem want fiftee.” “I guess I’m f—d for fair then.”
Maria walked round to the back of his chair and put a fat arm around his neck, leaning over him with little clucking noises. “Wait a minute, we tink . . . sabes?” Her big breast pressing against his neck and shoulder made him feel itchy; he didn’t like her touching him in the morning when he was sober like this. But he sat there until she suddenly let out a parrot screech. “Paquito . . . ven acá.”
A dirty pearshaped man with a red face and neck came in from the back. They talked Spanish over Joe’s head. At last she patted his cheek and said, “Awright Paquito sabe where heem live . . . maybe heem take twenty, sabes?”
Joe got to his feet. Paquito took off the smudged cook’s apron and lit a cigarette. “You savvy A.B. papers?” said Joe walking up and facing him. He nodded, “Awright,” Joe gave Maria a hug and a little pinch. “You’re a good girl, Maria.” She followed them grinning to the door of the bar.
Outside Joe looked sharply up and down the street. Not a uniform. At the end of the street a crane tilted black above the cement warehouse buildings. They got on a streetcar and rode a long time without saying anything. Joe sat staring at the floor with his hands dangling between his knees until Paquito poked him. They got out in a cheaplooking suburban section of new cement houses already dingy. Paquito rang at a door like all the other doors and after a while a man with redrimmed eyes and big teeth like a horse came and opened it. He and Paquito talked Spanish a long while through the halfopen door. Joe stood first on one foot and then on the other. He could tell that they were sizing up how much they could get out of him by the way they looked at him sideways as they talked.
He was just about to break in when the man in the door spoke to him in cracked cockney. “You give the blighter five pesos for his trouble, mytey, an’ we’ll settle this hup between wahte men.” Joe shelled out what silver he had in his pocket and Paquito went.
Joe followed the limey into the front hall that smelt of cabbage and frying grease and wash day. When he got inside he put his hand on Joe’s shoulder and said, blowing stale whiskybreath in his face, “Well, mytey, ’ow much can you afford?” Joe drew away. “Twenty American dollars’s all I got,” he said through his teeth. The limey shook his head, “Only four quid . . . well, there’s no ’arm in seein’ what we can do, is there, mytey? Let’s see it.” While the limey stood looking at him Joe took off his belt, picked out a couple of stitches with the small blade of his jackknife and pulled out two orangebacked American bills folded long. He unfolded them carefully and was about to hand them over when he thought better of it and put them in his pocket. “Now let’s take a look at the paper,” he said grinning.
The limey’s redrimmed eyes looked tearful; he said we ought to be ’elpful one to another and gryteful when a bloke risked a forger’s hend to ’elp ’is fellow creatures. Then he asked Joe his name, age and birthplace, how long he’d been to sea and all that and went into an inside room, carefully locking the door after him.
Joe stood in the hall. There was a clock ticking somewhere. The ticks dragged slower and slower. At last Joe heard the key turn in the lock and the limey came out with two papers in his hand. “You oughter realize what I’m doin’ for yez, mytey. . . .” Joe took the paper. He wrinkled his forehead and studied it; looked all right to him. The other paper was a note authorizing Titterton’s Marine Agency to garnishee Joe’s pay monthly until the sum of ten pounds had been collected. “But look here you,” he said, “that makes seventy dollars I’m shelling out.” The limey said think of the risk he was tyking and ’ow times was ’ard and that arfter all he could tyke it or leave it. Joe followed him into the paperlittered inside room and leaned over the desk and signed with a fountain pen.
They went downtown on the streetcar and got off at Rivadavia Street. Joe followed the limey into a small office back of a warehouse. “’Ere’s a smart young ’and for you, Mr. McGregor,” the limey said to a biliouslooking Scotchman who was walking up and down chewing his nails.
Joe and Mr. McGregor looked at each other. “American?” “Yes.” “You’re not expectin’ American pay I’m supposin’?”
The limey went up to him and whispered something; McGregor looked at the certificate and seemed satisfied. “All right, sign in the book. . . . Sign under the last name.” Joe signed and handed the limey the twenty dollars. That left him flat. “Well, cheeryoh, mytey.” Joe hesitated a moment before he took the limey’s hand. “So long,” he said.
“Go get your dunnage and be back here in an hour,” said McGregor in a rasping voice. “Haven’t got any dunnage. I’ve been on the beach,” said Joe, weighing the cigarbox in his hand. “Wait outside then and I’ll take you aboard the Argyle by and by.” Joe stood for a while in the warehouse door looking out into the street. Hell, he’d seen enough of B.A. He sat on a packingcase marked Tibbett & Tibbett, Enameled Ware, Blackpool, to wait for Mr. McGregor, wondering if he was the skipper or the mate. Time sure would drag all right till he got out of B.A.
The Camera Eye (28)
when the telegram came that she was dying (the streetcarwheels screeched round the bellglass like all the pencils on all the slates in all the schools) walking around Fresh Pond the smell of puddlewater willowbuds in the raw wind shrieking streecarwheels rattling on loose
trucks through the Boston suburbs grief isnt a uniform and go shock the Booch and drink wine for supper at the Lenox before catching the Federal
I’m so tired of violets
Take them all away
when the telegram came that she was dying the bellglass cracked in a screech of slate pencils (have you ever never been able to sleep for a week in April?) and He met me in the grey trainshed my eyes were stinging with vermillion bronze and chromegreen inks that oozed from the spinning April hills His moustaches were white the tired droop of an old man’s cheeks She’s gone Jack grief isn’t a uniform and the in the parlor the waxen odor of lilies in the parlor (He and I we must bury the uniform of grief)
then the riversmell the shimmering Potomac reaches the little choppysilver waves at Indian Head there were mockingbirds in the graveyard and the roadsides steamed with spring April enough to shock the world
when the cable came that He was dead I walked through the streets full of fiveoclock Madrid seething with twilight in shivered cubes of aguardiente redwine gaslampgreen sunsetpink tileochre eyes lips red cheeks brown pillar of the throat climbed on the night train at the Norte station without knowing why
I’m so tired of violets
Take them all away
the shattered iridescent bellglass the carefully copied busts the architectural details the grammar of styles
it was the end of that book and I left the Oxford poets in the little noisy room that smelt of stale oliveoil in the Pension Boston Ahora Now Maintenant Vita Nuova but we
who had heard Copey’s beautiful reading voice and read the handsomely bound books and breathed deep (breathe deep one two three four) of the waxwork lilies and the artificial parmaviolet scent under the ethercone and sat breakfasting in the library where the bust was of Octavius
were now dead at the cableoffice
on the rumblebumping wooden bench on the train slamming through midnight climbing up from the steerage to get a whiff of Atlantic on the lunging steamship (the ovalfaced Swiss girl and her husband were my friends) she had slightly popeyes and a little gruff way of saying Zut alors and throwing us a little smile a fish to a sealion that warmed our darkness when the immigration officer came for her passport he couldn’t send her to Ellis Island la grippe espagnole she was dead
washing those windows
K.P.
cleaning the sparkplugs with a pocketknife
A. W. O. L.
grinding the American Beauty roses to dust in that whore’s bed (the foggy night flamed with proclamations of the League of the Rights of Man) the almond smell of high explosives sending singing éclats through the sweetish puking grandiloquence of the rotting dead
tomorrow I hoped would be the first day of the first month of the first year
Playboy
Jack Reed
was the son of a United States Marshal, a prominent citizen of Portland Oregon.
He was a likely boy
so his folks sent him east to school
and to Harvard.
Harvard stood for the broad a and those contacts so useful in later life and good English prose . . . if the hedgehog cant be cultured at Harvard the hedgehog cant
at all and the Lowells only speak to the Cabot
and the Cabots and the Oxford Book of Verse.
Reed was a likely youngster, he wasnt a jew or a socialist and he didnt come from Roxbury; he was husky greedy had appetite for everything: a man’s got to like many things in his life.
Reed was a man; he liked men he liked women he liked eating and writing and foggy nights and drinking and foggy nights and swimming and football and rhymed verse and being cheerleader ivy orator making clubs (not the very best clubs, his blood didn’t run thin enough for the very best clubs)
and Copey’s voice reading The Man Who Would Be King, the dying fall Urnburial, good English prose the lamps coming on across the Yard, under the elms in the twilight
dim voices in lecturehalls,
the dying fall the elms the Discobulus the bricks of the old buildings and the commemorative gates and the goodies and the deans and the instructors all crying in thin voices refrain,
refrain; the rusty machinery creaked, the deans quivered under their mortarboards, the cogs turned to Class Day, and Reed was out in the world:
Washington Square!
Conventional turns out to be a cussword;
Villon seeking a lodging for the night in the Italian tenements on Sullivan Street, Bleecker, Carmine;
research proves R.L.S. to have been a great cocksman,
and as for the Elizabethans
to hell with them.
Ship on a cattleboat and see the world have adventures you can tell funny stories about every evening; a man’s got to love . . . the quickening pulse the feel that today in foggy evenings footsteps taxicabs women’s eyes . . . many things in his life.
Europe with a dash of horseradish, gulp Paris like an oyster;
but there’s more to it than the Oxford Book of English Verse. Linc Steffens talked the cooperative commonwealth.
revolution in a voice as mellow as Copey’s, Diogenes Steffens with Marx for a lantern going through the west looking for a good man, Socrates Steffens kept asking why not revolution?
Jack Reed wanted to live in a tub and write verses;
but he kept meeting bums workingmen husky guys he liked out of luck out of work why not revolution?
He couldn’t keep his mind on his work with so many people out of luck;
in school hadnt he learned the Declaration of Independence by heart? Reed was a westerner and words meant what they said; when he said something standing with a classmate at the Harvard Club bar, he meant what he said from the soles of his feet to the waves of his untidy hair (his blood didnt run thin enough for the Harvard Club and the Dutch Treat Club and respectable New York freelance Bohemia).
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
not much of that round the silkmills when
in 1913,
he went over to Paterson to write up the strike, textile workers parading beaten up by the cops, the strikers in jail; before he knew it he was a striker parading beaten up by the cops in jail;
he wouldn’t let the editor bail him out, he’d learn more with the strikers in jail.
He learned enough to put on the pageant of the Paterson Strike in Madison Square garden.
He learned the hope of a new society where nobody would be out of luck,
why not revolution?
The Metropolitan Magazine sent him to Mexico
to write up Pancho Villa.
Pancho Villa taught him to write and the skeleton mountains and the tall organ cactus and the armored trains and the bands playing in little plazas full of dark girls in blue scarfs
and the bloody dust and the ping of rifleshots
in the enormous night of the desert, and the brown quietvoiced peons dying starving killing for liberty
for land for water for schools.
Mexico taught him to write.
Reed was a westerner and words meant what they said.
The war was a blast that blew out all the Diogenes lanterns;
the good men began to gang up to call for machineguns. Jack Reed was the last of the great race of warcorrespondents who ducked under censorships and risked their skins for a story.
Jack Reed was the best American writer of his time, if anybody had wanted to know about the war they could have read about it in the articles he wrote
about the German front,
the Serbian retreat,
Saloniki;
behind the lines in the tottering empire of the Czar,
dodging the secret police,
jail in Cholm.
The brasshats wouldnt let him go to France because they said one night in the German trenches kidding with the Boche guncrew he’d pulled the string on a Hun gun pointed at the heart of France . . . playboy stuff but after all what did it matter who fired the guns or which way they were
pointed? Reed was with the boys who were being blown to hell,
with the Germans the French the Russians the Bulgarians the seven little tailors in the Ghetto in Salonique,
and in 1917
he was with the soldiers and peasants
in Petrograd in October:
Smolny,
Ten Days That Shook the World;
no more Villa picturesque Mexico, no more Harvard Club playboy stuff, plans for Greek theatres, rhyming verse, good stories of an oldtime warcorrespondent,
this wasnt fun anymore
this was grim.
Delegate,
back in the States indictments, the Masses trial, the Wobbly trial, Wilson cramming the jails,
forged passports, speeches, secret documents, riding the rods across the cordon sanitaire, hiding in the bunkers on steamboats;
jail in Finland all his papers stolen,
no more chance to write verses now, no more warm chats with every guy you met up with, the college boy with the nice smile talking himself out of trouble with the judge;
at the Harvard Club they’re all in the Intelligence Service making the world safe for the Morgan-Baker-Stillman combination of banks;
that old tramp sipping his coffee out of a tomatocan’s a spy of the General Staff.