The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (17 page)

Fog over San Francisco and a sky that is mad with mist and the splashings of high electric lights: a sense of being out of time, a sense of despair mingled with mockery; wet pavements, the usual people walking. When it is like this, the night business picks up; there is a deep and vague desire in the heart of man for death, and the whores carry death to any man, giving him enough of it to get him over the bad weather and to keep him alive awhile. But it is lovely weather for the girls, and in all the small hotels all over the city prosperity is becoming a fact. After midnight prosperity becomes a dance, swift opening and closing of doors, running up and down hallways amid
pleasant unprintable language concerning an ancient and instinctive act, old men and young boys, big business, and the girls being very matter of fact, going from one job to another with the grace and dignity of priests performing sacred works.

This sense of being out of time has driven thousands of people from their homes into moving-picture theatres where new universes appear before them, with emphasis on man and his major problem: a thing called, conveniently, love. The Sunday midnight shows do a thriving business, and the people go back to their homes, sick with the sickness of frustration; it is this that makes the city so interesting at night: the people emerging from the theatres, smoking cigarettes and looking desperate, wanting much, the precision, the glory, all the loveliness of life: wanting what is finest and getting nothing. It is saddening to see them, but there is mockery in the heart: one walks among them, laughing at oneself and at them, their midnight staring.

The restaurants do well, too: there is something about eating, about being able to eat, being able to pay for food, to sit at a table after midnight, to be awake at that hour with food before one: the fog and the electric lights and a night moment of grief: something about eating food that is sad and amusing: nothing else to do: we can eat and stay alive and go and come, etc. We are still alive, at a table. We are still walking in the city. It is this year and all of us are still in the picture, sick with the sickness of frustration, eating.

There are other places, other ways of being with
the despair. It is all business, the return of prosperity. The little beer joints with their two- and three-piece orchestras are taking in a lot of cash and sending home a lot of slightly intoxicated people. Everywhere they are playing and singing,
The Last Roundup, Alice In Wonderland
, and other sad songs. At the El Patio a lot of young and old men and women are dancing. But until you enter the skating rink you cannot appreciate how sad the city really is. You’ve got to see the boys and girls skating to feel how bad it is, how miserably ill everyone is with frustration. They move over the floor like swift insanity, giving futility an aspect of grace. The swiftness of their movement is purely sexual, and it is this that makes the severe expression of their faces so overwhelmingly amusing, the sadness that goes around with them in spite of the fact that they are on roller skates, going around and around on a hardwood floor. But you do not really laugh; it is merely a feeling you experience, a sadness for man that can only be articulated through laughter.

Things quiet down after one o’clock. The corner newsboys, some of them over fifty, speak sadly of the horses, and the small fortunes they would have made if they had played their own hunches instead of the suggestions of sincere but annoying friends. Monday’s paper is about Cuba, and a murder somewhere. The real news isn’t in Monday’s paper. It won’t be in Tuesday’s paper. It will never be in any newspaper. It has been going on so long that no one is noticing it any more. It is not even a subject any more, being
the fact
, the essence of the whole business, and having
been forgotten when it seemed too frightening to dwell upon: the maddening desire in the heart of man for precision or death, the possession of all loveliness or complete disintegration.

Only the girls are able to speak of the matter intelligently. They seem to understand how it is, and at two o’clock in the morning they seem to be the only decent people alive. The way they talk, the accuracy of the unprintable language they use, begins to seem noble and eloquent, and they themselves acquire a loveliness that is universal. Up and down the stairs of the small hotels, old men and boys. Money is involved, but that is simply because this is a capitalistic society, and because the medium of exchange, even in questions of love and lust, has conveniently assumed the materiality of coin and currency. It is impossible to understand the absolute failure of capitalism until one has studied the manner in which the girls carry love and death to clerks and book-keepers.

At three in the morning you are apt to come upon strange specimens of life, men made frightening by capitalism. They appear to be monsters, and merely to be in their presence horrifies; yet they speak English, they were born of women, they have names, they belong to the family of man. It is possible to speak to them. The one with whom I spoke was thirty-five. He said his name was Jones. He said he walked at night and rested during the day, standing up. He said it was easy; he had been doing it for years. He was not a Communist. I asked, and he said he was not. He was more afraid of me than I of him.
His name was not Jones; he could think of no other at the moment. My question startled him, and his mouth fell open, increasing the horror of his face, the dirty beard, the haunted eyes, the filth, and the very long lower teeth. I felt great love for him, even though he was ugly with the vilest ugliness of man, ghastly sexual ugliness: anger, amazement, and the desire to kill or rape, in his eyes.

Not any of the girls are trivial: this is a fact that must be recognized. It is impossible to be trivial, being so close to the secret of man. Work ends for the girls at three, no NRA codes or regulations. After three they go to bed. This time to sleep. They say they sleep soundly, in unheavenly peace in the stillness and hush of the time of man.

I am sitting in this small room, two or three months from now or two or three years from now, writing a story about a number of human beings marching in a hunger parade and writing about what is going on in their minds, about all the remarkable things they are dreaming and imagining in connection with themselves and the universe, when I hear a knock at my door, a very emphatic knock.

I know it isn’t opportunity because opportunity knocked at my door a number of years ago when I was out, looking for a job, so I imagine it must be my cousin Kirk Minor, the best writer I know who does not write and does not want to write. Or else, I imagine,
it is that young man with the sad face and the ragged blue serge suit who works for the collection agency and comes to my room once a month to inform me politely and nervously that unless I cough up with those four dollars I still owe that employment agency that got me a job in 1927 the case will be taken to court and I will be disgraced, and maybe sent to the penitentiary.

This young man has been coming around to my room so often that I know him very well and in a roundabout way we have come to be friends, even though on the surface we may appear to be enemies. I never did bother to ask him his name but he has told me all about himself and I know he has a wife and a young daughter who is always ill and a source of great worry.

At first I used to dislike this young man and I used to wonder why he worked for such a company as a collection agency, but when he explained about his little sick daughter I began to understand that he
had
to earn money somehow and that he wasn’t doing it because he liked to do it, but merely because it was absolutely, almost frantically, necessary. He used to come into my room, melancholy with worry, and he used to try to look at me severely, and then he would say: See here, Mr. Sturiza, my firm is becoming very tired of your evasions, and we must have a full settlement at once. And I used to say: Sit down. Have a cigarette. How is your daughter? Then the young collector used to sigh and sit down and light a cigarette. Duty is duty, he used to begin, and I’ve got to be severe with you. After all, you owe our client four
dollars. All right, I used to say,
be
severe. I don’t owe anybody a dime. I owe my cousin Kirk Minor a half dollar, but he hasn’t taken the case to an agency. Then we used to talk for about a half hour or so, and the young collector used to tell me his troubles, how bad it was with him, and I used to tell him my troubles, how bad it was with me, wanting to write well and always putting down the wrong thing, and then having to go out and walk to the public library to try to find out again how Flaubert did it.

The knock destroys the continuity of my thought, and I go to the door and open it. If it is my cousin Kirk, I think, I will reprimand him; if it is the young man from the collection agency, I will be polite, and I will ask about his daughter.

It is neither, however; it is a small man of fifty with a dull face animated momentarily by some exciting thought, and in his left hand is a large brown envelope, stuffed, no doubt, with very important documents. The man is a stranger to me, therefore I am greatly interested in him, hoping to be able to learn enough about him to write a good short story.

Enrico Sturiza? he asks, only he shouts it, and I begin to understand that something has happened somewhere in the world, something momentous, historic.

Yes, sir, I reply quietly.

Enrico Sturiza, continues the small man in a manner that suggests that I am about to be sentenced to death for some petty and forgotten misdemeanor, I have the distinguished honor to inform you, on behalf of the International League for the Preservation of
Democracy and the Annihilation of Fascism, Bolshevism, Communism and Anarchism, that you are eligible for active duty in the front line, and that as soon as you are able to get your hat and coat I shall be pleased to escort you in the Packard downstairs to the regimental headquarters. There you will be furnished a brand new uniform, a small book of instructions written in language comprehensible even to seven-year-olds, a good gun and a place to sleep.

The small man has made this speech in a lively and impressive style, but I am not greatly impressed. I pause, light a cigarette and suggest that my guest enter my room and sit down. He enters my room, but declines the chair.

Is there a war? I ask politely.

Yes, of course, smiles the small man, implying that I must be a dunce not to know. War, he announces, was declared this morning at exactly a quarter past six.

That’s no hour to be declaring war, I reply. Hardly anyone is awake at that hour. Who did the declaring?

This question disturbs the small man, and he blushes with confusion, making a face and attempting a cough.

The full and written declaration of war was printed in all the morning papers, he replies.

I don’t read the papers, I reply. I sometimes glance at the
Christian Science Monitor
, but not often. I am a writer, and reading newspapers spoils my style. I cannot afford to do it. But the war interests me. Who wrote the declaration?

The small man does not like me, and he refuses even to attempt to answer my question.

Are you Enrico Sturiza? he asks again.

I am, I reply.

Very well then, come with me, says the small man.

I am sorry, I reply. I am writing a short story about hungry people marching in a parade, and I must finish the story today. I cannot come with you. After I finish the story, I must walk to the Pacific Ocean for exercise.

I demand, says the small man, that you come with me. In the name of the International League, I demand that you come with me.

Get the hell out of here, I reply quietly.

The small man begins to tremble with rage, and I begin to fear that he will have some sort of fit. He turns, however, in a military manner, shouts that I am a traitor, and departs.

I return to my typewriter and try to go on with the story I am writing, but it is not easy to do so. A war is a war, and everybody knows how viciously the last war got on the nerves of writers, bringing about all sorts of eccentric styles of writing, all sorts of mannerisms. News of the war upsets me, and I begin to mope, sitting idly in my chair, trying to think of something intelligent to think.

In not more than a half hour there is another knock at my door, and opening it I look upon the handsome figure of a young man in an officer’s uniform. He is obviously a well-bred sort of chap, through the university, cheerful, and not altogether an idiot.

Enrico Sturiza? he asks.

Yes, I reply. Please come in.

My name, says the young officer offering me his hand, is Gerald Appleby.

I am very pleased to know your name, I reply. Will you be seated?

Young Mr. Appleby accepts my hospitality, produces a cigarette case, opens it; I accept one, we begin to smoke, and a conversation begins.

Mr. Covington, says Mr. Appleby, paid you a visit this morning, I am informed. His report suggests that you do not—shall I say?—do not particularly wish to be escorted by him to regimental headquarters. My commanding officer, General Egmont Pratt, has suggested that I call on you for the purpose of carrying on a conversation, with the view, we hope, of convincing you of the urgency of your participating in the present war before civilization itself is threatened.

Appleby is very interesting. He is interesting because I can see that nothing short of a war, and nothing short of a threatened civilization, could possibly lift him from the narrowness and emptiness of his life.

What makes you think civilization is being threatened? I ask him. Where did you get that idea?

Unless we crush the enemy, young Appleby replies, boyishly evading the question, civilization will be crushed, and crushed so badly that the earth will again enter a state of utter barbarism.

Which civilization are you referring to? I ask.

Our civilization, says Mr. Appleby.

I hadn’t noticed, I reply. Besides, I am heartily in favor of a return to utter barbarism. I think it
would be very good fun. I think even the most highly sophisticated people would enjoy being barbaric for a century or so.

Mr. Sturiza, says the young officer, as one young man to another, I ask you to cease being flippant, and to join your brothers in the battle against the destructive forces of man which are now threatening to overthrow all the noble and decent emotions of man.

Are you sure? I ask.

We must fight for the defense of democratic traditions, and if need be we must die in the battle.

Do you want to die? I ask
very
politely.

For liberty, yes, replies Mr. Appleby.

I’ll tell you, then, I say, how Pascin did it. I think he did it gracefully. He got into a warm tub, gently slashed his wrists, and bled to death, painlessly and artfully. There are, of course, a number of other ways, equally artful. I would not care to recommend leaping from a skyscraper. It is a much too hurried and fidgety way, one of those modern trends in suicide. I myself do not wish to die. It is part of my plan as a writer of prose to try to live as long as possible. I hope even to outlive three or four wars. It is my plan to stay alive indefinitely.

I cannot understand you, says Mr. Appleby. You are a strong young man. You are not ill. You have the erect posture of a soldier, and yet you pretend to wish not to engage in this war, a war which will end all wars, a war of history, an opportunity to participate in perhaps the most extraordinary event ever to happen on the face of the earth. Our air forces are perfect. Our gas and chemical divisions are prepared
to destroy the enemy in wholesale lots. Our tanks are the largest, the fastest and the deadliest. Our big guns are bigger than the big guns of the enemy. Our ships outnumber by three to one the ships of the enemy. Our espionage system is functioning perfectly and every secret of the enemy is known to us. Our submarines are ready to sink every ship of the enemy. And you sit here and pretend not to care to be involved in this, the noblest war of all time.

Precisely, I reply. I have no desire to destroy the enemy. I do not recognize an enemy. Who are you supposed to be fighting? Germany? France? Italy? Russia? Who? I am very fond of Germans and of the French and the Italian and the Russian. I wouldn’t think of so much as hurting the feelings of a Russian. I am a great admirer of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoi and Turgenev and Chekhov and Andreyev and Gorky.

Mr. Appleby rises, deeply hurt. Very well then, he says. Unfortunately, we have not yet obtained the required authority to demand the participation of all able-bodied young men, but our propaganda department is working night and day and we mean to put over a general election and to
win
the election. It is only a question of time when all you indifferent and cowardly fellows will be in the front ranks where you belong. I assure you, Mr. Sturiza, you shall not be able to escape this war.

Maybe this fellow is right at that, I think.

Come in again sometime, I suggest, and we’ll have a little conversation about art. It is an inexhaustible subject; the more you talk about it, the more there is to say and unsay.

I return again, a bit sadly this time, to the short story I am supposed to be writing, but it is no use; the war will not allow me to write. It is like a shadow over every thought and it renders futile every hope for the future. Rather than sit and mope, I go outdoors and begin to walk, moving in the direction of the public library. I notice people, and I notice that something has come over them. They are not the way they were yesterday. It is a very subtle change, and it is hard to explain, but I can tell that they are not the same. I wonder if I am the same. Certainly I am the same, I say, but at the same time I cannot believe in what I am saying. The people, like myself, seem to be the same, but they are not. I can perceive the difference that has come over them, but I cannot identify the difference that has come over me. I am doing my best to remain the same, but in spite of my efforts it is not working very well. Each moment finds me slightly but definitely changed.

The change in the people is hysteria; it is not yet at a high pitch, but it is beginning to grow. The change in myself, I begin to hope, is not the beginning of hysteria. I am quite calm. Only I cannot deny that I am beginning to be a little angry, and unconsciously I have a desire to knock down the next young man who asks me to participate in the war; I believe unconsciously that this is the proper thing for me to do, to knock down such a fool.

In the evening I return to my room and find my cousin Kirk Minor listening to the phonograph. The music is
Elegy
, by Massenet, sung by Caruso. My cousin is smoking a cigarette, looking very calm, listening
to the greatest singer the world has ever known, and, according to my cousin, one of the greatest men the world has ever known.

What about the war? I ask my cousin.

What about it? he replies.

How do you feel about it?

No opinions at all, says my cousin.

You’re not telling the truth, I say. How do you feel? You’re seventeen: they’ll be taking you before long. How do you feel about it?