Broken Necks/Dog Eat Dog
We were in a fine philosophical mood, my friend and I, and we walked in the avenue with portentous and sardonic steps. He with his shoulders lifted and his apish head wagging slowly from side to side. I with the proper Mona Lisa crook to my lips. Thus men walk when, as inviolable gods, they debate the puerilities and ironies of life.
There was about us in this avenue the paganism of women’s buttocks moving under adroit silks, of round warm legs flashing their curves and luscious tints in the sun, of pear-moulded breasts dancing beneath tight fabrics. Bodies moving slowly toward some fantastic carnival, they seemed; faces rouged and stencilled for subtle and priapic rites. Continually they zigzagged by us, colored like totems, a shining barbaric procession of lusts in caricature. The marvel of it was that some halooing buck did not come bounding into this avenue and seize upon these legs and buttocks and breasts that promenaded in such elaborate and piquant masquerade. A thought worthy of philosophers. Here under the tall sunny buildings with their polished windows, here walled by the luxurious dignity of their great rectangular faces, what a saturnalian rape were possible. What a dancing and shouting and rolling about with the tom-tom of the traffic hammering out its quick, delirious monotone. What a wild racing up and down silk-strewn pavements, in and out of marble-corridored grottos. What an insane and whimsical burlesque of passion.
Alas! these were merely the unwindings of philosophical fancy. Before us remained the vista of bobbing faces and hidden undulated bodies wedded to exotic plumage and lushent fabrics. From these corseted nymphs as they passed issued trailing perfumes that fell upon the nose as the cunning intimate whispers of a panderer might come into the ear. To- ward some carnival they might be destined (there are still boudoirs in the world, it is said), but their faces. remained as they floated by a succession of stencilled and unchanging blanks.
They stared now into the beaming windows of the avenue shops. Herein, behind sun-streaked panels of glass, lay oriental silks, gold and green and turquoise; Japanese bric-a-brac, little monsters of bronze; black and vermillion screens; scrolled porcelains. Here also they saw, as they passed, leather elegancies, little black velvet boxes of jewels, moon-white silvers, platters of gold, and occasionally groups of waxen mannikins garlanded with shining fabrics and postured in simpering mannerism. Tired of these windows they glanced now at each other or looked up in unimaginable conversations at the grey- faced, carefully mustached creatures who walked at their side. Delusions, all of them. Bodies of men bathed and shaved and tailored into puppets of commerce. White bodies of women reduced to piquant stuffings for silks.
We walked, my friend and I, with sardonic and portentous steps as befit the stride of gods who dot the unending processions of the little greedy half-dead. To our left the rubber-tired traffic purred and beat out its monotone, the whirling white and black of spokes pirouetted in the sun. To our right the grave and elegant geometries swooped into space. And having walked a goodly way between these things we paused and my friend improved the occasion with a snort. His head, as he stood contemplating the vari-colored swarm of motion, began to wag with more deliberation, his face growing pregnant with words. By these animated preliminary silences did my friend attune the spirit of his listener for matters of vast and symbolic import. The darkness of his face grew and he raised his arm with a slow gesture and pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the west.
"I keep thinking," he said, "I keep thinking of the gangs on the west side. The working people. The immemorial masses."
The ominous drawl of his words and the manner of his face, and a fixed and flint-like convulsion, weighted this thing my friend said with the illusion of depth and sagacity which attended the most trivial of his comments. His voice continued, a voice which had about it the quality of a banjo played with bewildering slowness.
"The immemorial masses on the west side,"’ he said, "who live in stinking houses and sweat ten hours a day for the right to remain alive. They’re coming in this street. This crowd in silk can’t hold them back much longer. Look at them." He stared into faces. "Four civilizations have died," he resumed, "four civilizations have died because the gang on the west side never broke through. But they’re coming through this time. When I see all this . . . all this . . ." he made a slow contemptuous gesture toward the vari-colored swarm about us, “I know the stage is set for the great act. When I look at the grey and painted faces and these unharnessed useless bodies, I get the breath of the gangs on the west side pushing through."
My friend paused and eyed the procession in the avenue with a dark and curious amusement. For there was a strange hate in the cerebrations of my friend, and a stranger love. He moved through the day like some grim and ominous evangel and his chuckles invariably reminded me of guillotines. He had the eyes of a prophet, deep-set smoky eyes, fastened always upon distances, and his thought was like a slow fume that darkened the air about him. That afternoon, as he stood facing the polite and repressed bacchanal of the avenue, was the last I saw of him. And therefore I have told of it. He had consented to walk with me away from the grimy factory-strewn scenes where he was then leading a strike of garment workers.
"The immemorial masses,"’ he chuckled, and his eyes rested darkly on the dapper procession. "This crowd... this little string of marionettes... can’t cheat them much longer." His fingers riveted my elbow. "I get the breath of them," he said, "I get the breath of the gangs on the west side of the world pushing through into the sun."
We shook hands and the storm of his thoughts remained like an uncanny shadow about me as he passed out of the avenue. During the days which followed my friend’s name appeared often in the newspapers. About him had rallied some five thousand workers, raising a great cry for wages and leisure. Once I went to the west side to see him, but found in his place a woman who spoke of him with eagerness. She was a dark-eyed creature with a smoulder in her voice. Walking with the rouged and dapper procession in the sunny avenue she would have seemed a strayed and bewildered animal. Here amid the sagging houses, the debris-covered street, the broken walls, her spirit was a luminous thing, her body arose from the earth with the bend of a far-flung defiance to her head. In her eyes, as in the eyes of my friend, there were also dark prophecies. And her words had about the same stillness, the same curious air of consecration.
She spoke of many things, of my friend, of poverty, of hovels in which men and women decayed, and of a mysterious dawn that was to break like a song through the dark places of the world. When she spoke of my friend there came into her voice an intimacy and an awe. Her body straightened as in some curious salute. Her eyes largened and there was tumult to her. Her soul seemed to precipitate itself into embraces unseen. More than ever she would have appeared a strayed and bewildered animal in the dapper procession of the sunny avenue.
As her talk moved to topics beyond my friend her intensity changed and her words became more deliberate. She emitted them slowly and it was almost the banjo voice of my friend that spoke.
"I had no faith until I met him," she said. "I had no faith in these people. But now they’re coming through. The little silk crowd can’t cheat us much longer. We’re coming through this time. The feet of armies have walked over us and we slept. Four civilizations have died because we slept. This sleep was because without faith we were without souls. But now we have faith in each other. The working people are standing together. From one end of the world to the other we have the faith that is bringing us to our feet in one mighty wave."
In her words was a quality which weighted their awkward rhetoric with a compelling power. This quality remained with me after I left her. Faith . . . the faith of a woman’s eyes raised in the dark of a church, the faith of a man’s eyes resting in awe upon a face finer and slenderer than his own, the faith of my friend and his friend amid the ancient poverties and decays, they are not a part of philosophy. And yet I came away thinking wistfully of the gods that corrupt the reason of the ages. It is, after all, a lonely and profitless business to deny these gods.
The faiths that boil in the souls of the race, the vari-shaped altars tended by the little greedy half-dead, there is in them perhaps the true solace for those who must find what they seek. My mood of that day on the avenue was gone. I walked now in ragged broken streets where the little half-dead seem to be moving always in vast and merciless defeat. In these streets I sought the faith of my friend. But the gods as ever eluded me. Here was merely a less colored masquerade than in the avenue. A great deal of soil and manure is needed to produce a flower, even such a flower as civilization. I watched the strikers gathering and talking, the men and women passing with intent and burning eyes, the half-naked children shrieking over the dirty pavements, and I came away with the memory of a purposeless, meaningless fever throbbing in the veins of the day. And my friend died in this manner.
The summer sun had loosened the stenches of the alleys when Nolan awoke. I have been in Nolan’s home and have seen his wife moving about in the morning cooking the breakfast for the seven of them. Her body is fat with the humanless contour of a spider and her eyes seem always to be thinking of bruises. From morning until night she moves about, scrubbing, cooking, washing, straightening, feeding children, walking to grocery stores and butcher shops, haggling over pennies. The children scream and brawl and chase each other through lots and alleys. Just before noon Nolan sits up in his dark, bitter-smelling bed and stretches his arms.
On the morning of the day in which my friend died, Nolan sat up in his bed and stretched his arms. At noon he emerged in his stocking feet and walked about in the kitchen of his home, his suspenders hanging in two purple loops from the waist of his drooping trousers. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a somewhat reddened face. His face, usually vigorous and genial, wore a frown whenever he moved about in the small littered rooms of his home. He ate his breakfast in silence and listened to the complaint of his woman, a complaint which, by reason of its antiquity, fell now like meaningless noise on his ears. It was more money for the doctor, his woman needed; more money for the girl, who must have another dress; more money for the butcher. A depressing racket, this ancient complaint of his woman, a thing which went on summer and winter. Nolan ate and the frown of his face grew deeper. In silence he moved into the bitter-smelling bedroom and put on his blue uniform and his leather puttees. It was the uniform of the city’s mounted police, kept by Nolan in some mysterious manner immune from the grime and the squalor of his home.
In this blue transforming uniform, freshly shaved and his neck ornamented with a white band of collar, Nolan waited patiently for his woman to cease her ancient complaint. Sixteen years of honest and faithful service were Nolan’s, and yet the complaint of his woman had grown with each of these years, even as the smell of his home had thickened and ac- quired a personality.
"It'll be pay day tomorrow," said Nolan at length. "And what good’ll that be?" said his woman, rubbing at her round fat face with her apron. "Maybe you think you’re somebody in them clothes of yours. But will you look at the bills from the doctor and the butcher." And there followed the depressing racket that seemed to Nolan an inevitable companion of the musty bitter smell which stuffed his home. "It’ll be pay day tomorrow," said Nolan, and he walked out of his home. Down the street he walked, and thought, as bitter as the smell of his bed, remained in his brain. Vague thought without out-line, it was. He spat as he walked and cursed under his breath.
There was a horse in the police barns that was Nolan’s, a shining brown, upstanding horse that whinnied at him as he came near. In silence Nolan placed the saddle on his horse and lifted himself into it. Into the street he jogged, his broad-shouldered figure in its resplendent uniform sitting stiff and careless atop, the lively horse, his eyes frowning from under his ornamented cap. Riding so on his horse Nolan glowered down upon the traffic that grew thicker about him. Men jumped out of his way and wagons drew tactfully aside to give him unmolested passage. This sometimes brought cheer into Nolan’s heart. But now the sound of his woman’s complaint was in his ears, and the bitter smell of his home lay like rust in his nose. And if he was strong and broad and could ride along on his horse now, what in hell would he be doing to stop the complaint of his woman when he had grown old?
Nolan came out of the squad room and remounted. He had his orders for the day. He rode off at a leisurely pace toward the west side. There was a strike there and trouble, and Nolan rode to keep the city from coming to harm.
There were a thousand men and women gathered in the street. Policemen stood before the doors of the black, many-windowed factory building which stretched its flat face down the block. The crowd in the street shuffled about over the pavements in compact little groups, crying out words, waving their arms, their faces moving in tiny grimaces. They were the strikers that my friend was leading, stunted little men in humorously misfitting clothes, girls in heavy sagging dresses and grimy waists. They swarmed about, voluble and excited. Nolan and seven horsemen like himself watched them from the end of the street. The eight of them sat stiff and straight on their horses and frowned. Nolan turned abruptly to one of them and said, "What the hell, they’re going to march. They ain’t got a permit for marching."
They were going to march. There was a man who stood on a box in the center of the street surrounded by a growing mass of faces. He waved his arms and cried out in a slow far-reaching voice. This man was my friend. Nolan watched him with the frown deepening in his face. Slowly, as my friend cried out, the scattered crowd seemed to unravel itself into ranks. Symmetrical rows of faces appeared one behind the other. Men began to shout and push other men. There was quick, determined tumult. The noise then began to die away. In the silence that came into the street a long thick mass of men and women stood with their eyes raised toward my friend and curious eager light in their faces.
"They’re going to march," said Nolan to the horsemen around him, "and they ain’t got a permit."
He spurred his horse up to my friend, who still stood on his box in the center of the street.
"Cut that," said Nolan, "you ain’t got a permit to march."
My friend looked at him and smiled. The ranks of men and women sagged and almost disappeared. The rows of faces became circles and half circles. But my friend on his little box threw up his arms.
"March," he cried out, "comrades, mark time. We march to the city hall. We march through the avenues. We will give the little silk-crowds a look at us."
The rattle and thud of feet striking the street sounded. The long thick mass grew mysteriously straight. The rows of faces flashed dully in even lines.
"Into the sun," cried my friend. "Comrades, forward... march."
The street moved. It lengthened and swayed. The beat of feet, like the long-drawn rattle of a drum, came into the air. Slowly, expanding and contracting, their shoulders swaying, the regiment of motion- less faces and leaping eyes groped for a rhythm. It came and the regiment marched. Down the street it moved, an unwavering, indomitable mass of swinging arms and legs. Above the rhythmic lift of its heads appeared banners red and black and inscribed with the words, "Labor . . . Give us Bread . . ."
Nolan and his horsemen watched the swinging column approach. For a moment he stared at it, fascinated. The thought of his woman’s complaint had gone from his head and with it the smell that had ridden in his nose. Under his bright blue uniform he felt himself grow warm and curiously alive. The blood swept through his body and a sweat like that of a strong juice came out of him. Oaths rushed from his lips and a lust whirled his head.
"Come on," he yelled, waving his arm, and his brown upstanding horse leaped forward. My friend and his immemorial masses were marching and Nolan and his seven horsemen were rushing down the street into the face of them. As the horses came nearer my friend grew large in front of the regiment. His voice arose clear and strident above the murmuring behind him and the wild sharp racket of the oncoming horses before him.
"Comrades," he shouted, "march, comrades. . . . Hold firm . . . and march . . ."
Nolan, his eyes swimming, heard the words and tugged at a rein in his hand. His brown leaping horse turned lightly. Rearing and plunging it shot forward and its iron hoofs cracked down upon the head of the man who had shouted the command. The thick ranks of the marchers disappeared and became a swarm of circling faces that melted into walls and vanished into little running groups. In the midst of the street, shouting and plunging, reared the seven horsemen. The street grew empty. Nolan bounced and cried out in his saddle as his horse, turning and prancing, leaped again and again upon the figure it had brought down. For a wild thing had burst in Nolan’s heart and there was the music of a hammering drum in his ears. There were cries and shrieks about him and he felt a hate leaping into his throat, contracting the muscles of his body. His hand fumbled desperately at the figure that lay under the dancing feet of the horse. But the figure was silent and motionless. It lay in a disjointed posture, its face flattened and crushed into the grime of the street, its body bent and spread out like a wooden thing.
Nolan dismounted and stood with the seven horsemen at the curb. They were all thick-shouldered men with strong red faces. They held guns in their hands. They stood with their jaws thrust forward and with glowering eyes stared into the emptied street.
"We got them," said Nolan in a thick voice. "The dirty bums, a pack of god-damned sheehies and polacks."
He glanced toward the figure that lay with its face crushed into the stone in the center of the street. There were several other figures moving feebly on their bellies. As he looked a woman came rushing toward the disjointed figure of my friend. She hurled herself with a cry across the twisted body and lay there stiff and silent. Nolan walked toward her, his head wagging from side to side. As he approached she raised her head and flung her fist toward him.
"You killed him. You murdered him," she shouted at Nolan. "But it won’t do you any good. You can’t stop us. You can’t cheat us much longer. Do you hear? God strike you dead you... you . .. He’s dead. He’s dead. But you can’t keep us back. Do you hear? We’re coming through . . ."
Nolan stared at her without words, looked at the woman’s fist that remained shuddering in the air. And in the voice and gesture of the body there was something that brought back to Nolan’s thought the complaint of his woman, the complaint that went on from day to day for sixteen years. He darted forward and seized this one by the shoulder.
"Stop your yowling," he cried. "Get up, you bum. You’re under arrest."
He shook her as she followed his grip to her feet. The smell of her brought back into Nolan’s nose the smell of his woman. He struck her with his fist.
"Come on," he cried, his voice thick with the violence of his blood. "Get along."
For a moment Nolan and the woman who had come to my friend remained staring into each other’s eyes, a hate burning between them and blackening their vision. Their faces, twisted and dark, came together. There were no words. With a great jerk Nolan tumbled the woman along after him toward the curb.
"Come on," he growled. "If you try to break away I’ll club you to death."