Algren at Sea

by Nelson Algren

  “In fact, he wouldn’t even get dressed until they had collected their twenty grand apiece. Then they had to get right out to the airport. If they had tried to get back to the hotel it would have been a pinch.

  “I called the girls to bring the baggage out to the airport, and they were good kids, they really showed up with the stuff. It looked like the boys would make it. But somebody had tipped the customs people about all those pounds going out of the country. They couldn’t make the plane till they came clean.

  “‘Give me the roll’—Vince told the manager right in front of a customs man—and handed 13,000 pounds over to the hookers and kissed them both goodbye. That was all there was to it. Vince liked getting rid of money, that’s all there was to it.”

  “Hemingway wrote that one up,” Zane kind of boggled up looking vague.

  “No,” I felt obliged to correct him, “Hemingway’s was about a fighter who bet fifty grand against himself. Vince only had twenty going.”

  “Same story all the same,” he insisted, “there’re six basic stories, all the rest, made up from them six.”

  “Where’s my drink?” the girl wanted to know, but he didn’t hear. He was focusing on me: I was the one who kept hiding his ham.

  “The best way to know the ins and outs of the boxing game,” I informed everybody authoritatively, “is just you talk to an ex-fighter—any ex-fighter. Once I talked to Tony Zale about his fight in Chicago with Al Hostak, and when I got through he asked me if my hand had healed. He thought I was Hostak.”

  Zane eyed me steadily. He was digesting the news piece by piece. Putting his hands on both arms of the chair brought his chin up close. “You’re not Hostak.”

  “No,” I told him, “I’ve gained weight.”

  The girl poked him in the side.

  “Where’s my drink, buddy?” She was being jocular.

  Zane wasn’t to be jocularized. “You’ve had it,” he told her without unfastening his eyes from mine.

  “How long does it take you to get ham and eggs?” he demanded of me.

  “I get them right away because I tip so heavy,” I told him talking over my head as I haven’t tipped a waiter in years and am not planning to begin now.

  “You go for this servees compree thing?” He put it to me. It was a political question.

  “I’m very strong against it,” I assured him. After all, it isn’t easy to stay on the good side of everybody when they are standing so close together.

  “If everybody on our side keeps adding something extra, where is it all going to end?” I asked. “Before the summer is over they’ll be eating the steaks. No, we have to draw the line,” I painted the Federals’ position darkly, “we can’t let their side shove our side around.”

  Apparently it was something along these lines he had been waiting to hear.

  “Buddy,” he told me, “I was in the Service four years, four months, and eighteen days. How long were you in?”

  “Long enough to be offered promotion,” I assured him, “but I didn’t feel I was ready for the responsibility of Pfc.”

  The girl poked him again. He didn’t feel it.

  “My grandmother was a Cherokee squaw,” he told me, “nobody shoves this soldier around.”

  “Don’t apologize for your folks,” I suggested, “My people weren’t exactly hipsters, either.” I thought he’d said “Cherokee square.”

  “Honey,” the girl told him, “look out. You’re talking to Solly Levitt.”

  It sounded like she might be trying to set something up.

  He studied me again. “You’re not Solly Levitt,” he decided.

  “You’re not exactly Hurricane Jackson yourself,” I had to point out.

  “I just wish you was heavyweight champ,” he warned me, “’n I was the channelger! You never whipped nobody your whole life!”

  I couldn’t recall any recent triumphs. “No,” I had to admit, “but at one time I could have whipped Chico Vejar. He was the channelger.”

  “Anybody you whipped went into a dive,” he decided, and turned on the girl—“Vince Loman never fought a clean fight in his life,” he accused her, “it’s why he’s in a fix now. He never made a nickel except when it was fixed. He was born in a fix.”

  “We’re all born in a fix, baby,” she told him gently, “but we’re not all at sea.”

  That had the earmarks of a pointed observation, but she handed him her glass before he could catch up. “That last one was for Mother,” she told him, “now get one for Baby.” He moved off with one shoulder higher than the other. He couldn’t whip Chico Vejar either. He couldn’t even whip me.

  “Do you know why Donoghue quit fighting?” I asked her, just to get things going again.

  “Because the Mexican died their second fight is what you’re going to tell me,” she told me. “Schulberg wrote that one up. Go see what Verina is doing. I’m going to bed. “

  “Any man who wears canvas suits can’t be all bad,” I defended Schulberg. But the girl was gone. She wasn’t Ava Gardner. But she was a beauty all the same.

  Verina, I judged, must be the girl wearing horn-rimmed glasses who was having trouble finding a husband for her boxer. I was sure that if she let her bitch off the leash for ten minutes on any side street the problem would resolve itself. All that remained was to choose a street. I decided to recommend the Rue Tiquetonne simply because I like the name.

  Verina’s glasses had fallen over her nose, which was pugged, lending her the aspect of female boxer wearing glasses.

  “Why isn’t the Grab-the-First-Thing-That-Comes-Your-Way System, employed by people in finding a soul mate, good enough for dogs?” I inquired courteously yet keeping my distance. You have to be careful about making jokes to Americans these days as they have more troubles than other people.

  “Because anything is good enough for people,” Verina told me, “but anything isn’t good enough for dogs. Don’t tell me—I know.”

  “I didn’t know,” I went along. “Can I ask how you found it out? Or am I being personal?”

  “Nothing personal at all. I found it out by marrying two of them, that’s how I found out. O God, why did it have to be me?”

  I waited politely to find out why it had to be her.

  “Oh, why did I have to marry an Argentinian built like a stallion?” she grieved; “no woman could stand that.”

  “I begin to get the drift,” I assured her, thinking of a Great Dane capturing Mimi’s heart.

  “You get the wrong drift,” she assured me in turn. “Oh, why did I have to marry a Frenchman built like a trout? I was better off with Ramón! I couldn’t even tell if we were in the same bed!” She tossed a lipstick into her handbag and shut it with a click. “O God,” she strangely prayed, “where is the Truth?” And she left.

  I put my back against the wall and thought about fighters who came up fast and couldn’t be beat. Then went down slow and finally didn’t fight anybody anymore. Satterfield and Vince Foster and Lew Jenkins and Booker Beckwith and Anton Radek and Johnny Colan and Altus Allen and Nick Castiglione and Carl Vinciquerra and Milt Aron and Willie Reddish and Billy Marquart and Pete Lello and Willie Joyce and Bratton.

  Till the moon of the night-trees, at last set free, rose with a single leaf touching its tip.

  Then I thought of the friends I had had a lifetime away, but one decade before.

  The face of Juliette Greco was no longer memorable. I had seen her again. Waiting to take a train to Marseilles, we had gone to the station’s dining room and sat next to a table that looked unusual. A dozen American men and one woman holding a huge doll. She was quite pale, rather fragile, with the appearance of an American starlet. The men, by their conversation, were plainly a film outfit going south, probably to Africa, for a film.

  The woman looked familiar. I thought she was an American starlet who was trying to look like Juliette Greco.

  When she passed, carting her doll, Castor greeted her as Greco.

  “We were wondering w
ho the beauty was, and weren’t certain,” she explained diplomatically.

  “It’s not all it seems to be,” Greco answered, smiling wanly, and passed on.

  What transformation a decade had made in Mouloudji I do not know. Having gone through his talent for writing, then painting, then for singing, I had seen him, the last time, in a bit part in an Italian film. I don’t think I’ll see Mouloudji again.

  Cau I had also seen. Cau was a success. He had been assigned by L’ Express to follow Hemingway on Hemingway’s last tour of the bullrings. Hemingway, being sick and dying, would make good reading for a certain type of reader.

  Hemingway had known of this particular danger in Africa.

  “Highly humorous was the hyena,” he had written in Green Hills of Africa, “obscenely loping, full belly dragging at daylight on the plain, who, shot from the stern, skittered on into speed to tumble end over end. Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back, his four feet and full belly in the air. Nothing could be more jolly than the hyena coming suddenly wedge-headed and stinking out of high grass by a donga, hit at ten yards, who raced his tail in three narrowing, scampering circles until he died.

  “It was funny to M’Cola to see a hyena shot at close range. There was that comic slap of the bullet and the hyena’s agitated surprise to find death inside him. It was funnier to see a hyena shot at a great distance, in the heat shimmer of the plain, to see him go over backwards, to see him start that frantic circle, to see that electric speed that meant that he was racing the little nickelled death inside him. But the great joke of all, the thing M’Cola waved his hands across his face about, and turned away and shook his head and laughed, ashamed even of the hyena; the pinnacle of hyenic humor, was the hyena, the classic hyena, that hit too far back while running, would circle madly, snapping and tearing at himself until he pulled his own intestines out, and then stood there, jerking them out and eating them with relish.

  “‘Fisi’ M’Cola would say and shake his head in delighted sorrow at there being such an awful beast. Fisi, the hyena, hermaphroditic, self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain, looking back, mongrel dog-smart in the face; whack from the little Mannlicher and then the horrid circle starting. ‘Fisi,’ M’Cola laughed, ashamed of him, shaking his bald black head. ‘Fisi.’ Eats himself. ‘Fisi.’”

  Cau was the right man for the job.

  Boris Vian was dead. He had come out of a movie house, where he had seen an American version of a book he had written, and collapsed of a heart attack on the walk.

  The Golden Zazu had lost some of her sheen. But was still the Michele who cared for people.

  Bost had both failed and succeeded. He had done no creative work since The Last Profession, and had had no commercial success. He had simply gone along doing odd-jobs in scenario writing and journalism. After ten years he had not aged or changed. He had not succeeded, yet had not failed. He seemed content to be a journalist, though he had begun more creatively. But he had kept respect for integrity and had sustained respect for himself in others. He remained Sartre’s closest friend.

  Of all, Castor alone seemed to have gained personal strength in the decade. Djamila Boupacha wrote to her in gratitude from prison in Algiers:

  “My fate seems marvelous now.”

  The moon of the night-trees, at last set free, rose with a single leaf touching its tip.

  I saw the river cruiser returning. The people behind the glass walls were still looking out at the couples walking the quai.

  The people on the boat waved at the few lovers still strolling.

  And not one lover waved back.

  Within The Metro’s fluorescent deep

  Are cries unheard on the busy street.

  One night I rode it all alone

  It never stopped. Nobody got on.

  That night was ferris-wheeled

  For one by one

  The darkened platforms passed like being swung.

  Dark against the white of the Metro wall

  I saw the girl with the black coiffure.

  For some girls clocks chime within the heart

  For others, each clock must strike apart.

  In a rain that lightly rains regret

  Upon the hour of the unbought whore

  I’ll come in my turn to the final door

  To pay up my money.

  To spit out the pit.

  When I come to the dance on the bed of the whore

  To marry my bride with the black Coiffure

  Let bells marry bells, let no lamp burn apart

  Let all clocks of Paris strike hard on the heart.

  Let odor of peaches mix with that of perfume

  Let the green of the moss break the heart of the stone

  Let no clock strike singly

  Let all jukes cry one song.

  And above a bed on the Rue Tiquetonne

  Keep two lamps burning each to each—

  Tique-DONG!

  Tique-DONG!

  Tique-DONG!

  Tique-DONG!

  BARCELONA

  THE BRIGHT ENORMOUS MORNING

  The-Porter-Who-Almost-Has-It-Made never moves any farther from the elevator door than Yogi Berra does from home plate, but the thing is automatic and I don’t need anyone to raise the handle of a door for me.

  He blocks me off, raises the handle, smiles while I pass in review before him into the cage, holds the smile when he follows me in, presses the button that says tercero—and smiles. The three of us go up together—myself, the porter, and the smile.

  “This thing is automático,” I explained this morning, thinking he didn’t know. He smiled: automático.

  If he keeps on smiling like that I’ll have to tell him frankly, I am promised to another.

  No, I haven’t tipped him. That would only be to encourage him.

  I took a one-peseta ride down the Rambla de Las Floras on a streetcar called Ataranzas, but the conductor put me off for aiming my camera at something through his window. If you’re the conductor of a streetcar anywhere you can’t be too careful about who you take aboard.

  The Rambla de Las Floras is a wide and prosperous ramble through arbors of flowers and arbors of books. Barcelona is a woman reading with mimosa in her hair. She is reading James Hadley Chase; there is no censorship of flowers.

  The Rambla is made for strolling. Though at nine o’clock of a weekday morning the people on it are hurrying to get somewhere as fast as those on Fifth Avenue. I caught a glimpse of an American wearing a pith helmet. Now, what country did he think he was in? But the people I wanted to talk to were those who weren’t going anywhere, if they were up yet. I took a turn into the Calle de San Pablo, and that was a good move because it brought me into the Barrio-Chino.

  The Barrio-Chino is the bottom of Barcelona, a town that tries to go straight down as well as straight up instead of just slopping over at the sides like Los Angeles. This is because the Spaniard is a person who goes straight up or straight down without slopping over. What some of these straight-up-and-down types were up to was almost any thing they thought would get them over the wall; such as walking down the street with government lottery tickets promising winners to everybody the day after tomorrow.

  I didn’t see how they could tell which numbers were that sure to win because those who weren’t blind in their reading eye had lost the sight of both. I hope nobody was lying as the totally blind aren’t supposed to lie. It’s alright for people who have lost sight in one, and nothing is any longer expected of people who can see out of both. But if the totally blind were telling the truth that morning in Barcelona, the Chief of State has begun robbing the rich to give to the poor.

  To tell the truth myself, the things people do in The
Barrio to get over the wall don’t come to anything more than what the people who would just as soon stay inside it are doing. A boy of ten had deliberately put himself between the shafts of a two-wheeled cart and was hauling it uphill to the fish market. What made him think his future would be more secure if he got seventy-five pounds of shovelnosed garpike to the top of a hill I sometimes still wonder.

  Another, a smaller boy, was putting in his time better by urinating from the curb to the street. Two girls, who looked like sisters, but not his, were watching him with flat-eyed curiosity. “Qué práctico!” the taller of the two observed. How practical! The littler one nodded in agreement: Quite practical. I was glad to see some people weren’t losing ground.

  A grown-up girl hurried up to me and stuck a pin in my neck. It was attached to a paper heart and it was my jacket she’d aimed at. I didn’t feel entitled to contribute as I don’t yet have heart disease, but I looked around to see who’d sent her, thinking it might be someone I knew. In France you’re permitted to refuse a paper heart, but if you walk past a heart-tag pusher here you’re insulting Franco. He’s a fellow in politics here.

  Somebody had chalked a cup of coffee, with red and green chalk, on the window of the coffeehouse and written below:Café—El Café Verdadero

  Black Coffee—THAT’s coffee

  But across the window of the coffeehouse directly opposite someone else had chalked a cup of coffee with a jug of milk beside it, and the milk was steaming. This had been done in black and white and under it was another promise:Café con leche—El Único Verdadero

  Coffee with milk—THAT’s coffee

  I’d known Spain was divided but had had no idea things had gone this far.

  A woman with coffee-colored hair was standing in front of the Café Verdadero place. She gave me a black-coffee smile. She didn’t use sugar either; that much was plain.

  Another woman smiled from the coffee-with-milk capitol, and her smile was pure cream. Grade A.A smile like that—never ask if it’s pasteurized, the smile is what matters. I crossed over to find out what she thought of Castro. I didn’t intend to join anybody. What I wanted was both sides of the argument.