Algren at Sea

by Nelson Algren

  And yet had kept her pride.

  How many midnight passages with the robbed drunk sleeping it off and the desk clerk waiting below? How many madams? How many jails? How many slicky-boys? How many blows? Seamen on leave or on the beach, M.P., tourist, policeman and pimp, each had taken his measure of her flesh. Not one had let her go.

  In bars where fists are what count most, chance had pitched her, small and weak. She’d made shore on her own strength alone.

  “Me speak Eng-ilsh pretty good,” Kim assured me, “but not read worth good damn”—she took a record off the player and put a finger on its title—“You tell, please.”

  The record was Rock Love, that I’d first heard in a Chicago bar nearly as old-fashioned as the parlor where I now stood, in 1953.

  Kim stood over it as it played, guardedly. The machine was her most precious possession. Music that an American woman can buy for a dollar, she had had to pay for more dearly.

  You got to have Rock Love

  Deep in your heart

  Concannon drew the bed-curtains aside and stretched out like a begoggled bear; the first low snore of Kingfisher (Oklahoma’s) greatest lover, rumbled forth. Kim took my hand, led me to a window, raised the shade and pointed down.

  “Port of Pusan,” she explained.

  A line of low roofs shimmered as though oiled; around a pond so stagnant that it gleamed. Thin trails of smoke rose from rooftops toward a moon so low it looked tethered.

  “Kimchi,” she told me, “are cook-ing.”

  The women of the shacks were cooking kimchi. A dog head-down and dreaming of dinner came trotting between the pond and the moon.

  Kim raised the window and called, in a silvery twitter, to someone below.

  A girl, wearing a babushka, stepped out of a door that sagged on a single hinge. She turned her face up to us and waved; then went back into her sag-door house. Kim drew the shade.

  “Port of Pusan,” she repeated sorrowfully.

  So when temptation rocks moves your soul

  The rock of love won’t let you roll—

  And seamen’s voices in the street took up her sorrow, like voices trying to feel happy far from home. I had heard that lonesome pining in voices of farm-boys singing no farther away from home than their town’s last street-lamp.

  Concannon murmured in sleep. Kim unlaced his boots and took them off without waking him. Concannon wriggled his toes as though dreaming he was walking barefoot in the sandhills again. Then turned on his side, cursing somebody—“Ahr-ahr-your-ass-I’ll take-ahr-ahr-arh-Ho-Phang Road—” and into a dreaming triumph, I think, of pitching Manning over a rail into heavy seas.

  Kim opened a brown paper bag and put it into the birdcage: the bird backed into it.

  A light warning tap at the backstair door, and in walked a robust, smiling child, to fling off her babushka with a smile so white it lit the dimness. She was wearing dark bangs and looked as though she had been in town just long enough to shake the rice out of her sandals.

  “Po-Tin,” Kim introduced her.

  “Pass-in-Chair,” she added.

  Kim poured a shot of Scotch for me and another for Po-Tin. The country girl wrinkled her country nose: a mere nub of a nose as noses go.

  “Wee-skee, no good,” Po-Tin explained, “Coca-cola, good.” Her breasts were so full that their nipples indented the thin cloth of her sweater. All she wore, it appeared, was the sweater, a blue-belted skirt of dark red, and sandals. She drew a small fan out of the belt and came to me, smiling self-consciously while spreading the fan. I took it from her and put it aside. It didn’t fit either the scene or herself. On my lap she cocked her head.

  “Pass-in-Chair? ”—and glanced at Kim for enlightenment.

  “Him not work longside ship. Him pay money for just ride. Him sit in chair. Captain-Ship bring him kimchi,” Kim explained authoritatively.

  I finally got it: A passenger was one who passed over sea seated in a chair. Po-Tin studied me incredulously.

  “You pay Captain-Ship for just ride? ”

  The American millionaire assented smugly.

  She put an arm around my neck.

  “You give Po-Tin much dollar?”

  I held an American dime to the light, then put it between her breasts. Po-Tin giggled.

  Then, lifting her arms above her head, she invited me to raise the sweater. It came off easily. The dime rolled onto the floor. Concannon’s mug came through the curtains, his eyes filmed by sleep, struck out one paw and the dime rolled into it. It was like seeing an outfielder, blinded by sun, stick out his glove to let a line-drive smack into it.

  The milky beauty on my lap felt no more self-consciousness about her breasts than she did about her ears. She poked a forefinger into my chest.

  “Pass-in-Chair, you take Po-Tin longside ship? You take Po-Tin Ny-agara Fall by Cal-ifornia? Me cook for you. Me no make bad-business by Ny-agara Fall, Cal-ifornia.”

  Concannon reared, put on his specs, fixed his sightline and stared.

  “Looks like we’ve all gone bamboo,” he decided. And fell back to a snoring sleep with that dime still clutched in his paw.

  When storm-winds blow and the waters shift

  The rock of love won’t let you drift.

  From the depths of her green kimono, Kim brought up a narrow cigarette wrapped in brown paper and dragged on it deeply. Its odor, so poignant, flowered the dark and heavy air like a flurry of scented confetti. She passed it to Po-Tin.

  Po-Tin put the stick to my lips; I closed my eyes and drew deep.

  Nothing happened. Not a thing.

  I turned it to Po-Tin’s mouth and she dragged on it solemnly.

  Her eyelids fluttered, as one viewing a more distant scene. Then a shutter fell across her vision. I took this phenomenal snipe from her lips and tried once again.

  Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

  The girl against my chest let her arms drop loosely across my shoulders: my Smiling Child was stoned.

  And her breath, that was sweet, fled across my cheek. And her breast swelled tight to the cup of my hand; like a small animal preparing itself for rest.

  Girls, I thought, those with hair like light and those with hair darkly piled; girls, I thought, with smiles still expectant and those with no smile left at all; girls, I thought, whether in sleep or waking, lips parted in wonder or suddenly laughing: girls have a hard time of it everywhere.

  The air grew weighted and all times felt troubled. For all ports with low-burning lights awaited a long ship low to the waters.

  A long ship far out, moving without lights, through the fogs of the East China Sea: seeking its final dock. All voyages were now done.

  All the lowball games at sea and all the poker hands had been played; at sea or on the beach. The gambler lay in the gambling-room. Cards were still scattered across the floor. The seaman slept beside his whore. The farm-child wakened beside its mother-and saw the lights of passing cars move across the ceiling.

  Someone was standing on the other side of the door.

  The room had gone cold, and the half-naked girl on my lap was pressing against me for warmth. Someone kept trying the latch.

  Someone is always trying the other side of somebody’s door, I thought, slipping back into darkness and fog. Someone is always trying somebody’s latch.

  When I came awake, later, it was because Kim was rocking Po-Tin awake. The girl’s head was lolling like a child’s.

  “Ny-agara Fall by Cal-ifornia,” she murmured.

  I put her on her feet, snatched Concannon’s bottle and held her against me down the dark backstairs, following Kim with a flashlight.

  Kim held us back at the door while she went out into the warren of kimchi shacks and clotheslines stretched across the moon. Po-Tin put her hand on the back of my neck, while we waited in the darkness, and pressed my nape. Her fingers were strong.

  “Come,” Kim told us.

  Po-Tin led me by the hand. She walked under a clothesline without stooping—it cau
ght me across my forehead and I stumbled across a sleeping hog; that grunted and ran away. The girl laughed softly in the kimchi gloom.

  She lived in a little kimchi house with an earthen floor, where kimchi mice ran in and out in the light of a kimchi moon. Incense cut the odor of kimchi while she undressed in the dark.

  Po-Tin stood by the window a moment in the light of Asia’s moon; a girl all smoky gold with hair like the sleeping sea.

  Then she came toward me.

  When I wakened the moon had set. What was I doing in Asia?

  Upon other wakenings far from home, in a tent pitched on a German racetrack, in the bow of a Greek fishing boat or on a rooftop in Fez, I’d known what I was doing there. This time I could find no other reason than that I didn’t want to be at home.

  And what troubled Concannon so about going bamboo? What was wrong with bamboo-root for the man with no roots at all? I drew the sleeping girl to me. She pressed herself hard against me without waking. Her lips parted as her breath came harder, yet she didn’t waken. Then took me in, so warm and so deep that I was glad I hadn’t stayed at home.

  I dreamt I was searching around a pond that was strangely still, for some flower that grows only under water. I was about to find it when I felt myself heaved bodily and wakened coming down on my face.

  It was morning and Po-Tin was being playful. Naked as she had slept, she hurled herself like a small bear upon me. Despite a fifty-pound weight advantage, it was all I could do to keep from being pinned disgracefully. Yet, every time I squirmed out from under her, she butted me in the side.

  Sensing my irritation at being unable to overpower her, she relaxed long enough to permit me to pin her. Then lay, smiling up, her long eyes glistening.

  “What got into you? ” I asked the little brute.

  “I happy,” she told me.

  Well, what do you know.

  Breakfast consisted of two cups of instant coffee, black. She was out of milk. She was out of sugar.

  Orange juice: out. Cereal: out. Fried eggs with bacon curling: out. Toast, marmalade, wheatcakes, butter and cream: out.

  Out like her checking account. Out like her social security. Out like her life insurance and her driver’s license. Out like her electric lighting, her inside plumbing and running water; her morning paper and her diner’s card. Out like her books, like her records; like her carpeting, curtains, music, and mail.

  Lovely as she was by moonlight, I decided not to live with Po-Tin until the Westernization of Korea had gotten farther along.

  The G.I. blanket under which we’d slept looked like it had been recaptured at Hill 29. A pair of G.I. combat boots, recently shined, stood in a corner. Somebody had been trying to reassemble a radio out of the parts of a half dozen shattered sets—and Po-Tin didn’t seem to be mechanically inclined.

  She clutched the ten-dollar bill I’d given her between her palms, in the manner of a child pleased at a gift yet secretly fearing it is going to be snatched away from her. I hoped Kim would catch her another trick before the tenner was gone.

  “You come back, take me longside Ny-agara Fall, Cal-ifornia,” she instructed me.

  I poured a farewell shot of Concannon’s Scotch.

  “When I come back,” I promised her.

  I found my way across the slum where pigs slept below clotheslines and American tires, stripped of rubber, lay like ruined expatriates. Then, remembering I’d forgotten Concannon’s bottle, cut back across the yard.

  The door was shut. Po-Tin didn’t answer my knock. I walked in all the same.

  The bottle was on the table. Slicky-Boy sat on the edge of our bed smoothing my ten-spot across his knee. Po-Tin sat in a crashed-in heap at his feet, touching a dab of cotton to her mouth. Her lip had been split.

  I snatched the ten-spot, wadded it, and flung it to a far corner of the room. Don’t ask me why.

  Slicky-Boy stared up with his jaw hanging. Then he looked down at his knee, where the bill had just been; and saw it wasn’t there any more. Po-Tin scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees, snatched it and raced to Slicky-Boy with it; where she unwadded it across his knee.

  There must be some way of getting out of this.

  Slicky-Boy took the bottle from my hand, drank, and returned it to me.

  “You got cigarette, Joe?” he asked.

  He took the pack from my hand, extracted one; then pocketed the pack.

  “Oh man,” his heavy look warned me, “you are so wrong.”

  Kim came in looking for Concannon’s bottle, saw Po-Tin on the floor, and began giving Slicky-Boy holy hell.

  I didn’t know what she was saying, but it was plain she was cussing him out. She took the bottle from me, poured a drop on her handkerchief, dabbed Po-Tin’s broken lip with it. Po-Tin made small peeping noises.

  Suddenly, Slicky-Boy began dissenting from Kim’s condemnation and pointing toward me.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “You Captain-Ship? ” she asked me.

  “No,” I told her.

  “Him say? Yes, you Captain-Ship, take Po-Tin longside you by Ny-agara Fall, Cal-ifornia. He say you no take Po-Tin without you take he too.”

  “Okay, I’m the captain, and I’m not going to take either one.”

  Kim translated.

  Slicky-Boy looked at me sullenly.

  “You no Number-One, Joe,” was his verdict—“you Number Six! Number Nine! Fourteen!”

  And on that deadly insult I left.

  Yet all across the littered slum I heard him crying derisively behind me—“Number-Nineteen-Joe! Twenty-Eight! Hey! Number-Sixty-Joe!”

  I felt like Number-One-Hundred-Joe.

  JULY 4TH

  EAST CHINA SEA

  “My head may be on sidewise,” Smith was acknowledging some jibe without anger, “but it’s got the best nose on it on this ship. How do you think I got to be a smeller for Some People’s Gas if I couldn’t smell gas where nobody else could?”

  “One day you’re an ex-fighter, the next you’re an ex-smeller,” I professed to be skeptical. He let his neck out one notch.

  “As a matter of fact, in my case the two trades were directly connected, sir,” he assured me—“it so happened in the army that a certain First Sergeant took such a dislike to me I couldn’t get off K.P. So I beefed to the Battery Commander I was being taken advantage of. ‘Have you done any fighting?’ he asked me. I sensed he had something in mind. ‘Not professionally, sir,’ I told him, ‘but I never minded hitting somebody with my fists if it was alright with the other fellow.’ ‘Would you like to try your hand at inter-battalion fighting?’ he asked me. ‘I’ll go where I’m needed most, sir,’ I answered promptly.”

  “How’d you make out?” I encouraged him.

  “I won my first two fights on knockouts as they were both with fellows from California. Which came to me as a complete surprise, as I’d never been in a fight where I didn’t get hit myself before. It dawned on me that I’d hit on a way of staying off K.P. as long as they didn’t match me with anybody from outside of Los Angeles. As luck would have it, my third match was with a fellow from West Virginia. ‘If you can hold him to a draw I’ll see you make Pfc,’ the Second Lieutenant promised me. ‘What do I get if I decision him, sir?’ I asked. ‘Acting Corporal,’ the man came through. I didn’t dare ask what would happen if I knocked the fellow out—I didn’t feel I was ready for a responsibility like that.”

  “What happened, Smith?”

  “What happened when?” he regarded me absently.

  “When you fought the fellow from West Virginia.”

  “O, that,” he returned from whatever cloud he’d been on, “he broke my nose in the first round but I didn’t know it till the bell rang for the last round. Then I sneezed and some fragments of bone blew out of my right ear. One hit the ref and he thought I’d done it a-purpose and give the West Virginia fellow the fight right there.”

  The story seemed to be over.

  “What did that ha
ve to do with being a smeller for Some People’s Gas?” I prodded him.

  “O, that led directly into it. When I came up for discharge they told me I was entitled to a free operation so I would be able to breathe like a civilian, and the doc did such a good job, cleaning out my nose, that when I got back in civvies I found I could smell things I could never smell before—or that anybody else had ever smelled, for that matter. I could tell the smell of apples from the smell of pears from across the street of a vegetable store. I could smell the difference between a tomcat and his old lady. Put glue in a paste bottle and paste in a glue bottle and I could tell you you had those bottles mixed. I could smell things that you’d think didn’t smell: Cardboard. Sawdust. Stamps. When I’d get on a street car—Wow! People smell strongest of all. In bars I got so I could tell whether it was Schlitz or Pabst in the schooner. Once a bartender bet me I couldn’t tell bourbon from sour mash, and I won the bet—and one day—it was in the same bar—I told him he had a gas leak. Nobody else could smell it but me. I had to find it to prove myself, and I found it—his refrigerator. He called Some People’s Gas and the guy they sent out couldn’t smell it till I put his nose right in it. ‘With a nose like that you ought to be on my job,’ he told me. ‘How much do you make?’ I asked him. He got paid good. I went down there and they put me on as an apprentice smeller. But I rose through the ranks faster than I did in the army, and didn’t have to get into a ring with anybody from West Virginia neither. I was there six months when I had my big success.”

  He was gone again, gazing at some far horizon through the open port.

  “You were saying you had a big success with Some People’s Gas,” I reminded him when he looked ready to return.

  “Why, the way it was with Some People’s Gas was like this: sometimes I had to crawl around a roof and sometimes I had to crawl under the street. Sometimes I had to make a hole in a floor and hang upside-down. Sometimes I had to scale a wall and sometimes I had to fight off dogs. One night, toward closing time, I was under a filling station looking for a screwdriver I’d put down and couldn’t locate, when I smelled gas. It was a new station, using bottled gas, and the bottles weren’t leaking. I couldn’t find the leak, but I reported it.