Algren at Sea

by Nelson Algren

“Five-four. We lost.”

  I turned away, but felt his hand on my shoulder lightly. I turned back.

  “That wasn’t what you were supposed to ask, sir.”

  “What was I supposed to ask?”

  “You were supposed to ask why this fellow got hisself throwed out and then just sat there saying he had it coming.”

  “Why did he get hisself throwed out and just sat there saying the same thing over and over?”

  “Well, he said, ‘I had it coming, I had it coming,’ because his conscience bothered him about trying to steal a baseball.

  “That’s what he claimed later.”

  “And what about the ten thousand dollars’ worth of office equipment he’d moved the night before?” I asked.

  “‘Everybody moves office equipment on Saturday nights,’ was the way Zekl felt about that—‘but no good guy,’ he told me, ‘no really good guy ever slides into first. Nobody ever slides into first,’ he went around saying. That’s what he’d meant when he kept saying ‘I got it coming, I got it coming. ’ It wasn’t office equipment on his conscience. He’d got hisself throwed out at home because he didn’t think a fellow who slood into first deserved to score a run.”

  “Frankie Frisch did,” I reminded Smith.

  Smith jerked his neck a notch inward.

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “I’m not putting you on,” I told him irritably, “he slood fingers-first, on his chest, into first, at the Polo Grounds. It started a riot.”

  Smith studied me.

  “If it started a riot,” he decided thoughtfully, “then he must have.”

  He put out his hand and I took it.

  “Thanks for telling me that. I feel better now.”

  “Because you were the guy who slood into first?”

  He grinned.

  “You G-Twoed it, sir,” he told me with fresh respect—“you hit it right on the head. Never was nobody called Hippo Zekl. I made up the name because I was ashamed of what I done. You’ve took a weight off my conscience. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any time I can do anything for you, sir, you have only to let me know.”

  “You could fill me in on why the last stitch goes through the nose any time you feel in the mood,” I suggested.

  Smith nodded as though he’d anticipated my question.

  “Let me make a suggestion, sir,” he told me without seeming offended, “ask Chips. It’s his job, not mine.”

  We were three days from the port of Bombay.

  Port of Bombay

  I. INTO THE GALA DAY

  This street, when the land was British, was named Saféd-Galli: Avenue of the White Whores. Today it is the Street of the Hundred Cages. Not everybody went home.

  Those who stayed do a lot of spitting. The walks in front of their cages are streaked by ropes of spittle of blackish red. A platinum blond with purple lips puts out her tongue; and her tongue is a deadlier purple yet. She smiles and the smile fills with blood: these ominous splatters marking the public ways are betel. The girls of the public cages chew it to dull hunger.

  Some go into the cages for shelter. Some are waifs who were snatched off the streets to earn their keep as servants until they grew big enough to be used. Some are working off fines for husbands and brothers. Betel is easier to spit out than debt.

  India’s bureaucracies are accused of using too much paper; around the cages of Suklaji Street it uses none at all. Any tourist can become an official jail visitor just by pausing long enough to say, “Hello, Baby.” By dispensing with paper-work entailed in making out visitors’ passes, an enormous saving is being effected for the nation. What India will do with the money is India’s problem.

  The areaways, where boys wearing saris wait, seem less streaked by betel. “No mama, no papa—you give,” one cries in light mockery after me. His sari looks wound in mockery of himself; and of all Bombay’s grinning amputees, contented bearers of incurable afflictions, flaunters of unnamed and unnamable diseases; and rouged gimps who plead languidly.

  Yet the woman extending her palm upturned to me through bars of wood, while giving suck to her infant, isn’t mocking me. Her breasts are wrinkled.

  Nor that lank youth naked to his loincloth, balancing a bicycle against himself and shading his eyes with his hand while standing in cow dung. He ducks into a doorway, emerges with a red umbrella hooked to his cloth, mounts the bicycle and wheels merrily away. When you work for Western Union it doesn’t matter what you’re standing in.

  The girl’s voice bouncing in from an American army base, through shop, taxi and bazaar, is that of Pat Suzuki—Daddy, I want a diamond ring—

  “The proper season for rain is the present, sir,” a voice in low-rolling thunder warns me—“yet the entire month, we are empty!”

  Two eyes, threaded by yellowish filament and filmed by cunning, looked up at me from under my armpit like two olives in a bowl of buttermilk. The man was almost as wide as he was high, and as dark as he was sweaty; with the head of a lion so long caged its mane has fallen to ruin.

  “O, Bombay is a great city, my friend—nobody knows how many people there are in Bombay, sir—multitudes!”—here The Lion daubed at his forehead with a handkerchief, taking care to flutter it against my lapel so I could see it was silk—“a great city and one with much traffic! Yet not a drop of rain! Nature finds herself scourged: friendship falls off: brothers divide. In cities, mutinies. In countries, discord. In palaces, treason. Bonds cracked between son and father”—I sensed his touch go down my belt then lightly withdraw. I’d never been frisked before by anyone who could quote Lear while doing it. It was my first time.

  Anyhow the transistor was on my other side.

  “A hundred and fifty inches of rain once fell in five days at Cherripunji! Yet here”—he turned his palms so wide yet so empty up to a blind sun—“Empty, sir, a city of empty multitudes! ‘We must do something i’ the heat! ’”—and closed his pitch with a smile so snaky it wriggled out of his perspiration.

  The girl giving suck to her infant still had her palm upturned at me through the bars. The platinum blonde again put out her tongue. The lank youth on the bike was lost in the traffic’s endless pleading. The dreadful day of big Bombay burned on.

  While Pat sang on and on—Daddy, you got to get the best for me . . .

  Yet Daddy never replied.

  “Sir!” The Lion introduced himself with a command that sounded like “Atten-shun! ”—“Sir! I am Baliram! Thirty-five years in Customs!”—then coyly waggling a warning finger playfully at me—“Beware, my American friend! I may come aboard your ship! Baliram may inspect your quarters! O, you won’t know Baliram in uniform! Baliram knows the tricks! Watch out, my friend, or your visit may cost you a pretty penny!”—then that smile like a pang gone yellow with servility.

  Suddenly shifting to a man-to-man approach, The Lion became all manliness and candor—“Baliram is no angel to be sure. Baliram knows the places seamen go. It has not been so long that Baliram has forgotten his own sins. Baliram too was young”—I had to keep turning slightly from him as he moved, to keep him off the transistor—“A man may see how this world goes with no eyes” he assured me—“but have you ever spent an evening in an Anglo-Indian parlor, my friend? Have you seen the little ones playing contentedly on the kitchen floor while the Anglo-Indian mother cooks and the father reads Dickens aloud?” I wondered who was listening to father reading in the parlor while everyone else was busy on the kitchen floor. “Have you seen a home God watches over, my friend?”

  “No,” I had to admit, “but I once knew a girl who roomed with the Alton Giant.”

  The Lion pretended to laugh. “You are pulling my leg, my friend—How can there be trust between men unless they begin with respect?” His fingers brushed a comer of the transistor.

  “Sir, my car is at the corner. Let me show you an Anglo-Indian home.” He linked my arm in his. This old boy really wanted me.

  He waved a taxi to the curb, climbed in beside the
driver and began giving directions in the tone one would use to one’s chauffeur, with a condescending hand on the driver’s shoulder.

  “O, my friend, you don’t know our people,” he resumed, “you hear nothing but cries of baksheesh! baksheesh! so you think we think of nothing but baksheesh. My friend, let me tell you. We do not all live as you see the ones of Suklaji Street live. We are the most spiritual of peoples. In our humble Anglo-Indian homes you will see The Golden Rule come true!”

  I looked out the window to see if there were a good movie in town. Under a sky stained by betel we wheeled midst the blind, overtaking the maimed, and abandoning the dying. Come to The Land of the Golden Rule! Opportunity knocks in bustling Bombay! Here at last, I perceived, was a city where I might not only get a start in life—but a headstart! For I outweighed almost everybody and even the ones my own size were non-violent. Nothing stood in my way.

  “Madam”—I began practicing a pitch of my own—“Do you find cataracts troublesome? This little bottle of Magic Chalmugra Oil cures cataracts, leukemia, leprosy, the falling sickness, hernia and gangrene—only seventy-five rupees per bottle. Thank you, madam. You need a small loan in order to marry, sir? Happy to help you—leave your wife at the fourth cage from the left, Falkland Road and Suklaji Street. You say you are well known as The Cha-Cha Queen, young woman? How would you like to give private dancing lessons to American seamen on long- or short-term rates?”

  Come to The Land of Non-Violence! The One Democracy where everyone has the same opportunity of leaping into a taxi beside its passenger and saying “Ssssssss—you like nice gel, sor?” If he looks like he’d prefer riding alone, get hold of a finger and smile. Breathe on him. If he still doesn’t break try “Ssssssss—you like nice boy, sor?” Then claw him lightly, blow in his ear and get out. Americans solve spiritual issues violently and we are a non-violent people.

  Never forget—no violence, no violence, no violence.

  There’s big money to be made in India mugging the mutilated. Earn while you learn! A pretty penny can be picked up robbing the lame when they’re sleeping. Something for everybody in bustling Bombay! Learn to fall headlong in front of a gharry! Dad! Be a leper and own your own bell! Sis! Be a girl devi-dasi and give suck to your young behind bars! Junior! Learn to make friends with seamen and wear jade earrings! Granny! Be an old abandoned ayah and scratch strangers from a prone position! Get your left arm sliced off at the elbow and pick up alms with your right! Did somebody leave the knees out of your legs? Stick your foot in your mouth and learn to roll! Make a pile overnight stuffing hashish into condoms! Come to The One Democracy that squats to pee! But: no violence no violence no violence.

  I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t still in Chicago.

  Miracle of Todd-A-O, I saw, was showing at the Strand. Jerry Lewis was due at the Regal. Kwality Ice-Creams with Soft-Recorded Music flashed past between chop suey joints and hamburger stands. Where the hell was The Mysterious East?

  “The offense of throwing articles at members of the judiciary,” Baliram saw fit I should know, “is increasing in Bombay, sir. Only last week Mr. Sarjero hurled a shoe at President Magistrate Chinoy in the Mazagon Court. Fortunately it struck an advocate. Persons of this type menace our society, sir. I am of those who feel that, unless deterrent sentences are imposed, it will not be long before disorder will reign in our courts.”

  “What happened to the nut who threw the shoe?” I asked.

  “Two years’ rigorous imprisonment. He was fortunate. He might well have received five.”

  A kid with his left arm sliced off raggedly at the elbow climbed into the seat beside me and shoved the elbow into my face. It was festering nicely.

  “Papa! You give!”

  I gave him a dime to take it away. He handed the dime back: not enough.

  “Now you don’t get anything,” I decided firmly.

  After all, I hadn’t sliced it off.

  The kid began working up a spittle and in no time at all had a great froth going. I handed him a quarter and he leaped out laughing. The old man smiled. He knew, I knew, everybody knew I had sliced it off.

  What India specializes in is chicken curry and redemptive beggary: the Indian takes such contentment in affliction he wants to share it. All that yummy agony, all that festering horror is yours as well as his. When he lays it on you, it stays there. Then leaps out laughing.

  Yet: no violence. No violence. No violence.

  Anthony Quinn in Carl Foreman’s GUNS OF NAVARONE flashed past. Hi, Tony. Hi, Carl. How’s Greg?

  “Do you see that innocent-looking hack-Victoria?” Baliram cut in. “Do you notice the bales of hay beneath for the horses? Only last Tuesday the Yellow Gate police found a radio transistor at the Red Gate, concealed in just such innocent bales!”

  “What the hell are the Yellow Gate police doing at the Red Gate?” I asked him—“Why don’t they stay in their own precinct?”

  A face framed by shoulder-length hair and fever obtruded itself into the cab window, but at my shout of dismay—“No! No!”—it withdrew looking shocked. That’s how to deal with interviewers from Time.

  I poked my head out to see if anyone from Playboy was around but couldn’t see a soul wearing a pith helmet.

  “And only yesterday the police stopped a gharry on Falkland Road—at the very point where we met today—and discovered not one transistor in the hay—but another in the tool-box!”

  You’re cutting in closer all the time, Dad, I reflected. I may have to jump ship and pan elsewhere for gold. But so long as I was seeing the city I might as well keep riding away from the madding throng, I decided.

  Even though my guide seemed more of a fink every minute.

  The throng got more and more madding. The nearer to his little Anglo-Indian nest Baliram got, the finkier he sounded and the worse the American movies got.

  The cab stopped for a light and I crouched, but a rap-rap-rap on the door straightened me up—a boy selling balloons, with his left leg tied back to a pole. It was the pole he was using to rap the taxi-door, leaning on the car to do so. I grabbed a balloon, handed him a dime and the Sikh started the car and the kid fell in the road before I could get my change.

  He sprawled on his face holding fast to his balloons. This was also my fault.

  “Don’t start up so fast,” I scolded the Sikh—“I had a nickel coming.”

  And away we wheeled without a woe into the gala day.

  Five Branded Women was at the Rex. Would they show the actual branding? That was one show I didn’t plan to miss.

  “A curious incident of only last Sunday,” the old man’s low rumble resumed, “a spider was discovered in an aerated bottle! Now the Health Officer has asked the people to consume aerated water only after the most careful examination!”

  I liked my balloon. It wasn’t young any more but I liked it all the more for that. It was fever-red stippled with small yellow disease spots but they weren’t malign. I could tell because they weren’t festering. Not yet.

  A cat raced across the street grinning with glee at the possibility of being squashed under wheels. He made the curb by a whisker and then stood on the curb looking disappointed: he was going to make another try.

  “Nonetheless, the situation is good for The Free World,” The Lion assured me, “your General Taylor saw that in South Viet Nam last week and had the courage to say so.”

  A girl put her head in the window and howled, “Bly-eye-nd brother! Blye-eye-nd brother!”

  She wasn’t lying. When I put my head out the window I saw him. He wasn’t just blind: he was the Blindest. He didn’t even have to roll his eyes to show he was blinder than anybody. Somebody had left his irises out.

  “Get him contact lenses,” I advised, and gave her a nickel. I would have made it a dime but I didn’t want to corrupt her.

  Geraldine Page was at the Alexander in Summer and Smoke.

  I became absorbed in watching a man so thin his bones cast shadows: six feet high, with a growth
of beard and hair, holding a bit of burlap across his genitals. Except for that burlap he was bare-ass naked in the middle of town. What a market for burlap!

  “Sir,” the old man insisted, “only today my friend Ayub Sardar Mulani was arrested by the General Crime Branch for breach of trust—what a dishonor to come upon gray hairs! Over a thousand pounds embezzled since the first of the year!—and admits everything freely! ‘Now that God is dead, my Mistress is my Heaven,’ he told the arresting officer, but his mistress threatened to leave him if he didn’t move her to a more respectable heaven. She may be an angel to Sardar, she told him, but people were looking at her as though she were a whore. So he stole to save his angel’s honor. We are a people who prize honor over everything, sir.”

  “So long as he didn’t spend anything on himself they can’t touch him,” I assured my old man as the cab wheeled up before a yellow cabaret.

  Baliram projected his great bulk backwards out of the hack and waddled, frontwards, to a door beside the cabaret; leaving me to settle with his “chauffeur.” I followed his monstrous bottom up a flight of careworn stairs into a room crowded with fixtures of another day. There was faint music, as of someone playing a piano only for himself, from the cabaret below. Overhead a wooden ceiling fan beat monotonously. My balloon tossed in its breeze—I’d have to be careful not to get it caught in that.

  “I want you to meet my wife,” Baliram assured me, “Pawm!” he bawled, “Pawmela! We hawv a gist, Pawmela!”

  All the pictures around the room were of the Stations of the Cross; and of such size that the room itself was diminished. The old man had a bigger stake in the legends of Christianity than in its real estate, it looked like. I wondered whether anybody was being crucified in the kitchen.

  “Pawm,” he called out in a tone most affected, “Pawmela dee-ah! We have a gist, Pawmela deeah!”

  The girl who emerged from the kitchen was another Caucasianized slant; one, I guessed, from the hills of Burma or the plains of Assam, with eyebrows penciled high to make her eyes look round. Her name would, more appropriately, have been Kai-Li. She didn’t crack a smile at sight of an American holding a red balloon. This was to show me she was British to the bone.