Algren at Sea

by Nelson Algren

  “Par example”: I continued, “during the Spanish Civil War an American actor named Flynn arrived at the Spanish border accompanied by his studio’s publicity department. He was photographed in a Spanish Republican militiaman’s uniform, being greeted by a Spanish Republican militiaman, and the photograph was sent to newspapers all over the world with the story that the actor was now fighting against Facism. When the stunt was over he returned to his yacht, anchored in French waters, and had a party.”

  “I am disgusted with your Flynn,” the girl assured me.

  “Don’t bother,” I suggested. “For one thing, he is dead; and, for a second, he wasn’t my Flynn.”

  “Then what is the point of telling me?” she wanted to know. She was a child of a strong curiosity.

  “The point is that when Hemingway became just as dead as Flynn, and Macdonald made it his business to sum up the man’s life, it wasn’t necessary for him to compare Flynn’s adventure in Spain with Hemingway’s in order to create the impression that there was no difference. The picture of Flynn fighting Fascism by shaking hands with a Republican militiaman and that of Hemingway doing the same thing, made it necessary for Macdonald only to comment about how much Hemingway loved being photographed.

  “Kitsch is a way of implying when one lacks the courage to speak directly. He thus created an impression that Hemingway, too, was faking. All he omitted was that Hemingway was on the Spanish front, in the worst part of the fighting between Madrid and Barcelona for two years. All he omitted was that Hemingway endured battle, wrote the best dispatches on the fighting, assisted on a movie called Spanish Earth and, later, wrote a novel about that war which brought the necessity of defeating Fascism in Spain to multitudes in America.”

  “What was the pudding-man doing at that time?” she wanted to know.

  “An excellent question,” I congratulated her, “he was discovering a way to be a dissenter against the way we live and at the same time to earn good dividends.”

  “How is this done?” she asked me.

  “I’m trying to tell you,” I scolded her—“it is done by being extremely careful about disapproving of the society in which one lives while at the same time being very angry at its art. By doing this one is not at all likely to be subpoenaed by a Congressional Committee asking what organizations one belongs to. Congressmen do not consider organizations of intellectuals to be dangerous. In another country, yes. Not here. Here it is the men who organize unions that must be watched. And by knowing this, Macdonald is able to be against things as they are in Dissent and for things as they are in Encounter, and to make as much money by saying things against them one week, as he does by taking them all back the next. This he has learned from watching Hollywood writers lick a book into shape. Only he goes farther—he knows how to lick a writer into shape.”

  “He sounds terribly confused,” the girl observed.

  “On the contrary,” I insisted, “he is very clear-headed.”

  “But does not this kind of process have a poor effect on the writing of the avant-garde?”

  “It leaves the avant-garde with no distinction between themselves and the Philistinism except to change their own name to ‘hipsters’ and that of the Philistines to ‘squares.’ And makes it possible to have both garlic dressing and roquefort.”

  “In the pudding of mediocrity,” the girl said thoughtfully—and this was a most thoughtful girl—“I think Macdonald is no plum.”

  At which moment the Diagnostician materialized beside us with a face full of explanations.

  “I didn’t mind paying the extra nickel,” he advised us, “but I prefer roquefort to garlic and it looked to me like an even trade.” He drew the salads closer, for purposes of comparison. “How do they look to you?”

  I failed to see the trap.

  “Frankly,” I told him, “the garlic salad looks better.”

  Immediately he put it in front of me. “I can’t eat both,” he assured me, “it’s only twenty cents.”

  Had it not been for wanting to make a strong impression on the girl I might have pushed it back. Instead, I found a twenty-five-cent piece and handed it to Macdonald.

  He pocketed it and evaded my gaze while a triumphant flush rose in his cheeks at the realization that he had recouped the difference in price between garlic and roquefort.

  Only he hadn’t. I fixed him with an eye so steely that at last he reached into a small dime-store wallet, unhooked a brass clasp and brought forth a nickel.

  He ate the roquefort with a disappointed air. And left us, immediately after, with the same aura of silent reproach. There was no doubt we were both kitschers now.

  Yet I could not help but marvel at what I had seen: a man recognized as an arbiter of literary style who himself did not possess ordinary grace sufficient to see him through a meal in an Automat.

  “In L’Automatique,” my friend observed after he had left, “all seems automatique.”

  Well, I told you she was from out of town.

  JULY 25TH

  BAY OF BENGAL

  “Never let a woman get so worldly-wise that she loses her leadership,” Smith glanced up at me from the table where he’d been shuffling a beat-up deck, “I took a seventeen-year-old bum named Gracie and made a fast-stepping queen out of her, but she lacked leadership. The minute you let a woman feel she don’t need you to lean on, she’s off and away.”

  “What’s our next port?” I wanted to know.

  “Calcutta. Gracie got so near to perfect I changed her name to Old Faithful. She kept herself that clean, and kept our apartment that neat, she cooked so good, and done whatever I told her without asking questions, and all the while bringing in five hundred to seven-fifty a week, I had to belt her now and then for being too perfect—what else was there to belt her for?”

  “Was she good-looking?” I asked.

  “The doll of the world. One hundred and four pounds of redheaded ravishment, that was all.”

  “You should have married her,” I suggested.

  “The truth of the matter is, Mister,” Smith assured me, “was that taking out papers on Gracie was exactly what I had in mind. When a hustling woman has had as many chances as Gracie had to put me in the pen and didn’t, she deserves to work out of a home instead of a bar.”

  “How’s your boil?” I inquired.

  “You see, I owned the bar Gracie was working out of—and it wasn’t a bar—it was a taproom.”

  “I didn’t know there was a difference,” I admitted.

  “You would if you had to run one in Santa Vaca,” Smith informed me, “where all the bars had to shut down at twelve o’clock but a taproom could stay open till four. That made a difference when a ship was docked in town. That was why I called my place The Fantail—like it was someplace you just hung around off duty. I know you think I’m a bum, sir, but that’s only because you met me at sea. On the beach I’m a first-class operator and I know my trade.”

  “Every time I talk to you you have a new trade,” I had to point out to him.

  “I had a three-piece combo going for me, and the drummer had one of those rubber deals we used to slip over a gearshift for when things got out of hand. The piano player wore knucks. The trumpet man was unarmed because he was a sissy. Gracie kept a pound jar of Pond’s cold cream in her handbag, and we had an old spade called Bull who took care of the men’s room. Bull was very dignified and wore a high white collar and tie, but I never called on him except in extreme emergency because he was on probation and hadn’t ought to be working where liquor was sold. We were ready.”

  Smith began that slow rotation of his skull which betokened inner agitation.

  “I left the joint early one night—about twelve—and left Gracie in charge. It was breaking daylight when she came in. I was in bed. She put eighty-five bucks on the dresser. Then she took off her slipper and put two c-notes on top of the eighty-five.

  “‘Where’re they from?’ I asked her.

  “‘A new trick,’ she tol
d me.

  “‘I didn’t notice him—he must have come in after I left,’ I told her.

  “‘No, he was there when you left. The Bosun’s Mate,’ she told me.

  “‘Him?’ I asked her. ‘Him? Where would he get two bills to blow so free and easy?’

  “‘I don’t know, Daddy,’ she told me, ‘but the man is ready to beat.’

  “‘You don’t know where the money is from but you think the man is ready to beat?’ I tried her.

  “‘Not if you don’t think so, Daddy,’ she told me, coming into bed.

  “I let her go to sleep. I didn’t mind beating a Bosun’s Mate but I didn’t want to undertake whipping the American navy. What if it were ship’s funds the man was spending?

  “‘I don’t want you to rap to that new trick,’ I told Gracie the first thing in the morning. ‘Don’t even say “hello.”

  “‘Whatever you say, Daddy,’ she agreed.

  “Things never start the way you think they’re going to. Gracie shook the Bosun’s Mate off, wouldn’t even drink with him, and he left without a beef. After he left I relaxed because, what I hadn’t told Gracie, the reason I was scared of the man wasn’t that he might be a thief so much as I was afraid he might be law. I was sitting there with a couple old-time hookers, thinking about this move to myself, when one of the hookers says, of a sudden, ‘All I want to do is get married.’ ‘What in God’s name you hangin’ around here for then?’ I asked her. ‘To give the joint a little class,’ she answered me. ‘You wouldn’t add class to a geek-show,’ I let her know, ‘every time you come in that door the joint is brought down.’ ‘In that event I’ll leave,’ she jumps salty. ‘’N don’t come back’—I threw that in just to speed her on her way and she stops dead at the door—‘Just for that last crack,’ she tells me. ‘I am coming back.’ ‘We’ll wait,’ I let her know, not worrying about a thing.

  “It wasn’t half an hour before the door flies open and in comes a flying wedge of so many seamen I thought the S.S. Idaho must be in port—at least forty of them lined up at the bar and here comes the Bosun’s Mate—250 pounds of him in new whites acting like he never been in the joint before.

  “‘Who’s the head-pimp here?’ he wants to know, coming directly to me to put that question.

  “‘I am,’ I told him, ‘you looking for work?’—and he slugged me so fast I went ass over teakettle and landed against the bar.

  “‘And now,’ he tells me while I’m still sitting there trying to clear my head, ‘we’re going to wreck this joint.’

  “‘Let me lock the door,’ I asked him, ‘and we’ll help you wreck it.’

  “I made it through that mob of sailors to the door, even though my head was still swinging from that sock he give me. I got the door locked. Then we went to work.

  “I wrapped myself around one of the Bosun’s arms, the drummer got the other, and the sissy rapped him with the gearshift-cover. The man didn’t even shake. ‘I’ll kill you a hundred times!’ the sissy hollered, and rapped him again. He shook, but didn’t go down. ‘Give me that thing,’ I told the sissy, and I brought that rubber down flat on the man’s skull. But he didn’t go down.

  “‘Let me try,’ the drummer asked, and I handed the rubber to the drummer. He tried it from the back on the very point of the man’s skull. That worked better. The man went down.

  “But he got right up.

  “‘Get Bull,’ I told the sissy.

  “Bull came out in his high collar and tie, grasped the situation and made a sign for us to step aside. Bull backed up a few feet, then came on skull first right into the Bosun’s middle. The man made a sound like Wuffooooof and went down doubled up. Then we went to work on the others.

  “By the time the shore patrol got there we had fifteen sailors laid out. The rest had fled. The Bosun’s Mate had come to, but all he could do was sit in the middle of the floor and hold his middle.

  The next day the navy hung an OFF LIMITS sign on us. I was as good as out of business. I went to see the Commandant.

  “‘Sir,’ I told him, ‘I’ve served my country’s armed forces too.’

  “‘What has that got to do with it?’ he asked me.

  “‘Sir,’ I tried another tack, ‘I realize we hospitalized one or two of your men.’

  “‘Six of them are still in traction,’ he told me, but I think he was exaggerating.”

  Danielsen came in wearing that lonesome smile; without saying what he had in mind in coming down to the crew’s lounge.

  “No game tonight,” Smith told him, “the guys aren’t taking another draw until we hit Calcutta.”

  Then, since Danielsen merely stood there smiling wanly, Smith concluded his wandering tale.

  “I was shut down for twenty-three days. Gracie had to start working out of a joint called The Club Gayety. I went to see the Commandant every day. ‘I’m sorry as can be, sir,’ I’d tell him, ‘that we put your men in traction. But, in a manner of speaking, sir, you have me in traction too. I can’t move either.’

  “‘In that case we’ll take you out of traction when my men get out,’ he told me.

  “‘But that may be weeks,’ I beefed.

  “‘Might be months,’ he told me.

  “‘I’ll be out of business by that time, sir,’ I told him.

  “‘Your old lady will help make ends meet,’ he tells me just like that.

  “‘Can we leave her out of this, sir?’ I asked him.

  “‘Well,’ he tells me, sitting back comfortably in his big navy chair, ‘you are a pimp, aren’t you, Smith?’

  “‘I’m not sure what you mean by that, sir,’ I told him, staying cool as possible. “‘I run a bar where seamen come looking for women and I don’t stand in the way of their wishes, that’s all.’”

  Smith glanced at Danielsen to see whether the man had decided what he wanted; but all Danielsen did was to smile remotely.

  “You see,” Smith addressed himself once more to me, “I realized that what the man was doing was trying to provoke me. He was being straight-on insulting so I’d flip and try to slug him, only I didn’t flip. I set myself to let anything he said roll off me.

  “‘O,’ he tells me, ‘I beg your pardon—I thought one of them redheaded whores was your wife.’

  “That almost did it—but not quite. I felt my throat go dry and felt my face burning. But I gave him a kindly smile all the same.

  “‘Sir,’ I asked him, gentle-like, ‘has it ever occurred to you that anyone of us might have been the Christ Child?’

  “He lost color because he hadn’t expected me to turn sweet on him. Then he started getting red. I saw it was the moment to reach him.

  “‘I’m afraid my wife will leave me if we don’t get the place open soon, sir,’ I told him—and got out of there fast.

  The next day the shore patrol came by in a jeep, took down the OFF LIMITS sign, gave me a paper to sign releasing the navy from any legal responsibility, and wheeled away.”

  “You and Gracie must have had a ball that night,” I surmised.

  “It wasn’t merely a ball,” Smith assured me—“it was a celebration—only Gracie wasn’t there.”

  “Gracie wasn’t there?” I asked, with the uneasy feeling I’ve been had again.

  “O no,” Smith assured me lightly, “she took off with the Bosun’s Mate. Like I told you—never let a woman get so worldly-wise that she loses her leadership. Always remember that you can always treat a woman too good—but you can never treat one too bad.”

  “Look, Smith,” I had to protest, “you got a boil on your ass as big as your mouth and you got plates in your mouth that don’t fit. You owe everybody aboard and you’ve got chronic clap. Manning has your discharge papers ready to hand to the company as soon as the ship hits Long Beach and who do you think is going to give a man in your condition a job? You are absolutely the most-fouled-up man I’ve ever known on land or sea and the worst of it is you don’t even seem to know it.”

  Smith hitched his
neck a notch outward to indicate he was giving serious reflection to my reproach.

  “You left something out, sir,” he told me after a minute, in the hum-blest voice I’d ever heard him employ—“my wife is in and out of the loony-bin like a fiddler’s elbow. Every time I send her an allotment the neighborhood winos take it out of our mailbox, sign it with her name and cash it. The poor thing is lucky if she gets a bottle out of it for herself. I can’t do anything about it because my sister-in-law has a rape warrant out on me. And you understand that anyone with a chest as weak as mine can’t afford to get into violent situations—to see my brother again would be to risk tuberculosis. Could you let me have five dollars till I get my draw in Calcutta, sir?”

  I found myself examining my wallet and, finding it had nothing in it but a ten-dollar bill, showed it to Smith in order to prove that I didn’t have five to loan him.

  “I’ll be right back with your change, sir,” I heard him say and noticed that I wasn’t holding the tenner anymore.

  “What did he mean?” Danielsen asked me.

  “Mean by what?”

  “By saying that anyone of us might have been Christ?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Danielsen turned to leave, but I had a question of my own. He waited.

  “Sparks told me that when a sailor is buried at sea and the ship’s carpenter sews him up, the last stitch goes through the nose. Is there anything to it?”

  “An old sea-tradition still faithfully observed,” Danielsen assured me, and again turned to leave.

  “Why? ”—I stopped him—“why?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  That irritated me.

  “What the goddamn hell is all the stupid secrecy about?” I demanded to know. “You’re the fourth man I’ve asked and everybody ducks like I’m asking a woman about her wedding night or something. There has to be a reason.”

  “There is,” Danielsen told me, but lowering his voice and regarding me somehow remotely: “Seamen live between water and land and belong to neither, their whole lives. They can’t rest at sea and they can’t get rest on land. So they get to thinking that, after death on the ocean bottom, they’ll rest forever. But if a dead man’s nostrils are left open, he’ll take in too much water to get all the way down. He’ll float, as he has in life, between bottom and top and never rest for all eternity.”