The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  Time passed. Maybe a half hour. I reached into my shirt and felt the fish against my skin. I ran my fingers along the surface, feeling his fins and tail. Now I felt better. I pulled the fish out, held him up, and looked at him. A mackerel, a foot long. I held my breath so I would not smell him. Then I put him in my mouth and bit off his head. I was sorry he was already dead. I threw him aside and got to my feet. There were some big flies making a feast of my face and the wet spot on my shirt where the fish had lain. A bold fly landed on my arm and stubbornly refused to move, even though I warned him by shaking my arm. This made me insanely angry with him. I slapped him, killing him on my arm. But I was still so furious with him that I put him in my mouth and chewed him to bits and spat him out. Then I got the fish again, placed him on a level spot in the sand, and jumped on him until he burst open. The whiteness of my face was a thing I could feel, like plaster. Every time I moved a hundred flies dispersed. The flies were such idiotic fools. I stood still, killing them, but even the dead among them taught the living nothing. They still insisted on annoying me. For some time I stood patiently and quietly, scarcely breathing, watching the flies move into a position where I could kill them.

  The nausea was past. I had forgotten that part of it. What I hated was the laughter, the flies, and the dead fish. Again I wished that fish had been alive. He would have been taught a lesson not soon forgotten. I didn’t know what would happen next. I would get even with them. Bandini never forgets. He will find a way. You shall pay for this—all of you.

  —The Road to Los Angeles

  THE DAY AFTER I DESTROYED THE WOMEN I wished I had not destroyed them. When I was busy and tired I did not think of them, but Sunday was a day of rest, and I would loaf around with nothing to do, and Helen and Marie and Ruby and the Little Girl would whisper to me frantically, asking me why I had been so hasty to destroy them, asking me if I did not now regret it. And I did regret it.

  Now I had to be satisfied with their memories. But their memories were not good enough. They escaped me. They were unlike the reality. I could not hold them and look at them as I did the pictures. Now I went around all the time wishing I had not destroyed them, and I called myself a dirty stinking Christian for having done it. I thought about making another collection, but that was not so easy. It had taken a long time to gather those others. I couldn’t at will go about finding women to equal the Little Girl, and probably never again would there ever in my life be another woman like Marie. They could never be duplicated. There was another thing that prevented me from making another collection. I was too tired. I used to sit around with a book of Spengler or Schopenhauer and always as I read I kept calling myself a fake and a fool, because what I really wanted were those women who were no more.

  Now the closet was different, filled with Mona’s dresses and the disgusting odor of fumigation. Some nights I thought I could not bear it. I walked up and down the grey carpet thinking how horrible grey carpets were, and biting my fingernails. I couldn’t read anything. I didn’t feel like reading a book by a great man, and I used to wonder if they were so great after all. After all, were they as great as Hazel or Marie, or the Little Girl? Could Nietzsche compare with the golden hair of Jean? Some nights I didn’t think so at all. Was Spengler as great as Hazel’s fingernails? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There was a time and place for everything, but as far as I was concerned I would rather have the beauty of Hazel’s fingernails to ten million volumes by Oswald Spengler.

  I wanted the privacy of my study again. I used to look at that closet door and say it was a tombstone through which I could never enter again. Mona’s dresses! It sickened me. And yet I could not tell my mother or Mona to please move the dresses elsewhere. I couldn’t walk up to my mother and say, “Please move those dresses.” The words would not come. I hated it. I thought I was becoming a Babbitt, a moral coward.

  One night my mother and Mona were not at home, just for old time’s sake I decided to pay my study a visit. A little sentimental journey into the land of yesterday. I closed the door and stood in the darkness and thought of the many times when this little room was my very own, with no part of my sister disturbing it. But it could never be the same again.

  In the darkness I put out my hand and felt her dresses hanging from the clothes-hooks. They were like the shrouds of ghosts, like the robes of millions and millions of dead nuns from the beginning of the world. They seemed to challenge me: they seemed to be there only to harass me and destroy the peaceful fantasy of my women who had never been. A bitterness went through me, and it was painful to even remember the other times. By now I had almost forgotten the features of those others.

  I twisted my fist into the folds of a dress to keep from crying out. Now the closet had an unmistakable odor of rosaries and incense, of white lilies at funerals, of carpetry in the churches of my boyhood, of wax and tall, dark windows, of old women in black kneeling at mass.

  It was the darkness of the confessional, with a kid of twelve named Arturo Bandini kneeling before a priest and telling him he had done something awful, and the priest telling him nothing was too awful for the confessional, and the kid saying he wasn’t sure it was a sin, what he had done, but still he was sure nobody else ever did a thing like that because, father, it’s certainly funny, I mean, I don’t know how to tell it; and the priest finally wheedling it out of him, that first sin of love, and warning him never to do it again.

  I wanted to bump my head against the closet wall and hurt myself so much that I would be senseless. Why didn’t I throw those dresses out? Why did they have to remind me of Sister Mary Justin, and Sister Mary Leo, and Sister Mary Corita? I guess I was paying the rent in this apartment; I guess I could throw them out. And I couldn’t understand why. Something forbade it.

  I felt weaker than ever before, because when I was strong I would not have hesitated a moment; I would have bundled those dresses up and heaved them out the window and spat after them. But the desire was gone. It seemed silly to get angry and start heaving dresses about. It was dead and drifted away.

  I stood there, and I found my thumb in my mouth. It seemed amazing that it should be there. Imagine. Me eighteen years old, and still sucking my thumb! Then I said to myself, if you’re so brave and fearless, why don’t you bite your thumb? I dare you to bite it! You’re a coward if you don’t. And I said, oh! Is that so? Well, I’m not either a coward. And I’ll prove it!

  I bit my thumb until I tasted blood. I felt my teeth against the pliant skin, refusing to penetrate, and I turned my thumb slowly until the teeth cut through the skin. The pain hesitated, moved to my knuckles, up my arm, then to my shoulder and eyes.

  I grabbed the first dress I touched and tore it to pieces. Look how strong you are! Tear it to bits! Rip it until there is nothing left! And I ripped it with my hands and teeth and made grunts like a mad dog, rolling over the floor, pulling the dress across my knees and raging at it, smearing my bloody thumb over it, cursing it and laughing at it as it gave way under my strength and tore apart.

  Then I started to cry. The pain in my thumb was nothing. It was a loneliness that really ached. I wanted to pray. I had not said a prayer in two years—not since the day I quit high school and began so much reading. But now I wanted to pray again, I was sure it would help, that it would make me feel better, because when I was a kid prayer used to do that for me.

  I got down on my knees, closed my eyes and tried to think of prayer-words. Prayer-words were a different kind of word. I never realized it until that moment. Then I knew the difference. But there were no words. I had to pray, to say some things; there was a prayer in me like an egg. But there were no words.

  Surely not those old prayers!

  Not the Lord’s Prayer, about Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come. … I didn’t believe that anymore. There wasn’t any such thing as heaven; there might be a hell, it seemed very possible, but there wasn’t any such thing as heaven. Not the Act of Contrition, about O my God, I am heartily s
orry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins. … Because the only thing I was sorry about was the loss of my women, and that was something which God emphatically opposed. Or did He? Surely, He must be against that. If I were God I would certainly be against it. God could hardly be in favor of my women. No. Then He was against them.

  There was Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche.

  I tried him.

  I prayed, “Oh dearly beloved Friedrich!”

  No good. It sounded like I was a homosexual.

  I tried again.

  “Oh dear Mr. Nietzsche.”

  Worse. Because I got to thinking about Nietzsche’s pictures in the frontispieces of his books. They made him look like a Forty-niner, with a sloppy mustache, and I detested Forty-niners. Besides, Nietzsche was dead. He had been dead for years. He was an immortal writer, and his words burned across the pages of his books, and he was a great modern influence, but for all that he was dead and I knew it.

  Then I tried Spengler.

  I said, “My dear Spengler.”

  Awful.

  I said, “Hello there, Spengler.”

  Awful.

  I said, “Listen, Spengler!”

  Worse.

  I said, “Well, Oswald, as I was saying. …”

  Brrr. And still worse.

  There were my women. They were dead too; maybe I could find something in them. One at a time I tried them out, but it was unsuccessful because as soon as I thought of them it made me wildly passionate. How could a man be passionate and be in prayer? That was scandalous.

  After I had thought of so many people without avail I was weary of the whole idea and about to abandon it, when all of a sudden I had a good idea, and the idea was that I should not pray to God or others, but to myself.

  “Arturo, my man. My beloved Arturo. It seems you suffer so much, and so unjustly. But you are brave, Arturo. You remind me of a mighty warrior, with the scars of a million conquests. What courage is yours! What nobility! What beauty! Ah, Arturo, how beautiful you really are! I love you so, my Arturo, my great and mighty god. So weep now, Arturo. Let your tears run down, for yours is a life of struggle, a bitter battle to the very end, and nobody knows it but you, no one but you, a beautiful warrior who fights alone, unflinching, a great hero the likes of which the world has never known.”

  I sat back on my heels and cried until my sides ached from it. I opened my mouth and wailed, and it felt ah so good, so sweet to cry, so that soon I was laughing with pleasure, laughing and crying, the tears spilling down my face and washing my hands. I could have gone on for hours.

  Footsteps in the living room made me stop. The steps were Mona’s. I stood up and wiped my eyes, but I knew they were red. Stuffing the torn skirt under my shirt I walked out of the closet. I coughed a little, clearing my throat, to show I was at ease with everything.

  Mona didn’t know anyone was in the apartment. The lights were out and everything, and she thought the place was deserted. She looked at me in surprise, as if she had never seen me before. I walked a few feet, this way and that, coughing and humming a tune, but still she watched, saying nothing but keeping her eyes glued to me.

  ‘Well,” I said. “You critic of life—say something.”

  Her eyes were on my hand.

  “Your finger. It’s all …”

  “It’s my finger,” I said. “You God-intoxicated nun.”

  I locked the bathroom door behind me and threw the tattered dress down the air shaft. Then I bandaged my finger. I stood at the mirror and looked at myself. I loved my own face. I thought I was a very handsome person. I had a good straight nose and a wonderful mouth, with lips redder than a woman’s, for all her paint and whatnot. My eyes were big and clear, my jaw protruded slightly, a strong jaw, a jaw denoting character and self-discipline. Yes, it was a fine face. A man of judgment would have found much in it to interest him.

  In the medicine cabinet I came upon my mother’s wedding ring, where she usually left it after washing her hands. I held the ring in the palm of my hand and looked at it in amazement. To think that this ring, this piece of mere metal, had sealed the connubial bond which was to produce me! That was an incredible thing. Little did my father know, when he bought this ring, that it would symbolize the union of man and woman out of which would arrive one of the world’s greatest men. How strange it was to be standing in that bathroom and realizing all these things! Little did this piece of stupid metal know its own significance. And yet someday it would become a collector’s item of incalculable value. I could see the museum, with people milling about the Bandini heirlooms, the shouting of the auctioneer, and finally a Morgan or a Rockefeller of tomorrow raising his price to twelve million dollars for that ring, simply because it was worn by the mother of Arturo Bandini, the greatest writer the world had ever known.

  —The Road to Los Angeles

  ONE NIGHT I WAS SITTING ON THE BED in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.

  In the morning I awoke, decided that I should do more physical exercise, and began at once. I did several bending exercises. Then I washed my teeth, tasted blood, saw pink on the toothbrush, remembered the advertisements, and decided to go out and get some coffee.

  I went to the restaurant where I always went to the restaurant and I sat down on the stool before the long counter and ordered coffee. It tasted pretty much like coffee, but it wasn’t worth the nickel. Sitting there I smoked a couple of cigarets, read the box scores of the American League games, scrupulously avoided the box scores of National League games, and noted with satisfaction that Joe DiMaggio was still a credit to the Italian people, because he was leading the league in batting.

  A great hitter, that DiMaggio. I walked out of the restaurant, stood before an imaginary pitcher, and swatted a home run over the fence. Then I walked down the street toward Angel’s Flight, wondering what I would do that day. But there was nothing to do, and so I decided to walk around the town.

  I walked down Olive Street past a dirty yellow apartment house that was still wet like a blotter from last night’s fog, and I thought of my friends Ethie and Carl, who were from Detroit and had lived there, and I remembered the night Carl hit Ethie because she was going to have a baby, and he didn’t want a baby. But they had the baby and that’s all there was to that. And I remembered the inside of that apartment, how it smelled of mice and dust, and the old women who sat in the lobby on hot afternoons, and the old woman with the pretty legs. Then there was the elevator man, a broken man from Milwaukee, who seemed to sneer every time you called your floor, as though you were such a fool for choosing that particular floor, the elevator man who always had a tray of sandwiches in the elevator, and a pulp magazine.

  Then I went down the hill on Olive Street, past the horrible frame houses reeking with murder stories, and on down Olive to the Philharmonic Auditorium, and I remembered how I’d gone there with Helen to listen to the Don Cossack Choral Group, and how I got bored and we had a fight because of it, and I remembered what Helen wore that day—a white dress, and how it made me sing at the loins when I touched it. Oh that Helen—but not here.

  And so I was down on Fifth and Olive, where the big street cars chewed your ears with their noise, and the smell of gasoline made the sight of the palm trees seem sad, and the black pavement still wet from the fog of the night before.

  So now I was in front of the Biltmore Hotel, walking along the line of yellow cabs, with all the cab drivers asleep except the driver near the main door, and I wondered about these fellows and their fund of information, and I remembered the time Ross and I got an address from one of them, how he leered salaciously and then took us to Temple Street, of all places, and whom did we see but two very unattractive ones,
and Ross went all the way, but I sat in the parlor and played the phonograph and was scared and lonely.

  I was passing the doorman of the Biltmore, and I hated him at once, with his yellow braids and six feet of height and all that dignity, and now a black automobile drove to the curb, and a man got out. He looked rich; and then a woman got out, and she was beautiful, her fur was silver fox, and she was a song across the sidewalk and inside the swinging doors, and I thought oh boy for a little of that, just a day and a night of that, and she was a dream as I walked along, her perfume still in the wet morning air.

  Then a great deal of time passed as I stood in front of a pipe shop and looked, and the whole world faded except that window and I stood and smoked them all, and saw myself a great author with that natty Italian briar, and a cane, stepping out of a big black car, and she was there too, proud as hell of me, the lady in the silver fox fur. We registered and then we had cocktails and then we danced awhile, and then we had another cocktail and I recited some lines from Sanskrit, and the world was so wonderful, because every two minutes some gorgeous one gazed at me, the great author, and nothing would do but I had to autograph her menu, and the silver fox girl was very jealous.

  Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.

  A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya, hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf, Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett; not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!