Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

  She went straight to Faye and stopped her sobs with a firm, “Now, Miss Greener.”

  There was so much authority in her voice and manner that she succeeded where Mary and Tod had failed.

  Faye looked up at her respectfully.

  “First, my dear,” Mrs. Johnson said, counting one with the thumb of her right hand on the index finger of her left, “first, I want you to understand that my sole desire in this matter is to help you.”

  She looked hard at Mary, then at Tod.

  “I don’t get anything out of it, and it’s just a lot of trouble.”

  “Yes,” Faye said.

  “All right. There are several things I have to know, if I’m to help you. Did the deceased leave any money or insurance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any money?”

  “No.”

  “Can you borrow any?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mrs. Johnson sighed.

  “Then the city will have to bury him.”

  Faye didn’t comment.

  “Don’t you understand, child, the city will have to bury him in a pauper’s grave?”

  She put so much contempt into “city” and horror into “pauper” that Faye flushed and began to sob again.

  Mrs. Johnson made as though to walk out, even took several steps in the direction of the door, then, changed her mind and came back.

  “How much does a funeral cost?” Faye asked.

  “Two hundred dollars. But you can pay on the installment plan—fifty dollars down and twenty-five a month.”

  Mary and Tod both spoke together.

  “I’ll get the money.”

  “I’ve got some.”

  “That’s fine,” Mrs. Johnson said. “You’ll need at least fifty more for incidental expenses. I’ll go ahead and take care of everything. Mr. Holsepp will bury your father. He’ll do it right.”

  She shook hands with Faye, as though she were congratulating her, and hurried out of the room.

  Mrs. Johnson’s little business talk had apparently done Faye some good. Her lips were set and her eyes dry.

  “Don’t worry,” Tod said. “I can raise the money.”

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  Mary opened her purse and took out a roll of bills.

  “Here’s some.”

  “No,” she said, pushing it away.

  She sat thinking for a while, then went to the dressing table and began to fix her tear-stained face. She wore a hard smile as she worked. Suddenly she turned, lipstick in air, and spoke to Mary.

  “Can you get me into Mrs. Jenning’s?”

  “What for?” Tod demanded. “I’ll get the money.”

  Both girls ignored him.

  “Sure,” said Mary, “you ought to done that long ago. It’s a soft touch.”

  Faye laughed.

  “I was saving it.”

  The change that had come over both of them startled Tod. They had suddenly become very tough.

  “For a punkola like that Earle. Get smart, girlie, and lay off the cheapies. Let him ride a horse, he’s a cowboy, ain’t he?”

  They laughed shrilly and went into the bathroom with their arms around each other.

  Tod thought he understood their sudden change to slang. It made them feel worldly and realistic, and so more able to cope with serious things.

  He knocked on the bathroom door.

  “What do you want?” Faye called out.

  “Listen, kid,” he said, trying to imitate them. “Why go on the turf? I can get the dough.”

  “Oh, yeah! No thanks,” Faye said.

  “But listen…” he began again.

  “Go peddle your tripe!” Mary shouted.

  17

  ON THE DAY of Harry’s funeral Tod was drunk. He hadn’t seen Faye since she went off with Mary Dove, but he knew that he was certain to find her at the undertaking parlor and he wanted to have the courage to quarrel with her. He started drinking at lunch. When he got to Holsepp’s in the late afternoon, he had passed the brave state and was well into the ugly one.

  He found Harry in his box, waiting to be wheeled out for exhibition in the adjoining chapel. The casket was open and the old man looked quite snug. Drawn up to a little below his shoulders and folded back to show its fancy lining was an ivory satin coverlet. Under his head was a tiny lace cushion. He was wearing a Tuxedo, or at least had on a black bow tie with his stiff shirt and wing collar. His face had been newly shaved, his eyebrows shaped and plucked and his lips and cheeks rouged. He looked like the interlocutor in a minstrel show.

  Tod bowed his head as though in silent prayer when he heard someone come in. He recognized Mrs. Johnson’s voice and turned carefully to face her. He caught her eye and nodded, but she ignored him. She was busy with a man in a badly fitting frock coat.

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” she scolded. “Your estimate said bronze. Those handles ain’t bronze and you know it.”

  “But I asked Miss Greener,” whined the man. “She okayed them.”

  “I don’t care. I’m surprised at you, trying to save a few dollars by fobbing off a set of cheap gun-metal handles on the poor child.”

  Tod didn’t wait for the undertaker to answer. He had seen Faye pass the door on the arm of one of the Lee sisters. When he caught up with her, he didn’t know what to say. She misunderstood his agitation and was touched. She sobbed a little for him.

  She had never looked more beautiful. She was wearing a new, very tight black dress and her platinum hair was tucked up in a shining bun under a black straw sailor. Ever so often, she carried a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes and made it flutter there for a moment. But all he could think of was that she had earned the money for her outfit on her back.

  She grew uneasy under his stare and started to edge away. He caught her arm.

  “May I speak with you for a minute, alone?”

  Miss Lee took the hint and left.

  “What is it?” Faye asked.

  “Not here,” he whispered, making mystery out of his uncertainty.

  He led her along the hall until he found an empty showroom. On the walls were framed photographs of important funerals and on little stands and tables were samples of coffin materials and models of tombstones and mausoleums.

  Not knowing what to say, he accented his awkwardness, playing the inoffensive fool.

  She smiled and became almost friendly.

  “Give out, you big dope.”

  “A kiss…”

  “Sure, baby,” she laughed, “only don’t muss me.” They pecked at each other.

  She tried to get away, but he held her. She became annoyed and demanded an explanation. He searched his head for one. It wasn’t his head he should have searched, however.

  She was leaning toward him, drooping slightly, but not from fatigue. He had seen young birches droop like that at midday when they are over-heavy with sun.

  “You’re drunk,” she said, pushing him away.

  “Please,” he begged.

  “Le’go, you bastard.”

  Raging at him, she was still beautiful. That was because her beauty was structural like a tree’s, not a quality of her mind or heart. Perhaps even whoring couldn’t damage it for that reason, only age or accident or disease.

  In a minute she would scream for help. He had to say something. She wouldn’t understand the aesthetic argument and with what values could he back up the moral one? The economic didn’t make sense either. Whoring certainly paid. Half of the customer’s thirty dollars. Say ten men a week.

  She kicked at his shins, but he held on to her. Suddenly he began to talk. He had found an argument. Disease would destroy her beauty. He shouted at her like a Y.M.C.A. lecturer on sex hygiene.

  She stopped struggling and held her head down, sobbing fitfully. When he was through, he let go of her arms and she bolted from the room. He groped his way to a carved, marble coffin.

  He was still sitting there when a young man in a b
lack jacket and gray striped trousers came in.

  “Are you here for the Greener funeral?”

  Tod stood up and nodded vaguely.

  “The services are beginning,” the man said, then opened a little casket covered with grosgrain satin and took out a dust cloth. Tod watched him go around the showroom wiping off the samples.

  “Services have probably started,” the man repeated with a wave at the door.

  Tod understood this time and left. The only exit he could find led through the chapel. The moment he entered it, Mrs. Johnson caught him and directed him to a seat. He wanted badly to get away, but it was impossible to do so without making a scene.

  Faye was sitting in the front row of benches, facing the pulpit. She had the Lee sisters on one side and Mary Dove and Abe Kusich on the other. Behind them sat the tenants of the San Berdoo, occupying about six rows. Tod was alone in the seventh. After him were several empty rows and then a scattering of men and women who looked very much out of place.

  He turned in order not to see Faye’s jerking shoulders and examined the people in the last rows. He knew their kind. While not torchbearers themselves, they would run behind the fire and do a great deal of the shouting. They had come to see Harry buried, hoping for a dramatic incident of some sort, hoping at least for one of the mourners to be led weeping hysterically from the chapel. It seemed to Tod that they stared back at him with an expression of vicious, acrid boredom that trembled on the edge of violence. When they began to mutter among themselves, he half turned and watched them out of the corner of his eyes.

  An old woman with a face pulled out of shape by badly fitting store teeth came in and whispered to a man sucking on the handle of a home-made walking stick. He passed her message along and they all stood up and went out hurriedly. Tod guessed that some star had been seen going into a restaurant by one of their scouts. If so, they would wait outside the place for hours until the star came out again or the police drove them away.

  The Gingo family arrived soon after they had left. The Gingos were Eskimos who had been brought to Hollywood to make retakes for a picture about polar exploration. Although it had been released long ago, they refused to return to Alaska. They liked Hollywood.

  Harry had been a good friend of theirs and had eaten with them quite regularly, sharing the smoked salmon, white fish, marinated and maatjes herrings they bought at Jewish delicatessen stores. He also shared the great quantities of cheap brandy they mixed with hot water and salt butter and drank out of tin cups.

  Mama and Papa Gingo, trailed by their son, moved down the center aisle of the chapel, bowing and waving to everyone, until they reached the front row. Here they gathered around Faye and shook hands with her, each one in turn. Mrs. Johnson tried to make them go to one of the back rows, but they ignored her orders and sat down in front.

  The overhead lights of the chapel were suddenly dimmed. Simultaneously other lights went on behind imitation stained-glass windows which hung on the fake oak-paneled walls. There was a moment of hushed silence, broken only by Faye’s sobs, then an electric organ started to play a recording of one of Bach’s chorales, “Come Redeemer, Our Saviour.”

  Tod recognized the music. His mother often played a piano adaptation of it on Sundays at home. It very politely asked Christ to come, in clear and honest tones with just the proper amount of supplication. The God it invited was not the King of Kings, but a shy and gentle Christ, a maiden surrounded by maidens, and the invitation was to a lawn fete, not to the home of some weary, suffering sinner. It didn’t plead; it urged with infinite grace and delicacy, almost as though it were afraid of frightening the prospective guest.

  So far as Tod could tell, no one was listening to the music. Faye was sobbing and the others seemed busy inside themselves. Bach politely serenading Christ was not for them.

  The music would soon change its tone and grow exciting. He wondered if that would make any difference. Already the bass was beginning to throb. He noticed that it made the Eskimos uneasy. As the bass gained in power and began to dominate the treble, he heard Papa Gingo grunt with pleasure. Mama caught Mrs. Johnson eyeing him, and put her fat hand on the back of his head to keep him quiet.

  “Now come, O our Saviour,” the music begged. Gone was its diffidence and no longer was it polite. Its struggle with the bass had changed it. Even a hint of a threat crept in and a little impatience. Of doubt, however, he could not detect the slightest trace.

  If there was a hint of a threat, he thought, just a hint, and a tiny bit of impatience, could Bach be blamed? After all, when he wrote this music, the world had already been waiting for its lover more than seventeen hundred years. But the music changed again and both threat and impatience disappeared. The treble soared free and triumphant and the bass no longer struggled to keep it down. It had become a rich accompaniment. “Come or don’t come,” the music seemed to say, “I love you and my love is enough.” It was a simple statement of fact, neither cry nor serenade, made without arrogance or humility.

  Perhaps Christ heard. If He did, He gave no signs. The attendants heard, for it was their cue to trundle on Harry in his box. Mrs. Johnson followed close behind and saw to it that the casket was properly placed. She raised her hand and Bach was silenced in the middle of a phrase.

  “Will those of you who wish to view the deceased before the sermon please step forward?” she called out.

  Only the Gingos stood up immediately. They made for the coffin in a group. Mrs. Johnson held them back and motioned for Faye to look first. Supported by Mary Dove and the Lee girls, she took a quick peek, increased the tempo of her sobs for a moment, then hurried back to the bench.

  The Gingos had their chance next. They leaned over the coffin and told each other something in a series of thick, explosive gutturals. When they tried to take another look, Mrs. Johnson herded them firmly to their seats.

  The dwarf sidled up to the box, made a play with his handkerchief and retreated. When no one followed him, Mrs. Johnson lost patience, seeming to take what she understood as a lack of interest for a personal insult.

  “Those who wish to view the remains of the late Mr. Greener must do so at once,” she barked.

  There was a little stir, but no one stood up.

  “You, Mrs. Gail,” she finally said, looking directly at the person named. “How about you? Don’t you want a last look? Soon all that remains of your neighbor will be buried forever.”

  There was no getting out of it. Mrs. Gail moved down the aisle, trailed by several others.

  Tod used them to cover his escape.

  18

  FAYE moved out of the San Berdoo the day after the funeral. Tod didn’t know where she had gone and was getting up the courage to call Mrs. Jenning when he saw her from the window of his office. She was dressed in the costume of a Napoleonic vivandière. By the time he got the window open, she had almost turned the corner of the building. He shouted for her to wait. She waved, but when he got downstairs she was gone.

  From her dress, he was sure that she was working in the picture called “Waterloo.” He asked a studio policeman where the company was shooting and was told on the back lot. He started toward it at once. A platoon of cuirassiers, big men mounted on gigantic horses, went by. He knew that they must be headed for the same set and followed them. They broke into a gallop and he was soon outdistanced.

  The sun was very hot. His eyes and throat were choked with the dust thrown up by the horses’ hooves and his head throbbed. The only bit of shade he could find was under an ocean liner made of painted canvas with real life boats hanging from its davits. He stood in its narrow shadow for a while, then went on toward a great forty-foot papier mâché sphinx that loomed up in the distance. He had to cross a desert to reach it, a desert that was continually being made larger by a fleet of trucks dumping white sand. He had gone only a few feet when a man with a megaphone ordered him off.

  He skirted the desert, making a wide turn to the right, and came to a Western street with a plank
sidewalk. On the porch of the “Last Chance Saloon” was a rocking chair. He sat down on it and lit a cigarette.

  From there he could see a jungle compound with a water buffalo tethered to the side of a conical grass hut. Every few seconds the animal groaned musically. Suddenly an Arab charged by on a white stallion. He shouted at the man, but got no answer. A little while later he saw a truck with a load of snow and several malamute dogs. He shouted again. The driver shouted something back, but didn’t stop.

  Throwing away his cigarette, he went through the swinging doors of the saloon. There was no back to the building and he found himself in a Paris street. He followed it to its end, coming out in a Romanesque courtyard. He heard voices a short distance away and went toward them. On a lawn of fiber, a group of men and women in riding costume were picnicking. They were eating cardboard food in front of a cellophane waterfall. He started toward them to ask his way, but was stopped by a man who scowled and held up a sign—“Quiet, Please, We’re Shooting.” When Tod took another step forward, the man shook his fist threateningly.

  Next he came to a small pond with large celluloid swans floating on it. Across one end was a bridge with a sign that read, “To Kamp Komfit.” He crossed the bridge and followed a little path that ended at a Greek temple dedicated to Eros. The god himself lay face downward in a pile of old newspapers and bottles.

  From the steps of the temple, he could see in the distance a road lined with Lombardy poplars. It was the one on which he had lost the cuirassiers. He pushed his way through a tangle of briars, old flats and iron junk, skirting the skeleton of a Zeppelin, a bamboo stockade, an adobe fort, the wooden horse of Troy, a flight of baroque palace stairs that started in a bed of weeds and ended against the branches of an oak, part of the Fourteenth Street elevated station, a Dutch windmill, the bones of a dinosaur, the upper half of the Merrimac, a corner of a Mayan temple, until he finally reached the road.

  He was out of breath. He sat down under one of the poplars on a rock made of brown plaster and took off his jacket. There was a cool breeze blowing and he soon felt more comfortable.