The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by Steinbeck, John; Astro, Richard

  And of course it was he himself who wanted so desperately to break through into the light.

  We worked and thought together very closely for a number of years so that I grew to depend on his knowledge and on his patience in research. And then I went away to another part of the country but it didn’t make any difference. Once a week or once a month would come a fine long letter so much in the style of his speech that I could hear his voice over the neat page full of small elite type. It was as though I hadn’t been away at all. And sometimes now when the postman comes I look before I think for that small type on an envelope.

  Ed was deeply pleased with the little voyage which is described in the latter part of this book, and he was pleased with the manner of setting it down. Often he would read it to remember a mood or a joke.

  His scientific interest was essentially ecological and holistic. His mind always tried to enlarge the smallest picture. I remember his saying, “You know, at first view you would think the rattlesnake and the kangaroo rat were the greatest of enemies since the snake hunts and feeds on the rat. But in a larger sense they must be the best of friends. The rat feeds the snake and the snake selects out the slow and weak and generally thins the rat people so that both species can survive. It is quite possible that neither species could exist without the other.” He was pleased with commensal animals, particularly with groups of several species contributing to the survival of all. He seemed as pleased with such things as though they had been created for him.

  With any new food or animal he looked, felt, smelled, and tasted. Once in a tide pool we were discussing the interesting fact that nudibranchs, although beautiful and brightly colored and tasty-looking and soft and unweaponed, are never eaten by other animals which should have found them irresistible. He reached under water and picked up a lovely orange-colored nudibranch and put it in his mouth. And instantly he made a horrible face and spat and retched, but he had found out why fishes let these living tidbits completely alone.

  On another occasion he tasted a species of free-swimming anemone and got his tongue so badly stung by its nettle cells that he could hardly close his mouth for twenty-four hours. But he would have done the same thing the next day if he had wanted to know.

  Although small and rather slight, Ed was capable of prodigies of strength and endurance. He could drive for many hours to arrive at a good collecting ground for a favorable low tide, then work like a fury turning over rocks while the tide was out, then drive back to preserve his catch. He could carry heavy burdens over soft and unstable sand with no show of weariness. He had enormous resistance. It took a train to kill him. I think nothing less could have done it.

  His sense of smell was very highly developed. He smelled all food before he ate it, not only the whole dish but each forkful. He invariably smelled each animal as he took it from the tide pool. He spoke of the smells of different animals, and some moods and even thoughts had characteristic odors to him—undoubtedly conditioned by some experience good or bad. He referred often to the smells of people, how individual each one was, and how it was subject to change. He delighted in his sense of smell in love.

  With his delicate olfactory equipment, one would have thought that he would be disgusted by so-called ugly odors, but this was not true. He could pick over decayed tissue or lean close to the fetid viscera of a cat with no repulsion. I have seen him literally crawl into the carcass of a basking shark to take its liver in the dark of its own body so that no light might touch it. And this is as horrid an odor as I know.

  Ed loved fine tools and instruments, and conversely he had a bitter dislike for bad ones. Often he spoke with contempt of “consumer goods”—things made to catch the eye, to delight the first impression with paint and polish, things made to sell rather than to use. On the other hand, the honest workmanship of a good microscope gave him great pleasure. Once I brought him from Sweden a set of the finest scalpels, surgical scissors, and delicate forceps. I remember his joy in them.

  His laboratory practice was immaculate and his living quarters were not clean. It was his custom to say that most people paid too much for things they didn’t really want, paid too much in effort and time and thought. “If a swept floor gives you enough pleasure and reward to pay for sweeping it, then sweep it,” he said. “But if you do not see it dirty or clean, then it is paying too much to sweep it.”

  I think he set down his whole code or procedure once in a time of stress. He found himself quite poor and with three children to take care of. In a very scholarly manner, he told the children how they must proceed.

  “We must remember three things,” he said to them. “I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things. But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”

  Ed’s feeling for clothes was interesting. He wore Bass moccasins, buckskin-colored and quite expensive. He loved thick soft wool socks and wool shirts that would scratch the hell out of anyone else. But outside of those he had no interest. His clothing was fairly ragged, particularly at elbows and knees. He had one necktie hanging in his closet, a wrinkled old devil of a yellow tint, but no one ever saw him wear it. His clothes he just came by, and the coats were not likely to fit him at all. He was not in the least embarrassed by his clothes. He went everywhere in the same costume. And always he seemed strangely neat. Such was his sense of inner security that he did not seem ill dressed. Often people around him appeared over-dressed. The only time he ever wore a hat was when there was some chance of getting his head wet, and then it was likely to be an oilskin sou’wester. But whatever else he wore or did not wear, there was invariably pinned to his shirt pocket a twenty-power Bausch and Lomb magnifying glass on a little roller chain. He used the glass constantly. It was a very close part of him—one of his techniques of seeing.

  Always the paradox is there. He loved nice things and did not care about them. He loved to bathe and yet when the water heater in the laboratory broke down he bathed in cold water for over a year before he got around to having it fixed. I finally mended his leaking toilet tank with a piece of chewing gum which I imagine is still there. A broken window was stuffed with newspaper for several years and never was repaired.

  He liked comfort and the chairs in the lab were stiff and miserable. His bed was a redwood box laced with hemp rope on which a thin mattress was thrown. And this bed was not big enough for two. Ladies complained bitterly about his bed, which was not only narrow and uncomfortable but gave out shrieks of protest at the slightest movement.

  I used the laboratory and Ed himself in a book called Cannery Row. I took it to him in typescript to see whether he would resent it and to offer to make any changes he would suggest. He read it through carefully, smiling, and when he had finished he said, “Let it go that way. It is written in kindness. Such a thing can’t be bad.”

  But it was bad in several ways neither of us foresaw. As the book began to be read, tourists began coming to the laboratory, first a few and then in droves. People stopped their cars and stared at Ed with that glassy look that is used on movie stars. Hundreds of people came into the lab to ask questions and peer around. It became a nuisance to him. But in a way he liked it too. For as he said, “Some of the callers were women and some of the women were very nice looking.” However, he was glad when the little flurry of publicity or notoriety was over.

  It never occurred to me to ask Ed much about his family background or his life as a boy. I suppose it would be easy to find out. When he was alive there were too many other things to talk about, and now—it doesn’t matter. Of course I have heard him asked the usual question about his name. Ricketts. He said, “No, I was not named after the disease—one of my relatives is r
esponsible for its naming.”

  When the book Studs Lonigan came out, Ed read it twice very quickly. “This is a true book,” he said. “I was born and grew up in this part of Chicago. I played in these streets. I know them all. I know the people. This is a true book.” And, of course, to Ed a thing that was true was beautiful. He followed the whole series of Farrell’s books after that and only after the locale moved to New York did he lose interest. He did not know true things about New York.

  One of the most amusing things that ever happened in Pacific Biological Laboratories was our attempt to help with the war effort against Japan and the complete fiasco that resulted.

  When we came back from the collecting trip which is recorded in the latter part of this book, we went to work on the thousands of animals we had gathered. Our project had been to lay the basis for a new faunal geography rather than a search for new species. We needed a great amount of supplementary information regarding the distribution of species on both sides of the Pacific Ocean and among the Pacific Islands, since many species are widely placed.

  By this time Pearl Harbor had been attacked and we were at war with Japan. But even if we had not been, there were difficulties. Soon after the First World War a great number of the islands of the Pacific were mandated to Japan by the League of Nations. And Japan’s first act had been to draw a bamboo curtain over these islands and over the whole area. No foreigner had been permitted to land on them in twenty years for any purpose whatever.

  These islands had not been well known in a zoologic sense before the mandate and nothing had been heard from them since—so we thought.

  We sent out the usual letters to universities, requesting information that might be available concerning these curtained islands. The replies delighted us. There was a great deal of information available.

  What had happened is this. Japan had certainly cut off the islands from the world, but, perhaps with the future war in view, Japan had wanted to make a survey of her new possessions in the matter of food supply from the ocean. The Japanese eat many more sea products than we do. Who better to send to make this survey than certain eminent Japanese zoologists who were internationally known?

  What followed is truly comic opera. The zoologists did make the survey—very secretly. Then afterwards, since they were good scientists and specialists, what was more natural than that they should study their specialties together with the ecological theater? And then, being thoroughly good men, they completed their zoologic survey.

  Now a careful zoologic survey notes not only the animals but their neighbor animals—friends and enemies and the conditions under which they live. Such conditions would include weather, wave shock, tidal range, currents, salinity, reefs, headlands, winds, nature of coast and nature of bottom, and any interesting phenomena which might interfere with or promote the occurrence, normal growth, and happiness of the animals in question. Such matters might be mentioned as the discharge into tide pools of by-products of new chemical plants which would change the ecological balance.

  Having finished their sea-food reports to the Japanese government, the zoologists with even more loving care wrote their papers on the specialties. And then, what was more natural than that they should send these papers to their colleagues around the world? Japan was not at war. They knew their brother zoologists would be interested and many of the Japanese had studied at Harvard, at Hopkins, at California Institute of Technology—in fact at all of the American universities. They had friends all over the world who would appreciate and applaud their work in pure science.

  When these surveys began to arrive Ed and I suddenly lost our interest in the animals. Here under our hands were detailed studies of the physical make-up of one of the least-known areas of the world and one which was in the hands of our enemy. With excitement we realized that if we were ever going to go island-hopping toward Japan, which seemed reasonable, here was all the information needed if we were to make beach landings—depth, tide, currents, reefs, nature of coast, etc. We did not know whether we were alone in our discovery. We wondered whether our naval or military intelligence knew of the existence of these reports. Often a very obvious thing may lie unnoticed. It seemed to us that if our intelligence services did not know, they should, and we were quite willing to take the chance of duplication.

  We drafted a letter to the Navy Department in Washington, explaining the material, its possible use, and how we had come upon it.

  Six weeks later we received a form letter thanking us for our patriotism. I seem to remember that the letter was mimeographed. Ed was philosophical about it, but I, who did not have his military experience and cynicism, got mad. I wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, at that time the Honorable Frank Knox, again telling the story of the island material. And then after the letter was sealed, in a moment of angry impudence, I wrote “Personal” on the envelope.

  Nothing happened for two months. I was away when it did happen. Ed told me about it later. One afternoon a tight-lipped man in civilian clothes came into the laboratory and identified himself as a lieutenant commander of Naval Intelligence.

  “We have had a communication from you,” he said sternly.

  “Oh, yes,” Ed said. “We’re glad you are here.”

  The officer interrupted him. “Do you speak or read Japanese?” he asked suspiciously.

  “No, I don’t,” Ed said.

  “Does your partner speak or read Japanese?”

  “No—why do you ask?”

  “Then what is this information you claim to have about the Pacific islands?”

  Only then did Ed understand him. “But they’re in English—the papers are all in English!” he cried.

  “How in English?”

  “The men, the Japanese zoologists, wrote them in English. They had studied here. English is becoming the scientific language of the world.”

  This thought, Ed said, really made quite a struggle to get in, but it failed.

  “Why don’t they write in Japanese?” the commander demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Ed was getting tired. “The fact remains that they write English—sometimes quaint English but English.”

  That word tore it, just as my “Personal” on the envelope probably tore it in Washington.

  The lieutenant commander looked grim. “Quaint!” he said. “You will hear from us.”

  But we never did. And I have always wondered whether they had the information or got it. I wonder whether some of the soldiers whose landing craft grounded a quarter of a mile from the beach and who had to wade ashore under fire had the feeling that bottom and tidal range either were not known or were ignored. I don’t know.

  Ed shook his head after he told me about the visit of the officer. “I never learn,” he said. “I really fell into that one. And I should know better. And I used to be a company clerk.” Then he told me about the Navy tests at Bremerton.

  The tests were designed to develop some bottom material or paint which would repel barnacles. The outlay of money was considerable—big concrete tanks were built and samples of paints, metal salts, poisons, tars, were immersed to see what material barnacles would be most likely to stay away from.

  “Now,” Ed said, “a friend of mine who teaches at the University of Washington is one of the world’s specialists in barnacles. My friend happens to be a woman. She heard of the tests and offered her services to the Navy. A very patriotic woman as well as a damn good scientist.

  “There were two strikes against her,” Ed said. “One, she was a woman, and two, she was a professor. The Navy was gallant but adamant. She was thanked and informed that the Navy was not interested in theory. This was hard-boiled realism, and practical men—not theoreticians—would see it through.”

  Ed grinned at me. “You know,” he said, “at the end of three months there wasn’t a single barnacle on any of the test materials, not even on the guide materials, the untouched wood and steel. My friend heard of this and visited the station again. She was shy about imposing t
heory. But she saw what was wrong very quickly.

  “The Navy is hard-boiled but it is clean,” Ed said. “Bremerton water, on the other hand, is very dirty—you know, harbor stuff, oil and algae, decayed fish and even some human residue. The Navy didn’t like that filth so the water was filtered before it went to the tanks. The filters got the water clean,” said Ed, “but it also removed all of the barnacle larvae.” He laughed. “I wonder whether she ever told them,” he said.

  Thus was our impertinent attempt to change the techniques of warfare put in its place. But we won.

  I became associated in the business of the laboratory in the simplest of ways. A number of years ago Ed had gradually got into debt until the interest on his loan from the bank was bleeding the laboratory like a cat in the basement. Rather sadly he prepared to liquidate the little business and give up his independence—the right to sleep late and work late, the right to make his own decisions. While the lab was not run efficiently, it could make enough to support him, but it could not also pay the bank interest.

  At that time I had some money put away and I took up the bank loans and lowered the interest to a vanishing point. I knew the money would vanish anyway. To secure the loan I received stock in the corporation—the most beautiful stock, and the mortgage on the property. I didn’t understand much of the transaction but it allowed the laboratory to operate for another ten years. Thus I became a partner in the improbable business. I must say I brought no efficiency to bear on it. The fact that the institution survived at all is a matter that must be put down to magic. I can find no other reasonable explanation. It had no right to survive. A board of directors’ meeting differed from any other party only in that there was more beer. A stern business discussion had a way of slipping into a consideration of a unified field hypothesis.

  Our trip to the Gulf of Lower California was a marvel of bumbling efficiency. We went where we intended, got what we wanted, and did the work on it. It had been our intention to continue the work with a survey of the Aleutian chain of islands when the war closed that area to us.