by John Fante
I opened my portable and put it on the table under the window. I saw myself writing furiously, pounding night and day here in this room, the great sprawling city down below. Outside the window was the tip of an aged palm tree. It would inspire me, break the monotony of four walls.
Mrs. Flores was back with soap and towels. Her dark eyes widened when she saw the typewriter. I explained how it was with me—this was how I made my living, writing stuff.
“You’ll have to leave,” she said.
“Leave? Why?”
She took the forty dollars from her skirt pocket and laid it on the dresser. “It’s the noise of the typewriter,” she said. “The man next door needs his sleep.”
The door separating my room and the next was thick walnut. The walls were thick. And my machine was quiet. I showed her, rattling a few keys. I promised there would be no noise. But her mind was firm. She shook her head slowly, persistently. I began to throw things back into my grip. I thought how unreasonable she was. And I hated the man next door, whoever he was; I cursed him.
There were footsteps in the hall. He appeared, this man who lived next door.
“Cristo!” the woman said.
He stood there looking at me and I saw the peculiar animation of love come into the face of Mrs. Flores, the dark eyes adoring him.
“Hallo,” he said.
It was mechanical, cold. He could feel her animation. He did not want it. He was guarding himself from it. He was tall, intense, handsome, a Filipino of probably thirty-five. He was beautifully dressed, specially his yellow necktie shining like a little sun from his neck.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“He writes with the typewriter,” Mrs. Flores said. “You won’t sleep if he stays. You need your rest. You don’t sleep well.”
“I sleep good,” he said. “How you know this—how I sleep? You peek?”
He wanted an answer. His eyes opened in indignation. Mrs. Flores lowered her face.
“Is bad for woman to look at sleeping man,” he admonished. “I do not like this.”
She took it quietly, stoically. Cristo smiled at me. “Please to stay, my friend,” he said. “Is good to have educated man for neighbor, with typewriter.”
I thanked him and we shook hands.
“Name of Sierra. Cristo Sierra.”
“John Lane,” I told him.
But I watched Mrs. Flores. She showed no emotion. I wanted to hear her say, in so many words, that the room was mine. As she backed out, Cristo holding the door, she gave me a quick inscrutable look. Then I was alone in my room. I sat down and tried to work. Through my mind flashed that passion in the eyes of Mrs. Flores, the way she looked at Cristo, but it would not go down on paper.
No, it wouldn’t go down. After three days, all I had to show for the ferment of my brain was wads of crushed paper. I walked the creaking floor. I pounded my head, rolled on the bed, stared at the ceiling. Alert, I listened to the sounds coming from the house. Every morning I heard Cristo leave. He was gone until late at night, sometimes after midnight. Two other roomers lived on the second floor. Old Mr. Ashley had heart trouble and was seldom heard. I never knew or saw the other man. But now I found myself forever listening for the feline swish of Mrs. Flores’ huaraches. Her name disturbed me. I told myself that with her youth and beauty she should be known as Dolores or Maria, or some such name to fit the dark loveliness of her face.
Every morning after he was gone I heard her in Cristo’s room. She would be in there dusting and making his bed. Her sobs would emerge like the fluttering of a trapped dove.
I learned a few things about her from old Ashley. He had lived in this house for twenty years. He remembered when Mrs. Flores had bought it three years before. She was a war widow. Her husband had left her enough to buy this house. If Ashley suspected that she loved Cristo, he didn’t say it. But it was significant that he began immediately to talk of the Filipino. Cristo worked for a fruit company, where he was foreman of the warehouse.
I talked to Cristo a week later. That was the first time I saw his room. It was after dark of another sterile day, with nothing on paper. He knocked on the door separating our rooms. When I answered, the key turned and he opened the door.
“Hallo,” he said. “You like little drink?” He frowned at the condition of my room.
“Mrs. Flores promised me a wastebasket,” I said.
“Is hard work, yes?” he asked, nodding at the typewriter.
I liked this Cristo. Here was at least one person who understood my problems. He stepped aside and bowed toward his room.
“Welcome.”
His room was breath-taking. I had almost forgotten such places existed. There were the lamps: three soft-glowing floor lamps spilling light on a room so richly furnished I stared in unbelief. In one corner was a fireplace. Before it stood two luxurious red leather chairs, a low table between them, and on the table in elegant simplicity were decanters of liquor, a bowl of ice cubes and a tray of glasses.
I spun around in awe. On the walls were Currier and Ives reprints mounted in expensive frames. It was a corner room, two sides redecorated in knotty pine and stained with bright shellac. I touched the draperies hanging from the double windows. They were gold-figured chintz against a blue background. And all the time Cristo watched me, pleased. Standing before the fireplace, he fixed highballs, his lips turned in a quiet smile. He seemed to invite me to browse around. I prowled everywhere, opening doors. Here was his clothes closet. It was as one might expect, his suits hanging neatly, like headless figures of himself. And there were his ties—not as many as I imagined, a dozen or so—but each a stunning eye-catcher. I closed the door and paused before the one next to it.
“Do you mind?” I asked. “I might as well see it all.”
“Halp youself.”
It was the bathroom. The absolutely private bathroom of Cristo Sierra. When I saw the stall shower behind panels of opaque glass I envied Cristo for the first time.
“You’re lucky,” I told him.
His dismissal was a shrug. He handed me a highball. I crossed the room to a bowl of fruit and a display of flowers on the table beside his studio couch.
“So you like flowers too,” I said.
“No.”
“You like Mrs. Flores?”
“Is fine woman,” he said, taking in the room with a wave of his hand. “She give me all this. Rent, five a week. I wish to pay more. She will not take.”
“She has good taste.”
“Fine woman. But not for Cristo Sierra.”
“I hear her in here every day. She cries.”
“I know. Cannot halp. Is not my type.”
I wondered about his type but I didn’t ask.
We sprawled in the leather chairs, smoking and sipping our drinks. We seemed to know there was serious talk ahead. We drained our glasses and he filled them again.
“Mr. Lane,” he said. “I have big dream. Big. You are writer. You will understand.”
His dream was a return in triumph to his native village of Villazon, seventy miles north of Manila. Twenty years ago, when he was fifteen, Cristo had come to the United States. Somehow he had escaped the poverty and desolation of Villazon only to find himself trapped by the glittering poverty of California. But that was in the past. Somehow he had survived. He had picked grapes in Modesto, cotton in Bakersfield, asparagus in Sacramento, celery in Venice, cantaloupes in the Imperial Valley. He had canned tuna at San Pedro. He had been hungry in Oxnard, Lompoc and San Diego. Once he had nearly died of pneumonia in the Sutter County Hospital. Once he lived a whole month in the Union Station at Berkeley.
But not once in all those years had he fallen in love, nor met the dream of his soul. Now he was glad he had not found her during that bitter time. He might have lost her out of his inability to keep her gowned and fed. But good times finally came to Cristo. He had saved his money for years. Because he had learned the ways of workmen, he was well paid for his knowledge. Now he was a foreman, a
boss.
“Look. I show you.”
He drew out a small book that recorded his bank deposits. I read the figure. It was nearly seven thousand.
“Soon I go back to Villazon,” he said. “I buy tobacco plantation.”
For he knew exactly what he wanted. A hundred acres in the hills above his native village. As a boy he had played in those hills with his dog. Soon he would return like a hero and bring prosperity to his family.
“Soon?”
“Soon as I find wife. That is my dream.”
“Maybe you won’t find her. It may take years.”
He shook his head. Now he was ready to find her. He had money now. That was the difference.
“Mrs. Flores would make a wonderful wife.”
“Is not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Is not the type of Mrs. Flores. Is different.”
“Where do you look for her?”
“All over Los Angeles. Every night. All day Saturday and Sunday. I walk in the street, in the stores, I keep looking. In the show, in the cafe. On Sunday in the church. All over Southern California I look. Sometimes I go to Long Beach, San Bernardino. Pretty soon I find her.”
“And you want an American girl.”
“Must be American. Typical American girl. Was time was prejudice for Filipino. Is no more. Must be American, for children. To get pioneers, for plantation.”
“Mrs. Flores is American.”
“Is not my type,” he snapped.
After that, conditions improved for me in the Bunker Hill house. Cristo left his door open and I was free to use his shower. He insisted I help myself to the fruit bowl. Usually he returned from work around six in the evening. Every night he came to the door and glanced at the new wastebasket Mrs. Flores had supplied. It was usually full of crumpled paper, crushed evidence of another futile day. After a while, showered and dressed, a gala necktie at his throat, Cristo left and I knew he was off to prowl the streets and cafes, searching for his dream woman.
One day he stayed in his room because of a cold. He wasn’t seriously ill, merely fretful. Mrs. Flores tried to come in to make his bed but I heard him chase her away crossly.
“You’re sick,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“No. Is only cold. I wish to be alone.”
In a moment Mrs. Flores came to my room. Her face was worried, her eyes gleamed with concern. She held a hot-water bottle and a small package.
“Please,” she said. “Will you give him these?”
The package contained mustard plasters and nose drops. I took the stuff to Cristo. He examined everything with a look of horror, sneezed and turned his face away.
“Is crazy, that woman. Here is best thing for cold.”
He poured himself a jigger of whisky and swallowed it laboriously.
The next morning he was on his feet again. I heard him bounce out of bed and leave for work. On my way to breakfast I met Mrs. Flores. She couldn’t hide her concern.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Cured,” I said. “He went to work.”
“Then the medicine helped?”
“Just the thing.”
She smiled with vast satisfaction. She was happy.
When I came back from breakfast there were some pleasant improvements in my room. The window was hung with fresh white curtains, there was a small hooked rug before my bed, and another chair—a rocking chair.
Cristo Sierra found his dream girl four weeks after I arrived at Mrs. Flores’ rooming house. I am sure of the date because my rent was due and I didn’t have it.
Somewhere around midnight Saturday Cristo came to my room. I sat in the rocker, reading a stack of futile manuscripts, trying to salvage a few sentences. Cristo was not jubilant over his discovery. He was rather like the buyer of a car who had finally found what he wanted.
“I see her tonight,” he said. “Is wonderful. Just what I want.”
“What’s she like?”
“Is typical American girl.”
“Did you talk to her?”
No, he hadn’t even met her. He had only seen her at a night club.
“I wish your opinion,” he said. “Tomorrow I take you to look at her.”
We left the house Sunday night and walked down Angel’s Flight to downtown Los Angeles. Cristo was magnificent in a blue gabardine double-breasted suit over a black shirt, and a purple necktie. I felt lowly and threadbare beside him, my shapeless slacks drooping miserably. But I was glad to be away from the house. I couldn’t write there. I was thinking of moving.
We took a taxi and drove out to the Sunset Strip. It was a long fare, nearly ten miles. Somewhere along Wilshire Cristo ordered the driver to come to a stop before a flower shop.
“What is good flower for beautiful woman?”
I told him they all like orchids.
He went inside and after five minutes emerged carrying a big box.
“So you got roses,” I said.
“Orchids. Is very expensive flower.”
“One orchid is plenty.”
“For her I buy dozen.”
The price would have paid my rent for six weeks. We moved along the Strip now, gaudy neon tubes lighting up the boulevard. Cristo was calm, puffing a cigar as he watched the heavy traffic. He neither looked nor acted romantic. This was business to him.
The place was called The Tampico. We got out and Cristo paid an enormous cabfare. There was a pompous simplicity about The Tampico, even to the snobbish doorman who was plainly annoyed by my formless suit. Cristo entered the place with suave jauntiness. He gave the flowers to the headwaiter, tipped him five dollars and immediately we were seated at a ringside table.
After my little room it was good to be in a place like this—the soothing lights, the music, the perfumed and beautiful women.
“Does she work here?” I said.
He smiled without answering. The dance floor cleared and the floor show began. Then I saw her. She was a torch singer, tall, blonde, marvelously curved beneath silver lamé and with orchids pinned to her hair. She went by the name of Charleen Sharron and she sang in a husky voice of tortured love, the agony of love, and a man named Bill who sometimes beat her but she loved him anyhow. She sang rather well and she was very lovely, but she simply didn’t fit as mistress of a tobacco plantation in the Philippine hinterland. I watched Cristo as she sang. His cold appraisal was a little frightening. Nor did he applaud when Charleen Sharron finished her third encore and bowed out. He was more interested in the ovation she received.
“You see,” he said, realizing I was still unconvinced. “They like her.”
It wasn’t any of my business. I was merely the man next door, trying hard to put something on paper. But suddenly I’d had enough of The Tampico, and I stood up.
“Let’s get out of here.”
We went outside and got into a cab. He leaned back and seemed to wait for me to say something about the singer. But I tricked him. I deliberately said nothing.
Finally he asked, “How you like my woman?”
I shrugged. Already in spirit he possessed her—a girl he had seen but never met. It was hopeless, a small tragedy. Cristo was going to get hurt. Again. I remembered the story of his youth in America, the loneliness, the injury he had suffered because he was of another race, and the hard shell he had nourished to protect himself. Twenty years ago he had come to California from across the Pacific to make his fortune. In toil and in desperation he had survived and made it. The same despair now moved him toward a woman like Charleen Sharron. Cristo’s America was a picture-book land. His ideal American woman was a picture-book heroine. She would become his bride, she had to become his bride, because his symbols were mixed. Because, to his way of thinking, she was America. And he wanted to return to Villazon a conqueror with America at his side.
The events of that night left me sleepless and tossing until daybreak. But I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Before dawn I heard it outside i
n the corridor, the soft padding sound of Mrs. Flores’ huaraches. The sound traveled as far as Cristo’s door. Then it returned and moved down the stairs.
Then came the love letters. Here is what happened: A couple of nights after we visited The Tampico Cristo showed me a gold cigarette case he had bought for Charleen Sharron. He wanted to send a love note along with it. Would I write it for him?
“I pay you,” he said. “Ten dollars.”
The rent was overdue. I accepted. I rolled a sheet of paper into my typewriter and wrote that I loved her endlessly, that I worshiped her from afar, that she sang like the wind on a summer night. Cristo was very pleased. He paid me ten dollars immediately. Then he handed me another five.
“Good job,” he said. “I give you bonus.”
He wrapped the cigarette case for mailing and, signing the letter with his first name only, attached it to the package. I pointed out that he hadn’t written his return address. He smiled mysteriously.
“Not yet,” he said. “She must not know for few days.”
So that was it. I began to understand his plan. In the following two weeks I wrote six love letters to the girl at The Tampico. It was the only writing I did during that time. By now the spark of creation had burned out inside me. A cloying sense of guilt enveloped me. I knew I was a charlatan, selling my meager talent to deceive an innocent person. The very sight of my typewriter made me shudder and, though I ate better than I had in weeks, my spirit slowly expired from hunger. Every letter to Charleen Sharron accompanied some expensive gift—perfume, jewelry, a dozen pairs of nylons.
Finally Cristo came to my room with the most exciting gift of all for his dream girl. It was in a large box and even as he ripped it open I dreaded the sight of its beauty. Somehow I knew this would surpass everything. It was a silver fox cape. I touched it and I was without words.
“Good, yes?”
“This is it,” I said. “You can’t do more.”
“Right. Tonight I tell her who I am. You write big love letter.”
It took me two hours to write a one-page note. I was drained out. But it was finally done—the last of Cristo’s love letters. It was flat and full of clichés he didn’t notice. He signed it with his full name and he wrote his address after it.
