by John Fante
“Now we wait for answer.”
It came the next afternoon. It was brought by a boy from the telegraph office who was looking for Cristo Sierra. I signed for the message. In the doorway stood Mrs. Flores, her dark eyes penetrating, fluttering in unconcealed distress.
I fingered the telegram in the light of the window. I wanted to open it, to read with my own eyes the rejection of Cristo Sierra by Charleen Sharron. She had to reject him. It couldn’t be otherwise. I remembered her as I had seen her at The Tampico, beautiful, voluptuous. Suddenly I recalled something that had completely escaped me until that moment. She was cold—as cold as ice. She was like Cristo. Then I was sure this grotesque romance would be consummated. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I blamed myself, yet I couldn’t understand why I should be miserable at Cristo’s happiness.
He came home around seven. I heard him in the next room. I felt his expectancy. He opened the door and peeked inside, grinning.
“Over by the typewriter,” I said.
He stood before the telegram rubbing his hands together. He tore open the envelope and read the message, a smile seeping into his face. He handed the message to me and walked out. The telegram was signed by Charleen Sharron. It read: “Please come and see me.”
He dressed: the full treatment—tuxedo, black bow tie, patent leather shoes, black topcoat. I watched him take a last look at himself in the mirror. He radiated conquest.
“Let me know how it works out,” I said.
“You, I tell first. My friend John Lane,” he said. “Good friend.”
He meant the letters, I didn’t answer. After he was gone I poured myself a drink from his supply of bourbon. It was eight-thirty. This was going to be a long night.
At a quarter to nine I heard the swish of Mrs. Flores’ huaraches. She knocked at my door. Until then I had tried to keep her from knowing that I used Cristo’s room. I didn’t care any more now. After I shouted for her to come in, she opened the door and came through to Cristo’s room.
“Good evening,” I said.
“Why did you write those letters to that woman?” she asked.
“You’ve been rummaging through my wastebasket, Mrs. Flores. That’s not nice.”
“Nice? And you?”
“He paid me to write them.”
“And you took the job.”
It was impossible to tell her emotion. She didn’t appear angry, but she left me uncertain. She moved closer.
“What’s she like, this Charleen?”
“Very attractive.”
“And I?”
Startled, I looked up at her.
“You’re much more than that,” I answered.
It pleased her. She sat in the red chair opposite me and crossed her legs. They were firm and smooth and brown.
“I suppose Cristo thinks her a typical American girl.”
“His exact words,” I said.
“Poor Cristo.”
She rose to leave.
“Don’t let the rent worry you,” she smiled. “I won’t throw you out.”
I was still thinking of her an hour later, when Cristo’s steps sounded in the hall. They were the steps of doom, of defeat, echoing bitter failure. He entered with the gray face of a man who had weathered an ordeal. His arms were loaded with packages. He dumped them into a chair and stood over the mass and I saw again the silver fox cape, the bottles of perfume, the jewelry. He faced me, the hurt deep inside him tightening the muscles around his mouth, his eyes dry and bright and wanting darkness. I got up and walked out of the room. Closing the door, I heard a little gasp of pain. Then he began to cry.
Three days later he was still in his room. I wasn’t worried for him; he need the loneliness, the friendship with himself. What disturbed me more was the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Flores. Mr. Ashley was worried about it too. He wanted to call the police.
“I know this town,” he said. “Something’s happened to her. She’s too pretty.”
On the fourth night of Cristo’s self-imposed exile I began to think Ashley was right.
I knocked on Cristo’s door. He opened the door. He looked agitated, restless.
“Mrs. Flores has disappeared,” I told him.
“Is bad. Look.”
His room was in chaos. The carpets needed sweeping, his studio couch wasn’t made up, glasses were scattered on chair arms and ash trays were glutted. The fruit bowl was empty save for apple cores and peach stones. The flowers in the vase were wilted.
“Where she go?”
“Nobody seems to know.”
“Bad,” he repeated. “Is fine woman.”
Back in my room I heard footsteps in the hall—the click of high heels. They stopped before my door. A knock. I opened the door.
A woman stood there, straight and blonde, her yellow hair wind-blown. The dress she wore—it was gold satin, tight and daring—the quick gust of perfume took my breath away. I could only stare.
“Good evening.” She smiled.
“Mrs. Flores!”
She stepped inside and I took my time examining her from the toes of her high pumps to the little banner of ribbon in her yellow hair. It was unbelievable, yet there she was. It was a little pathetic too.
“Now what?” I said.
She nodded toward Cristo’s door.
I knocked and opened the door. She stood beside me in a kind of gaudy elegance, but I sensed her nervousness as Cristo turned in his chair to look at us.
“I want you to meet a friend,” I said.
At first he didn’t recognize her. His breath filled his body as he arose. His brown eyes widened. His mouth opened. Bravely she crossed to him, her eyes fixed upon him.
“Hello, Cristo,” she said.
“Mrs. Flores! Mrs. Flores!”
He said it over and over, looking at her in unbelief. “Mrs. Flores—why you do this?”
It was an innocent but a brutal question. She put her hand to her mouth as if to hold back her words.
“I’m a fool,” she gasped. “Such a fool.”
Then she was gone, running out of the room and down the hall. We heard her rushing down the stairs and the click of the lock in her door. Cristo stared after her.
“She is so beautiful,” he said. “More beautiful than my Charleen.”
“She loves you.”
“For me she do this. Change to blonde. Is wonderful. I am big fool. Twenty years in America, I look for wrong thing. Is not clothes. Is not yellow hair. Is love. Is here.” He tapped his heart.
“Tell her that, Cristo.”
“Make good pioneer.”
“Wonderful.”
I watched him square his shoulders and stride down the hall. From the top of the stairs I saw him below, knocking at Mrs. Flores’ door. It opened and she stood there.
“I wish to make big apology,” he said.
“Oh, Cristo!”
She threw her arms around him. I watched them a moment. Then everything cleared in my mind. All those weeks, the things I had to say, the things I wanted to write—I could write them now, the feelings in my blood; they would mix with ink and stretch themselves across fields of white paper. I rushed back to my room and sat down before my typewriter and it flowed like magic.
Helen, Thy Beauty Is to Me—
WHEN LOVE CAME to Julio Sal, he was not prepared. Julio Sal, Filipino boy, forty cents an hour, Tokyo Fish Company, Wilmington. Her name was Helen, she wore a smooth red dress and she worked at the Angels’ Ballroom, in Los Angeles. Five feet, four inches was the height of Julio Sal, but when that Helen’s golden head lay on his shoulder, strength and grandeur filled his body. A dream shaped itself in his Malay brain. She sensed it too. She always sensed that sort of thing in the Filipino customers. A gallant flame possessed them, and they bought more tickets. The dances were ten cents apiece; she got half of it.
Towering over the golden hair, Julio Sal saw half a hundred of his countrymen gazing after him, watching the serpentine undulations beneath the
red dress, watching the fast-diminishing roll of tickets in Helen’s left hand. The dances were one minute long. Somewhere behind the four-piece colored band, a bell clanged the end of each number. Since ten o’clock Julio Sal had danced continuously.
Now it was almost midnight. Already he had spent twelve dollars. Forty cents remained in his pocket. It meant four more minutes with the golden hair, and it meant his fare back to the canneries.
The bell clanged, the dance ended, another dance began. In the best alligator style, Julio jittered the dream toward the glass ticket box. Her hand over his shoulder tore a stub from the string and dropped it into the slot.
“Only one left,” the girl panted as Julio bounced her in the corner. It was her first word in an hour. Sweat oozed from the dark face of Julio Sal. Again he gazed across the floor at the group of his countrymen.
Ten of them strained against the railing, each clutching a fat roll of tickets, ready to rush upon the golden girl the moment Julio’s last ticket disappeared inside the glass box. Despair clutched the heart of Julio Sal. Resolution showed in his brown eyes.
“I get some more,” he said.
The bell clanged, the dance ended, another dance began. There was a smile on the girl’s white, hot face as she dropped the last ticket into the slot. This time it was a waltz, a breathing spell. Julio Sal nodded to the ticket man, who made his way through the couples, coins jingling in his money apron. Dismay seeped into the faces of the Penoys pressed against the rail. Julio’s fingers dug into his watch pocket. Surprise widened the blue eyes of Helen when she saw forty cents—nickel, dime and quarter—pinched between Julio Sal’s thumb and forefinger.
“Four tickets,” said Julio Sal.
The ticket vender rolled a cigar through his teeth. “Only four?”
“Please.”
The bell clanged, the dance ended, another dance began. Out of the corner of his eye Julio Sal saw the dismay leave the faces of his little brown brothers. Their smiles mocked him. They had waited so long; they would gladly wait another four dances. The bell clanged, the dance ended, another dance began; again the bell clanged.
“Helen,” said Julio Sal. “Helen, I love you, Helen.”
“That’s nice,” she said, because all the Filipinos loved Helen, because all the Filipinos managed to say it when they got down to their last two or three.
“I write you letter,” said Julio Sal.
“Please do.” Because she always said that; because letters meant that they would be coming back on payday. “Please write.”
“You write me too?”
But the bell clanged, the dance ended and he had no more tickets. She slipped from his arms. The wicker gate opened and he was lost in an avalanche of little brown men fighting for the golden girl. Smiling weakly, he stood at the rail and watched her settle her child’s face against the chest of Johnny Dellarosa, label machine, Van Camp’s, San Pedro. A wave of tenderness suffocated Julio Sal. A small white doll—that was his Helen. The blissful future revealed itself in a reverie that shut out the boogy-woogy and the clanging bell—she was frying his bacon and eggs in a blue-tinted kitchen like in the movie pitch, and he came grinning from the bedroom in a green robe with a yellow sash, like in the move pitch. “Ah, Helen,” he was saying to her, “you are most wonderful cook in whole California. Pretty soon we take boat back to Luzon to meet my mamma and papa.”
The reverie endured through twenty-five clangs of the bell before he remembered that his pockets were empty and that it was eighteen miles to Wilmington.
On his way out, buttoning his square-cut, shoulder-padded, tight overcoat, Julio Sal paused before a huge photograph of the Angels’ Ballroom Staff; forty beautiful girls, forty. She was there, his Helen, her lovely face and slim-hipped figure third from the left, front row.
“Helen, Helen, I love you.”
He descended the stairs to Main Street, saw the fog flowing north like a white river. Julio Sal, well-dressed Filipino boy—black serge suit, hand-tailored overcoat, black patent-leather shoes, snappy, short-brimmed hat. Breasting the white river, he walked south on Main Street. Eighteen miles to the harbor. Good. It had been worth while. He breathed fog and cigarette smoke and smiled for his love. Mamma, this is Helen; papa, this is Helen, my wife. The dream held. He couldn’t marry her in California. The law said no. They would go to Reno. Or Tijuana. Or Seattle. Work a while up north. Then home to the Philippines. Mamma, this is Helen. Papa, this is Helen.
Eighteen miles to Wilmington.
II
He arrived at six o’clock, his patent-leather shoes in ruins. Behind the cannery, in the duplexes, the five Japanese families were already up, lights from their windows a dull gold in the deep fog.
He smelled the fertilizer vats, the tar, the oil, the copra, the bananas and oranges, the bilge, the old rope, the decaying anchovies, the lumber, the rubber, the salt—the vast bouquet of the harbor. This, too, was part of the dream. While working here at this spot, I met my love—I, Julio Sal.
Like one barefoot, he walked down the long veranda of the flat, salt-blackened building. They were single apartments set like cell blocks—one door, one window; one door, one window. A board creaked beneath his step, a baby wakened and cried. Babies, ah, babies. A little girl, he hoped, with the face and eyes of Mamma Helen.
He lived in the last apartment; he and Silvio Lazada, Pacito Celestino, Manuel Bartolome, Delfin Denisio, Vivente Macario, Johnny Andrino and Fred Bunda—all young men who had come to America as boys in the late 20’s.
They were asleep now, the cramped room reeking with the odor of fish, bodies, burned rice and salt air. Bunda, Lazada and Celestino were in the wall bed; Andrino lay on the davenport; Bartolome, Macario and Denisio on the floor. Good boys. Loyal countrymen; though he had been gone all night, none had taken his bed in the bathtub.
On tiptoe he made his way over the sleepers to the bathroom. Through the gray fog-swept light he saw that someone was in the bathtub after all. The sleeper lay deep in blankets, old linen and soiled clothing, his head under the water spouts, his feet on the tub incline. Julio Sal bent down and smiled; it was Antonio Repollo. He had not seen Antonio in two years, not since the Seattle and Alaska canneries. Julio Sal whistled with pleasure. Now his letter-writing problem was solved. Antonio Repollo was a graduate of the University of Washington; he could write beautiful letters. Antonio Repollo was not only a university graduate, he also wrote poetry for El Grafico in Manila.
Julio Sal bent over and shook him awake.
“Antonio, my friend. Welcome.”
Repollo turned over, a laundry bag in his arms.
“Antonio, is me. Julio Sal. I have girl.”
“Is American?” asked Repollo.
“Is blonde,” said Julio Sal. “Is wonderful.”
“Is bad,” said Antonio.
“No,” said Julio Sal. “Is good, very good.”
“Is very bad,” said Repollo. “Is worst thing possible.”
“No,” said Julio Sal. “Is best thing possible.”
He slipped into his greasy dungarees, found a clean shirt behind the kitchen door, and put that on too. It was Vivente Macario’s turn to cook breakfast. Since 1926, at the asparagus fields, the celery fields, the canneries from Alaska to San Diego, Vivente Macario always prepared the same breakfast when his turn came—warmed-over rice, three cans of sardines stolen from the cannery, a hunk of bread and tea. They sat around the knife-scarred breakfast nook and ate quietly over a table whose surface was a mass of initials and dates of the hundreds of Filipino cannery workers who had come and gone throughout the years.
His brown face glowing from cold water, Antonio Repollo came into the kitchen. The poet, the college man. He was here, in their house, and they were honored; had even provided him with a bathtub in which to sleep. They made a place for him at the table, watched his long beautiful fingers remove sardines from the can.
“Julio Sal,” he said, “what is the name of the woman?”
“Is H
elen.”
“Helen? No more? No Anderson, no Smith, Brown?”
“No more. Helen, all the same. Helen.”
“He has girl,” explained Repollo.” Name of Helen. He wish to marry this girl. American girl.”
“No good,” said Fred Bunda.
“Crazy,” said Delfin Denisio.
“Too much trouble”—Johnny Andrino.
“Helen?” Manuel Bartolome talking. “Is not same Helen for to work Angels’ Ballroom, taxi dance?”
“Ya, ya,” said Julio Sal. “She is him, all the same.”
Bartolome sucked his big lips tight. “Is no good, this woman. Cannot be. For to marry, I try myself. She damn liar. You give money, she take. Give you nothing.”
“No, no,” smiled Julio Sal. “Is another Helen. This one, she is good. This one love. She like me. She say ‘write letter.’ This I am do tonight.”
“Gnah,” said Bartolome, coughing an evil memory from his mouth. “For why you believe that? Is applesauce. I am write letter, too—six times. She take my money, give nothing. She no love you, Julio Sal. She no marry Filipino. She take his money, but she no marry. Is not love. Is business.”
The strong fist of Julio Sal whacked the table. “I make her love me. You wait. You see. Pretty soon, three months, cannery close down. I have money. We go for to get married. Reno, Seattle.”
“Is bad,” said Pacito Celestino.
“Crazy,” said Vivente Macario.
“Is terrible,” said Delfin Denisio. “Is awful.”
“Is love,” said Julio Sal. “Is wonderful!”
III
Said Julio Sal to Antonio Repollo, “You will write letter for me tonight, yes?”
Said Antonio Repollo, “No.”
It was evening. The poet, Antonio Repollo, sat before his portable typewriter, line upon line of typescript rattling across the page. The fog had cleared. The moon showed big and yellow, rising over the American-Hawaiian docks.
“I am disappoint,” said Julio Sal. “I write letter myself.”
He asked for paper, and Repollo gave it to him. He asked for a fountain pen, and got that too. He sat across from the poet, his tongue making a bulge against his cheek. A half hour passed. Sweat broke out upon the brow of Julio Sal; the paper before him was white and untouched. Pleading eyes observed the dancing fingers of Antonio Repollo.
