Читать книгу A Search for America - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 9

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It would be pretty hard to analyze the elements which entered into my friendship for Frank. He was not highly cultured, in the sense in which the word culture comprises manners, knowledge, and, above all, tastes and inclinations. He patronized, for instance, all manner of cheap shows. Yet, on my side at least, the friendship amounted to a passion while it lasted. "While it lasted"--for through none of my fault, as you will see, Frank vanished from my life when I left Toronto; the mere memory of this friendship turned into bitterness.

When I first met him, he attracted me by the force of the contrast in which he stood to our common environment. Like myself he could not possibly submerge in the atmosphere of that eating-place. I endowed him in my thought and unconscious appraisal with virtues and sensibilities which were quite foreign to his real nature; and that even after he had revealed part of this real nature to me.

At the time, I had intentionally dropped all consciousness of what had--in Europe--made up my inner life, as contradistinguished from the mere accidentals of the day. I saw the futility of much of its pretensions. I saw that what I had called my "view of life" utterly lacked a foundation on which to rest. This "view of life", which had been a composite of the experiences and conclusions arrived at by a multitude of great minds of the past, was utterly unoriginal and untenable--a mixture of practical optimism and transcendental pessimism, with now the one, now the other predominating. As a matter of fact, it was contingent upon a life of ease, upon mental or spiritual parasitism, or at least upon a sheltered condition. Such views are needed; they fulfil the mission of helping the masses interpret their lives. But from the moment when I resolved upon my great adventure I saw that they would not do for myself. So, when I threw them out of my mental equipment, with them there went into the discard everything else, above all that vast store of memories which was acquired, not by living, but by reading, and which we ordinarily call by the name of education. Thus I arrived at an undervaluation of myself; I looked upon the world, upon other people, and upon myself "de profundis"--from the depths. It took me years of a new and strange life to get back to a proper appreciation of these memories, and though they do no longer predominate, they form a large and important part of what I may call my present intellectual environment. As for original "Views of Life", the last thirty years have taught me one thing about them, namely, that they are possible of attainment only for those who walk on the very heights, or for those who walk in the very depths of life; because only such will dare to place themselves beyond tradition, beyond what I may, for the moment, call morality.

At the time I was abasing myself. As for Frank, a certain clearness of perception, a shrewdness of judgment, a nicety of feeling, an instinctive respect for the other man's point of view, a mental cleanliness which despised pretences and shams--all these lifted him above the rest of the "crowd". I looked up to him. I lived, as it were, on the sea-level; I had the perspective of the frog: above him all things loom.

But there were other things. The "crowd"--with the exception of Ella who was morally clean--had positive characteristics which we two lacked. I will not speak at length of the depravity in "rebus sexualibus" which seemed to impregnate the dressing-rooms. There are episodes in my memory which I do not like to touch on even in thought, much less in speech. But, repulsive as the scene must be, I will try to sketch an interlude which was played upstairs, in the kitchen. I shall do this merely because after much reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that there is only one excuse for a narrative of this kind: truth. Truth is not necessarily so much a matter of often disgusting detail as it is a matter of atmosphere. But, though accordingly I have endeavoured to indicate this atmosphere of the restaurant--the "milieu"--by mere slight touches of the brush, omitting much and leaving other things in semi-darkness, I still believe that, to give it relief, I must set down one glaring colour-patch; without it nobody would quite understand why I reacted in the way I did.

In the front-room worked a little man of thirty-five or so whom all called Jim. He was of slight build, no taller than Roddy, with a head that seemed to have been compressed from both sides; with sloping shoulders and small feet which had already acquired the shuffling gait resulting from the waiter's flatfootedness. He was everlastingly joking in coarse, mostly sexual allusions, especially in conversation with the girls, all of whom, except Ella, liked him for this "naughtiness". He was married, by the way, and had a family; and he was reputed to be a good father, though a bad husband--bad at any rate in the matter of connubial fidelity.

One evening, when the supper-wave had come and gone, Frank, myself, and a few other waiters were standing in the corridor of the kitchen where some discussion with the cooks had arisen, when suddenly Jim burst in among us, swearing in the most frightful way, red in the face with unreasoning, scornful anger. He was carrying a tray with a plate of soup, which he fairly knocked down on the counter, yelling at the top of his voice, and cursing everybody.

"Blankety-blank," he shouted. ". . . this fool of a fellow! That's the third time the son of a . . . sends me back with that plate of soup! He's merely trying to pick on me, . . . him!" He was hopping about on his feet and waving his arms. ". . . him!" he shouted again; and then, clearing his throat with a mighty effort, he spat into the plate of soup with great exertion.

Everybody except Frank and myself was enjoying this thing; most of the onlookers were laughing.

"Take it back to him, Jim," shouted a voice, "make him eat it, the son-of-a-gun!"

Instantly Jim was quiet. He looked around, perfectly self-controlled, and winked at the crowd. "Sure," he said; "what did you think I did it for? Here, Dan," this to the cook, "pour some boiling water in. This time it wasn't hot enough for the son-of-a- . . . !"

Under general shouting and laughter he shouldered the tray and walked out with the greatest bravado.

Part of the "crowd" followed him at no very great distance, to press into the little orchestra-platform, where he informed them shortly, so I heard, that the son of a . . . was eating it, "spitting and all."

The fact that Frank saw in this scene as little fun as I did--gathered from it, indeed, nothing but disgust--marked him off from the rest more effectively even than more positive virtues might have done.

I should add, too, I suppose, that both of us instinctively felt and soon verified that neither one was "naturally" a member of this trade or limited to it in his ambitions. Frank confided to me early in our acquaintance that he was an engineer by trade--I did not know at the time how wonderfully ductile this term is on the American continent, covering as it does the wide range from the streetcar driver to Thomas A. Edison; I understood that he was taking a correspondence-school course in order to prepare himself for advancement; he was planning an elaborate campaign in order to secure the position which he wished to hold. If anything, he was rather older than myself; which made me sometimes wonder why he was not further advanced in his real career; I was to find out by and by.

Lastly, there entered into our short but ardent friendship one more element: a rather unreasonable admiration for him on my part, on account of his very superior, though very natural familiarity with American conditions. It seems to be a matter of course that a hundred thousand trifles which astonished me should have seemed quite commonplace and nearly immutable to him; he had never known any alternatives to them. To him it appeared to be only one of the manifestations of democracy that people should crowd the street-cars to overflowing, hanging on to straps and stepping on each other's toes; that men and women should rub elbows in the aisles of a sleeper, fumbling behind impeding curtains while dressing. He did not recoil from the common drinking-cup or the general washing-room in public places. Since the customs of the country demanded such indifference, I looked up to him on the score of a callousness from which my sensibilities shrank. The reader who shares my own point of view must not forget that my most immediate ambition, like that of every immigrant, was to differ from the average American as little as possible.

It was during the second week of my waiterdom that we drifted together. On Monday morning I was given the last two centre tables with the adjoining eight stalls. That means, I was, when every seat was occupied, supposed to take care of forty-eight customers at a time. This arrangement relieved Iva and Ella to the extent of one-half of their former work, much to their satisfaction. Even twenty-four seems a heavy allotment for a rush-hour: but the pressure on the back-room was never even nearly as heavy as that on the front-room. I cannot but say that during the noon-wave both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Carlton henceforth concentrated their activities on my stand, so that it was a rare occurrence when I had to take an order myself; they simply handed me the checks to get whatever was wanted. They also did everything in their power to keep my dumbwaiters cleared. On the other hand, during the rest of the day, the work of these tables was very light; and, since the noon-hour was unproductive of tips, I was by no means satisfied with the way things were going.

"You work too hard when the rush is on," Frank said to me when I complained. "Keep cool; take your time. It's the running that tells on you. Pile your trays higher; take heavier loads. Above all, don't worry. Your evening trade will pick up. Next week you can ask for a different stand."

"Why!" I exclaimed. "I'll be glad if they don't fire me."

Frank laughed. "Fire you! They don't fire a waiter in this place when he brings in the second-highest total of checks."

"The second-highest total?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"Yes," he answered; "you want to ask for the check-list at the desk. You'll find it ready every morning at ten. Your checks totalled fifty-three dollars yesterday. Mine were fifty-nine. The lowest was twenty-nine. So you see!"

"Well," I gasped, "you are the most encouraging person I ever met."

"If you keep anywhere near that mark," Frank continued, "you can have the pick of the place by Saturday. As it is, you have too many tables. You want only one centre table, but farther to the front. Look out for regular customers. They are the ones that tip. Ask for Roddy's tables; then we'll be neighbours; you'll soon catch on to the ropes."

This information put so much spring into my muscles that I by no means heeded Frank's advice. I wanted to be sure that I could ask for whatever stand I pleased and get it. And I might say right here that I did "keep it up" for the rest of the week and finished on the six days' total of sales in the second place.

When, on the other hand, the third day went by and I had again taken in less than a dollar in tips, I became discouraged once more.

"You come to the front to-night," said Frank; "stick around my stand. I'll show you how to get tips."

That is what I did; and what I saw that night, opened my eyes indeed, though I knew at once that Frank's methods could never be mine. I told him so; and thereby, I believe, hangs the tale of the ultimate break in our friendship.

First of all I was struck by the fact that most of the customers who sat at Frank's tables were by no means the higher-class clients of the place. All of them seemed to know just where they were going. That was one of Frank's tricks: he never changed his stand. He might have had his choice of the tables in the front-room; he did not want them. His regular customers knew him, knew where to find him, and did not care to be attended to by any other waiter.

I shall sketch the way in which he waited on two of his typical patrons.

The first one was a young man who might have been a truck-driver or a baggage-handler at one of the railroad stations. Even in this by no means exclusive restaurant he looked slightly out of place. He nodded to Frank when he sat down, exchanged a few remarks, and asked, "Well, what've you got to-night?"

Frank named two or three inexpensive "short orders."

"All right," said the young man, "make it chops. And coffee with apple-pie."

Frank went to the kitchen and in due time filled the order. So far there was nothing extraordinary about the affair. The astonishing part began when the young man had consumed what he had ordered.

He turned to Frank, winked, and said, "Got any more of this?" touching his pie-plate with his finger.

"Sure," said Frank, "lots of it." He stepped up to his dumbwaiter, whisked two pieces of apple-pie on a plate, and pushed it in front of his guest. The same manoeuvre was performed once more, with an extra cup of coffee thrown in; none of these items was marked down on the check.

Before this young man who apparently was inordinately fond of pie had finished his meal, another customer, a heavy-set, prosperous-looking man who might have been a butcher or a small contractor came in and dropped into a seat on the opposite side of the room.

When Frank went over to take his order, he merely said, "Hello, Frank! The usual thing."

I was interested in this usual thing and followed Frank into the kitchen.

Frank laughed. "Beginning to dawn on you?" he asked. Then he shouted his order, "One Porterhouse, rare." Meanwhile he was making out the check. When he had finished, he shoved it to me, and I read, "One Sirloin, single."

Porterhouse steak figured on the menu at one dollar, sirloin at forty cents.

Frank winked at the one-eyed cook and pushed a ten-cent piece across the counter; the cook slipped it negligently into his trousers-pocket. It was he who, after the supper-rush, attended to the checking of our orders.

"I see," I said, rather taken aback. There must have been some distance in my tone, for Frank laughed; and his laugh sounded a trifle too boisterous.

"Oh Phil!" he exclaimed; and I could not help hearing a certain weariness in his mocking hilarity. "What's the use? Everybody does it. Tip the cook and serve the customer. You see they are still making piles of money. They charge it up to overhead. That way I get a chance to make a penny, too."

"Where do you get the pie?" I enquired. "Is Walter in with you, too?" Walter was the German-American "boss" at the counter.

"No," answered Frank, "I've never been able to do anything with him. When I have an order for the counter, I just invite a couple of pieces of pie to come along."

"I see," I said again.

And again Frank tried to laugh it off. "The great American game," he said.

When we returned to the dining-room, I was rather silent. But at last I asked, "How much do these fellows tip you?"

"A quarter each," he replied.

"How much are you making that way?" I went on.

"Well, I don't usually talk about it. Nobody tells the truth about his tips. But you keep quiet, and I'll tell you."

"Of course, I'll keep quiet."

He held up the five fingers of his hand. "About that," he said, "a day."

That was my first encounter with American "graft". I felt rather hurt at the discovery that Frank, whom I was inclined to idolize, should have lax principles with regard to common honesty. I also realized at once the bearing this had on my own outlook. If this was the way to earn tips, was I going to get them? These methods, I knew, were impossible for me. I might, under stress of circumstances, have become a thief, a burglar, almost anything. I was no longer so sure of myself as I had been before I emigrated from Europe. Hunger, despair, and helpless loneliness are strange prompters. I had begun to think less harshly of him who sins against society. This fact may be a revelation to some who are dealing with alien criminals in this country. The path of the immigrant is sown with temptation: a temptation of a spiritual kind; he is tempted to charge all his troubles to some incomprehensible vice in the very constitution of the new country or the new society into which he came. His need and distress may become extreme. If he sins, the society against which he sins is foreign to him, just as truly, as he is foreign to it. What he sees of American morals is often, too often, not what shows them at their best. Having set myself the arduous task of telling the truth, I will, in my own case, even go further and confess that, what disgusted me here, was the pettiness of the thing rather; there was nothing in it to appeal to my æsthetic appreciation. Large, bold crime I could have admired where I recoiled from pilfering.

Frank and I had already formed the habit of walking along together when we went home in the small hours of the day. The road which we followed in common was somewhat out of the way for him as well as myself. But for the sake of our company we were both willing to make a slight detour. Sometimes we had, when reaching the point where we must separate, delayed at the street-corner, talking and laughing for an additional quarter of an hour or so.

This night we reached it in silence. But instead of bidding Frank good-night, I said briefly, "Come, I shall see you home."

We proceeded in silence for a little while longer.

Frank felt the tension as much as I did. That reconciled me partly. I could see it by the way in which he looked ahead, staring into vacancy. My unspoken condemnation hurt him: I was glad of it. He understood me; that did him honour. But apparently, too, he had not expected anything of the kind; and that I resented. He had taken me into his confidence with bravado; a master had shown a supposedly apt pupil one of his tricks of the trade; and the apprentice had suddenly turned into a judge. Every motion of his betrayed that he was chafing under the eye of the law.

"Look here, Phil," he said at length; "let's have this out."

I breathed more freely. I was glad that he felt it incumbent upon himself to broach the matter instead of leaving the task to me.

"You don't know," he went on. "You are new in this country. Everybody else in the crowd would think this a clever trick. In fact, as I've said, quite a few of them practise it themselves. I need the money. I've got to have it. You can't know, of course. But I've got to have it, fair means or foul. I could not be satisfied with the six or eight dollars those fellows pay. I'm getting eight; don't tell anybody. They might give me ten if I threatened to quit. If I did not do as I'm doing, I'd make ten dollars in tips besides. That isn't enough."

"The question seems to be, can you make more at anything else?"

"I could, and I can't," he answered impatiently.

"If you could, why not try?"

"No use," he replied. "Not yet. Nothing to it just now. Got to stick it out for the moment."

My silence seemed to irritate him.

"Look here, Phil," he began once more. "You are new in this country. Let me tell you a few things. There's Johnson. He owns property in this city. His property is assessed by its earning power. Do you think, when the assessor comes around, he gives him the correct figures? Graft! He names a figure and slips the man a bill--a big bill, I suppose. Graft, I tell you, graft! There's Carlton. He buys the supplies for the beastly place. Take the butchers. One has a better meat at the lower price. The other slips Carlton a hundred-dollar bill and gets the trade. . . ."

"How can you know?"

"Never mind," he exclaimed; "I do know. Graft, I tell you! Graft again. There's Cox. He's supposed to place the customers and, of course, not to know who tips and who doesn't. But you can tell by the mere looks of the fellow, by the way he steps about and noses around. Who gets the big tippers? Meg! And you can have some of them, too, if you slip him a five every week. What is it but graft? Take a railroad conductor. You board a train without a ticket. You wink at him and hold out a dollar-bill. Where to? he asks. You name your destination and get your counter check just as if you had paid your fare. Graft! It's the same thing everywhere. You don't know this country yet. Who's the successful man? The successful grafter, that's all."

I was struck speechless for a moment. Then I saw the flaw in his eloquence. "Just a moment, Frank. Has it ever occurred to you that, if what you say were true, there would be no business possible in this country? The railroads, the big companies and corporations would simply have to quit."

"Oh," Frank laughed, "there are always the suckers."

"You call the honest man a sucker--whatever that may mean."

"A sucker's the man who takes what's handed to him, the gaff as well as the gold-brick, and doesn't squeal," Frank volunteered as a definition.

"Then I'd rather be a sucker than a . . ."

I suppressed the word, and Frank had the grace not to supply it. Again we went in silence for a while.

"Look here, Phil," Frank began for the third time. "I want you to understand this. I might just as well tell you. Carrol's as little my real name as yours is Branden."

"Just a moment," I interrupted him. "Is there no law in this country against assuming a false name?"

"No," he said. "There isn't. Not so long as you do it without dishonest purpose. Of course, if you do it for fraud . . ."

"Good," I interrupted him once more. "That settles that point. I don't see anything wrong in a man's changing his name if he cares to do so, law or no law. But since you've done it, I'm glad it isn't illegal. As for myself, I can assure you I have documentary evidence for the effect that Branden happens to be my real name, though that's neither here nor there."

"Then why . . . No, listen. I want you to get this. I'm hiding. Buffalo's my home town. I'm hiding from my wife."

"Your what?" I asked sharply.

"Yes," he replied and chuckled, though awkwardly. "Didn't know I was married, did you? Well, I am. I'll tell you a few things about that marriage. I was nineteen, my wife was seventeen when we took the plunge. My father turned me out; said I was crazy; he was right; but I didn't know it; so I went on my own. I defied the world. Poor but happy, you know. Paradise in a hut; just read it up in any fool novel. Heaven turned into the usual hell. No children, thank the Lord! Meanwhile I was making good on the job. I was with the Big Four. Took correspondence lessons, etc. Never had had beyond two years of high school. At last I was assistant engineer on the Delaware-Lackawanna; at one hundred and twenty per. By that time the wife was an hysterical wreck. Home was hell, I can tell you. Nagging and scolding and quarrelling, day and night. The worst about those hysterical women is, no matter how wildly they exaggerate in the reproaches they gush at you, there's always a wee, tiny kernel of truth in what they fling at your head; that disarms you. Whenever I wasn't out on a night-run, we sat up quarrelling or arguing--she doing nine-tenths of the talking. She didn't need any microscope either to see my faults! By and by I lost all my self-respect. Drinks never bothered me much; but then I hit the booze. One day I came home--discharged. Well, I tried to face the music. She went off into a fit and threw herself on the floor, screaming and kicking with arms and legs. I packed up. I told her I was going to leave, for good. She scratched my face all up, screamed some more, and then I banged the door shut on that part of my life. Now get this. Before I left town, I saw my father. He's a Pullman conductor, quite well off--graft, I suppose. . . ."

"Frank!" I exclaimed sharply.

"Oh, hell!" Frank shouted, "don't be so squeamish! Take the world as it is; this country, anyway. Well, he agreed to my going into hiding. I'm paying alimony; thirty dollars a week. Those were his terms. I was to go under an assumed name: none of my friends to know where I was--only he. And he would shield me so long as I paid the thirty a week, promptly, to him. If I missed one single payment, he said, he'd hand me over to that fury. If I hadn't promised, he'd have had me arrested right off, I assure you. I went into this waiter business because it was the only thing I knew at which I could make enough money without losing time. I've changed my name; I can't use any of my old testimonials and references. I've got to get a diploma from some reputable school in my new name before I can go back to my old work. I've got to start in from the bottom. And while I'm doing that, I can't even make enough money to live up to what I've promised. I've got to get far enough ahead first. I can't even tell them that I've had experience. They'd ask me where. And if I tell them, I give myself away."

"Well," I sighed, "you're in a mess all right."

"You've said it. And now, I suppose, you are ready to pass me up."

"No," I said hesitatingly. "Still . . ."

"Oh, cut it, Phil," he exclaimed. "You know I can help you a lot. You don't want to stick in that hole, do you? I can help you along. New York, that's the place for you. I've been a waiter at Sherry's, a bell-hop at the Belmont. Just for the fun of it, when I was a mere kid. I know a few people there, and they know me. I can give you a start . . ."

"I suppose so," I said. "But that isn't the point. I did not try to make friends with you for what there might be in it for me. I don't think I want to stay in this business anyway. But what is there in our relation for you?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I don't care. I've taken to you, that's all. I want you to think well of me. I'm quite a decent chap after all, no matter what I may be doing in the line of graft. I've known worse than I am, at any rate."

We drifted into silence again.

"No," I said at last. "I don't think I want to pass you up as you call it. But you know, you've given me some jolts tonight. I wish I could help you, but I can't. You must give me time to get used to the new ideas. Guess I'll turn back now."

"All right, I'll turn back with you." And he took me home.

Matrimonial entanglements were nothing new to me. In those strata of society in which I had been moving in Europe, marital escapades were viewed with leniency. The universal tendency to make marriage easy, so as to prevent extra-nuptial immorality, had, in my old environment, reached a point where five-year trial marriages seemed within reach. Everybody discussed such things; not to talk glibly about them, branded you as being behind the times. From there it is no great step to taking the solemn obligations of old-fashioned wedlock as a mere joke. From a strictly opportunistic view-point it seems indeed as if there were no way out of this dilemma. If you want to suppress vice by making it legitimate, you must throw the portals of wedlock wide open. If you still want marriage to mean anything at all, you must open the door of divorce equally wide; otherwise you encourage the weak in breaking the law; and you force misery on those who are morally strong. All which very likely amounts to, "Le roi est mort--vive le roi!" Unfortunately for the opportunists, a mistake has been made in this modern tendency, namely, to open the door into wedlock a little faster than the door out of it; so that a good many--like my then friend Frank--got caught between door and jamb.

I do not mean to defend him--nor to indict. But I do wish to say that familiarity will inure you to almost anything. I had become inured to lax views regarding the sanctity of marriage. Even to my mother an elopement or a case of adultery had not meant much beyond a theme for amused gossip. Frank probably had become inured to "graft" because he had heard of it and seen it practised ever since he was a child. Still, the mere fact that he felt the need of an explanation showed me that he was aware of the moral taint attached to it.

I have, as you will hear if you care to follow me to the end, devoted the major part of my life to the task of "Americanizing" others.* I have, from choice, since I found my "level" in the New World, spent most of my years among that part of the population of this continent which is of foreign origin. Only too often have I, in the midst of these people, met with the profound conviction that in America "graft" is king, sharp practice goes rampant, that "to put one over on the other fellow" is the chief aim in life of every one the immigrant has to deal with. If he is unable to speak the language, he feels helpless, not without bitterness. Nothing was harder to fight than the pessimism created by such impressions.

* I use the word in the wider sense in which it includes what is commonly called Canadianization. America is a continent, not a country.

I do not mean to indict; nor do I mean to suggest a remedy. I have just recounted my first encounter with graft. I have given, as nearly as I can remember, the first explanation with which I met of this disease on the body democratic. I wish to add that much of the suffering I was destined to go through, for a long, long while, was caused by its rankling in my heart which was only too eager to worship the New World. In looking back over the first few years of my life on this continent--while I was still in the plastic stage,--I cannot but be struck by the amazingly large number of people with whom I fell in who lived more or less exclusively on this or that form of graft. There were so many that in another person I should find it pardonable if he had arrived at the conclusion that graft was the predominating trait in the make-up of the average American. Is it that the "grafter" consciously or unconsciously drifts towards the immigrant? Does he there scent his prey? Or is it that the immigrant, coming as he does into a world which he does not understand, here finds the one feature which he by force must learn to understand if he wants to survive?