In the twilight, a great crowd was streaming up the Prado in Havana.
The people had been down to the shore to laugh and twiddle their
fingers at the American blockading fleet--mere colourless shapes on the
edge of the sea. Gorgeous challenges had been issued to the far-away
ships by little children and women while the men laughed. Havana was
happy, for it was known that the illustrious sailor Don Patricio de
Montojo had with his fleet met the decaying ships of one Dewey and
smitten them into stuffing for a baby's pillow. Of course the American
sailors were drunk at the time, but the American sailors were always
drunk. Newsboys galloped among the crowd crying _La Lucha_ and _La
Marina_. The papers said: "This is as we foretold. How could it be
otherwise when the cowardly Yankees met our brave sailors?" But the
tongues of the exuberant people ran more at large. One man said in a
loud voice: "How unfortunate it is that we still have to buy meat in
Havana when so much pork is floating in Manila Bay!" Amid the
consequent laughter, another man retorted: "Oh, never mind! That pork
in Manila is rotten. It always was rotten." Still another man said:
"But, little friend, it would make good manure for our fields if only
we had it." And still another man said: "Ah, wait until our soldiers
get with the wives of the Americans and there will be many little
Yankees to serve hot on our tables. The men of the _Maine_ simply
made our appetites good. Never mind the pork in Manila. There will be
plenty." Women laughed; children laughed because their mothers laughed;
everybody laughed. And--a word with you--these people were cackling and
chuckling and insulting their own dead, their own dead men of Spain,
for if the poor green corpses floated then in Manila Bay they were not
American corpses.
The newsboys came charging with an extra. The inhabitants of
Philadelphia had fled to the forests because of a Spanish bombardment
and also Boston was besieged by the Apaches who had totally invested
the town. The Apache artillery had proven singularly effective and an
American garrison had been unable to face it. In Chicago millionaires
were giving away their palaces for two or three loaves of bread. These
despatches were from Madrid and every word was truth, but they added
little to the enthusiasm because the crowd--God help mankind--was
greatly occupied with visions of Yankee pork floating in Manila Bay.
This will be thought to be embittered writing. Very well; the writer
admits its untruthfulness in one particular. It is untruthful in that
it fails to reproduce one-hundredth part of the grossness and indecency
of popular expression in Havana up to the time when the people knew
they were beaten.
There were no lights on the Prado or in other streets because of a
military order. In the slow-moving crowd, there was a young man and an
old woman. Suddenly the young man laughed a strange metallic laugh and
spoke in English, not cautiously. "That's damned hard to listen to."
The woman spoke quickly. "Hush, you little idiot. Do you want to be
walkin' across that grass-plot in Cabanas with your arms tied behind
you?" Then she murmured sadly: "Johnnie, I wonder if that's true--what
they say about Manila?"
"I don't know," said Johnnie, "but I think they're lying."
As they crossed the Plaza, they could see that the Café Tacon was
crowded with Spanish officers in blue and white pajama uniforms. Wine
and brandy was being wildly consumed in honour of the victory at
Manila. "Let's hear what they say," said Johnnie to his companion, and
they moved across the street and in under the _portales_. The owner of
the Café Tacon was standing on a table making a speech amid cheers. He
was advocating the crucifixion of such Americans as fell into Spanish
hands and--it was all very sweet and white and tender, but above all,
it was chivalrous, because it is well known that the Spaniards are a
chivalrous people. It has been remarked both by the English newspapers
and by the bulls that are bred for the red death. And secretly the
corpses in Manila Bay mocked this jubilee; the mocking, mocking corpses
in Manila Bay.
To be blunt, Johnnie was an American spy. Once he had been the manager
of a sugar plantation in Pinar del Rio, and during the insurrection it
had been his distinguished function to pay tribute of money, food and
forage alike to Spanish columns and insurgent bands. He was performing
this straddle with benefit to his crops and with mildew to his
conscience when Spain and the United States agreed to skirmish, both in
the name of honour. It then became a military necessity that he should
change his base. Whatever of the province that was still alive was
sorry to see him go for he had been a very dexterous man and food and
wine had been in his house even when a man with a mango could gain the
envy of an entire Spanish battalion. Without doubt he had been a mere
trimmer, but it was because of his crop and he always wrote the word
thus: C R O P. In those days a man of peace and commerce was in a
position parallel to the watchmaker who essayed a task in the midst of
a drunken brawl with oaths, bottles and bullets flying about his intent
bowed head. So many of them--or all of them--were trimmers, and to any
armed force they fervently said: "God assist you." And behold, the
trimmers dwelt safely in a tumultuous land and without effort save that
their little machines for trimming ran night and day. So many a
plantation became covered with a maze of lies as if thick-webbing
spiders had run from stalk to stalk in the cane. So sometimes a planter
incurred an equal hatred from both sides and when in trouble there was
no camp to which he could flee save, straight in air, the camp of the
heavenly host.
If Johnnie had not had a crop, he would have been plainly on the side
of the insurgents, but his crop staked him down to the soil at a point
where the Spaniards could always be sure of finding him--him or his
crop--it is the same thing. But when war came between Spain and the
United States he could no longer be the cleverest trimmer in Pinar del
Rio. And he retreated upon Key West losing much of his baggage train,
not because of panic but because of wisdom. In Key West, he was no
longer the manager of a big Cuban plantation; he was a little tan-faced
refugee without much money. Mainly he listened; there was nought else
to do. In the first place he was a young man of extremely slow speech
and in the Key West Hotel tongues ran like pin-wheels. If he had
projected his methodic way of thought and speech upon this hurricane,
he would have been as effective as the man who tries to smoke against
the gale. This truth did not impress him. Really, he was impressed with
the fact that although he knew much of Cuba, he could not talk so
rapidly and wisely of it as many war-correspondents who had not yet
seen the island. Usually he brooded in silence over a bottle of beer
and the loss of his crop. He received no sympathy, although there was a
plentitude of tender souls. War's first step is to make expectation so
high that all present things are fogged and darkened in a tense wonder
of the future. None cared about the collapse of Johnnie's plantation
when all were thinking of the probable collapse of cities and fleets.
In the meantime, battle-ships, monitors, cruisers, gunboats and torpedo
craft arrived, departed, arrived, departed. Rumours sang about the ears
of warships hurriedly coaling. Rumours sang about the ears of warships
leisurely coming to anchor. This happened and that happened and if the
news arrived at Key West as a mouse, it was often enough cabled north
as an elephant. The correspondents at Key West were perfectly capable
of adjusting their perspective, but many of the editors in the United
States were like deaf men at whom one has to roar. A few quiet words of
information was not enough for them; one had to bawl into their ears a
whirlwind tale of heroism, blood, death, victory--or defeat--at any
rate, a tragedy. The papers should have sent playwrights to the first
part of the war. Play-wrights are allowed to lower the curtain from
time to time and say to the crowd: "Mark, ye, now! Three or four months
are supposed to elapse. But the poor devils at Key West were obliged to
keep the curtain up all the time." "This isn't a continuous performance."
"Yes, it is; it's _got_ to be a continuous performance. The welfare of
the paper demands it. The people want news." Very well: continuous
performance. It is strange how men of sense can go aslant at the
bidding of other men of sense and combine to contribute to a general
mess of exaggeration and bombast. But we did; and in the midst of the
furor I remember the still figure of Johnnie, the planter, the
ex-trimmer. He looked dazed.
This was in May.
We all liked him. From time to time some of us heard in his words the
vibrant of a thoughtful experience. But it could not be well heard; it
was only like the sound of a bell from under the floor. We were too
busy with our own clatter. He was taciturn and competent while we
solved the war in a babble of tongues. Soon we went about our peaceful
paths saying ironically one to another: "War is hell." Meanwhile,
managing editors fought us tooth and nail and we all were sent boxes of
medals inscribed: "Incompetency." We became furious with ourselves. Why
couldn't we send hair-raising despatches? Why couldn't we inflame the
wires? All this we did. If a first-class armoured cruiser which had
once been a tow-boat fired a six-pounder shot from her forward
thirteen-inch gun turret, the world heard of it, you bet. We were not
idle men. We had come to report the war and we did it. Our good names
and our salaries depended upon it and we were urged by our
managing-editors to remember that the American people were a collection
of super-nervous idiots who would immediately have convulsions if we
did not throw them some news--any news. It was not true, at all. The
American people were anxious for things decisive to happen; they were
not anxious to be lulled to satisfaction with a drug. But we lulled
them. We told them this and we told them that, and I warrant you our
screaming sounded like the noise of a lot of sea-birds settling for the
night among the black crags.
In the meantime, Johnnie stared and meditated. In his unhurried,
unstartled manner he was singularly like another man who was flying the
pennant as commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron. Johnnie
was a refugee; the admiral was an admiral. And yet they were much akin,
these two. Their brother was the Strategy Board--the only capable
political institution of the war. At Key West the naval officers spoke
of their business and were devoted to it and were bound to succeed in
it, but when the flag-ship was in port the only two people who were
independent and sane were the admiral and Johnnie. The rest of us were
lulling the public with drugs.
There was much discussion of the new batteries at Havana. Johnnie was a
typical American. In Europe a typical American is a man with a hard
eye, chin-whiskers and a habit of speaking through his nose. Johnnie
was a young man of great energy, ready to accomplish a colossal thing
for the basic reason that he was ignorant of its magnitude. In fact he
attacked all obstacles in life in a spirit of contempt, seeing them
smaller than they were until he had actually surmounted them--when he
was likely to be immensely pleased with himself. Somewhere in him there
was a sentimental tenderness, but it was like a light seen afar at
night; it came, went, appeared again in a new place, flickered, flared,
went out, left you in a void and angry. And if his sentimental
tenderness was a light, the darkness in which it puzzled you was his
irony of soul. This irony was directed first at himself; then at you;
then at the nation and the flag; then at God. It was a midnight in
which you searched for the little elusive, ashamed spark of tender
sentiment. Sometimes, you thought this was all pretext, the manner and
the way of fear of the wit of others; sometimes you thought he was a
hardened savage; usually you did not think but waited in the cheerful
certainty that in time the little flare of light would appear in the
gloom.
Johnnie decided that he would go and spy upon the fortifications of
Havana. If any one wished to know of those batteries it was the admiral
of the squadron, but the admiral of the squadron knew much. I feel sure
that he knew the size and position of every gun. To be sure, new guns
might be mounted at any time, but they would not be big guns, and
doubtless he lacked in his cabin less information than would be worth a
man's life. Still, Johnnie decided to be a spy. He would go and look.
We of the newspapers pinned him fast to the tail of our kite and he was
taken to see the admiral. I judge that the admiral did not display much
interest in the plan. But at any rate it seems that he touched Johnnie
smartly enough with a brush to make him, officially, a spy. Then
Johnnie bowed and left the cabin. There was no other machinery. If
Johnnie was to end his life and leave a little book about it, no one
cared--least of all, Johnnie and the admiral. When he came aboard the
tug, he displayed his usual stalwart and rather selfish zest for fried
eggs. It was all some kind of an ordinary matter. It was done every
day. It was the business of packing pork, sewing shoes, binding hay. It
was commonplace. No one could adjust it, get it in proportion,
until--afterwards. On a dark night, they heaved him into a small boat
and rowed him to the beach.
And one day he appeared at the door of a little lodging-house in Havana
kept by Martha Clancy, born in Ireland, bred in New York, fifteen years
married to a Spanish captain, and now a widow, keeping Cuban lodgers
who had no money with which to pay her. She opened the door only a
little way and looked down over her spectacles at him.
"Good-mornin' Martha," he said.
She looked a moment in silence. Then she made an indescribable gesture
of weariness. "Come in," she said. He stepped inside. "And in God's
name couldn't you keep your neck out of this rope? And so you had to
come here, did you--to Havana? Upon my soul, Johnnie, my son, you are
the biggest fool on two legs."
He moved past her into the court-yard and took his old chair at the
table--between the winding stairway and the door--near the orange tree.
"Why am I?" he demanded stoutly. She made no reply until she had taken
seat in her rocking-chair and puffed several times upon a cigarette.
Then through the smoke she said meditatively: "Everybody knows ye are a
damned little mambi." Sometimes she spoke with an Irish accent.