What I am trying to convey to you, the reader, is a sense of the man
in the bedroom, and myself looking at each other and thinking each his
own thoughts and that these thoughts were a compound of our own and
other people’s thoughts too. In the restaurant Edward and myself, while
wanting to do so very much, had yet been unable to come close to each
other. The man from prison, wanting us also, had been frightened by
our presence and now here was this new man, a writer like myself and
Edward, trying to thrust himself into the circle of my consciousness.
We continued looking at each other. The man was a popular American
short story writer. He wrote each year ten, twelve, fifteen magazine
stories which sold for from five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars
each.
Was he tired of writing his stories? What did he want of me? I began
to grow more and more belligerent in my attitude toward him. It is,
with me, a common effect of feeling my own limitations. When I feel
inadequate I look about at once for someone with whom I may become
irritated.
The book I had been reading a half hour before, the book of “The Tales
of Balzac,” lay on a table near where the man sat and his fingers now
reached out and took hold of it. It was bound in soft brown leather.
One who loves me and who knew of my love for the book had taken it from
my room in a house in Chicago and had carried it off to an old workman
who had put it in this new suit of soft brown leather.
The fingers of the man on the bed were playing with the pages of the
book. One got the notion that the fingers wanted to begin tearing pages
from the book.
I had been trying to reassure him. “Do stay, I have nothing to do,” I
had said and he smiled at my words as a child might smile. “I am such
an egotist,” he explained. “You see, I want to talk of myself. I write
stories, you see, but they aren’t any good. Really they aren’t any good
at all but they do bring me in money. I’m in a tight hole, I tell you.
I own an automobile and I live on a certain scale that is fixed--that’s
what I mean--that’s what’s the trouble with me. I am no longer young,
as you’ll see if you look at my hair. It’s getting gray. I’m married
and now I have a daughter in college. She goes to Vassar. Her name is
Elsie. Things are fixed with me. I live on a certain scale--that’s what
I mean--that’s what’s the trouble with me.”
It was apparent the man had something of importance to himself he
wanted to say and that he did not know how to begin.
I tried to help. My friend Edward had told me a little of his story.
(For the sake of convenience and really to better conceal his identity
we will call him Arthur Hobson--although that is not his name.)
Although he was born in America he is of Italian descent and there is
in his nature, no doubt, something of the Italian spirit of violence,
strangely mingled, as it so often is in the Latins, with gentleness
and subtlety.
However, he was like myself in one thing. He was an American and was
trying to understand himself--not as an Italian but as an American.
And so there was this Hobson--born in America of an Italian father--a
father who had changed his name after coming to America and had
prospered here. He, the father, had come to America to make money and
had been successful. Then he had sent his son to an American college,
wanting to make a real American of him.
The son had been ambitious to become a well-known football player
and to have, during his college days, the joy of seeing his name and
picture in the newspapers. As it turned out however, he could not
become one of the great players and to the end of his college career
remained what is called a substitute--getting into but one or two
comparatively unimportant games to win his college letter.
He did not have it in him to be a great football player and so, in
a world created in his fancy, he did what he could not do in life.
He wrote a story concerning a man who, like himself, was of Italian
descent and who also remained through most of his college career a
substitute on a football team--but in the story the man did have, just
at the end of his days in college, an opportunity of which he took
brilliant advantage.
There was this Hobson in his room writing on an afternoon of the late
Fall. It was the birth of a Story-teller. He moved restlessly about the
room, sat a long time writing and then got up and moved about again.
In the story he wrote that day in his room long ago he did what he
could not do in the flesh. The hero of his story was a rather small
square-shouldered man like himself and there was an important game on,
the most important of the year. All the other players were Anglo-Saxons
and they could not win the game. They held their opponents even but
could make no progress toward scoring.
And now came the last ten minutes of play and the team began to weaken
a little and that heartened the other side. “Hold ’em! ... hold ’em!
... hold ’em!” shouted the crowd. At last, at the very last, the young
Italian boy was given his chance. “Let the Wop go in! We are going to
lose anyway. Let the Wop go in!”
Who has not read such stories? There are infinite variations of the
theme. There he was, the little dark-skinned Italian-American and who
ever thought he could do anything special! Such games as football are
for the nations of the North. “Well, it will have to be done. One of
the halfbacks has injured himself. Go in there, you Wop!”
So in he goes and the story football game, the most important one of
the year for his school, is won. It is almost lost but he saves the
day. Aha, the other side has the ball and fumbles, just as they are
nearing the goal line. Forward springs the little alert dark figure.
Now he has the ball and has darted away. He stumbles and almost falls
but ... see ... he has made a little twisting movement with his body
just as that big fellow, the fullback of the opposing team, is about
to pounce upon him. “See him run!” When he stumbles something happens
to his leg. His ankle is sprained but still he runs like a streak. Now
every step brings pain but he runs on and on. The game is won for the
old school. “The little Wop did it! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
The devil and all! These Italian fellows have a cruel streak in them,
even in their dreams. The young Italian-American writer, writing his
first story, had left his hero with a slight limp that went with him
all through life and had justified it by the notion that the limp was
in some way a badge of honor, a kind of proof of his thorough-going
Americanism.
Anyway, he wrote the story and sent it to one of our American magazines
and it was paid for and published. He did, after all, achieve a
kind of distinction during his days in college. In an American
college a football star is something but an author is something,
too. “Look, there goes Hobson. He’s an author! He had a story in the
_National Whiz_ and got three hundred and fifty dollars for it.
A smart fellow, I tell you! He’ll make his way in the world. All the
fraternities are after the fellow.”
And so there was Hobson and his father was proud of him and his college
was proud of him and his future was assured. He wrote another football
story and another and another. Things began to come his way and by
the time he left college he was engaged to be married to one of the
most popular girls of his class. She wasn’t very enthusiastic about
his people but one did not need to live in the same city with them.
An author can live where he pleases. The young couple came from the
Middle-West and went to live in New England, in a town facing the sea.
It was a good place for him. In New England there are many colleges
and Hobson could go to football games all Fall and get new ideas for
stories without traveling too far.
The Italian-American has become what he is, an American artist. He has
a daughter in college now and owns an automobile. He is a success. He
writes football stories.
V
He sat in my room in the hotel in New York, fingering the book he had
picked up from the table. The deuce! Did he want to tear the leaves?
The fellow who came into the restaurant where Edward and I sat was
in my mind perhaps--that is to say, the man who had been in prison.
I kept thinking of the story writer as a man trying to tear away the
bars of a prison. “Before he leaves this room my treasured book will be
destroyed,” a corner of my brain was whispering to me.
He wanted to talk about writing. That was his purpose. As with Edward
and myself, there was now something between Hobson and myself that
wanted saying. We were both story-tellers, fumbling about in materials
we too often did not understand.
“You see now,” he urged upon me, leaning forward and now actually
tearing a page of my book, “You see now, I write of youth ... youth
out in the sun and wind, eh? I am supposed to represent young America,
healthy young America. You wouldn’t believe how many times people have
spoken to me saying that my stories are always clean and healthy and
the editors of magazines are always saying it too. ‘Keep on the track,’
they say. ‘Don’t fly off the handle! We want lots of just such clean
healthy stuff.’”
He had grown too nervous to sit still and getting up began to walk back
and forth in the narrow space before the bed, still clinging to my
book. He tried to give me a picture of his life.
He lived he said, during most of the year, in a Connecticut village by
the sea and for a large part of the year did not try to write at all.
The writing of football stories was a special thing. One had always to
get hold of the subject from a new angle and so, in the Fall, one went
to many games and took notes. Little things happened on the field that
could be built up and elaborated. Above all, one must get punch into
the stories. There must be a little unexpected turn of events. “You
understand. You are a writer yourself.”
My visitor’s mind slipped off into a new channel and he told me the
story of his life in the New England town during the long months of the
Spring, Summer and early Fall when, as I understood the matter, he did
no writing.
Well, he played golf, he went to swim in the sea, he ran his
automobile. In the New England town he owned a large white frame house
where he lived with his wife, with his daughter when she was at home
from school, and with two or three servants. He told me of his life
there, of his working through the Summer months in a garden, of his
going sometimes in the afternoons for long walks about the town and
out along the country roads. He grew quieter and putting my book back
on the table sat down again on the edge of the bed.
“It’s odd,” he said. “You see, I have lived in that one town now for a
good many years. There are people there I would like to know better. I
would like really to know them, I mean. Men and women go along the road
past my place. There is a man of about my own age whose wife has left
him. He lives alone in a little house and cooks his own food. Sometimes
he also goes for a walk and comes past my place and we are supposed to
be friends. Something of the kind is in the wind. He stops sometimes
by my garden and stands looking over and we talk but do not say much
to each other. The devil, that’s the way it goes you see--there he is
by the fence and there am I with a hoe in my hand. I walk to where he
stands and also lean on the fence. We speak of the vegetables growing
in my garden. Would you believe it we never speak of anything but the
vegetables or the flowers perhaps? It’s a fact. There he stands. Did I
tell you his wife has left him? He wants to speak of that--I’m sure of
it. To tell the truth when he set out from his own house he was quite
determined to come up to my place and tell me all about everything, how
he feels, why his wife has left him and all about it. The man who went
away with his wife was his best friend. It’s quite a story, you see.
Everyone in our town knows about it but they do not know how the man
himself feels as he sits up there in his house all alone.”
“That’s what he has made up his mind to talk to me about but he can’t
do it, you see. All he does is to stand by my fence and speak of
growing vegetables. ‘Your lettuce is doing very well. The weeds do grow
like the deuce, don’t they though? That’s a nice bed of flowers you
have over there near the house.’”
The writer of the football stories threw up his hands in disgust. It
was evident he also felt something I had often felt. One learns to
write a little and then comes this temptation to do tricks with words.
The people who should catch us at our tricks are of no avail. Bill
Hart, the two-gun man of the movies, who goes creeping through forests,
riding pell-mell down hillsides, shooting his guns bang-bang, would be
arrested and put out of the way if he did that at Billings, Montana,
but do you suppose the people of Billings laugh at his pranks? Not
at all. Eagerly they go to see him. Cowboys from distant towns ride
to where they may see his pictures. For the cowboy also the past has
become a flaming thing. Forgotten are the long dull days of following
foolish cows across an empty desert place. Aha, the cowboy also wants
to believe. Do you not suppose Bill Hart also wants to believe?
The deuce of it all is that, wanting to believe the lie, one shuts
out the truth, too. The man by the fence, looking at the New England
garden, could not become brother to the writer of football stories.
“_They tell themselves so many little lies, my beloved._”