The story writer again sat down on the edge of the bed. There was
something feverish in his eyes. Again he smiled softly but his fingers
continued to play nervously with the pages of my book and now he tore
several of the pages. Again he spoke of the three men of his New
England town.
The fish-seller, it seemed, was not like the Yank of the comic papers.
He was fat and in the comic papers a Yank is long and thin.
“He is short and fat,” my visitor said, “and he smokes a corncob pipe.
What hands he has! His hands are like fish. They are covered with fish
scales and the backs are white like the bellies of fish.”
“And the Italian shoe-shiner is a fat man too. He has a mustache. When
he is shining my shoes sometimes--well, sometimes he looks up from his
job and laughs and then he calls the fat Yankee fish-seller--what do
you think--a mermaid.”
In the life of the Yankee there was something that exasperated my
visitor as it did the Greek grocer and the Italian who shined shoes
and as he told the story my treasured book, still held in his hand,
suffered more and more. I kept going toward him, intending to take
the book from his hand (he was quite unconscious of the damage he was
doing) but each time as I reached out I lost courage. The name Balzac
was stamped in gold on the back and the name seemed to be grinning at
me.
My visitor grinned at me too, in an excited nervous way. The seller
of fish, the old fat man with the fish scales on his hands, had a
daughter who was ashamed of her father and of his occupation in life.
The daughter, an only child lived during most of the year in Boston
where she was a student at the Boston Conservatory of Music. She was
ambitious to become a pianist and had begun to take on the airs of a
lady--had a little mincing step and a little mincing voice and wore
mincing clothes too, my visitor said.
And in the Summer, like the writer’s daughter, she came home to live in
her father’s house and, like the writer himself, sometimes went to walk
about.
To the New England town during the Summer months there came a great
many city people--from Boston and New York--and the pianist did not
want them to know she was the daughter of the seller of fish. Sometimes
she came to her father’s booth to get money from him or to speak with
him concerning some affair of the family and it was understood between
them that--when there were city visitors about--the father would not
recognize his daughter as being in any way connected with himself. When
they stood talking together and when one of the city visitors came
along the street the daughter became a customer intent upon buying
fish. “Are your fish fresh?” she asked, assuming a casual lady-like air.
The Greek, standing at the door of his store across the street and the
Italian shoe-shiner were both furious and took the humiliation of their
fellow merchant as in some way a reflection on themselves, an assault
upon their own dignity, and the story writer having his shoes shined
felt the same way. All three men scowled and avoided looking at each
other. The shoe-shiner rubbed furiously at the writer’s shoes and the
Greek merchant began swearing at a boy employed in his store.
As for the fish merchant, he played his part to perfection. Picking up
one of the fish he held it before his daughter’s eyes. “It’s perfectly
fresh and a beauty, Madam,” he said. He avoided looking at his fellow
merchants and did not speak to them for a long time after his daughter
had gone.
But when she had gone and the life that went on between the three men
was resumed the fish merchant courted his neighbors. “Don’t blame me.
It’s got to be done,” he seemed to be saying. He came out of his little
booth and walked up and down arranging and re-arranging his stock and
when he glanced at the others there was a pleading look in his eyes.
“Well, you don’t understand. You haven’t been in America long enough to
understand. You see, it’s like this--” his eyes seemed to say, “--we
Americans can’t live for ourselves. We must live and work for our
wives, our sons and our daughters. We can’t all of us get up in the
world so we must give them their chance.” It was something of the sort
he always seemed to be wanting to say.
It was a story. When one wrote football stories one thought out a plot,
as a football coach thought out a new formation that would advance the
ball.
But life in the streets of the New England village wasn’t like that. No
short stories with clever endings--as in the magazines--happened in the
streets of the town at all. Life went on and on and little illuminating
human things happened. There was drama in the street and in the lives
of the people in the street but it sprang directly out of the stuff of
life itself. Could one understand that?
The young Italian tried but something got in his way. The fact that
he was a successful writer of magazine short stories got in his way.
The large white house near the sea, the automobile and the daughter at
Vassar--all these things had got in his way.
One had to keep to the point and after a time it had happened that the
man could not write his stories in the town. In the Fall he went to
many football games, took notes, thought out plots, and then went off
to the city, where he rented a room in a small hotel in a side street.
In the room he sat all day writing football stories. He wrote furiously
hour after hour and then went to walk in the city streets. One had to
keep giving things a new twist--to get new ideas constantly. The deuce,
it was like having to write advertisements. One continually advertised
a kind of life that did not exist.
In the city streets, as one walked restlessly about, the actuality
of life became as a ghost that haunted the house of one’s fancy. A
child was crying in a stairway, a fat old woman with great breasts was
leaning out at a window, a man came running along a street, dodged
into an alleyway, crawled over a high board fence, crept through a
passageway between two apartment buildings and then continued running
and running in another street.
Such things happened and the man walking and trying to think only of
football games stood listening. In the distance he could hear the
sounds of the running feet. They sounded quite sharply for a long
moment and then were lost in the din of the street cars and motor
trucks. Where was the running man going and what had he done? The old
Harry! Now the sound of the running feet would go on and on forever
in the imaginative life of the writer and at night in the room in the
hotel in the city, the room to which he had come to write football
stories, he would awaken out of sleep to hear the sound of running
feet. There Was terror and drama in the sound. The running man had a
white face. There was a look of terror on his face and for a moment a
kind of terror would creep over the body of the writer lying in his bed.
That feeling would come and with it would come vague floating dreams,
thoughts, impulses--that had nothing to do with the formation of plots
for football stories. The fat Yankee fish-seller in the New England
town had surrendered his manhood in the presence of other men for
the sake of a daughter who wished to pass herself off as a lady and
the New England town where he lived was full of people doing strange
unaccountable things. The writer was himself always doing strange
unaccountable things.
“What’s the matter with me?” he asked sharply, walking up and down
before me in the room in the New York hotel and tearing the pages of
my book. “Well, you see,” he explained, “when I wrote my first football
story it was fun. I was a boy wanting to be a football hero and as I
could not become one in fact I became one in fancy. It was a boy’s
fancy but now I’m a man and want to grow up. Something inside me wants
to grow up.”
“They won’t let me,” he cried, holding his hands out before him. He had
dropped my book on the floor. “Look,” he said earnestly, “my hands are
the hands of a middle-aged man and the skin on the back of my neck is
wrinkled like an old man’s. Must my hands go on forever, painting the
fancies of children?”