A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht

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Yes, we are all lost and wandering in the thick mists. We have no
destinations. The city is without outlines. And the drift of figures is a
meaningless thing. Figures that are going nowhere and coming from nowhere.
A swarm of supernumeraries who are not in the play. Who saunter, dash,
scurry, hesitate in search of a part in the play.

This is a curious illusion. I stop and listen to music. Overhead a piano
is playing and a voice singing. A song-boosting shop above Monroe and
State streets. A ballad of the cheap cabarets. Yet, because it is music,
it has a mystery in it.

The fog pictures grow charming. There is an idea in them now. People are
detached little decorations etched upon a mist. The cat has eaten up the
monstrous clock and people have rid themselves of their routine, which was
to tumble and scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life,
with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have
become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city.
Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The
clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have
become our unconnected selves."

* * * * *

Beside me in the fog a man stands next to a tall paper rack. I remember
that this is the rack where the out-of-town papers are on sale. The papers
are rolled up and thrust like rows of little white dolls in the rack. I
wonder that this should be a newspaper stand. It looks like almost
anything else in the fog.

A pretty girl emerges from the background of fog. She talks to the man
next to the rack.

"Have you a Des Moines newspaper?" she asks.

The man is very businesslike. He fishes out a newspaper and sells it. At
the sight of its headlines the girl's eyes light up. It is as if she had
met a very close friend. She will walk along feeling comforted now.
Chicago is a stranger. Its fog-hidden buildings and streets are strangers
and its crowds criss-crossing everywhere are worse than strangers. But now
she has Des Moines under her arm. Des Moines is a companion that will make
the fog seem less lonely. Later she will sit down in a hotel room and read
of what has happened in Des Moines buildings and Des Moines streets. These
will seem like real happenings, whereas the happenings that the Chicago
papers print seem like unrealities.

This is Dearborn Street now. Dark and cozy. People are no longer
decorations but intimate friends. When it is light and one can see the
cogs of the monstrous clock go round and the springs unwind one thinks of
people as a part of this mechanism. And so people grow vague in one's mind
and unhuman or only half-human.

But now that the mechanism is gone, people stand out with an insistent
humanness. People sitting on lunch-counter stools, leaning over coffee
cups. People standing behind store counters. People buying cigars and
people walking in and out of office buildings. They are very friendly.
Their tired faces smile, or at least look somewhat amused and interested.
They are interested in the fog and in the fact that one cannot see three
feet ahead. And their faces say to each other, "Here we are, all alike.
The city is only a make-believe. It can go away but we still remain. We
are much more important than the big buildings."

* * * * *

I hear an odd tapping sound on the pavement. It is faint but growing
nearer. In another moment a man tapping on the pavement with a cane
passes. A blind man. And I think of a plot for a fiction story. If a
terrible murder were committed in a marvelous fog that hid everything the
chief of police would summon a blind man. And the blind man could track
the murderer down in the fog because he alone would be able to move in the
thick, obliterating mists. And so the blind man, with his cane tapping,
tapping over the pavements and able by long practice to move without
sight, would slowly close in on the murderer hemmed in by darkness.

A newsboy cries from the depth of nowhere: "Paper here. Trains crash in
fog. Paper."

* * * * *

A friend and I sat in an office. He has been dictating letters, but he
stops and stares out of the window. His eyes grow speculative. He says:

"Wouldn't it be odd if it were always like this? I think I'd like it
better, wouldn't you? But I suppose they'd invent lights able to penetrate
mist and the town would be as garish as ever in a few years. But I like
the fog because it slows things up. Things are too damn fast to suit me. I
like 'em slow. Like they used to be a century ago."

We talk and my friend becomes reminiscent on the subject of stage coaches
and prairie schooners and the days before there were railroads,
telephones, electricity and crowds. He has never known such a time, but
from what he has read and imagined about it--yes, it would be better.

* * * * *

When I come out it is mid-afternoon. The fog has gone. The city has popped
back and sprawls triumphantly into space. For a moment it seems as if the
city had sprung up in an hour. Then its sturdy walls and business windows
begin to mock at the memory of the fog in my mind. "Fogs do not devour
us," they say. "We are the ones who do the devouring. We devour fogs and
people and days." Marvelous buildings.

Overhead the sky floats like a gray and white balloon, as if it were a toy
belonging to the city.

DON QUIXOTE AND HIS LAST WINDMILL

Sherwood Anderson, the writer, and I were eating lunch in the back room of
a saloon. Against the opposite wall sat a red-faced little man with an
elaborate mustache and a bald head and a happy grin. He sat alone at a
tilted round table and played with a plate of soup.

"Say, that old boy over there is trying to wigwag me," said Anderson. "He
keeps winking and making signs. Do you know him?"

I looked and said no. The waiter appeared with a box of cigars.

"Mr. Sklarz presents his compliments," said the waiter, smiling.

"Who's Sklarz?" Anderson asked, helping himself to a cigar. The waiter
indicated the red-faced little man. "Him," he whispered.

We continued our meal. Both of us watched Mr. Sklarz casually. He seemed
to have lost interest in his soup. He sat beaming happily at the walls, a
contagious elation about him. We smiled and nodded our thanks for the
cigars. Whereupon after a short lapse, the waiter appeared again.

"What'll you have to drink, gentlemen?" the waiter inquired.

"Nothing," said Anderson, knowing I was broke. The waiter raised his
continental eyebrows understandingly.

"Mr. Sklarz invites you, gentlemen, to drink his health--at his expense."

"Two glasses," Anderson ordered. They were brought. We raised them in
silent toast to the little red-faced man. He arose and bowed as we drank.

"We'll probably have him on our hands now for an hour," Anderson frowned.
I feared the same. But Mr. Sklarz reseated himself and, with many head
bowings in our direction, returned to his soup.

"What do you make of our magnanimous friend?" I asked. Anderson shrugged
his shoulders.

"He's probably celebrating something," he said. "A queer old boy, isn't
he?"

* * * * *

The waiter appeared a third time.

"What'll it be, gentlemen?" he inquired, smiling. "Mr. Sklarz is buying
for the house."

For the house. There were some fifteen men eating in the place. Then our
friend, despite his unassuming appearance, was evidently a creature of
wealth! Well, this was growing interesting. We ordered wine again.

"Ask Mr. Sklarz if he will favor us by joining us at our table for this
drink," I told the waiter. The message was delivered. Mr. Sklarz arose and
bowed, but sat down again. Anderson and I beckoned in pantomime. Mr.
Sklarz arose once more, bowed and hesitated. Then he came over.

As he approached a veritable carnival spirit seemed to deepen around us.
The face of this little man with the elaborate black mustache was violent
with suppressed good will and mirth. He beamed, bowed, shook hands and sat
down. We drank one another's health and, as politely as we could, pressed
him to tell us the cause for his celebration and good spirits. He began to
talk.

He was a Russian Jew. His name was Sklarz. He had been in the Russian army
years ago. In Persia. From a mountain in Persia you could see three great
countries. In Turkey he had fought with baggy-trousered soldiers and at
night joined them when they played their flutes outside the coffee-houses
and sang songs about women and war. Then he had come to America and opened
a box factory. He was very prosperous and the factory in which he made
boxes grew too small.

So what did he do but take a walk one day to look for a larger factory.
And he found a beautiful building just as he wanted. But the building was
too beautiful to use for a factory. It should be used for something much
nicer. So what did he do then but decide to open a dance-hall, a
magnificent dance-hall, where young men and women of refined, fun-loving
temperaments could come to dance and have fun.

* * * * *

"When does this dance-hall open?" Anderson asked. Ah, in a little while.
There were fittings to buy and put up first. But he would send us special
invitations to the opening. In the meantime would we drink his health
again? Mr. Sklarz chuckled. The amazing thing was that he wasn't drunk. He
was sober.

"So you're celebrating," I said. Yes, he was celebrating. He laughed and
leaned over the table toward us. His eyes danced and his elaborate
mustache made a grotesque halo for his smile. He didn't want to intrude on
us with his story, but in Persia and Turkey and the Urals he had found
life very nice. And here in Chicago he had found life also very nice. Life
was very nice wherever you went. And Anderson quoted, rather imperfectly,
I thought:

Oh, but life went gayly, gayly
In the house of Idah Dally;
There were always throats to sing
Down the river bank with spring.

Mr. Sklarz beamed.

"Yes, yes," he said, "down the river benk mit spring." And he stood up and
bowed and summoned the waiter. "See vat all the gentlemen vant," he
ordered, "and give them vat they vant mit my compliments." He laughed, or,
rather, chuckled. "I must be going. Excuse me," he exclaimed with a quick
little bow. "I have other places to call on. Good-by. Remember me--Sam
Sklarz. Be good--and don't forget Sam Sklarz when there are throats to
zing down the river benk mit spring."

We watched him walk out. His shoulders seemed to dance, his short legs
moved with a sprightly lift.

"A queer old boy," said Anderson. We talked about him for a half hour and
then left the place.

* * * * *

Anderson called me up the next morning to ask if I had read about it in
the paper. I told him I had. A clipping on the desk in front of me ran:

"Sam Sklarz, 46 years old and owner of a box factory on the West Side,
committed suicide early this morning by jumping into the drainage canal.
Financial reverses are believed to have caused him to end his life.
According to friends he was on the verge of bankruptcy. His liabilities
were $8,000. Yesterday morning Sklarz cashed a check for $700, which
represented the remains of his bank account, and disappeared. It is
believed that he used the money to pay a few personal debts and then
wandered around in a daze until the end. He left no word of explanation
behind."

THE MAN HUNT

They were hunting him. Squads of coppers with rifles, detectives, stool
pigeons were hunting him. And the people who had read the story in the
newspapers and looked at his picture, they too, were hunting him.

Tommy O'Connor looked out of the smeared window of the room in which he
sat and stared at the snow. A drift of snow across the roofs. A scribble
of snow over the pavement.

There were automobiles racing through the streets loaded with armed men.
There were crowds looking for a telltale face in their own midst. Guards,
deputies, coppers were surrounding houses and peering into alleys, raiding
saloons, ringing doorbells. The whole city was on his heels. The city was
like a pack of dogs sniffing wildly for his trail. And when they found it
they would come whooping toward him for a leap at his throat.

Well, here he was--waiting. It was snowing outside. There was no noise in
the street. A man was passing. One of the pack? No. Just a man. The man
looked up. Tommy O'Connor took his face slowly away from the window. He
had a gun in his pocket and his hand was holding it. But the man was
walking away. Huh! If the guy knew that Lucky Tommy O'Connor was watching
him from a window he'd walk a little faster. If the guy knew that Lucky
O'Connor, who had busted his way out of jail and was being hunted by a
million people with guns, was sitting up here behind the window, he'd
throw a fit. But he didn't know. He was like the walls and the windows and
the snow outside--quiet and peaceful.

"Nice boy," grinned Tommy O'Connor. Then he began to fidget. He ought to
go out and buy a paper. See what was doing. See what became of Mac and the
rest of the boys. Maybe they'd all been nabbed. But they couldn't do him
harm. On account nobody knew where he was. No pal. No dame. Nobody knew he
was sitting here in the room looking at the snow and just thinking. The
papers were probably full of cock-and-bull stories about his racing across
the country and hiding in haystacks and behind barns. Kid stuff. Maybe he
should ought to of left town. But it felt better in town. Some rube was
always sure to pick out a stranger beating it down a empty road. And there
was no place to hide. Long, empty stretches, where anybody could see you
for a mile.

Better in town. Lots of walls, alleys, roofs. Lots of things like that. No
hare-and-hounds effect like in the country. But the papers were probably
full of a lot of bunk. He'd take a walk later and buy a few. Better sit
still now. There was nothing harder to find than a man sitting still.

* * * * *

Tommy O'Connor yawned. Not much sleep the night before. Well, he'd sleep
tonight. Worrying wasn't going to help matters. What if they did come? Let
them come. Fill up the street and begin their damn shooting. They didn't
think Lucky Tommy was sucker enough to let them march him up on a scaffold
and break his neck on the end of a rope. Fat chance. Not him. That sort of
stuff happened to other guys, not to Lucky Tommy.

Snowing outside. And quiet. Everybody at work. Funny about that. Tommy
O'Connor was the only free man in the city. There was nobody felt like him
right now--nobody. Where would he be exactly this time a week from now? If
he could only look ahead and see himself at four o'clock next Monday
afternoon. But he was free now. No breaking his neck on the end of a rope.
If worst came to worst--if worst came to worst--O'Connor's fingers took a
grip on the gun in his pocket. They were hunting him. Up and down the
streets everywhere. Racing around in taxis, with rifles sticking out of
the windows. Well, why didn't they come into this street? All they had to
do was figure out: Here's the street Tommy O'Connor is hiding in. And that
looks like the house. And then somebody would yell out: "There he is!
Behind that window! That's him!" Why didn't this happen?

* * * * *

Christmas, maybe, he'd call on the folks. No. Rube stuff. A million
coppers would be watching the house. But he might drop them a letter. Too
bad he didn't have any paper, or he might write a lot of letters. To the
chief of police and all the head hunters. Some more rube stuff, that. They
could tell by the postmark what part of the city he was hiding in and
they'd be on him with a whoop.

Funny how he had landed in this room. No plans, no place in particular to
head for. That was the best way. Like he'd figured it out and it turned
out perfect. Grab the first auto and ride like hell and keep on changing
autos and riding around and around in the streets and crawling deeper into
the city until the trail was all twisted and he was buried. But he ought
to shave his mustache off. Hell. What for? If they came whooping into the
street they'd find him, mustache or no mustache. But what if he wanted to
buy some papers?

It was getting darker now. The snow was letting up. Just dribbling. Better
if it would snow a lot. Then he could sit and have something to
watch--snow falling on the street and turning things white. That was on
account of his headache he was thinking that way. Eats might help, but he
wasn't hungry. Scared? No. Just waiting. Hunters winding in and out like
the snow that was falling. People were funny. They got a big thrill out of
hunting a live man who was free in the streets.

He'd be walking some day. Strolling around the streets free as any of
them. Maybe not in town. Some other town. Take a walk down State Street.
Drop in at a movie. Kid stuff. Walk over to Mac's saloon and kind of
casually say "Hello, fellows." And walk out again. God, they'd never hang
him. If the worst came to the worst--if the worst came to the worst--but
they'd never hang him.

* * * * *

Dark now. But the guys hunting him weren't going to sleep. Lights were
going on in the windows. Better light up the room. People might notice a
dark window. But a lighted one would look all right. It was not snowing
any more. Just cold.

Well, he'd go out in a while. Stretch his legs and buy the papers and give
them a reading. And then take a walk. Just walk around and take in the
streets and see if there was anybody he knew. No. Rube stuff, that. Better
stick where he was.

Lucky Tommy walked around in the room. The drawn window blind held his
eye. Wagons were passing. What for? Yes, and there was a noise. Like
people coming. Turn out the light, then. He'd take a look.

Tommy O'Connor peeled back the blind carefully. Dark. Lights in windows.
Some guys on the corner. Hunting him? Sure. And they were coming his way.
Straight down the street. They were looking up. What for? A gun crept out
of Tommy O'Connor's pocket. He pressed himself carefully against the wall.
He waited. The minutes grew long. But this was the hunt closing in. They
were coming. Black figures of men floating casually down the street. All
right--let them come.

Lucky Tommy O'Connor's eyes stared rigidly out of the smeared window at a
vague flurry of figures that seemed to be coming, coming his way.

MR. WINKELBERG

There was never a man as irritating as Winkelberg. He was an encyclopedia
of misfortune. Everything which can happen to a man had happened to him.
He had lost his family, his money and his health. He was, in short, a man
completely broken--tall, thin, with a cadaverous face, out of which shone
two huge, lusterless eyes. He walked with an angular crawl that reminded
one of the emaciated flies one sees at the beginning of winter dragging
themselves perversely along as if struggling across an illimitable expanse
of flypaper.

It was one of Winkelberg's worst habits to appear at unexpected moments.
But perhaps any appearances poor Winkelberg might have made would have had
this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward
to Winkelberg, and thus the sight of his wan, determined smile, his
lusterless eyes and his tenacious crawl was invariably an uncomfortable
surprise.

* * * * *

I will be frank. It was Winkelberg's misfortune which first attracted me.
I listened to his story avidly. He talked in slow words and there was
intelligence in the man. He was able to perceive himself not only as a
pain-racked, starving human, but he glimpsed with his large, tired eyes
his relation to things outside himself. I remember he said, and without
emotion: "There is nobody to blame. Not even myself. And if I cannot blame
myself how can I blame the world? The city is like that. I am no good. I
am done. Something worn out and useless. People try to take care of the
useless ones and they would like to. There are institutions. I was kicked
out of two of them. They said I was a faker. Somehow I don't appeal to
charitably inclined people."

Later I understood why. It was because of the man's smile--a feeble,
tenacious grimace that seemed to be offering a sardonic reproof. It could
never have been mistaken for a courageous smile. The secret of its
aggravating quality was this: In it Winkelberg accused himself of his
uselessness, his feebleness, his poverty. It was as if he were regarding
himself continually through the annoyed eyes of others and addressing
himself with the words of others: "You, Winkelberg, get out of here.
You're a nuisance. You make me uncomfortable because you're poor and
diseased and full of gloom. Get out. I don't want you around. Why the
devil don't you die?"

And the aggravating thing was that people looked at Winkelberg's smile as
into a mirror. They saw in it a reflection of their own attitude toward
the man. They felt that Winkelberg understood what they thought of him.
And they didn't like that. They didn't like to feel that Winkelberg was
aware that deep inside their minds they were always asking: "Why doesn't
this Winkelberg die and have it over with?" Because that made them out as
cruel, heartless people, not much different in their attitude toward their
fellow men from predatory animals in their attitude toward fellow
predatory animals. And somehow, although they really felt that way toward
Winkelberg, they preferred not to believe it. But Winkelberg's smile was a
mirror which would not let them escape this truth. And eventually
Winkelberg's smile became for them one of those curious mirrors which
exaggerate images grotesquely. Charitably inclined people, as well as all
other kinds of inclined people, prefer their Winkelbergs more egoistic.
They prefer that unfortunate ones be engrossed in their misfortunes and
not go around wearing sardonic, philosophical smiles.

* * * * *

Winkelberg dragged along for a year. He was past fifty. Each time I saw
him I was certain I would never see him again. I was certain he would
die--drop dead while crawling across his flypaper. But he would appear. I
would pretend to be vastly busy. He would sit and wait. He never asked
alms. I would have been relieved if he had. Instead he sat and smiled, and
his smile said: "You are afraid I am going to ask you for money. Don't
worry. I won't ask you for money. I won't bother you at all. Yes, I agree
with you, I ought to be dead. It would be better for everybody."

We would talk little. He would throw out a hint now and then that perhaps
I could use some of his misfortunes for material. For instance, the time
his two children had been burned to death. Or the time he had fallen off
the street car while in a sick daze and injured his spine for life, and
how he had settled with the street car company for $500 and how he had
been robbed on the way to the bank with the money two weeks later.

I refused consistently this offer of "material." This offended Winkelberg.
He would shake his head and then he would nod his head understandingly and
his smile would say:

"Yes, yes. I understand. You don't want to get involved with me. Because
you don't want me to have any more claims on your sympathy than I've got.
I'm sorry."

Toward the end Winkelberg's visits grew more frequent. And he became
suddenly garrulous. He wished to discuss things. The city. The various
institutions. Politics. Art. This phase of Winkelberg was the most
unbearable. He was willing to admit himself a social outcast. He was
reconciled to the fact that he would starve to death and that everybody
who had ever seen him would feel it had been a good thing that he had
finally died. But this final plea came from him. He wanted nothing except
to talk and hear words in order to relieve the loneliness of his days. He
would like abstract discussions that had nothing to do with Winkelberg and
the Winkelberg misfortunes. His smile now said: "I am useless, worn out
and better off dead. But never mind me. My mind is still alive. It still
thinks. I wish it didn't. I wish it crawled around like my body. But
seeing that it does, talk to me as if it were a mind belonging to somebody
else and not to the insufferable Winkelberg."

I grew suspicious finally. I began to think there was something vitally
spurious about this whole Winkelberg business. And I said to myself: "The
man's a downright fake. If anybody were as pathetic and impossible and
useless as this Winkelberg is he would shoot himself. Winkelberg doesn't
shoot himself. So he becomes illogical. Unreal."

* * * * *

A woman I know belongs to the type that becomes charitable around
Christmas time. She makes a glowing pretense of aiding the poor. As a
matter of fact, she really does aid them, although she regards the poor as
a sort of social and spiritual asset. They afford her the double
opportunity of appearing in the eyes of her neighbors as a magnanimous
soul and of doing something which reflects great credit upon her
character. But, anyway, she "does good," and we'll let it go at that.

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