A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht

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I told this woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the
subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above
all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was
making some amends and that the thing reflected credit upon my character.

So she went to the room on the South Side where Winkelberg sleeps. And
they told her there that Winkelberg was dead. He had died last week. She
was upset when she told me about it. She had come too late. She might have
saved him.

It was a curious thing--but when she told me that Winkelberg was dead I
felt combatively that it was untrue. And now since I know certainly that
Winkelberg is dead and buried I have developed a curious state of mind. I
look up from my desk every once in a while expecting to see him. In the
streets I sometimes find myself actually thinking: "I'll bump into him
when I turn the corner."

I have managed to discover the secret of this feeling. It is Winkelberg's
smile. Winkelberg's smile was the interpretation of the world's attitude
toward him, including my own. And thus whenever his name comes to mind his
smile appears as if it were the thought in my head. And in Winkelberg's
smile I hear myself saying: "He is better off dead."

A SELF-MADE MAN

"Over there," said Judge Sabath, "is a man who has been a juror in
criminal cases at least a dozen times."

His honor pointed to a short, thin man with a derby on the back of his
head and a startling mustache, concealing almost half of his wizened face.
The man was sitting a bit childishly on a window ledge in the hall of the
Criminal Court building swinging his legs and chewing rhythmically on a
plug of tobacco.

"They let him go this morning while picking a jury for a robbery case
before me," said the judge. "He tried to stay on, but neither side wanted
him. You might get a story out of him. I think he's broken-hearted."

* * * * *

The short, thin man with the derby, swinging his legs from the window
ledge said his name was Martin.

"That's true," he said, "what the judge said. I been a juror fourteen
times. I was on five murders and four big robberies and then I was on five
different assorted kinds of crimes."

"How do you like being a juror, Mr. Martin?"

"Well, sir, I like it a lot. I can say that out of the fourteen times I
been a juror I never lost a case."

Mr. Martin aimed at the new cuspidor--and missed.

"There's some jurors as loses nearly every case they're on. They give in
first crack. But take the Whitely murder trial I was on. That was as near
as I ever come to losing a case. But I managed to hang the jury and the
verdict was one of disagreement. Whitely was innocent. Anybody could have
told that with half an eye."

"How long have you been serving on juries, Mr. Martin?"

"Going nigh on twenty-three years. I had my first case when I was a young
man. It was a minor case--a robbery. I won that despite my youth and
inexperience. In those days the cases were much harder than now on account
of the lawyers. The old-fashioned lawyer was the talkingest kind of a
nuisance I ever had to deal with. He always reminded me of somebody
talking at a mark for two dollars a week.

"I don't refer to the orators. I mean the ones who talk during the case
itself and who slow things up generally by bothering the witnesses to
death with a lot of unnecessary questions. Although the orators are pretty
bad, too. There's many a lawyer who has lost out with me on account of the
way he made faces in the windup. One of my rules as a juror, a successful
one, I might say, is, 'Always mistrust a lawyer who talks too fancy.'"

* * * * *

"Judge Sabath just said that they let you go in his court this morning."

"H'm," snorted Mr. Martin. "That was the lawyer. He's mad at me because he
lost a case two years ago that I was on. I won it and he holds a grudge.
That's like some lawyers. They don't like the man who licks them.

"But you were asking about the qualifications of an all-around juryman.
I'll give 'em to you. First and foremost you want a man of wide experience
in human nature. I spend most of my time in the courts when I ain't
serving as juror studyin' human nature. You might say that all human
nature is the same. But it's my experience that some is more so than
others.

"Well, when you know human nature the next step is to figure out about
lawyers. Lawyers as a whole is the hardest nut the juror has to crack. To
begin with, they're deceivin', and if you let them they'll take advantage
of your credulity. There's Mr. Erbstein, for instance, the criminal
lawyer. He's a pretty smart one, but I won a case from him only four years
ago and he's never forgiven me. I was juror in a manslaughter trial he was
trying to run. He thought himself pretty foxy, but when it came to a
showdown I put it all over him. There was a guy who was foreman of the
jury that time who said I had it all over Mr. Erbstein as an argufier and
that my arguments made his look like ten cents. I won easily on five
ballots and Mr. Erbstein has never forgave me.

* * * * *

"But I'll go on about the qualifications. First of all, I never read
newspapers. Never. No juror should ought to know anything about anything
that's going on. I found that out in my youth when I first started in. The
first question they ask you is, 'What have you heard about this case and
what have you read or said about it?' That's the first one. Well, the
right answer is 'nothing.'

"If you can say nothing and prove you're right they'll gobble you up as a
juror. For that reason I avoid all newspapers, and right now I don't know
what big crimes or cases have been committed at all. I have a clean,
unprejudiced mind and I keep it that way.

"Nextly," said Mr. Martin, trying a new sight on the cuspidor, "I don't
belong to any lodges whatsoever. They're a handicap. Because if the
defendant is a Mason and you are a Elk he would rather have a brother
Mason be juror than a strange Elk. So I don't belong to any of them and I
don't go to church. I also have no convictions whatsoever about politics
and have no favorites of any kind in the matter of authors or statesmen or
anything. What I try to do is to keep my mind clean and unprejudiced on
all subjects."

"Why do you like serving as a juror?"

Mr. Martin stared.

"Why?" he repeated. "Because it's every man's duty, naturally. And
besides," he went on, narrowing his eyes into shrewd slits, "I've just
been luckier than most people. Most people only get called a few times
during their life. But I get called regularly every year and sometimes
twice a year and sometimes four and five times a year for service. Of
course, I ain't boasting, but the city has recognized my merits, no doubt,
as a juror, knowing all the cases I've won, and it perhaps shows a little
partiality to me for that reason. But I feel that I have earned it and I
would like nothing said about it or any scandal started."

"What do you think of this Taylor death mystery in Los Angeles, Mr.
Martin?"

"Ha, ha," said Mr. Martin, "there you're tryin' to catch me. You thought
you could put that over on me without my seein' through it, didn't you?
That's just the way the lawyers try to trap me when I'm sittin' on one of
my cases. I ain't ever heard of this Taylor death mystery, not reading the
papers, you see."

"That's too bad, Mr. Martin. It's quite a story." Mr. Martin sighed and
slipped from the window ledge, shaking down his wrinkled, high-water
pants.

"Yes," he sighed, a sudden wistfulness coming into his rheumy eyes.
"Things have been pretty slow around here. Chicago used to be the place
for a juror--none better. But I been thinkin' of going west. Not that I
heard anything, mind you, about any of these cases." Mr. Martin glowered
virtuously. "I never read the papers, sir, and have no prejudices
whatsoever.

"But I've just been feelin' lately that there are wider opportunities in
the west for a man of my experience and record than are left around here."

TO BERT WILLIAMS

"Well," said Mr. Bert Williams, in his best "Under the Bamboo Tree"
dialect, "If you like mah singin' and actin' so much, how come, you bein'
a writer, you don't write somethin' about youah convictions on this
subjeck? Oh! It's not youah depahtment! Hm! Tha's jes' mah luck. I was
always the mos' unluckiest puhson who ever trifled with misfohtune. Not
his depahtment! Tha'--tha's jes' it. I never seems to fall jes' exactly in
the ri-right depahtment.

"May I ask, without meanin' to be puhsonal, jes' what is your depahtment?
Murder! Oh, you is the one who writes about murders and murderuhs foh the
paper! Nothin' else? Is tha' so? Jes' murders and murderuhs and--and
things like tha'? Well, tha' jes' shows how deceivin' looks is, fo' when
you came in heah I says to mahself, I says, 'this gen'le-man is a critic
of the drama.' And when I sees you have on a pair o' gloves I added
quickly to mahself, 'Yes, suh, chances are he is not only a critic of the
drama, but likewise even possuhbly a musical critic.' Yes, suh, all mah
life I have had the desire to be interviewed by a musical critic, but no
matter how hard I sing or how frequently, no musical critic has yet taken
cognizance o' me. No, suh, I get no cognizance whatsoever.

"Not meanin' to disparage you, suh, or your valuable depahtment. Foh if
you is in charge o' the murder and murderuh's depahtment o' yo' paper
possuhbly some time you may refer to me lightly between stabbin's or
shootin's in such wise as to say, foh instance, 'the doomed man was
listenin' to Mr. Williams' latest song on the phonograph when he received
the bullet wound. Death was instantaneous, the doomed man dyin' with a
smile on his lips. Mr. Williams' singin' makes death easy--an' desirable.'

"What, suh? You is! Sam, fetch the gen'leman some o' the firewater, the
non-company brand, Sam. All right, say when. Aw, shucks, that ain't enough
to wet a cat's whiskers. Say when again. There, tha's better. Here, Sam.
You got to help drink this. It's important. The gen'leman says if I will
wait a little while, jes' a little while, he is goin' to alter his
depahtment on the newspaper. Wasn't that it? Oh, I see. In the magazine.
Very well. Here's to what you says about me some day in the magazine. An'
when you writes it don't forget to mention somewhere along in it how when
I was playin' in San Francisco and Sarah Bernhardt was playin' there, and
this was years ago, don' forget to mention along with what you write about
mah singin' and actin' that I come to mah dressing room one evenin', in
Frisco, and there's the hugest box o' flowers you ever saw with mah name
on it. An' I open it up and, boy! There plain as the nose on your face is
a card among the flowers readin', 'to a fellow artist, from Sarah
Bernhardt.' And--whilst we are, so to speak, on the subjeck--you can put
in likewise what Eleanora Duse said o' me. You know who she is, I suppose,
the very most superlative genius o' the stage, suh. Yes, suh, the very
most. An' she says o' me when she went back to Italy, how I was the best
artist on the American stage.

"Artist! Tha' always makes Sam laugh, don't it, Sam, when he heahs me
refuhed to as artist. An'--have another beaker o' firewater, suh. It's
strictly non-company brand. An' here's how again to tha' day you speak of
when you write this article about me. An', boy, make it soon, 'cause this
life, this sinful theat'ical life, is killin' me fast. But I'll try an'
wait. Here's howdy."

* * * * *

He didn't wait. And today a lazy, crooked grin and a dolorous-eyed black
face drift among the shades in the Valhalla where the Great Actors sit
reading their press notices to one another. The Great Actors who have died
since the day of Euripides--they sit around in their favorite make-ups in
the Valhalla reserved for all good and glorious Thespians.

A company of ladies and gentlemen that would make Mr. Belasco's heart stop
beating! The Booths and Barretts from antiquity down, the Mrs. Siddonses
and Pattis, the Cyranos, Hamlets, buffoons and heroes. All of them in
their favorite make-ups, in their favorite cap and bells, their favorite
swords, their favorite doublet and hose--all of them sit around in the
special Valhalla of the Great Actors reading their press notices to one
another and listening to the hosannas of such critics as have managed to
pry into the anterior heaven.

And today Bert Williams makes his entrance. Yes, suh, it took that long to
find just the right make-up. To get just the right kind of ill-fitting
white gloves and floppy shoes and nondescript pants. But it's an important
entrance. The lazy crooked grin is a bit nervous. The dolorous eyes peer
sadly through the opening door of this new theater.

Lawdy, man, this is got a Broadway first night backed off the boards.
Rejane, Caruso, Coquelin, Garrick and a thousand others sittin' against
the towering walls, sittin' with their eyes on the huge door within' to
see who's a-comin' in now.

All right, professor, jes' a little music. Nothin' much. Anything kind o'
sad and fidgetylike. Tha's it, that-a-boy. There's no use worryin'--much.
'Member what Duse said as I was the greatest artist, an 'member how Sarah
Bernhardt sent me roses in Frisco an' says, 'To a fellow artist'? Yes,
suh, they can't do mo' than walk out on me. An' ah's been walked out on
befo'.

All right, professor. Tha's it. Now I'll stick my hand inside the door and
wiggle mah fingers kind o' slow like. Jes' like that. An' I'll come on
slow. Nothin' to worry about--much.

* * * * *

A wrinkled white-gloved hand moving slowly inside the door of the
Valhalla. Sad, fidgety music. Silence in the great hall. This is another
one coming on--another entrance. A lazy, crooked grin and a dolorous-eyed
black face. Floppy shoes and woebegone pants.

Bravo, Mr. Williams! The great hall rings with hand-clapping. The great
hall begins to fill with chuckles. There it is--the same curious grin, the
lugubrious apology of a grin, the weary, pessimistic child of a grin.

The Great Actors, eager-eyed and silent, sit back on their thrones. The
door of the Valhalla of Great Actors swings slowly shut. No Flo Ziegfeld
lighting this time, but a great shoot of sunshine for a "garden." And the
music different, easier to sing to, somehow. Music of harps and flutes.
And a deep voice rises.

Yes, I would have liked to have been there in the Valhalla of the Great
Actors, when Bert Williams came shuffling through the towering doors and
stood singing his entrance song to the silent, eager-eyed throng of
Rejanes, Barretts and Coquelins--

Ah ain't ever done nothin' to nobody,
Ah ain't ever got nothin' from nobody--no time, nohow.
Ah ain't ever goin' t' do nothin' for nobody--
Till somebody--

MICHIGAN AVENUE

This is a deplorable street, a luxurious couch of a street in which the
afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite. Overhead the sky stretches itself
like a holiday awning. The sun lays harlequin stripes across the building
faces. The smoke plumes from the I. C. engines scribble gray, white and
lavender fantasies against the shining air.

A deplorable street--a cement and plate glass Circe. We walk--a long
procession of us. It is curious to note how we adjust ourselves to
backgrounds. In other streets we are hurried, flurried, worried. We summon
portentous frowns to our faces. Our arms swinging at our sides proclaim,
"Make way, make way! We are launched upon activities vital to the
commonwealth!"

But here--the sun bursts a shower of little golden balloons from the high
windows. The green of a park makes a cool salaam to the beetle-topped
traffic of automobiles. Rubber tires roll down the wide avenue and make a
sound like the drawn-out striking of a match. Marble columns, fountains,
incompleted architectural elegancies, two sculptured lions and the
baffling effulgence of a cinder-veiled museum offer themselves like
pensively anonymous guests. And we walk like Pierrots and Pierrettes, like
John Drews and Jack Barrymores and Leo Ditrichsteins; like Nazimovas,
Patricia Collinges and Messalinas on parole.

* * * * *

I have squandered an afternoon seduced from labors by this Pied Piper of a
street. And not only I but everybody I ever knew or heard of was in this
street, strutting up and down as if there were no vital projects demanding
their attention, as if life were not a stern and productive routine. And
where was the Rotary Club? Not a sign of the Rotary Club. One billboard
would have saved me; the admonitions that "work is man's duty to his
nation," that my country needed me as much in peace as in war, would have
scattered the insidious spell of this street and sent me back to the
typewriter with at least a story of some waiter in a loop beanery who was
once a reigning prince of Patagonia.

But there was no sign, no billboard to inspire me with a sense of duty. So
we strutted--the long procession of us--a masquerade of leisure and
complacency. Here was a street in which a shave and a haircut, a shine and
a clean collar exhilarated a man with a feeling of power and virtue. As if
there were nothing else to the day than to decorate himself for the
amusement of others.

There were beggars in the street but they only add by way of contrast to
the effulgence of our procession. And, besides, are they beggars? Augustus
Caesar attired himself in beggar's clothes one day each year and asked
alms in the highways of Rome.

* * * * *

I begin to notice something. An expression in our faces as we drift by the
fastidious ballyhoos of the shop windows. We are waiting for
something--actors walking up and down in the wings waiting for their cues
to go on. This is intelligible. This magician of a street has created the
illusion in our heads that there are adventure and romance around us.

Fauns, Pierrots, Launcelots, Leanders--we walk, expectantly waiting for
our scenes to materialize. Here the little steno in the green tarn is Lais
of Corinth, the dowager alighting from the electric is Zenobia. Illusions
dress the entire procession. Semiramis, Leda, and tailored nymphs; dryad
eyes gleam from powder-white masks. Or, if the classics bore you, Watteau
and the rococo pertness of the Grand Monarch. And there are Gothic noses,
Moorish eyebrows, Byzantine slippers. Take your pick, walk up and down and
wait for your cue.

There are two lives that people lead. One is the real life of business,
mating, plans, bankruptcies and gas bills. The other is an unreal life--a
life of secret grandeurs which compensate for the monotony of the days.
Sitting at our desks, hanging on to straps in the street cars, waiting for
the dentist, eating in silence in our homes--we give ourselves to these
secret grandeurs. Day-dreams in which we figure as heroes and Napoleons
and Don Juans, in which we triumph sensationally over the stupidities and
arrogances of our enemies--we think them out detail by detail. Sometimes
we like to be alone because we have a particularly thrilling incident to
tell ourselves, and when our friends say good-by we sigh with relief and
wrap ourselves with a shiver of delight in the mantles of imagination. And
we live for a charming hour through a fascinating fiction in which things
are as they should be and we startle the world with our superiorities.

* * * * *

This street, I begin to understand, is consecrated to the unrealities so
precious to us. We come here and for a little while allow our dreams to
peer timorously at life. In the streets west of here we are what we
are--browbeaten, weary-eyed, terribly optimistic units of the boobilariat.
Our secret characterizations we hide desperately from the frowns of
windows and the squeal of "L" trains.

But here in this Circe of streets the sun warms us, the sky and the spaces
of shining air lure us and we step furtively out of ourselves. And give us
ten minutes. Observe--a street of heroes and heroines. Actors all. Great
and irresistible egoists. Do we want riches? Then we have only to raise
our finger. Slaves will attend with sesterces and dinars. A street of
joyous Caligulas and Neros, with here and there a Ghengis Khan, an Attila.

The high buildings waver like gray and golden ferns in the sun. The sky
stretches itself in a holiday awning over our heads. A breeze coming from
the lake brings an odorous spice into our noses. Adventure and romance!
Yes--and observe how unnecessary are plots. Here in this Circe of streets
are all the plots. All the great triumphs, assassinations, amorous
conquests of history unravel themselves within a distance of five blocks.
The great moments of the world live themselves over again in a silent
make-believe.

Here is one who has just swum the Hellespont, one who has subdued
Cleopatra; here one whose eyes are just launching a thousand ships. What a
street!

The afternoon wanes. Our procession turns toward home. For a few minutes
the elation of our make-believes in the Avenue lingers. But the "L" trains
crowd up, the street cars crowd up. It is difficult to remain a Caesar or
a Don Quixote. So we withdraw and our faces become alike as turtle backs.

And see, the afternoon has been squandered. There were things which should
have been done. I blush indignantly at the memory of my thoughts during
the shining hours in the Avenue. For I spent the valuable moments
conversing with the devil. I imagined him coming for me and for two hours
I elaborated a dialogue between him and myself in which I gave him my
immortal soul and he in turn promised to write all the stories, novels and
plays I wanted. All I would have to do was furnish the paper and leave it
in a certain place and call for it the next morning and it would be
completed--anything I asked for, a story, novel or play; a poem, a
world-shattering manifesto--anything.

Alas, I am still in possession of my immortal soul!

COEUR DE LION AND THE SOUP AND FISH

For they're hangin' Danny Deever--

The voice of Capt. MacVeigh of the British army rose defiantly in the
North La Salle Street hall bedroom. The herculean captain, attired in a
tattered bathrobe, underwear, socks and one slipper, patted the bottom of
the iron with his finger and then carefully applied it to a trouser leg
stretched on an ironing board in front of him.

Again the voice:

For they're hangin' Danny Deever;
You can hear the death march play,
And they're ta ta ta da
They're taking him away,
Ta da ta ta--

The captain was on the rocks. _Sic transit gloria mundi_. Or how
saith the poet, "The lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshid
gloried and drank deep." Bust, was the captain. "Dying, Egypt, dying, ebbs
the crimson life blood fast." Flatter than a hoecake was the captain.

"Farewell, my bluebell, farewell to thee," sang the captain as the iron
crept cautiously over the great trouser leg of his Gargantuan full-dress
suit. African mines blown up. Two inheritances shot. A last remittance
blah. Rent bills, club bills, grocery bills, tailor bills, gambling bills.
"Ho, Britons never will be slaves," sang the intrepid captain. Fought the
bloody Boers, fought the Irawadi, fought the bloody Huns, and what was it
Lady B. said at the dinner in his honor only two years ago? Ah, yes,
here's to our British Tartarin, Capt. MacVeagh. But who the devil was
Tartarin?

Never mind. "There's a long, long trail a-windin' and ta da ta ta ta tum,"
sang Capt. MacVeagh and he took up the other trouser leg. Egad, what a
life! Not a sou markee left. Not a thin copper, not a farthing! "Strike me
blind, me wife's confined and I'm a blooming father," sang Capt. MacVeagh,
"For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the death march play----"

* * * * *

This was the last phalanx. This thing on the ironing board was Horatius at
the bridge holding in check the hordes of false Tarquin. Everything gone
but this. Not even a pair of pants or a smoking coat. Not a blooming thing
left but this--a full-dress suit beginning to shine a bit in the rear.

"The shades of night were falling fast when through an Alpine village
passed"--egad, what a primitive existence. Like an Irunti in the
Australian bush. Telling time by the sun. It must be approachin' six,
thought the captain as his voice trailed off.

Beautiful thought. "Mabel, little Mabel, with her face against the pane,
sits beside the window, looking at the rain." That was Capt. MacVeagh of
the British army, prisoner in a La Salle Street hall bedroom. No clothes
to wear, nothing but the soup and fish. So he must sit and wait till
evening came, till a gentleman could put on his best bib and tucker, and
then--_allons!_ Freshly shaved, pink jowled, swinging his ebony
stick, his pumps gleaming with a new coat of vaseline, off for the British
Officers' Club!

All day long the herculean captain sulked in his tent--an Achilles with a
sliver in his heel. But come evening, come the gentle shades of darkness,
and presto! Like a lily of the field, who spun not nor toiled; like a
knight of the boulevards, this servant of the king leaped forth in all his
glory. The landlady was beginning to lose her awe of the dress suit, the
booming barytone and the large aristocratic pink face of her mysterious
boarder. And she was pressing for back rent. But the club was still
tolerant.

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