A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht

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But her romantic eyes are oblivious. They consult the rain-washed pavement
before her and nothing else. Very well, there are other and nicer skies in
her heart that she contemplates. This is an inferior sky overhead. We walk
on.

You see, I have been wrong. It is not green fields that lured the heavy
feet of this slavey. She is not a peasant Cinderella. Grief, yes, hidden
sorrow, has led her here. This is a cemetery.

It rains over the cemetery. There is silence. The white stones glisten.
They stand like beggars asking alms of the winding paths. And this blousy
one has come to be close to one of the white stones. Under one of them
lies somebody whose image still lives in her heart.

She will kneel in the wet grass and her pasty little face will blink its
dull eyes over a grave. Like a little clown in her curling cotton suit,
her lumpy shoes, her idiotic hat, she will offer her tears to the pitiless
silence of trees, wind, rain and white stones.

"Do you like them there?" She asks. She points to a cluster of fancy
headstones.

"Do you?" I ask.

She smiles.

"Oh yes," she says. And she stops. She is admiring the tombstones. We walk
on.

It is incredible. This blousy one, this dull-eyed one has come to the
cemetery on her day off--to admire the tombstones. Ah, here is drama of a
poignant kind. Let us pray God there is nothing pathologic here and that
this is an idyl of despair, that the lumpish little slavey sits on the
rain-washed bench dreaming of fine tombstones as a flapper might dream of
fine dresses.

Yes, at last we are on the track. We talk. These are very pretty, she
says. Life is dull. The days are drab. The place where she works is like
an oven. There is nothing pretty to look at--even in mirrors there is
nothing cool and pretty. Clothes grow lumpy when she puts them on. Boys
giggle and call names when she goes out. And so, outcast, she comes here
to the cemetery to dream of a day when something cool and pretty will
belong to her. A headstone, perhaps a stately one with a figure above it.
It will stand over her. She will be dead then and unable to enjoy it. But
now she is alive. Now she can think of how pretty the stone will look and
thus enjoy it in advance. This, after all, is the technique of all dreams.

We grow confidential. I have asked what sort she likes best, what sort it
pleases her most to think about as standing over her grave when she dies.
And she has pointed some out. It rains. The trees shake water and the wind
hurries past the white stones.

"I will tell you something," she says. "Here, look at this." From one of
her curled pockets she removes a piece of paper. It is crumpled. I open it
and read:

"In Case of Accident please notify Misses Burbley,--Sheridan Road, and
have body removed to Home of Parents who are residants of Corliss
Wisconsin where they have resided for twenty Years and the diseased is a
only Daughter named Clara. Age nineteen and educated in Corliss public
Schools where she Graduated as a girl but came to Chicago in serch of
employment and in case of accident funeral was held from Home of the
Parents, many Frends attending and please Omit flours...."

"I got lot of them writ out," said Clara, blinking. "You wanna read more?
Why I write them out? Oh, because, you can't tell, maybe you get run over
and in accident and how they going to know who you are or what to do with
the diseased if they don't find something?"

Her thick red hands grew excited. She produced further obituaries. From
her pocketbook, from her bosom, from her pockets and one from under her
hat. I read them. They were all alike, couched in vaguely bombastic terms.
We sat in the rain and I thought:

"Alas, Clara is a bounder. A snob. She writes her own obituaries. Alive
she can think of herself only as Clara, the slavey at whom the boys giggle
and call names. But dead, she is the 'deseased'--the stately corpse
commanding unprecedented attention. The prospect stirs a certain
snobbishness in her. And she sits and writes her death notices out--using
language she tries to remember from reading the funeral accounts of rich
and powerful people."

Clara, her hat awry, her doltish body sagging in the rain--shuffled down
the dirt road once more. Her outing is over. Cinderella returns to the
ashes of life.

THE WAY HOME

He shuffles around in front of the Clinton Street employment agency. The
signs say: "Pick men wanted, section hands wanted, farm laborers wanted."

A Mexican stands woodenly against the window front. His eyes are open but
asleep. He has the air of one come from a far country who lives upon
memories.

There are others--roughly dressed exiles. Their eyes occasionally study
the signs, deciphering with difficulty the crudely chalked words on the
bulletin boards. Slav, Swede, Pole, Italian, Greek--they read in a
language foreign to them that men are wanted on the farms in the Dakotas,
in the lumber camps, on the roadbeds in Montana. Hard-handed men with
dull, seamed faces and glittering eyes--the spike-haired proletaire from a
dozen lands looking for jobs.

But this one who shuffles about in a tattered mackinaw, huge baggy
trousers frayed at the feet, this one whose giant's body swings loosely
back and forth under the signs, is a more curious exile. His Mexican
brother leaning woodenly against the window has a slow dream in his eyes.
Life is simple to his thought. It was hard for him in Mexico. And
adventure and avarice sent him northward in quest of easier ways and more
numerous comforts. Now he hunts a job on a chilly spring morning. When the
proper job is chalked up on the bulletin board he will go in and ask for
it. He stands and waits and thinks how happy he was in the country he
abandoned and what a fool he was to leave the white dust of its roads, its
hills and blazing suns. And some day, he thinks, he will go back, although
there is nothing to go back for. Yet it is pleasant to stand and dream of
a place one has known and whither one may return.

But this one who shuffles, this giant in a tattered mackinaw who slouches
along under the bulletin signs asking for section hands and laborers,
there is no dream of remembered places in his eyes. Dull, blue eyes that
peer bewilderedly out of a powerful and empty face. The forehead is
puckered as if in thought. The heavy jaws protrude with a hint of ferocity
in their set. There is a reddish cast to his hair and face and the backs
of his great hands, hanging limply almost to his knees, are covered with
red hair.

The nose of this shuffling one is larger than the noses in the city
streets. His fingers are larger, his neck is larger. There is a curious
earthy look to this shuffling one seldom to be seen about men in streets.
He is a huge creature with great thighs and Laocooen sinews and he towers a
head above his brothers in front of the employment office. He is of a
different mold from the men in the street. Strength ripples under his
tattered mackinaw and his stiff looking hands could break the heads of two
men against each other like eggshells while they rained puny blows on his
dull face.

And yet of all the men moving about on the pavement in front of the
Clinton Street bulletin boards it is this shuffling one who is the most
impotent seeming. His figure is the most helpless. It slouches as under a
final defeat. His eyes are the dullest.

He stops at the corner and stands waiting, his head lowered, his shoulders
hunched in and he looks like a man weighed down by a harness.

* * * * *

A curious exile from whose blood has vanished all memory of the country to
which he belongs. A faraway land, ages beyond the sun-warmed roads of
which his Mexican brother dreams as he stands under the bulletin boards. A
land which the ingenuity of the world has left forever behind. This is a
land that once reached over all the seas.

For it was like this that men once looked in an age before the myths of
the Persians and Hindus began to fertilize the animal soul of the race. In
the forests north of the earliest cities of Greece, along the wild coasts
tapering from the Tatar lands to the peninsula of the Basques, men like
this shuffling one once ranged alone and in tribes. Huge, powerful men
whose foreheads sloped back and whose jaws sloped forward and whose stiff
hands reached an inch nearer their knees than today.

This giant in the tattered mackinaw is an exile from this land and there
is no dream of it left in his blood. The body of his fathers has returned
to him. Their long, loose arms, their thick muscles and heavy pounding
veins are his, but their voices are buried too deep to rise again in him.
The mutterings of warrior councils, the shouts of terrible hunts are lost
somewhere in him and he shuffles along, his sloping forehead in a pucker
of thought as if he were trying to remember. But no memories come. Instead
a bewilderment. The swarming streets bewilder him. The towering buildings,
the noises of traffic and people dull his eyes and bring his shoulders
together like the shoulders of some helpless captive.

* * * * *

He returns to the employment office and raises his eyes to the bulletin
boards. He reads slowly, his large lips moving as they form words. In
another day or another week he will be riding somewhere, his dull eyes
gazing out of the train window. They will call him Ole or Pat or Jim in
some camp in the Dakotas or along some roadbed in Montana. He will stand
with a puny pick handle in his huge hands and his arms will rise and fall
mechanically as he hews away along a deserted track. And his forehead will
still be puckered in a frown of bewilderment. The thing held in his fists
will seem like a strange toy.

"Farm laborers in Kansas," says the bulletin board as the clerk with his
piece of chalk re-enters the office. The Mexican slowly removes himself
from the window and the contemplation of memories. Kansas lies to the
south and to the south is the way home. He goes in and talks to the man
behind the long desk.

An hour later the clerk and his piece of chalk emerge. The exiles are
still mooching around on the pavement and the shuffling one stands on the
curb staring dully at the street under him.

"Section hands, Alberta, Canada, transportation," says the new bulletin.
There is no stir among the exiles. This is to the north. It is still cold
in the north. But the shuffling one has turned. His eyes again trace the
crudely chalked letters of the bulletin board. His lips move as he tells
himself what is written.

And then as if unconsciously he moves toward the door. Alberta is to the
north and the voices that lie buried deep under the giant's mackinaw
whisper darkly that to the north--to the north is the way home.

THE PIG

"Sofie Popapovitch versus Anton Popapovitch," cries the clerk. A number of
broken-hearted matrons awaiting their turn before the bar of justice in
the Domestic Relations Court find time to giggle at the name Popapovitch.

"Silence," cries the clerk. Very well, silence. Anton steps out. What's
the matter with Anton? An indignant face, its chin raised, its eyes
marching defiantly to the bar of justice. Sofie too, but weeping. And a
lawyer, Sofie's lawyer.

Well, what's up? Why should the Popapovitches take up valuable time. Think
of the taxpayers supporting this court and two Popapovitches marching up
to have an argument on the taxpayers' money. Well, that's civilization.

Ah, ah! It appears that Anton, the rogue, went to a grand ball and raffle
given by his lodge. What's wrong with that? Why must Sofie weep over that?
Women are incredible. He went to the grand ball with his wife, as a man
should. A very fine citizen, Anton. He belongs to a lodge that gives grand
balls and he takes his wife.

Go on, says the judge, what happened? What's the complaint? Time is
precious. Let's have it in a nutshell.

This is a good idea. People spend a frightful lot of unnecessary time
weeping and mumbling in the courts. Mrs. Popapovitch will please stop
weeping and get down to brass tacks. Very well, the complaint is, your
honor, that Mr. Popapovitch got drunk at the grand ball. But that wasn't
the end of it. There's some more. A paragraph of tears and then, your
honor, listen to this: Mr. Popapovitch not only got drunk but he took a
chance on the raffle which cost one dollar and he won.

But what did he win! Oh, oh! He won a pig. A live pig. That was the prize.
A small, live pig with a ribbon round its neck. And, says Mrs. Popapovitch
(there's humor in a long foreign-sounding name because it conjures up
visions of bewildered, flat-faced people and bewildered, flat-faced people
are always humorous), and, says she, they had been married ten years.
Happily married. She washed, scrubbed, tended house. There were no
children. Well, what of that? Lots of people had no children.

Anyway, Anton worked, brought home his pay envelope O.K. And then he wins
this pig. And what does he do? He takes it home. He won't leave it
anywhere.

"What!" he says, "I leave this pig anywhere? Are you crazy? It's my pig. I
win him. I take him home with me."

And then? Well, it's midnight, your honor. And Anton carries the pig
upstairs into the flat. But there's no place to put him. Where can one put
a pig in a flat, your honor? No place. The pig don't like to stand on
carpets. And what pig likes to sleep on hard wood floors? A pig's a pig.
And what's good for a pig? Aha! a pig pen.

So, your honor, Anton puts him in the bathtub. And he starts down stairs
with a basket and all night long he keeps bringing up basketfuls of dirt
dug up from the alley. Dirt, cinders, more dirt. And he puts it in the
bathtub. And what does the pig do? He squeals, grunts and wants to go
home. He fights to get out of the bathtub. There's such a noise nobody can
sleep. But Anton says, "Nice little pig. I fix you up fine. Nice little
pig."

And so he fills the bathtub up with dirt. Then he turns on the water. And
what does he say? He says, "Now, little pig, we have fine mud for you.
Nice fine mud." Yes, your honor, a whole bathtub full of mud. And when the
pig sees this he gets happy and lies down and goes to sleep. And Anton
sits in the bathroom and looks at the pig all night and says, "See. He's
asleep. It's like home for him."

But the next day Anton must go to work. All right, he'll go to work. But
first, understand everybody, he don't want this pig touched. The pig stays
in the bathtub and he must be there when he comes home.

All right. The pig stays in the bathtub, your honor. Anton wants it.
Tomorrow the pig will be killed and that'll be an end for the pig.

Anton comes home and he goes in the bathroom and he sits and looks at the
pig and complains the mud is dried up and why don't somebody take care of
his pig. His damn pig. He brings up more dirt and makes more mud. And the
pig tries to climb out and throws mud all over the bathroom.

That's one day. And then there's another day. And finally a third day.
Will Anton let anybody kill his pig? Aha! He'll break somebody's neck if
he does. But, your honor, Mrs. Popapovitch killed the pig. A terrible
thing, isn't it, to kill a pig that keeps squealing in the bathtub and
splashing mud all day?

But what does Anton do when he comes home and finds his pig killed? My
God! He hits her, your honor. He hits her on the head. His own wife whom
he loves and lives with for ten years. He throws her down and hollers,
"You killed my little pig! You good for nothing. I'll show you."

What a disgrace for the neighbors! Lucky there are no children, your
honor. Married ten years but no children. And it's lucky now. Because the
disgrace would have been worse. The neighbors come. They pull him away
from his wife. Her eye is black and blue. Her nose is bleeding. That's
all, your honor.

A very bad case for Anton Popapovitch. A decidedly bad case. Step forward,
Anton Popapovitch, and explain it, if you can. Did you beat her up? Did
you do this thing? And are you ashamed and willing to apologize and kiss
and make up?

Anton, step forward and tell his honor. But be careful. Mrs. Popapovitch
has a lawyer and it will go bad with you if you don't talk carefully.

All right. Here's Anton. He nods and keeps on nodding. What is this?
What's he nodding about? Did this happen as your wife says, Anton? Anton
blows out his cheeks and rubs his workingman's hand over his mouth. To
think that you should beat your wife who has always been good to you,
Anton. Who has cooked and been true to you! And there are no children to
worry you. Not one. And you beat her. Bah, is that a man? Don't you love
your wife? Yes. All right, then why did you do it?

Anton looks up surprised. "Because," says Anton, still surprised, "like
she say. She kill my pig. You hear yourself, your honor. She say she kill
him. And I put him in the bathtub and give him mud. And she kill him."

But is that a reason to beat your wife and nearly kill her? It is, says
Anton. Well, then, why? Tell the judge, why you were so fond of this pig,
Anton.

Ah, yes, Anton Popapovitch, tell the judge why you loved this little pig
so much and made a home for him with mud in the bathtub. Why you dreamed
of him as you stood working in the factory? Why you ran home to him and
fed him and sat and looked at him and whispered "Nice little pig?" Why?

God knows. But Anton Popapovitch can't explain it. It must remain one of
the mysteries of our city, your honor. Call the next case. Put Anton
Popapovitch on parole. Perhaps it was because..., well, the matter is
ended. Anton Popapovitch sighs and looks with accusing eyes at his wife
Sofie, with accusing eyes that hint at evidence unheard.

THE LITTLE FOP

This little caricature of a fop, loitering in the hotel lobby, enthralled
by his own fastidiousness, gazing furtively at the glisten of his newly
manicured nails and shuddering with awe at the memory of the puckered
white silk lining inside his Prince of Wales derby--I've watched him for
more than a month now. Here he comes, his pointed button shoes, his
razor-edged trousers, his natty tan overcoat with its high waist band and
its amazing lapels that stick up over his shoulders like the ears of a
jackass, here he comes embroidered and scented and looking like a cross
between a soft-shoe dancer and a somnambulist. And here he takes his
position, holding his gloves in his hand, his Prince of Wales derby jammed
down on his patent-leather hair.

Observe him. This is a pose. He is living up to a fashion illustration in
one of the magazines. Or perhaps he is duplicating an attitude of some one
studied in a Michigan Avenue club entrance. His right arm is crooked as if
he were about to place his hand over his heart and bow. His left arm hangs
with a slight curve at his side. His feet should be together, but they
shift nervously. His head is turned to the left and slightly raised--like
a movie actor posing for a cigarette advertisement.

And there he stands, a dead ringer for one of the waxen dummies to be seen
in a Halsted Street Men's Snappy Furnishings Store.

* * * * *

I've watched him for a month, off and on. And his face still says nothing.
His eyes are curiously emotionless. They appear suddenly in his face. He
is undersized. His nose, despite the recent massage and powder, has a
slight oleaginous gleam to it. The cheek bones are a bit high, the mouth a
trifle wide and the chin slightly bulbous. As he blinks about him with his
small, almost Mongolian eyes he looks like some honest little immigrant
from Bohemia or Poland whom a malignant sorcerer has changed into a
caricature fashion plate. This is, indeed, the legend of Cinderella and
the fairy godmother with an ending of pathos.

Yet, though his face says nothing, there is a provoking air to this little
fop. His studied inanimation, his crudely self-conscious pose, his dull,
little, peasant eyes staring at the faces that drift by in the
lobby--these ask for translation. Why is he here? What does he want? Why
does he come every evening and stand and watch the little hotel parade?
Ah, one never sees him in the dining room or on the dance floor. One never
meets him between the acts in the theater lobby. And one never sees him
talking to anybody. He is always alone. People pass him with a curious
glance and think to themselves, "Ah, a young man about town! What a shame
to dissipate like that!" They sometimes notice the masterly way in which
he sizes up a fur-coated "chicken" stalking thin-leggedly through the
lobby and think to themselves: "The scoundrel! He's the kind of creature
that makes a big city dangerous. A carefully combed and scented vulture
waiting to swoop down from the side lines."

Evening after evening between 6 o'clock and midnight he drifts in and out
of the lobby, up and down Randolph Street and takes up his position at
various points of vantage where crowds pass, where women pass. I've
watched him. No one ever talks to him. There are no salutations. He is
unknown and worse. For the women, the rouged and ornamental ones, know him
a bit too well. They know the carefully counted nickels in his trousers
pocket, the transfers he is saving for the three-cent rebate that may come
some day, the various newspaper coupons through which he hopes to make a
killing.

All this they know and through a sixth sense, a curious instinct of sex
divination, they know the necktie counter or information desk behind which
he works during the day, the stuffy bedroom to which he will go home to
sleep, the vacuity of his mind and gaudy emptiness of his spirit. They
know all this and pass him up with never a smile. Yes, even the manicure
girls in the barber shop give him the out-and-out sneer and the hat-check
girls and even the floor girls--the chambermaids--all of whom he has tried
to date up--they all respond with an identical raspberry to his
invitations.

But he asks for translation--this determined little caricature of the
hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the
bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something
of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little
fool. There is something in him that desires expression, that will never
achieve expression, and that will always leave him just such an absurd
little clown of a fop.

* * * * *

When the manicure girls read this they will snort. Because they know him
too well. "Of all the half-witted dumbbells I ever saw in my life," they
will say, "he wins the cement earmuffs. Nobody home, honest to Gawd, he's
nothin' but a nasty little fourflusher. We know him and his kind."

Fortunately I don't know him as well as the manicure girls do, so there is
room for this speculation as I watch him in the evening now and then. I
see him standing under the blaze of lobby lights, in the thick of passing
fur coats and dinner jackets, in the midst of laughter, escorts,
intrigues, actors, famous names.

He stands perfectly still, with his right arm crooked as if he were going
to place his hand over his heart and bow, with his left arm slightly
curved at his side. Grace. This is a pose denoting grace. He got it
somewhere from an illustration. And he holds it. Here is life. The real
stuff. The real thing. Lights and laughter. Glories, coiffures, swell
dames, great actors, guys loaded with coin. His little Mongolian eyes
blink through his amusing aplomb. Here are gilded pillars and marbled
walls, great rugs and marvelous furniture. Here music is playing somewhere
and people are eating off gold-edged dishes.

* * * * *

And now you will smile at me, not him. Because watching him of evenings,
on and off, a curious notion takes hold of my thoughts. I have noticed the
race oddities of his face, the Mongolian eyes, the Slavic cheek bones, the
Italian hair. A mixed breed, this little fop. Mixed through a dozen
centuries. Fathers and mothers that came from a hundred parts of the
earth. But down the centuries they had one thing in common. Servitude. The
Carlovingian courts, the courts of the De Medici, the Valois, and long
before that, the great houses that lay around the Roman hills. Dragged
from their villages, east, west, north and south, they flitted in the
trappings of servitude through the vast halls of tyrants, barons, Caesars,
sybarites, debauchees. They were the torchbearers, the caitiffs, the
varlets, the bathkeepers, the inanimate figures whose faces watched from
the shadows the great orgies of Tiberius, the bacchanals of satraps,
kings, captains and squires.

And here their little great-great-grandson stands as they stood, the ghost
of their servitude in his sluggish blood. He is content with his role of
watcher as his people were content. These slightly grotesque trappings of
his are a disguise. He wishes to disguise the fact that he is of the
torchbearers, the varlets, the bathkeepers who produced him. So he
imitates servilely what he fancies to be the distinguishing marks of his
betters--their clothes, their manners, their aplomb. This accomplished, he
is content to yield himself to the mysterious impulses and dreams that
move silently through him.

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