A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht

B >> Ben Hecht >> A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

"Well, that's him there, see? He comes in like this and sits down near the
band. Look at him. Do you make him? The way he's movin' his hands? See,
he's leadin' the band. Sure"--Izzy laughed mirthlessly--"that's what the
guy's doin'. Nuts, see? Daffy. He comes in here like that and I always
watch him. He sits still and when the music starts up he begins wit' his
hands. Ain't he the berries?

"Now keep your eye on him. You'll see somethin' pretty quick. He's alone
tonight. I guess the dame has shook him for the evenin'. Look, he's still
conductin'. Ain't he rich? But he's got a good face, you might say. Class,
eh? You'd know he was a musician.

"I tell you I begin to watch him the first time I saw him. And from the
beginnin' he's always conductin' when the band starts in. The dame is
usu'lly wit' him and she don't like it. She tries to stop him, but he
don't see her for sour apples. He keeps right on like now, beatin' time
wit' his hands. Look, the poor nut's growin' excited. Daffy. Can you beat
it? There he goes. See? That's on account of Jerry. Jerry's the black one
on the end wit' the saxophone. Ha, Jerry always does it.

"I told Jerry about this guy and Jerry tried it on him the first night. He
pulled a sour one, you know, blew a mean one through the horn and his nobs
nearly fell out of his seat. Like now. See, he's through. He won't conduct
the band any more tonight. He's sore. No sir, he won't conduct such a lot
of no-good boilermakers like Jerry. Can you beat it?"

* * * * *

Izzy's eyes follow a stoop-shouldered gray-haired man from one of the
tables. A thin-faced man with bloodshot eyes. He walks as if he were half
asleep. The crowd swallows him and Izzy laughs again without mirth.

"He's done for the night. That's low down of Jerry. But Jerry says it gets
his goat to see this daffy guy comin' in here night after night and
leadin' the band from the table. So the smoke blows that sour note every
time his nobs gets started on his conductin' and it always knocks his nobs
for a gool. He never stays another minute, but lights out right away.

"Look, there's his dame. The one wit' the green hat, sittin' wit' the guy
with the cheaters over there. Yeah, that's her. I don't know why she ain't
wit' him tonight. Prob'ly a lovers' quarrel." And Izzy grinned. "She's a
tough one, take it from me. I don't know how she hooked the professor, but
she did. She used to be swelled up about him. And once she got him a job
in Buxbaum's old place, she told me, to work in the orchestra. But his
nobs kicked. Said he'd cut his throat before playin' in a roughneck
orchestra and who did she think he was to do such a thing? He says to her:
I'm Weintraub--Weintraub, d'ye understand?' And he hauls off and wallops
her one and she guve up tryin' to get him a job. It makes her sore to
watch him sittin' around like tonight and conductin' the orchestra. She
says it ain't because he's daffy, but on account of his bein' stuck up."

The woman with the green hat had left her table. Izzy's shrewd eyes picked
her out again--this time standing against a far wall talking to the
professor, and the professor was rubbing his forehead and saying "No, no,"
with his hands.

And now the entertainer was singing again:

"Got de St. Louis Blues, jes' as blue as Ah can be,
Dat man has a heart like a rock ca-ast in de sea,
Or else he would not have gone so far away from me."

VAGABONDIA

Here they come. Five merry travelers in a snorting, dust-caked automobile.
Wanderers, egad! Bowling rakishly across the country. Dusters and goggles
and sunburn. Prairie nights have sung to them. Little towns have grinned
at them. Mountains, valleys, forests and stars have danced across their
windshield.

The newspaper man stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb.
His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows.
Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a
city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. And scooting out again.

The newspaper man thought, "The world isn't buried yet. There's still a
restlessness left. Things change from triremes to motor boats, from
Rosinante to automobiles. But adventure merely mounts a new seat and goes
on. Dick Hovey sang it once:

"I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay."

The five merry travelers crawled out and stretched themselves. They doffed
their goggles and slipped off their linen dusters and changed forthwith
from a group of flying gnomes into five tired-looking citizens of
California. Two middle aged women. Two middle-aged men and a son.

One of the men said, "Well, we'll lay up here for awhile, I got a blister
on my hand from the wheel."

One of the women answered, "I must buy some hairpins, Martin."

The newspaper man said to himself, "What ho! I'll give them a ring. Why
not? A story of the modern wanderlust. Anyway, they're not averse to
publicity seeing they've got two 'coast to coast' pennants on the back of
their machine. What they've seen. Why they've journeyed. A tirade against
the monotony of business. And I'll stick in one of Hovey's stanzas, the
one that goes:

"There's a schooner in the offing
With her topsails shot with fire.
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire."

"You can say," said the spokesman of the wanderers, "that this is Martin
S. Stevers and party. I am Mr. Stevers of the Stevers Linseed Oil Company
in San Francisco. Here's my card."

"Thanks," said the newspaper man, taking the card.

"And now," spake on the spokesman of the wanderers, "what can I do for
you?"

Newspaper men are perhaps the only creatures who as a type never learn how
to ask questions. An embarrassment caused by the stupidity of the gabby
great whom they interrogate daily puts a crimp into their tongues. Their
questions wince in anticipation of the banalities they are doomed to
elicit. Their curiosity collapses under the shadow of the inevitable,
impending bromide.

Thus the newspaper man, wearily certain that regardless of what he asks or
how he asks it, he will hear for answers only the clumsy asininities
behind which the personalities, leaders and sacred white cows pompously
attitudinize, gets so that he mumbles a bit incoherently.

But here was a different case. Here were merry travelers with memories of
wind-swept valleys and star-capped mountains to chatter on. So the
newspaper man unearthed his vocabulary, tilted his hat a trifle and smiled
invitingly.

"Well," said he to the spokesman of the wanderers, "The kind of story I'd
like to get would be a story about five people wandering across the
country. You know. Hills, sunsets, trees and how those things drive away
the monotony that fills up the hearts of city folk. What you enjoyed on
the trip and the advantages of a rover over a swivel-chair statistician."

An eloquence was beginning to skip around on the newspaper man's tongue.
His heart, weary of tall buildings and the endless grimace of city
windows, began to warm under the visions his phrases aroused.

Then he paused. One of the women had interrupted. "Go on Martin, you can
tell him all that. And don't forget about the lovely hotel breakfast room
in Des Moines."

Martin, however, hesitated. He was a heavy-set, large-faced man with
expansive features almost devoid of expression. Suddenly his face lighted
up. His hands jumped together and he rubbed their palms enthusiastically.

"I see," he said with profundity. "I see."

"Yes," breathed the newspaper man.

"Well," said Mr. Stevers, "the first thing I'd like to tell you, young
man, is about the car. You won't believe this, but we've been making
twenty miles on a gallon, that is, averaging twenty miles on each and
every gallon, sir, since we left San Francisco. Pretty good, eh?"

On a piece of scratch paper the newspaper man obediently wrote, "twenty
miles, gallon."

"And then," went on the spokesman for the wanderers, "Our speed, eh? You'd
like to know that? Well, without stretching the thing at all, and you can
verify it from any of my party, we've averaged twenty-six miles an hour
all the time out. I tell you the old boat had to travel some to do that."

'"Twenty-six miles," scribbled the newspaper man, adding after it, "The
man's an idiot."

Mr. Stevers, unmindful, loosened up. The price of gasoline. The price of
breakfasts. The condition of the roads. How long a stretch they had been
able to do without a halt. How many hours a day he himself had stuck at
the wheel. When he had finished the newspaper man bowed and walked
abruptly away.

* * * * *

The newspaper man's thoughts form a conclusion.

"It's true, then," he thought, "the world's becoming as stupid as it
looks. People are drying up inside with facts, figures, dollar signs. This
man and his party would have got as much out of their cross-country trip
if they'd all been blindfolded and shot through a tunnel two thousand feet
under the ground. Man is like an audience and he has walked out on mystery
and adventure. The show kind of tired him. And got his goat. It would have
been a good yarn otherwise, the motor vagabonds. I'd have ended with
Hovey's verse:

"I must forth again tomorrow,
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea."

Mumbling the lines to himself, the newspaper man strode on through the
crowded loop with a sudden swagger in his eyes.

NIRVANA

The newspaper man felt a bit pensive. He sat in his bedroom frowning at
his typewriter. About eight years ago he had decided to write a novel. Not
that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city
was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy
monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man's thought
from day to day with an irritating blur.

And for eight years or so the newspaper man had been fumbling around
trying to get it down on paper. But no novel had grown out of the blur in
his head.

* * * * *

The newspaper man put on his last year's straw hat and went into the
street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A
shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing
store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops,
movie theatres invite with the promise of a saturnalia in suspense.

At Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road the newspaper man paused. Here the
loneliness he had felt in his bedroom seemed to grow more acute. Not only
his own aimlessness, but the aimlessness of the staring, smiling crowd
afflicted him.

Then out of the babble of faces he heard his name called. A rouged young
flapper, high heeled, short skirted and a jaunty green hat. One of the
impudent little swaggering boulevard promenaders who talk like simpletons
and dance like Salomes, who laugh like parrots and ogle like Pierettes.
The birdlike strut of her silkened legs, the brazen lure of her stenciled
child face, the lithe grimace of her adolescent body under the stiff
coloring of her clothes were a part of the blur in the newspaper man's
mind.

She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter--one of the
city products born of the tinpan bacchanal of the cabarets. A sort of
frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that
danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man
smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the
typewritten phrases.

"Wilson Avenue," he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. "The wise,
brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler.
She's it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox
trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette."

* * * * *

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came
together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place
with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing
lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils
through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened
together; eyes glassy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur
before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he
heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

"Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well,
that's the way with you Johns. But there's enough to go around, you can
bet. Say boy! I met the classiest John the other evening in front of the
Hopper. Did he have class, boy! You know there are some of these fancy
Johns who look like they were the class. But are they? Ask me. Nix. And
don't I give them the berries, quick? Say, I don't let any John get moldy
on me. Soon as I see they're heading for a dumb time I say 'razzberry.'
And off your little sugar toddles."

"How old are you?" inquired the newspaper man abstractedly.

"Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the
telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain't
going good? One of the Johns I met in front of the Edgewater steered me to
it. He turned out kind of moldy, and say! he was dumb. But I played along
and got the job.

"Say, I bet you never noticed my swell kicks." The flapper thrust forth
her legs and twirled her feet. "Classy, eh? They go with the lid pretty
nice. Say, you're kind of dumb yourself. You've got moldy since I saw you
last."

"How'd you remember my name?" inquired the newspaper man.

"Oh, there are some Johns who tip over the oil can right from the start.
And you never forget them. Nobody could forget you, handsome. Never no
more, never. What do you say to another shot of hootch? The stuff's
getting rottener and rottener, don't you think? Come on, swallow. Here's
how. Oh, ain't we got fun!"

* * * * *

The orchestra paused. It resumed. The crowd thickened. Shouts, laughter,
swaying bodies. A tinkle of glassware, snort of trombones, whang of
banjos. The newspaper man looked on and listened through a film.

The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin
coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her
dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly
through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of
classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing
and amusement parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to
be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman.
Yes, she'd had a lot of close times, but they wouldn't get her. Never, no,
never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a
whoop-de-da-da in the amusement parks.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls.
Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin--the
unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the
cabarets."

* * * * *

They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still
mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against
the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting
themselves in the artifice of confusion.

The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There
was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless
chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling
cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick
couldn't reach, seemed to grow deader and deader.

The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd
rose in an "ah-ah-ah." Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place,
squeezing fresh arrivals around them.

The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories.
Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man's ear above the
racket:

"Say this is a dumb place."

The newspaper man smiled.

"Ain't it, though?" she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless
voice sighed. She spoke.

"Gee!"--with a laugh that still seemed breathless--"gee, but it's lonely
here!"

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MASTERPIECE

"You come with me to the Art Institute today," said Max Kramm. "My friend
Broun has an exhibition. You know Broun? Ah, I think he is today the
greatest living artist. No, we will walk. It is only four or five blocks.
And I tell you a story."

A story from Max Kramm is worth attention even though it is hot and though
the Boul Mich pavement feels like a stove griddle through the leather of
one's shoes. For the Dante-faced Max, in addition to being one of the
leading piano professors of the country, the billiard champion of the
Chicago Athletic Club and the most erudite porcelain connoisseur in Harper
Avenue, is one of the survivors of the race of raconteurs that flourished
in the time of nickel cigars and the free lunch.

"I have eight more lessons to administer today," sighed Max with a parting
glower at the premises of the Chicago Musical College, "But when my old
friend Broun has an exhibition I go."

* * * * *

"It was when we lived together in a studio in North Avenue," said Max. "Jo
Davidson, Walter Goldbeck and the bunch, we all roomed together in the
same neighborhood and we were poor, I can tell you. But young. And that
makes up for a lot of things.

"Broun and I, we room together in a little attic where I have a piano and
he paints. Even in those days we all knew Frank Broun would be a great
painter if he didn't starve to death first. And the chances looked even.

"Well, there was Schneider, of course. You never heard of him, I'll bet
you. No, he don't paint. And he don't sing and he don't play the piano. He
was somebody much more important than such things. Schneider was the
proprietor of a beer saloon in North Avenue. Where is he now, I wonder?
Well, in those days he saved our life twice a day regularly.

"Broun and I we keep alive for one whole year on Schneider's free lunch.
Herring, pickles, rye bread, pepper beef, boiled ham, onions, pretzels,
roast beef and a big jar full of fine cheese. And, I forgot, a jar full of
olives and a dish of crackers. Oh, there was food fit for a king in
Schneider's. You buy one glass beer, for five cents, and then you eat till
you bust--for nothing.

"You can't imagine what that meant to us in those days. Broun and I, we
sometimes have so much as ten cents a day between us and on this we must
live. So at noon we both go into Schneider's. Broun says, 'You want a
drink, Max? I say, 'No, Frank.' Then I engage Schneider in talk while
Broun makes away with a meal. Then Broun does the talking and it is my
turn.

"Well, it got so that the good Schneider finally points out to us one day.
'Max,' he says, 'and Frank, I tell you something. You boys owe me three
dollars and you come in here and eat all your meals and you don't even pay
for the one glass beer you buy any more. I am sorry, but your credit is
exhausted.'

"So you can imagine what Broun and I feel when we get home. No more
Schneider's, no more food, and eventually we see ourselves both starving
to death.

"'Max' says Broun, 'I have an idea.' And he did.

"Like all great ideas, it was simple. Broun figures that what we need to
do is to convince Schneider we have wonderful prospects and so Schneider
will give us back our credit. So Broun sits down that day and all day and
most of the night he paints. I think it was the last canvas he had in the
studio, too. And a big one. You know all of Broun's landscapes are big.

"Well, he paints and paints, and when he is finished we take the picture
to Schneider, the two of us carrying it. I tell Schneider that it is one
of the old masters which we just received from Berlin from my father's
studio. Then Broun says that Schneider must keep it in his place. It is
too valuable to hang in our attic. Schneider looks at the picture and, it
being so big, he half believes it.

"Then Broun and I go to the bank and draw out our $10 which we have saved
up for a rainy day. And we go down town and get the picture insured for
$2,000. You can imagine Schneider. We bring the insurance gink out there
and when he gives us the policy and we show it to Schneider--well, our
credit is re-established. Herring, rye bread, roast beef, pickles and
cheese once more. We eat.

"Schneider is more proud of that picture than a peacock. And every day we
drop in to see if it is all right and Broun always goes behind the bar and
dusts it off a little and draws himself another drink. There is never any
question any more of our credit. Don't we own a picture insured for
$2,000? The good Schneider is glad to have such affluent customers, you
can believe me.

* * * * *

"Well, things go on like this for some months. Then I am coming home one
night with Broun and the fire engines pass us. So Frank and I we go to the
fire.

"It is Schneider's beer saloon. We see it a block off. Frank turns pale
and he holds my arm and he whispers, 'Max, the picture! It is burning up!'

"I look at Broun and I suppose I tremble a little myself. Who wouldn't?
Two thousand dollars! 'Max,' says Broun, 'We go around the world together.
And I saw a suit today and a cane I must have.'

"But we couldn't talk. We walk slowly to the beer saloon. We walk already
like plutocrats, arm in arm, and our faces with a faraway look. We are
spending the two thousand, you can imagine.

"The saloon is burning fine. Everything is going up in smoke. Broun and I,
we hold on to each other. We see Jo Davidson running to the fire and we
nod at him politely. Money makes a big difference, you know.

"And then we hear a cry. I recognize Schneider and I see him break loose
from the crowd. He runs back into the burning saloon, a fireman after him.
Broun and I, we stand and watch. He is probably gone after one of his
kids. But I count the kids who are all in the street and they are all
there.

"Then Schneider comes out and the fireman, too. And they are carrying
something. Broun falls against the delicatessen store window and groans.
And I close my eyes. Yes, it is the picture.

"Schneider sees us and comes rushing. He is half burned up. But the
picture is not touched. He and the fireman hand us the picture. As for me,
I turn away and I lose command of the English language.

"'You boys trusted me,' says Schneider, 'and I remembered just in time. I
remembered your picture. I may not be an artist, but I don't let a
masterpiece burn up. Not in my saloon. So I save it. It is the only thing
I save out of the whole saloon.' And he wrings Broun's hand, and I say,
'thanks.' That night, all night long, I played Beethoven. The Ninth
Symphony is good for feelings such as mine and Broun's."

* * * * *

It is cooler in the Art Institute and Max, smiling in memory of other
days, looks at the Broun exhibition.

"I could finish the story by telling you excitedly that this landscape
here is the picture Schneider saved," he went on, pointing to one of the
large canvases. "But no. It wouldn't be the truth. I have the picture
home. It is not yet worth $2,000, but in a few years more, who knows?
Maybe I have cause to thank Schneider yet."

SATRAPS AT PLAY

The elfin-faced danseuse puts it over. Her voice sounds like a run-down
fifteen-cent harmonica. But that doesn't matter. Not at two a.m. in an
all-night cabaret. You don't need a voice to knock us out of our seats.
You need something else--pep.

"I wanna be--in Tennuhsee," the elfin-faced one squeaks. And the ladies of
the chorus grin vacuously and kick their pink tights. One, two, kick! One,
two, kick! I wanna be--in Tennuhsee. One, two, kick! The third one on the
other side looks all right. No, too fat. There's one. The one at the end.
Pretty, ain't she? Who? You mean the one with the long nose? No,
whatsamatter with you? The one with the eyes. See. She's bending over now.
Some kid.

Two a.m. outside. Dark streets. Sleepy chauffeurs dreaming of $10 tips.
All-night Greek restaurants. Twenty-second Street has gone to bed. But we
sit in the warm cabaret, devilishly proud of ourselves. We're a part of
the gang that stays awake when the stars are out.

And the elfin-faced one cuts loose. Attaboy, girlie! Legs shooting through
the tobacco smoke. Eyes like drunken birds. A banjo body playing jazz
capers on the air. It ain't art. But who the devil wants art? What we want
are conniption fits. This is the way the soul of Franz Liszt looked when
he was writing music. Mumba Jumba had a dream that looked like this one
night when the jungle moon arched its back and spat at his black linen
face.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18