Пользователь - WORLDS END Страница 7

Lanny had never been taught to play poker, but had watched it sometimes. They might still be playing when he woke up in the morning, and would go on playing most of the day; he was used to the sight of Petries' Peerless and soda bottles on the side table, and half-empty glasses, and the not very pleasant odor of stale tobacco smoke, and little ashtrays filled with stubs. He was used to hearing how "rotten" his father was as a poker player, and would smile to himself, for this was one of the secrets which he shared with Robbie, who used as much skill in losing as other people did in trying to win.

Always to the right man, of course! This time Captain Bragescu would be the lucky one. Robbie, bland and smiling, would drav cards every time, and wait until the captain gave signs of having a strong hand, then raise him, and finally quit and drop his cards without showing them. After this had happened a few times the captain would realize that it was safe for him to bet heavily, and when Robbie would propose to raise the limit, he would agree. This would go on for hours, until the lucky officer had most of the chips piled in front of him, and would think that he owned the world. At the end Robbie would say: "It's amazing how you've mastered our American game." It was such a decent way to arrange a contract for guns that the captain could not fail to appreciate it. The guns were all right, of course, and the Rumanian army would be safe from the Bulgarians and able to capture the rebel mountaineers and collect the taxes.

VI

Robbie motored to Marseille to meet some member of his family who was coming from Egypt, and Beauty went to dance at a ball which a friend was giving in one of the white marble palaces on the heights above Nice. It would last until morning, and she would sleep there and return later. Lanny settled himself to the reading of a well-worn novel which somebody had picked up on a bookstall and left in the house.

It was a story about slum life on the outskirts of an American industrial town. The district was known as the "Cabbage Patch," and in it lived an Irish washerwoman with a brood of children, all dreadfully poor, but so honest and good that it touched your heart. Lanny, whose heart was always being touched by one thing or another, found this the dearest and sweetest of stories. By next morning he was nearly through with it and, sitting in the warm sunshine of the court, with narcissus beds around him and a huge bougainvillaea throwing a purple mantle over the kitchen porch, he yearned to have been born in a slum, so that he might be so generous and kindhearted and hard-working and helpful to everybody around him.

There came a tinkling of the bell, and Lanny went to the front gate and was confronted by his Uncle Jesse, his mother's brother. Jesse Blackless was a painter of a sort - that is to say, he had a small income and didn't have to work. He lived in a fishing village some distance to the west, a place where "nobody ever went," as Beauty phrased it. But it was just as well, because Jesse didn't seem to care about visitors, nor they about him; he lived alone in a cottage which he had fixed up in his own fashion. Lanny had been there once, when Uncle Jesse was sick and his sister felt it necessary to pay a duty call, taking along a basket of delicacies. That had been two or three years ago, and the boy had a vague memory of soiled dishes, a frying pan on the center table, and half a room filled with unframed paintings.

The artist was a man of forty or so, wearing a sport shirt open at the neck, a pair of linen trousers, not very well pressed, and tennis shoes dusty from his walk. He wore no hat, and his hair was gone entirely from the top, so that the brown dome was like a bronze Buddha's. He looked old for his years, and had many wrinkles around his eyes; when he smiled his mouth went a little crooked. His manner was quizzical, which made you think he was laughing at you, which wasn't quite polite. Lanny didn't know what it was, but he had got the impression that there was something wrong about his Uncle Jesse; Beauty saw him rarely, and if Robbie spoke of him, it was in a way implying disapproval. All the boy knew definitely was that Uncle Jesse had had a studio in Paris, and that Beauty had been visiting him at the time she met Robbie and fell in love.

Lanny invited him into the court and got him a chair and, as Uncle Jesse looked hot after his walk, called Rosine to bring some wine. "Mother's gone to the ball at Mrs. Dagenham Price's," said the boy.

"She would," was Jesse's comment.

"Robbie's gone to Marseille," Lanny added.

"I suppose he's making lots of money."

"I suppose so." That was a subject Lanny did not discuss, so the conversation' lagged.

But then Lanny recalled the Salon des Indиpendants, and said he had been there. "Are they spoofing, or aren't they?" he asked.

"No doubt many of them are," said Uncle Jesse. "Poor devils, they have to get something to eat, and what do critics or buyers know about original work?"

Lanny had picked up ideas concerning the graphic arts, as well as all the others. Many painters lived along the Cфte d'Azur and reproduced its charms; a few were famous, and now and then someone would persuade Beauty that it was a cultural action to invite one to a tea party, or perhaps be taken to his studio to inspect his work. Now and then she would "fall for" something that was especially praised, and these hung as showpieces in the home. The most regarded was a blazing sunrise painted by a certain van Gogh, who had lived at Aries, which you passed when you motored to Paris; in fact he had gone crazy there and had cut off one of his ears. Also there was a pond covered with shining water lilies by Monet. These canvases were becoming so valuable that Beauty was talking about having them insured, but it cost so much that she kept putting it off.

VII

There was, of course, a limit to the amount of time that a specialist in the art of painting cared to devote to exchanging ideas with a youngster; so presently the conversation lagged again. Uncle Jesse watched the bees and the hummingbirds in the flowers, and then his eyes happened to fall upon Lanny's book, which had been laid back up on the grass. "What are you reading?" he inquired.

Lanny handed him the volume, and he smiled one of those twisted smiles. "It was a best-seller many years ago."

"Have you read it?" inquired the boy.

"It's tripe," replied Uncle Jesse.

Lanny had to be polite at all hazards, so after a moment he said: "It interests me because it tells about the slums, which I don't know about."

"But wouldn't it be better," asked the uncle, "if you went and looked at them, instead of reading sentimental nonsense about them?"

"I'd be interested," replied the lad; "but of course there aren't any slums on the Riviera."

Uncle Jesse wanted to laugh again, but there was such an earnest look in his nephew's eyes that he checked himself. "It happens that I'm going to pay a visit in a slum this afternoon. Would you like to come?"

The boy was much excited. It was exactly what he had been longing for, though without having formulated it. A "cabbage patch" in Cannes - imagine such a thing! And a woman who lived there for the same noble and idealistic reasons that Lanny had been dreaming about! "This woman is poor," his uncle explained, "but she doesn't need to be. She is highly educated and could make money, but she prefers to live among the working people."

Leese gave them some lunch, and then they walked to the tram and rode cheaply into the city. When they got off, they walked into the "old town," picturesque and fascinating to tourists. They turned into a lane where the tall buildings came closer together at the top, and very little light got down. There are thousands of such tenements in towns all along the Mediterranean shore; built of stone, several stories high, and having been there for a hundred years or more. There will be steps in the street, and many turns, and archways, and courts with balconies above, and at the end perhaps a dead wall, or a glimpse of an old church, prompting the tourist to unsling his camera.

Of course Lanny knew that people lived in such tenements. Babies swarmed on the steps, with flies crawling over their sore eyes; chickens dodged beneath your feet, donkeys jostled you with their loads, and peddlers shouted their wares into your ears. But somehow when you were thinking about antiquities you forgot about human beings; things that are ancient and artistic are lifted into a different realm. The son of Beauty Budd might have walked through such "old towns" for years and never once had the idea of going inside for a visit. But now Uncle Jesse turned into one of the small doorways. It was dark inside, no electric light, not even gas; the steps felt as if they were made of rotten boards, and the odors seemed as old as the house. Doors were left ajar and fresh smells came out; food cooking, and clothes - "Let's hope they're in separate kettles," said the sardonic visitor. Babies squalled, and one very nearly got caught between their legs. Yes, it was a "cabbage patch"!

VIII

The man knocked on a door, a voice called, and they went in. There appeared to be only one room; it had one window, and a woman was sitting near it. She seemed to be old, and was wrapped in a shawl; the light made a silhouette of her face, which was emaciated, and yellow in hue, as happens when the blood goes out of the skins of these swarthy Mediterranean people. Her face lighted when she saw who it was, and she greeted Jesse Blackless in French and held out to his nephew a hand in which he could feel all the bones.

The woman's name was Barbara Pugliese; pronounced Italian fashion, Pool-yay-say. They were evidently old friends, but had not met for some time. Uncle Jesse was anxious about her cough, and she said it was about the same; she was well taken care of, since many here loved her, and brought her food. She asked about Jesse's health, and then about his painting; he said that nobody paid any attention to it, but it kept him out of mischief - but perhaps that was just his way of making a joke.

They talked part of the time in Italian, of which Lanny understood only a little; perhaps they thought he didn't understand any. He gathered that they knew the same persons, and talked about what these were doing. They discussed international affairs, and the diplomats and statesmen, of whom they thought badly - but so did most people in France, the boy had observed. He knew the names of many politicians, but was hazy about parties and doctrines.

His eyes roamed over the room. It was small, the furniture scanty and plain. There was a single bed, or perhaps it was just a cot, with a couple of worn blankets on it; a chest of drawers; a table with odds and ends piled on it, mostly papers and pamphlets; a lot of books on a trunk - apparently no other place for them; a curtain covering one corner, presumably with clothes behind it. This was how you lived in a slum!

Lanny found himself watching the woman again. He had never seen so much grief in a face. To him suffering was a theme for art, so he found himself remembering Christian martyrs as painted by the Italian primitives; he kept trying to recall one of the saints of Cimabue. The woman's voice was soft and her manner gentle, and he decided that she was truly a saint; yes, she lived in this terrible place out of pity for the poor, and must be an even more wonderful person than Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.

When they went out Lanny hoped that Uncle Jesse would tell him about her; but the painter was an unsatisfying sort of companion. All he said was: "Well, you've seen a slum."

"Yes, Uncle Jesse," replied the boy humbly. Presently he added: "Don't you think we ought to take her some food, or something?"

"It wouldn't do any good. She'd just give it away."

The man appeared to be wrapped up in his own thoughts, and Lanny hesitated to disturb him. But finally he asked: "Uncle Jesse, why do there have to be poor people like those?"

The other replied at once: "Because there are rich people like us." That was confusing to the boy, who had always been led to believe that it was the rich people who gave the poor people work; he knew of cases in which they had done it out of kindness, because they were sorry for the poor.

Lanny tried again. "Why doesn't somebody clean up places like that?"

"Because somebody is making money out of them."

"I don't mean the landlords," Lanny explained. "I mean the city officials."

"Maybe they're the landlords; or else they're collecting graft."

"In France, Uncle Jesse?" Lanny had been given to understand that that happened only in America.

The painter laughed one of his disagreeable laughs. "They don't publish it here," he said. They were in front of the Mairie, and he waved his hand toward it. "Go dig in there, and you'll find all you want." As they walked on, he added: "As much as in the munitions industry."

Of course Lanny couldn't discuss that, and perhaps his uncle knew it. Perhaps Uncle Jesse had argued too much in his life, and had grown tired of it. Anyhow, they had come to the tram, where their ways parted. The boy would ride home alone, because his uncle's home lay to the west, and a long way off. Lanny thanked him and said he had enjoyed the visit, and would think over what he had seen and heard. Uncle Jesse smiled another of his twisted smiles, and said: "Don't let it worry you."

IX

Walking from the tram in Juan, Lanny had got to the gate of his home when a car tooted behind him, and there was Robbie just arriving. They greeted each other, and Robbie said: "Where have you been?" When Lanny replied: "I went to Cannes with Uncle Jesse," the father's manner changed in an unexpected way.

"Does that fellow come here?" he demanded. The boy answered that it was the first time in a long while. Robbie took him into, the house, and called Beauty into her room, and Lanny also, and shut the door.

It.was the first time the boy had ever seen his father really angry. Lanny was put through a regular cross-examination, and when he told about Barbara Pugliese, his father exploded in bad language, and the boy learned some of the things that Uncle Jesse had not chosen to explain to him.

The woman was a prominent leader of the "syndicalist" movement. That was a long word, and Lanny didn't know what it meant, until Robbie said that for practical purposes it was the same as anarchism. The boy had heard enough about that, for every once in a while a bomb would go off and kill some ruler or prime minister or general, and perhaps some innocent bystanders. It had happened in Russia, in Austria, Spain, Italy, even in France; it was the work of embittered and deadly conspirators, nihilists, terrorists, men and women seeking to destroy all organized government. Only last year a band of them had been robbing banks in Paris and had fought a regular battle with the police. "There are no more depraved people living!" exclaimed the father.

Lanny broke in: "Oh, surely, Robbie, she isn't like that. She's so gentle and kind, she's like a saint."

Robbie turned upon the mother. "You see! That snake in the grass, imposing upon the credulity of a child!"

He couldn't blame Lanny, of course. He controlled his anger, and explained that these people were subtle and posed as being idealists, when in their hearts were hatred and jealousy; they poisoned the minds of the young and impressionable.

Beauty began to cry, so the father talked more quietly. "I have always left Lanny's upbringing to you, and I have no fault to find with what you've done, but this is one thing on which I have to put down my foot. The black sheep of your family - or perhaps I had better say the red sheep of your family - is certainly not going to corrupt our son."