Men without women
out for her and went back to her place at the table. We left a tip on
the table and went out. When we were seated in the car ready to start,
the girl came out and stood in the door. We started and I waved to her.
She did not wave, but stood there looking after us.
AFTER THE RAIN
It was raining hard when we passed through the suburbs of Genoa and,
even going very slowly behind the tram-cars and the motor trucks, liquid
mud splashed on to the sidewalks, so that people stepped into doorways
as they saw us coming. In San Pier d’Arena, the industrial suburb
outside of Genoa, there is a wide street with two car-tracks and we
drove down the centre to avoid sending the mud on to the men going home
from work. On our left was the Mediterranean. There was a big sea
running and waves broke and the wind blew the spray against the car. A
river-bed that, when we had passed, going into Italy, had been wide,
stony and dry, was running brown, and up to the banks. The brown water
discolored the sea and as the waves thinned and cleared in breaking, the
light came through the yellow water and the crests, detached by the
wind, blew across the road.
A big car passed us, going fast, and a sheet of muddy water rose up and
over our wind-shield and radiator. The automatic wind-shield cleaner
moved back and forth, spreading the film over the glass. We stopped and
ate lunch at Sestri. There was no heat in the restaurant and we kept our
hats and coats on. We could see the car outside, through the window. It
was covered with mud and was stopped beside some boats that had been
pulled up beyond the waves. In the restaurant you could see your breath.
The _pasta asciuta_ was good; the wine tasted of alum, and we poured
water in it. Afterward the waiter brought beefsteak and fried potatoes.
A man and a woman sat at the far end of the restaurant. He was
middle-aged and she was young and wore black. All during the meal she
would blow out her breath in the cold damp air. The man would look at it
and shake his head. They ate without talking and the man held her hand
under the table. She was good-looking and they seemed very sad. They had
a travelling-bag with them.
We had the papers and I read the account of the Shanghai fighting aloud
to Guy. After the meal, he left with the waiter in search for a place
which did not exist in the restaurant, and I cleaned off the
wind-shield, the lights and the license plates with a rag. Guy came back
and we backed the car out and started. The waiter had taken him across
the road and into an old house. The people in the house were suspicious
and the waiter had remained with Guy to see nothing was stolen.
“Although I don’t know how, me not being a plumber, they expected me to
steal anything,” Guy said.
As we came up on a headland beyond the town, the wind struck the car and
nearly tipped it over.
“It’s good it blows us away from the sea,” Guy said.
“Well,” I said, “they drowned Shelley somewhere along here.”
“That was down by Viareggio,” Guy said. “Do you remember what we came to
this country for?”
“Yes,” I said, “but we didn’t get it.”
“We’ll be out of it to-night.”
“If we can get past Ventimiglia.”
“We’ll see. I don’t like to drive this coast at night.” It was early
afternoon and the sun was out. Below, the sea was blue with whitecaps
running toward Savona. Back, beyond the cape, the brown and blue waters
joined. Out ahead of us, a tramp steamer was going up the coast.
“Can you still see Genoa?” Guy asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“That next big cape ought to put it out of sight.”
“We’ll see it a long time yet. I can still see Portofino Cape behind
it.”
Finally we could not see Genoa. I looked back as we came out and there
was only the sea, and below in the bay, a line of beach with
fishing-boats and above, on the side of the hill, a town and then capes
far down the coast.
“It’s gone now,” I said to Guy.
“Oh, it’s been gone a long time now.”
“But we couldn’t be sure till we got way out.”
There was a sign with a picture of an S-turn and Svolta Pericolosa. The
road curved around the headland and the wind blew through the crack in
the wind-shield. Below the cape was a flat stretch beside the sea. The
wind had dried the mud and the wheels were beginning to lift dust. On
the flat road we passed a Fascist riding a bicycle, a heavy revolver in
a holster on his back. He held the middle of the road on his bicycle and
we turned out for him. He looked up at us as we passed. Ahead there was
a railway crossing, and as we came toward it the gates went down.
As we waited, the Fascist came up on his bicycle. The train went by and
Guy started the engine.
“Wait,” the bicycle man shouted from behind the car. “Your number’s
dirty.”
I got out with a rag. The number had been cleaned at lunch.
“You can read it,” I said.
“You think so?”
“Read it.”
“I cannot read it. It is dirty.”
I wiped it off with the rag.
“How’s that?”
“Twenty-five lire.”
“What?” I said. “You could have read it. It’s only dirty from the state
of the roads.”
“You don’t like Italian roads?”
“They are dirty.”
“Fifty lire.” He spat in the road. “Your car is dirty and you are dirty
too.”
“Good. And give me a receipt with your name.”
He took out a receipt-book, made in duplicate, and perforated, so one
side could be given to the customer, and the other side filled in and
kept as a stub. There was no carbon to record what the customer’s ticket
said.
“Give me fifty lire.”
He wrote in indelible pencil, tore out the slip and handed it to me. I
read it.
“This is for twenty-five lire.”
“A mistake,” he said, and changed the twenty-five to fifty.
“And now the other side. Make it fifty in the part you keep.”
He smiled a beautiful Italian smile and wrote something on the receipt
stub, holding it so I could not see.
“Go on,” he said, “before your number gets dirty again.”
We drove for two hours after it was dark and slept in Mentone that
night. It seemed very cheerful and clean and sane and lovely. We had
driven from Ventimiglia to Pisa and Florence, across the Romagna to
Rimini, back through Forli, Imola, Bologna, Parma, Piacenza and Genoa,
to Ventimiglia again. The whole trip had only taken ten days. Naturally,
in such a short trip, we had no opportunity to see how things were with
the country or the people.
FIFTY GRAND
“HOW are you going yourself, Jack?” I asked him.
“You seen this, Walcott?” he says.
“Just in the gym.”
“Well,” Jack says, “I’m going to need a lot of luck with that boy.”
“He can’t hit you, Jack,” Soldier said.
“I wish to hell he couldn’t.”
“He couldn’t hit you with a handful of bird-shot.”
“Bird-shot’d be all right,” Jack says. “I wouldn’t mind bird-shot any.”
“He looks easy to hit,” I said.
“Sure,” Jack says, “he ain’t going to last long. He ain’t going to last
like you and me, Jerry. But right now he’s got everything.”
“You’ll left-hand him to death.”
“Maybe,” Jack says. “Sure. I got a chance to.”
“Handle him like you handled Kid Lewis.”
“Kid Lewis,” Jack said. “That kike!”
The three of us, Jack Brennan, Soldier Bartlett, and I were in
Handley’s. There were a couple of broads sitting at the next table to
us. They had been drinking.
“What do you mean, kike?” one of the broads says. “What do you mean,
kike, you big Irish bum?”
“Sure,” Jack says. “That’s it.”
“Kikes,” this broad goes on. “They’re always talking about kikes, these
big Irishmen. What do you mean, kikes?”
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“Kikes,” this broad goes on. “Whoever saw you ever buy a drink? Your
wife sews your pockets up every morning. These Irishmen and their kikes!
Ted Lewis could lick you too.”
“Sure,” Jack says. “And you give away a lot of things free too, don’t
you?”
We went out. That was Jack. He could say what he wanted to when he
wanted to say it.
Jack started training out at Danny Hogan’s health-farm over in Jersey.
It was nice out there but Jack didn’t like it much. He didn’t like being
away from his wife and the kids, and he was sore and grouchy most of the
time. He liked me and we got along fine together; and he liked Hogan,
but after a while Soldier Bartlett commenced to get on his nerves. A
kidder gets to be an awful thing around a camp if his stuff goes sort of
sour. Soldier was always kidding Jack, just sort of kidding him all the
time. It wasn’t very funny and it wasn’t very good, and it began to get
to Jack. It was sort of stuff like this. Jack would finish up with the
weights and the bag and pull on the gloves.
“You want to work?” he’d say to Soldier.
“Sure. How you want me to work?” Soldier would ask. “Want me to treat
you rough like Walcott? Want me to knock you down a few times?”
“That’s it,” Jack would say. He didn’t like it any, though.
One morning we were all out on the road. We’d been out quite a way and
now we were coming back. We’d go along fast for three minutes and then
walk a minute, and then go fast for three minutes again. Jack wasn’t
ever what you would call a sprinter. He’d move around fast enough in the
ring if he had to, but he wasn’t any too fast on the road. All the time
we were walking Soldier was kidding him. We came up the hill to the
farmhouse.
“Well,” says Jack, “you better go back to town, Soldier.”
“What do you mean?”
“You better go back to town and stay there.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m sick of hearing you talk.”
“Yes?” says Soldier.
“Yes,” says Jack.
“You’ll be a damn sight sicker when Walcott gets through with you.”
“Sure,” says Jack, “maybe I will. But I know I’m sick of you.”
So Soldier went off on the train to town that same morning. I went down
with him to the train. He was good and sore.
“I was just kidding him,” he said. We were waiting on the platform. “He
can’t pull that stuff with me, Jerry.”
“He’s nervous and crabby,” I said. “He’s a good fellow, Soldier.”
“The hell he is. The hell he’s ever been a good fellow.”
“Well,” I said, “so long, Soldier.”
The train had come in. He climbed up with his bag.
“So long, Jerry,” he says. “You be in town before the fight?”
“I don’t think so.”
“See you then.”
He went in and the conductor swung up and the train went out. I rode
back to the farm in the cart. Jack was on the porch writing a letter to
his wife. The mail had come and I got the papers and went over on the
other side of the porch and sat down to read. Hogan came out the door
and walked over to me.
“Did he have a jam with Soldier?”
“Not a jam,” I said. “He just told him to go back to town.”
“I could see it coming,” Hogan said. “He never liked Soldier much.”
“No. He don’t like many people.”
“He’s a pretty cold one,” Hogan said.
“Well, he’s always been fine to me.”
“Me too,” Hogan said. “I got no kick on him. He’s a cold one, though.”
Hogan went in through the screen door and I sat there on the porch and
read the papers. It was just starting to get fall weather and it’s nice
country there in Jersey, up in the hills, and after I read the paper
through I sat there and looked out at the country and the road down
below against the woods with cars going along it, lifting the dust up.
It was fine weather and pretty nice-looking country. Hogan came to the
door and I said, “Say, Hogan, haven’t you got anything to shoot out
here?”
“No,” Hogan said. “Only sparrows.”
“Seen the paper?” I said to Hogan.
“What’s in it?”
“Sande booted three of them in yesterday.”
“I got that on the telephone last night.”
“You follow them pretty close, Hogan?” I asked.
“Oh, I keep in touch with them,” Hogan said.
“How about Jack?” I says. “Does he still play them?”
“Him?” said Hogan. “Can you see him doing it?”