The Accursed (55 page)

I will go back to the flat, to sleep. And tomorrow—I will go to Staten Island, to claim my woman and my “heir.”

Somehow, as in a trance, he was walking south—on Seventh Avenue—in the direction of Times Square. Though he hadn’t ever patronized the notorious MacDougal’s, nor even would have thought he knew its location, Upton found himself drawn in that direction—for hadn’t Jack London invited him to drop by MacDougal’s after the rally?—it would be rude for him not to accept London’s invitation, under the circumstances. For he, Upton Sinclair, had invited London to accept the presidency of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and to speak at its inaugural rally—very likely, he was Jack London’s closest friend in Manhattan, and the Socialist comrade closest to him in ideology, zeal, and temperament.

“It would be rude, certainly. After the sacrifice London has made, coming here . . .”

When Upton arrived at MacDougal’s he had no difficulty locating Jack London and Miss Charmian in its crowded, deafening, and sulfurous-smoky interior—there, at a table at the very center of the bustling restaurant, was the conspicuous couple, surrounded by a pack of admirers.

Hesitantly Upton approached—he’d been jostled by departing revelers, at the front of the restaurant—feeling as if he were stepping into something like a blast furnace—by the indraft sucked inside, shyly excited, intimidated, yet helpless to resist. He saw that London’s table was strewn with glasses, Champagne and beer bottles, dirtied plates and cutlery; on a platter in front of London were the remains of what appeared to be a raw hunk of meat, only the curving, tusk-like bone and shreds of bloody gristle remaining. Upton would have thought that, after his energetic performance at Carnegie Hall, Jack London would be in a subdued if not exhausted mood, but, to the contrary, here was the famous man laughing loudly, sprawled in his chair, a railway cap perched cockily on his head, and the stump of a thick-ashed cigar clamped between his big bared teeth. His jaws gleamed with grease, his canine teeth looked particularly pointed. The elegant herringbone coat had been removed, the herringbone vest had been torn open, the white silk blouse was splattered with food- and drink-stains, pulled open also at the throat to show a broad, fatty, grizzle-haired upper torso.

Yet more astonishing to Upton that London, sighting him as he hesitantly approached, squinting at him through wafting clouds of smoke, reacted so suddenly, and so warmly: “Here he is! Here! We’ve all been waiting for—who’s-it—Comrade Sinc’ler—hope of the twentieth century—author of the greatest novel since
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
—
Jungle! The Jungle!—
that’s it, ain’t it?—
God-dam Jungle!
—truer words were never uttered—this damn-cursed cap’list nation is a
jungle
—never mind
Wolf,
and
Death—
predators of the deep—here is where the cesspool lies, in these United States.” Upton paused a few feet from the table, stricken with self-consciousness as everyone at the table turned to stare at him, and London lurched to his feet as if he were greeting a long-lost friend, or indeed a comrade-brother. The fierce-faced man staggered toward Upton as if to embrace him, colliding with a waiter, and with a gentleman in a tuxedo seated at his table—“Make way, make way, damn you—this is
Comrade Sinc’ler
—make way and let the skinny fella in—runt of the litter—shy!—‘the meek shall enter first’—or—is it ‘last’?—no matter, if you enter—better last, if the first is trompled over—‘survival of the fittest’—sit!—here, my friend!—beside Jack, sit—there is plenty of room—my woman on my left-hand, my brother Sinc’ler on my right—now, we are all meant where we are to be, or—we are all where we are meant to be; and the hour is still young.”

Upton had no choice but to sit beside London, who pulled him down into the chair beside him; his face was hot with embarrassment, and a wild sort of elation, as if he, too, were drunk. Yet more surprising than London’s welcome was Miss Charmian’s—the perky little woman, not to be upstaged by her lover, leaned across London’s stocky grizzled chest to kiss Upton on the cheek!—warmly, wetly—tickling him with one of the curled macaw feathers that adorned her bosom, to the amusement of the table of revelers.

“Wel-come! Wel-come to—wherever this is! If you are Jack’s brother, you are Miss Charmian’s brother.
Sit.
”

There followed then a confusing interlude during which, though Upton protested that he didn’t drink, he had vowed never to drink following his father’s tragic experience with alcoholism, London tried to press on him any number of highly potent beverages, including what he called his
post-performance libation,
a blend of Champagne, whiskey, and dark beer; even more strenuously, London tried to press on him the remaining half of his
cannibal sandwich,
a pound of raw beefsteak topped with onions, pickles, and catsup, on a kaiser roll, which lay on a nearby plate, the hard-crusted roll showing the imprint of London’s teeth. He’d had a sixteen-ounce plank steak, London said, as well as two of the
cannibal sandwiches,
and had not been able to finish the second, though it was delicious. “Comrade Sinc’ler—you are looking so undernourished and anemic, as if the women had been uncommonly rough on you, you’d best gobble down this sandwich at once, and bring a little color to your cheeks.”

“But—I think I may have mentioned to you, Jack—in one of my letters—I am a vegetarian . . .”

At the mere utterance of the word
vegetarian
the table erupted in laughter—even Miss Charmian, who’d been so welcoming to Upton, laughed derisively. Upton laughed too, or tried to laugh—he was a good sport, in such situations—as a Socialist he’d learned to parry and thrust when baited, teased, even threatened; apologetically, he tried to explain that his “digestion” wouldn’t accommodate such rich food, for he had some sort of stomach condition—“colitis”; yet, at this, the table again erupted in laughter, as if Upton had said something even wittier than before.

It was a relief when, laying his arm across Upton’s shoulders, London regaled the table with an account of his favorite delicacies of the moment—number one wasn’t beef, in fact, but “two large male mallards—cooked for no more than eight minutes to assure the fowl sufficiently
underdone
.”

This ushered in a protracted discussion of favorite delicacies, from around the table, which gave Upton some respite. He’d managed to order, from a harassed waiter, a bottle of mineral water, which he drank as unobtrusively as he could manage, not wanting his vociferous companion to notice; sitting beside London, as in the vicinity of a blast furnace, he felt both warmed and over-warmed, dazzled, wary. Naively he’d hoped for some time with London during which they might have talked frankly together of politics, literature, the future of Socialism, possibly even the vicissitudes of married life, and love; naively he’d hoped that London might have sequestered a private room at the restaurant, and rebuffed the invitations of admirers to treat him and Miss Charmian to drinks and dinner. For Upton was surprised, London didn’t appear to be acquainted with even the gentleman in the tuxedo, who’d been seated beside him before Upton arrived; and Upton was surprised to learn that, far from journeying to New York City principally to address the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, London had come here on the first leg of a trans-Atlantic journey—his Yukon books had become runaway best sellers in Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia, and his publishers in these countries were eager to host him—“It seems that I have quite eclipsed old ‘Mark Twain’—the Germans especially despise Twain, y’know—the old fool has mouthed some crude sort of criticism of them—in defense of Jewry—
he
is in defense of Jewry—the Germans will not forgive him”—London burst into laughter, as if he’d never heard anything so amusing—“and caricature him now, in the public press, with a
Jew-nose
.”

This crude remark initiated a round of
Jew-talk,
and
Jew-jokes,
which were offensive to Upton Sinclair, as well as shocking—for wasn’t Socialism a wholly nonsectarian movement, vigorously led and supported by Jews?—as a Socialist, Jack London would know this fact, surely. What would Moses Leithauser think, if he could hear . . .

Yet more disappointing, London seemed to have forgotten Upton Sinclair. After the initial fuss, London turned his back to him, addressing others at the table in the hale, hearty tone in which he’d addressed Upton; nor did Miss Charmian give Upton a second glance. London had moved now from his Champagne concoction to straight Kentucky bourbon, in shot glasses.

Sprawling in his chair like a pasha, his heavy chin several times brought to rest on Miss Charmian’s plump shoulder in a way to make the excitable woman emit little cries of laughter, London entertained the table, and patrons of MacDougal’s who’d gathered in a semi-circle, with a rambling and disconnected monologue—his “Life Philosophy”—about which, evidently, there was enormous interest across the States.

“In interviews it is always inquired—‘Where does Jack London’s stamina derive from’—where, his ability to compose never less than one thousand words a day, and often near ten thousand; and how does he hold an audience in the palm of his hand—as I did just now in Carnegie Hall—for more than two hours, without slackening? Where, in short, Jack London’s particular ‘genius’? Where, indeed.” London chuckled deep in his throat, like a stirring beast; he pressed his chin downward on Miss Charmian’s shoulder, in a way to make her squeal, and glanced about the restaurant in shivering delight. “Such questions,” London continued, in a graver voice, “strike deep to the heart of primeval Being itself, and can’t be answered, except, perhaps, in terms of
racial ancestry.
That is, to speak bluntly—the superiority of certain races, and the inheritance of these superior traits by ‘superior’ specimens within these races.”

Now, to Upton’s extreme discomfort, London began to speak with drunken animation of
Nordic supremacy—
the uncontested superiority of the
Beast-man
—descended from the great icy wastes of the Polar region and “taking the sickly little dagos of the Southern Hemisphere by storm.” Upton dared to interrupt, objecting that such a belief was in violation of the Socialist brotherhood—“Are not all men equal?—men of all races, skin-colors, and classes?—that is,
men and women alike,
in the Socialist fold? No race can claim superiority—no skin-color—though, at this perilous point in history, the proletarian is undoubtedly superior, morally . . .” But London rudely puffed on his cigar, releasing a virulent cloud of smoke; swallowed down another shot-glass of bourbon; and snapped his finger to summon a waiter, to order more bourbon. It was uncanny, London behaved not only as if Upton had said nothing but also as if Upton wasn’t seated in the chair beside him; London merely continued his monologue as if he hadn’t been interrupted. Nor did Miss Charmian, or anyone else at the table, take note of his rudeness to his friend.

“The dominant races of the Earth came down, you see, from the North. From the great ice-fields and snowy wastes, the tundras, of the North. From the forest primeval—the abode of silent tragedy. Yes, it is ever so:
noisy comedy, silent tragedy.
Once, we were forged of iron, and much that is greater than iron, in the blast-furnace of the soul. For there, y’see, in the pitiless North, the struggle for survival continues as always—as if it were not 1906 but the very beginning of history; and our feeble, effeminate ‘civilized’ notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, social welfare and social outrage, never conceived.” London sighed loudly, stubbing out his cigar in the remains of his beefsteak sandwich, and signaling for a waiter to carry it away.

With surprising boldness, for one so temperamentally quiet, and loath to quarrel, Upton dared to raise an objection: “I don’t doubt the ‘pitilessness’ of the North any more than I would doubt the ‘pitilessness’ of the Sahara, or the Amazon rain forest—but I contest its application to human history. Doesn’t this lead to the very ‘social Darwinism’ advanced by our enemies? Think of the criminal Rockefeller publicly congratulating himself that God had given him his money—or daring to compare the fruits of his criminal trust to the ‘exquisite flowering of the American Beauty rose.’ ”

Again, London failed to reply to Upton. It might have been that he was preoccupied in searching through his pockets for another cigar—(which Miss Charmian gaily provided him out of a glaringly sequined purse); or, London simply didn’t hear his comrade’s remarks in the din of MacDougal’s. In any case he scarcely altered his frowning gaze, or modified the condescending tone of his argument, proceeding as if uninterrupted: “ . . .
never conceived.
And, indeed, mere jests upon the wind! For in the land of the midnight sun, where the wolf pack trots at the flank of the caribou herd, singling out the weak, and the aged, and the great with calf, and pulling them down to devour with not a flicker of remorse, it’s a foolish fancy to prattle of such effeminate notions. The Nordic soul is a man’s soul from time immemorial. Wolf knew, and Death knew—predator-brothers of
The Sea Wolf
—but all know, in our hearts—even the slant-eyed, the Jews, and the dagos. For that, my friends, is the caldron out of which Jack London has been forged and it would be false modesty to claim otherwise.” London cocked his railway cap at an aggressive angle on his thick disheveled hair, as if to dare anyone to knock it off.

But no one at the table contested his words or, except for Upton Sinclair, seemed upset by them. Jocose toasts were drunk to the “Nordic soul”—to Jack London’s “Nordic soul” in particular—while Upton, blushing and nettled, refused to drink even his mineral water, unnoticed.

It was now nearing 1 a.m., and the din of hilarity in MacDougal’s showed no sign of abating. How lurid, this nocturnal life!—this
under-belly
sort of city-life, of which Upton Sinclair had had no notion, in his monastic seclusion outside Princeton, New Jersey; and in his fervent dealings with immigrant Socialists of the Lower East Side, who rose early to work fourteen-hour days, and collapsed into bed most nights immediately after their evening meal. Jack London, tireless, continued his slurred monologue, while Upton berated himself—what a fool he’d been, how naïve, to have imagined that Jack London expected him here tonight; to have entered of his own volition a fashionable “gin-mill” like MacDougal’s. If his mother could see him, in such a place! If Meta could see him!