The Road to Los Angeles (11 page)

I was such a devil. Then my smile would leave her helpless, the hand that held the knife finally growing limp, the knife falling to the floor, and she cringing in horror and hate, yet wild with love. So she was the Little Girl, and of them all she was easily my favorite. I regretted destroying her. For a long time I deliberated, because I knew she would find relief and surcease from me once I destroyed her, because then I could no longer harass her like a devil, and possess her with contemptible laughter. But the Little Girl's destiny was sealed. I could play no favorites. I tore the Little Girl to pieces like the others.

When the last had been destroyed the pieces blanketed the surface of the water, and the water was invisible beneath. Sadly I stirred it up. The water was a blackish color of fading ink. It was finished. The show was over. I was glad I had made this bold step and put them away all at once. I congratulated myself for having such strength of Purpose, such ability to see a job through to the end. In the face of sentimentality I had gone ruthlessly forward. I was a hero, and my deed was not to be sneered at. I stood up and looked at them before I pulled the plug. Little pieces of departed love. Down the sewer with the romances Arturo Bandini! Go down to the sea! Be off on your journey down the drain to the land of dead crabs. Bandini had spoken. Pull the chain!

And it was done. I stood with water dripping from me and saluted.

"Goodbye," I said. "Farewell, ye women. They laughed at me down at the cannery today, and it was the fault of ye, for ye hath poisoned my mind and made me helpless against the onslaught of life. Now ye are dead. Goodbye and goodbye forever. He who maketh a sap of Arturo Bandini, be he man or woman, cometh to an untimely end. I have spoken. Amen."

Chapter Thirteen

ASLEEP OR AWAKE, it did not matter, I hated the cannery, and I always smelled like a basket of mackerel. It never left me, that stench of a dead horse at the edge of the road. It followed me in the streets. It went with me into buildings. When I crawled into bed at night, there it was, like a blanket, all over me. And in my dreams there were fish fish fish, mackerel slithering about in a black pool, with me tied to a limb and being lowered into the pool. It was in my food and clothes, and I even tasted it on my toothbrush. The same thing happened to Mona and my mother. At last it got so bad that when Friday came we had meat for dinner. My mother couldn't bear the idea of fish, even though it was a sin to be without fish.

From boyhood I loathed soap too. I didn't believe I would ever get used to that slimy greasy stuff with its slithering, effeminate smell. But now I used it against the stench of fish. I took more baths than ever before. There was one Saturday when I took two baths — one after work, and another before I went to bed. Every night I stayed in the tub and read books until the water grew cold and looked like old dish water. I nibbed soap into my skin until it shone like an apple. But there was no sense in it all, because it was a waste of time. The only way to get rid of the smell was to quit the cannery. I always left the tub smelling of two mingling stenches - soap and dead mackerel.

Everybody knew who I was and what I did when they saw me coming. Being a writer was no satisfaction. On bus I was recognized instantly, and in the theater too.

He's one of those cannery kids. Good Lord, can't you smell him? I had that well-known smell.

One night I went to the theatre to see a picture show. I sat by myself, all alone in the corner, my smell and I. But distance was a ridiculous obstacle to that thing. It left me and went out and around and returned like something dead fastened to a rubber band. In a while heads began to turn. A cannery worker was somewhere in the vicinity, obviously. There were frowns and sniffs. Then mumbling, and the scraping of feet. People all around me got up and moved away. Keep away from him, he's a cannery worker. And so I went to no more picture shows. But I didn't mind. They were for the rabble anyhow.

At night I stayed home and read books.

I didn't dare go to the library.

I said to Mona, "Bring me books by Nietzsche. Bring me the mighty Spengler. Bring me Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant. Bring me books the rabble can't read."

Mona brought them home. I read them all, most of them very hard to understand, some of them so dull I had to pretend they were fascinating, and others so awful I had to read them aloud like an actor to get through them. But usually I was too tired for reading. A little while in the bathtub was enough. The print floated near my eyes like thread in the wind. I fell asleep. Next morning I found myself undressed and in bed, the alarm ringing, wondering how my mother had not waked me up. And as I dressed I thought over the books I had read the night before. I could remember only a sentence here and there, and the fact that I had forgotten everything.

I even read a book of poetry. It made me sick, that book, and I said I would never read another again. I hated that poet. I wished she would spend a few weeks in a cannery. Then her tune would change.

Most of all, I thought about money. I never did have much money. The most I ever had at one time was fifty dollars. I used to roll paper in my hands and pretend it was a wad of thousand dollar bills. I stood in front of a mirror and peeled it off to clothiers, automobile salesmen, and whores. I gave one whore a thousand dollar tip. She offered to spend the next six months with me for nothing. I was so touched I peeled off another thousand and gave it to her for sentiment's sake. At this she promised to give up her bad life. I said tut tut, my dear, and gave her the rest of the roll: seventy thousand dollars.

A block from our apartment was the California Bank. I used to stand at our window at night and see it bulging out : so insolently on the corner. I finally thought of a way to rob it without being caught. Next door to the bank was a dry-cleaner establishment. The idea was to dig a tunnel from the dry cleaner's to the bank safe. A getaway car could be waiting in back. It was only a hundred miles to Mexico.

If I didn't dream of fish I dreamed of money. I used to wake up with my fist clenched, thinking there was money in it, a gold piece, and hating to open my hand because I knew my mind was playing a trick, and there was really no money at all in my hand. I made a vow that if I ever got enough money I would buy the Soyo Fish Company, have an all night celebration like the Fourth of July, and burn it to the ground in the morning.

The work was hard. In the afternoons the fog lifted and the sun beat down. The rays lifted themselves from the blue bay inside the saucer formed by the Palos Verdes hills and it was like a furnace. In the cannery it was worse. There was no fresh air, not even enough to fill one nostril. All the windows were nailed down by rusted nails, and the glass was cobwebbed and greasy with age. The sun heated the corrugated iron roof like a torch, forcing the heat downward. Hot steam drifted from the retorts and ovens. More steam came from the big fertilizer vats.

These two steams met head on, you could see them meeting and we were right in the middle of it, sweating in the clamor of the can dump.

My uncle was right about the work, all right. It was work done without thinking. You might just as well have left your brains at home on that job. All we did through the whole day was stand there and move our arms and legs. Once in a while we shifted weight, one foot to the other. If you really wanted to move, you had to leave the platform to go to the water fountain or the lavatory. We had a plan: we took turns: each of us took ten minutes in the lavatory by turn. No boss was necessary with those machines working. When the labeling began in the morning, Shorty Naylor threw the switch and left the room. He knew about those machines. We didn't like to see them get ahead of us. When they did it hurt us vaguely. It was not a pain like someone jabbing you in the seat with a pin, but it was a sadness which in the long run was worse. If we escaped there was always someone down the line who didn't. He yelled. Up in front we had to work harder to fill up the space in the conveyor belt so he would feel better. Nobody liked that machine. It didn't matter if you were a Filipino or an Italian or a Mexican. It bothered us all. It needed such care too. It was like a child. Whenever it broke down panic would go through the whole cannery. Everything was done to the minute. When the machines were silenced it was like another place. It was no longer a cannery but a hospital. We waited around, talking in whispers until the mechanics fixed it.

I worked hard because I had to work hard, and I didn't complain much because there wasn't any time to complain. Most of the time I stood feeding the machine and thinking of money and women. Time passed easier with such thoughts. It was the first job I ever had where, the less you thought about your work, the easier it was. I used to get very passionate with my thoughts of women. That was because the platform was in a state of perpetual jerking. One dream of them slipped into another, and the hours passed away as I stood close to the machine and tried to concentrate on my work so the other boys wouldn't know what I was thinking about.

Through the haze of steam I could see across the room to the open door. There lay the blue bay swept by hundreds of dirty lazy gulls. On the other side of the bay was the Catalina Dock. Every few minutes in the morning steamers and airplanes left the dock for Catalina Island, eighteen miles away. Through the hazy door I could see the red pontoons of the planes as they lifted from the water. The steamers left only in the mornings, but all day long the planes soared away to the little island eighteen miles away. The dripping red pontoons flashed in the sunlight, frightening the gulls. But from where I stood I could only see the pontoons. Only the pontoons. Never the wings and fuselage.

This upset me from the first day. I wanted to see the whole plane. Many times I had seen the planes on my way to work. I used to stand on the bridge and watch the pilots tinker with them, and I knew every plane in the fleet. But seeing only the pontoons through the door, it worked on my mind like a bug. I used to think the craziest things. I used to imagine things were happening to the invisible parts of the plane — that stowaways were riding the wings. I wanted to rush to the door to make sure. I was always having hunches. I used to wish for tragedies. I wanted to see the planes blow up and the passengers drown in the bay. Some mornings I would come to work with only one hope in mind - that somebody would be silled in the bay. I used to be convinced of it. The next plane, I would say, the next one will never get to Catalina: it will crash in the take-off; people will scream, women and children drown in the bay; Shorty Naylor will throw the switch and we will all get to see the rescuers pull the bodies out of the water. It is bound to happen. It is inevitable. And I used to think I was psychic. And so, all day long the planes pulled away. But standing where I was, all I saw was the pontoons. My bones ached to break away. The next one would surely crash. I made noises in my throat, biting my lips and waiting feverishly for that next plane. Presently I heard the roar of the motors, faint above the cannery din, and I timed it. Death at last! Now they will die! When the time arrived, I stopped work and stared, hungry for the sight. The planes never varied an inch in the take-off. The perspective through the door never changed. This time, as always, all I saw were the pontoons. I sighed. Ah well, who knows? Maybe it will crash beyond the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. I will know in a minute. The coast guard sirens will sound. But the sirens didn't sound. Another plane had got through.

Fifteen minutes later I heard the roar of another plane. We were supposed to stay there. But the devil with orders. I jumped from the can dump and ran to the door. The big red plane took off. I saw all of it, every inch of it, and my eyes made a little feast before the tragedy. Out there, anywhere, lurked death. At any moment he would strike. The plane moved across the bay, shot into the air, and moved toward the San Pedro lighthouse. Smaller and smaller. It had escaped too. I shook my fist at it.

"You'll get it yet!" I screamed.

The boys at the can dump watched me in amazement. I felt like a fool. I turned around and returned. Their eyes accused me, as if I had run to the door and tried to kill a beautiful bird.

All at once I had a different view of them. They looked so stupid. They worked so hard. With wives to feed, and a swarm of dirty-faced kids, and worries about the light bill and the grocery bill, they stood so far away, so detached, naked in dirty overalls, with stupid, pock-marked Mexican faces, glutted with stupidity, watching me return, thinking me crazy, making me shiver. They were gobs of something sticky and slow, gobby and glutted and in the way like glue, gluey and stuck and helpless and hopeless, with the whipped sad eyes of old animals from a field. They thought me crazy because I didn't look like an old whipped animal from a field. Let them think me crazy! Of course I'm crazy! You clod-hoppers, you dolts, you fools! I don't care about your thoughts. I was disgusted that I had to be so near them. I wanted to beat them up, one at a time, beat them until they were a mass of wounds and blood. I wanted to yell at them to keep their goddamn mopey melancholy whipped eyes away from me, because they turned a black slab in my heart, an open place, a grave, a hole, a sore, out of which marched in a torturing procession their dead leading other dead after them, parading the bitter suffering of their lives through my heart.

The machine clanged and banged. I took my place beside Eusibio and worked, the same routine, feeding the cans to the machine, resigned to the fact that I was not psychic, that tragedy only struck like a coward in the night. The boys watched me begin again, then they began too, giving me up for a maniac. Nothing was said. The minutes passed. It was an hour later.

Eusibio nudged me.

"For why you run like that?"

"The pilot. An old friend of mine. Colonel Buckingham. I was waving to him."

Eusibio shook his head.

"Bull, Arturo. You full of bull."

Chapter Fourteen

FROM MY PLACE on the conveyor I could also see the California Yacht Club. In the background were the first green ripples of the Palos Verdes Hills. It was a scene out of the Italy I knew in books. Bright pennants flapped from the masts of yachts. Farther out were the whitecaps of the big waves that smashed against the jagged breakwater. On the decks of the yachts lay men and women in careless white suits. These were fabulous people. They were from the movie colony and Los Angeles financial circles. They had great wealth, these boats were their toys. If they felt like it they left their work in the city and came down to the harbor to play with them, and brought along their women.