T.G. had a tormenting secret. He was the author of some verse dramas. Throughout that stormy childhood and youth he had read books. Unfortunately, he did not so much read books as read himself into books. He was incapable of a prolonged self-forgetfulness. He had never been able to finish Rousseau’s Confessions or even Anna Karenina—so great was the turbulence set up within him. Similarly, he was a victim of music. A band concert unmanned him. Even as a boy he had eavesdropped under the windows of rooms where there was singing or playing. He even slipped into churches. He made no distinction between good music and bad, but inferior music had a more rapid action. His dramas were called Abelard and Lancelot and, of course, Lucifer. He had never finished a play and never read a line to a human being.
The friendship between T.G. and Roger resembled an armed truce. Each needed the other. T.G. needed a fresh ear for his doctrines and a companion in total disillusion. He proselytized. Roger needed the older man’s conversation: it brought to the surface, it aerated, his half-formed misanthropy. In the early days of their association, T.G.’s picture of society as a façade concealing beast, sloth, peacock, blindworm, and asp glided into Roger’s mind like balm. If Roger had much to learn, he had much to unlearn. The two men were also useful to each other in a practical sense. They worked on different papers. After attending separately some trial, boxing match, or political meeting, one would pass his notes on the occasion to the other. If T.G. had been drinking, Roger wrote two accounts of the event and gave one of them to his friend. It was neither the scabrous nor iconoclastic content of T.G.’s conversation that introduced a constant strain on their relationship; it was the burden of insult and contempt that Roger was called upon to endure. “T.G.” could be rendered frantic by any reply that invoked moral values or a shade of idealism. “You dreck! You donkey drool! You yellow drawers! You have no ideas! All you’ve got in your head are some clinkers from Coaltown and your grandmother’s old trusses!” At this, Roger would rise, gaze at him a moment, kick over a chair, and start for the door. T.G. would call him back, tender a sour apology, and the truce would be resumed.
It was not easy to humiliate or insult the Ashleys. Their attention would be riveted, not on themselves, but on their attempt to understand the sources of malice and enmity in their persecutors. Early in her career Lily was often hissed or booed in the opera houses of Europe; she waited tranquilly through the tumult for the opinion of the majority to manifest itself and to make clear to herself, after the performance, the reasons for the antagonism. Many hotels and very many homes refused to receive Constance. She said, “After people have had the pleasure of being shocked they start to think. My best supporters began as my worst enemies. But why must that be?” One of the reasons for Roger’s patience now was his search for an answer to that question: why does each of us do what we do—the petty, the favored, the aggressive, the meek? Always there lurked the fear that one’s own view of truth was merely a small window in a small house. In the face of so important a concern any contempt poured on oneself was incidental.
June, 1904:
“You know why your father was such a grinning idiot, don’t you? You know why the trial was a farce, don’t you? Because Coaltown and everybody in it was stupefied by the fumes that came up from under the ground. You know that the miners in Coaltown are the worst paid in the country?”
“No.”
“That even the miners in Kentucky and West Virginia thank their gods that they don’t work in Coaltown?”
“No.”
“Well, your father knew it.”
“I don’t think he did.”
“Don’t lie to me! Where was he—asleep? The facts speak for themselves. There were very few miners with less than five children. A miner with a small family could move away and find a better job. And did. Men with seven children are stuck. Especially when they’re hipdeep in debt to the company stores. The Emma Goldman Mapping Battalion had posted those mines as the worst in the country. No peonage in the world could compare with the stranglehold that your father’s company had on those miners.”
“My father had nothing to do with the policy of the—”
“Shut your schnout! Nobody has anything to do with anything. Eighteen million dollars a year were pulled out of Coaltown and out of Dohenus and out of the Black Valley hills. Where did it go? It went to Pittsburgh and New York. It bought yachts. It hung diamonds on actresses. It bought lifetime boxes in opera houses. It bought lifetime pews in churches. And what about Coaltown? Joe started coughing. ‘Sorry, Joe, we can’t use you any more; you’re dying.’ And Dohenus: sixty-three men caught in a gas caloup. Fifty-one widows. Almost three hundred little orphans. ‘Sorry! One of those accidents, boys! Sorry! Act of God! Better luck next time!’—Did you notice how few people came forward to speak a good word for your father? I went around Coaltown trying to get someone to express an opinion about the trial. ‘What trial?’ ‘Where?’ ‘Who?’—Where there’s injustice, there’s fear. Where there’s fear, there’s cowardice. But the chain begins farther back: where there’s money, there’s injustice.”
“There were no rich people in Coaltown, T.G. My father wasn’t a rich man.”
“Shut your damned choppers! He was on the leash from rich men. You come from the middle class, don’t you? That is to say: the crawling class? You don’t know how to use the words ‘rich’ and ‘poor.’ There were six in your family. You all had two pairs of shoes, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You had meat every day of the week, didn’t you? You had meat twice a day. Blistering cabooses! Anything you’d have to say about poverty would be like a Chinese blindman describing Niagara Falls. Remember that! There’s only one qualification for talking about poverty and that’s to have LIVED IT.”
“My father got the company to build a clubhouse for the miners.”
“Of course, he did. I could have told you that. Listen to me: philanthropy is the roadblock in the path of social justice. Philanthropy is like an infected rain from heaven; it poisoneth him who gives and him who takes.”
“What do you mean, T.G.?”
“You went to the circus last week, didn’t you? Well, go again. Ask the guards to let you go into the lions’ cage at feeding time. Now, when the lion’s got that hunk of horsemeat between his teeth, you take it away from him. You can do it. Yes, you can. You can do it, but you have to KILL him first. That’s the picture of the rich man and his property. Get this straight. No rich man ever gave away a penny he could find a use for. Never has and never will. By separating themselves from a little money the rich feel justified in making a lot more. Spiders draw just enough silk out of their bowels to catch those half-dozen flies they need to feed themselves and their loved ones; but the rich make silk and silk and silk. Nothing can stop them. Their houses are stuffed with it. Their banks are stuffed with it, and it’s not out of their bowels they make it, but out of the bowels and lungs and eyeballs of others. The little coins that fall from their tables make churches and libraries, don’t they? Churches! That’s where the soothing syrup’s stored. There’s no marriage tighter than that between the banker and the bishop. The poor should rest content in that situation in which God has seen fit to place them. It’s God’s will that they work a lifetime over a sewing machine or in a mine. Trent! Get a-holt of this: theft is the obligation of the poor! Over the city of Chicago hangs a poison-bloated cloud. Everybody can see it. It’s fed by the unequal distribution of wealth. It poisons the child in the cradle. It befouls the home. It’s so dark in the courthouse you can’t see a truth two feet away. The most sacred thing in the world is property. It’s more sacred than conscience. It’s more untouchable than a woman’s reputation. And for all its importance, no one, NO ONE, has ever attempted to put a qualifying value on it. Property can be unearned, unmerited, extorted, abused, misspent, without losing one iota of its sacred character—its religious character. They used to hang a man for stealing a loaf of bread. We don’t do that now: we warp his life and m
aim his children. I was once given eight months for stealing a bicycle—a rich boy’s toy. But I was able to escape and steal another. I NEEDED a bicycle.—Listen to me: there’s going to be an earthquake. Not just one of those little tremors where Mrs. Cobblestone reports that a picture fell off the wall. Not just a little shake or two, but a real sockdologer. The earth will be shaken like a rat. Because it isn’t only Coaltown that is perched above a gas leak; it’s the whole world. The lie about property’s gone on too long. Even the schoolchildren are beginning to see it. There’s going—”
His hands were trembling. He rose and looked about him wildly. “I’m getting nervous. I’ve got to go to Coralie’s.”
July, 1904:
“Did you write this?—This is in your newspaper.”
“What?”
“Says that six men were working on a cradle in Chicago harbor. ‘Through an imperfection in the equipment the cradle caught fire.’ Did you write that?”
“Yes.”
“‘Three of the men were burned to death. The other three drowned. The Magilvaney Construction Company has generously consented to pay the funeral expenses of the victims.’ GENEROUSLY! What were you thinking when you wrote that? Oh, I forgot—you don’t think. When you’d written that word ‘generously’ you ought to have gone out and hung yourself. You’ve joined the great Chicago Singing Society that spends its time flattering rich men. The construction company gave them a rotten piece of equipment. Six men die. ‘Sorry, men. Accidents will happen. Act of God. Better luck next time!’”
July, 1904. T.G. was often able to read Roger’s thoughts, to drag into the light those that Roger did not dare pursue.
“Hunkus, you’ve been flabbergasted by the amount of people in Chicago, haven’t you? You’ve been thinking that there are too many people in the world. You’ve been thinking that most of ’em would be better off dead. Why, I’m ashamed of you—a nice American boy like you going around killing people. Don’t lie to me! Well, let me tell you something. Everybody does it. Aren’t you glad every time you read about a train wreck, a flood, an earthquake? Of course, you are. There’ll be more room for the rest of us. There’ll be more food for the rest of us. That’s why people read our newspapers. ‘EXTRA! EXTRA! Excursion boat sinks with all on board. EXTRA! Three cents. Read all about it!’ And people read all about it. They’re filled with horror. It’s terrible. But, oh! a little voice inside them says, ‘It was getting a little crowded at the feeding trough.’ Their eyes glitter. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me on that boat.’ More dead! More dead! They love it. And once they get these auto-MO-biles going, what a time we’ll have! It’ll be great! Especially on holidays. . . . ? Of course, war is best of all. During the Spanish War everybody in America read his newspaper at breakfast and hoped that every goddamned Spaniard in the world had been killed the day before. Every American ate Spaniards for breakfast. The great thing about war is that it makes murder legitimate. It permits Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones and little Junior and dear little Arabella Jones to come out of the bushes and yell ‘Kill ’em!’ It’s called patriotism. People went to bed every night simply exhausted with the noble exertions of patriotism. In that courthouse in Coaltown, didn’t you want to kill the whole caboodle?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Thank you.—And they wanted to kill your father? Why—for justice? for revenge? No! They didn’t care a broken horseshoe for the late Breckenridge Lansing. I found that out. They wanted, under cover of legality, to get your father out of the way. The capacity of human beings to wish their neighbors dead is unlimited. Now, mind you! I don’t say that everybody wants everybody dead. We all belong to little clubs. We want the members of other clubs dead; we only want the members of our own club STUNTED. A man wants his wife stunted and vice versa; a father wants his son stunted and vice versa.
“Take fathers. You were seventeen when your father ran away. Oh, you don’t know how lucky you are! Listen to me: all fathers hate their sons. They hate them—first!—because they know that their sons will be going around whistling in the sunlight when they’re rotting under the ground. They know that their sons will be jangling the bedsprings with girls in their arms when the old man is wheezing in a wheelchair. That’s a bitter thought. Second! They’re terrified that the boys may make less of a mess of their lives than they’ve made. It’s a terrible thought that that man whom you knew as a little smeller in the cradle, as an idiotic puppy, as a troublemaking pimply adolescent—him!—that he could make a better showing in life than you’ve done. Terrible! And as no man has EVER been successful or happy inside—inside, where his real judgment of himself sits—this becomes true of every father. No father since the beginning of time has ever given a word of advice or encouragement that would lead to his son’s thinking big and planning big. No, sir-eee! Dad sweats and wrings his hands and advises caution and going slow and keeping to the middle of the road. That passes under the name of paternal affection. Everybody knows that family life is a hell, but if you want to see a family life that’s really beautiful, go back to the zoo. Look at the lions and tigers and bears. They really love their young. They really do. To see the lion cubs playing under papa’s chin is the most beautiful sight in the world; and mama pretending to be half asleep, keeping one eye on the cubs and one eye on the loathsome human beings on the other side of the bars. The only time when a human parent really loves its young is when the child is brought home on a shutter. Then some atavistic animal bond comes to life. Mothers are torn in two, but they’re torn in two at the thought that they hadn’t been able to give the little blighters any love. You see when intelligence was given to human beings it fouled up the whole picture. Intelligence brought with it the realization that there is a future and that every man’s future is death. Man is the animal that plants crops, that saves money, that has old age and death.
“Yes, there are too many people in the world. Nature’s only interested in one thing—to cover the earth with as thick a layer of protoplasm as possible: plants, fishes, insects, and animals. Did you ever see a field covered with anthills? Billions of ants. Did you ever see a swarm of grasshoppers? Nature’s not very bright. She doesn’t care if there’ll be food for all of us. She just keeps bringing us on the stage in vaster numbers. That’s why we die. When we can no longer make babies we’ve got to go. ‘Bring on another plate of murphies, Mrs. Casey.’ Nature seems to be in a constant state of panic lest her big meaningless process stop. On they come: little fishes and little trees and gophers and fleas and Ashleys. ‘Bring on another plate of murphies, Mrs. Casey.’
“What’s that? What’s that you’re saying? Listen to me: there is no sense behind the universe. There is no reason why people are born. There is no plan. Grass grows; babies are born. Those are facts. For thousands of years men have been manufacturing interpretations: life’s a test of our character; rewards and penalties after death; God’s plan; Allah’s Paradise, full of beautiful girls for everybody; Buddha’s nirvana—we get that anyway, it means ‘see nothing, feel nothing’; evolution, higher forms, social betterment, Utopia, flying machines, better shoelaces—nothing but THISTLE DUST! Will you get that into your draughty head?”
Billions have believed that we are influenced variously by the sun, the moon, and the planets. Millions have scoffed at the notion. Millions have believed that the heavenly bodies have marked certain men and women as their own—often erratically, brokenly, even grotesquely—but indubitably. The children of the Sun reflect the characteristics of Apollo leading the muses in his train, healing, cleansing with light, dispelling mists, prophesying: Thomas Garrison Speidel.
The children of Saturn also shed their influence upon the growing man:
Roger spent the greater part of the day moving about Chicago and its environs. He returned at intervals to his table in the tumultuous City Room, where he was accustomed to receive visits from persons wanting publicity for a favorite charity, an obituary for a relative (Roger was very fine at obituaries), an advertisement for a lost pet.
Some came to express approval or indignation. One morning as he was leaving his desk he was approached by a grave bearded man whom he recognized as the prominent lawyer Abraham Bittner.
“Mr. Frazier?”
“Yes. Yes, Mr. Bittner. Please sit down.” Mr. Bittner sat down, slowly drew off his gloves, and looked at Roger in silence. “What can I do for you, Mr. Bittner?”
Mr. Bittner’s hands played with an agate fob that dangled from his watch chain. Roger’s eyes kept returning to some words engraved on two sides of the stone. Seeing his curiosity, Mr. Bittner drew out the watch and fob and placed them on the table. He remained silent as Roger looked more closely at the stone.
“Are those words in Greek, Mr. Bittner?”
“They are in Hebrew.”
Roger raised his eyes inquiringly.
“Those words are the motto of a society to which I belong. I am calling on you today as a representative of that society.”
“What do those words say, sir?”
“Have you a Bible in this office?”
“We had one. Someone took it.”
“The words, in your Bible, are from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the third verse of the fortieth chapter: ‘Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”
“May I pick it up, Mr. Bittner?”
“You may. I represent this society and particularly its directing committee of twelve men. This committee—as a mark of esteem for what you are doing for the city of Chicago—would like to place a convenience at your disposal.” He paused. “You live in Room 441 at the Thurston House. The street under your windows is noisy until late at night and is particularly so in the early morning. The view from your two windows opens on the brick wall of Cowan’s warehouse. Are these things so?”
“Yes, Mr. Bittner.”
“This committee wishes to rent to you for three years, at one dollar a year, an apartment on the fourth floor at 16 Bowen Street. Four of its windows look out upon the lake. There are absolutely no conditions attached to this offer. It is extended entirely in the interest of your well-being and continued productivity. The apartment is ready to receive you from this moment. Here are the keys. Here is a receipt for your signature.”