come to write this book which won you the Nobel Award?’
Bandini: ‘The book is based on a true experience which happened to me one night in Los Angeles. Every word of that book is true. I lived that book, I experienced it.’
Enough. I saw it all. I turned and walked back towards the church. The fog was impenetrable. The girl was gone. I walked on: perhaps I could catch up with her. At the corner I saw her again. She stood talking to a tall Mexican. They walked, crossed the street and entered the Plaza. I followed. My God, a Mexican! Women like that should draw the colour line. I hated him, the Spick, the Greaser. They walked under the banana trees in the Plaza, their feet echoing in the fog. I heard the Mexican laugh. Then the girl laughed. They crossed the street and walked down an alley that was the entrance to Chinatown. The oriental neon signs made the fog pinkish. At a rooming house next door to a chop suey restaurant they turned and climbed the stairs. Across the street upstairs a dance was in progress. Along the little street on both sides yellow cabs were parked. I leaned against the front fender of the cab in front of the rooming house and waited. I lit a cigarette and waited. Until hell freezes over, I will wait. Until God strikes me dead, I will wait.
A half hour passed. There were sounds on the steps. The door opened. The Mexican appeared. He stood in the fog, lit a cigarette, and yawned. Then he smiled absently, shrugged, and walked away, the fog swooping upon him. Go ahead and smile. You stinking Greaser – what have you got to smile about? You come from a bashed and busted race, and just because you went to the room with one of our white girls, you smile. Do you think you would have had a chance, had I accepted on the church steps?
A moment later the steps sounded to the click of her heels, and the girl stepped into the fog. The same girl, the same green coat, the same scarf. She saw me and smiled. ‘Hello, honey. Wanna have a good time?’
Easy now, Bandini.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Maybe. And maybe not. Whatcha got?’
‘Come up and see, honey.’
Stop sniggering, Arturo. Be suave.
‘I might come up,’ I said. ‘And then, I might not.’
‘Aw honey, come on.’ The thin bones of her face, the odour of sour wine from her mouth, the awful hypocrisy of her sweetness, the hunger for money in her eyes.
Bandini speaking: ‘What’s the price these days?’
She took my arm, pulled me towards the door, but gently.
‘You come on up, honey. We’ll talk about it up there.’
‘I’m really not very hot,’ said Bandini. ‘I – I just came from a wild party.’
Hail Mary full of grace, walking up the stairs, I can’t go through with it. I’ve got to get out of it. The halls smelling of cockroaches, a yellow light at the ceiling, you’re too aesthetic for all this, the girl holding my arm, there’s something wrong with you, Arturo Bandini, you’re a misanthrope, your whole life is doomed to celibacy, you should have been a priest, Father O’Leary talking that afternoon, telling us the joys of denial, and my own mother’s money too, Oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee – until we got to the top of the stairs and walked down a dusty dark hall to a room at the end, where she turned out the light and we were inside.
A room smaller than mine, carpetless, without pictures, a bed, a table, a wash-stand. She took off her coat. There was a blue print dress underneath. She was bare-legged. She took off the scarf. She was not a real blonde. Black hair grew at the roots. Her nose was crooked slightly. Bandini on the bed, put himself there with an air of casualness, like a man who knew how to sit on a bed.
Bandini: ‘Nice place you got here.’
My God I got to get out of here, this is terrible.
The girl sat beside me, put her arms around me, pushed her breasts against me, kissed me, flecked my teeth with a cold tongue. I jumped to my feet. Oh think fast, my mind, dear mind of mine please get me out of this and it will never happen again. From now on I will return to my Church. Beginning this day my life shall run like sweet water.
The girl lay back, her hands behind her neck, her legs over the bed. I shall smell lilacs in Connecticut, no doubt, before I die, and see the clean white small reticent churches of my youth, the pasture bars I broke to run away.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
She crossed her legs.
‘I’m a writer,’ I said. ‘I’m gathering material for a book.’
‘I knew you were a writer,’ she said. ‘Or a business man, or something. You look spiritual, honey.’
‘I’m a writer, see. I like you and all that. You’re okay, I like you. But I want to talk to you, first.’
She sat up.
‘Haven’t you any money, honey?’
Money – ho. And I pulled it out, a small thick roll of dollar bills. Sure I got money, plenty of money, this is a drop in the bucket, money is no object, money means nothing to me.
‘What do you charge?’
‘It’s two dollars, honey.’
Then give her three, peel it off easily, like it was nothing at all, smile and hand it to her because money is no object, there’s more where this came from, at this moment Mamma sits by the window holding her rosary, waiting for the Old Man to come home, but there’s money, there’s always money.
She took the money and slipped it under the pillow. She was grateful and her smile was different now. The writer wanted to talk. How were conditions these days? How did she like this kind of life? Oh, come on honey, let’s not talk, let’s get down to business. No, I want to talk to you, this is important, new book, material. I do this often. How did you ever get into this racket. Oh honey, Chrissakes, you going to ask me that too? But money is no object, I tell you. But my time is valuable, honey. Then here’s a couple more bucks. That makes five, my God, five bucks and I’m not out of here yet, how I hate you, you filthy. But you’re cleaner than me because you’ve got no mind to sell, just that poor flesh.
She was overwhelmed, she would do anything. I could have it any way I wanted it, and she tried to pull me to her, but no, let’s wait a while. I tell you I want to talk to you, I tell you money is no object, here’s three more, that makes eight dollars, but it doesn’t matter. You just keep that eight bucks and buy yourself something nice. And then I snapped my fingers like a man remembering something, something important, an engagement.
‘Say!’ I said. ‘That reminds me. What time is it?’
Her chin was at my neck, stroking it. ‘Don’t you worry about the time, honey. You can stay all night.’
A man of importance, ah yes, now I remembered, my publisher, he was getting in tonight by plane. Out at Burbank, away out in Burbank. Have to grab a cab and taxi out there, have to hurry. Goodbye, goodbye, you keep that eight bucks, you buy yourself something nice, goodbye, goodbye, running down the stairs, running away, the welcome fog in the doorway below, you keep that eight bucks, oh sweet fog I see you and I’m coming, you clean air, you wonderful world, I’m coming to you, goodbye, yelling up the stairs, I’ll see you again, you keep that eight dollars and buy yourself something nice. Eight dollars pouring out of my eyes. Oh Jesus kill me dead and ship my body home, kill me dead and make me die like a pagan fool with no priest to absolve me, no extreme unction, eight dollars, eight dollars …
The lean days, blue skies with never a cloud, a sea of blue day after day, the sun floating through it. The days of plenty – plenty of worries, plenty of oranges. Eat them in bed, eat them for lunch, push them down for dinner. Oranges, five cents a dozen. Sunshine in the sky, sun juice in my stomach. Down at the Japanese market he saw me coming, that bullet-faced