Chapter 12

"Then after they've got along and think they've got you biting they begin to get fresh. They tell you you shouldn't ought to work in a barber shop, a girl as beautiful as you. The surroundings ain't what they should be. And they'd like to fix you up. Yes, they begin handing out their castles in Rome or Spain or whatever it is. Cheap! Say, they are so cheap they wouldn't go on the 5- and 10-cent store counter.

"Sometimes you can shame them into making good in a small way. But it's too much work. Oh, yes, they give tips. Fifty cents is the usual tip. Sometimes they make it $2.00. They think they're buying you, though, for that.

* * * * *

"As I was saying, the patent-leather hair boys are the worst. They're the ones who call themselves loop hounds. They know everybody by their first name and sometimes they've got all of $6.50 in their pocket at one time. And if you're out some evening with a friend--a regular fella, they pop in the next day and say, 'Hello, Peewee, who was that street sweeper I see you palling with last night? Oh, he wasn't! Well, I had him pegged either as a street sweeper or a plumber!"

"That's their speed. And they come again and again. They never give up. They've got visions of making a conquest some day--on $1.50. And when a new girl comes into the shop--boy, don't the buzzards buzz! I came here six months ago and they started it on me. But I wasn't born yesterday. I'd been a manicure in Indianapolis. And they're just the same in Indianapolis as they are in Chicago. And they're just the same in Podunk.

"Now, I'm not going to mention any names. But take your city directory and begin with Ab Abner and go right on through to Zeke Zimbo and don't skip any. And you'll get a clear idea about the particular gentlemen I'm talking about."

* * * * *

Peewee sighed and shook her head.

"Are you busy?" inquired the head manicurist.

"Not at all," said Peewee, "not at all."

Peewee's biographer asked a final question. To which she responded as follows:

"Well, I'll get married. Maybe. When I find the exception I was telling you about--the gentleman who isn't a stranger in town and in need of a little guide. There must be one of them somewhere. Unless they was all killed in the war."

THE SOUL OF SING LEE

The years have made a cartoon out of Sing Lee. A withered yellow face with motionless black eyes. Thin fingers that move with lifeless precision. Slippered feet that shuffle as if Sing Lee were yawning.

A smell of starch, wet linen and steam mingles with an aromatic mustiness. The day's work is done. Sing Lee sits in his chair behind the counter. Three walls look down upon him. Laundry packages--yellow paper, white string--crowd the wall shelves. Chinese letterings dance gayly on the yellow packages.

Sing Lee, from behind the counter, stares out of the window. The Hyde Park police station is across the way. People pass and glance up:

Sing Lee, Hand Laundry, 5222 Lake Park Avenue.

Come in. There is something immaculate about Sing Lee. Sing Lee has been ironing out collars and shirts for thirty-five years. And thirty-five years have been ironing Sing Lee out. He is like one of the yellow packages on the shelves. And there is a certain lettering across his face as indecipherable and strange as the dance of the black hieroglyphs on the yellow laundry paper.

Something enthralls Sing Lee. It can be seen plainly now as he sits behind the counter. It can be seen, too, as he works during the day. Sing Lee works like a man in an empty dream. It is the same to Sing Lee whether he works or sits still.

The world of collars, cuffs and shirt fronts does not contain Sing Lee. It contains merely an automaton. The laundry is owned by an automaton named Sing Lee, by nobody else. Now that the day's work is done he will sit like this for an hour, two hours, five hours. Time is not a matter of hours to Sing Lee. Or of days. Or even of years.

The many wilted collars that come under the lifeless hands of Sing Lee tell him an old story. The story has not varied for thirty-five years. A solution of water, soap and starch makes the collars clean again and stiff. They go back and they return, always wilted and soiled. Sing Lee needs no further corroboration of the fact that the crowds are at work. Doing what? Soiling their linen. That is as final as anything the crowds do. Sing Lee's curiosity does not venture beyond finalities.

* * * * *

Sing Lee is a resident of America. But this is a formal statistic and refers only to the automaton that owns the hand laundry in Lake Park Avenue. Observe a few more formal facts of Sing Lee's life. He has never been to a movie or a theater play. He has never ridden in an automobile. He has never looked at the lake.

Thus it becomes obvious that Sing Lee lives somewhere else. For a man must go somewhere in thirty-five years. Or do something. There is a story then, in Sing Lee. Not a particularly long story. Life stories are sometimes no longer than a single line--a sentence, even a phrase. So if one could find out where Sing Lee lives one would have a story perhaps a whole sentence long.

"Mukee kai, Sing Lee."

A nod of the thin head.

"Business good?"

Another nod.

"Pretty tired, washing, ironing all day, eh?"

A nod.

"When are you going to put in a laundry machine?"

A shake of the thin head.

"When are you going to quit, Sing Lee?"

Another shake of the thin head.

"You're not very gabby tonight, Sing."

A dignified answer to this: "I thinking."

"What about, Sing Lee?"

A faint smile. The smile seems to set Sing Lee in motion. It comes from behind the automaton. It is perhaps Sing Lee's first gesture of life in weeks.

"You don't mind my sitting here and smoking a pipe, eh?"

* * * * *

The minutes pass. Sing Lee stands up. He turns on a small electric light. This is a concession. This done, he opens a drawer behind the counter and removes a little bronze casket. The casket is placed on the counter. Slowly as if in a deep dream Sing Lee lights a match and holds it inside the casket. A thin spiral of lavender smoke unwinds from its mouth.

Sing Lee watches the spiral of smoke. It wavers and unwinds. A finger writing; an idiot flower. Then it opens up into a large smoke eye. Smoke eyes drift casually away. An odor crawls into the air. Sing Lee's eyes close gently and his thin body moves as he takes a deep breath.

His eyes still closed, Sing Lee speaks.

"You writer?" he murmurs.

"Yes."

"I too," says Sing Lee. "I write poem."

"Yes? When did you do that?"

"Oh, long ago. Mebbe year. Mebbe five years."

Sing Lee reaches into the open drawer and takes out a large sheet of rice paper. It is partly covered with Chinese letters up and down.

"I read you in English," says Sing Lee. His eyes remain almost shut. He reads:

The sky is young blue. Many fields wait. Many people look at young blue sky. Old people look at young blue sky. Many birds fly. At night moon comes and young blue sky is old. Many young people look at old sky.

"Did you write that about Chicago, Sing Lee?"

"No, no," says Sing Lee. His eyes open. The smoke eyes from the incense pot drift like miniature ghost clouds behind him and creep along the rows of yellow laundry packages.

"No, no," says Sing Lee. "I write that about Canton. I born in Canton many years ago. Many, many years ago."

MRS. RODJEZKE'S LAST JOB

Mrs. Rodjezke scrubbed the corridors of the Otis building after the lawyers, stenographers and financiers had gone home. During the day Mrs. Rodjezke found other means of occupying her time. Keeping the two Rodjezke children in order, keeping the three-room flat, near the corner of Twenty-ninth and Wallace streets, in order and hiring herself for half-day cleaning, washing or minding-the-baby jobs filled this part of her day. As for the rest of the day, no fault could be found with the manner in which Mrs. Rodjezke used that part of her time.

At five-thirty she reported for work in the janitor's quarters of the office building. She was given her pail, her scrub brush, mop and bar of soap and with eight other women who looked curiously like herself started to work in the corridors. The feet of the lawyers, stenographers and financiers had left stains. Crawling inch by inch down the tiled flooring, Mrs. Rodjezke removed the stains one at a time. Eight years at this work had taken away the necessity of her wearing knee pads. Mrs. Rodjezke's knees did not bother her very much as she scrubbed.

* * * * *

In the evening Mrs. Rodjezke usually rode home in the street car. There were several odd items about Mrs. Rodjezke that one could observe as she sat motionless and staring in her seat waiting for the 2900 block to appear. First, there were her clothes. Mrs. Rodjezke was not of the light-minded type of woman that changes styles with the season. Winter and summer she wore the same.

Then there were her hands. Mrs. Rodjezke's fingernails were a contrast to the rest of her. The rest of her was somewhat vigorous and buxom looking. The fingernails, however, were pale--a colorless light blue. And the tips of her fingers looked a trifle swollen. Also the tips of her fingers were different in shade from the rest of her hands.

Another item of note was her coiffure. Mrs. Rodjezke was always indifferently dressed, her clothes looking as if they had been thrown on and pinned together. Yet her coiffure was almost a proud and careful-looking thing. It proclaimed, alas, that the scrubwoman, despite the sensible employment of her time, was not entirely free from the vanities of her sex. The deliberate coiling and arranging of her stringy black hair must have taken a good fifteen minutes regularly out of Mrs. Rodjezke's otherwise industrious day.

These items are given in order that Mrs. Rodjezke may be visualized for a moment as she rode home on a recent evening. It was very hot and the papers carried news on the front page: "Hot Spell to Continue."

Mrs. Rodjezke got off the car at 29th and Halsted streets and walked to her flat. Here the two Rodjezke children, who were 8 and 10 years old respectively, were demanding their supper. After the food was eaten Mrs. Rodjezke said, in Bohemian:

"We are going down to the beach to-night and go in swimming."

Shouts from the younger Rodjezkes.

* * * * *

When the family appeared on the 51st Street beach it was alive with people from everywhere. They stood around cooling off in their bathing suits and trying to forget how hot it was by covering themselves in the chill sand.

Mrs. Rodjezke's bathing suit was of the kind that attracts attention these days. It was voluminous and hand made and it looked as if it might have functioned as a "wrapper" in its palmier days. For a long time nobody noticed Mrs. Rodjezke. She sat on the sand. Her head felt dizzy. Her eyes burned. And there was a burn in the small of her back. Her knees also burned and the tips of her fingers throbbed.

These symptoms failed to startle Mrs. Rodjezke. Their absence would have been more of a surprise. She sat staring at the lake and trying to keep track of her children. But their dark heads lost themselves in the noisy crowds in front of her and she gave that up. They would return in due time. Mrs. Rodjezke must not be criticized for a maternal indifference. The children of scrubwomen always return in due time.

* * * * *

Mrs. Rodjezke had come to the lake to cool off. The idea of going for a swim had been in her head for at least three years. She had always been able to overcome it, but this time somehow it had got the better of her and she had moved almost blindly toward the water front.

"I will get a rest in the water," she thought.

But now on the beach Mrs. Rodjezke found it difficult to rest. The dishes weren't washed in the kitchen home. The clothes needed changing on the beds. And other things. Lots of other things.

Mrs. Rodjezke sighed as the shouts of the bathers floated by her ears. The sun had almost gone down and the lake looked dull. Faintly colored clouds were beginning to hide the water. It was no use. Mrs. Rodjezke couldn't rest. She sat and stared harder at the lake. Yes, there was something to do. Before it got too dark. Something very important to do. And it wasn't right not to do it. The scrubwoman sighed again and put her hand against her side. The burn had dropped to there. It had also gone into her head. But that was a thing which must be forgotten. Mrs. Rodjezke had learned how to forget it during the eight years.

* * * * *

A girl saw it first. She was laughing in a group of young men from the hotel. Then she exclaimed, suddenly:

"Heavens! Look at that woman!"

The group looked. They saw a middle-aged woman in a humorous bathing costume crawling patiently down the beach on her hands and knees. Soon other people were looking. Nobody interfered at first. Perhaps this was a curious exercise. Some of them laughed.

But the woman's actions grew stranger. She would stop as she crawled and lift up handfuls of water from the edge of the lake. Then she would start scratching in the sand. A crowd collected and the beach policeman arrived. The beach policeman looked down at the woman on her hands and knees.

She had stopped and her face had grown sad.

"What's the matter here?" the policeman asked of her.

The woman began to cry. Her tears flooded her round worn face.

"I can't finish it to-night," she sobbed, "not now anyway. I'm too tired. I can't finish it to-night. And the soap has floated away. The soap is gone."

* * * * *

Mrs. Rodjezke was taken up by the policeman with the two Rodjezke children, who had, of course, returned in due time. They cried and cried and the group went to the police station.

"I don't know what's wrong with the poor woman," said the beach policeman to the Hyde Park police sergeant. "But she was moving up and down like she was trying to scrub the beach."

"I guess," said the sergeant, "we'll have to turn her over to the psychopathic hospital."

There's a lot more to the story, but it has nothing to do with Mrs. Rodjezke's last job.

QUEEN BESS' FEAST

Elizabeth Winslow, who was a short, fat woman with an amazing gift of profanity and "known to the police" as "Queen Bess," is dead. According to the coroner's report Queen Bess died suddenly in a Wabash Avenue rooming house at the age of seventy.

Twenty-five years ago Queen Bess rented rooms and sold drinks according to the easy-going ideas of that day. But there was something untouched by the sordidness of her calling about this ample Rabelaisian woman. There was a noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.

"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money, Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Washington Park--a lot of good that would do her in her old age!

But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing--a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the worst--Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.

Nevertheless, in memory of the set of Oscar Wilde's works presented to my roommate twelve years ago one Christmas morning by Queen Bess, and in memory of the six world-famous oaths this great lady invented--here goes. Let Bess roar in her grave. There's one thing she can't do and that's call me a liar.

* * * * *

It was Thanksgiving day and years ago and my roommate Ned and I were staring glumly over the roofs of the town.

"I've got an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for both of us," said Ned. "But I feel kind of doubtful about going."

I inquired what kind of invitation.

"An engraved invitation," grinned Ned. "Here it is. I'll read it to you." He read from a white card: "You are cordially invited to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Queen Bess, ---- Street and Wabash Avenue, at 3 o'clock. You may bring one gentleman friend."

"Why not go?" I asked.

"I'm a New Englander at heart," smiled Ned, "and Thanksgiving is a sort of meaningful holiday. Particularly when you're alone in the great and wicked city. I've inquired of some of the fellows about Queen Bess's dinner. It seems that she gives one every Thanksgiving and that they're quite a tradition or institution. I can't find out what sort they are, though. I suspect some sort of an orgy on the order of the Black Mass."

At 2 o'clock we left our room and headed for the house of Queen Bess.

* * * * *

A huge and ornamental chamber known as the ballroom, or the parlor, had been converted into a dining-room. Ned and I were early. Six or seven men had arrived. They stood around ill at ease, looking at the flamboyant paintings on the wall as if they were inspecting the Titian room of some museum. Ned, who knew the town, pointed out two of the six as men of means. One was manager of a store. One was a billiard champion in a Michigan Avenue club.

Gradually the room filled up. A dozen more men arrived. Each was admitted by invitation as we had been. Sally, the colored mammy of the house, took charge and bade us be seated. Some twenty men took their places about the long rectangular table. And then a pianist entered. I think it was Prof. Schultz. He played the piano in the ballrooms of the district. He came in in a brand-new frock coat and patent leather shoes and sat down at the ivories. There was a pause and then the professor struck up, doloroso pianissimo, the tune of "Home, Sweet Home."

As the first notes carrying the almost audible words, "Mid pleasures and palaces" arose from the piano the folding doors at the end of the ballroom parted and there appeared Queen Bess, followed by fifteen of the girls who sold drinks for her. Queen Bess was dressed in black, her white hair coiffured like a hospital superintendent's. Her girls were dressed in simple afternoon frocks. Neither rouge nor beads were to be seen on them. And as the professor played "Home, Sweet Home" Queen Bess marched her companions solemnly down the length of the ballroom and seated them at the table.

I remember that before the numerous servitors started functioning Queen Bess made a speech. She stood up at the head of the table, her red face beaming under her white hair and her black eyes commanding the attention of the men and women before her.

"All of you know who I am, blankety blank," said Queen Bess, "and, blankety blank, what a reputation I got. All of you know. But I've invited you to this blankety blank dinner, hoping you will humor me for the afternoon and pretend you forget. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves at the banquet board, eat and drink what wine there is and laugh and be thankful, but without pulling any blankety blank rough stuff. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves as if you were in--in your own homes. Which I take it none of you gentlemen have got, seeing you are sitting here at the board of Queen Bess.

"Now, gentlemen," she concluded, "if it's asking too much of you to forget, the fault is mine and not yours. And nobody will be penalized or bawled out, blankety blank him, for being unable to forget. But if you can forget, and if you can let us enjoy ourselves for an afternoon in a blankety blank decent and God-fearing way--God love you."

And Queen Bess sat down. We ate and drank and laughed till seven o'clock that evening. And I remember that not one of the twenty men present used a profane word during this time; not one of them did or said anything that wouldn't have passed muster in his own home, if he had one. And that no one got drunk except Queen Bess. Yes, Queen Bess in her black dress got very drunk and swore like a trooper and laughed like a crazy child. And when the party was over Queen Bess stood at the door and we passed out, shaking hands with her and giving her our thanks. She stood, steadying herself against the door beam, and saying to each of us as she shook our hands:

"God love you. God love you for bringing happiness to a blankety blank blank like old Queen Bess."

THE DAGGER VENUS

The great Gabriel Salvini, whose genius has electrified the populace of a thousand vaudeville centers, sat in his suite at the Astor Hotel and listened glumly to the strains from a phonograph.

"What is the use?" growled the great Salvini. "It is no use. You listen to her."

"New music for your act, signor?"

"No, no, no. My wife. You hear her? She lie on the floor. The phonograph music play. The man call from the phonograph, 'one, two; one, two; one, higher; one, two.' And my wife, she lie on the floor and she kick up. She kick down. She roll over. She bend back. She bend forward. But it is no use."

"Madam is reducing, then, signor?"

"Bah! She kick. She roll. She jump. I say 'Lucia, what good for you to kick and jump when tonight you sit down and you eat; name of God, how you eat! Potatoes and more potatoes. Bread with butter on it. Meat, pie, cream, candy--ten thousand devils! She eat and eat until the eyes stick out. There is no more place to put. And I say, 'Lucia, you eat enough for six weeks every time you set down to the table.' I say, 'Lucia, look how the MacSwiney of Ireland go for thirty weeks without eating one bite.' Bah!"

"It is difficult to make a woman stop eating, signor."

"Difficult! Aha, but she must stop, or what become of me, the great Salvini, who have 200 medals? Look! I will show you from my book what they say of me. They say, 'Salvini is the greatest in his line.' They say, 'Here is genius; here is a man whose skill transcends the imagination.' So what I do if madam keep on growing fatter? Ah, you hear that music? It drive me crazy. I sit every day and listen. You hear her kick. Bang, bang! That's how she kick up she lie on the back. Ah, it is tragedy, tragedy!"

I nodded in silence as the great Salvini arose and moved across the room, a dapper figure in a scarlet dressing gown and green silk slippers. He returned with a fresh load of cigarettes. I noticed his hands--thin, gentle-looking fingers, like a woman's. They quivered perceptibly as he lighted his smoke, and I marveled at this--that the wizard fingers of the great Gabriel Salvini should shake!

"I tell you my story," he resumed. "I tell no one else. But you shall hear it. It is a story of--of this." And he clapped his hand despairingly over his heart. "I suffer. Name of God, I suffer every day, every night. And why? because! You listen to her. She still kick and kick and kick. And I sit here and think 'Where will it all end?' Another five pounds and I am ruined.

"It is ten years ago I meet her. Ah, so beautiful, so sweet, so light--like this." And the great Salvini traced the wavering elfin proportions of the Lucia of his youth in the air with his hands.