Chapter 6

This little caricature of a fop, loitering in the hotel lobby, enthralled by his own fastidiousness, gazing furtively at the glisten of his newly manicured nails and shuddering with awe at the memory of the puckered white silk lining inside his Prince of Wales derby--I've watched him for more than a month now. Here he comes, his pointed button shoes, his razor-edged trousers, his natty tan overcoat with its high waist band and its amazing lapels that stick up over his shoulders like the ears of a jackass, here he comes embroidered and scented and looking like a cross between a soft-shoe dancer and a somnambulist. And here he takes his position, holding his gloves in his hand, his Prince of Wales derby jammed down on his patent-leather hair.

Observe him. This is a pose. He is living up to a fashion illustration in one of the magazines. Or perhaps he is duplicating an attitude of some one studied in a Michigan Avenue club entrance. His right arm is crooked as if he were about to place his hand over his heart and bow. His left arm hangs with a slight curve at his side. His feet should be together, but they shift nervously. His head is turned to the left and slightly raised--like a movie actor posing for a cigarette advertisement.

And there he stands, a dead ringer for one of the waxen dummies to be seen in a Halsted Street Men's Snappy Furnishings Store.

* * * * *

I've watched him for a month, off and on. And his face still says nothing. His eyes are curiously emotionless. They appear suddenly in his face. He is undersized. His nose, despite the recent massage and powder, has a slight oleaginous gleam to it. The cheek bones are a bit high, the mouth a trifle wide and the chin slightly bulbous. As he blinks about him with his small, almost Mongolian eyes he looks like some honest little immigrant from Bohemia or Poland whom a malignant sorcerer has changed into a caricature fashion plate. This is, indeed, the legend of Cinderella and the fairy godmother with an ending of pathos.

Yet, though his face says nothing, there is a provoking air to this little fop. His studied inanimation, his crudely self-conscious pose, his dull, little, peasant eyes staring at the faces that drift by in the lobby--these ask for translation. Why is he here? What does he want? Why does he come every evening and stand and watch the little hotel parade? Ah, one never sees him in the dining room or on the dance floor. One never meets him between the acts in the theater lobby. And one never sees him talking to anybody. He is always alone. People pass him with a curious glance and think to themselves, "Ah, a young man about town! What a shame to dissipate like that!" They sometimes notice the masterly way in which he sizes up a fur-coated "chicken" stalking thin-leggedly through the lobby and think to themselves: "The scoundrel! He's the kind of creature that makes a big city dangerous. A carefully combed and scented vulture waiting to swoop down from the side lines."

Evening after evening between 6 o'clock and midnight he drifts in and out of the lobby, up and down Randolph Street and takes up his position at various points of vantage where crowds pass, where women pass. I've watched him. No one ever talks to him. There are no salutations. He is unknown and worse. For the women, the rouged and ornamental ones, know him a bit too well. They know the carefully counted nickels in his trousers pocket, the transfers he is saving for the three-cent rebate that may come some day, the various newspaper coupons through which he hopes to make a killing.

All this they know and through a sixth sense, a curious instinct of sex divination, they know the necktie counter or information desk behind which he works during the day, the stuffy bedroom to which he will go home to sleep, the vacuity of his mind and gaudy emptiness of his spirit. They know all this and pass him up with never a smile. Yes, even the manicure girls in the barber shop give him the out-and-out sneer and the hat-check girls and even the floor girls--the chambermaids--all of whom he has tried to date up--they all respond with an identical raspberry to his invitations.

But he asks for translation--this determined little caricature of the hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little fool. There is something in him that desires expression, that will never achieve expression, and that will always leave him just such an absurd little clown of a fop.

* * * * *

When the manicure girls read this they will snort. Because they know him too well. "Of all the half-witted dumbbells I ever saw in my life," they will say, "he wins the cement earmuffs. Nobody home, honest to Gawd, he's nothin' but a nasty little fourflusher. We know him and his kind."

Fortunately I don't know him as well as the manicure girls do, so there is room for this speculation as I watch him in the evening now and then. I see him standing under the blaze of lobby lights, in the thick of passing fur coats and dinner jackets, in the midst of laughter, escorts, intrigues, actors, famous names.

He stands perfectly still, with his right arm crooked as if he were going to place his hand over his heart and bow, with his left arm slightly curved at his side. Grace. This is a pose denoting grace. He got it somewhere from an illustration. And he holds it. Here is life. The real stuff. The real thing. Lights and laughter. Glories, coiffures, swell dames, great actors, guys loaded with coin. His little Mongolian eyes blink through his amusing aplomb. Here are gilded pillars and marbled walls, great rugs and marvelous furniture. Here music is playing somewhere and people are eating off gold-edged dishes.

* * * * *

And now you will smile at me, not him. Because watching him of evenings, on and off, a curious notion takes hold of my thoughts. I have noticed the race oddities of his face, the Mongolian eyes, the Slavic cheek bones, the Italian hair. A mixed breed, this little fop. Mixed through a dozen centuries. Fathers and mothers that came from a hundred parts of the earth. But down the centuries they had one thing in common. Servitude. The Carlovingian courts, the courts of the De Medici, the Valois, and long before that, the great houses that lay around the Roman hills. Dragged from their villages, east, west, north and south, they flitted in the trappings of servitude through the vast halls of tyrants, barons, Caesars, sybarites, debauchees. They were the torchbearers, the caitiffs, the varlets, the bathkeepers, the inanimate figures whose faces watched from the shadows the great orgies of Tiberius, the bacchanals of satraps, kings, captains and squires.

And here their little great-great-grandson stands as they stood, the ghost of their servitude in his sluggish blood. He is content with his role of watcher as his people were content. These slightly grotesque trappings of his are a disguise. He wishes to disguise the fact that he is of the torchbearers, the varlets, the bathkeepers who produced him. So he imitates servilely what he fancies to be the distinguishing marks of his betters--their clothes, their manners, their aplomb. This accomplished, he is content to yield himself to the mysterious impulses and dreams that move silently through him.

And so he takes his position beside his people--the mixed breeds dragged from their scattered villages--so he stands as they stood through the centuries, their faces watching from the shadows the gorgeousness and tumult of the great aristocrats.

MOTTKA

Since most of the great minds that have weighed the subject have arrived at the opinion that between poverty and crime there is an inevitable affinity, the suspicion with which the eye of Policeman Billings rested upon Mottka, the vender of roasted chestnuts, reflected creditably upon that good officer's grasp of the higher philosophies.

Policeman Billings, sworn to uphold the law and assist in the protection of property, viewed the complications and mysteries of the social system with a simple and penetrating logic. The rich are not dangerous, reasoned Policeman Billings, because they have what they want. But the poor who have not what they want are, despite paradox and precedent, always to be watched closely. A raggedly dressed man walking in a dark, lonely street may be honesty itself. Yet rags, even when worn for virtue's sake, are a dubious assurance of virtue. They are always ominous to one sworn to protect property and uphold the law.

There is a maxim by Chateaubriand, or perhaps it was Stendhal--maxims have a way of leaving home--which claims that the equilibrium of society rests upon the acquiescence of its oppressed and unfortunate.

* * * * *

In passing the battered chestnut roaster of the unfortunate Mottka, Policeman Billings was aware in his own way of the foregoing elements of social philosophy. Mottka had chosen for his little shop an old soapbox which a wastrel providence had deposited in the alley on Twenty-second Street, a few feet west of State Street. Here Mottka sat, nursing the fire of his chestnut roaster with odd bits of refuse which seldom reached the dignity of coal or even wood.

He was an old man and the world had used him poorly. He was, in fact, one of those upon whom the equilibrium of the social system rests. He was unfortunate, oppressed and acquiescent. Arriving early in the forenoon he set up his shop, lighted his fire and took his place on the soapbox. When the lights began to wink out along this highway of evil ghosts Mottka was still to be seen hunched over his chestnut roaster and waiting.

Policeman Billings strolling over his beat was wont to observe Mottka. There were many things demanding the philosophical attention of Policeman Billings. Not so long ago the neighborhood which he policed had been renowned to the four corners of the earth as the rendezvous of more temptations than even St. Anthony enumerated in his interesting brochure on the subject. And Policeman Billings felt the presence of much of this evil lingering in the brick walls, broken windows and sagging pavements of the district.

It was after a number of days on the beat that Policeman Billings began to take Mottka seriously. There was something curious about the chestnut vender, and the eye of the good officer grew narrow with suspicion. "This man," reasoned Policeman Billings, "makes pretense of being a vender of roasted chestnuts. He sits all day in the alley between two saloons. I have never noticed him sell any chestnuts. And come to think of it, I have never seen more than a half-dozen chestnuts on his roasting pan. I begin to suspect that this old man is a fraud and that his roasting chestnuts is a blind. He is very likely a lookout for some bootlegger gang or criminal mob. And I will keep an eye on him."

* * * * *

Mottka remained unaware of Policeman Billing's attention. He continued to sit hunched over his roaster, nursing the little fire under it as best he could--and waiting. But finally Policeman Billings called himself to his attention in no uncertain way.

"What's your name?" asked the good officer, stopping before the chestnut vender.

"Mottka," answered Mottka.

"And what are you doing here?" asked Policeman Billings, frowning.

"I roast chestnuts and sell them," said Mottka.

"Hm!" said Policeman Billings, "you do, eh? Well, we'll see about that. Come along."

Mottka rose without question. One does not ask questions of an officer of the law. Mottka stood up and put the fire out and put the handful of chestnuts in his pocket and picked up his roaster and followed the officer. A half-hour later Mottka stood before the sergeant in the Twenty-second street station.

"What's the trouble?" asked the sergeant.

And Policeman Billings explained.

"He claims to be selling chestnuts and roasting them. But I never see him sell any, much less do I see him roasting any. He's got about a dozen chestnuts altogether and I think he may bear looking into."

"What about it, Mottka?" asked the sergeant.

Mottka shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and smiled deprecatingly.

"Nothing," he said, "I got a chestnut roaster I got from a friend on the West Side. And I try to make business. I got a license."

"But the officer says you never roast any chestnuts and he thinks you're a fake."

"Yes, yes," smiled Mottka; "I don't have so many chestnuts. I can't afford only a little bit at a time. Some time I buy a basket of chestnuts."

"Where do you live, Mottka?"

"Oh, on the West Side. On the West Side."

"And what did you do before you roasted chestnuts?"

"Me? Oh, I was in a business. Yes, in a business. And it failed. So I got the chestnut roaster. I got a license."

"It seems to me I've seen you before, Mottka."

"Yes, yes. A policeman bring me here before when I was on Wabash Avenue with my chestnuts."

"What did he bring you in for?"

"Oh, because he thinks I am a crook, because I don't have enough chestnuts to sell. He says I am a lookout for crooks and he brings me in."

Mottka laughed softly and shrugged his shoulders.

"I am no crook. Only I am too poor to buy more chestnuts."

Policeman Billings frowned, but not at Mottka.

"Here," said the good officer, and he handed Mottka a dollar. Three other upholders of the law were present and they too handed Mottka money.

"Go and buy yourself some chestnuts, Mottka," said the sergeant, "so the officers won't be runnin' you in on suspicion of bein' a criminal."

Now Mottka's chestnut roaster in the alley off State Street is full of chestnuts. A bright fire burns under the pan and Mottka sits watching the chestnuts brown and peel as they roast. And if you were to ask him about things he would say:

"Tell something? What is there to tell? Nothing."

"FA'N TA MIG!"

Avast and belay there! Take in the topgallants, wind up the mizzenmast and reef the cleets! This is Tobias Wooden-Leg plowing his way through a high sea in Grand Avenue.

Aye, what a night, what a night! The devil astride the jib boom, his tail lashing in the wind. "Pokker!" says Tobias, "fa'n ta mig. Hold tight and here we go!"

The boys in the Elite poolroom stand grinning in the doorway. Old Norske Tobias is on a tear again, his red face shining with the memory of Stavanger storms, his beard bristling like a north cat's back. An Odin in caricature.

They watch him pass. Drunker than a fiddler's wench. Drunker than a bootlegger's pal. Drunk as the devil himself and roaring at the top of his voice: "Belay, there! Hold tight and here we go!" Poor Tobias Wooden-Leg, the years keep plucking out his hairs and twisting his fingers into talons. Seventy years have squeezed him. And they have brought him piety and wisdom. They have taught him virtue and holiness.

But the wind suddenly rises and comes blowing out of Stavanger again. The great sea suddenly lifts under his one good leg. And Tobias with his Bibles and his prayer books struggles in the dark of his Grand Avenue bedroom. The devil comes and sits on his window sill, a devil with long locks and bronze wings beside his ears and a three-pronged pitchfork in his hand.

"Ho, ho!" cries this one on the window sill. "What are you doing here, Tobias? With the north wind blowing and the gray seas standing on their heads? Grown old, Tobias, eh? Sitting in a corner and mumbling over litanies."

And it has always been like that since he came to Grand Avenue ten years ago. It has always turned out that Tobias takes off his white shirt and puts on his sailor's black sweater and fastens on his old wooden leg and follows the one on the window sill.

* * * * *

Avast and belay! The night is still young and a sailor man's abroad. The sergeant going off duty at the Chicago Avenue station passes and winks and calls: "Hello, Tobias. Pretty rough tonight."

"Fa'n ta mig!" roars Tobias. "Hold tight." And he steers for Clark Street. And now the one on the window sill is gone and the storm grows quiet. And poor Tobias Wooden-Leg, the venerable and pious, who has won the grace of God through a terrific fight, finds himself again lost and strayed.

Of what good were the prayers and the night after night readings in the old sea captain's Bible stolen forty years ago? Of what good the promises and tears of repentance, when this thing that seemed to rise out of forgotten seas could come and jump up on his window sill and bewitch him as if he were a heedless boy? When it could sit laughing at him until in its laugh he heard the sounds of old winds roaring and old seas standing on their heads, and he put on his black sweater--the moth-eaten badge of his sinfulness--and he put on his wooden leg and lifted out the handful of money from under the corner of the carpet?

What good were the prayers if they couldn't keep him pious? Yes, that was it. And here the habitués along North Clark Street grin. For Tobias Wooden-Leg is coming down the pavement, his head hanging low, his beard no longer bristling and his soul on a hunt for a new God. A strong God. A powerful and commanding God, stronger than the long-locked, bronze-winged one of the window sill.

They grin because this is an old story. Tobias is an old character. Once every two or three months for ten years Tobias has come like this with his head lowered searching for a new and powerful God that would keep him pious and that would kill the devil that seemed never to die inside his old Norske soul.

So he had taken them all--a jumble of gods, a patchwork of religions. Every soapbox apostle in the district had at one time converted him. Holy Roller, Methodist, Jumper, Yogi, Swami, Zionite--he had bowed his head before their and a dozen other varied gods. And the missions in the district had come to know him as "the convert." He had been faithful to each of the creeds as long as he remained sober and as long as he sat in his room of nights reading in his Bible.

But come a storm out of Stavanger, come a whistling under the eaves and a thumping of wind on the window pane and Tobias was off again. "He is not a good God!" Tobias would cry in his new "repentance." "His religion is too weak. The devil is stronger than Him. I want a stronger religion. Pagh, I want somebody big enough to kill this fanden inside me."

The crowd around the soapbox evangelist is rather slight. The night is cold. The wind bites and the street has a dismal air. The evangelist stands around the corner from the old book store in whose windows thousands of musty volumes are piled like the bones of hermits. The man who owns this curious book store is a sun-worshipper. And the evangelist on the soapbox is a friend of his.

The slight crowd listens. Peace comes from the sun. The sun is the source of light and of health. It is the eye of God. Terrible by day and watching by night. It is the fire of life. The slight crowd grins and the evangelist, his mind bubbling with a cabalistic jargon remembered out of musty books, tries to explain something that seems vivid in his heart but vague to his tongue.

They will drop away soon because the night is cold and the evangelist a bit too nutty for serious attention. But here comes Tobias Wooden-Leg and some of the listeners grin and nudge one another. Tobias, with his voice hoarse and his blue eyes shining with wrath--wrath at himself and wrath at the God who had abandoned him, unable to cope with the one on the window sill.

Tobias listens. Terrible by day and ever watchful by night. The King of Kings, the Great Majesty and secret symbol of the absolute. Tobias drinks in the jargon of the soapbox man and then shouts: "I'll join, I'll join! I want a strong God!"

* * * * *

So now Tobias Wooden-Leg is a sun-worshipper. The boys in the Elite poolroom will tell you all about it. How he walks the street at dawn with his head raised and bows every seven steps. And how in the evening he is to be seen standing at his window bowing to the sun going down. And how he has been around saying: "Well, I have found the big God at last. No more monkey business for me. Listen to what it says in the book about him." And how he will quote from the sea captain's Bible stolen forty years ago.

But the boys also say: "Just wait."

And they wink, meaning that another storm will blow up out of Stavanger in Norway and old Tobias will come plowing down the street again howling that fa'n ta mig the devil has him and that old Thor leaped on his window sill and tossed the all-powerful sun out of the sky with his hammer.

FANTASTIC LOLLYPOPS

They will never start. No, they will never start. In another two minutes Mr. Prokofieff will go mad. They should have started at eleven. It is now ten minutes after eleven. And they have not yet started. Ah, Mr. Prokofieff has gone mad.

But Mr. Prokofieff is a modernist; so nobody pays much attention. Musicians are all mad. And a modernist musician, du lieber Gott! A Russian modernist musician!

The medieval face of Mr. Boris Anisfeld pops over the rows of empty seats. It is very likely that Mr. Anisfeld will also go mad. For Mr. Anisfeld is, in a way, a collaborator of Mr. Prokofieff. It is the full dress rehearsal of "The Love for Three Oranges." Mr. Prokofieff wrote the words and music. Mr. Anisfeld painted the scenery.

"Mees Garden weel be hear in a meenute," the medieval face of Boris whispers into the Muscovite ears of Serge.

* * * * *

Eleven-fifteen, and Miss Garden has arrived. She is armed, having brought along her heaviest shillalah. Mr. Prokofieff is on his feet. He takes off his coat. The medieval face of Mr. Anisfeld vanishes. Tap, tap, on the conductor's stand. Lights out. A fanfare from the orchestra's right.

Last rehearsal for the world premier of a modernist opera! One winter morning years ago the music critics of Paris sat and laughed themselves green in the face over the incomprehensible banalities of an impossible modernist opera called "Tannhäuser." And who will say that critics have lost their sense of humor. There will unquestionably be laughter before this morning is over.

* * * * *

Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium. Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New Year's eve horns, harmonicas and old-fashioned musical beer steins that play when you lift them up. Mr. Prokofieff waves his shirt-sleeved arms and the sounds increase.

There is nothing difficult about this music--that is, unless you are unfortunate enough to be a music critic. But to the untutored ear there is a charming capriciousness about the sounds from the orchestra. Cadenzas pirouette in the treble. Largos toboggan in the bass. It sounds like the picture of a crazy Christmas tree drawn by a happy child. Which is a most peculiar way for music to sound.

But, attention! The curtain is up. Bottle greens and fantastic reds. Here is a scene as if the music Mr. Prokofieff were waving out of the orchestra had come to life. Lines that look like the music sounds. Colors that embrace one another in tender dissonances. Yes, like that.

And here, galubcheck (I think it's galubcheck), are the actors. What is it all about? Ah, Mr. Prokofieff knows and Boris knows and maybe the actors know. But all it is necessary for us to know is that music and color and a quaint, almost gargoylian, caprice are tumbling around in front of our eyes and ears.