Algren at Sea (54 page)

“So long as he didn't spend anything on himself they can't touch him,” I assured my old man as the cab wheeled up before a yellow cabaret.

Baliram projected his great bulk backwards out of the hack and waddled, frontwards, to a door beside the cabaret; leaving me to settle with his “chauffeur.” I followed his monstrous bottom up a flight of careworn stairs into a room crowded with fixtures of another day. There was faint music, as of someone playing a piano only for himself, from the cabaret below. Overhead a wooden ceiling fan beat monotonously. My balloon tossed in its breeze—I'd have to be careful not to get it caught in
that.

“I want you to meet my wife,” Baliram assured me, “
Pawm!
” he bawled, “
Pawmela!
We hawv a gist,
Pawmela!
”

All the pictures around the room were of the Stations of the Cross; and of such size that the room itself was diminished. The old man had a bigger stake in the legends of Christianity than in its real estate, it looked like. I wondered whether anybody was being crucified in the kitchen.

“
Pawm,
” he called out in a tone most affected, “
Pawmela dee
-ah! We have a
gist,
Pawmela deeah!”

The girl who emerged from the kitchen was another Caucasianized slant; one, I guessed, from the hills of Burma or the plains of Assam, with eyebrows penciled high to make her eyes look round. Her name would, more appropriately, have been Kai-Li. She didn't crack a smile at sight of an American holding a red balloon. This was to show me she was British to the bone.

“Do you like our little home, sir?” Baliram asked me.

No farther than I can throw my old balloon, I thought.

The girl nodded coldly once; then slipper-sloppered back to her kitchen-station.

“
Pawm
deah.
Pawm
ela. I would like you to
welcome
ouah gist.”

So here comes Pawm slipper-sloppering back. If she'd put in as much care on her dress as on her eyebrows, two buttons wouldn't have been askew. Pawm wasn't more than twenty-two but she walked like sixty-six. Pawm just didn't
care.

“How do,” she acknowledged both me and my balloon, and started away again.

“
Pawm
ela, our guest would like a bit of Anglo-Indian cheeah with us—
Would
you mind stepping out for it?”

“Where's the bread?” Her English was faultless.

“O, I'm suah ouah guest will be glad to contribute a few rupees toward some Anglo-Indian cheeah,” the old man decided airily.

I extended a five-dollar bill toward him, and when he reached for it I gave him my index finger instead.

Immediately he feigned great amusement. “
Pawm
ela! Did you see the
trick?
O,
will
you teach me how
that
is done, sir? See, deah—he offers money but then gives nothing but a finger! It is done to reprove persons who act greedily—O, but wasn't it neatly accomplished!”

The girl blushed. He was too much for me too.

I gave her enough change to buy a bottle and she shuffled out into the hallway.

“I'm interested in radio engineering,” Baliram informed me, indicating a radio disassembled on a mantel—“on occasion I buy old sets in hope of repairing them for resale. Unfortunately,” he shrugged—“I have little skill along mechanical lines. Perhaps you would care to trust me with your balloon long enough to take off your coat? You'd feel more at ease.”

Sitting down at the table and letting the balloon catch the breeze from the fan, yet not letting it get too near the blades, I indicated I was at ease already.

Pawmela returned with a bottle. Baby, I thought, that was a fast trip to the still, considering you didn't even use the stairs. Either you went down the side of the building or the Liquor Permit Office is in the hall.

“
Pawm!
May we have
glaw
sses?”

Pawm slid a couple glasses across the table and turned back to the kitchen before they stopped sliding. I knew they'd like me in Bombay.

Baliram filled my glass, then his own. I waited to see whether he'd drink it or quote
Lear
to gain time. I gave him time and he downed the drink, so I followed: a rich blend of Jamaican rum and rotting bananas.

“We would
both
feel more at home if you took off your coat, my friend,” he urged me.

The balloon was a problem. When I tried taking off my coat I found it wouldn't go through my sleeve. Finally the old man held it for me until I got my coat off. When he handed it back I pulled the transistor out of my belt, extended its aerial and tuned it in—all with one hand.

a tenor's voice came in pleadingly—

“That's Tokyo,” I assured Baliram so he wouldn't think it was Atlanta.

“What price are you asking, my friend?” he asked me.

“Sixty dollars American.”

“I'm only a poor broker,” he explained. “I can't buy it myself.”

“I don't care who I sell to.”

He examined the brand name, fussed with the aerial, tuned in another station, expressed doubt, shook his head regretfully. He wanted to tune it in again; so I drew the aerial down.

“I
can
get sixty dollars for it,” he decided, “but no more. That leaves me nothing for the risk I take in your interest.”

“Everything you get over fifty-five is yours,” I compromised. “If you don't get over fifty-five you take the risk for nothing.” Some compromise.

“And if I get less?”

“Then you deduct the difference between what you got and fifty-five and that much is what you're out.”

“You drive a hard bargain, my friend.”

“I can get seventy-five for it myself,” I lied.

He stood up wiping his forehead in anticipation of the heat of the street, went into the kitchen, and returned with a shopping bag and two loaves of French bread. He put the set in the bottom of the bag with the loaves sticking out; and left walking more heavily than before.

I was left alone with a pint of cheap rum and Kai-Li.

The girl waited till the old man's heavy step had died away before she came out. She'd tidied her hair, touched her lips and eyebrows; but still looked sullen. I invited her to share the rum.

“Me no drink,” she explained; but sat down all the same.

I waited.

“Papa no good,” she told me at last, “Mama no good. Everybody no good.”

Then merely sat looking at me as though suspecting I was probably worse. There wasn't a thing she could do for me and there wasn't a thing I could do for her. Except to listen to her woes.

That she plainly wanted to tell. For they were the kind one can safely tell only to a stranger.

I tied the balloon to my finger.

“You like the old man?” I encouraged her.

She wrinkled her nose. “I do like he tell,” she told me, “I got no paper.” “No passport?”

“No nothing.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Macao. My real papa Chinese gambler-man. Mama Russki. Both no good. He sell her. Then he sell me.”

There was a long silence.

“You're a long way from Moscow,” I pointed out to be helpful.

The overhead fan deepened its whirring roar.

“You know
Cages?
” the girl asked me.

Yes, I'd seen The Cages. What about The Cages?

“Is where old man find me.”

So the old man had bought her out and now was trying to get his money back.

“How long ago did he take you out?” I asked her.

“Two year,” she told me. “First year, me
good
to Old Man. I no tell he
steal because he no tell I got no paper. He no tell on me, I no tell on him.
Steal, steal, steal.
Custom-Man do too
much
steal. ‘Old man,' I tell him, ‘you stop steal now; you do too much steal, old man.' Old man no stop. Old man get catched.” The girl clutched her hair to mimic the old man's fright—“‘O-O-O, your little daddy gonna get rig-or-ous labor now! O-O-O your little daddy gonna die in jail—O-O-O'”—her eyes, that had been so leaden, came pleasantly agleam at the recollection of the old man's panic—then dimmed with disappointment: “Old man no get rig-or-ous labor. Old man no go to jail. Old man pay. He go free. Then he make sailor-busyness. Old man buy what sailor got—watch, ring, radio. Then old man say, ‘You like nice Anglo gel, sailor?' he no ask
me.
He tell
sailor—sailor
say, ‘I pay good money for you, Baby'—How you like
that?
”

I couldn't say I cared for it. But I could see how things could be worse.

I waited.

The girl studied me curiously.

“You like short-term?” she asked at last.

I shook my head: no short-term.

“You like long-term?”

I shook my head: no long-term.

“Mama no good!” She began one of those demonstrations of absent-minded anguish which, by inflicting sufficient misery upon the innocent bystander, permit the anguishee to make plans of his own for the following day. “Papa no good! Me got no paper! Me got no little baby! Me got no
baksheesh!
—Me got no home! Me got nothink! You no want short-term, you no want long-term—O! O! O!—You no good too!”

There,
I'd done it again. Every time anybody in Asia tried improving his difficult lot, there I'd be throwing my weight against his chances. I was certainly going out of my way to foul people up.

“Old man t'row me out!” she howled.

“Why should he do that?”

I only wondered.

“Because
you
no want short-term,
you
no want long-term,
you
not give poor girl nothink!”

Nobody loves The Good Guys anymore.

“Back to Cages!” she concluded the demonstration. “Me die! You no good. You no
damned
good.”

“Whenever things seem to be darkest, honey, is just before they get worse,” I consoled her.

She put her head down on her arms and began shaking her shoulders. It was the most theatrical exhibition of fraudulent guilt-placing I'd had put on me since James Baldwin accused me of complicity in the lynching of Matt Parker.

“I was at a ball game in Comiskey Park that night,” I'd tried to wriggle out; but when James lays down a charge, he
lays
it.

“You were there all the same,” he put it right on me—“your Northern indifference triggered the Southern gun. The men who did the lynching merely acted out the will of the white community—and there is no Mason-Dixon line to
that
community. You are as much a part of it in Chicago as any Mississippi sheriff.”

“I don't follow you,” I had to admit.

“Because you don't
dare
follow,” he challenged
me.

“Where would I wind up if I did?” I asked curiously.

“By finding that your father and your father's father conspired in the lynching of Matt Parker a hundred years before the lynching.”

“My old man came from Indiana,” I felt I ought to explain, as James plainly had me confused with somebody else, “and
his
old man came from Europe.”

“Europe raped Africa, let me remind you,” James informed me.

“You mean we were in on
that
too?” I asked.

“Everyone in the crucible of Western Civilization was in on it,” he assured me.

What could I say except that I was
terribly
sorry?

“I'll have to take responsibility,” I finally confessed to the lynching of Emmett Till as well as of Matt Parker, “so long as you'll stop denying you set the Reichstag fire.”
²¹

The girl had stopped shaking her shoulders. She had a new thing going.
She was trailing her fingers down the front of her blouse, smiling seductively; and every time she touched a button the blouse opened a bit wider. This interested me as I thought that if she got the blouse open entirely it would mean she was going to wash it. By the time she had it open I saw that her bra needed washing even more. I took my bottle and stretched out on the divan.

And felt the beat of the city's terrible heat on rooftop, alley, bazaar and wall. The balloon tied to my finger rose toward the blades of the fan as though irresistibly drawn; then swung like a weightless pendulum there, four swings every half-minute.

My watch ticked off the swings and the beat of the fan slowed to the throb of engines hauling deep below-deck. Seamen were coming down the hall but they didn't know which door was mine. Yet they stopped and began whispering just outside.

“He's trying to get the ship in trouble,” one began informing on me.

“It isn't any of his business,” a half-familiar voice agreed.

Then the whisperers conferred: they were going to come in on me. I tried to waken but could not. Someone was standing in the door.

“The last stitch is through the nose,” he announced. His face was bleeding and his cap was afire. It was a matter of life or death that I waken before he touched me and I did.

And heard Baliram's heavy step upon the stair. He came into the room awash with sweat.

The girl had left her blouse and bra on a chair. Baliram saw it at the same moment that I did.

“Did you enjoy my wife's company, my friend?” he wanted to know.

“Where your wife hangs her underwear doesn't concern me,” I assured him. “What did you get for the set?”