The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) (40 page)

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Authors: John Steinbeck

BOOK: The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics)
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His feeling for psychic pain in normal people also was philosophic. He would say that nearly everything that can happen to people not only does happen but has happened for a million years. “Therefore,” he would say, “for everything that can happen there is a channel or mechanism in the human to take care of it—a channel worn down in prehistory and transmitted in the genes.”
He disliked time intensely unless it was part of an observation or an experiment. He was invariably and consciously late for appointments. He said he had once worked for a railroad where his whole life had been regulated by a second hand and that he had then conceived his disgust, a disgust for exactness in time. To my knowledge, that is the only time he ever spoke of the railroad experience. If you asked him to dinner at seven, he might get there at nine. On the other hand, if a good low collecting tide was at 6:53, he would be in the tide pool at 6:52.
The farther I get into this the more apparent it becomes to me that no rule was final. He himself was not conscious of any rules of behavior in himself, although he observed behavior patterns in other people with delight.
For many years he wore a beard, not large, and slightly pointed, which accentuated his half-goat, half-Christ appearance. He had started wearing the beard because some girl he wanted thought he had a weak chin. He didn’t have a weak chin, but as long as she thought so he cultivated his beard. This was probably during the period of the prognathous Arrow Collar men in the advertising pages. Many girls later he was still wearing the beard because he was used to it. He kept it until the Army made him shave it off in the Second World War. His beard sometimes caused a disturbance. Small boys often followed Ed, baaing like sheep. He developed a perfect defense against this. He would turn and baa back at them, which invariably so embarrassed the boys that they slipped shyly away.
Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog on the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving, often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn’t smile back at him. Cats, on the other hand, did not arouse any enthusiasm in him. However, he always remembered one cat with admiration. It was in the old days before the fire when Ed’s father was still alive and doing odd jobs about the laboratory. The cat in question took a dislike to Ed’s father and developed a spite tactic which charmed Ed. The cat would climb up on a shelf and pee on Ed’s father when he went by—the cat did it not once but many times.
Ed regarded his father with affection. “He has one quality of genius,” Ed would say. “He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgments at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father—he is wrong all of the time about everything. That is a matter not of luck but of selection. That requires genius.”
Ed’s father was a rather silent, shy, but genial man who took so many aspirins for headaches that he had developed a chronic acetanilide poisoning and the quaint dullness that goes with it. For many years he worked in the basement stockroom, packing specimens to be shipped and even mounting some of the larger and less delicate forms. His chief pride, however, was a human fetus which he had mounted in a museum jar. It was to have been the lone child of a Negress and a Chinese. When the mother succumbed to a lover’s quarrel and a large dose of arsenic administered by person or persons unknown, the autopsy revealed her secret, and her secret was acquired by Pacific Biological. It was much too far advanced to be of much value for study so Ed’s father inherited it. He crossed its little legs in a Buddha pose, arranged its hands in an attitude of semi-prayer, and fastened it securely upright in the museum jar. It was rather a startling figure, for while it had negroid features, the preservative had turned it to a pale ivory color. It was Dad Ricketts’ great pride. Children and many adults made pilgrimages to the basement to see it. It became famous in Cannery Row.
One day an Italian woman blundered into the basement. Although she did not speak any English, Dad Ricketts naturally thought she had come to see his prize. He showed it to her; whereupon, to his amazement and embarrassment, she instantly undressed to show him her fine scar from a Caesarian section.
Cats were a not inconsiderable source of income to Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc. They were chloroformed, the blood drained, and embalming fluid and color mass injected in the venous and arterial systems. These finished cats were sold to schools for study of anatomy.
When an order came in for, say, twenty-five cats, there was only one way to get them, since the ASPCA will not allow the raising of cats for laboratory purposes. Ed would circulate the word among the small boys of the neighborhood that twenty-five cents apiece would be paid for cats. It saddened Ed a little to see how venially warped the cat-loving small boys of Monterey were. They sold their own cats, their aunts’ cats, their neighbors’ cats. For a few days there would be scurrying footsteps and soft thumps as cats in gunny sacks were secretly deposited in the basement. Then guileless and innocent-faced little catacides would collect their quarters and rush for Wing Chong’s grocery for pop and cap pistols. No matter what happened, Wing Chong made some small profit.
Once a lady who liked cats very much, if they were the better sort of cats, remarked to Ed, “Of course I realize that these things are necessary. I am very broad-minded. But, thank heaven, you do not get pedigreed cats.”
Ed reassured her by saying, “Madam, that’s about the only kind I do get. Alley cats are too quick and intelligent. I get the sluggish stupid cats of the rich and indulgent. You can look through the basement and see whether I have yours—yet.” That friendship based on broad-mindedness did not flourish.
If there were a complaint and a recognition Ed always gave the cat back. Once two small boys who had obviously read about the oldest cheat in the world worked it twice on Ed before he realized it. One of them sold the cat and collected, the other came in crying and got the cat back. They should have got another cat the third time. If they had been clever and patient they would have made a fortune, but even Ed recognized a bright yellow cat with a broken tail the third time he bought it.
 
Everyone, so Ed said, has at least one biologic theory, and some people develop many. Ed was very tolerant of these flights of theoretic fancy. A strange group flowed through the laboratory.
There were, for instance, the people who suddenly discovered parallels in nature, like the man who conceived the thought that tuna, which is called commercially “Chicken of the Sea,” might be related to chickens, because, as he said, “Their eyes look alike.” Ed’s reply to this man was that he rarely liked to make a positive statement, but in this case he was willing to venture the conviction that there was no very close relation between chickens and tunas.
One day there came into the laboratory a young Chinese, dressed in the double-breasted height of fashion, smelling of lily of the valley, and bringing a mysterious air with him. He was about twenty-three and his speech was that of an American high-school boy. He suggested darkly that he would like to see Ed alone. Ed happily joined the mystery and indicated that I was his associate and the sharer of his secrets. We found ourselves speaking in heavy, pregnant whispers.
Our visitor asked, “Have you got any cat blood?”
“No, not right now,” Ed replied. “It is true I do draw off the blood when I inject cats. What do you want it for?”
Our visitor said tightly, “I’m making an experiment.” Then, to prove that we could trust his judgment and experience, he flipped his lapel to show the badge of a detective correspondence school. And he drew out his diploma to back up the badge. We were delighted with him. But he would not explain what he needed the cat blood for. Ed promised that he would save some blood from the next series of cats. We all nodded mysteriously back and forth and our visitor left quietly, walking on his toes.
Mysteries were constant at the laboratory. A thing happened one night which I later used as a short story. I wrote it just as it happened. I don’t know what it means and do not even answer the letters asking what its philosophic intent is. It just happened. Very briefly, this is the incident. A woman came in one night wanting to buy a male rattlesnake. It happened that we had one and knew it was a male because it had recently copulated with another snake in the cage. The woman paid for the snake and then insisted that it be fed. She paid for a white rat to be given it. Ed put the rat in the cage. The snake struck and killed it and then unhinged its jaws preparatory to swallowing it. The frightening thing was that the woman, who had watched the process closely, moved her jaws and stretched her mouth just as the snake was doing. After the rat was swallowed, she paid for a year’s supply of rats and said she would come back. But she never did come back. What happened or why I have no idea. Whether the woman was driven by a sexual, a religious, a zoophilic, or a gustatory impulse we never could figure. When I wrote the story just as it happened there were curious reactions. One librarian wrote that it was not only a bad story but the worst story she had ever read. A number of orders came in for snakes. I was denounced by a religious group for having a perverted imagination, and one man found symbolism of Moses smiting the rock in the account.
I shall mention only a few other of the mysteries. There was the persecution with flowers, for example. Someone who must have been watching the laboratory waited until we were out on several occasions and then placed a line of white flowers across the doorstep. This happened a number of times and seems to have been meant as a hex. Such a curse is practiced by some northern Indians to bring death to anyone who steps over the flowers. But who put them there and whether that was the intention we never found out.
During the time when the Klan was spreading its sheets all over the nation the laboratory got its share of attention. Small red cards with the printed words, “We are watching you, K.K.K.,” were slipped under the door on several occasions.
Mysteries had a bad effect on Ed Ricketts. He hated all thoughts and manifestations of mysticism with an intensity which argued a basic and undefeatable belief in them. He refused to have his fortune told or his palm read even in fun. The play with a Ouija board drove him into a nervous rage. Ghost stories made him so angry that he would leave a room where one was being told.
In the course of time Ed’s father died. There was an intercom phone between the basement and the upstairs office. Once after his father’s death Ed admitted to me that he had a waking nightmare that the intercom phone would ring, that he would lift the receiver and hear his father’s voice on the other end. He had dreamed of this, and it was becoming an obsession with him. I suggested that someone might play a practical joke and that it might be a good idea to disconnect the phone. This he did instantly, but he went further and removed both phones. “It would be worse disconnected,” he said. “I couldn’t stand that.”
I think that if anyone had played such a joke, Ed would have been very ill from shock. The white flowers bothered him a great deal.
I have said that his mind had no horizons, but that is untrue. He forbade his mind to think of metaphysical or extra-physical matters, and his mind refused to obey him.
Life on Cannery Row was curious and dear and outrageous. Across the street from Pacific Biological was Monterey’s largest, most genteel and respected whorehouse. It was owned and operated by a very great woman who was beloved and trusted by all who came in contact with her except those few whose judgment was twisted by a limited virtue. She was a large-hearted woman and a law-abiding citizen in every way except one—she did violate the nebulous laws against prostitution. But since the police didn’t seem to care, she felt all right about it and even made little presents in various directions.
During the depression Madam paid the grocery bills for most of the destitute families on Cannery Row. When the Chamber of Commerce collected money for any cause and businessmen were assessed at ten dollars, Madam was always nicked for a hundred. The same was true for any mendicant charity. She halfway paid for the widows and orphans of policemen and firemen. She was expected to and did contribute ten times the ordinary amount toward any civic brainstorm of citizens who pretended she did not exist. Also, she was a wise and tolerant pushover for any hard-luck story. Everyone put the bee on her. Even when she knew it was a fake she dug down.
Ed Ricketts maintained relations of respect and friendliness with Madam. He did not patronize the house. His sex life was far too complicated for that. But Madam brought many of her problems to him, and he gave her the best of his thinking and his knowledge, both scientific and profane.
There seems to be a tendency toward hysteria among girls in such a house. I do not know whether hysterically inclined types enter the business or whether the business produces hysteria. But often Madam would send a girl over to the laboratory to talk to Ed. He would listen with great care and concern to her troubles, which were rarely complicated, and then he would talk soothingly to her and play some of his favorite music to her on his phonograph. The girl usually went back reinforced with his strength. He never moralized in any way. He would be more likely to examine the problem carefully, with calm and clarity, and to lift the horrors out of it by easy examination. Suddenly the girl would discover that she was not alone, that many other people had the same problems—in a word that her misery was not unique. And then she usually felt better about it.

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