Barefoot Boy with Cheek Read online

  We entered a room lit dimly by candles. A group of young men sat cross-legged in a circle on the floor. In the corner of the room on a dais Roger sat, dressed in a curiously inscribed robe. Frankincense and myrrh burned in an icon on the wall.

  Shylock led me to the center of the circle. He chanted:

  “I bring a man

  Into this clan.”

  “Hubba, gubba,

  Goodrich rubba,”

  intoned the circle.

  A barefoot maiden in a white gown entered bearing a young ram above her head. She deposited the ram in Roger’s lap.

  “Ram, bam,

  Thank you ma’am,”

  he said.

  He drew a curiously inscribed kriss from his robe and slit the ram’s throat. He dipped his finger in the blood and, beckoning me to the dais, made a curious inscription on my forehead.

  “He’s been washed in the blood of the ram,” Roger announced.

  “He’s been washed in the blood of the ram,” repeated the circle. Then they sang:

  “Blood, thud,

  Fuddy dud.”

  They leaped to their feet. Each put his hands on the hips of the one in front of him. They proceeded to move around me in a curious dance consisting of three steps and a kick, regularly repeated. After a while they resumed their positions and chanted:

  “Simba, marimba,

  Richard himba.”

  The lights went on, and suddenly their smiling faces were shaking my hand. Tears streamed uncheckable from my little eyes. “My brothers! My brothers!” I cried hoarsely.

  Now I was on their shoulders, and they were giving three cheers and a tiger for me.

  “By the way,” said Shylock, “what’s your name?”

  “Asa Hearthrug,” I answered.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said.

  CHAPTER VI

  Je dormait dans un gros lit.—GORIOT

  But all was not play at the University of Minnesota. Now I began classes, and that was work—the good, satisfying work of learning.

  I shall always remember the first class I attended. It was a class in sociology. I took a seat in the front row and spread my paper and pencils neatly on my desk. Turning to my brother students, I smiled friendlily. They threw lighted matches at me in a demonstration of good fellowship. Then the venerable white-haired professor entered the room. He advanced to the lectern at the head of the class. Putting on his pince-nez, he surveyed us for a moment. “Jeez,” he said, “they get crumbier every year.”

  We laughed appreciatively.

  “My name is Schultz,” said the professor. “Now, get out paper and pencil, and I’ll give you a list of books you’ll need for this course. Ready? Introduction to the Study of Sociology by Schultz. Sociology Made Simple by Schultz. Sociology for College Freshmen by Schultz. Survey of Freshman Sociology by Schultz. Sociology for Freshmen in College by Schultz. Introductory Monograph to the Study of Freshman Sociology by Schultz. Broader Aspects of Sociology by Schultz. Bibliography of Schultz’s Treatises on Sociology for College Freshmen by Schultz.

  “I’ll let you out of class early today so you can run right over to the bookstore and buy these books. And don’t try to get them secondhand because you can’t. I just wrote them this summer. Don’t try to sell them when you’re through, either. I’m writing a new set right now. You don’t think I live on my salary here, do you? Why, the third-string fullback made more than I did last year.

  “But enough of this pecuniary chitchat. Let’s get down to business. This is a class in sociology. Now, what is sociology? I’ll tell you what sociology is. Sociology is the study of how people live together.”

  I felt a prod in my ribs. Turning, I saw a dark-eyed, finely mustached girl in a close-knit burlap dress. “Hey,” she whispered, “you know what sociology is?”

  “The study of how people live together,” I answered.

  “Nah,” she said. “It’s the study of how the working class is oppressed under the capitalistic system.”

  The professor fixed us with a baleful eye. “If you two don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll go on with my lecture.”

  “Tool,” hissed the girl.

  “In this course,” continued the professor, “we shall study the various forms of communal life, the habits, customs, and mores, as we like to call them, that prevail among the different peoples of the world. After learning the broad backgrounds of the subject we shall take up the most important part of sociology. We shall study the individual from the standpoint of his environment. Sociology has proved that the key to individual behavior can be found in environment. For instance, last year we went through the records of the Minneapolis police department and compiled case histories of all the persons listed there. We found without exception that each one of them had come from what we call a ‘bad’ home or neighborhood.

  “Let me cite a typical case, that of Mildred W., at present an inmate of the Effie T. Libidinous Home for Erring Girls.

  “Mildred W. was one of twenty-seven children. Her father, Chauncey W., earned four dollars a week as a taper snuffer, but he seldom worked more than a week or two out of the year because of the meager demand for his talents. The mother was a laconic slattern named Bunny who spent the bulk of her time fretfully paring her nails. The family lived a peripatetic home life in the tender of a Baltimore & Ohio freight train.

  “Aside from Mildred the children were generally a normal lot except for four boys, Primus, Secundus, Tertius, and Quartus, who were all joined together at the forehead, and Al, another son, who was six feet, nine inches tall, weighed thirty-five pounds, and spent his days boring holes in a table leg with his head.

  “The rest of the children were as happy as children can be who don’t eat. Chauncey W. tried to keep the children’s minds off of food by organizing games. These were reasonably successful except when the children’s attention lagged and they fell upon the youngest child and devoured it.

  “Mildred never participated in these games. She was an adopted child, and although the family always tried to make her feel at home and never mentioned that she was adopted, she knew subconsciously that she was an outsider. While her sisters and brothers romped about, Mildred sat in a corner aimlessly cutting an old tarpaulin into isosceles triangles.

  “In addition to her feeling that she did not belong, something else was troubling Mildred. She was ten years old at this time and beginning to pass through puberty. She asked her mother to explain the subtle changes that were coming over her, but her mother merely blushed and said, ‘It ain’t fitten to talk about.’

  “Then one day Mildred picked up a circular advertising for peach pickers in California. In the dead of night she appropriated a shift, which was the family’s sole article of clothing, and ran away to seek a job picking peaches.

  “She met a girl named Frances Fagin on the highway. After hearing Mildred’s plans, Frances said, ‘Listen, honey, you’re too pretty to pick peaches. You come with me and I’ll show you how to get your mitts on some real dough.’

  “That night Mildred and Frances met a couple of desperadoes, the notorious Nidrick brothers, Norman and Neville, and the four of them held up a Standard Oil station near Lima, Ohio, making off with $65 and a quart of Iso-Vis.

  “They went to Davenport, Iowa, where they dissipated their swag in three months of riotous living. Finding themselves without funds, they knocked over the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Albert Lea, Minnesota. Their loot totaled $983,000,000. (There was an interesting side light to this robbery. The president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, one Lawrence [Fats] Demijohn, was unable to satisfactorily explain how come he had so much money in his bank. Upon investigation it was learned that Demijohn, himself, had robbed the First Trust Company of Bismarck, North Dakota, the summer before and stored the loot in his own bank.)

  “But I digress. Mildred decided not to share the proceeds with her accomplices. She drew a Luger that she had concealed in her tunic and dispatched the three of them.

 
; Then she packed the money in a valise and caught a train East. On the train there was a mixup in bags and somebody walked off with Mildred’s valise. Although she advertised in several papers, her valise was never returned to her. This had a profound effect on her personality. In her own words, ‘I made up my mind right there and then never to trust nobody no more.’

  “Mildred was now almost twelve years old and in the first flush of young womanhood. It was a simple matter for her to enter a brothel. She stayed there two years, finally leaving in a fit of pique when she discovered that the other girls were getting paid.

  “For several weeks she wandered around hungry, keeping alive by snatching bread crumbs from irate pigeons. At length she found work dealing fan-tan in a Chinese joss house. Here she became acquainted with Norbert Huh, a narcotics peddler who put her to work selling hasheesh.

  “Unfortunately, Mildred began sampling her wares. One night, while driving her car under the influence of hasheesh, she drove it right into the reading room of the public library and killed two mannish-looking women who were reading The Well of Loneliness.

  “She was apprehended and convicted, but instead of being put in some dirty old prison, she was committed to a modern, homelike institution of correction. She is given a great deal of freedom and loving care. To help rehabilitate her, she is being taught handicraft. Mildred is responding very well. As soon as she promises to stop decapitating matrons with her crosscut saw she will be released to take her place in society.

  “Well, that’s all for today. Run along now and buy the books and tomorrow we’ll plunge into the study of sociology.”

  I walked out of class with the girl who had spoken to me. We stopped in the hall while she rolled a cigarette and struck a match on her rope-soled shoe. The label on the sole said “Made in the Workers’ Co-operative at Omsk.”

  “Well,” I said, “it looks like sociology is going to be a lot of fun.”

  She spat obliquely across the hall and did not answer.

  “My name is Asa Hearthrug,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Call me Yetta Samovar. That’s my Party name. I took the name of our great feminine martyr.”

  “Who was she?” I asked.

  She looked contemptuously at me. “Oh, God—to mention a popular figure from the bourgeois religion-myth—don’t you know who Yetta Samovar was? Oh well,” she sneered, flicking my Alpha Cholera pin with a dirty-nailed forefinger, “what can you expect from a fraternity counter-revolutionist?”

  “Madam,” I cried, drawing myself up, “I shall not listen to any attack on my fraternity! They’re all swell kids, and they’re loads of fun.”

  “Fun! Fun!” she shrieked. “That’s what you came to the University for. You’re just like the rest of them. Well, have your fun now. The working class is getting damned good and tired of supporting your temple of hedonism on their scarred backs. You’ll see the day when the likes of you have your fun in salt mines.”

  “Permit me to correct you,” I remarked coldly. “I did not come to the University for fun. I came to learn how to write.”

  “You want to write! You! Tell me, have you suffered?”

  “Well, yes,” I confessed. “I get awful chafed in summer.”

  Yetta looked at me for a long time, then she took my hand in hers and spoke. “Friend,” she said tenderly, “I spoke hastily. It is now evident that you are not a fascist. You are merely politically undeveloped. But that is dangerous, doubly dangerous because you are in a fraternity.”

  I raised my hand. “Say of me what you like, but I will not hear a word against Alpha Cholera.”

  “Asa, you must listen to me. I promise you you will thank me later for that which I am going to tell you now. Let me ask you a question. What does your fraternity do?”

  “Do? Why, they listen to records and play bridge and hold dances and—”

  “Exactly,” she interrupted. “That’s my point. They listen to records and play bridge and hold dances. Do they ever go out and join a picket line? Do they discuss ways and means to better the condition of the working class? Do they collect funds for the families of martyrs of the class war? No! No! No!”

  “But that doesn’t make them fascists,” I protested.

  “Ah,” she screamed, “but it does! They are either for us or against us.” Her tone grew softer. “Asa, you want to be a writer. What kind of writer do you want to be? Do you want to be a feeble, sniveling voice of decadent reaction or do you want to be the brave trumpet of a new era?”

  “The brave trumpet of a new era,” I said promptly.

  “Then you must let me guide you. Tonight the Minnesota chapter of the Subversive Elements League is holding a meeting. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll meet you at nine in front of the chemistry building. You won’t regret it. And maybe later I can help you with your writing. I know a few people on Poignancy, the campus literary magazine.”

  “Oh, Yetta,” I cried, “do you think you could—”

  “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll see. Well, I’ll meet you tonight.”

  “All right. Say, by the way, who was the original Yetta Samovar?”

  “She was the first Soviet woman to operate a power crane,” said Yetta. “One day while working at the Dnepropetrovsk dam she leaned out of her crane to wave a greeting to a young man whose bed she shared and with whom she had become quite friendly. She leaned too far. Down she plunged into a block of newly laid, quick-drying concrete. Her last words as the concrete hardened about her were, ‘Solidarity forever!’”

  “I see,” I said.

  CHAPTER VII

  Je suis froid. —ROLLAND

  Yetta was waiting when I got to the chemistry building. “Come on,” she said. “It’s about a half mile from here. Let’s run.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Are we late?”

  “No, but you’re a stranger. It will make a good impression if you come in smelling of sweat.”

  We loped to a basement apartment on the coal docks near the river. Inside were about fifteen or twenty young men and women sitting cross-legged on the floor. Their acne glowed dully in the glare of an unshaded light bulb that dangled from the ceiling. At the head of the room was an uncovered table. A hirsute fellow with thick glasses stood behind it.

  Yetta found a place for us near the back of the room. She heaped up two little piles of coal dust, and we sat down.

  The hairy fellow rapped on the table for order. “That’s Sam Nihilism, our commissar,” Yetta whispered.

  “The meeting will now come to order,” Sam said. “First, I want to introduce John Das Kapital and Natashya Fiveyearplan, who have been sent here by the central committee to handle publicity for us.”

  John and Natashya advanced to the table amid enthusiastic applause. John held up his hand. “Comrades,” he began. “Comrade Natashya and I are going to help you with publicity this year. Last year we were at the University of Wisconsin where, I can say with all modesty, our work met with considerable success. We have acquainted ourselves with the situation at Minnesota, and we find that it is quite similar to what we had to face at Wisconsin.

  “Believe me, comrades, it was almost impossible to get any publicity at Wisconsin. The kept press refused to print any notices of our meetings or any accounts of our activities. It looked hopeless, but we finally got a story into the paper. Not just a little story, but a big story, and on the front page and with pictures.”

  There were admiring whistles and cries of “Pictures, yet!” from the audience. John smiled modestly and continued:

  “Let me tell you how we did it. We scheduled a demonstration on the steps of the university library one afternoon. Natashya started to speak and pretty soon a few curious students collected. I waited for a little while, and then I ran to the dean’s office. All out of breath I burst in and announced that communists were setting the library on fire. The dean got hold of the campus cop immediately
and told him to rush to the library. As soon as Natashya saw the cop coming she threw herself to the steps, knocked out her front teeth, and screamed that she had been clubbed. In an instant a huge crowd appeared. Well, the paper simply couldn’t ignore that story.”

  The audience applauded wildly. Natashya acknowledged the ovation with a proud toothless grin.

  “That Natashya,” Yetta whispered to me, “she’s one of our best Party workers. She used to be in charge of our free love campaign, but since she knocked out all her front teeth she can’t even give it away.”

  The two publicists retired, and Sam took over again. “Our next speaker needs no introduction. He has been in charge of our youth movement at the University of Minnesota for the last twenty-two years. You all know him—Westbrook Workingstiff.”

  A huge, bloated fellow of forty-odd years in a three-piece denim suit came up to the table. He began to read from a sheaf of paper in his enormous fist. “Fellow yoots, like we all know, da capitalistic system is doomeded. It is up to us, da yoot of America, to build da future. What kinda future is it gonna be? Dat dere question it is up to you to answer it.

  “We got to take t’ings in our own hands. Da gov’ment is full wit’ corrupshun. Da forces of reaction is lurking all around us, waiting to grab us by our t’roat. Our enemies is crafty and unscrupuless. Dey’ll give you dat sweet talk, but dey are a two face. Dey won’t stop at not’ing to stem da tide of our movemint.

  “We, da yoot of Minnesota, must be a inspiration to da rest of da yoot of da nation, and also a inspiration to da farmers and da rest of da working class. But we can be a inspiration only t’rough action. It is up to us, da yoot, to do some action.

  “We, da yoot, must not be ascared of da battle. We must girdle our loins and go fort’ wit’—”

  He paused to turn a page. The thin sheet resisted his great blunt fingers. He fumbled and hacked at it vainly for several minutes. Sweat poured down his face. At last he abandoned the struggle. “T’ank you,” he said, and stepped down.