The Big Hunger

by John Fante

  I didn’t care any more. I didn’t give a damn for anything. When I thought of how Hazel was sitting so close to Phil Mannix, with both her arms around his right arm, and her head on his shoulder, I didn’t care. I was through. I was all washed up. And I didn’t care about the black splotch across my sweater. I didn’t care at all. And while I was walking through the rain toward home, I took out my jackknife, and I cut and hacked that sweater off me. I ripped it off in hunks and strips, and tossed them into the gutter.

  I Am a Writer of Truth

  THE TRUTH IS often unpleasant, but it must be told. In this case the truth is that Jenny is not a beautiful girl. She makes a lamentable heroine for this story. She is short and fat, with ripples of fat that wash from her. Her stupidity is beyond the power of my pen. Indeed, she disgusts me. No: that is not the truth, for she does not disgust me. But she does something to me which is not good. She saddens me. When I think of her a sense of hopelessness possesses me, a feeling that I can do nothing about the inequality between men and women. I do not hate Jenny, but I certainly despise the things for which she stands. As for what those things are, I am unable to say.

  One evening, out of breath, she ran into my room with her arms extended. She was shrieking with delight, her grey eyes laughing and laughing in triumph. I turned from my typewriter and asked for an explanation.

  “Look!” she said. “On my wrist! Look! My boyfriend gave it to me!”

  It was a wristwatch.

  “Jenny,” I said. “In the name of God stop saying ‘boyfriend.’ I loathe that word. I hate it!”

  Jenny’s boyfriend is a fellow named Mike Schwartz. He is Jewish—a tremendous man. I have seen him many times, a two-hundred pounder, strong and silent, who comes here almost every night to see Jenny in her room. His strong, silent strain does not fool me. I personally am neither one nor the other, but I am aware that the quiet strain in big men is invaluable. When he comes up the stairs in his quiet way I can easily understand what he desires from Jenny. Of course I can understand it! I am aware that the quiet strain has its uses.

  About the wristwatch. Jenny is a stenographer in a downtown Los Angeles office. On that very afternoon, she said, Mike Schwartz had come there. Quietly he came, a big man carrying the wristwatch in a tiny box. There he stood, strong and silent. I could visualize the whole thing clearly. I think it monstrous; the truth is, I have to laugh when I think about it. Mike Schwartz asked her what she thought of the watch.

  “It’s cute,” Jenny said.

  Cute! Oh Lord! What a ghastly description. Cute! What a loathsome word! A wristwatch can be interesting, or charming, or even beautiful. But never cute. Never! Only a person of limited intelligence, such as Jenny, would ever call a wristwatch cute.

  Mike said, “It’s for a friend of mine—a girl about to be married. It’s a wedding present.”

  This disappointed Jenny, who thought the watch was for her. Without another word she handed the watch back to him. It was cute, and that was enough. I can see the whole thing. With her nose tilted, she returned the watch.

  Mike Schwartz started to leave the office. He turned his back and walked toward the door. I am telling you exactly what Jenny told me. I am a writer: I see it all very clearly. At the door he turned and there were tears in his eyes. Tears in his eyes! Imagine that! A strong, silent man, a giant of a man, with tears in his eyes. I wish to be truthful, and to me a man of forty with tears in his eyes is a jackass. He turned and there were tears in his eyes, and no doubt tears on his shirt and tie, and he came back, fell on his knees before Jenny, who is fat and twenty, and crushed her in his arms.

  “Keep it, Jenny!” he gasped. “Keep it. I was lying. It’s not a wedding present. It’s for you. Keep it—forever!”

  Forever! Tears in his eyes! What a spectacle! I can visualize it, and I have to laugh and laugh. There he was, a man of forty, strong and silent, sobbing on his knees before a girl twenty years younger than himself! Lord, it’s funny. I laugh and laugh. The fool! Such tears would not have fetched me. I should have laughed in his face.

  Nor did they fetch Jenny. But Jenny is clever, grasping, shrewd. Now the watch became more than cute. It was now a wonderful watch, and she cried too. And there they were, two people crying over a mere wristwatch. And that night Jenny brought the watch to my room and told me about it, annoyed me with all this nonsense, telling me that Mike Schwartz touched her soul and that she cried for the sweetness of him.

  “I couldn’t help it, Mr. Bandini,” she said to me—a writer, an interpreter of human psychology.

  I refuse to believe Jenny. Furthermore, I refuse to believe she cried for that reason. She is too shrewd, too grasping, too fat for sorrow and tenderness. My theory is that if she wept at all, her tears were tears of joy, of possession, because now she owned the watch, it belonged to her now, and she wept in triumph.

  “Let me see this watch,” I said.

  I examined it indifferently. It was a Bulova Bagette, or some such folderol. A tiny silver watch, with a bit of silver chain clinging to it—a really absurd watch, a mere toy, for one could scarcely see the watch-face, let alone the hands: a joke of a watch, preposterous, and no good at all for seeing the time of day. I turned it over in my palm. There were scratches on the case, wounds made by a pen knife, as if someone had rubbed away a monogram. A second-hand watch. Unquestionably a second-hand watch.

  “Ha!” I said. “Old merchandise! A second-hand watch! Precisely what I suspected. The man is a fraud. A hounder. A cheap charlatan.”

  Jenny knew it was second-hand for she was shrewd indeed. She knew more than that. She had gone to the jeweler and priced the watch. Trust Jenny to do that!

  “Well” I said. “What did the jeweler say?”

  She refused to answer me.

  “Rather expensive,” she said.

  “Be honest, please,” I said. “I am a writer—a man of truth. Hypocrisy is foreign to my nature. How much did the jeweler say it was worth?”

  “Quite a bit,” she smiled.

  “Well,” I said. “Far be it from me to pry into your prosaic activities. But if you must know the truth, I tell you here and now that I can get a better watch than that for three dollars and fifty cents. A much better watch.”

  I handed the watch back to her.

  “There’s little purpose in defending the man before me,” I said. “Without question he’s a fraud. An unmitigated fakir. He’s brummagem. He amuses me to the nth degree. When you leave this room I shall start laughing about him.”

  She chained the watch to her wrist without a word, and then she went away She was hurt. She does not wear the watch now. She hasn’t worn it since then. It lies in her dresser-drawer, in a little box which I discovered one night when I went through her things in search of cigarettes.

  The wristwatch is of no significance. True, it was an inexpensive watch and Mike Schwartz could have afforded better. But Jenny coming to my room and asking me what I thought of it—ah! Now there you have something most significant! It reveals her own suspicions. The common run of writer would have praised the watch elaborately, distorting the truth. But not I. My words stabbed like a hot knife. For in her heart she knows what Mike Schwartz really wants, and I know too. The watch was a pitiful subterfuge, an insult. But for all that, it is no affair of mine, nor am I greatly interested.

  There is nothing between Jenny and me. I live on one side of the hall and she lives on the other, upstairs in the second story of a two-story house. The other room up here is the bathroom. When first I came here I thought there might be something to it all. I heard clicking high heels in the hall and in the next room, and in the bathroom I saw pale blue things hanging out to dry. I touched these, for they pleased me, and their softness and fragrance brought pleasant little things to my imagination. But nothing happened.

  When I heard the click of high heels I sat in my room, always in the evening, and pounded violently on the typewriter, hammered it for all I was worth, writing anything that came to
mind, just anything, the Gettysburg Address, or a Shakespearean sonnet, or anything, only hitting the keys with great force so that the sound carried, for there are some who will know a writer is in a room by the noise of his typewriter, and they will like the sound and come to the door and ask him if he writes, and what he writes—I mean women—for so it has happened to me many times, for I have lived here and there in this great city, in houses, apartments, and hotels, and I know the business of violently whanging a typewriter is invariably successful, invariably bringing someone, a man or woman, often enough a woman who is lonely and curious; and sometimes, oftener than not, a man, a man in a rage who tells you to cut out the racket so he can get some sleep.

  I lived in this house three days before I saw Jenny. The noise of my big machine never lured her, never once caused her to pause at my door and wonder, and perhaps investigate. This surprised me, and I thought of other methods. But in one way or another all things come from my typewriter, and I could do nothing more, so I hit the keys even harder. This was at night, after I heard her get into bed. But the noise never disturbed her. Apparently she slept without interruption. Finally it was she who lured me.

  It was the telephone. Every evening it rang continuously at the bottom of the stairs, and it was always for her. At length I weakened, took my aching fingertips away from the keyboard, stood at the door and listened to the telephone conversation. This time she spoke to a person called Jimmie.

  “Why Jimmie, you darling!”

  “Oh Jimmie, you bad boy!”

  “Why Jimmie, you bad bad boy!”

  “Jimmie! You naughty thing!” I listened to this sort of thing for a long time, stunned by the stupidity of such banal dialogue. As soon as she hung up I rushed back to my typewriter and began pounding again. But it was no use. Her feet mounted the stairs and crossed the hall without pause, and then her door closed.

  Later I met this Jimmie. He was a stupid clod, a dandy who wore checkered coats and the neckties of a savage, a bounder who was not impressed by the daring simplicity of my bare feet in house slippers, even though my feet were on Jenny’s table and I smoked a pipe larger and longer than any other pipe in the city of Los Angeles. Jimmie was a magazine subscription agent.

  “I sell to all the big shots,” he said. “Anne Harding is one of my customers.”

  No doubt he expected me to fall out of my chair at this. I smoked in silence, while he and Jenny waited for my comment.

  “Who?” I said. “Not the cinema actress? Very tragic. Very tragic indeed.”

  Later Jenny told me even more of this Anne Harding pishposh. “She buys all her magazines from Jimmie. Dozens of them.”

  “That,” I said, “is curiously unimpressive. Even the fact that no doubt stories of mine were printed in those magazines fails to arouse my enthusiasm.”

  Here again the clever urbanity of my remark was scattered on yokel soil. But it didn’t matter, for I was not greatly interested and her friendship with Jimmie was no affair of mine.

  I will tell the truth about my first conversation with Jenny. It was the night the landlady introduced us. I invited Jenny to my room for a glass of wine. In truth, I tried to shock her. She was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the dresser while I poured the wine. I looked at her squarely.

  “Do you mind if I call you Jenny?” I asked. “The name has an amusing bucolic flavor.”

  “Not at all!” she smiled, because she didn’t know the meaning of bucolic. I handed her a glass of wine.

  “Ummm!” she said. “Thanks!”

  I was studying her face closely, studying it as a student of mankind, a writer, would study it. This made her a bit uneasy. She raised her glass.

  “To you!” she said, “I know you must be a great writer.”

  I touched her glass and laughed. For the moment I became aware that, after all, the girl was not completely hopeless.

  “The matter rests with History,” I said. “I live only in the past and future.”

  We drained the wine glasses. I poured two more.

  “Jenny,” I said. “I am a man of Truth. Permit me to make an observation about you.”

  She lifted her glass.

  “Fire away, Mr. Charles Dickens! Give me both barrels!”

  “Jenny,” I said. “I’m like my great predecessor, Huneker. Nothing on the face of the earth annoys me more than a teasing demirep.”

  “Demirep?” she said. “What’s a demirep?”

  “A doxy.” I smiled.

  “Doxy?” she said. “I’ll bite, professor. What’s that?”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “A doxy,” I said, “is a harridan.”

  “What’s a harridan?”

  “A harridan.” I said, “is a mopsy.”

  “You’ve got me again, professor. What’s a mopsy?”

  “A mopsy is a trull.”

  “A trull?” She frowned, then laughed. “It sounds good, but I’m still at sea.”

  “A Delilah,” I said. “A Thaïs. A Messalina. A Jezebel.”

  “Come again,” she said. “Try once more.”

  “The dictionary is right there. Look it up.”

  She put down her glass and sprang for the dictionary.

  “Sure enough!” she said. “Which one?”

  “You’d better try trull,” I said.

  And she did. Then she closed the dictionary.

  “But what’s this got to do with me?”

  I am not sure what I answered is true. But no one will deny that it had the sound and force of a startling analysis, a bombshell, and true or false, one worth exploding, simply for the effect.

  “Jenny,” I said. “All womankind is an embryonic trull. The tendency is powerful, and from puberty women must fight it as they would typhus.”

  She put down her wine glass, snuffed out her cigarette, and walked out of the room.

  “You’re horrible,” she said. “Just awful.”

  But as time went on nothing I said shocked her. Every night we talked, I doing most of the talking, and she paying no attention to what I said. If you were to ask, there is no word or phrase of mine which Jenny could remember. This is a tragedy. I have said some fine things, sometimes even surprising myself. I am unable to recall them now, but I remember that at the time they were spectacular, exquisitely phrased and worth remembering.

  I have said that I wish to tell the truth. I must pause now I to admit that I have failed. I have said that Jenny is fat and not beautiful. That is rather inaccurate, for Jenny is none of those things. No. Jenny is a beauty. She is slender and supple. Her poise is as arrogant as a rose. It is a joy to live near her. The hair on her head is a wonderful thing. It is neither red nor gold, but both, and she combs it with mysterious intricacy, knobbing it at her neck in the manner of Slavic women. She has been married, but now she is divorced. Her husband was a poultry man. This amused me.

  “Jenny,” I said. “What does a poultry man look like?”

  There was no reason for this. As a matter of fact, I know perfectly well what a poultry man looks like. My uncle in Colorado Springs is in the poultry business, and I worked all one summer on his ranch.

  Mike Schwartz is a widower. I would classify him as handsome. He has a son, a fine boy, six years old. Sometimes Mike brings the boy here to see Jenny. The boy calls her Aunt Jenny. He has a wonderfully strong little body, with legs like burnished ivory, and curly hair. A fine boy—a son such as I would proudly claim as my own. He is very noisy. Sometimes he wanders into my room and I sit him before my typewriter and allow him to hammer the keys like a monkey. He enjoys this. A fine boy. It is a tragedy that his father is such a dumb cluck. The boy has pronounced literary talent. If he were mine I would make a literary genius out of him. At twelve I would see to it that he wrote and published an autobiography. It would be a sheer masterpiece, I would see to that too. As it is, the boy will unquestionably grow up to be a boob like his father, a man without poetry who falls on his knees and bawls like a calf as he presen
ts a girl a lump of metal.

  Jenny grows excited when Schwartz brings the boy. It begins to look as though Schwartz is going to marry her. She has the boy’s photograph on her dresser and she worships it. I for one am pretty sick of that boy’s photograph. Every time I enter her room to borrow a cigarette I must tolerate it shoved under my nose, together with a collection of the lad’s bright sayings. They are no doubt very fine, but I am not interested. I like the boy, he is a fine fellow, but his puerile epigrams bore me. I am really not interested at all.

  Mike Schwartz comes regularly to see Jenny. Every night before he arrives Jenny clashes into my room and asks if her dress is fitted correctly, if her hair looks nice, if I like this or that pair of shoes. Mike Schwartz has money, great stacks of it in the bank. He is the owner of a brickyard. Nor is that all. He owns a house in Los Angeles, a mansion in Bel Air, to say nothing of two Packards and a Pontiac.

  “Jenny,” I said, “he may own a brickyard and a castle in Bel Air, but does he have a soul? Has he any depth? I personally have observed him closely, and I fail to discover any beauty in his nature. He is a cold, bloodless, money-grubbing Babbitt.”

  “He’s awfully sweet,” Jenny said.

  “A perfectly meaningless judgment. Has he any perception of the finer things of life? The deep, enduring things?”

  “He’s just sweet. And big as he is, he’s gentle as a lamb.”

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling.

  “Ah, Jenny. Your naïveté saddens me. It makes me want to go blindly into the night and weep on a high lonely hill for the sorrows of women. The mere fact that Schwartz is gentle proves nothing. A cow is gentle too. What I mean is, does he have any poetry in his blood?”

  “He’s never written me any.”

  “The man is a fraud. He amuses me. He has no more poetry than a stomach pump.”