Algren at Sea

by Nelson Algren

  When she saw me coming she held the smile and the smile stayed pure cream. Her hair was down on one side of her face and she had a plain, beseeching face.

  She knew it was time to turn off the smile; yet she couldn’t. She knew all she was doing was grinning like an embarrassed fool at being badly dressed in front of an American millionaire. When she accepted a cigarette I told her to keep the pack.

  She handed the pack back.

  “Gracias, señor.”

  She had shown me a little of what she was like. One cigarette was courtesy, a pack was charity. She didn’t have to grin any longer.

  This struck me as a distinct improvement in manners over those of Mrs. Alfred Paperfish, wife of the Footnote King, to whom I had once, in a moment of absent-mindedness, extended a pack of Chesterfields. She had taken one and handed the pack to her husband, who had put it in his pocket for later.

  “Good for you, Alfred,” she had congratulated him. Meaning he might amount to something yet.

  Perhaps she was running low herself and sensed it was a good moment to change brands. But good for Alfred all the same. He doesn’t smoke. That was how he got his start—by not smoking other people’s cigarettes.

  I was also struck by my own presumption that a hungry woman couldn’t have manners up to those of a well-fed one. A presumption Americans often make. I am now working on the presumption that the closer to hunger anyone is, the better his manners get; and, conversely, the longer it has been since he lacked the price of a meal, the more of a boor he becomes. My reasoning may not be flawless, but it has at least as good a chance of being true as the Paperfish theory that good manners belong to the man who keeps saying I’m Getting Mine until he gets his.

  Now, I may at any moment be able to figure out why the Spanish aren’t as smart as we are, and the minute I do I’ll report in to Clare Luce Tooth. It’s plain to be seen that they aren’t, because if they were they wouldn’t be where they are and we wouldn’t be where we are and I wouldn’t be where I am, talking to a native whose name I don’t know. But who looks farther from home than myself.

  For though her eyes were warm and her smile was white, she was ashamed to be standing in a pair of used-to-be shoes and carrying no handbag at all. There was no brassiere behind her blouse, that was black with white buttons; and no stockings below her skirt, that was gray with black checks. One look was enough to tell she had no pimp. Maybe that was what she was feeling so self-conscious about.

  She wanted to know where I had parked the coche, and I told her I didn’t have a car. She said, Oh, she had taken me for Americano.

  “Sí, Americano,” I assured her.

  “Then where is coche?”

  Honey, we can’t stand here and do this all morning even though I do own two Chryslers and come from Grosse Pointe, I thought, but all I actually asked her was, “Why stand in the doorway when there are chairs?”

  “La cuenta y la puerta,” she summed matters up—if you don’t order something you don’t sit in a chair.

  She was a poor girl badly dressed but not ashamed to eat. She was a poor whore traveling light but she’d sure got down early for breakfast. She was a perfectly lousy whore but maybe she’d never been given a real chance to be a good one. She was a poor girl far from home and in fact she wasn’t a whore at all.

  She was just a woman who had to get downstairs early to have breakfast at all.

  The glance the café-con-leche owner threw me when I brought this one in to his café-con-leche tables told me I’d come down in the world in practically no time at all. That look left me with nowhere to go but up. He was one of those people who won’t rap to you unless you have recently been seen talking to Diana Dors. If his glance hadn’t told me I was keeping bad company, the way he slopped my friend’s coffee into her saucer would have.

  I didn’t look at the cup when he brought mine. I looked at him.

  He didn’t spill a drop. What I’m trying to say is that he put it down carefully. Everybody else has to take chances for this type because he never takes a chance for himself.

  Then I looked at the woman. The reason she was wearing her hair down one side was that that side of her face was pocked. The darkness under her eyes wasn’t eye shadow. She was about thirty-five, but hard times had added a decade to her mileage, so I took ten years off thirty-five. She showed me her carte de seguridad so I wouldn’t think I was dating a security risk, and I showed her my certificate of membership in the Division Street Y.M.C.A., Men’s Division. So she wouldn’t think she was dating a child.

  She was Loren Domingués, born at Torremolinos. I found this of interest, as Torremolinos is a resort town noted for the backwardness of its natives and the forwardness of its Americans. The men of Torremolinos don’t understand why American men are more interested in the young fishermen of Torremolinos than in the young girls of the town. They think it is comical. Wait till they find out.

  Loren Domingués, child of scorn, was three years old at the time of the massacre in the bullring at Badajoz. I was the same age at the time that Stanley Ketchel fought Philadelphia Jack O’Brien. I don’t know what side Loren was on, but most three-year-olds lost. So has everyone born in Spain since except generals and bishops.

  There is a fisherman in the port of Barcelona who can eat fire, and other fishermen say Franco taught him how: once you swallow Franco you can swallow anything.

  I don’t know how good Loren Domingués is at eating fire, but she was very good at swallowing milk. She drank her own and then she drank mine. I asked her if she wanted more and she said yes. When she finished that off I began to look at her a little closer. That’s an awful lot of milk for a single woman.

  After the fourth glass I began to look for milk coming out of her ears. “It is bad to be afraid and it is bad to grow old,” she told me—“but to grow old being afraid—” She broke off, being afraid that talking of fear might be poor pay for milk. Having fear that if she spoke of age she might have no milk at all tomorrow.

  Your body dark and delicious,

  she began to sing loudly enough for me to hear, but not so loudly as to draw the owner’s attention—

  Your body dark and odorous,

  and broke off again, smiling apologetically. Perhaps I did not like Spanish songs?

  “You’re feeling better,” I answered.

  Everybody was feeling better.

  Encouraged, she sang more slowly, as women do when they are really feeling better:Yours is a slim body the hue of sin

  Your kiss is wet, such a kiss is a scandal—

  The Barrio is a city where poor men try to make a living from the sea and poor girls work for whatever men have left over. Sometimes the sea gives a man enough for food and drink, sometimes not enough. When the sea is generous, it gives him a wife for an hour or a night. Lonely men looking to the sea for help; lonely girls looking to men for help. Poor girls of The Barrio looking for money from strangers.

  Strangers in need of poor girls of The Barrio.

  They have put the black tricorn on the head of the gypsy who once played the small guitar at saints’ fairs: he will have no pesos for girls this year.

  The side-street solitary drinks standing up in the violet neon’s flare. The man who drinks wine standing up will have nothing left in his pocket for love—no matter. He is only a postman who never gets a letter himself.

  Your kiss fell on my lips lightly

  Yet the touch of it stays and stays.

  False-promising vendors of the forenoon streets come in darker hours to the Calle San Pablo; to buy love that is all false promising. Has the one who sells the smuggled English cigarettes been past yet? Has the old cobbler come?

  All day the old man bends over a last in a cave of leather, talking to shoes. At the hour when the last pimp has given up, he comes seeking the last unbought whore.

  The old man buys shoes no one else will wear. Never speaks, but shows his money.

  All the next day he will be telling the story of the nig
ht before to his shoes. Has the pharmacist come? The one who wears the white intern’s jacket to sell contraceptives that fit the tongue?

  He lives in a hotel where water and light are turned off between nine and six and he comes looking for a wife between six and nine. He will never know the touch of warm water.

  When Loren Domingués showed her carte de seguridad to the clerk who sits below the hotel stairs, he had to let her in, but the disappointment on his face was plain. A man who comes with Senorita Domingués is one who pays no more than the legal rate for habitación.

  She was a poor girl traveling light who liked swallowing milk better than fire.

  You have kissed my mouth that is the mouth

  of the people

  In your kiss on my mouth

  Mouths you have not known know your kiss.

  My mouth that is the mouth of the people

  Cannot forget.

  The clerk-below-the-stairs would have shown more respect had the man shown up with some elegant mopsie like the small blonde from Córdoba, no more than eighteen, calling herself Encarnación.

  “Bon soir, m’sieur,” this girl who never saw France greets me. Causing me to wonder whether a new people might not be in process, one merging the virtues without the flaws of France and the U.S.A.: forming one noble race of which I will be a leading member. Stanley Ketchel fought Philadelphia Jack O’Brien the same week I was born. My father pedaled to work on a bicycle but O’Brien ran like a thief.

  “C’est la vie, m’sieur, I kiss you lov-ing”—Encarnación pirouettes, wearing no underclothing at all. A single pirouette can sure carry a lot of meaning when it’s done right. All the English she knows is “I kiss you loving.” I was afraid she’d catch cold.

  “Servez-vous, c’ est ça, merci”—I understand: she has put the money that should go for underclothes into dresses. She owns fourteen dresses and six pairs of shoes. She told me so herself. That is very good for a girl working only two hours a night. Talent can spring up anywhere.

  Encarnación has had proposals of marriage in every language of Europe. That isn’t hard to believe, judging by the competition for her around the Café El Kosmo. Though I doubt marriage is the first thing the competitors have in mind.

  She asked me to come to her room to help her count her clothes, as she had recently lost track. I went with her and, what do you know, that girl really does have fourteen dresses and six pairs of shoes! I counted twice to make sure. Then we went back to the café because I wanted to take her picture while there was still a good light. She seemed puzzled about something. My father was born in San Francisco and raised in Black Oak, Indiana, which was at that time hardly more than a village. Later a rich vein of silver tinfoil was discovered there, so the town has now entirely disappeared.

  I took Encarnación’s picture in front of Café El Kosmo with the streetcars called Ataranzas clanging past, and gave her a pencil and paper for her address so I could send her the picture. She handed both to another village child working at the same trade, who could write.

  How did a thing like that happen—a village girl who can write her own language? The Guardia Civil must have slipped.

  The chances of learning to write her own language, for a village child on the town here, are roughly the same as those against her becoming a whore. 8-5 and take your pick.

  In a single bold move, Spain’s fearless leader has abolished prostitution and emancipated women simply by herding the unwanted girls of the villages into the back streets of the cities, where nobody wants them either. A girl from the country now has as good a chance as a girl from the city to become a whore, so half the battle against vice has been won. When Franco has finished wiping out corruption in Spain he can come to work for us.

  The war the Germans and Italians won here wasn’t won against Communism after all. It was won against Loren Domingués and Encarnación Castell.

  Meanwhile, it would be a nice idea if someone would buy chairs for the girls of Barcelona who have to stand up all day, in narrow doors as well as wide. Who also wait on the terraces or walk down the Rambla between the flowers.

  Between Soho and the Rue Saint-Denis, Dublin to the Barrio-Chino, there is a vast wasteland that cannot be seen from any plane. A continent of young women abandoned more wantonly than sheep, than dogs, than cattle are ever abandoned.

  A room of one’s own doesn’t sound like much, but to a poor girl of Spain who doesn’t want to make her living on her back it sounds like the hope of those people in Hell who want ice water. There are many empty rooms in France, and Spanish girls are the best housekeepers in the world. The French say so, who keep house well themselves. The Spanish girl will work for little more than enough to eat and a place to stay. The trick is to get out of the country.

  So the strong girls with big feet come to the Barrio-Chino from the villages of the barren south, because in such villages children go barefoot their whole childhood. Ash-blondes from Córdoba or doe-colored women with a touch of Moor, girls from the Balearics or the Canaries. By the time one gets to the Barrio she has shoes and knows how to say “I kiss you lov-ing.”

  All she needs now is a place to stand.

  I have found the clue to the everlasting smile of The-Porter-Who-Never-Has-It-Made. The hotel’s menu explains it:In an Italian restaurant, a customer

  who asked to see the manager was told,

  “You are the Manager, sir.”

  Below it is the boast:Le Patron c’est vous, monsieur.

  And, under the Spanish menu:El Dueño es Ud., señor.

  The Spanish have had to go to the French to learn the proper attitudes of service. But your average Spaniard can’t learn service. I understood this when I saw the waiter serving me a napkin. He brought it held high between two forks and deposited it with care before me, that I might see for myself that its spotless purity was unstained. I didn’t mind that it had the remains of someone else’s gaspacho from the night before on it. A lot of people like a cold soup before they turn in.

  What gets me is that the hotel takes such precautions for me against the germs on the waiter’s hands, but won’t spare me a bar of soap. I’ll take my chances on the waiter’s germs if someone will put a bar of Lifebuoy in the bathroom.

  The porter is beginning to look like a piggybank to me. What is this everlasting smile? Was the man raised in Los Angeles?

  In front of a cave called Club Java I heard a woman singing:This is a great big city

  There’s a million things to see

  But the one I love is missing

  ’n there’s no town big enough for me

  Everyone in The Club Java looked like he was raised in East St. Louis, including the bartender, but the paper on the bar wasn’t the Globe-Democrat, it was Arriba. Arriba, as in Arriba España! meaning “Property Owners of Spain, Arise!” On the cover is the customary photograph of El Porko saluting other investors.

  I myself was one of that happy number of Americans who once hoped somebody would defeat the Italians and Germans. I know I was thinking along those lines because I joined the local chapter of Rear-Echelon Radicals Against Fascism. There were at that time many American writers, mostly in New York City, whose politics were left wing because of a shortage of business opportunities in the right wing. None of these could go to Spain to do any actual fighting themselves because they had a magazine called Partisan Review which the editors decided was indispensable to culture, the thing the Spanish people were then fighting to preserve. I didn’t go to Spain to fight either, but this was only because I didn’t want to die young. A flimsy excuse. I didn’t want to give up listening to Bessie Smith.

  It’s mighty strange beyond a doubt,

  No man can use you when you’re down and out.

  I saluted the photograph to amuse the bartender, but he wasn’t about to be amused. He fought on the winning side in the Civil War but they didn’t give him a prize. So he merely looked glum and pushed down one thumb.

  He was a little late in turning d
own a thumb. While Americans who were turning down their thumbs on El Porko twenty-five years ago are now putting them up. Chiefly rear-echelon liberals against Fascism who may earnestly point out that the bartender of The Java isn’t as badly off as he would have been under Hitler. I’ve never cared for this Reader’s Digest type of Richard Rovere-ish product, however marketable. To bring the record up to date, I still don’t.

  In the women’s prison at Alcalá de Henares there are ten Christian Democrats serving from ten to thirty years. One, who was a student of twenty when she was arrested in 1941, has contracted tuberculosis. Another, a woman of fifty-five who has now done eighteen years, is paralyzed. Two days after Eisenhower’s visit to Madrid in 1959, seventeen Christian Democrat Catholics were put on trial for distributing leaflets at a football game. One received a sentence of eight years at hard labor. The other sixteen got terms of from six months to six years. Records on 1,900 political prisoners belie the insistence of El Porko that there are no political prisoners in Spain.

  An American wearing a white pullover on which the name HANK had been sewn with red thread came into The Java and sat beside me. Hank was looking for someone to tell how hard it is to get ham and eggs in this country. He looked at me steadily but I wouldn’t rap to him. Finally he asked me the time, so I had to give him an opening.

  He told me he was from Milford Junction, Ohio, and had been walking all over Barcelona. “I heerd there was hoo-ers in this town but I could of done better in Columbus. Ain’t seen nare one.”

  What country did HANK think he was in?

  The bartender says when a country is at war everybody ought to go. But that if there is another in his own, he will give up his turn for once to somebody who has never had a chance to go before.