Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “Vat you say?”

  “When I was a kid in Guatemala my folks had a set of gold plate, dishes you know, hundreds of ‘em, all solid gold.”

  Here we touch on Judy’s one mania. She believed and often stated that at one time her parents in Guatemala were enormously wealthy, and in particular were possessed of a wonderful service of gold plate. She would describe this gold plate over and over again to anyone who would listen. Why there were more than a hundred pieces, all solid red gold. Why there were goblets and punch-bowls and platters and wine-pitchers and ladles, why the punch-bowl itself was worth a fortune. Ignorant enough on other subjects, and illiterate enough, Heaven knows, once started on her gold plate, Judy became almost eloquent. Of course, no one believed her story, and rightly so because the gold plate never did exist. How Judy got the idea into her mind it was impossible to say, but it was the custom of people who knew of her mania to set her going and watch her while she rocked to and fro with closed eyes, and hands clasped over her knee chanting monotonously, “More’n a hundred pieces, and all red, red gold,” and so on and so on.

  For a long while her hearers scoffed, then at last she suddenly made a convert, old Knubel, the redheaded Polish Jew, believed her story on the instant. As often as Judy would come to make her monthly report on the shark liver industry, old Knubel would start her going, swallowing her words as a bullion-bag swallows coin. As soon as Judy had finished he would begin to ask her questions.

  “The gold voss soft, hey? und ven you rapped him mit der knuckles now, he rung out didn’t he, yes?”

  “Sweeter’n church bells.”

  “Ah, sweeter nor der church bells, shoost soh. I know, I know. Now let’s have ut egain, more’n a hoondurt bieces. Let’s haf ut all eg-gain.” And again and again Judy would tell him her wonderful story, delighted that she had at last found a believer. She would chant to Knubel by the hour, rocking herself back and forth, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes closed. Then by and by Knubel, as he listened to her, caught himself rocking back and forth, keeping time with her.

  Then Knubel found excuses for Judy’s coming to see him oftener than once a month. The manufacture of cod liver oil out of sharks’ livers needed a great deal of talking over. Knubel knew her story by heart in a few weeks and began to talk along with her. There in that wretched room over the “Bocce” court on the top of Telegraph Hill, the “Mexican” hybrid woman and the Polish Jew, red-headed and paralytic, rocked themselves back and forth with closed eyes and clasped hands sing-songing, “More’n a hundred pieces, all red, red gold”— “More den a hoondurt bieces und alle rad gold.”

  It was a strange sight to see.

  “Judy,” said Knubel, one day when the woman was getting ready to leave, “vy you go, my girl, eh? Stay hier bei me, und alle-ways you will me dat story getellen, night und morgen, alle-ways. Hey? Yes?”

  So it came about that the two were — we will say married, and for over a year, night und morgen Judy the story of the wonderful gold plate ge-told. Then a little child was born to her. The child has nothing to do here, besides it died right away, no doubt its little body wasn’t strong enough to hold in itself the blood of the Hebrew, the Spaniard and the Slav. It died. At the time of its birth Judy was out of her head, and continued so for upwards of two weeks. Then she came to herself and was as before.

  Not quite. “Now ve vill have ut once eg-gain,” said Knubel, “pe-gin, more dan one hoondurt bieces, und alle rad, rad gold.”

  “What’s you talkin’s about?” said Judy with a stare. “Vy, about dat gold blate.”

  “I don’t know about any gold plate, you must be crazy, Knubel. I don’t know what you mean.”

  Nor did she. The trouble of her mind at the time of her little child’s birth had cleared her muddy wits of all hallucinations. She remembered nothing of her wonderful story. But now it was Knubel whose red head was turned. Now it was Knubel who went about telling his friends of the wonderful gold service. But his mania was worse than Judy’s.

  “You’ve got ut, you’ve got ut zum-vairs, you she-swine,” he would yell, clubbing Judy with a table leg. “Vair is ut, you’ve hidun ut. I know you’ve got ut. Vair is dose bunch-powl, vair is dose tsoop sboon?”

  “How do I know?” Judy would shout, dodging his blows.

  In fact how did she know?

  Knubel went from bad to worse, ransacked the house, pulled up the flooring, followed Judy when she went out as well as his game leg would allow, and peeped at her through keyholes when she was at home.

  Knubel and Judy had a neighbor who was also an acquaintance, a Canadian woman who did their washing. Judy was sitting before the kitchen stove one morning when this woman came after the weekly wash. She was dead and must have been dead since the day before, for she was already cold. The Canadian woman touched her shoulder, and Judy’s head rolled sideways and showed where Knubel had — well, she was dead.

  Late in the day the officers found Knubel hiding about the old abandoned “Pavilion” that stands on top of the Hill. When arrested he had a sack with him full of rusty tin pans, plates and old tomato cans that he had gathered from the dump heaps.

  “I got ut,” said Knubel to himself, “I got ut, more dan a hoondurt pieces. I got ut at last.”

  The manufacture of cod liver oil from shark livers has languished of late, because of the hanging of Mister Knubel at San Quentin penitentiary.

  * * *

  And all this, if you please, because of a service of gold plate that never existed.

  FANTAISIE PRINTANIERE

  A SHORT STORY FROM The Wave of November 6, 1897.

  The McTeagues and the Ryers lived at the disreputable end of Polk street, away down in the squalid neighborhood by the huge red drum of the gas works.

  The drum leaked, of course, and the nasty brassy foulness of the leak mingled with the odors of cooking from the ill-kept kitchens, and the reek of garbage in the vacant lots did not improve the locality.

  McTeague had once been a dentist, and had had “parlors” up at the respectable end of the street. But after a while the license office discovered that he had no diploma; in fact, had never attended a college of any sort, and had forbidden him to practice. So McTeague had taken to drink.

  Ryer, some years back, had been a sort of small stock-dealer on the outskirts of Butchertown, and had done fairly well until the Health Board reported him to the Supervisors because he had fattened his hogs on poultices obtained from the City and County Hospital. The result was a lamentable scandal, which finally drove him out of business. So Ryer had taken to drink.

  The Ryers’ home (or let us say, the house in which the Ryers ate and slept), adjoined the house in which the McTeagues ate and slept. You would have thought that this propinquity, joined with the coincidence of their common misfortunes — both victims of governmental persecution — would have insured a certain degree of friendship between the two men. But this was not so at all, a state of feud existed between Montague Ryer and Capulet McTeague. The feud had originated some year or so previous to the time of this tale, in the back room of Gerstle’s “Wein Stube” on the corner opposite the drum. A discussion had arisen between the two men, both far gone in whiskey, as to the lines of longitude on the surface of the globe. Capulet claimed they were parallel throughout their whole extent — Montague maintained they converged at the poles. They discussed this question at length — first with heady words and vociferation, next with hurled pony glasses and uplifted chairs, and finally, after their ejection from the “Stube,” with fists clenched till the knuckles whitened, crooked elbows, and the soles of heavy-shod boots. They arrived at no definite conclusion. Twice since then had they fought. Their original difference of opinion had been speedily forgotten. They fought now, they knew not why — merely for the sake of fighting. The quarrel between them came to be recognized by the “block” as part of the existing order of things, like the reek from the drum and the monthly visit of the rent-collector.

  Ryer had somet
hing the worst of it in these fights. He was a small, lean, pinkish creature, like a split carrot, his mouth a mere long slit beneath his nose. When he was angry his narrow eyes glistened like streaks of bitumen.

  McTeague was a huge blonde giant, carrying his enormous fell of yellow hair, six feet and more above his ponderous, slow-moving feet. His hands, hard as wooden mallets, dangled from arms that suggested twisted cables. His jaw was that of the carnivora.

  Both men thrashed their wives, McTeague on the days when he was drunk, which were many, Ryer on the days when he was sober, which were few. They went about it, each in his own peculiar fashion. Ryer found amusement in whipping Missis Ryer with a piece of rubber hose filled with gravel, or (his nature demanded variety of sensation), with a long, thin rawhide, which he kept hidden between the matresses. He never used fists or boots; such methods revolted him. “What! am I a drayman, am I a hod-carrier!” exclaimed Mister Ryer. When McTeague did not use the fist or the foot, he used the club. Refinement, such as characterized Ryer, was foreign to the ex-dentist. He struck out blindly, savagely, and with a colossal, clumsy force that often spent itself upon the air. The difference between the men could be seen in the different modes of punishment they affected. Ryer preferred the lash of the whip, McTeague the butt. Ryer was cruel, McTeague only brutal.

  While common grievance had not made friends of the two men, mutual maltreatment had drawn their wives together, until no two women on the “block” were more intimate than Trina McTeague and Ryer’s wife. They made long visits to each other in the morning in their wrappers and curl papers, talking for hours over a cuppa tea, served upon the ledge of the sink or a corner of the laundry table. During these visits they avoided speaking of their husbands, because, although the whole “block” knew of the occasional strained relations of their families, the two women feigned to keep the secret from each other. And this in the face of the fact that Missis Ryer would sometimes come over to see Trina with a thin welt across her neck, or Trina return the visit with a blackened eye or a split lip.

  Once, however, only once, they broke in upon their reticence. Many things came of the infringement.

  Among others this fantaisie.

  * * * * *

  During that particular night three dandelions had bloomed in the vacant lot behind the gas works, the unwonted warmth of the last few days had brought back the familiar odor of the garbage heaps, an open car had appeared on the cross-town cable line and Bock beer was on draught at the “Wein Stube,” and Polk Street knew that Spring was at hand.

  About nine o’clock Trina McTeague appeared on the back steps of her house, rolling her washtub before her, preparing to do her monthly washing in the open air on that fine morning. She and Ryer’s wife usually observed this hated rite at the same time, calling shrilly to one another as their backs bent and straightened over the scrubbing-boards. But that morning Trina looked long for Missis Ryer and at last fell a-wondering.

  The fact of the matter was that the night before Ryer had come home sober and had found occasion to coerce Missis Ryer with a trunk-strap. By a curious coincidence McTeague had come home drunk the same evening, and for two hours Trina had been hard put to it to dodge his enormous fists and his hurled boots. (Nor had she been invariably successful).

  At that moment the ex-dentist was sleeping himself sober under the stairs in the front hall, and the whilom stock-dealer was drinking himself drunk in the “Wein Stube” across the street.

  When eleven o’clock had struck and Missis Ryer had not appeared, Trina dried her smoking arms on her skirt, and, going through the hole in the backyard fence, entered the kitchen of the Ryer’s house and called. Missis Ryer came into the kitchen in a blue cotton wrapper and carpet slippers. Her hair was hanging down her back (it was not golden). Evidently she had just arisen.

  “Ain’t you goin’ to wash this mornin,’ Missis Ryer?” asked Trina McTeague.

  “Good mornin,’ Trina,” said the other, adding doggedly, as she sat down hard in a broken chair: “I’m sick and tired a-washin’ an’ workin’ for Ryer.”

  She drew up instinctively to the cold stove, and propped her chin upon her knuckles. The loose sleeve of the wrapper fell away from her forearm, and Trina saw the fresh marks of the trunk-strap. Evidently Ryer had not held that strap by the buckle-end.

  This was the first time Missis Ryer had ever mentioned her husband to Trina.

  “Hoh!” ejaculated Trina, speaking before she thought, “It ain’t alwus such fun workin’ for Mac, either.”

  There was a brief silence. Both the women remained for a moment looking vaguely out of the kitchen door, absorbed in thought, very curious, each wondering what next the other would say. The conversation, almost without their wishing it, had suddenly begun upon untried and interesting ground. Missis Ryer said:

  “I’ll make a cuppa tea.”

  She made the tea, slovening languidly about the dirty kitchen, her slippers clap-clapping under her bare heels. Then the two drew up to the washboard of the sink, drinking the tea from the saucers, wiping their lips slowly from time to time with the side of their hands. Each was waiting for the other to speak. Suddenly Missis Ryer broke out:

  “It’s best not to fight him, or try to git away — hump your back and it’s soonest over.”

  “You couldn’t do that with Mac,” answered Trina, shaking her head with decision; “if I didunt dodge, if I let um have his own way he’d sure kill me. Mac’s that strong he could break me in two.”

  “Oh, Ryer’s strong all-right-all-right,” returned Missis Ryer, “an’ then he’s sober when he fights an’ knows what he’s about, an’ that makes it worse. Look there what he did last night.” She rolled up her sleeve and Trina glanced at the arm with the critical glance of a connoisseur.

  “Hoh,” she said scornfully, “that ain’t a circumstance. I had a row with Mac last night meself, and this is what he did with his fist. Just his fist, mind you, and it only grazed me as it was.” She slipped a discolored shoulder out of her calico gown. The two critically compared bruises. Missis Ryer was forced to admit that Trina’s bruise was the worse. She was vexed and disappointed but rallied with:

  “Yes, that’s pirty bad, but I’ll show you somethin’ that’ll open your eyes,” and she thrust the blue wrapper down from the nape of the neck. “See that scar there,” she said, “that’s the kind of work Ryer can do when he puts his mind to it; got that nearly four months ago and it’s sore yet.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Trina loftily, “little scars, little flesh wounds like that! You never had any bones brokun.

  Just look at that thumb,” she went on proudly, “Mac did that with just a singul grip of his fist; I can’t never bend it again.”

  Then the interminable discussion began; “Luck at that, just look at that, will you.”

  “Ah, that ain’t nothun. How about that, there’s a lick for you.”

  “Why, Mac’s the strongest man you ever saw.”

  “Ah-h, you make me tired, it ain’t a strong man, always, that can hurt the most. It’s the fellah that knows how and where to hit. It’s a whip that hurts the most.”

  “But it’s a club that does the most damage.”

  “Huh! wait till you get hit with a rubber hose filled with gravel.”

  “Why, Mac can knock me the length of the house with his left fist. He’s done it plenty a’ times.” Then they came to reminiscences.

  “Why, one time when Mac came home from a picnic at Schuetzen Park, he picked me right up offun the ground with one hand and held me right up in the air like that, and let me have it with a kitchun chair. Huh! talk to me about Ryer’s little whips, Ryer ain’t a patch on my man. You don’t know what a good thrashun is.”

  “I don’t, hey, you can just listen to what I tell you, Trina McTeague, when I say that Ryer can lay all over your man. You jest ought a’ been here one night when I sassed Ryer back, I tell you I’ll never do that again. Why the worst lickin’ Mister McTeague ever gave you was just little
love taps to what I got. Besides I don’t believe your man ever held you up with one hand and banged you like that with a chair, you wouldn’t a’ lived if he had.”

  “Oh, I ain’t lyun to you,” cried Trina, with shrill defiance getting to her feet. Missis Ryer rose likewise and clapped her arms akimbo.

  “Why,” she cried, “you just said as much yourself, that if you didn’t dodge and get away he’d kill you.”

  “An’ I’ll say it again. I ain’t gowun to eat my words for the best woman that ever wore shoes, an’ you can chew on that, Missus Ryer. I tell you Mac’s the hardust hittun husband a woman ever had.”

  “I just like to have you live here with Ryer a week or so, you’d soon find out who was the best man, an’—” here Missis Ryer came close to Trina and shouted the words in her face. “An’ don’t you sass me either, an talk about eatin’ words, or I’ll show you right here the kind a’ whalin’ Ryer’s taught me.”

  “I guess Ryer, himself, knows who’s the best man of the two, he or Mac,” exclaimed Trina, loftily. “How about that last scrap o’ theirs? If Mac got hold a’ you once and gave you one lick, like the kind I get twenty of evury week, you wouldunt be as well off as your man was when Mac got through with um the time they fought last Washingtun’s burthday, behind the brick kiln. Why Mac could do for the whole three of us, you an’ Ryer an’ I, yes he could, with one hand.”

  “Ah, talk sense, will you,” shouted Missis Ryer, as she moved the previous question. “Ain’t Mister McTeague drunk when he dresses you down, and don’t it stand to reason that he can’t give it to you as hard as Ryer gives it to me when he’s sober?”

  “Do you know anything about it anyways?” said Trina, excitedly, “I tell you he’s a deal worse to me than Ryer ever thought of be-un to you. Ain’t he twysut, three times as strong?”

  “That’s a lie,” retorted Ryer’s wife, vindicating her absent husband with astonishing vehemence.

  “Don’t you tell me I lie again,” shouted Trina, her cheeks flaming, her chin thrust out.