He turned to the lecturer again.
“Not to mislead you, I am rubbing out these diagrams, which are symbols and do not represent any existing thing. They are a convention for something not understood . . . these things have never been seen, they have only been divined by rods, screens, jets of metal and vanes in vacuums. The newest is not necessarily the best . . . I am not dogmatic, do not you be . . . theories do not grew out of date . . . Our course will not be dramatic as to-night’s lecture has been. It is for sober students.”
The class applauded faintly, not sure if it was correct in a lecture on physics.
They paddled round getting their cloaks and umbrellas, and left in a sort of scrimmage, a shameful collection of dillydaddles. Compared with the universe, they were in a disheartening disorder. The black-coated servant continued to sneer as he put away the apparatus.
The rain had stopped; they walked to the quay. When they came through the little park of Lachlan Place, Joseph said:
“I had better go and get my coat: I left it in the place.”
“Funny,” answered Baruch; “the lights are on.”
“Chamberlain’s working late over his accounts.”
He came out in a minute:
“Funniest thing I ever struck. Montagu and Withers are there by themselves going over the accounts. Perhaps Chamberlain’s gone out for a walk. They didn’t look pleased to see me.”
“They’re cooking up something. Perhaps the bank manager’s coming down to look over the place.”
“I’m goddamned tired.”
“I hope it’s fine for our picnic Saturday.”
“What picnic’s that?”
“I didn’t ask you, Jo? What a shame. You’ll come along. It’s the crowd. Your cousins will be there.”
“Where to?”
“The Lane Cove River, I think. Go on the spree for once; you never have any fun.”
“All right, I’ll see. Good-night!”
“Good-night; see you to-morrow.”
7
Under the eschscholtzias. Montagu a skunk, Withers not a
social type. Castaways in a busy harbour. Brother and sister.
Examples of the long thoughts of youth; a mediaeval tyrant.
The sons of Clovis. Catherine wanders again.
On Saturday a fresh breeze blew under a sun-drenched sky. At twelve the city was full of feet and wheels; at two, pigeons picked at dung in the centre of the principal streets, the untrodden macadam shone blue and the air was clean and still. In the weekends, during the six months’ fair season, the whole city empties its workers like a shovel emptying nutshells, on to the beaches, river banks, bay, green suburbs, to the tennis-courts, boat-races, horse-races, baths and public reserves.
Baruch and Joseph hustled out of the office, putting their coats on, and smelling of soap. They sat down in the little park under the tiger-yellow cannas and the eschscholtzias. The dark humus exuded a honey-scented moisture in the heat. The heat soaked through them and the wind flitted over the blades of grass.
“We have time,” said Baruch when they had eaten their sandwiches; “let’s walk round the sea-wall.”
“We’ll go and see the animals in the Gardens,” said Joseph.
“If you like, but I hate animals, with their thick furry foreheads, and moochy caged ways.”
“There are monks too,” suggested Joseph with sympathy.
“All right, we’ll peek at the little monks. Funny,” he continued, partly to himself, “how the monkeys obviously recognise that we are another sort of ape: But with us, there’s a shape, here’s a shape, everywhere a shape; and nothing but a strange coincidence, a bizarre collusion of Nature and Irony. Then, their pure stupidity might have taught us we’re animals; look at us, smells, diet, love, fighting, defecation, the same. We could invent God in our image, but not animals. Very dull indeed, our respected ancestors. You might say the mind of man has only just begun to blink up out of the primeval ooze; he has no more mind than that clod, or that century plant there, slow blighter. The same as a century plant. For years and years, four generations, he laps up sun, rain, air, juices; grows a big stalk, looks important, and then puts out a flower once in a hundred years. What happens? A marvel: everyone runs to look at it. Whereas the rose that flowers four times a year gets no applause. When we get a bright idea once in a century, how we applaud ourselves. With much ach-and-krach and hitting each other on the head we fall, after thousands of years, below the ant, who works in pure Communism. And for that we consider ourselves the dandy of creation; something with a soul. Of course, what else could explain such remarkable achievements, but the Intangible and the Unknowable?”
“You would say,” said Joseph cautiously, “that a monkey is a sort of imitation of men in nature; a freak, like the mandragore root.”
“I’ll get you a book on Darwin’s theory,” said Baruch.
“He rejoined the Church at the end and said that all he had done had been a mistake,” remarked Joseph doggedly.
Baruch looked at him intently.
“Funny; you have such a clear mind. You wouldn’t say that if you knew anything about it. I trust in your clear mind.”
Joseph kicked the pebbles on the path. Blarney.
They saw a man, a familiar figure, throwing bits of bread to the black swans. It was Withers.
“Hurro, Tom!” cried Baruch joyously.
“Lo!”
“Not grouchy at present?”
“No fear. You must think I’ve got a rotten temper. I have, but I’ve been sitting half an hour in the sun, there, out of the wind. The sailing-boats look like bonnets bowling along the water, from there. It makes even the old girls sitting, palsied, acid, disappointed, unresigned to old age, it makes even them sweet-tempered. One’s been entertaining me with the history of her life, to amuse me because I looked lonely, she said. After all, compared with her, my troubles sound like an attack of the jim-jams, that’s all. They have to pay rent, too, after all, and they have to eat, and dress means more to them than to us, and if they don’t get a boy every one calls them an old maid: and if they go astray, wow! what ructions! That old girl looks strong and fat, but she thinks of nothing all day long but that she is an old maid, with no one to care for her, no one to leave her money to buy her quarters of tea, no grandchildren to come and look at her tombstone. She can’t sleep at night for thinking of it. The old don’t sleep, anyhow. She’s ashamed, she told me, she never had one man. She’s sorry she didn’t take a man off the streets, a truck-driver, anybody; can you imagine it? Well, it put me in a better humour; it’s terribly funny. And you feel, what a breed! Who stops them from breaking loose? There’s no actual law; and if they all got up on their hindlegs and broke loose together—he-he, Lysistrata reversed. It’s their own fault, after all: enterprise bred out of them since the wigwam, I suppose. Well, I don’t give a damn, it’s not my business; but it gives me the pip. Men and women, the world’s yellow and a pack of beggars. I reckon we need discipline. It must have been better in the martial ages. There weren’t too many people either, they got killed off. And the women had several husbands. Ought to be like that now. They wouldn’t cackle so much.”
“Gay and gallant as usual,” cried Baruch.
“A marriage in the family,” said Withers, turning and walking with them; “Effie’s marrying her Dave, from what I hear. Good thing too. Wonder the boss hasn’t gone bust a hundred times already. I’m feeling rather more bouncing myself. Dave’ll probably make a go of it. He’s going to run the business, you know. He’s put up some money. The bank has taken his guarantees and Montagu’s. I’ve learned a thing or two. Montagu and I went over it last night (when you came in, Baguenault). I’m keeping my eye on that bounder just for the good of the family.”
“Thanks,” said Baruch drily.
“Montagu, a skunk, dyed in the wool, tipped the bank off—he knows the manager personally—that Chamberlain was not good for his overdraft. Chamberlain was crying this morning, after
you left. ‘But what’s a bank for but to give you credit when you’re stuck? A man don’t want it when he’s in the funds.’They’ve kept on extending it, Greg says loftily: ‘but I’ll try to persuade the manager, if you’ll hand over all the books and let me see what can be done.’ ‘Gladly, old man,’ and he gives him his books, a shameful display. ‘Go now, Montie, I’m too hard pressed: luck’s against me.’ We had him on his knees. He’s so ridiculously proud of his little tinpot press; that was our cue.”
“What’s the game?” put in Joseph.
“We’ll be part owners, and the overdraft is extended. Chamberlain’s out altogether. I don’t know all the details. It’s the only way I see of getting my money back. Effie’s willing; we spoke to her secretly. Her head’s screwed on right. Her mother has a bit of land with a cottage at Blackheath; they go there at Christmastime. Effie’ll get her mother to sell it. The money’ll go into the business when Dave Jonas and Effie are married, to pay the overdraft, as a wedding present to Dave; besides, they owe it to him, for the car, or at least some of it. Only one consideration, that Chamberlain, that big slob, is eased out. He can look around: he’s no good for this business. He can work as foreman if he wants it.”
Withers laughed long and softly. “I’m a good manager; they play into my hands.”
“The business is his pride,” said Baruch mournfully. “What will he do when he finds he’s eased out, and by his daughter, son-in-law, wife and two closest friends?”
“Didn’t he give me the boot?”
“He’s just the sort of man to jump over the Gap.”
“He might,” said Joseph slowly. His mind travelled to Fisherman’s Bay. There two nights ago, when he came home, a rowing-boat was tied to one of the piles of the wharf; in the rowing-boat a tarpaulin covering the body of the Gap’s latest victim, a bankrupt shop-keeper.
“He looks back at his life,” Withers went on canting, “and says, ‘I’ve always been a good fellow, really good, never done harm to a fly. People have always liked me, I was Grand Master of the Lodge; I had the best credit in town. I can’t understand how all this has come on me, how I came to have an overdraft, to sign notes for Montie, to sign notes at the garage, to have this big debt. I don’t know how I came to deceive my wife or let my daughter run wild with a young man. It all came on me; but I don’t know how.’ Touching! ‘That’s funny,’ he continues to me this morning (he was slightly shnicker, weeping), ‘I was such a good young man. Until twenty-five I never told a lie, touched a drop, or even went with a girl. I was really pure. I went to church twice on Sundays and used to take the Sunday School out into the fields, fields we call them, and tell them stories in ‘God’s own tabernacle’, I used to tell them. Funny, I always loved Nature and my fellow-man. I’m weak, not bad,’ said he. God, I had to keep blowing my nose into my handkerchief to keep from laughing at him: but I was irritated too. I could have brought my fist down on his red tear-bleary face.”
“You must be sorry for him,” said Baruch. “He’s not a bad friend to you, apart from the fact that he absorbs cash like dry-dust water. But you knew that.”
“But don’t you see? If I’d had my own money in my pocket, I could have gone shares with Jonas on a proper basis. Now I’m practically a slave. They have me in a vice. I can’t move. If it weren’t for me, seven years ago he would have been ruined, the customers would have thrown back every bit of work. His business is mine; my blood’s been poured into it. I’ve run all round the town, I’ve managed everything. It was me got the new press out here on credit, and got it through the Customs. I tell you, it’s my business, practically speaking, and now to see it whistled into Montie’s pocket, my own business! I always expected to own it. I would have married Effie, if she hadn’t got tied up with Jonas, but I’m a stinker myself, and can’t foist on a young girl a chap that’s likely to see the blue devils any night. Rotten luck. Always defeated, always defeated, with my brains! I’m the smartest man around there. No wonder I’m fuddled half the time. I wish I’d been some imbecile old woman who didn’t know an overdraft from a hole in the ground. Their idiocies. Men have a tough life. All fighting, and at the end nothing.” He looked sourly at a young woman trailing languidly in front of them. “Lot of fowls. I would have married Effie: she’s a nice kid, but loose like them all. I know she’s been the mistress of three men at least. And all that fancy business. She’ll stick at nothing. Lively.”
“We should have struck long ago,” said Baruch regretfully.
“No, I don’t strike. I want to run things my own way. I’m not a whining underdog, I want to be manager, I want my money. I’ll make my own way or not at all.”
“Well, our relations are stereotyped,” concluded Baruch drily. “This identical situation occurs in hundreds of small shops, because we’re not organised. You’re too good to strike, you want to run other workers. Joseph’s priest won’t let him strike. You’re intriguing with a man you know to be a pig, Montagu; I’m counting on getting away to America. That’s the great secret: how does a small minority oppress a large majority?—we count on making a getaway. We don’t realise our whole life is bound up with a million others: we’re all individuals. We believe in God, luck, astrology.”
“Aw, don’t begin that,” said Withers bitterly. “I’m not a social type, true. I don’t give a damn about my fellow-workers. To begin with, I don’t want to be like them, or live in a commonwealth with them, or vote with them, or argue with them about some idiotic politics or Socialist theory. It gives me a pain in the neck. And I don’t want them to worry about me. I like to be alone and I want to die alone; no comrades for me, thanks. And I’m not going to sign on with a lot of hot-headed fanatics who want to upset everything, out of jealousy, because their brains aren’t good enough to get them on. Nothing but ‘the State’; the State should do everything, feed them, their women, their kids. I’m a man. I want to fight my own battles. But there’s another reason: I’d better tell the truth, or you’ll be after me: I’m not so heroic; it’s not that. I just don’t want to fight, I just don’t want to. I’ve had too much trouble. I don’t want any more, with going to arbitration, or with rioting, or with strikes. I want rest; I want to make a bit of dough and sock it away so that I’ll have a plug to chew when I’m old and sour. I’m no pioneer or working-class martyr. All that makes me sick besides. They’re all on the make, or so badly off they couldn’t be worse off in gaol: so they get into gaol. And I keep a level head, too. I don’t run after the first demagogue who gets up on a soap-box and shouts, ‘Liberty, Equality!’ It’s a lie He knows as well as you and me that there isn’t any. Look at Joseph; with all the equality and liberty in the world, he wouldn’t get on as well as you, Baruch. Nah, you can’t change human nature, or differences in brain, or cunning. Then I like to think for myself. Your Socialist Parties have credos like the Churches; as for the Communist Party, I’m dashed if I’m going to spend my life at a party’s beck and call, doused by a secret conclave of Doges, taken down by some little duffer of a secretary who only wants to get, by making himself big in the eyes of a few mahogany-heads, a position he couldn’t get by hard work, and who’s only anxious to get a soft Government job under his particular type of Government. Certainly, turn the old ones out and put the new ones in. Smart, that is. Nah, nah; leave me alone. Besides, I could join your things, but I’m not a hero; if they clubbed me on the napper, I’d yell for mercy straight away so that I could go back to my natural element crooking my elbow at the corner pub. If they started to torture me I’d split on the whole gang and anyone else who came into my mind. It’s a fine show, your revolution. After all, own up: you only stick up for it because you know you’d be somebody in a revolution, you have the capacity for demagogy. As if the workers haven’t enough trouble paying the rent, without getting themselves into trouble with the police and bosses, getting locked out. There’s plenty of unemployment; they can always find scabs. Look at the wharves now; swarming with scabs. They’ll all scab in time, and your fine Foll
iots don’t live too hard, do they? And I bet you’ll be different when you get a nice pozzy with Farmer. You can’t change human nature; you’ll always have jealousy, squabbling, and greed.”
“There are other traits in human nature,” said Baruch. “As you know yourself, your arguments do not shine by their originality, but I’m not going to fight with you now. It’s too ridiculous.”
“Yes, leave me alone,” agreed Withers. “If you don’t want me to get narked and nurse my grudge all the afternoon. You know me, Baruch, I’m not meat for your fry. You don’t take me in.”
“All right, all right. Let’s be getting along, it’s nearly two-thirty.”
“When you get older, you’ll know the world better. The capitalist system is here for a jolly long time yet: you’ll see. Wait till you get your job as political secretary, too: you won’t be so keen for starting study circles and strikes.”
“I understand,” said Baruch.
“I’m as good a Socialist as anyone, but I’m practical,” said Withers.
There was no reply.
“I’m a good Communist too, if it comes to that, but I use my eyes,” Withers finished irritably.
He was silent as they walked back, round the bay, towards the wharf, where a launch, already half-full, awaited them. Baruch looked down at their dusty feet, at Jo’s boot curiously fixed with wire—or a hairpin, he decided, after examining it sideways for a moment. Wither’s face had hollows, the eyes were sunken, from drinking the night before, the temples were fatigued. The expressions were rather the same, although the physiognomies were so different. The faces were almost lifeless in repose as if after they had been created in their idiosyncrasies, they had been lightly stamped in the same press. There was no sparkle; only an expression of endurance of hard luck. In a moment Jo cried joyfully, “Yes, that’s our launch, there’s Catherine and Michael!” and Withers, looking up, took on a livelier expression. They all had packages, contributions to the table.
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 23