by Jack Kerouac
It was cool along the river. Behind him, the energetic thrum of New York City sighed and pulsed as though Manhattan Island itself were an unharmonious wire plucked by the hand of some brazen and busy demon. The young man turned and swept his dark, curious eyes along the high rooftops of the city, and down toward the harbor where the island’s chain of lights curved in a mighty arc, sultry beads in the midsummer mist strung in confused succession.
His cigar held the bitter taste he had wanted in his mouth; it felt full and ample between his teeth. On the river, he could distinguish faintly the hulls of the anchored merchant ships. A small launch, invisible except for its lights, glided a weaving path alongside the dark freighters and tankers. With quiet astonishment he leaned forward and watched the floating points of light move slowly downriver in liquid grace, his almost morbid curiosity fascinated by what might have seemed commonplace to another.
This young man, however, was no ordinary person. He presented a fairly normal appearance, just above average height, thin, with a hollow countenance notable for its prominence of chin and upper lip muscles, and expressive mouth lined delicately yet abundantly from its corners to the thin nose, and a pair of level, sympathetic eyes. But his demeanor was a strange one. He was accustomed to hold his head high, so that whatever he observed received a downward scrutiny, an averted mien that possessed a lofty and inscrutable curiosity.
In this manner, he smoked his cigar and watched the Drive saunterers pass by, for all outward purposes at peace with the world. But he was broke and he knew it; by tomorrow he would be penniless. With a shade of a smile, which he accomplished by raising a corner of his mouth, he tried to recall how he had spent his eight hundred dollars.
The night before, he knew, had cost him his last hundred and fifty dollars. Drunk for two consecutive weeks, he had finally achieved sobriety in a cheap hotel in Harlem; from there, he recalled, he had taken a cab to a small restaurant on Lenox Avenue where they served nothing but spare ribs. It was there he’d met that cute little colored girl who belonged to the Young Communists League. He remembered they’d taken a taxi down to Greenwich Village where she wanted to see a certain movie. . . . wasn’t it Citizen Kane? And then, in a bar on MacDougall Street, he lost track of her when he met up with six sailors who were broke; they were from a destroyer in dry-dock. From then on, he could remember riding in a taxi with them and singing all kinds of songs and getting off at Kelly’s Stables on 52nd Street and going in to hear Roy Eldridge and Billie Holliday. One of the sailors, a husky dark-haired pharmacist’s mate, talked all the time about Roy Eldridge’s trumpet and why he was ten years ahead of any other jazz musician except perhaps two others who jammed Mondays at Minton’s in Harlem, Lester somebody and Ben Webster; and how Roy Eldridge was really a phenomenal thinker with infinite musical ideas. Then they had all rode to the Stork Club, where another sailor had always wanted to go, but they were all too plastered to be admitted in, so they went to a dime-a-dance joint where he had bought up a roll of tickets for the gang. From there they had gone to a place in the East Side where the Madame sold them three quarts of Scotch, but when they were finished, the Madame refused to let them all sleep there and kicked them out. They were sick of the place and the girls anyway, so they rode uptown and west to a Broadway hotel where he paid for a double suite of rooms and they finished the Scotch and flopped off in chairs, on the floor, and on the beds. And then, late the next afternoon he woke up and found three of the sailors sprawled about in a litter of empty bottles, sailor caps, glasses, shoes, and clothing. The other three had wandered off somewhere, perhaps in search of a bromo seltzer or tomato juice.
Then he had dressed up slowly, after taking a leisurely shower, and strolled off, leaving the key at the desk and making a request to the hotelkeeper not to disturb his slumbering buddies.
So here he sat, broke except for fifty cents. Last night had cost $150 or so, what with taxis, drinks around, hotel bills, women, cover charges, and everything else; his good time was over for this time. He smiled as he remembered how funny it was when he woke up a few hours previous, on the floor between a sailor and an empty quart bottle, and with one of his moccasins on his left foot and the other on the bathroom floor.
Casting away his cigar butt, he rose and moved on across the Drive. Back on Broadway he walked slowly uptown taking in the small shoe stores, radio repair shops, drugstores, newsstands, and dimly lit bookstores with a calm and curious eye.
In front of a fruit stand he stopped in his tracks; at his feet, a small cat mewed up at him in a plaintive little cry, its pink bud of a mouth opened in a heart shape. The young man stooped down and picked up the cat. It was a cute little kitten with grey-striped fur and a remarkably bushy tail for its age.
“Hello, Tiger,” he greeted, cupping the little face in his hand. “Where do you live, huh?”
The kitten mewed a reply, its fragile little frame purring in his hand like a delicate instrument. He caressed the tiny head with his forefinger. It was a minute shell of a skull, one that could be crushed between thumb and forefinger. He placed the tip of his nose against the little mouth until the kitty playfully bit it.
“Ha ha! A little tiger!” he smiled.
The proprietor of the fruit stand stood in front rearranging his display.
“This is your cat?” inquired the young man, walking over with the kitten.
The fruit man turned a swarthy face.
“Yes, that is my wife’s cat.”
“He was on the sidewalk,” said the young stranger. “The street’s no place for a kitty, he’ll get run over.”
The fruit man smiled: “You are right; he must have wandered away from the house.” The man glanced up above the fruit store and shouted: “Bella!”
A woman presently came to the window and thrust her head out: “Hah?”
“Here’s your cat. He almost got lost,” shouted the man.
“Poom-poom!” cooed the woman, espying the kitten in the young man’s hands. “Bring it up Charley; he’ll get hurt in the street.”
The man smiled and took the cat from the stranger’s hands; its weak little claws were reluctant to change hands.
“Thank you!” sang the woman from above.
The young man waved his hand.
“You know women,” confided the fruitseller, “they love little cats . . . they always love the helpless things. But when it comes to men, you know, they’ll want them cruel.”
The young stranger smiled thinly.
“Am I right?” laughed the man, slapping the youth on the back and reentering his store with the kitten, chuckling to himself.
“Maybe so,” mumbled the youth to himself. “How the hell should I know?”
He walked five more blocks uptown, more or less aimlessly, until he reached a combination bar and cafeteria, just off the Columbia University campus. He walked in through the revolving doors and occupied an empty stool at the bar.
The room was crowded with drinkers, its murky atmosphere feverish with smoke, music, voices, and general restlessness known to frequenters of bars on summer nights. The young man almost decided to leave, until he caught sight of a cold glass of beer the bartender was just then setting before another patron. So he ordered himself a glass. The youth exchanges stares with a girl named Polly, who sits in a booth with her own friends.
They stared at each other for several seconds in the manner just described; then, with a casual familiarity, the young man spoke to Polly: “Where you going?”
“Where am I going?” laughed Polly, “I’m not going anywhere!”
But while she laughed at the stranger’s unusual query, she could not help but wonder at his instant possessiveness: for a second, he seemed to be an old friend she had forgotten many years ago, and who had now chanced upon her and resumed his intimacy with her as though time were no factor in his mind. But she was certain she had never met him. Thus, she stared at him with some astonishment and waited for his next move.
He did nothing; he
merely turned back to his beer and drank a meditative draught. Polly, bewildered by this illogical behavior, sat for a few minutes watching him. He apparently was satisfied with just one thing, asking her where she was going. Who did he think he was? . . . it was certainly none of his business. And yet, why had he treated her as though he had always known her, and as though he had always possessed her?
With an annoyed frown, Polly left the booth and went to the young stranger’s side. She did not reply to the inquiries shouted after her by her friends; instead, she spoke to the young man with the curiosity of a child.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Wesley.”
“Wesley what?”
“Wesley Martin.”
“Did I ever know you?”
“Not that I know of,” he answered calmly.
“Then,” began Polly, “why did you? . . . why? . . . how do you . . . ?”
“How do I do what?” smiled Wesley Martin, raising a corner of his mouth.
“Oh hell!” cried Polly, stamping an impatient foot. “Who are you?”
Wesley maintained his amused shadow of a smile: “I told you who I was.”
“That’s not what I mean! Look, why did you ask me where I was going? That’s what I want to know.”
“Well?”
“Well for God’s sake don’t be so exasperating—I’m asking you, you’re not asking me!” By this time Polly was fairly shouting in his face; this amused Wesley, for he was now staring at her wide-eyed, with his mouth open, in a fixed, sustained glee which was all at once as mirthless as it was tremendously delighted. It seemed as though he were about to burst into guffaws of laughter, but he never did; he only stared at her with roguish stupefaction.
At a point where Polly was ready to be hurt by this uncomplimentary attitude, Wesley squeezed her arm warmly and returned to his beer.
“Where are you from?” pressed Polly.
“Vermont,” mumbled Wesley, his attention fixed on the bartender’s operations at the tap.
“What’re you doing in New York?”
“I’m on the beach,” was the reply.
“What’s that mean?” persisted Polly in her child’s wonder.
“What’s your name?” posed Wesley, ignoring her question.
“Polly Anderson.”
“Polly Anderson—Pretty Polly,” added Wesley.
“What a line!” smirked the girl.
“What’s that mean?” smiled Wesley.
“Don’t give me that stuff . . . you all try to act so innocent it’s pitiful,” commented Polly. “You mean men don’t have lines in Vermont? Don’t try to kid me, I’ve been there.”
Wesley had no comment to make; he searched in his pockets and drew out his last quarter.
“Want a beer?” he offered Polly.
“Sure—let’s drink them at my table; come on over and join the party.”
Wesley purchased the beers and carried them over to the booth, where Polly was directing a new seating arrangement. When they had seated themselves side by side, Polly introduced her new friend briefly as “Wes.”
“What do you do, feller?” inquired the man addressed as Everhart, who sat in the corner peering slyly through horn-rimmed glasses toward Wesley.
Wesley glanced briefly at his interrogator and shrugged. This silence fascinated Everhart; for the next few minutes, while the party regained its chatty frolic, Everhart studied the stranger; once, when Wesley glanced at Everhart and found him ogling from behind the fantastic spectacles, their eyes locked in combat, Wesley’s cool and non-committal, Everhart’s a searching challenge, the look of the brazen skeptic.
As the night now wore on, the girls and George Day in particular became exceedingly boisterous; George, whose strange fancy had thought of something, was now laughing with a painful grimace; he was trying to relate the object of his mirth, but when he would reach the funny part of the incident which amused him so, and was about to impart the humor to the rest of them, he would suddenly convulse in laughter. The result was infectious: the girls screamed, Everhart chuckled, and Polly, head on Wesley’s shoulder, found herself unable to stop giggling.
Wesley for his part, found George’s dilemma as amusing as he had Polly’s impatience earlier in the evening, so that now he stared with open-mouthed, wide-eyed astonishment at the former, an expression of amusement as droll in itself as anything its wearer would ever wish to see.
For the most part, Wesley was not drunk: he had by now consumed five glasses of beer, and since joining the party in the booth, five small glasses of straight gin which Everhart had cheerfully offered to pay for. But the atmosphere of the bar, its heavy smoke and odor of assorted hard liquors and beer, its rattle of sounds, and the constant loud beat of music from the nickelodeon served to cloud his senses, to hammer them into muffled submission with a slow, delirious, exotic rhythm. Enough of this, and Wesley was as good as drunk; he usually could drink much more. Slowly, he began to feel a tingle in his limbs, and he found his head swaying occasionally from side to side. Polly’s head began to weigh heavily on his shoulder. Wesley, as was his wont when drunk, or at least almost drunk, began to hold a silence as stubborn as the imperturbability which accompanied it. Thus, while Everhart spoke, Wesley listened, but chose to do so in strict, unresponsive silence.
Everhart, now quite intoxicated, could do nothing but talk; and talk he did, though his audience seemed more concerned with maintaining the ridiculous gravity of drunkards. No one was listening, unless it was Wesley in his oblique manner; one of the girls had fallen asleep.
“What do I tell them when they want to know what I want to do in life?” intoned Everhart, addressing them all with profound sincerity. “I tell them only what I won’t do; as for the other thing, I do not know, so I do not say.”
Everhart finished his drink hastily and went on: “My knowledge of life is negative only: I know what’s wrong, but I don’t know what’s good . . . don’t misinterpret me, fellows and girls . . . I’m not saying there is no good. You see, good means perfection to me . . .”
“Shut up, Everhart,” interposed George drunkenly.
“. . . and evil, or wrong, means imperfection. My world is imperfect, there is no perfection in it, and thus no real good. And so I measure things in the light of their imperfection, or wrong; on that basis, I can say what is not good, but I refuse to dawdle about what is supposed good. . . .”
Polly yawned loudly; Wesley lit up another cigarette.
“I’m not a happy man,” confessed Everhart, “but I know what I’m doing. I know what I know when it comes to John Donne and the Bard; I can tell my classes what they mean. I would go so far as to say I understand Shakespeare thoroughly—he, like myself, was aware of more imperfection than is generally suspected. We agree on Othello, who, but for his native gullibility and naiveté, would find in Iago a harmless little termite’s spite, as weak and impotent as it is inconsequential. And Romeo, with his fanciful impatience! And Hamlet! Imperfection, imperfection! There is no good; there is no basis for good, and no basis for moral. . . .”
“Stop grating in my ear!” interrupted George, “I’m not one of your stupid students.”
“Blah!” added one of the girls.
“Yes!” sang Everhart. “A high hope for a low heaven! Shakespeare said that in Love’s Labour’s Lost! Ay! There it is! A low heaven, and high-hoped men . . . but fellows and girls, I can’t complain: I have a good post in the University, as we are fond to call it; and I live happily with my aged father and impetuous young brother in a comfortable apartment; I eat regularly, I sleep well; I drink enough beer; I read books and attend innumerable cultural affairs; and I know a few women. . . .”
“Is that so!” cried George, leaning his head to sleep through the monologue.
“But that is all beside the point,” decided Everhart. “The revolution of the proletariat is the only thing today, and if it isn’t, then it is something allied with it—Socialism, international anti-Fascism. R
evolt has always been with us, but we now find it in force. The writing of this war’s peace will be full of fireworks . . . there are two definitions for postwar peace: The good peace and the sensible peace. The sensible peace, as we all know, is the business man’s peace; but of course the business man wants a sensible peace based on the traditions of America—he’s a business man, he’s in business! This the radicals overlook: they forget the business man depends as much on business as the radicals depend on private support . . . take each away from each and the two classes disappear as classes. The business man wants to exist too—but naturally he’s prone to exist at the expense of others, and so the radicals are not blind to wrong. What I want to know is, if the radicals do not approve of economic liberalism, or laissez-faire, or private enterprise. . . .”
“Or what you will!” added George.
“Yes . . . if so, what do the radicals approve of? Plenty, of course: I respect their cognizance of wrong, but I fail to see the good they visualize; perfect states, as is the case with the younger and whackier radicals. But the older ones, with their quiet talk about a country where a man can do his work and benefit from this work; where he can also exist in cooperative security rather than in competitive hysteria—these older radicals are a bit more discerning, but I still doubt if they know what’s good: they only know what’s wrong, like me. Their dreams are beautiful, but insufficient, improbable, and most of all short of the mark.”
“Why is that so?” Everhart asked himself. “It is so because the progressive movement makes no provision for the spirit: it’s strictly a materialistic movement, it is limited. True, a world of economic equality and cooperative cheer might foster greater things for the spirit—resurgences in culture, Renaissances—but, in the main, it’s a materialistic doctrine, and a shortsighted one. It is not as visionary as the Marxists believe. I say, spiritual movements for the spirit! And yet, fellow and gentlewomen, who can deny Socialism? Who can stand up and call Socialism an evil, when in the furthest reaches of one’s conscience, one knows it is morally true? But is it a Good? No! It is only a rejection, shall we say, of the no-Good . . . and until it proves otherwise, in the mill of time, I will not embrace it fervently, I will only sympathize with it. I must search on . . .”