America Is in the Heart

by Carlos Bulosan

“Now you can go to the university,” she said, tossing a roll of money on the bed. “Nearly three hundred dollars. All for you—from Marian.” She laughed. “I have deposited some more for you, Carl. Now I’ll go to bed, but wake me up if I oversleep.”

  She flung herself upon the bed and in a few minutes she was sound asleep. I stood watching her face. I took off her shoes and dress and tucked her inside the bed. It was like a fairy tale. Here I was with a white woman who had completely surrendered herself to me. “The human heart is bigger than the world,” I said to myself.

  Marian woke up at ten in the evening. “Let’s have a capitalist dinner,” she said.

  I had no idea of what she was driving at. But I said: “All right, Marian.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For mentioning my name. I like the sound of it. The feel of it, too. Thank you again!”

  “It’s love, I guess.”

  She put her face up like a white rose and wept. Then she pushed me gently away and said, “Turn away now. I’ll change my dress.”

  I turned away, amused. She was dancing and humming. When I looked at her, I was startled by her beauty. She seemed an entirely new person. She was wearing a dark suit: there was a red hat in her left hand and a pair of white gloves in the other. She was tall and straight and lovely. She was the song of my dark hour.

  We took a taxi and went to a famous night club in Hollywood. I was afraid to go inside, but did not want to show my fear to Marian. I followed her slowly, hardening myself. But I found that the people were more tolerant there than in any other place. They looked toward our table now and then, but it was merely curiosity.

  I looked at Marian’s animated face. It was unbelievable that I could sit with a white girl in a famous place. I began remembering my years in the freight trains. Marian touched my hand. Oh, she was happy! She wanted to dance. I had never danced in a place like this, but I would do anything for Marian. I knew that if a man insulted me, I would jump at him with my knife. But the people were very tolerant. We danced twice; then, having swept the dining room with a beaming face, Marian told me that she was tired.

  It was when we were crossing the street toward my hotel that she fainted. I gathered her in my arms, put her on my bed, and called a doctor.

  “She is very sick,” he said. “I’ll have to transfer her to my office.”

  “It is the only way?”

  “It is.”

  I could not sleep when Marian was gone. I went to the doctor’s office early the next morning. Marian was sitting up in bed.

  “It was foolish of me to faint last night,” she said apologetically. “It was such a lovely evening.”

  “I’ll always remember it,” I said. “How do you feel?”

  She turned away. She looked at me again when I touched her hand.

  “Listen carefully, Carl,” she said. “When I’m gone remember me once in a while. And if you meet someone that you could like, take her with you and remember my face in hers.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Marian.”

  “I’m dying—didn’t the doctor tell you? Look at those trees on the hills! Isn’t this land of ours a paradise!” Silence. Then she said, “Promise me something, Carl.”

  I nodded.

  “Promise me not to hate. But love—love everything good and clean. There is something in you that radiates like an inner light, and it affects others. Promise me to let it grow. . . .”

  I wanted to ask her what I would do with her money, but she had turned toward the hills again. Her eyes were lost and faraway. Slowly she closed them; then she was sound asleep. I got up and walked away, committing her face to memory.

  I went to see her again the following morning. She was delirious. The doctor told me to leave. I went to a bar and started drinking heavily. I staggered aimlessly along the street; then my mind collapsed into darkness. It is, I believe, called toxic amnesia. I found myself walking in Alhambra, ten miles away from Los Angeles.

  I rushed to a public phone and called the doctor.

  “You’d better hurry,” he said. “It is only a matter of minutes.”

  I dashed down the street shouting for a taxi. When I arrived the doctor met me.

  “It is too late,” he said kindly. “She is gone now.”

  I was stunned. I groped blindly into the room and looked at her still face. Her brown hair was like a nest around her head. A nurse came in and slowly rolled her away. The world stood still. I walked outside and the doctor stopped me.

  “What was it, doctor?” I asked.

  “Syphilis,” he said. “But it was more than that. Complications. She gave up without a struggle. I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for her.”

  Slowly I walked down the suddenly darkened street.

  CHAPTER XXX

  The death of Marian marked one of the darkest periods of my life. I bought a one-way ticket to Seattle. But I drank a pint of whisky in Bakersfield and lost consciousness until I reached Stockton, where I stopped because it was familiar to me. I wandered aimlessly on El Dorado Street, entering bars and drinking quantities of whisky. I did not know why I had suddenly turned to drinking; why I was driven into it by the death of a strange woman. Yet, looking back, perhaps it was because there was no other place for me to go, and because I met there only drunkards and other denizens of lost worlds who were as hopeless as I.

  I went to a Chinese restaurant and tried to eat. I went to a Japanese place and waited for hours for it to open. When I could wait no longer, I went to a liquor store and bought a bottle of port wine. I met a Filipino farm worker who helped me finish it. Then I lost consciousness; when I came to myself again, I was sprawling on a chair at the Lincoln Hotel. It was already morning, but the lobby was still dark.

  Then I walked blindly to the station; luckily, there was a bus waiting. I climbed aboard and tried to sleep. Two girls were singing in the back seat. I dozed off now and then, but at Roseville I began to feel better.

  A girl with a red ribbon in her hair, who was called Rosaline, suggested that I sing with them. We sang several popular tunes and ended with America, which affected an elderly lady on the first row. The other girl, Lily, was more talkative than her companion. It seemed that they had left their town without telling their parents. They had gone to San Diego, married sailors, and were now on their way home to break the news to their families.

  In Redding, where the air smelled of pine trees, I stepped out and went to the cocktail bar in the station. I had a few drinks, and when I came out the bus had already gone. I told my predicament to the driver of another bus, which had just arrived, and we were off in pursuit, speeding up and down the mountain highway until we caught up with the first bus forty miles away.

  We were now entering the forest country. Lily and Rosaline were sleeping, their heads close to each other, their mouths open in calm repose. I woke them up and gave them the sandwiches I had bought for them, and they thanked me very prettily. I looked out the window and saw a little girl milking a cow. She looked in the direction of the bus and waved her hand.

  It was a familiar land. How many times had I passed through it? The air was clean. The trees were tall and straight. I could see little streams in the deep canyons below. Now we were nearing the place where I had been humiliated by two highway patrolmen.

  “Why don’t you stop in Medford?” Lily asked when we were crossing the Oregon border. “We have a nice lake and a big dancing pavilion.”

  “You could stay at our house,” Rosaline said.

  “I invited him first,” Lily said.

  “I’ll accept your invitation to stop in Medford,” I said. “But I’ll stay at a hotel. All right?”

  It was the best solution, they agreed. The girls’ mothers came to meet them. I was embarrassed, but they gave me their hands. Lily explained how they had met me, my nat
ionality and a little of the history of the Philippines, which she seemed to know. I felt at home with these people who had never seen Filipinos, and I wept a little in my room when they took me to a hotel, while they were waiting in the lobby for me.

  When the dinner at Lily’s house was over, I was suddenly lonely for Marian. Rosaline, noting my introspection, suggested that we go to the lake. They invited some of their friends. We rode in two jalopies, singing in the bright moonlight and the soft wind that sighed through the pine trees. The night was like an arrested dream: so calm it was almost unreal.

  Then the lake came into view; like a piece of polished glass, it lay in the palm of a dark hand. The jalopies stopped; the girls and boys jumped out and undressed hastily, plunging naked into the waiting water. I watched their agile bodies glide through the phosphorescent water.

  I laughed and swam among them, trying to forget my own tragedy. Now and then I stood up in the water remembering the time when my father and I had gone to the mountains. I remembered the clear, deep pool where we had bathed. Lily suddenly pushed me vigorously and swam away, turning back to see if I would follow her. I dived and swam swiftly under the water. I caught her and for a moment was tempted to hold her tightly; but I merely splashed water into her face and swam away.

  It was already midnight when we returned to Medford, and they all accompanied me to my hotel. Rosaline sent one of the girls to get her radio, and we started dancing in my room and the clerk, a man about forty, came up and danced with Lily. Then they all left and waved good-bye to me when they reached the street. I watched them disappear with a great loneliness.

  I called the clerk for something to drink. He came up with a bottle of bourbon and we sat drinking and talking for hours. When he left, I went to bed, trying to forget Marian. I awakened in time for the first bus. I wrote a note to Lily and Rosaline and their friends, and gave it to the morning clerk.

  * * *

  —

  I was full of premonition when I arrived in Seattle. Walking on King Street, I came accidentally upon Conrado Torres. We went to a Japanese restaurant and sat in a corner.

  “Something big will break soon,” he said. “The Japanese contractors have hired some thugs and they are running around with guns.”

  “Who do you think is the victim?” I asked.

  “It’s a fellow named Dagohoy. He started the union in the fish canneries; that is, he is the first president. Now the Japanese contractors, and perhaps Filipinos also, are after him.”

  “Is it a conspiracy of the Japanese contractors?”

  “Well, in a way. Actually, however, the friction arose because a powerful Japanese contractor feared he would be deprived of his income when the cannery workers were organized. He was making a fortune from his double-dealings with the companies and with the workers. But when a progressive union was born . . .”

  I suddenly discovered that I was sitting in the same corner where I had sat years before. The place was unchanged. There was even my name and the date of my arrival in the United States where I had carved it on the table. I kept remembering the shooting in the street outside, and the policemen spreading out to catch the crazed Filipino gambler, trapping him in the basement of a hotel. Then Marcelo came to my mind also, and the tall blonde who had screamed when the lights had gone out in the dance hall. Wherever I went memories crowded my mind, and sometimes my heart was heavy. But I could run away or forget. I was pursued by my own life.

  Then something happened so swiftly that I could scarcely believe it. Dagohoy and two other Filipinos, also officers of the newly established cannery workers’ union, came into the restaurant while we were leaving. Conrado and I were talking outside when we heard shooting inside; then suddenly people started running into the restaurant.

  We followed them. Dagohoy was profusely bleeding from bullet wounds, crumbling over one of his dead comrades. The other Filipino was sagging on his knees. They had no chance to defend themselves against their assailants.

  All of them died. It was believed that a Japanese labor contractor in the fish canneries in Alaska had hired assassins to eliminate the leaders of the union.

  I knew—now. This violence had a broad social meaning; the one I had known earlier was a blind rebellion. It was perpetrated by men who had no place in the scheme of life. I felt a deep responsibility for Dagohoy’s death. But I left Seattle immediately when he was buried. I went to San Francisco where a meeting of Filipino trade unionists was scheduled.

  But I did not stay long in San Francisco. When I had seen José, who was still nursing his wounds received in the San Jose incident, I left word for Ganzo, who was also in San Francisco, to go to the meeting. I was still tracing a maze and it seemed impossible for me to stay in one place without feeling persecuted and hunted.

  I left for Salinas, where I found Mariano. I was in Pismo Beach when I received word that the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) had been formed and had adopted a broad democratic program. Now we really had something around which to rally our forces.

  I waited for José, and when he came, I left him in Santa Maria where he planned an intensive campaign. The UCAPAWA had assigned him to Central California, a fascist country, where he had failed before with Helen, the strike-breaker and professional agitator for the powerful farmers. I told José that I was leaving for Los Angeles, where I expected to pick up some of my clothes, but would return to work with him.

  I agreed to meet José in Lompoc, but did not go there. I did not go back to active duty, because before long I went to a county hospital and stayed there for two years. I was lying in a sickbed when war was going on in Spain, a civil war to stop the tide of fascism from spreading throughout the world.

  * * *

  —

  I found my brother Macario in Los Angeles. He was again staying with Victor. I was writing in their room when a girl knocked at the door. She came in unannounced and told me that she knew my brother and Nick, who was now working in a night club in Hollywood. Dora Travers, for that was her name, waited until nine in the evening for my brother. Then she asked me to take a walk with her, because she was becoming restless in the room.

  “Are you a member of the YCL?” Dora asked when we were eating in a Mexican place on Main Street.

  “What is that?” I said.

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t know what it is!” There was genuine arrogance in her voice.

  “I don’t know what it is—really,” I said, feeling foolish.

  She said proudly: “It’s the Young Communist League.”

  “What makes you think that I would be useful to the organization?” I said. “I don’t know anything about it. You see, I have been on the move since I was a little kid. . . .”

  “Don’t be silly, Carl!”

  I wanted to leave her then, because I was angry. Yet I needed her company, her nearness, her assurance. My lonely life had made me sensitive to words and sounds, and when one of these touched my inner feelings, I became drunk with it as on wine.

  So it was with Dora. I was intrigued by her sweeping generalizations. She walked beside me silently to my brother’s hotel, but Macario was still out. We climbed the narrow passageway to the top of the hotel. There was a light breeze. The beacon lights on the city hall were stabbing the sky.

  Dora sat in a corner, her back to the wall. In a little while she fell sound asleep. I felt a slight tug at my heart. I watched her still face. She was no longer arrogant. She even looked lonely in repose. I turned away from her, looking over the city in the night.

  The next morning I sat in my brother’s room and started to write a poem, remembering Dora Travers and how she slept.

  I read the poem to Dora when she came again.

  “Write more poems, Carl,” she said. “I don’t care if you are a Communist or not. I like your music. I think you will be a good American poet.”<
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  I was glad. I felt inspired. Yes, there was music in me, and it was stirring to be born. I wrote far into the night, subsisting on coffee and bread. I did not stop to analyze why my thoughts and feelings found expression in poetry. It was enough that I was creating. I was like a little boy who had suddenly come upon a treasure of gold. I felt the words come to my mind effortlessly. I wrote ten or fifteen poems in one sitting.

  Then I knew surely that I had become a new man. I could fight the world now with my mind, not merely with my hands. My weapon could not be taken away from me any more. I had an even chance to survive the brutalities around me. But I was beginning to cough, and I could not sleep at night. I was sick: the years of hunger had found me at last.

  I was reading some new poems to Dora when I began to cough violently and could not stop. I rushed to the bathroom and bent over the washbowl, coughing out blood and bringing tears to my eyes. Dora came and held my head, rubbing my throat and forehead. When Macario arrived he called a doctor.

  “What is it, doctor?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid it is TB,” he said. “Advanced stage. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Carl!” Dora said.

  There was great shock in Macario’s face. He knew what it meant then: that I, too, would have to wait for slow death. How did my brother Luciano die? He had gone to Binalonan and waited ten years; when he died, finally, there was nothing left of his body. Macario stood by my bed for a long time. The gentleness came back to his face, as though I were a little boy again.

  “Don’t worry, Carlos,” he said kindly. “I’ll find a job and stay in it until you get well. I’ll do anything until you are well again.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  At first I did not realize the extent of the disease. I did not know that it would incapacitate me for years. But during the first days of anxiety, lying in bed alone and thinking of my interrupted work, I had only one desire: to get well as soon as possible and go back to the labor movement. It was an exhilarating feeling—this belonging to something vitally alive in America. But when three months passed and my condition seemed to get worse, I began to doubt that I would get well. I became intensely aware of the room: the four gray walls that seemed to fall upon me, the antiquated furniture, ugly and dark, and the utter dullness of everything around me. And I became aware of the presence of other things that had seemed inconsequential before: why Macario—why all of us were constantly hounded by the terrible threat of unemployment and disease.