Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "we must not tarry any longer. We must empty the water out of the radiator and pour into it an anti-freeze mixture. The nights are cold already and the water might freeze. Our radiator will go to the devil. Here in the park we left our machine in a warm garage. But I cannot guarantee that during the next night we shall find anything like that."

In the warm garage of the Grand Canyon we saw somebody's automobile after an accident. Thick branches of trees had broken in through the roof of the large Buick. The motor had pushed itself into the seat of the chauffeur. Inside the machine lay branches and green leaves. The man who had been driving that Buick had fallen asleep at the wheel. That happens in America. The even road, the lulling sway of the machine, the fatigue of the day—and the man, without noticing it himself, falls asleep while driving at a speed of fifty miles an hour. The awakening is almost always frightful. The Buick we saw hit a tree with such force that at the place of the accident one could not tell where the product of General Motors began and where the product of nature ended. Strange as it may " seem, the sleeping driver not only remained alive, but was not even badly hurt. The boy from the garage told us in a respectful manner that he hoped the owner of the machine will henceforth sleep in more safe places than in a moving automobile—in bed, for example. We all looked at Mrs. Adams. Although she never fell asleep while driving, on all our faces was written: "You see?" as if we had already caught our driver snoring at the wheel. We did it anyway, for good measure.

Newer and newer colour schemes, each more imposing than the other, opened at every turn of the Grand Canyon. The bright blue and pink haze of early morning scattered. We stopped at some parapets and looked into the abyss. It was now apricot in colour. At a distance of a mile below us could be seen a river growing ever more luminous. We shouted for all we were worth, calling forth an echo, and for a long time our Moscow voices hopped over the cliffs, returned to us, and finally perished in space.

At last we passed the exit booth. There was no one there. Today was an important holiday—a day of thanks—Thanksgiving Day. And many of the employees did not work. However, on the glass of his booth there was a note which read: "Good-bye. Call again."

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams instructively, "put that down in your little books."

And he began to tell us long and interesting stories about American service. He talked like one inspired until we had driven some forty miles away from the canyon. Then he put his left hand over his eyes, and was petrified.

"Becky," he said, no longer inspired, "did you take my watch out from under my pillow?"

"No," said Becky, throwing a red-hot glance at her husband.

"But, but. . ." moaned Mr. Adams, "please don't look at me. You mustn't do that. Look only at the road."

"You left the watch in the camp," said Mrs. Adams, without taking her eyes off the road.

"No, no, Becky!" Mr. Adams spoke in excitement. "I did not leave it in the camp. I left it under the pillow."

We stopped. We learned that the watch cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars, but that wasn't the main thing. The real misfortune was that the watch had been given as a gift to her husband by Mrs. Adams herself.

We began to figure which was more to our advantage, to make an extra eighty miles to recover the watch or to forget about the watch and to go on. We decided that it paid to go back, especially since the object left behind was precious as a memento, which could in no way be said about the petrol.

Nevertheless, we did not turn back. We telephoned to the camp from the nearest petrol station. The camp replied that the worker who had cleaned our house had gone away at the moment, but there was no doubt that he would immediately turn over the watch to the management of the camp, provided the watch was under the pillow.

"Well," said Mrs. Adams, "in that case, we will not go back. You pan send the watch to us in San Francisco, General Delivery."

The man from the camp replied that all that was very well, but at the same time asked that the key to the house, which Mr. Adams had taken along with him, be sent back. Mrs. Adams cast a withering glance at her husband and said that we would immediately return the key by mail.

In view of these circumstances, we drove for two whole hours in utter silence.

27 The Man In the Red Shirt

OUT OF Grand Canyon there was a new road, untravelled yet by tourists. The tall thick forests of the National Park became gradually thinner and finally disappeared altogether. They were succeeded by yellow cliffs which ended in a descent into the new desert. The road fell down in sharp curves. It was one of the most remarkable of American automobile roads, a scenic road, which meant a landscape road. The builders of it made it not only durable, broad, convenient, and safe during rain, but they even attained this: that every one of its turns compelled the traveller to admire ever newer and newer landscapes, scores of various facets of one and the same landscape.

"No, seriously," said Mr. Adams, sticking his head out of the machine every minute, "you want to understand what American service is. It is the highest degree of knowing how to serve. You don't have to climb over cliffs in order to find a convenient point for observation. You can see everything while sitting in your machine. Therefore, buy automobiles, buy petrol, buy oil!"

We had become accustomed to deserts, we had come to love them, and so we greeted the new desert, which opened before us from a considerable height, as an old friend. Here began the reservation of a nomad Indian tribe, the Navajo. This is one of the largest Indian tribes. It consists of sixty thousand people. Five years ago this region was altogether inaccessible, and only recently, with the advent of the new road, did tourists gradually begin to penetrate.

The Navajos loathe and detest their "white-faced brothers," who have been exterminating them for two centuries, driving them into worse and worse places, and finally into a fruitless desert. This hate is unmistakable in the Indian's every glance. He will attach his new-born baby to a little–' board and put it right down on the dirty earthen floor of the wigwam rather than take from the white man any part of his culture.

The Indians almost never mix with the whites. That is an age-long opposition of theirs, evidently, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of mankind.

The government, which formerly devoted itself to destroying the Indians, is now trying to preserve their small number of descendants. At the head of the Indian Department in Washington is a liberal gentleman. So-called Indian reservations have been built where the whites are permitted to trade with the Indians under state control. Having chased the Indians away from the fertile ground, they have reserved for them only a few pathetic parcels of desert, and this is regarded as a great act of beneficence. They have opened museums of Indian art. They buy from the Indians, for a pittance, their drawings, rugs, painted clay bowls, and silver bracelets. They have built several well-equipped schools for Indian children. Americans are rather proud of their Indians: even so does the director of a zoo take pride in a rare old lion. The proud beast is very old and is no longer dangerous: his claws are dull, his teeth have fallen out, but his skin is magnificent.

While arranging the reservations, schools, and museums they forgot that the foundation of a people's development is their native tongue. In Indian schools only white men teach, and they teach only in English. There is no Indian writing. True, every Indian tribe has its own peculiar language. But that is no obstacle. Where there is a will there is a way. And many American scientists, specialists of Indian culture, could create a written language for them in a short time, if only for a few of the more important tribes.

Toward noon we arrived in a habitation called Cameron. Here were a few houses—a post office, a trading post where merchandise is sold to Indians, a small but excellently equipped hotel with a little restaurant, a camp, and two adobe Indian wigwams.

We went into one of these. The father of the family was not at home. On the floor sat an Indian beauty who looked like a gypsy (Indian men are usually handsomer than the women). She was surrounded by a whole brood of children. The smallest, a suckling infant, was tied to a little board which lay on the floor. . The oldest was about seven years old. The children were dirty but very handsome, like their mother.

"Becky, Becky!" Mr. Adams cried excitedly, "come here, quick! I found some children!"

The Adamses missed their baby and never let a youngster get by without taking him up in their arms, petting him and giving him a bit of candy. Children were very fond of Mr. Adams, went to his arms gladly, prattling something about lambs and ponies. Their mothers, flattered by this attention, regarded Mr. Adams with a grateful glance and in farewell would bid him a tender good-bye, as if he were not a casual traveller met on the road but a kind grandfather who had arrived from Kansas City for a visit with his dearly beloved grandchildren. In brief, the Adamses derived great pleasure from such meetings.

"Where are the children?" exclaimed Mrs. Adams, hastily taking out of her bag a piece of chocolate and stooping down in order to enter through the low door of the wigwam.

"Well, young gentlemen," said Mr. Adams cheerfully, "which one of you wants to be the first to get the chocolate ? "

The youngsters began to bawl in fright. The beautiful mother distractedly tried to quiet them. Only the seven-year-old, who evidently also wanted to begin bawling, controlled himself, clenched his dirty little lists and looked at us with such ferocity that we immediately left.

"Here," said Mr. Adams in confusion, "Indians from the very earliest age teach their children hatred for the whites. Yes, yes, yes! The Navajo Indians are wise people. Why should they love the whites?"

When we were leaving the wigwam, a rusty old automobile (such an ancient specimen we had not seen even in Texas) drove up, and the father of the family walked out of it.

"How do you do, sir?" said Mr. Adams, trying to start a conversation.

The Indian did not reply. He pointed to his lips and made a negative gesture with his hand. He did not wish to converse with white people. Going to his wigwam with an armful of dry weeds, he did not even look in our direction. We interested him no more than the dust of the desert, liven an old English diplomat might envy the majesty of his gait and the inscrutability of his face.

How clearly we grasped at that moment the hypocrisy of all the Indian departments, schools, museums, reservations, all this busybody charity of an old sinner who clumsily tries to make up for the wrongs of the past!

When we were driving out of Cameron we were warned that from then on for a long time we would not find a place to stop.

A splendid road presented us with the opportunity to develop high speed. We raced across the desert for about five hours without meeting a soul, except that once a white horse appeared. It was going, in a sure manner, somewhere, alone, without a guide. A little farther on there was a detour for about ten miles. Here several workers in road machines were finishing up the final section of a road.

On both sides of the highway lay the painted desert. We were racing after the sun, which was slowly dropping into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere into Japan, which from the American point of view is the land of the setting sun. We crossed the territory of the Navajo; yet where were those sixty thousand poor but proud people? That we did not know. They must have been somewhere with their flocks, their fires, and their wigwams. Several times in the course of the day the figure of a rider would appear on the horizon, and with it a cloud of dust, and then both would quickly disappear.

If the desert had seemed varied to us, now it changed almost every minute. At first we saw level hills, which seemed to be covered over with cocoa, and in their forms reminiscent of wigwams (so this is where the Indians got the models for their architecture!). Then began a piling up of smooth and round dark-grey heights which looked as soft as pillow and were seamed at the edges like pillows. Then we found ourselves at the bottom of a small canyon. Here was such architecture—mausoleum, bastions, castles—that we gave up exclaiming over it, and, leaning out the windows, silently followed with our eyes the stone visions of the thousands of years that flew past us. The sun sank. The desert became pink. All of it culminated in a temple on a cliff surrounded by even terraces. The road turned toward this temple. Under it flowed the Little Colorado River. Across it was flung a new suspension bridge. Here was the end of the Navajo reservation.

It suddenly turned dark and cold. We ran out of petrol. We were hungry. But scarcely had Mr. Adams managed to express the thought that everything was over and we would have to sleep in the desert, when immediately from around the bridge a light gleamed, and we drove up to a house. Near the little house we noticed, with a sigh of relief, a petrol station. Nothing was there other than these two structures, which stood directly in the desert and were not even fenced in. The house represented what in Russian and in Spanish is called a "rancho" but in English a "ranch." So, here in the desert, where for two hundred miles around there is not a single settled habitation, we found: excellent beds, electric lights, steam heat, hot and cold water—we found all the conveniences of any house in New York, Chicago, or Gallup. In the dining-room we were served tomato juice in glasses and a steak with a bone in the shape of the letter T, just as handsome and as unappetizing as in Chicago, New York, or Gallup, and we were charged almost the same price as in Gallup, Chicago, or New York, although, if they wanted to take advantage of the helpless situation of the travellers, they could have got from us as much as they liked.

This spectacle of the American standard of living was no less grandiose than the painted desert. If we were asked to name the one distinguishing characteristic of America, we should say: this very little house in the desert. This little house contains all of American life: complete comfort in a desert side by side with the pauper wigwams of the Indians—quite as in Chicago, where side by side with Michigan Avenue is a rubbish heap of a slum. No matter where you might go as a traveller, to the North, to the South, or to the West, to New York, New Orleans, or New Jersey, you will see everywhere poverty and riches, which like two inseparable sisters stand hand in hand at all the roads and at all the bridges of this great country.

On the parapet of the entrance to the house lay an ox-yoke. At its sides were placed several chunks of petrified wood. On the porch we were met by a greyish cowboy, the master of the house and of the petrol station. He had come into the desert from Texas twenty years ago. In those days, without paying for it, any citizen of the United States could stake out in the desert sixty acres of land and take up cattle raising. All he had to invest in the land was two hundred dollars. In those days this cowboy was a young man. He brought his cattle, built a house, got married. Even five years ago it was two hundred miles from the house to the nearest road, and one could ride to it only on horseback. But recently the broader highway had been built, tourists began to appear, the cowboy built a petrol station, and converted his little house into .1 hotel. In the fireplace of his log hall a big fire blazes. On the walls hang deer heads, Indian rugs, and a leopard skin. Several rocking-chairs Rand about and several portable lamps with cardboard shades (just exactly as they stood in our New York hotel room). There is a piano– and a radio which never stops playing or broadcasting news. His wife and daughter cook and serve. The cowboy himself, a typical American husband and father, with a kindly and somewhat wistful smile, helps them cook and serve, puts logs into the fireplace, and sells petrol. But there are already visible elements of the future large hotel. There is already a table with a special department for envelopes and writing paper. So far, the envelopes are just ordinary ones, but soon there will appear on them a vignette representing the facade of the hotel, an Indian profile, and the beautifully printed title: "Hotel Desert" or "Hotel Navajo Bridge." And already Indian rugs and trifles are offered for sale. Among those rugs were two which the owner did not want to sell, although he had been offered fifty dollars apiece.

"Now," said Mr. Adams, impatiently moving from foot to foot, "you must tell us what is remarkable about these rugs."

The old cowboy proved to be good company.

"Well," he began slowly, "these are Indian religious rugs, or, as the Indians call them, garments. I got them a long time ago from a certain Indian. You see, the Indians have a belief that should anyone become ill he must be wrapped in these garments. Therefore, they always come to me for them. I, of course, never refuse them. While the sick man lies wrapped in the rugs, the tribe dances a special dance dedicated to his convalescence. At times they dance several days on end. I love and respect the Navajos very much. It would be most unpleasant for me to sell these rugs and deprive them of such a means of healing."

The master rose, stamping resoundingly with the heels of his cowboy boots, walked toward the fireplace, and threw in a large log. Then he returned and continued:

"The Navajos are actually a remarkable people. They are faultlessly honest. There are never any crimes among them. It seems to me that they don't even know what a crime is. During the last twenty years I have learned to respect them as I have never respected any white man, and I am very sorry for them. Their children are dying at a great rate. You see, they don't want any help from the whites. They will not submit to white influence and will not allow white men in their wigwams.

I have friendly relations with the Navajos, but even after twenty years I am a stranger to them. Yet they are a remarkable people. It is hard to imagine how honest they are."

The old cowboy told us a story about a certain Indian of the Navajo tribe who suddenly decided to take up trade.

"Somehow the Indian managed to acquire an unusual amount of capital, two hundred dollars, either because he sold some cattle or found a little oil on his property; but anyhow, he got hold of a little money. So he decided to go into business. He went from the desert to the nearest town, bought two hundred dollars' worth of various merchandise, and brought it to his own native reservation. Just imagine an Indian engaged in commerce! It was the first occurrence of that kind in the entire history of the Navajo tribe. His trade went quite well. But I noticed that my Indian friend was carrying on his business in a rather peculiar way. I was so surprised that at first I thought he had lost his mind. You see, he was selling his merchandise for exactly the same price he had paid for it himself. So I began to explain to him that he can't carry on trade that way, that he would go bankrupt, that merchandise must be sold for more than the price paid for it.

"'Well, what do you mean by a higher price?' the Indian asked me.

"Very simple,' I replied. 'Let's say you bought a thing for a dollar; so you must sell it for a dollar-twenty.'

"' How can I sell it for a dollar-twenty when it cost me only a dollar ?' this merchant asked me.

"' But that is exactly what trade means,' I said. 'You buy cheaper and you sell for more.'

"But at this point my Indian became frightfully angry.

"' That's fraud!' he said. ' To buy for a dollar and to sell for a dollar-twenty ! You're advising me to deceive people.'

"Then I said to him:

"'That's not fraud. You simply must earn money, must make a profit; don't you understand? Make a profit!'

"But something strange happened to my Indian friend. He suddenly stopped understanding the most ordinary things.

"'What do you mean, make a profit?' he asked.

"'Well,' I said, 'justify your expenses.'

"I didn't have any expenses.'

"'But still, you went to the city; you bought; you brought it here; you worked.'

"' What kind of work is that?' the Indian told me. 'To buy, to bring it here—that's not work. No, you're giving me bad advice.'

"It was simply impossible to convince him. No matter how hard I tried, nothing came of it. He was as stubborn as a bull, and he kept repeating one and the same thing: ' You're advising me to do something dishonest.' I tell him, this is trade; and he tells me that in that case trade is a dishonest thing. And just imagine: he continued to trade that way, just as he began, though eventually he gave up this occupation. Thus, the only commercial enterprise with Indian capital in a Navajo tribe had to close up."

We remembered that Indian a month later when we were sitting in the Senate of the United States of America during the investigation of John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., by a Senate Committee.

The Committee was concerned with the question of Morgan's role in so far as it helped to drag America into the World War.

"Tell me," asked Senator Nye, "didn't you know that by exporting money into Europe you were supporting war ?"

"Yes, I knew it."

"Why did you do it, then?"

"What do you mean, why?" The huge old man was surprised, rising a little in his chair. " But that is business! Trade! They bought money and I sold it."

The wife called our host into the dining-room to help her set the table. Soon they called us too.

After we had finished our dinner, a tall man in boots, in a bright red shirt, held in by a cartridge belt, entered the room. His hair was reddish, with considerable grey in it. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a dazzling smile. He was accompanied by a woman. They greeted our host and sat down at the neighbouring table. The man in the red shirt heard us speaking among ourselves in some foreign tongue and said to the woman who had come there with him:

"Well, wife, these must be Frenchmen." Now you'll have a chance to talk French."

"I don't know French," replied his wife.

"What do you mean, you don't know it? Well, what do you know about that! We have been married for fifteen years and all that time every day you told me that you were born two hours' ride from Paris."

"So I was born two hours' ride from Paris."

"Well, why don't you talk French with these people?"

"But I tell you I don't know the French language. I was born in London, and London is actually two hours' ride from Paris if you go by airplane."

The man in the red shirt laughed noisily. It was evident that this family joke was repeated every time the couple met foreigners.

The ground was beautifully prepared for Mr. Adams to act, and he did not hesitate.

"I see, sir, that you are a cheerful person," said Mr. Adams, taking a polite little step forward.

"Sure!" exclaimed the man in the red shirt.

And he on his part took a step in the direction of Mr. Adams.

In the eyes of both men gleamed such an unquenchable and insane desire to talk that it was clear to us that they were bound to meet in the desert. They could not fail to meet. Only love at first sight flares up with such natural alacrity.

"How do you do, sir?" said Mr. Adams, taking one more step forward.

"How do you do?" said the man in the red shirt, and he also took an additional step. "Are you from New York?" he asked.

"Surely!" piped Mr. Adams. "And you live here?"

"Surely!" roared the stranger.

A second later they were already slapping each other on the shoulder with terrible gusto—though actually little Mr. Adams slapped his new friend across the waist, while his tall friend was whacking Mr. Adams almost on the back of his head.

Mr. Adams had an extraordinary nose for new acquaintances. The man in the red shirt proved to be one of the most interesting people we met in America.

"He is the only white man," our cowboy host said about him, "whom the Indians have accepted as one of their own. He lives with the Indians, but sometimes he comes to visit me."

The biography of this man is a real romance.

After graduating from college he became a missionary. Being a man with a purpose in life, he married and went to the post of his new field of duty—into the desert, to the Navajo Indians, in order to convert them to Christianity. However, it soon became evident to the fledgling missionary that the Indians did not want Christianity. All his efforts met the stubborn resistance of the Indians, who not only did not wish to accept the new faith, but more than that, refused to have anything at all to do with white people. Despite all rebuffs, he learned to like the Indians. A year later he went back to his superiors and declared that he refused to convert Indians to Christianity.

"I see my Christian duty in helping people," he said, "irrespective of what religion they profess. I have thought it all out thoroughly. If you have no objections, I shall remain in the desert with the Indians, but I warn you I will not make the slightest effort to convert them to Christianity. Otherwise, I could never be accepted by the Indians as one of them. I will simply help them the best I can. I will call doctors for them, explain to them how they must take care of their children. I will give them advice on how to live. So far there has never been a case of the Navajo-accepting a white man. Only if I should succeed can we begin to consider the possibility of converting them to Christianity."

The church administration thought such talk too radical.

"You must act like all missionaries," they told him.

He refused.

Then they dismissed him. Yet, this odd fellow remained true to his dangerous ideas, although he had his wife to support and not a penny with which to do it.

He again went into the desert, this time with the firm determination never to return. That was eighteen years ago. He settled in a nomad camp of the Navajos and began to lead the life of an Indian. He had no money. Like the Indians, he took up hunting and cattle raising.

Years passed. The Indians became accustomed to the brave and cheerful man in eyeglasses. Little by little they began to show confidence in him, and he began to be one of them. Occasionally he would go into the city, arrange a public subscription for the Indian children, and persuade the Indians to go to doctors for medical aid and not to tie their infants to the little boards. He mastered the Navajo language. He came to love the Indians very much. He somehow could never begin his propaganda of Christianity. "I'll have time for that yet," he thought. But after a while he even stopped thinking about Christianity. Looking back, he understood that the greater and probably the better part of his life had already passed and that it had passed well. He was happy.

"I wanted to make Christians out of the Indians," the man in the red shirt, with a cartridge belt, told us, "but it didn't turn out as I expected: they made an Indian out of me. Yes! Now I am a real Indian. If you like I'll take your scalp off!"

And laughing loudly he pretended to scalp Mr. Adams.

Then he sat down and, still smiling, added thoughtfully:

"And to tell you the truth, I don't know more honest, noble, and clean-cut people than the Indians. They taught me to love the sun, the moon, the desert. They taught me to understand nature. I cannot imagine now how I could live away from the Indians."

"Sir," Mr. Adams said suddenly, "you are a good man."

He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, without taking off his eyeglasses.

On the morrow we rose at six o'clock. Day was beginning to break, although the sun had not yet risen. It was as cold as it is in Moscow at that hour. We shivered under our topcoats. The little forest was covered with hoar frost. The desert seemed dark and not so beautiful as yesterday. We ran to the bridge for another look at the Little Colorado River. Above us was the cliff in the shape of a temple surrounded by terraces. Even that did not seem so magic to us as it had the day before. When in an effort to warm up we ran back to the little house, the sun appeared. The desert at once was alight and became beautiful. Half an hour later we took off our coats, and in another half-hour it was downright hot.

Before starting off on our long journey (we had to travel three hundred miles to Boulder Dam), we stopped at the petrol station. There we saw the missionary in the red shirt. He had taken the place of the cowboy, who was occupied with his household affairs. Again he and Adams began to whack each other's shoulder.

"I am a Bolshevik!" shouted the former missionary in farewell, pointing to his red shirt and roaring with laughter. "Good-bye!" " Good-bye!" cried Mr. Adams in response.

The road went up into the hills. So, looking back on the desert of the Navajos, we could see for a long time the little house, and the bridge, and the petrol station beside which could be seen the red shirt of the missionary who had become an Indian. We were gazing for the last time at the Navajo desert, wondering how in the centre of the United States —between New York and Los Angeles, between Chicago and New Orleans, surrounded on all sides by electric stations, oil derricks, railways, millions of automobiles, thousands of banks, stock exchanges and churches, deafened by the clamour of jazz bands, motion-picture films and gangster machine-guns—these people managed to preserve in its full untouchability their manner of living.

28 A Young Baptist

THE ASCENT among the yellow cliffs continued for an hour and a half. The little house of the cowboy, the petrol station, and the bridge across the Little Colorado River had long ago vanished from view, yet the desert of the Navajo Indians still lay in the valley behind us, the last barren refuge of pure-blooded, one-hundred-per-cent. Americans whose only misfortune was that their skin was red and that they had no aptitude for trade, but rather for drawing and for warlike but not dangerous dances.