Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

But it was simply impossible to wait any longer. The sturdy sailors, among whom we noticed our Amur captain, quickly put us into the machine, and with a cry which sounded very much like "Veeraah," began to push us to the dock.

"I'm very, very sorry!" muttered Mr. Adams, bowing to either side like a President. "I'm terribly sorry! I'm terribly sorry!"

To the sound of the uninterrupted blaring of the ferry-boat, the honking of automobile horns, and the taunting laughter of chauffeurs, the sailors rolled us out on the rocky dock, and ran back to the ferry. Mr. Adams was left to face his angry wife.

"I'm terribly sorry!" Mr. Adams continued to mutter, still bowing.

"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "How long are we going to stand here on the dock?"

"Oh, Becky, don't talk like that!" said Mr. Adams, regaining his composure. "It hurts me to hear you talk like that!"

"Well, all right, I only want to know what we are going to do here on the dock? What have you done with the key?"

Interrupting each other, we tried to recall how Mr. Adams took the key and how he told us at the time that caution is the traveller's best friend.

"Well, now, try to remember, try to remember where you put it!"

"Oh, Becky! How can I tell you where I put it? You talk like a little girl! You must not talk like that!"

"Let me do it!" Mrs. Adams said decisively, and, sinking her two fingers into her husband's waistcoat pocket, she immediately pulled out the key. "What is this?"

Mr. Adams was silent.

"I'm asking you: what is this?"

"Becky," muttered Mr. Adams. "Don't talk like that: ' what is this ?'! It's a key, Becky. You can see perfectly well for yourself."

A minute later we were rolling over the streets of San Francisco.

This is the most beautiful city in America, apparently because it is in no way reminiscent of America. Most of its streets rise from hill to hill. An automobile journey through San Francisco looks more like a sideshow tailed "American Mountains" and presents the passenger with a number of strong sensations. Nevertheless, in the centre of the city is a piece which looks like the flattest Leningrad in the world, with its squares and broad avenues. The other parts of San Francisco form a remarkable seashore mixture of Naples and Shanghai. The resemblance to Naples we can certify from personal experience. The Chinese find the resemblance to Shanghai. There are many Chinese in San Francisco.

Among the triumphs of the city is the fact that its principal street is called neither "Main Street" nor "Broadway," but simply "Market Street." We sought in vain for uptown and downtown. No, in San Francisco there is no upper town and no lower town, or rather there are too many of them, several hundred upper and lower parts. No doubt, the denizen of Frisco, as the city is called in friendly familiarity by the sailors of the entire world, might take offence at this and tell us that San Francisco is no worse than New York or Gallup and that the denizen of Frisco knows very well where his uptown and where his downtown are located, where business is carried on, and where people rest after business in their family circles, and that it's no use our trying to isolate San Francisco and tear it away from its family of other American cities. Possibly, it is so. But to our foreign view San Francisco looked more like a European than an American city. Here, as everywhere else in America, was limitless wealth and limitless poverty standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, so that the faultless dinner jacket of the rich man touched the dirty blouse of an unemployed stevedore, but wealth here did not seem as depressingly monotonous and dull, while poverty was at least picturesque.

San Francisco is one of those cities one begins to like from the very first moment and continues to like more and more every day thereafter.

From the height of Telegraph Hill opens a beautiful view of the city and the bay. Here a broad platform has been constructed with a white stone balustrade surrounded by urns.

The bay, gleaming in the sun, is crisscrossed in all directions by white ferries. In the harbour stand large ocean steamers. They belch smoke, ready to go off to Yokohama, Honolulu, and Shanghai. From the aerodrome of the military encampment an aeroplane rises and, its wings gleaming in the sun, disappears in the translucent sky. In the middle of the bay on Alcatraz Island, which from the distance looks like an antiquated armoured cruiser, one can make out the building of the federal prison for particularly important criminals. There sits Al Capone, the famous chieftain of a bandit organization which had terrorized the country. Ordinary bandits in America are placed in the electric chair. Al Capone has been sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment, not for bootlegging and not for robbery, but for non-payment of income tax on the money he acquired through robbery and bootlegging. In prison Al Capone writes anti-Soviet articles which the Hearst newspapers print with pleasure. The famous bandit and murderer (something like the cabman Komorov, only much more dangerous) is concerned about conditions in America, and while sitting in prison composes plans for saving the country from the spread of communist ideas. And Americans, great lovers of humour, do not see anything funny in that.

On Telegraph Hill is a high tower from the top of which, we were told, opens a broad view of the city. However, we were not allowed to go to the top. We learned that in the morning an unemployed young man had flung himself from the tower and was crushed, and so for that day it was decided to forbid admission to the tower.

San Francisco Bay is separated from the ocean by two peninsulas, which jut out from the northern and southern sides of the bay and end in high cliffs that form the exit into the ocean. That is the Golden Gate. The northern peninsula, full of cliffs, is covered with a wild forest. San Francisco lies on the southern peninsula, facing the bay.

We drove toward the Golden Gate. On a high cape at the exit into the ocean is a beautiful park and in it a museum of fine arts with numerous reproductions of famous European sculptures. Here ends Lincoln Highway, the autostrada between New York and San Francisco. American technicians are people of amazing modesty. The end of their concrete masterpiece which unites the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans they have marked with a memorial column only three feet high, on which are the letter "L," a small bronze bas-relief of Lincoln, and the inscription: "The Western End of the Lincoln Highway." The names of the builders of the road remain unknown. What of it! The people who a year from now will be driving across the bridges of San Francisco Bay will not know who planned and built them.

Thanks to the kindness of the bridge builders we were granted permission to look at their work. We got into a naval cutter, which waited for us in the harbour, and departed for Yerba Buena Island, located in the middle of the bay. The little island is in charge of the War Department, and one must receive special permission to visit it. The San Francisco-Oakland Bridge, eight and a half miles long, consists of several bridge spans of different types. Especially interesting is its western suspension part, which is 10,450 feet in length. It joins San Francisco with Yerba Buena Island and consists of suspension spans connected by a central stabilizer. On the island the western part of the bridge meets with the eastern part, which connects the island with the land. That part consists of a cantilever span, which stretches for 1400 feet, and several other spans, which are overlapped by latticed girders.

The main work on the island, which is almost completed, is a wide and high tunnel drilled through the cliffs. It is this tunnel which connects both parts. The tunnel and the bridge will be two stories high. On the upper story automobiles will move in six rows. The pedestrians have not been forgotten either. There will be two sidewalks for them. On the lower story in two rows will pass trucks, and between them an electric railway. By comparison with this bridge, the greatest European and American bridges will seem small.

Now they were finishing the spinning of the steel cable on which the bridge will hang. Its thickness is almost a metre in diameter. It is that which, when we were approaching San Francisco, looked to us like thin 'wires dangling over the bay. The guy, which before our very eyes was being spliced in the air by moving machinery, reminded us of Gulliver, whose every strand of hair was tied by the Lilliputians, each to a little peg. That cable, hanging over the bay, is safely provided with a wire net for the workmen to walk on. We ventured to make a short journey along the cable. We felt as if we were on the roof of a skyscraper, with only this difference—that there was nothing at all under our feet except a thin wire net through which the waves of the bay were visible. A strong wind was blowing.

Although the journey was quite safe, we clutched the cable with desperation.

"How thick it is," said Mrs. Adams, trying not to look down.

"A beautiful cable," confirmed Mr. Adams, without letting the upper steel support out of his hands.

The cable is woven out of seventeen and a half thousand thin steel wires, our guide explained to us.

We went into transports of rapture over this figure, and hung on to the cable more firmly than ever.

"And now let us go higher," the guide proposed, "to the very top of the pylon."

But it was impossible to tear us away from the cable.

"What a cable!" Mr. Adams exclaimed. "Just see how thick it is. How many wires did you say ? "

"Seventeen and a half thousand," said the guide.

"I simply don't want to go away from it," Mr. Adams remarked.

"But we don't have to go away from it. We will go up alongside the cable," the guide said naively.

"No, no. In this particular place the cable is especially good! This is a magnificent cable! Just look how faultlessly thin it is and at the same time what durable workmanship!"

Mr. Adams looked down by chance, and instantly shut his eyes.

"An excellent, excellent cable," he muttered. "Write that down in your little books."

"Wouldn't you like to look through the console span of the eastern part of the bridge ? " the guide suggested.

"No, no, sir! What a thing to say! No, this is an excellent cable! I like it very much. This is a perfect, a superior cable. It would be interesting to know from how many wires it is made up."

"From seventeen and a half thousand," our guide said sadly.

He understood that we would not go anywhere else and suggested that we go down. The entire way back we walked without letting the cable out of our hands and admiring its unheard-of qualities.

Only when we found ourselves on the hard rocky surface of Yerba Buena Island did we understand the meaning of the heroism of people who, whistling gaily, were splicing the cable over the ocean.

32 American Football

ON THE fifth day of our life in San Francisco we noticed that the city began to suck us in, just as long ago—thousands of cities, a score of deserts, and a score of states ago—we had been almost sucked in by New York. Our notebooks were filled with a multitude of notes, signifying the dates of business appointments, of business luncheons, and business cocktail parties. We were leading the life of businesslike Americans, without having any business at all. Our days were tremulous with da fear of being late for an appointment. Cursing, we crept around the room, looking for the lost collar button. Like Chichikov, we paid a visit to the mayor of the city, a very charming Italian by the name of Rossi, a bald-headed gentleman with black eyebrows. He showed us a letter from Honolulu which had been sent only the day before, The letter had been brought over by the China Clipper, a flying boat of Sikorsky's. For exactly five minutes we praised the city of San Francisco to the mayor and he treated us to excellent cigars. It was our luck that San Francisco really is a fine city and we were not obliged to lie to Mr. Rossi. We walked out of the City Hall with pleasant smiles on our faces and with apprehension in our hearts. It was high time to break through the ring of business appointments and really begin a business life—that is, wander aimlessly through the city.

For the first time we circled a high cape at the Golden Gate and drove out on a quay. Along the quay stretched a beach on which the waves of the Pacific Ocean broke with thunder: it was a sunny but windy December day. The swimming season was over, and the entertainment establishments which faced the quay were empty. Here San Franciscans go out to enjoy themselves on warm Sundays. Here one may test his strength, ride on electric automobiles that bump into one another, for ten cents receive a portrait of one's future wife with a description of her character, play pinball games, and, on the whole, secure a brimful measure of the American entertainment ration. But how beautiful this place was! The quay seemed no lesssweeping than the ocean—there was no end to either of them.

At the "Topsy" restaurant—which specialized in roasted breaded chicken, and, therefore, had its roof decorated with a cockerel's head and its hall with the portrait of hens—we saw how a San Franciscan in moderate circumstances has his "good time." For fifty cents he gets a portion of chicken, and, having eaten it, dances until he is on the verge of collapsing. After he is tired of dancing, he and his girl, taking no pity on his Sunday-best trousers, ride down a polished wooden chute placed in the hall especially for entertainment-seeking chicken eaters.

It may be due to the influence of the ocean, the climate, or the sailors from all parts of the world who crowd each other here, but in the restaurant business of San Francisco one notices a play of mind not customary in America. In Bernstein's Restaurant, somewhere in the centre, near Market Street, we were served fish courses exclusively. The restaurant itself was built in the shape of a ship, and the food was served by people in the uniforms of captains and sailors. Everywhere hung life preservers with the inscription " Bernstein." That, of course, was no evidence of a very artistic imagination. But after a drug-store lunch No. 3, this was much more satisfactory, especially since it did not cost any more than a visit to a drug-store. Not far from the harbour was a quite remarkable food establishment, an Italian restaurant called "Lucca's."' Its owner impressed us as a magician and benefactor. The magician's charge for a dinner is, to tell the truth, not so very little—a dollar—but then here for the same price one has the right to ask for additional helpings of any course one finds to his special liking. However, the main surprise is still ahead. After dinner, when the visitor is putting on his overcoat, he is given a package of pastry neatly tied with a ribbon.

"But I did not order any pastry!" the visitor says, turning pale.

"This is free," the waiter replies, looking at him with burning Italian eyes. "It is a gift."

But this is not all. The visitor is also given a ticket. The ticket entitles him to come the following morning into Lucca's pastryshop for a roll and a cup of coffee. At the moment the visitor's overwhelmed brain cannot grasp that the price of the pastry and the coffee and roll entered into the honestly paid dollar, and that all of this extraordinary commercial reckoning of Lucca's is based on the supposition that many of the visitors will not come the next day for their coffee and roll, since they will not have the time for it. Here, as they say, was a plain case of diamond cut diamond.

Having relieved ourselves of visits, we felt cheery and buoyant, like students after an examination. The fact that we had seen real Rodins in Paris and in Moscow saved us from the necessity of looking at the copies of Rodin at the museum, so we wandered over the city without plan or purpose. And since our entire journey had passed quite wisely and had been subjected to Mr. Adams's strict plan, we regarded these free hours of wanderings as a well-deserved rest.

We don't understand why and how we found ourselves in the "Tropical Swimming Pool"—that is, in a winter basin. We stood there, without taking off our top-coats, in a huge, old, white wooden dwelling where the air was as oppressive as in a hothouse; here and there bamboo poles and drapery protruded, and, after admiring a young couple in swimming-suits who very busily played ping-pong and a fat man who floundered in a large box of water, we noticed several pinball games and an automatic machine for chewing gum, so went on, to the Japanese garden.

This garden was a gift to the city from the Japanese empress. In it everything was small. Hunchbacked bamboo bridges, midget trees, and a Japanese house with sliding paper doors. In it lives a Japanese who, if the visitors like, "will brew real Japanese tea for them. We sat in a midget bamboo pergola and drank fragrant green hot water, which the polite host served noiselessly. When we felt ourselves on the blessed islands of Nippon, our fellow travellers told us that this Japanese had recently destroyed his wife. He had tormented her so that she had poured kerosene and set fire to herself.

From the Japanese garden we went to the Chinese city. It was picturesque and rather dirty. Everything in it was Chinese—its denizens, its paper lanterns, and the long pieces of cloth with hieroglyphics. But in the store sat only Japanese who sold kimonos, robes, wooden slippers, coloured photographs and Chinese trinkets with the stamp "Made in Japan."

Our free day was finished by a visit to a football match. The teams o| two universities were playing: Santa Clara and Texas Christian.

But before passing to a description of this event which, to some extern, helped us to understand the nature of America, it is necessary to say a few words about American football in general.

Football in America means this: the very largest stadium, the very largest congregation of people and automobiles in one place, the very loudest noise that can be emitted through the oral cavity of a certain creature with two hands, two legs, one head, and one hat put on aslant; it means the very largest appropriation of money, a special football press and a special football literature (stories, novelettes, and novels of football life). A big football match in America is an event of much greater significance than a concert by a symphony orchestra under the direction of Toscanini, a cyclone in Florida, a war in Europe, or even the kidnapping of a famous millionaire's daughter. If a bandit wants to become famous, he must not commit his sensational crime on the day of a football match between the Army and the Navy, but must find for it a more suitable and quieter time. Mussolini, for example, found a very convenient moment for attacking Abyssinia. On that day there was no football game in America, so the Duce received good publicity on the first page of all the newspapers. Otherwise, he would have had to move over to the second or maybe even to the third page.

The match which we saw in San Francisco cannot be regarded as one of the big games. However, it was not such a very small game either, and we would not advise Gigli or even Jascha Heifetz to give a concert on that day in San Francisco.

The grandstands of the stadium, filled in the centre, were almost vacant on the ends. Still, there were approximately thirty thousand people there. At first the play seemed incomprehensible and, therefore, not interesting.

American football has nothing in common with European football. These games resemble each other so little that when in New York in a newsreel theatre a portion of a football match between two European teams was shown, there was laughter in the audience.

And so, for some time we could not understand what was going on in the field. People in leather helmets, looking a little bit like sea divers, some of them in red, others in white, stood facing each other, their heads and backs bent, and for several seconds kept standing without a move. Then a whistle blew and these people dashed frantically away from their places. The reds and the whites got mixed up, as it seemed to us, seizing each other by their legs. Such a commotion occurs in a chicken coop when a polecat appears. It seemed to us that we even heard the flapping of wings. Then they all fell on top of each other, forming a large pile of bodies in motion. The audience rose and shouted lustily. The referee whistled. The football players resumed their places and everything began all over again.

The first few minutes we did not even see the ball: that is, we noticed it, but only for a second or two, and then again we lost sight of it. Gradually we learned to follow the ball and to estimate the situation. By the end of the first quarter we began to understand a little about American football and by the end of the second quarter we were already great experts, repeated the names of the best players, and yelled with all the other onlookers.

In broad outline, American football is somewhat like this: There are two teams; each team has its goal with a crossbeam. The grassy field is marked off by white crosswise strips, and each of these strips is occupied by assault. We will not describe the rules of the game in detail. They are too complicated. The important thing is how it is played, what is

done with the ball. The ball is made of leather; it is not round, it is oblong. This, it seems, makes it possible to hold on to it more firmly and more conveniently, pressing it to the stomach. When the teams take their places, bending over and facing each other, three players stand behind. The central player throws the ball back between his legs, which are spread apart, to one of his teammates at the back. The opponent does not see at once who caught the ball, and therein lies the advantage of the team that begins the play. The man who receives the ball either kicks it or throws it far ahead, on the calculation that one of his running team mates will catch it, or he passes it as unnoticeably as possible to a partner

from hand to hand. In either case, the man who finally receives the ball presses it to his stomach and runs ahead. Everyone has the right to push him, to catch him by his legs, to trip him up. Sometimes (this happens rarely and calls forth ovations from the stadium) the player manages to elude all attacks and carry the ball to the extreme end, into

the territory or camp of the opponent. However, more frequently he is caught and thrown to the ground. If at that time he let the ball drop out of his hands, the next turn, or, if you like, the next paroxysm, of football begins from the spot where the man fell with the ball. Occasionally the man who receives the ball, if he is a good runner, makes a wide circle in order to elude his enemies. But the enemies quickly discover him who holds the ball and run across to cut off his way. He passes the ball to another, that one to the third one, but it is difficult to break through, it is almost impossible, and the man with the ball is sometimes thrown to the ground farther away from the goal than at the moment when the turn began, and thus several feet are lost. Between the turns of play the team which has the ball holds a conference as to further tactics. By tradition this team goes a little to the side, and, forming a circle—so that only the bent backs and outspread legs are seen, while their heads, almost touching each other, form the centre—whispers. Finally, the terrible plan is thought up, the players peer ahead warily, and a new overwhelming brawl begins.

The Santa Clara and Texas Christian teams were almost evenly matched. The Christian young men of Texas were/a trifle stronger. In almost all the skirmishes their tactics consisted in having the player who had the ball fling himself headlong into the very thickness of the Santa Claraites and thus attempt to gain at least an inch of ground. He was felled at once. A new skirmish began and again an inch was gained. This reminded us of the attack on the western front at the time of the World War, when after a three-day artillery preparation the armies managed to move a hundred yards ahead. Slowly and implacably the Texans moved toward the goal of the Santa Claraites. The tension in-creased more and more. The young men in slanting hats shouted louder and louder. Now our entire attention was drawn to the public.

On the grandstands of the stadium, facing each other, sat the students of the respective universities, "suffering" for their teams. On our side sat several thousand Santa Claraites, in red caps, with their own band. Opposite us, the entire centre of the grandstand was occupied by the Christian young men in white caps, likewise with their own band, who had especially journeyed here from Texas.

When only about twenty feet remained before the last line of the Santa Claraites was reached, the Texans rose from their seats, took off their white caps and, rhythmically waving them in the direction of the opponent's goal, began to cry under the command of the band leader: "Go! Go! Go!"

In exact translation this means "proceed!" But it should be understood rather as: "Forward! Forward! Forward!"

The band also rose and, raising the horns to the very sky, blared forth intact the cacophonic sounds: "Go! Go!"

The Santa Claraites in their red caps were downcast and silent. By the time of the intermission, Texas Christian was ahead. A new disgrace fell on the heads of the poor students of Santa Clara. By tradition, the band of the victors played during the intermission. But now, while the players, spitting out the grass and pulling it out of their nostrils and ears, were restoring themselves into fit condition for the next half, the drums resounded, fanfares bayed, and parading into the field marched the white orchestra of Texas Christian. Ahead of them walked the drum-major, executing fancy dancing steps and waving his baton like a virtuoso. The band played its university march. All that time the Santa Clara band, sitting idly, must have suffered the torments Wagner experienced while listening to the hateful sounds of Traviata. Moreover, the contemptible band of the opponents played and played and played. Now the musicians were playing fashionable fox-trots and songs, marching one after the other down the field, coming together, walking apart, executing various marching figures. The band leader wriggled his body, tap-danced, and on purpose made all sorts of impudent body movements in order to irritate and humiliate his defeated enemies. The second half began.

Beyond the walls of the stadium we could see the houses of San Francisco ranged up and down. Close together and fresh and green were the trees of the gardens. The square of lawn shone in the sun, while the light odour of seaweed, oysters, youth, and happiness, which came from the ocean, mingled with the disgustingly drug-storish stench of whisky. The public, in order to warm up its enthusiasm and in fond memory of Prohibition days, pulled out flat pocket flasks and drank right out of the bottle while in the grandstand.

Again an interesting skirmish began. This time Santa Clara did not begin so badly. The line of combat came closer and closer to the goal of the Christian young men. Now red caps were lifted and the Santa Clara boys began to work up their football players.

"Go! Go! Go!" they cried in ringing youthful voices. The Santa Clara band, jumping to their benches, launched such 11 bedlam of music that this alone should have turned the accursed and impudent Christian young men into ashes. With every new whistle of the referee the line of the game moved toward the goal of the Texans. The Santa Claraites literally broke their way through with their heads, capturing inches and feet of green grass. Urged on by yells, they fought tooth and nail, and like bucking goats plunged headlong into the wall of enemy stomachs.

"Santa Clara!" some young men over our heads shouted desperately. "Santa Clara! Go! Go!"

Their eyes were popping. Their mouths were wideopen. Forgotten bits of chewing gum stuck to their teeth. The hour of reckoning was at hand. And suddenly something frightful happened. Something happened which compelled both warring grandstands to rise and to emit one heartrending cry, in which was everything, including triumph and pride and horror. In a word, it was a universal cry, the very loudest cry thirty thousand throats can muster.

The best football player of Texas Christian unexpectedly caught the ball and raced to the goal of Santa Clara. He had to cross the entire field. Men ran to intercept him. Men chased after him. They tried to tackle him. The most desperate defendants of Santa Clara flung them selves headlong under his feet. But the little football player, pressing the ball to his stomach, kept running and running and running. It was a remarkable miracle. At first he ran along the edge of the field. Then he turned sharply into the middle, leaving behind those who ran to meet him on the side. He jumped over a Santa Claraite who flung himself under his legs and cleverly skipped away from a score of other arms stretched out toward him. It is difficult to convey the excitement of the public. Finally, this player ran across the last line and stopped. That was all. Texas Christian had won. Our grandstand was disgraced. The grandstand opposite exulted stormily.

33 Russian Hill

WE RETURNED from the football game in excellent spirits and, interrupting each other, began to tell the Adamses our football impressions. The Adamses did not go with us to the football game; they went instead to the post office.

"Don't talk to me about football," Mr. Adams said to us, "it is a horribly barbarous game. Seriously, it hurts me to hear you talk about football. Instead of studying, these young men do the devil only knows what. No, let's not talk about that nonsense."