Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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From the cemetery we went to a photographer's supply store to have our camera repaired. While Mr. Adams was talking with the woman in charge about the prospects of the city's future development (the prospects were bad), and about trade (the trade likewise was bad), there entered a handsome young man with black eyes and a beaked French nose.

"May I see the manager of the store?" he asked.

"He is not here now," answered the lady, a thin, red-haired woman in spectacles, "but if you need anything, you may tell me."

"But I should like to talk to the owner," muttered the young man, looking appealingly at us.

"Is it a very important matter?" asked the lady.

"Yes ... that is, it is not so important, but I thought ... however, you also, of course ... I can tell you what it is."

He came close to the lady and very quietly said:

"I should like to wash the show window in your store for only five cents."

The lady said she was very sorry, but she did not need that kind of work. The young man apologized, and, stumbling several times, ran out of the store.

We were silent for some time; then Mr. Adams ran out into the street. He returned ten minutes later.

"Gentlemen," he said, shaking his round head," this is terrible ! You can't imagine to what stage of pauperism he has descended. I caught up with him with difficulty, he ran so fast down the street. I had a talk with him. He is an unemployed, artist. He has had no orders for a long time and he does not expect any in the future. The boy no longer counts on his profession. He is ready to do any kind of work, but this is also hopeless. Yes, gentlemen, that nice boy has been hungry for several years. He would not take a dollar from me for anything in the world. He was even angry with me."

"What? And you did not manage to give him ... "

"No, don't say I could not give it to him. It is simply foolish to think so. Let us not talk about it."

We had left the store some time ago, passed all the way down Canal Street, were coming to the Mississippi, and Mr. Adams was still muttering, as he groaned and moaned:

"No, gentlemen, let us not talk about it."

New Orleans is a beautiful city. It appealed to us. But the feeling of indifference and boredom, which overcame our automobile group after New Year's Eve in San Antonio, like a never-ceasing rain pouring constantly from an ever-cloudy sky, did not even think of leaving us. We had skimmed the cream off the journey. Man is not equipped to enjoy himself eternally. Therefore, all the beauty of New Orleans was appreciated only with our minds. The heart was speechless.

On a large square at the Mississippi it was quite deserted. Automobile ferries, the same kind as in San Francisco, were leaving the wooden docks for the other side. On a parapet, his legs hanging down toward the river, a Negro sat sadly, in a straw hat pulled over his nose. Beside him stood a crazy old man, a black coat flung around his shoulder, who directed the departing and approaching ferries. While doing this, he emitted cries of command. A street photographer came to us and, listlessly, as if he had seen us yesterday and the day before, asked in Russian whether we did not wish to have our pictures taken. He had arrived here twenty years ago from Kovno to become a millionaire, and one sensed such scepticism in his face and in the figure of this Kovno photographer that we did not even ask him how business was and what were his further prospectives.

Unexpectedly, from beyond the wooden dock moved a high long white structure which one could not at once recognize as a steamship. It went past us up the river. Quite close to its prow stood two high stacks, placed side by side across the deck, decorated in curlicues and looking like cast-iron poles of some monumental fence. The steamer was set in motion by the movement of one huge wheel placed astern.

"The last of the Mohicans," said Mr. Adams. "Now people ride on such ships only for rest and recreation, and that very rarely. Mississippi has come to an end!"

We looked at the river on which at one time floated barges with merchandise and slaves. It was on this river that Harriet Beecher Stowe introduced Tom to her readers. On it moved the raft of Huckleberry Finn, who hid the Negro, Jim, from his pursuers. Now the river is dead, river transport having proved too slow for the United States. Trains and automobiles have taken possession of all the cargoes of the river. Speed —that is the slogan under which the economy of the United States has developed in recent years. Speed at any price!

And there are no longer any slaves in the United States. By law the slaves have become free men with equal rights. But let a Negro so much as dare to enter a Southern motion-picture theatre, a street car, or a church where white men sit!

In the evening, wandering over the old streets of New Orleans, we saw the Palace Motion Picture Theatre, over which was this lighted inscription:

Splendid Southern Theatre.

For Coloured Folks Only.

44 Negroes

THE FARTHER we moved through the Southern states, the more frequently we met with all kinds of limitations designed for Negroes. Sometimes they were separate comfort stations " for the coloured," or a special bench at an autobus stop, or a special section of the street car. Here even the churches were separate; for example, one for the white Baptists and another for the black Baptists. When the Baptist God several years hence returns to earth, in order to destroy Soviet atheists who help one another, he will be delighted with his establishments in the south of America.

When leaving New Orleans we saw a group of Negroes working on swamp reclamation. The work was carried on in the most primitive manner. The Negroes had nothing but spades.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, " this should be especially interesting to you. Common ordinary spades in the land of the greatest mechanization ! It would be foolish to think that in the United States there are no machines for draining swamps. The labour of these people is almost thrown away. These are unemployed who receive a little relief. For that relief they must be given some kind of work, they must be occupied in some way. So they have been given spades. Let them dig. The productivity of labour here is equal to zero."

Our further route lay along the Gulf of Mexico, through the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We passed through all these states in one day, and stopped in Florida. Then from Florida—to the shore of the Atlantic Ocean—into Georgia, then through South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia—to Washington.

The first part of our route along the Gulf of Mexico was made by us with great speed. American technique delivered a new blow to our imagination. It is hard to astonish people after they have seen Ford's plant, Boulder Dam, the San Francisco bridges, and the New Orleans bridge. But in America everything proved possible. The fight against water—this is what occupied technique here. For scores of miles, bridges and dams alternate. At times it seemed that our automobile was a motor-boat, because all around, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but water, and across it in some marvellous way a broad concrete road stretched. Then a bridge appeared, then again a dam, and then again a bridge. What effort, what money were needed to build it all! Most astonishing of all was the fact that twenty miles from here was an excellent parallel road, and there was really no pressing necessity for the road on which we were travelling, the construction of which was a technical wonder of the world and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We learned that during prosperity this road was built in order to attract tourists to these places. The very shore of the Gulf of Mexico was covered with a quay that stretched for hundreds of miles. We regret that we did not write down the exact figure, but we do remember distinctly that it was several hundreds of miles. It is hard to believe, but we drove an entire day alongside the sea, which was separated from us by a solid and beautiful quay.

We spent the night in the small port and summer resort town of Pensacola, in Florida. Rain poured down all night. Our automobile stood under the open sky, and in the morning it was impossible to start the motor. Mr. Adams walked around the machine and, throwing his hands up in despair, said:

"Our battery has gone to the devil! Our battery has gone to the devil!" The rain annoyed and perplexed Mr. Adams, and he redoubled his usual automobile cautiousness.

It was our luck that our battery had not even thought of going to the devil. The wires had become a bit damp, and as soon as they dried out he motor began to work.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, looking at the murky sky, "I ask you to be as careful as possible. I suggest that we postpone getting out of here. Suppose the rain should start again."

"But suppose it doesn't start again?" said Mrs. Adams. "You don't expect us to stay here in Pensacola for the rest of our lives!"

"Oh, Becky, you don't know what Florida is. Here the climate is changeable and dangerous. Anything can happen here."

"Well, what can happen?"

"Seriously, Becky, you talk like a little girl. Anything can happen here."

"At the worst, if we should run into rain, we will drive in the rain."

All of us were so eager to get on our way that we paid no attention to Mr. Adams, and, taking advantage of a lull in the downpour, set out along the Gulf across the hew dams and the new bridges.

An hour after driving out of Pensacola, we ran into a tropical storm (rather, this was a subtropical storm, but at the time it seemed so frightful to us that we regarded it as a tropical storm). Everything happened according to Jules Verne—thunder, lightning, and a Niagara pouring out of the skies. Now everything was covered with water. We moved ahead blindly. At times the water was so deep that we seemed to be driving along the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. At each clap of thunder Mr. Adams jumped and muttered:

"Gentlemen, be calm ... be calm ..."

He was undoubtedly afraid that a stroke of lightning would hit our automobile.

We tried stopping and waiting for the storm to blow over, but we were afraid that the water would flood the motor and the battery would actually "go to the devil." We remembered with trepidation newspaper stories about hurricanes in Florida and photographs of gigantic trees pulled out by the roots and trains knocked off the rails.

At any rate, just as in Jules Verne, it all ended well.

We spent the night in the city of Tallahassee, and in the morning we were already in Georgia. The January day was almost sultry, and we forgot about our terrors of yesterday.

Georgia proved to be a forest country. For some inexplicable reason we had always imagined the Southern Negro states in the form of sheer cotton fields and tobacco plantations. And here suddenly we learned that besides plantations and fields, there are also thick forests. We drove through lanes over which, in the manner of goatbeards, hung down the hempen tails of a tree called "pecan," a kind we had never seen before.

We "met Negroes more and more frequently; at times for several hours at a stretch we saw no white people. But in the cities the white man ruled, and if a Negro appeared at some moss-covered mansion in the residential part, he would invariably have a broom, a pail or a package, all of which pointed to the fact that here he could be only a servant.

The high American standard of living has not yet conquered the Southern states. It has, of course, penetrated considerably—there are Southern Main Streets, drug-stores, quadrangles of butter at dinner and luncheon, pinball games, chewing gum, petrol stations, highways, T-bone steaks, girls with the coiffures of movie stars, and advertising billboards in no way distinguishable from the Eastern, Western and Northern quadrangles of butter, girls, highways, and billboards. Yet the Southern states have something of their own, something peculiar and indigenous to them which is amazingly charming and warm. Nature? Perhaps it is partly nature too. Here are no self-conscious palms, no polished suns as in California. But then there is also no dryness of desert here, something that is felt over there. The Southern states are a land of village landscapes, of forests, and of mournful songs. But, of course, it is not only a matter of nature.

The soul of the South is its people; not its white people, but its black.

We stopped in Charleston, South Carolina. After looking over the city, we were returning home in the evening over the inevitable Main Street when we saw in a dark lane a Negro girl about twelve years old. The girl did not see us. She held a basket on her arm. The walk of the girl at first seemed strange to us, but, peering more closely, we saw that the girl was dancing. It was a talented improvisation, clean-cut and rhythmic, an almost finished dance which we should have liked to call: "A Girl from a Southern State." Dancing, the little Negress went farther and farther down the dark lane, glided, made turns, little hops, and gracefully balanced the light and empty basket. After the commerce of the day, the city was asleep. It was wrapped in utter darkness. It seemed to us that we heard the sounds of the banjo, so rhythmic and musical was her dance.

Negroes are talented people. True, the whites gladly applaud them, but at the same time continue to regard them as a lower race. Negroes are graciously permitted to be artists. Evidently, when the black is on the stage and a white man in a loge, the latter can look down on the black man, and his lordly pride does not suffer therefrom.

Negroes are impressionable people. The whites regard that ironically and figure that Negroes are fools. Indeed! For success in commerce there is no need of impressionability.

Speaking now of white people, we have in view Southern gentlemen, and not them only but also the gentlemen from the North who are likewise infected with the psychology of slave-owning. We also want to say that not all the people in the South regard Negroes as lower beings, but, to our regret, these are the majority.

Negroes possess a strong imagination. They love to bear the names of famous people, for example, and occasionally some porter, elevator operator, or farm labourer, whose name is Jim Smith, pronounces his full name thus—"Jim George Washington Abraham Lincoln Grant Nebuchadnezzar Smith."

"Why, of course," says the Southern gentleman, whose imagination day and night encompasses only the splendid vision of a million dollars, "he is an utter idiot!"

In all the motion pictures and vaudevilles Negroes are represented as comic personalities who are foolish but good-natured servants.

Negroes love nature. As is peculiar of artistic characters, they are contemplative. Southern gentlemen find their own explanation for this. The Negroes, you see, are lazy and incapable of systematic labour. At that point is inevitably recounted the case of a Negro, who, having earned five dollars, does not go to work the next day, but, instead, taking his black girl by the arm, goes off with her to have a good time in the woods or by the river. And then the profound conclusion is drawn which, in a way, serves as the theoretical justification for exploiting the black man.

"No matter how much you pay him, he'll live like a pig, anyway. Therefore, pay him as little as possible."

Finally, Negroes are expansive. Oh! Here the Southern gentleman is seriously disturbed. He is already reaching for a pulley, a rope, and a piece of soap. He is already laying out the fire. He suddenly becomes incredibly noble and suspicious. Negroes are sexual criminals. It is simply necessary to hang them.

Negroes are inquisitive. For this there are a thousand explanation. It's as clear as day that they are simply an impudent and hopeless people. They stick their nose into what does not concern them. They stick their black nose into everything.

In spite of all this, the Southern gentleman figures that Negroes love him very much. In motion-picture dramas about the life of the landed gentry there is always an old grey Negro who adores his master and is| ready to give up his life for him.

Oh, if only the Southern gentleman, the kind-hearted spectator or the participant of a lynching-bee suddenly understood that in order to attain full one hundred per cent, humanity he needs what he lacks—namely, these very Negro characteristics which he derides! What would he say to that?

Negroes have almost no opportunity to develop and to grow. In the cities the careers of porters and elevator operators are open to them, while in their homeland, in the Southern states, they are farm labourers without any rights; reduced by oppression to the status of domestic animals; they are utter slaves there.

Nevertheless, if Negroes were to be taken away from America, the country would, of course, become somewhat whiter, but most certainly it would become at least, twenty times more dull.

True to our rule to take into the automobile people waiting for the occasion on the road, at an isolated petrol station in North Carolina, we picked up an eighteen-year-old boy from a CCC camp near Washington. These camps had been built by President Roosevelt: for unemployed young men, originally for six months. Roosevelt hoped to end unemployment in six months—but later, when it became clear that it was not so easy to end unemployment, the camps were left for an indefinite period The boy had to drive eighty miles from his camp to his native town of Elizabethtown. Quite a cold rain was pouring. The young man shivered in his summer khaki shirt and his perforated, broad-brimmed felt hat.

Soon our last hitchhiker warmed up in the enclosed machine and began to reply to our questions. He did not add anything new to the impression we had acquired of American young men as a type—talkative, self-confident, and lacking in curiosity.

His story was ordinary. His father was a farmer. The old man's affairs were not so good. The boy graduated from a high school. He didn't have enough money to go to college. He set out to look for a job. He did not find it. He had to enroll in the CCC. There, together with other boys, he clears forests and digs fire-prevention ditches. They feed him not badly, clothe him, and give him thirty dollars a month (five in hand and twenty-five to his parents). Of course, this is a help. What will happen further is unknown. He knows only one thing: he is young, healthy, he has a white skin, he plays baseball. That means that everything will be well—" all right"—and will work out well. There is no fog in his consciousness. On the contrary, utter explicitness. He could give no answers to most of the questions we asked him. Then, with charming frankness, he would say: "I don't know about that." But then when he understood the question, he would reply at once, without thinking, with a ready-made formula, which was evidently firmly embedded in the family of his father, the farmer, and in the city of Elizabethtown.

"But, after all, don't you want to go to college?"

"Of course, although I do know lots of fellows with diplomas in their pockets who tramp through the country in search of work. But still, it is easier to make your way after going through college."

"Well, what studies interest you in college?"

"Well, what do you mean—what studies? Why, of course, those that they study there."

We were passing through a Negro village. It was the same standardized Negro poverty. It would have been just as unusual to find here a good Negro house as to find a bad road.

"You can tell a Negro house right away from a white man's house," our fellow traveller said with a smile.

"Is it possible that all Negroes live so poorly?"

"Of course, all of them."

"Well, now, you have grown up in the South. Tell us, do you know at least one wealthy Negro?"

The youth thought for some time.

No, I don't know a single one," he finally answered.

"Why is it so? Are Negroes bad workers?"

"No, they know how to work."

"Maybe it's because they're dishonest people?"

"Why dishonest? I know Negroes well. Negroes are good people. There are some good football players among them."

"How does it happen then that all Negroes are poor?"

"I don't know about that."

"Is your father acquainted with any Negroes?"

"We know many Negroes."

"And you treat them well?"

"Of course!"

"Would you ask such a Negro to sit down at the table with your family?"

The youth laughed.

"No, that's impossible!"

"Why?"

"Because! Negroes and white folks cannot sit together at the same table."

"But why not?"

"You must be from New York," said the young man.

To the Southern mind, New York is the limit of freethinking and radicalism.

"Now tell us this. We have passed through several Negro states and occasionally we saw quite good-looking Negresses. Could you be fond of a Negress?"

"Why, yes, that can happen," said the young man after some cogitation. "Yes, that might happen. It's true that among the coloured there are some good-looking ones, especially mulattoes."

"But if you were fond of her, would you marry her?"

"Go on! That's out of the question!"

"Why?"

"That's impossible!"

"Well, but suppose you loved her very much? Or suppose a white girl fell in love with a Negro and married him?"

The youth waved his arms.

"No, I can see right away that you're from New York."

"I dare say such a Negro would be hanged. Right?"

"I think something of the kind might happen to him."

The young man laughed gaily for a long time.

This conversation is reproduced here with complete accuracy.

Not only here, but even in New York itself, about which the young boy from the South talked with horror, it is almost impossible to see a Negro in a restaurant, a motion-picture theatre, or a church, unless, of course, he is there as a servant or a porter. In a large New York hall —Carnegie Hall—at the concert of the Negro singer, Marian Anderson, we saw hundreds of intelligent Negroes who sat in the gallery in a quite separate group.

Of course, in accordance with American laws, and especially in New York, Negroes have the right to take any place among the white, to go into a white motion-picture theatre or into a white restaurant. But the Negro himself will never do it. He knows only too well how such experiments might end. He will not be beaten up, of course, as in the South, but his closest neighbours in most cases will at once demonstratively depart—that is indubitable.

By law, Negroes are free citizens of the United States, yet in the South under various pretexts they are deprived of the right to vote, and in Washington itself, and not alone Washington, but in the very building where the laws were written, the following occurred: a Negro by the name of DePriest was elected to Congress from the city of Chicago. To the disaffection of the white Congressmen, he sat beside them at the sessions of the House of Representatives. But that wasn't all. This black man with his black secretary went to eat in the Congressional dining-room. He could not be turned out, and he paid no attention whatever to the quiet demonstrations against him. Finally, they thought up an excellent way out of the situation. They closed the dining-room. They closed down entirely the Congressional dining-room, just so that the Negro would not be able to eat with white people.

"Yes, yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, when, after letting off our young man from the CCC, we drove on, "I'll tell you a remarkable story about my friend from the Island of Trinidad. I knew an American family that lived there. They decided to come to New York. It so happened that I was obliged to leave New York for a year and decided to sublet my apartment to them. I recommended them to my landlord and went away. When I returned a year later the landlord flung himself at me almost with clenched fists. `It's an outrage,` he cried. `I never thought that you would play such a dirty trick on me!' I became frightened and began to wonder what I could have done to him that was so bad. ' I don't know what I did to hurt you,' I told the landlord. 'You settled Negroes in my house,' the landlord groaned. 'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'I settled in your house my friends from the Island of Trinidad. They are white people, just like you and me. They lived in the Islands for thirty years, and now return to America.' 'But why didn't you tell me at once that your friends lived in the Island of Trinidad? I wouldn't have let them in for anything in the world.' ' What happened?'I asked. 'This is what happened. All my tenants in one voice insist that your friends have a touch of Negro blood. They have a grandmother whose hair is too curly. That's definitely established. One of my tenants moved out. The others said that if I didn't get rid of these Negroes, they would break their leases and move out.' Seriously, gentlemen, it would be foolish to think that Negroes are well off in New York. Now, in our house there is a Negro elevator man. But, of course, that's a different matter."

It became cold in Northern Carolina and still colder in Virginia. The thin rain poured on the roof of our car all through the last day of our journey. It was only a few miles to Washington, but Mr. Adams feared that the water might begin to freeze. Bill-boards appeared advertising Washington hotels.

"Stop!" Mr. Adams cried suddenly.

The machine stopped.

"Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "do you want to know what is America?"

"We do," we replied.

"In that case, look!"

And Mr. Adams pointed to a bill-board we had almost passed.

We saw a large picture, exceedingly touching in content. On it was portrayed a fine young mother of the type of Greta Garbo with a fine young girl (of the type of Shirley Temple) in her arms. Behind them stood a wonderful guardian angel with the face of a Hollywood motion-picture lieutenant and with outspread wings.

"The signature!" cried Mr. Adams. "The signature! Do you know what this guardian angel is telling the good mother? He advises her to place money in a bank to the credit of her child. The angel is so kind that he even explains to her in which particular bank she should place her money. Seriously, gentlemen, you don't want to understand what America is!"

As we were driving into Washington the speedometer of our car showed exactly ten thousand miles.

For the last time we shouted " Hurrah!"

45 American Democracy

ON A RAINY winter day a small freight boat came to the shores of England. A hatless man came down the wet gangplank to the pier. With one hand he held his wife and with the other he pressed his child to him. He was attacked from all sides by photographers, motion-picture operators, and journalists. The man walked right through, paying no heed to anyone. Only after he took his place in a taxi did he turn to look back at the crowd that followed him, and in his look was reflected hatred and fear.

That man had fled from America. He abandoned America at night, when the country was asleep, after eluding the vigilance of New York's fleetest reporters. In order to avoid persecution, he departed not on a comfortable passenger ship, but on an old shabby freighter, where there was not even a convenient cabin. And this man who had abandoned his native land was happy to be on a foreign shore.

That was Charles Lindbergh, one of the most famous men in the world, and his native land was the United States of America, the country of the greatest democracy, as Americans firmly believe.

All know, of course, the reasons that drove Lindbergh to the necessity of undertaking the most serious step in the life of any man—to abandon his native land. America was not able to protect the inviolability of personality of its national hero. It was unable to defend his domicile from the intrusion of bandits. It was unable to protect his family.

There is no doubt that Lindbergh loves America and that Americans adore Lindbergh. And if one will read carefully the text of the American Constitution, it is easy to discover there grandiose and equitable sections which would seem to guarantee the general welfare. Nevertheless, Lindbergh fled, while the Constitution in the capitalist country is merely a bronze tablet or a no less beautiful parchment preserved in the vault of a lawmaking institution.

From the story of the famous man let us pass to the story of an ordinary woman for whom as much as for Lindbergh were written the sonorous words of the Constitution of the United States.

That American woman had a seventeen-year-old daughter and a grown-up son. On one occasion the daughter did not return home. She did not come back all through the night, nor did she return the next day. The girl disappeared. The police looked for her and did not find her. The mother regarded her daughter as lost. A year passed. Then, in one way or another, a friend of her son's told him a horrible bit of news. He had seen the girl whom they all regarded as lost in a. secret brothel. (Officially, there is no prostitution in America. As a matter of fact, there are any number of secret brothels there.) At once the brother, pretending to be a client, went to this den of iniquity. There he actually saw his sister. He recognized her with difficulty, so frightfully had the young girl changed. What she told him was even more horrible. She had been kidnapped and sold.

"I'm lost," said the girl, "and don't try to save me. The people who abducted me are so powerful that nobody can fight them. They will not hesitate to kill you or Mother."

Nevertheless, the fight began. The mother went to the police. But nothing came of it. Behind the backs of the bandits stood some unknown but extraordinarily powerful people. The mother appealed to the courts. The lawyer of the bandits proved that the girl was an old prostitute, and the menace to society were not the bandits who had abducted her but she herself. The superior court of the state likewise decided the case in favour of the bandits. A trip to Washington did not help the mother. Washington simply has no power over the court of the state. That's all there was to it. The girl remained in the brothel.