On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [86]
face to face with the very thing he despised and loathed in life. This was the face of the barracks supervisor. Henri hated that man’s face so much that he told me “What’s the name of that Russian author you’re always talking about- -the one who put the newspapers in his shoe and walked around in a stovepipe hat he found in a garbage pail.” This was an exaggeration of what I’d told Henri of Dostoevsky the holy Russian novelist saint. “Ah, that’s it…that’s IT…DOSTIOFFSKI…A man with a face like that supervisor can only have one name…it’s Dostioffski.” He was face to face with Dostioffski the supervisor, the manager, the boss man of the place. The only unlocked door he ever found belonged to Dostioffski. Not only that, but D. was asleep when he heard someone fiddling with his doorknob. He got up in his pajamas. He came to the door looking twice as ugly as usual. When Henri opened it he saw a haggard face suppurated with hatred and dull fury. “What is the meaning of this?” “I was only trying this door…I thought this was the…ah..moproom. I was looking for a mop.” “What do you MEAN you were looking for a mop.” “Well..ah.” And I stepped back and said “One of the men puked in the hall upstairs. We have to mop it up.” “This is NOT the moproom. This is MY room. Another incident like this and I’ll have you fellows investigated and thrown out! Do you understand me clearly?” “A fellow puked upstairs,” I said again. “The moproom is down the hall. Down there”- -and he pointed, and waited for us to go and get a mop, which we did, and foolishly carried it upstairs. I said “Goddamn it Henri you’re always getting us into trouble. Why don’t you lay off. Why do you have to steal all the time.” “The world owes me a few things, that’s all. You can’t teach the old maestro a new tune. You go on talking like that and I’m going to start calling you Dostioffsky.” “Okay Hank. Go put the mop back.” “You go put the mop back. I’ve not given up on these doors.” He claimed he once found a man sleeping with a dollar sticking out of his pocket. “Did you take it?” “I’m not in California, which is a land of fruit and nuts, either you go nuts or you go fruit, for the benefit of what my mother used to call my health. You stick with the old maestro and we’ll make beautiful music on their evil skulls. Kerouac I’m absolutely convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that this Dostioffsky, this man, this worm, is nothing but a thief because of the shape of his evil skull.” Henri was a compulsive thief. He was just like a little boy. Somewhere in his past, in his lonely schooldays in France, they’d taken everything from him; his parents just stuck him in schools and left him there; he was browbeaten and thrown out of one school after another; he walked the French roads at night devising curses out of his innocent stock of words. He was out to get back everything he’d lost; there was no end to his loss; this thing would drag on forever. The barracks cafeteria was our meet. We looked around to make sure nobody was looking and especially to see if any of our copfriends were lurking about to check on us, then I squatted down and Henri put a foot on each shoulder and up we went. He opened the window, which was never locked, as he saw to it in the evenings, scrambled through and came down on the flour table. I was a little more agile and just jumped and crawled in. Then we went to the soda fountain. Here, realizing a dream of mine from infancy, I took the cover off the chocolate ice cream and stuck my hand in wrist-deep and hauled me up a skewer of ice cream and licked at it. Then we got ice cream boxes and stuffed them---poured chocolate syrup over and sometimes strawberries too---took wooden spoons---then walked around in the dispensary, the kitchens, opened iceboxes to see what we could take home in our pockets. I often tore off a piece of roastbeef and wrapped it in a napkin. “You know what President Truman said,” Henri would say, “we must cut down on the cost of living.” One night I waited a long time as he filled a huge box full of groceries. Then we couldn’t get it through