The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [220]
“I know it. Say, there’s girls like that all right out there. They’ll go the limit, do anything a guy wants for a meal. There’s girls like that in any big town.”
“It’s this country, capitalism.”
“I know how it feels to be out of work, in a strange town, stony,” said Davey reflectively, taking a sip of coffee.
“And in Los Angeles, they have fanatics. Christians,” said Christy.
“Sure. All kinds of bugs. There’s more fake saviors there than any place in the world.”
“Christians. Love your neighbor as yourself. Christians,” sneered Pete.
“And what the hell did they do to get their God but steal Him from the Jews,” laughed Davey.
“And the Catholic Church. Yes. It has perverted the great philosophy of Aristotle.”
“I don’t like the Catholics none. They’re hypocrites and idolators,” said Davey.
“Jesus, He was great. Great men like Lenin and Savonarola and Socrates. Christians, they drag him in the mud. They don’t love Jesus, or follow his example. They are afraid. They have a God of fear. That’s religion…fear.”
“The Irish made a shanty Irishman out of Christ,” Davey said.
“Yes, Jesus was a noble man. The Christians, Catholics, they put Him in a sink of superstition.”
“Yeah, Christy,” said Davey, kind of agreeing with him, feeling that agreement got him even with the Irish bastards like Lonigan and Kelly.
“And America, this great country. It’s all cheap journalism, selling. Everything is sell, and what do people get. Things they can’t use. Automobiles. Radios. Cheap clothes. The capitalists kill workers, pay them starvation wages, and why? To sell all these things, junk. America was a good country. It isn’t now. America is capitalism. It bleeds the world.”
Davey didn’t know what to say. Maybe he agreed. Goddamn it, people didn’t need as much as they had, when others, now himself, had to go without things, be sick, possibly die from want of care.
“America is a country for the parvenu rich man. No art, it’s all journalism. America, you have one poet, you don’t know him.”
“Who’s that? Longfellow?”
“Whitman. I’m translating him for my countrymen to read. Perhaps they will appreciate his greatness more than his own countrymen.”
“Christy, what do you think of that German-Jewish poet, Heine?”
“A great spirit too, like Nietzsche. He was a great spirit, a great lyric poet.”
“But wasn’t Nietzsche pretty much of an anarchist?”
“Nietzsche was a great genius. Too great for people like Americans with Sinclair Lewis and all their journalism,” said Christy.
Christy waited on another customer. Then, Davey told about how he had picked up the book of Heine when he was on the bum, and how much he’d liked it.
“Yes, he was a fine lyric poet.”
“You know, Christy, I like to talk with you, because, you know, hell, I never got a break. It makes me think there are things in life after all,” Davey said, sentimentally.
“Yes, but the fine things in life, they are obscured in America because of greed. In America you have greed, capitalism. There are, boy, two countries in the world. Greece and Russia. Greece is the world’s past, Russia the future of the world.”
“You know, I wonder. Look now at all the things about Russia you read in the newspaper.”
“Don’t believe the newspaper, American journalism. That’s the trouble with Americans. They believe the newspaper lies all the time. The newspaper is an American’s bible.”
“The papers are pretty yellow.”
“You want to read, read Plato’s Republic. That’s what Russia is going to become, maybe. A government and land of justice.”
“Well, maybe bolshevism is not so bad as it seems,” said Davey.
“Bolshevism is going to be justice for the workingman. He will no longer be a slave, work ten, twelve hours a day and have his children starved and underfed. He will have opportunities. Bolshevism will not allow greed, not allow capitalists to steal all the money to crush people, kill them in wars, to waste their toil on jewelry for silly women and silly wives. Russia is trying to make a