U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [112]
Edwin Vinal had been a social worker and lived in a settlement house and now he had a scholarship at Columbia but he said the profs were too theoretical and never seemed to realize it was real people like you and me they were dealing with. Daughter had done churchwork and taken around baskets to poorwhite families at Christmas time and said she'd like to do some socialservicework right here in New York. As they were taking off their skates he asked her if she real y meant it and she smiled up at him and said, "Hope I may die if I don't."
So the next evening he took her downtown threequar-ters of an hour's ride in the subway and then a long stretch on a crosstown car to a settlement house on Grand Street where she had to wait while he gave an English lesson to
-265-a class of greasylooking young Lithuanians or Polaks or something like that. Then they walked around the streets and Edwin pointed out the conditions. It was like the Mexican part of San Antonio or Houston only there were al kinds of foreigners. None of them looked as if they ever bathed and the streets smelt of garbage. There was laun-dry hanging out everywhere and signs in al kinds of funny languages. Edwin showed her some in Russian and Yid-dish, one in Armenian and two in Arabic. The streets were awful crowded and there were pushcarts along the curb and peddlers everywhere and funny smel s of cooking coming out of restaurants, and outlandish phonograph music. Edwin pointed out two tiredlooking painted girls who he said were streetwalkers, drunks stumbling out of a saloon, a young man in a checked cap he said was a cadet drumming up trade for a disorderly house, some sal ow-faced boys he said were gunmen and dope peddlers. It was a relief when they came up again out of the subway way uptown where a springy wind was blowing down the broad empty streets that smelt of the Hudson River.
"Wel , Anne, how did you like your little trip to the underworld?"
"Al right," she said after a pause. "Another time I think I'l take a gun in my handbag. . . . But al those people, Edwin, how on earth can you make citizens out of them?
We oughtn't to let al these foreigners come over and mess up our country."
"You're entirely wrong," Edwin snapped at her.
"They'd al be decent if they had a chance. We'd be just like them if we hadn't been lucky enough to be born of decent families in smal prosperous American towns."
"Oh, how can you talk so sil y, Edwin, they're not white people and they never wil be. They're just like Mexicans or somethin', or niggers." She caught herself up and swal-, lowed the last word. The colored elevator boy was drows-ing on a bench right behind her. If you're not the benightedest little heathen I ever
-266-saw," said Edwin teasingly. "You're a Christian, aren'
you, wel , have you ever thought that Christ was a Jew?"
"Wel , I'm fal in' down with sleep and can't argue with you but I know you're wrong." She went into the elevator and the colored elevator boy got up yawning and stretch:'
ing. The last she saw of Edwin in the rapidly decreasing patch of light between the floor of the elevator and the ceiling of the vestibule he was shaking his fist at her. She threw him a kiss without meaning to.
When she got in the apartment, Ada, who was reading in the livingroom, scolded her a little for being so late, but she pleaded that she was too tired and sleepy to be scolded.
"What do you think of Edwin Vinal, Ada?"
"Why, my dear, I think he's a splendid young fel ow, a little restless maybe, but he'l settle down. . . . Why?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Daughter, yawning, "Good night, Ada darlin'." he took a hot bath and put a lot of perfume on and
went to bed, but she couldn't go to sleep. Her legs ached from the greasy pavements and she could feel the wal s of the tenements sweating lust and filth and the smel of crowded bodies closing in on her, in spite of the perfume she stil had the rank garbagy smel in her nose, and the dazzle of street lights and faces pricked her eyes. When she went to sleep she