U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [184]
forged passports, speeches, secret documents, rid-ing the rods across the cordon sanitaire, hiding in the bunkers on steamboats;
jail in Finland al his papers stolen,
no more chance to write verses now, no more warm
chats with every guy you met up with, the col ege boy with the nice smile talking himself out of trouble with the judge;
at the Harvard Club they're al in the Intel igence Service making the world safe for the Morgan-Baker-Stil man combination of banks; that old tramp sipping his coffee out of a tomato-can's a spy of the General Staff. The world's no fun anymore,
only machinegunfire and arson
starvation lice bedbugs cholera typhus
no lint for bandages no chloroform or ether thou-sands dead of gangrened wounds cordon sanitaire and everywhere spies.
-16-The windows of Smolny glow whitehot like a
bessemer,
no sleep in Smolny,
Smolny the giant rol ingmil running twentyfour
hours a day rol ing out men nations hopes mil enniums impulses fears, rawmaterial
for the foundations
of a new society.
A man has to do many things in his life.
Reed was a westerner words meant what they said.
He threw everything he had and himself into
Smolny,
dictatorship of the proletariat;
U.S.S.R.
The first workers republic
was established and stands.
Reed wrote, undertook missions (there were spies
everywhere), worked til he dropped,
caught typhus and died in Moscow.
JOE WILLIAMS
Twentyfive days at sea on the steamer Argyle, Glas-gow, Captain Thompson, loaded with hides, chipping rust, daubing red lead on steel plates that were sizzling hot griddles in the sun, painting the stack from dawn to dark, pitching and rol ing in the heavy dirty swel i bedbugs in the bunks in the stinking focastle, slumgul ion for grub, with potatoes ful of eyes and mouldy beans, cockroaches mashed on the messtable, but a tot of limejuice every day in accordance with the regulations; then sickening rainy heat and Trinidad blue in the mist across the ruddy water.
-17-Going through the Boca it started to rain and the islands heaped with ferny parisgreen foliage went grey under the downpour. By the time they got her warped into the
wharf at Port of Spain, everybody was soaked to the skin with rain and sweat. Mr. McGregor, striding up and
down in a souwester purple in the face, lost his voice from the heat and had to hiss out his orders in a mean whisper. Then the curtain of the rain lifted, the sun came out and everything steamed. Apart from the heat everybody was sore because there was talk that they were going up to the Pitch Lake to load asphaltum.
Next day nothing happened. The hides in the forward hold stank when they unbattened the hatches. Clothes and bedding, hung out to dry in the torrid glare of sun be-tween showers, was always getting soaked again before they could get it in. While it was raining there was no-where you could keep dry; the awning over the deck dripped continual y.
In the afternoon, Joe's watch got off, though it wasn't much use going ashore because nobody had gotten any pay. Joe found himself sitting under a palm tree on a bench in a sort of a park near the waterfront staring at his feet. It began to rain and he ducked under an awning in front of a bar. There were electric fans in the bar; a cool whiff of limes and rum and whiskey in iced drinks wafted out through the open door. Joe was thirsty for a beer but he didn't have a red cent. The rain hung like a bead curtain at the edge of the awning.
Standing beside him was a youngish man in a white suit and a panama hat, who looked like an American. He
glanced at Joe several times, then he caught his eye and smiled, "Are you an Am-mmerican," he said. He stut-tered a little when he talked. "I am that," said Joe. There was a pause. Then the man held out his hand.
"Welcome to our city," he said. Joe noticed that he had a slight edge on. The man's palm was soft when he shook
-18-his hand. Joe didn't like the way his handshake felt. "You live here?" he asked. The man laughed. He had blue eyes and a round poutlipped face that