U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [365]
The next spring he got sick with scarlet fever and was ten weeks in the hospital. When he got out his eyes were so bad it gave him a headache to read for an hour. The old man owed the Morris Plan another hundred dol ars be-sides the first hundred dol ars and the interest and the in-vestigation fees. Ben had met a girl at a lecture at Cooper Union who had worked in a textile mil over in Jersey. She'd
been arrested during the Paterson strike and had been blacklisted. Now she was a salesgirl at Wanamaker's, but her folks stil worked in the Botany Mil at Passaic. Her name was Helen Mauer; she was five years older than Ben, a pale blonde and already had lines in her face. She
-431-said there was nothing in the socialist movement; it was the syndicalists had the right idea. After the lecture she took him to the Cosmopolitan Café on 2nd Avenue to have a glass of tea and introduced him to some people she said were real rebels; when Ben told Gladys and the old people about them the old man said, "Pfooy. . . radical jews," and made a spitting sound with his lips. He said Benny ought to cut out these monkeyshines and get to work. He was getting old and now he was in debt, and if he got sick it would be up to Benny to support him and the old
woman. Ben said he was working al the time but that your folks didn't count, it was the workingclass that he was working for. The old man got red in the face and said his family was sacred and next to that his own people. Momma and Gladys cried. The old man got to his feet; choking and coughing, he raised his hands above his head and cursed Ben and Ben left the house.
He had no money on him and was stil weak from the
scarlet fever. He walked across Brooklyn and across the Manhattan Bridge and up through the East Side, al ful of ruddy lights and crowds and pushcarts with vegetables that smelt of the spring, to the house where Helen lived on East 6th Street. The landlady said he couldn't go up to her room. Helen said it wasn't any of her business but while they were arguing about it his ears began to ring and he fainted on the hal settee. When he came to with water running down his neck Helen helped him up the four flights and made him lie down on her bed. She yel ed down to the landlady who was screaming about the police, that she would leave first thing in the morning and noth-ing in the world could make her leave sooner. She made Ben some tea and they sat up al night talking on her bed. They decided that they'd live in free union together and spent the rest of the night packing her things. She had mostly books and pamphlets. Next morning they' went out at six o'clock, because she
-432-had to be at Wanamaker's at eight, to look for a room. They didn't exactly tel the next landlady they weren't married, but when she said, "So you're bride and groom?" they nodded and smiled. Fortunately Helen had enough money in her purse to pay the week in advance. Then she had to run off to work. Ben didn't have any money to buy anything to eat so he lay on the bed reading Progress and Poverty al day. When she came back in the evening she brought in some supper from a delicatessen. Eating the rye bread and salami they were very happy. She had such large breasts for such a slender little girl. He had to go out to a drugstore to buy some safeties because she said how could she have a baby just now when they had to give al their strength to the movement. There were bedbugs in the bed but they told each other that they were