U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [52]
women hanging out clothes seemed to understand Mac's lingo. At last Mac heard a voice from above in careful y modulated English. "Come up if you are looking for Ricardo Perez . . . please . . . I am Ricardo Perez." Mac looked up and saw a tal bronzecolored grayhaired man in an old tan duster leaning from the top gal ery of the courtyard. He went up the iron steps. The tal man shook hands with him.
"Fel owworker McCreary . . . My comrades wrote me you were coming.""That's me, al right . . . I'm glad you talk English.""I lived in Santa Fe many years and in Brockton, Massachusetts. Sit down . . . please I am very happy to welcome an American revolutionary worker . . . Though our ideas probably do not entirely agree we have much in common. We are com-rades in the big battle." He patted Mac on the shoulder and pressed him into a chair. "Please." There were sev-eral little yel ow children in torn shirts running round barefoot. Ricardo Perez sat down and took the smal est on his knee, a little girl with kinky pigtails and a smudged face. The place smelt of chile and scorched olive oil and children and washing. "What are you going to do in Mexico, fel owworker?" Mac blushed. "Oh, I want to kinda get into things, into the revolution."
"The situation is very confusing here . . . Our town-workers are organizing and are classconscious but the peons, the peasants, are easily misled by unscrupulous leaders."
"I want to see some action, Perez I was living in Los Angeles an' gettin' to be a goddam booster like the rest of 'em. I can earn my keep in the printin' line, I guess."
-125-"I must introduce you to the comrades . . . Please
. . . We wil go now."
Blue dusk was swooping down on the streets when they went out. Lights were coming out yel ow. Mechanical pianos jinglejangled in bars. In a gateway a little outof-tune orchestra was playing. The market was al lit up by flares, al kinds of shiny brightcolored stuff was for sale at booths. At a corner an old Indian and an old broad-faced woman, both of them blind and heavily pockmarked, were singing a shril endless song in the middle of a dense group of short thickset country people, the women with black shawls over their heads, the men in white cotton suits like pajamas.
"They sing about the murder of Madero . . . It is very good for the education of the people
. . . You see they cannot read the papers so they get their news in songs . . . It was your ambassador murdered Madero. He was a bourgeois idealist but a great man . . . Please
. . . Here is the hal . . . . You see that sign says "Viva the Revindicating Revolution prelude to the Social Revo-lution." This is the hal of' the Anarchist Union of In-dustry and Agriculture. Huerta has a few federales here but they are so weak they dare not attack us. Ciudad Juarez is heart and soul with the revolution . . . Please
. . . you wil greet the comrades with a few words." The smoky hal and the platform were fil ed with
swarthy men in blue denim workclothes; in the back were a few peons in white. Many hands shook Mac's, black eyes looked sharp into his, several men hugged him. He was given a campchair in the front row on the platform. Evidently Ricardo Perez was chairman. Applause fol-lowed in every pause in his speech. A feeling of big events hovered in the hal . When Mac got on his feet, somebody yel ed "Solidarity forever" in English. Mac stammered a few words about how he wasn't an official representative of the I.W.W. but that al the same classconscious Ameri--126-can workers were watching the Mexican revolution with big hopes, and ended up with the wobbly catchword about building the new society in the shel of the old. The speech went big when Perez translated it and Mac felt pretty good. Then the meeting went on and on, more and more speeches and occasional songs. Mac found himself nodding several times. The sound of the strange language made him sleepy. He barely managed to keep awake until a smal band in the open door of the