U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [534]
"Could you eat some supper? I've brought some in."
"I'l try . . . nothing too rich . . . I've gotten very dyspeptic. . . . So you thought I spoke al right?""I thought it was wonderful," she said.
"After supper I'l look at the papers you brought in.
. . . If the kept press only' wouldn't always garble what we say." She heated some peasoup and made toast and bacon and eggs and he ate up everything she gave him. While they were eating they had a nice cozy talk about the movement. She told him about her experiences in the great steelstrike. She could see he was beginning to take an interest in her. They'd hardly finished eating before he began to turn white. He went to the bathroom and threw up.
"Ben, you poor kid," she said when he came back look-ing haggard and shaky. "It's awful."
"Funny," he said in a weak voice. "When I was in the Bergen County jail over there in Jersey I came out feel-ing fine . . . but this time it's hit me.""Did they treat szyou badly?" His teeth clenched and the muscles of his jaw stiffened, but he shook his head. Suddenly he grabbed. her hand and his eyes fil ed with tears. " Mary French,
-443-you're being too good to me," he said. Mary couldn't help throwing her arms around him and hugging him. "You don't know what it means to find a . . . to find a sweet girl comrade," he said, pushing her gently away. "Now let me see what the papers did to what I said." After Ben had been hiding out in the apartment for about a week the two of them decided one Saturday night that they loved each other. Mary was happier than she'd ever been in her life. They romped around like kids al Sunday and went out walking in the park to hear the band play in the evening. They threw sponges at each other in the bathroom and teased each other while they were get-ting undressed; they slept tightly clasped in each other's arms.
In spite of never going out except at night, in the next few days Ben's cheeks began to have a little color in them and his step began to get some spring into it. "You've made me feel like a man again, Mary," he'd tel her a dozen times a day. "Now I'm beginning to feel like I could do something again. After al the revolutionary labor movement's just beginning in this country. The tide's going to turn, you watch. It's begun with Lenin and Trotzky's victories in Russia." There was something mov-ing to Mary in the way he pronounced those three words: Lenin, Trotzky, Russia.
After a couple of weeks he began to go to conferences with radical leaders. She never knew if she'd find him in or not when she got home from work. Sometimes it was three or four in the morning before he came in tired and haggard. Always his pockets bulged with literature and leaflets. Ada's fancy livingroom gradual y fil ed up with badlyprinted newspapers and pamphlets and mimeo-graphed sheets. On the mantelpiece among Ada's dresden-china figures playing musical instruments were stacked the three volumes of Capital with places marked in them with pencils. In the evening he'd read Mary pieces of a pam--444-phlet he was working on, modeled on Lenin What's to Be Done? and ask her with knitted brows if he was clear, if simple workers would understand what he meant.
One Sunday in August he made her go with him to
Coney Island where he'd made an appointment to meet his folks; he'd figured it would be easier to see them in a crowded place. He didn't want the dicks to trail him home and then be bothering the old people or his sister who had a good job as secretary to a prominent business-man. When they met it was some time before the Comp-tons noticed Mary at al . They sat at a big round table at Stauch's and drank nearbeer. Mary found it hard to sit stil in her chair when the Comptons al turned their eyes on her at once. The old people were very polite with gentle manners but she could see that they wished she hadn't come. Ben's sister Gladys gave her one hard mean stare and then paid no attention to her. Ben's brother Sam, a stout prosperouslooking Jew