Big Money (2 page)

But for Jean-Paul Sartre, writing in 1938, it was exactly in the novel's refusal to redeem its characters that he found its greatness. Their lives are reported, their feelings and utterances put forth, says Sartre, in the style of a “statement to the Press.” And we the readers accumulate endless catalogues of individual sensory adventures, from the outside, right up to the moment the character disappears or dies—and is dissolved in the collective consciousness. And to what purpose all those feelings, all that adventure? What is the individual life against history? “The pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container does not depend upon the individual histories of the molecules composing it,” says the French existentialist philosopher.

But
U.S.A.
is an American novel after all, and we recognize the Americanness of the characters. They really do have a national specificity. In fact, the reader now, half a century further along, cannot help remark how current Dos Passos's characters are—how we could run into Margo Dowling or Ward Moorehouse or Charley Anderson today and recognize any one of them, and how they would fit right in without any trouble. How they do.
U.S.A.
is a useful book to us because it is far-seeing. It seems angrier and at the same time more hopeful than it might have seemed in 1938. A moral demand is implicit in its pages. Dos Passos says in his prologue that above all, “
U.S.A.
is the speech of the people.” He heard our voice and recorded it, and we play it now for our solemn contemplation.

—E. L. Doctorow

Charley Anderson lay in his bunk in a glary red buzz.
Oh, Titine
, damn that tune last night. He lay flat with his eyes hot; the tongue in his mouth was thick warm sour felt. He dragged his feet out from under the blanket and hung them over the edge of the bunk, big white feet with pink knobs on the toes; he let them drop to the red carpet and hauled himself shakily to the porthole. He stuck his head out.

Instead of the dock, fog, little greygreen waves slapping against the steamer's scaling side. At anchor. A gull screamed above him hidden in the fog. He shivered and pulled his head in.

At the basin he splashed cold water on his face and neck. Where the cold water hit him his skin flushed pink.

He began to feel cold and sick and got back into his bunk and pulled the stillwarm covers up to his chin. Home. Damn that tune.

He jumped up. His head and stomach throbbed in time now. He pulled out the chamberpot and leaned over it. He gagged; a little green bile came. No, I don't want to puke. He got into his underclothes and the whipcord pants of his uniform and lathered his face to shave. Shaving made him feel blue. What I need's a . . . He rang for the steward. “Bonjour, m'sieur.” “Say, Billy, let's have a double cognac tootsuite.”

He buttoned his shirt carefully and put on his tunic; looking at himself in the glass, his eyes had red rims and his face looked green under the sunburn. Suddenly he began to feel sick again; a sour gagging was welling up from his stomach to his throat. God, these French boats stink. A knock, the steward's frog smile and “Voila, m'sieur,” the white plate slopped with a thin amber spilling out of the glass. “When do we dock?” The steward shrugged and growled, “La brume.”

Green spots were still dancing in front of his eyes as he went up the linoleumsmelling companionway. Up on deck the wet fog squeezed wet against his face. He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned into
it. Nobody on deck, a few trunks, steamerchairs folded and stacked. To windward everything was wet. Drops trickled down the brass-rimmed windows of the smokingroom. Nothing in any direction but fog.

Next time around he met Joe Askew. Joe looked fine. His little mustache spread neat under his thin nose. His eyes were clear.

“Isn't this the damnedest note, Charley? Fog.”

“Rotten”

“Got a head?”

“You look topnotch, Joe.”

“Sure, why not? I got the fidgets, been up since six o'clock. Damn this fog, we may be here all day.”

“It's fog all right.”

They took a couple of turns round the deck.

“Notice how the boat stinks, Joe?”

“It's being at anchor, and the fog stimulates your smellers, I guess. How about breakfast?” Charley didn't say anything for a moment, then he took a deep breath and said, “All right, let's try it.”

The diningsaloon smelt of onions and brasspolish The Johnsons were already at the table. Mrs. Johnson looked pale and cool. She had on a little grey hat Charley hadn't seen before, all ready to land. Paul gave Charley a sickly kind of smile when he said hello. Charley noticed how Paul's hand was shaking when he lifted the glass of orangejuice. His lips were white.

“Anybody seen Ollie Taylor?” asked Charley.

“The major's feelin' pretty bad, I bet,” said Paul, giggling.

“And how are you, Charley?” Mrs. Johnson intoned sweetly.

“Oh, I'm . . . I'm in the pink.”

“Liar,” said Joe Askew.

“Oh, I can't imagine,” Mrs. Johnson was saying, “what kept you boys up so late last night.”

“We did some singing,” said Joe Askew.

“Somebody I know,” said Mrs. Johnson, “went to bed in his clothes.” Her eye caught Charley's.

Paul was changing the subject: “Well, we're back in God's country.”

“Oh, I can't imagine,” cried Mrs. Johnson, “what America's going to be like.”

Charley was bolting his wuffs avec du bakin and the coffee that tasted of bilge.

“What I'm looking forward to,” Joe Askew was saying, “is a real American breakfast.”

“Grapefruit,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Cornflakes and cream,” said Joe.

“Hot cornmuffins,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Fresh eggs and real Virginia ham,” said Joe.

“Wheatcakes and country sausage,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Scrapple,” said Joe.

“Good coffee with real cream,” said Mrs. Johnson, laughing.

“You win,” said Paul with a sickly grin as he left the table.

Charley took a last gulp of his coffee. Then he said he thought he'd go on deck to see if the immigration officers had come. “Why, what's the matter with Charley?” He could hear Joe and Mrs. Johnson laughing together as he ran up the companionway.

Once on deck he decided he wasn't going to be sick. The fog had lifted a little. Astern of the
Niagara
he could see the shadows of other steamers at anchor, and beyond, a rounded shadow that might be land. Gulls wheeled and screamed overhead. Somewhere across the water a foghorn groaned at intervals. Charley walked up forward and leaned into the wet fog.

Joe Askew came up behind him smoking a cigar and took him by the arm: “Better walk, Charley,” he said. “Isn't this a hell of a note? Looks like little old New York had gotten torpedoed during the late unpleasantness. . . . I can't see a damn thing, can you?”

“I thought I saw some land a minute ago, but it's gone now.”

“Musta been Atlantic Highlands; we're anchored off the Hook. . . . Goddam it, I want to get ashore.”

“Your wife'll be there, won't she, Joe?”

“She ought to be. . . . Know anybody in NewYork, Charley?”

Charley shook his head. “I got a long ways to go yet before I go home. . . . I don't know what I'll do when I get there.”

“Damn it, we may be here all day,” said Joe Askew.

“Joe,” said Charley, “suppose we have a drink . . . one final drink.”

“They've closed up the damn bar.”

They'd packed their bags the night before. There was nothing to do. They spent the morning playing rummy in the smokingroom. Nobody could keep his mind on the game. Paul kept dropping his cards. Nobody ever knew who had taken the last trick. Charley was trying to keep his eyes off Mrs. Johnson's eyes, off the little curve of
her neck where it ducked under the grey fur trimming of her dress. “I can't imagine,” she said again, “what you boys found to talk about so late last night. . . . I thought we'd talked about everything under heaven before I went to bed.”

“Oh, we found topics but mostly it came out in the form of singing,” said Joe Askew.

“I know I always miss things when I go to bed.” Charley noticed Paul beside him staring at her with pale loving eyes. “But,” she was saying with her teasing smile, “it's just too boring to sit up.”

Paul blushed, he looked as if he were going to cry; Charley wondered if Paul had thought of the same thing he'd thought of. “Well, let's see; whose deal was it?” said Joe Askew briskly.

Round noon Major Taylor came into the smokingroom. “Good morning, everybody. . . . I know nobody feels worse than I do. Commandant says we may not dock till tomorrow morning.”

They put up the cards without finishing the hand. “That's nice,” said Joe Askew.

“It's just as well,” said Ollie Taylor. “I'm a wreck. The last of the harddrinking hardriding Taylors is a wreck. We could stand the war but the peace has done us in.” Charley looked up in Ollie Taylor's grey face sagging in the pale glare of the fog through the smokingroom windows and noticed the white streaks in his hair and mustache. Gosh, he thought to himself, I'm going to quit this drinking.

They got through lunch somehow, then scattered to their cabins to sleep. In the corridor outside his cabin Charley met Mrs. Johnson. “Well, the first ten days'll be the hardest, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Why don't you call me Eveline, everybody else does?” Charley turned red.

“What's the use? We won't ever see each other again.”

“Why not?” she said. He looked into her long hazel eyes; the pupils widened till the hazel was all black.

“Jesus, I'd like it if we could,” he stammered. “Don't think for a minute I . . .”

She'd already brushed silkily past him and was gone down the corridor. He went into his cabin and slammed the door. His bags were packed. The steward had put away the bedclothes. Charley threw himself face down on the striped musty-smelling ticking of the mattress. “God damn that woman,” he said aloud.

The rattle of a steamwinch woke him, then he heard the jingle of
the engineroom bell. He looked out the porthole and saw a yellow and white revenuecutter and, beyond, vague pink sunlight on frame houses. The fog was lifting; they were in the Narrows.

By the time he'd splashed the aching sleep out of his eyes and run up on deck, the
Niagara
was nosing her way slowly across the greengrey glinting bay. The ruddy fog was looped up like curtains overhead. A red ferryboat crossed their bow. To the right there was a line of four- and fivemasted schooners at anchor, beyond them a squarerigger and a huddle of squatty Shipping Board steamers, some of them still striped and mottled with camouflage. Then dead ahead, the up and down gleam in the blur of the tall buildings of New York.

Joe Askew came up to him with his trenchcoat on and his German fieldglasses hung over his shoulder. Joe's blue eyes were shining. “Do you see the Statue of Liberty yet, Charley?”

“No . . . yes, there she is. I remembered her lookin' bigger.”

“There's Black Tom where the explosion was.”

“Things look pretty quiet, Joe.”

“It's Sunday, that's why.”

“It would be Sunday.”

They were opposite the Battery now. The long spans of the bridges to Brooklyn went off into smoky shadow behind the pale skyscrapers.

“Well, Charley, that's where they keep all the money. We got to get some of it away from 'em,” said Joe Askew, tugging at his mustache.

“Wish I knew how to start in, Joe.”

They were skirting a long row of roofed slips. Joe held out his hand. “Well, Charley, write to me, kid, do you hear? It was a great war while it lasted.”

“I sure will, Joe.”

Two tugs were shoving the
Niagara
around into the slip against the strong ebbtide. American and French flags flew over the wharfbuilding, in the dark doorways were groups of people waving. “There's my wife,” said Joe Askew suddenly. He squeezed Charley's hand. “So long, kid. We're home.”

First thing Charley knew, too soon, he was walking down the gangplank. The transportofficer barely looked at his papers; the customsman said, “Well, I guess it's good to be home, lieutenant,” as he put the stamps on his grip. He got past the Y man and the two reporters and the member of the mayor's committee; the few people and the scattered trunks looked lost and lonely in the huge yellow
gloom of the wharfbuilding. Major Taylor and the Johnsons shook hands like strangers.

Then he was following his small khaki trunk to a taxicab. The Johnsons already had a cab and were waiting for a stray grip. Charley went over to them. He couldn't think of anything to say. Paul said he must be sure to come to see them if he stayed in New York, but he kept standing in the door of the cab, so that it was hard for Charley to talk to Eveline. He could see the muscles relax on Paul's jaw when the porter brought the lost grip. “Be sure and look us up,” Paul said and jumped in and slammed the door.

Charley went back to his cab, carrying with him a last glimpse of long hazel eyes and her teasing smile. “Do you know if they still give officers special rates at the McAlpin?” he asked the taximan.

“Sure, they treat you all right if you're an officer. . . . If you're an enlisted man you get your ass kicked,” answered the taximan out of the corner of his mouth and slammed the gears.

The taxi turned into a wide empty cobbled street. The cab rode easier than the Paris cabs. The big warehouses and marketbuildings were all closed up. “Gee, things look pretty quiet here,” Charley said, leaning forward to talk to the taximan through the window.

“Quiet as hell. . . . You wait till you start to look for a job,” said the taximan.

“But, Jesus, I don't ever remember things bein' as quiet as this.”