Kabanata Kabanata 17 · Chapter XVII

. Chapter XVII

Martin learned to do many things. In the course of the first week, in

one afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white shirts.

Joe ran the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked on a steel

string which furnished the pressure. By this means he ironed the yoke,

wristbands, and neckband, setting the latter at right angles to the

shirt, and put the glossy finish on the bosom. As fast as he finished

them, he flung the shirts on a rack between him and Martin, who caught

them up and “backed” them. This task consisted of ironing all the

unstarched portions of the shirts.

It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed. Out

on the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool white,

sipped iced drinks and kept their circulation down. But in the laundry

the air was sizzling. The huge stove roared red hot and white hot,

while the irons, moving over the damp cloth, sent up clouds of steam.

The heat of these irons was different from that used by housewives. An

iron that stood the ordinary test of a wet finger was too cold for Joe

and Martin, and such test was useless. They went wholly by holding the

irons close to their cheeks, gauging the heat by some secret mental

process that Martin admired but could not understand. When the fresh

irons proved too hot, they hooked them on iron rods and dipped them

into cold water. This again required a precise and subtle judgment. A

fraction of a second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge

of the proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the

accuracy he developed—an automatic accuracy, founded upon criteria that

were machine-like and unerring.

But there was little time in which to marvel. All Martin’s

consciousness was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active, head

and hand, an intelligent machine, all that constituted him a man was

devoted to furnishing that intelligence. There was no room in his brain

for the universe and its mighty problems. All the broad and spacious

corridors of his mind were closed and hermetically sealed. The echoing

chamber of his soul was a narrow room, a conning tower, whence were

directed his arm and shoulder muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the

swift-moving iron along its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes,

just so many strokes and no more, just so far with each stroke and not

a fraction of an inch farther, rushing along interminable sleeves,

sides, backs, and tails, and tossing the finished shirts, without

rumpling, upon the receiving frame. And even as his hurrying soul

tossed, it was reaching for another shirt. This went on, hour after

hour, while outside all the world swooned under the overhead California

sun. But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The cool

guests on the verandas needed clean linen.

The sweat poured from Martin. He drank enormous quantities of water,

but so great was the heat of the day and of his exertions, that the

water sluiced through the interstices of his flesh and out at all his

pores. Always, at sea, except at rare intervals, the work he performed

had given him ample opportunity to commune with himself. The master of

the ship had been lord of Martin’s time; but here the manager of the

hotel was lord of Martin’s thoughts as well. He had no thoughts save

for the nerve-racking, body-destroying toil. Outside of that it was

impossible to think. He did not know that he loved Ruth. She did not

even exist, for his driven soul had no time to remember her. It was

only when he crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning,

that she asserted herself to him in fleeting memories.

“This is hell, ain’t it?” Joe remarked once.

Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation. The statement had been

obvious and unnecessary. They did not talk while they worked.

Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time,

compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two extra

motions before he caught his stride again.

On Friday morning the washer ran. Twice a week they had to put through

hotel linen,—the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-cloths, and

napkins. This finished, they buckled down to “fancy starch.” It was

slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did not learn it so

readily. Besides, he could not take chances. Mistakes were disastrous.

“See that,” Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could

have crumpled from view in one hand. “Scorch that an’ it’s twenty

dollars out of your wages.”

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension,

though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened

sympathetically to the other’s blasphemies as he toiled and suffered

over the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do

their own laundrying. “Fancy starch” was Martin’s nightmare, and it was

Joe’s, too. It was “fancy starch” that robbed them of their hard-won

minutes. They toiled at it all day. At seven in the evening they broke

off to run the hotel linen through the mangle. At ten o’clock, while

the hotel guests slept, the two laundrymen sweated on at “fancy starch”

till midnight, till one, till two. At half-past two they knocked off.

Saturday morning it was “fancy starch,” and odds and ends, and at three

in the afternoon the week’s work was done.

“You ain’t a-goin’ to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top of

this?” Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a triumphant

smoke.

“Got to,” was the answer.

“What are you goin’ for?—a girl?”

“No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket. I want to renew

some books at the library.”

“Why don’t you send ’em down an’ up by express? That’ll cost only a

quarter each way.”

Martin considered it.

“An’ take a rest to-morrow,” the other urged. “You need it. I know I

do. I’m plumb tuckered out.”

He looked it. Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and

minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles, a

fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon for

work, now that he had accomplished the week’s task he was in a state of

collapse. He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face drooped in

lean exhaustion. He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly, and his voice

was peculiarly dead and monotonous. All the snap and fire had gone out

of him. His triumph seemed a sorry one.

“An’ next week we got to do it all over again,” he said sadly. “An’

what’s the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a hobo. They

don’t work, an’ they get their livin’. Gee! I wish I had a glass of

beer; but I can’t get up the gumption to go down to the village an’ get

it. You’ll stay over, an’ send your books down by express, or else

you’re a damn fool.”

“But what can I do here all day Sunday?” Martin asked.

“Rest. You don’t know how tired you are. Why, I’m that tired Sunday I

can’t even read the papers. I was sick once—typhoid. In the hospital

two months an’ a half. Didn’t do a tap of work all that time. It was

beautiful.”

“It was beautiful,” he repeated dreamily, a minute later.

Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman had

disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer Martin

decided, but the half-mile walk down to the village to find out seemed

a long journey to him. He lay on his bed with his shoes off, trying to

make up his mind. He did not reach out for a book. He was too tired to

feel sleepy, and he lay, scarcely thinking, in a semi-stupor of

weariness, until it was time for supper. Joe did not appear for that

function, and when Martin heard the gardener remark that most likely he

was ripping the slats off the bar, Martin understood. He went to bed

immediately afterward, and in the morning decided that he was greatly

rested. Joe being still absent, Martin procured a Sunday paper and lay

down in a shady nook under the trees. The morning passed, he knew not

how. He did not sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did not finish the

paper. He came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner, and fell

asleep over it.

So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting

clothes, while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with groans

and blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft-soap.

“I simply can’t help it,” he explained. “I got to drink when Saturday

night comes around.”

Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the electric

lights each night and that culminated on Saturday afternoon at three

o’clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted triumph and then drifted

down to the village to forget. Martin’s Sunday was the same as before.

He slept in the shade of the trees, toiled aimlessly through the

newspaper, and spent long hours lying on his back, doing nothing,

thinking nothing. He was too dazed to think, though he was aware that

he did not like himself. He was self-repelled, as though he had

undergone some degradation or was intrinsically foul. All that was

god-like in him was blotted out. The spur of ambition was blunted; he

had no vitality with which to feel the prod of it. He was dead. His

soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the

sunshine sifting down through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault

of the sky whisper as of old and hint of cosmic vastness and secrets

trembling to disclosure. Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its

taste was bad in his mouth. A black screen was drawn across his mirror

of inner vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where entered no

ray of light. He envied Joe, down in the village, rampant, tearing the

slats off the bar, his brain gnawing with maggots, exulting in maudlin

ways over maudlin things, fantastically and gloriously drunk and

forgetful of Monday morning and the week of deadening toil to come.

A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life. He

was oppressed by a sense of failure. There was reason for the editors

refusing his stuff. He could see that clearly now, and laugh at himself

and the dreams he had dreamed. Ruth returned his “Sea Lyrics” by mail.

He read her letter apathetically. She did her best to say how much she

liked them and that they were beautiful. But she could not lie, and she

could not disguise the truth from herself. She knew they were failures,

and he read her disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic

line of her letter. And she was right. He was firmly convinced of it as

he read the poems over. Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and as

he read the poems he caught himself puzzling as to what he had had in

mind when he wrote them. His audacities of phrase struck him as

grotesque, his felicities of expression were monstrosities, and

everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible. He would have burned the

“Sea Lyrics” on the spot, had his will been strong enough to set them

aflame. There was the engine-room, but the exertion of carrying them to

the furnace was not worth while. All his exertion was used in washing

other persons’ clothes. He did not have any left for private affairs.

He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together and

answer Ruth’s letter. But Saturday afternoon, after work was finished

and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered him. “I guess

I’ll go down and see how Joe’s getting on,” was the way he put it to

himself; and in the same moment he knew that he lied. But he did not

have the energy to consider the lie. If he had had the energy, he would

have refused to consider the lie, because he wanted to forget. He

started for the village slowly and casually, increasing his pace in

spite of himself as he neared the saloon.

“I thought you was on the water-wagon,” was Joe’s greeting.

Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey, filling

his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle.

“Don’t take all night about it,” he said roughly.

The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for

him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.

“Now, I can wait for you,” he said grimly; “but hurry up.”

Joe hurried, and they drank together.

“The work did it, eh?” Joe queried.

Martin refused to discuss the matter.

“It’s fair hell, I know,” the other went on, “but I kind of hate to see

you come off the wagon, Mart. Well, here’s how!”

Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and

awing the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue

eyes and hair parted in the middle.

“It’s something scandalous the way they work us poor devils,” Joe was

remarking. “If I didn’t bowl up, I’d break loose an’ burn down the

shebang. My bowlin’ up is all that saves ’em, I can tell you that.”

But Martin made no answer. A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt

the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl. Ah, it was living, the

first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks. His dreams came

back to him. Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a

thing of flaming brightness. His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a

flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery. Wonder and beauty walked with

him, hand in hand, and all power was his. He tried to tell it to Joe,

but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would

escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a

great steam laundry.

“I tell yeh, Mart, they won’t be no kids workin’ in my laundry—not on

yer life. An’ they won’t be no workin’ a livin’ soul after six P.M. You

hear me talk! They’ll be machinery enough an’ hands enough to do it all

in decent workin’ hours, an’ Mart, s’help me, I’ll make yeh

superintendent of the shebang—the whole of it, all of it. Now here’s

the scheme. I get on the water-wagon an’ save my money for two

years—save an’ then—”

But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until

that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who,

coming in, accepted Martin’s invitation. Martin dispensed royal

largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the

gardener’s assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive

hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of

the bar.