Эптон Синклер: Oil!

“But oh my friends, who can foresee the Wisdom of the Lord? Who can understand His ways? It was His Will to answer my prayers, and permit my lost brother to open his eyes, and hear the voice of the Lord speaking by my lips, and to answer, and confess his transgressions, and repent, and be healed, and washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Glory hallelujah! Glory! Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall become as white as snow, blessed be the name of the Lord! Brethren, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

All through this discourse you were aware of the murmur and stir of a great crowd. They would break into ejaculations at every pause in the prophet’s words; and now at the end they drowned him out with a chorus of rejoicing, “Glory! Glory, hallelujah!” And in the doorway of the hospital room stood Ruth Watkins, having awakened from her sleep. She was staring at Bunny with horrified eyes, and whispering, “Oh, what a lie!”

Yes, Bunny suspected that it was a lie; but he could not prove it; and even if he could, what then? The radio is a one-sided institution; you can listen, but you cannot answer back. In that lies its enormous usefulness to the capitalist system. The householder sits at home and takes what is handed to him, like an infant being fed through a tube. It is a basis upon which to build the greatest slave empire in history.

The householder shifted his dial. The returns from California were beginning to come in. “Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Angel City, California.” The announcer had a soft, caressing voice, worth a thousand dollars a month to him; it had a little chuckle which caused the children to adore him—he went by the name of “Uncle Peter,” and told them bed-time stories. Now he was applying his humor to the returns. “Rosario, California. Hello! The home town of Bob Buckman, secretary to the Chamber of Commerce! Let’s see what Bob’s been doing! Rosario, 37 precincts out of 52 give LaFollette 117, Davis 86, Coolidge, 549. Well, well! If Bob Buckman is listening in on VXZ, congratulations from Uncle Peter—you’re a great little booster, Bob!”

And then, startling the watchers by the bedside—“Paradise, California. Now what do you think of that? The location of the Ross Junior oil field, owned by Bunny Ross, our parlor Bolshevik! Bunny’s the boy that bails out the political prisoners, as he calls them; he publishes a little paper to dye our college boys and girls pink. Let’s see what Little Bunny’s town has to say to him. Paradise, California, 14 precincts out of 29 give LaFollette 217, Davis 98, Coolidge 693. Well, well, Bunny—you’ve got some more boring from within to do!”

The householder shifted again. “Radio QXJ, the Angel City Evening Roarer, banjo solo by Bella Blue, the Witch of Wicheta.” Plunkety-plunkety—plunkety-plunkety—plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk!

Paul’s lips were beginning to move. There was a trace of sound, and Ruth bent close to him. “He’s coming back to life! Oh, call the doctor!” The hospital doctor came, and listened, and felt Paul’s pulse; but he shook his head. It was merely a question of what areas of the brain were affected; the speech areas might be uninjured. The sounds were incoherent, and the doctor said Paul didn’t know what he was saying. He might stay that way for days, even for a week or two.

But Ruth continued to listen, and try to catch a word. Paul might be there, somehow, trying to speak to her, to convey some request. She whispered, in an agony of longing, “Paul, Paul, are you trying to talk to me?” The sounds grew louder, and Rachel said, “It’s a foreign language.” Bunny said, “It must be Russian”—the only foreign language Paul knew. It was strange, like a corpse talking, or a wax doll; the sounds seemed to come from deep in his throat. “Da zdrávstvooyet Revolútziya!” over and over; and Bunny said, “That must mean revolution.” And then, “Vsya vlast Soviétam!”—that must have something to do with the Soviets!

For an hour that went on; until suddenly Ruth exclaimed, “Bunny, we ought to find out what he’s saying! Oh, surely we ought to—just think, if he’s asking for help!”

Rachel tried to argue with her; it was just a delirium. But Ruth became more excited—she didn’t want Rachel to interfere. Rachel had saved her man, and what did she know about suffering? “I want to know what Paul’s saying! Can’t we find somebody that knows Russian?” So Bunny got Gregor Nikolaieff on the phone, and asked him to jump on the car and come down here.

When Bunny returned to the room, Paul was talking louder than ever, but still moving only his lips. The Angel Jazz Choir were shouting, “Honey-baby, honey-baby, kiss me in the neck!” And Paul was saying again and again, “Nie troodyáshchiysia da nie yest!”

“Oh, Bunny,” pleaded Ruth. “We ought to write down what he says! He might stop—and never speak again!” Bunny understood—Ruth had been brought up to believe in revelations, in words of awful import spoken on special occasions, in strange languages or other unusual ways. The doctors might call it delirium, but how could they be sure? Things that were hidden from the wise were revealed to babes and sucklings. So Bunny got out his notebook and fountain-pen, and wrote down what Paul’s words sounded like, as near as he could guess. “Hliéba, mira, svobódy!” And when Gregor came in, an hour or so later, he was able to say this meant, “Bread, peace, freedom,” the slogan of the Bolsheviks when they took possession of Russia: and “Dayesh positziyu!”—that was a war-cry of the red army, commanding the enemy to give up the position. The other things Paul had been saying were phrases of the revolution, that he had heard first in Siberia, and then in Moscow. No, Paul was not trying to talk to his sister; he was telling the young workers of America what the young workers of Russia were doing!

“Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Winitsky’s orchestra, in the main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel, broadcasting by remote control.” And then presently “Radio QXJ, the Evening Roarer,” giving election returns—big figures now. “Republican Campaign Headquarters in New York, in a bulletin issued at 1 A.M., estimates that Calvin Coolidge has carried Massachusetts by 400,000 plurality—hooray for the Old Bay State! And New York by 900,000—three cheers for the Empire State—ray, ray, ray! And Illinois by—wait a minute there, somebody’s knocked my glasses off—they’re pulling the rough stuff in this studio. Behave yourselves, girls, don’t you know the world’s listening in on QXJ tonight? Illinois by 900,000. Whoopee! That noise you hear is the Chicago Comet yelping for his home state! It’s time we heard the Chicago Comet again—sing us a hot one, Teddy—that little warble about the street car comin’ along. You know what I mean?” A broad, jolly Negro voice answered, “Yessah, Ah knows! Yessah, hyar Ah goes!” Plunkety-plunk—

“Ah had some one befoah Ah had you

An’ Ah’ll have someone aftah you’s gone,

A street car or a sweetheart doan’ mattah to me,

There’ll be another one comin’ along!”

Six or seven years ago the people of the United States in their sovereign wisdom had passed a law forbidding the sale of alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes. But the advocates of law and order reserve to themselves the privilege of deciding which laws they will obey, and the prohibition act is not among them. All ruling class America celebrates its political victories by getting drunk. Bunny knew how it was, having got drunk himself four years ago when President Harding had been elected; he could smile appreciatively when the announcer of QXJ tripped over his syllables—“Thass not polite now, Polly, quit your shovin’ this micro-hiccrophone!”