Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

LANNY BUDD was the only occupant of a small-sized reception-room. He was seated in a well-padded armchair, and had every reason to be comfortable, but did not appear so. He fidgeted a good deal, and found occasions for looking at his watch; then he would examine his fingernails, which needed no attention; he would look for specks of lint on his tropical worsted trousers, from which he had removed the last speck some time ago. He would look out of the window, which gave on one of the fashionable avenues of the city of Cannes; but he had already become familiar with the view, and it did not change. He had a popular novel on his knee, and every now and then would find that he could not interest himself in the conversation of a set of smart society people.

Now and then one of several white-clad nurses would pass through the room. Lanny had asked them so many questions that he was ashamed to speak again. He knew that all husbands behave irrationally at this time; he had seen a group of them in a stage play, slightly risqué but harmless. They all fidgeted and consulted their watches; they all got up and walked about needlessly; they all bored the nurses with futile questions. The nurses had stereotyped replies, which, except for the language, were the same all over the world. "Oui, oui, monsieur. . . . Tout va bien. . . . Il faut laisser faire. . . . Il faut du temps. . . . C’est la nature."

Many times Lanny had heard that last statement in the Midi; it was a formula which excused many things. He had heard it more than once that afternoon, but it failed to satisfy him. He was in rebellion against nature and her ways. He hadn’t had much suffering in his own life, and didn’t want other people to suffer; he thought that if he had been consulted he could have suggested many improvements in the ways of this fantastic universe. The business of having people grow old and pass off the scene, and new ones having to be supplied! He knew persons who had carefully trained and perfected themselves; they were beautiful to look at, or possessed knowledge and skills, yet they had to die before long — and, knowing that fact, must provide a new lot to take their places.

Lanny Budd belonged to the leisure classes. You could tell it by a single glance at his smiling unlined face, his tanned skin with signs of well-nourished blood in it, his precise little mustache, his brown hair neatly trimmed and brushed, his suit properly tailored and freshly pressed, his shirt and tie, shoes and socks, harmonizing in color and of costly materials. It had been some time since he had seen any bloodshed or experienced personal discomfort. His life had been arranged to that end, and the same was true of his wife. But now this damnable messy business, this long-drawn-out strain and suffering—good God, what were doctors and scientists for if they couldn’t devise something to take the place of this! It was like a volcanic eruption in a well-ordered and peaceful community; not much better because you could foresee the event, going in advance to an immaculate hospice de la maternité and engaging a room at so much per week, an accoucheur at so much for the job.

A surgeon! A fellow with a lot of shiny steel instruments, prepared to assist nature in opening a woman up and getting a live and kicking infant out of her! It had seemed incredible to Lanny the first time he had heard about it, a youngster playing with the fisherboys of this Mediterranean coast, helping them pull strange creatures out of the sea and hearing them talk about the "facts of life." It seemed exactly as incredible to him at this moment, when he knew that it was going on in a room not far away, the victim his beautiful young playmate whom he had come to love so deeply. His too vivid imagination was occupied with the bloody details, and he would clench his hands until the knuckles were white. His protest against nature mounted to a clamor. He thought: "Any way but this! Anything that’s decent and sensible!" He addressed his ancient mother, asking why she hadn’t stuck to the method of the egg, which seemed to work so well with birds and snakes and lizards and fishes? But these so-called "warm-blooded creatures," that had so much blood and spilled it so easily!

Lanny knew that Irma didn’t share these feelings. Irma was a "sensible woman," not troubled with excess of imagination. She had said many times: "Don’t worry. I’ll be all right. It doesn’t last for­ever." Everybody agreed that this young Juno was made for motherhood; she had ridden horseback, swum, played tennis, and had a vigorous body. She hadn’t turned pale when she crossed the thresh­old of this hospital, or even when she heard the cries of another woman. Things always went all right with Irma Barnes, and she had told Lanny to go home and play the piano and forget her; but here he sat, and thought about the details which he had read in an encyclopedia article entitled "Obstetrics." From boyhood he had had the habit of looking up things in that dependable work; but, damn it all, the article gave an undue proportion of space to "breech presentations" and other variations from the normal, and Lanny might just as well have been in the delivery-room. He would have liked to go there, but that would have been considered an extreme variation from the normal in this land of rigid conventions.

So he sat in the little reception-room, and now and then the perspiration would start on his forehead, even though it was a cool spring day on the Riviera. He was glad that he had the room to himself; at times, when somebody came through, he would lower his eyes to his book and pretend to be absorbed. But if it was one of the nurses, he couldn’t keep from stealing a glance, hoping that it was the nurse and the moment. The woman would smile; the conventions permitted her to smile at a handsome young gentleman, but did not permit her to go into obstetrical details. "Tout va bien, monsieur. Soyez tranquille." In such places the wheel of life revolves on schedule; those who tend the machinery acquire a professional attitude, their phrases become standardized, and you have mass production of politeness as well as of babies.

Lanny Budd was summoned to the telephone. It was Pietro Corsatti, Italian-born American who represented a New York newspaper in Rome and was having a vacation on the Riviera. He had once done Lanny a favor, and now had been promised one in return. "Pete" was to have the news the moment it happened; but it refused to happen, and maybe wasn’t going to happen. "I know how you feel," said the correspondent, sympathetically. "I’ve been through it."

"It’s been four hours!" exclaimed the outraged young husband.

"It may be four more, and it may be twenty-four. Don’t take it too hard. It’s happened a lot of times." The well-known cynicism of the journalist.

Lanny returned to his seat, thinking about an Italian-American with a strong Brooklyn accent who had pushed his way to an important newspaper position, and had so many funny stories to tell about the regime fascista and its leaders, whom, oddly enough, he called "wops." One of his best stories was about how he had become the guide, philosopher, and friend of a New York "glamour girl" who had got herself engaged to a fascinating aristocrat in Rome and had then made the discovery that he was living with the ballerina of the opera and had no idea of giving her up. The American girl had broken down and wept in Pete’s presence, asking him what to do, and he had told her: "Take a plane and fly straight to Lanny Budd, and ask him to marry you in spite of the fact that you are too rich!"