John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

Thomas A. Edison at eightytwo worked sixteen hours a day;

he never worried about mathematics or the social system or generalized philosophical concepts;

in collaboration with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone who never worried about mathematics or the social system or generalized philosophical concepts;

he worked sixteen hours a day trying to find a substitute for rubber; whenever he read about anything he tried it out; whenever he got a hunch he went to the laboratory and tried it out.

those spring nights the streetcarwheels screech grinding in a rattle of loose trucks round the curved tracks of Harvard Square dust hangs in the powdery arclight glare allnight till dawn can’t sleep

haven’t got the nerve to break out of the bellglass

four years under the ethercone breathe deep gently now that’s the way be a good boy one two three four five six get A’s in some courses but don’t be a grind be interested in literature but remain a gentleman don’t be seen with Jews or socialists

and all the pleasant contacts will be useful in Later Life say hello pleasantly to everybody crossing the yard

sit looking out into the twilight of the pleasantest four years of your life

grow cold with culture like a cup of tea forgotten between an incenseburner and a volume of Oscar Wilde cold and not strong like a claret lemonade drunk at a Pop Concert in Symphony Hall

four years I didn’t know you could do what you Michaelangelo wanted say

Marx

to all

the professors with a small Swift break all the Greenoughs in the shooting gallery

but tossed with eyes smarting all the spring night reading The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and went mad listening to the streetcarwheels screech grinding in a rattle of loose trucks round Harvard Square and the trains crying across the saltmarshes and the rumbling siren of a steamboat leaving dock and the blue peter flying and millworkers marching with a red brass band through the streets of Lawrence Massachusetts

it was like the Magdeburg spheres the pressure outside sustained the vacuum within

and I hadn’t the nerve

to jump up and walk out of doors and tell them all to

go take a flying

Rimbaud

at the moon

an attack by a number of hostile airships developed before midnight. Bombs were dropped somewhat indiscriminately over localities possessing no military importance

RAILROADS WON’T YIELD AN INCH

We shall have to make the passage under conditions not entirely advantageous to us, said Captain Koenig of the Deutschland ninety miles on his way passing Solomon’s Island at 2:30. Every steamer passed blew his whistle in salute.

You make me what I am today

I hope you’re satisfied

You dragged me down and down and down

Until the soul within me died

Sir Roger Casement was hanged in Pentonville Gaol at nine o’clock this morning.

U-BOAT PASSES CAPES UNHINDERED

clad only in kimono girl bathers shock dairy lunch instead of first class cafe on amusement dock heavy losses shown in US crop report Italians cheered as Austrians leave hot rolls in haste to get away giant wall of water rushes down valley professor says Beethoven gives the impression of a juicy steak

PRISON’S MAGIC TURNS CITY JUNK INTO

GOLD MINE

MOON WILL HIDE PLANET SATURN FROM

SIGHT TONIGHT

BROTHERS FIGHT IN DARK

The rebels took Juarez and Huerta fled and the steamboats to Europe were packed with cientificos making for Paris and Venustiano Carranza was president in Mexico City. Somebody got Mac a pass on the Mexican Central down to the capital. Encarnacion cried when he left and all the anarchists came down to the station to see him off. Mac wanted to join Zapata. He’d picked up a little Spanish from Encarnacion and a vague idea of the politics of the revolution. The train took five days. Five times it was held up while the section hands repaired the track ahead. Occasionally at night bullets came through the windows. Near Caballos a bunch of men on horses rode the whole length of the train waving their big hats and firing as they went. The soldiers in the caboose woke up and returned the fire and the men rode off in a driving dustcloud. The passengers had to duck under the seats when the firing began or lie flat in the aisle. After the attack had been driven off an old woman started to shriek and it was found that a child had been hit through the head. The mother was a stout dark woman in a flowered dress. She went up and down the train with the tiny bloody body wrapped in a shawl asking for a doctor, but anybody could see that the child was dead.

Mac thought the trip would never end. He bought peppery food and lukewarm beer from old Indian women at stations, tried to drink pulque and to carry on conversations with his fellowpassengers. At last they passed Queretaro and the train began going fast down long grades in the cold bright air. Then the peaks of the great volcanos began to take shape in the blue beyond endless crisscrosspatterned fields of century-plants and suddenly the train was rattling between garden walls, through feathery trees. It came to a stop with a clang of couplings: Mexico City.

Mac felt lost wandering round the bright streets among the lowvoiced crowds, the men all dressed in white and the women all in black or dark blue. The streets were dusty and sunny and quiet. There were stores open and cabs and trolleycars and polished limousines. Mac was worried. He only had two dollars. He’d been on the train so long he’d forgotten what he intended to do when he reached his destination. He wanted clean clothes and a bath. When he’d wandered round a good deal he saw a place marked “American Bar.” His legs were tired. He sat down at a table. A waiter came over and asked him in English what he wanted. He couldn’t think of anything else so he ordered a whisky. He drank the whisky and sat there with his head in his hands. At the bar were a lot of Americans and a couple of Mexicans in tengallon hats rolling dice for drinks. Mac ordered another whisky. A beefy redeyed man in a rumpled khaki shirt was roaming uneasily about the bar. His eye lit on Mac and he sat down at his table. “Mind if I set here awhile, pardner?” he asked. “Those sonsobitches too damn noisy. Here, sombrero… wheresat damn waiter? Gimme a glassbeer. Well, I got the old woman an’ the kids off today… When are you pullin’ out?”

“Why, I just pulled in,” said Mac.

“The hell you say… This ain’t no place for a white man… These bandits’ll be on the town any day… It’ll be horrible, I tell you. There won’t be a white man left alive… I’ll get some of ’em before they croak me, though… By God, I can account for twentyfive of ’em, no, twentyfour.” He pulled a Colt out of his back pocket, emptied the chamber into his hand and started counting the cartridges, “Eight,” then he started going through his pockets and ranged the cartridges in a row on the deal table. There were only twenty. “Some sonvabitch robbed me.” A tall lanky man came over from the bar and put his hand on the redeyed man’s shoulder. “Eustace, you’d better put that away till we need it… You know what to do, don’t you?” he turned to Mac; “as soon as the shooting begins all American citizens concentrate at the embassy. There we’ll sell our lives to the last man.” Somebody yelled from the bar, “Hey, big boy, have another round,” and the tall man went back to the bar.

“You fellers seem to expect trouble,” said Mac.

“Trouble — my God! You don’t know this country. Did you just come in?”

“Blew in from Juarez just now.”