John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

“You can’t have. Railroad’s all tore up at Queretaro.”

“Well, they musta got it fixed,” said Mac. “Say, what do they say round here about Zapata?”

“My God, he’s the bloodthirstiest villain of the lot… They roasted a feller was foreman of a sugar mill down in Morelos on a slow fire and raped his wife and daughters right before his eyes… My God, pardner, you don’t know what kind of country this is! Do you know what we ought to do… d’you know what we’d do if we had a man in the White House instead of a yellowbellied potatomouthed reformer? We’d get up an army of a hundred thousand men and clean this place up… It’s a hell of a fine country but there’s not one of these damn greasers worth the powder and shot to shoot ’em… smoke ’em out like vermin, that’s what I say… Every mother’s sonvabitch of ’em’s a Zapata under the skin.”

“What business are you in?”

“I’m an oil prospector, and I’ve been in this lousy hole fifteen years and I’m through. I’d have gotten out on the train to Vera Cruz today only I have some claims to settle up an’ my furniture to sell… You can’t tell when they’ll cut the railroad and then we won’t be able to get out and President Wilson’ll let us be shot down right here like rats in a trap… If the American public realized conditions down here… My God, we’re the laughing stock of all the other nations… What’s your line o’ work, pardner?”

“Printer… linotype operator.”

“Looking for a job?”

Mac had brought out a dollar to pay for his drinks. “I guess I’ll have to,” he said. “That’s my last dollar but one.” “Why don’t you go round to The Mexican Herald? They’re always needin’ English language printers… They can’t keep anybody down here… Ain’t fit for a white man down here no more… Look here, pardner, that drink’s on me.”

“Well, we’ll have another then, on me.”

“The fat’s in the fire in this country now, pardner… everything’s gone to hell… might as well have a drink while we can.”

That evening, after he’d eaten some supper in a little American lunchroom, Mac walked round the alameda to get the whisky out of his head before going up to The Mexican Herald to see if he could get a job. It would only be for a couple of weeks, he told himself, till he could get wise to the lay of the land. The tall trees on the alameda and the white statues and the fountains and the welldressed couples strolling round in the gloaming and the cabs clattering over the cobbles looked quiet enough, and the row of stonyeyed Indian women selling fruit and nuts and pink and yellow and green candies in booths along the curb. Mac decided that the man he’d talked to in the bar had been stringing him along because he was a tenderfoot.

He got a job all right at The Mexican Herald at thirty mex dollars a week, but round the printing plant everybody talked just like the man in the bar. That night an old Polish American who was a proofreader there took him round to a small hotel to get him a flop and lent him a couple of cartwheels till payday. “You get your wages in advance as much as you can,” said the old Pole, “one of these days there will be revolution and then goodby Mexican Herald … unless Wilson makes intervention mighty quick.” “Sounds all right to me; I want to see the social revolution,” said Mac. The old Pole laid his finger along his nose and shook his head in a peculiar way and left him.

When Mac woke up in the morning he was in a small room calsomined bright yellow. The furniture was painted blue and there were red curtains in the window. Between the curtains the long shutters were barred with vivid violet sunlight that cut a warm path across the bedclothes. A canary was singing somewhere and he could hear the flap pat flap pat of a woman making tortillas. He got up and threw open the shutters. The sky was cloudless above the redtile roofs. The street was empty and full of sunlight. He filled his lungs with cool thin air and felt the sun burning his face and arms and neck as he stood there. It must be early. He went back to bed and fell asleep again.

When Wilson ordered the Americans out of Mexico several months later Mac was settled in a little apartment in the Plaza del Carmen with a girl named Concha and two white Persian cats. Concha had been a stenographer and interpreter with an American firm and had been the mistress of an oilman for three years so she spoke pretty good English. The oilman had jumped on the train for Vera Cruz in the panic at the time of the flight of Huerta, leaving Concha high and dry. She had taken a fancy to Mac from the moment she had first seen him going into the postoffice. She made him very comfortable, and when he talked to her about going out to join Zapata, she only laughed and said peons were ignorant savages and fit only to be ruled with the whip. Her mother, an old woman with a black shawl perpetually over her head, came to cook for them and Mac began to like Mexican food, turkey with thick chocolate brown sauce and encheladas with cheese. The cats were named Porfirio and Venustiano and always slept on the foot of their bed. Concha was very thrifty and made Mac’s pay go much further than he could and never complained when he went out batting round town and came home late and with a headache from drinking tequila. Instead of trying to get on the crowded trains to Vera Cruz, Mac took a little money he had saved up and bought up the office furniture that wildeyed American businessmen were selling out for anything they could get for it. He had it piled in the courtyard back of the house where they lived. Buying it had been Concha’s idea in the first place and he used to tease her about how they’d ever get rid of it again, but she’d nod her head and say, “Wait a minute.”

Concha liked it very much when he’d have friends in to eat with him Sundays. She would wait on them very pleasantly and send her little brother Antonio round for beer and cognac and always have cakes in the house to bring out if anybody dropped in. Mac would sometimes think how much pleasanter this was than when he’d lived with Maisie in San Diego, and began to think less often about going out to join Zapata.

The Polish proofreader, whose name was Korski, turned out to be a political exile, a socialist and a wellinformed man. He would sit all afternoon over a half a glass of cognac talking about European politics; since the collapse of the European socialist parties at the beginning of the war he had taken no part in anything; from now on he’d be an onlooker. He had a theory that civilization and a mixed diet were causing the collapse of the human race.

Then there was Ben Stowell, an independent oil promotor who was trying to put through a deal with Carranza’s government to operate some oilwells according to the law. He was broke most of the time and Mac used to lend him money, but he always talked in millions. He called himself a progressive in politics and thought that Zapata and Villa were honest men. Ben Stowell would always take the opposite side of any argument from Korski and would infuriate the old man by his antisocial attitude. Mac wanted to make some money to send up to Maisie for the kids’ schooling. It made him feel good to send Rose up a box of toys now and then. He and Ben would have long talks about the chances of making money in Mexico. Ben Stowell brought round a couple of young radical politicians who enjoyed sitting through the afternoon talking about socialism and drinking and learning English. Mac usually didn’t say much but sometimes he got sore and gave them a broadside of straight I.W.W. doctrine. Concha would finish all arguments by bringing on supper and saying with a shake of her head, “Every poor man socialista… a como no? But when you get rich, quick you all very much capitalista.”