Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

By now it was getting dark and I kept thinking of the meeting. “Isn’t it time for us to be starting back?”

“Is it?”

“It must be getting on toward seven o’clock.”

“H’m.”

He sat down and began to glower at his feet. “I’ve been organizing a junior executives’ union. Or trying to.”

I didn’t think it was at all what had been bothering him, but just to be agreeable, I said: “Are you a junior executive?”

“Me? I’m nothing.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Yes, I’m a junior executive, God help me. I’ve got a desk, a phone extension and a title. Statistician. You can’t beat that, can you? It sounds as important as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. But all I can make out of it is slave. In the Army we had slaves and overseers, and I was both. Here I’m one, but I’m supposed to pretend I’m the other. But I’ve accepted my lowly lot. Did you hear me? I’ve accepted it.”

“I don’t accept my lowly lot. I’m nothing too. I’m only a waitress, but I have ambitions to be something more.”

“The emancipated slave wants to drive slaves.”

“All right, but they can get emancipated if they’ve got enough gump.”

“But you still see no objection to slavery.”

“It’s not slavery.”

“Oh, yes, it is, yes, it is.”

“To me, it’s work.”

“Suppose you wanted to do work that didn’t pay, and yet they made you be an office worker?”

“All real work pays.”

“Oh, no. That’s where you’re wrong. Some work doesn’t pay. And yet you want to do it, and you can choose between going to them with your hat in your hand — a junior executive. Either way you’re their slave.”

“Whose slave?”

“All of them. The system.”

“I don’t see any system. All I see is a lot of people trying to make a living.”

“Well, I see it. And I accept it. But I’m going to make them accept it too — accept the other side, show them there’s two sides to it. I’ve been trying to organize a junior executives’ union.”

“Any success?”

“...No!”

“Why not?”

“They won’t admit they’re slaves!”

“Maybe they’re not, really.”

“Maybe the dead are not dead, really. They want to pretend they’re something they’re not — white-collar workers thinking they’re part of the system, on the other side. They think they’re going to be masters, too—”

“Like me.”

“Like you, and a fat chance—”

“You can just leave me out. I don’t want to drive any slaves, but one day I’m going to be something, and I can’t be stopped—”

“You can be, and you will be!”

“Oh, no. Not me.”

There was a great deal more, all in the same vein, and finally I got very annoyed. “I don’t like this kind of talk and I wish you’d stop.”

“Because at heart you’re a cold little slave-driver.”

“No, that’s not it at all.”

“And what is it?”

“Because you sound so weak.”

He sulked a long time over that and then he said: “I am weak. You’re weak—”

“I am not!”

“We’re all weak, that’s why we’ve got to organize, it’s the only way to beat them!”

“All right, maybe I’m weak, I’m only a girl that came to the city a few months ago, and I’m nothing to brag about. But I’d die rather than admit it!”

“I admit it! I admit the truth! I—”

“You stop that kind of talk right now! The idea! A big, strong healthy galoot like you, only twenty-seven years old, admitting you’re licked before you even start!”

I was very angry. It was completely dark by now, and I knew I could never get to the meeting, so didn’t even say any more about it. I knew that he still wasn’t talking about what was really on his mind, although he certainly felt very strongly about this labor business, but in some way I felt it was important and I wanted to have it out with him.

When I called him a big strong galoot, I yelled very loud, and then he seemed to realize that there might be neighbors, and subsided for a time. I went out in the kitchen to see what there might be to eat. The icebox was empty, but there was plenty of English biscuit and canned things, so I made some canapes and coffee and served them on a table in the living room, although I had to use condensed cream with the coffee. He gobbled it down, as I did, for we were very hungry. Then I took the dishes out, and he came and helped me wash them, and then we went back. I took his hand in mine. “What on earth is the matter with you anyway? Why don’t you tell me what it’s all about — what it’s really all about?”

He gulped, and I saw he was about to cry, and I knew he wouldn’t want me to see him doing it. I snapped the lights out quick, and went to the door of the veranda. “Let’s sit out here. It’s such a pretty night.”

It was a pretty night, with no moon but the stars shining bright and frogs croaking down near the water. We sat in a big canvas porch seat and I took his hand in mine again. “Go on. Tell me.”

“What the hell? You want the story of my life?”

Now right there was where I should have said yes, I want the story of your life, it’s most important that I know the story of your life. But at his words something like a knife shot through me. Because if he told the story of his life I might have to tell the story of my life, and I didn’t want to have to say I had been an orphan, that I didn’t know who I was, that I didn’t even know my proper name. Perhaps you think this is far-fetched, but there are many of us in that situation in the world. We form a, little club, and if you ever meet any of them they will tell you the same thing: it is a terrible thing not to know who you are, a secret shame that gnaws at you constantly, and all the more because you are helpless to do anything about it. So I merely said: “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I’m — just no good, that’s all.”

“Some people might not think so.”

“Oh, yes, if they knew it all.”

“Most of the time I think you’re — a lot of good. And fine inside, I mean. But I don’t like it when you talk this way. I don’t mind what you are. I don’t mind if you’re never anything — of what you mean. But I hate it when you stop fighting. That’s the main thing — to do your best.”

“I’m blocked off from my best.”

Again, what was he talking about? I didn’t know, and for my own reasons, I was afraid to ask. So I merely patted his hand and said: “Nobody can be blocked off from their best, if they really try. It’s got to come out.”

He put his head on my shoulder, and we sat a long time without talking, and then he went to the end of the veranda and sat for awhile with his back to me, looking out over the water. Then he came and stood looking down on me. “There’s one way I can get back at them.”

“How?”

“By marrying you.”

It was like a dash of cold water in the face somehow. Up to then, in spite of all the talk he had been indulging in, I had felt very near him, but now I felt very queer, and must have hesitated for a time before I said anything. “Is that the only reason you want to marry me? To get back at them?”

“Well — let’s say to get clear of them.”

“To show your independence?”

“All right, put it that way.”

“It doesn’t interest me to be the Spirit of ’76 to your little revolution — whatever it’s about, as I haven’t found out yet.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There’s only one reason I’d marry you, or anybody. If you loved me, and I felt I loved you, that would be enough reason. But just to get back at them — well, that may be your idea of a reason, but it’s not mine.”