LITMIR.BIZ

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an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being. One can’t make a new heaven and earth with “facts.” There are no “facts”—there is only the fact that man, every man everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous and patient. In my enthusiasm certain things were then inexplicable to me which now are clear. I think, for example, of Carnahan, one of the twelve little men I had chosen to write about. He was what is called a model messenger. He was a graduate of a prominent university, had a sound intelligence and was of exemplary character. He worked eighteen and twenty hours a day and earned more than any messenger on the force. The clients whom he served wrote letters about him, praising him to the skies; he was offered good positions which he refused for one reason or another. He lived frugally, sending the best part of his wages to his wife and children who lived in another city. He had two vices—drink and the desire to succeed. He could go for a year without drinking, but if he took one drop he was off. He had cleaned up twice in Wall Street and yet, before coming to me for a job, he had gotten no further than to be a sexton of a church in some little town. He had been fired from that job because he had broken into the sacramental wine and rung the bells all night long. He was truthful, sincere, earnest. I had implicit confidence in him and my confidence was proven by the record of his service which was without a blemish. Nevertheless he shot his wife and children in cold blood and then he shot himself. Fortunately none of them died; they all lay in the hospital together and they all recovered. I went to see his wife, after they had transferred him to jail, to get her help. She refused categorically. She said he was the meanest, cruelest son of a bitch that ever walked on two legs—she wanted to see him hanged. I pleaded with her for two days, but she was adamant. I went to the jail and talked to him through the mesh. I found that he had already made himself popular with the authorities, had already been granted special privileges. He wasn’t at all dejected. On the contrary, he was looking forward to making the best of his time in prison by “studying up” on salesmanship. He was going to be the best salesman in America after his release. I might almost say that he seemed happy. He said not to worry about him, he would get along all right. He said everybody was swell to him and that he had nothing to complain about. I left him somewhat in a daze. I went to a nearby beach and decided to take a swim. I saw everything with new eyes. I almost forgot to return home, so absorbed had I become in my speculations about this chap. Who could say that everything that happened to him had not happened for the best? Perhaps he might leave the prison a full-fledged evangelist instead of a salesman. Nobody could predict what he might do. And nobody could aid him because he was working out his destiny in his own private way.

      There was another chap, a Hindu named Guptal. He was not only a model of good behavior—he was a saint. He had a passion for the flute which he played all by himself in his miserable little room. One day he was found naked, his throat slit from ear to ear, and beside him on the bed was his flute. At the funeral there were a dozen women who wept passionate tears, including the wife of the janitor who had murdered him. I could write a book about this young man who was the gentlest and the holiest man I ever met, who had never offended anybody and never taken anything from anybody, but who had made the cardinal mistake of coming to America to spread peace and love.

      There was Dave Olinski, another faithful, industrious messenger who thought of nothing but work. He had one fatal weakness—he talked too much. When he came to me he had already been around the globe several times and what he hadn’t done to make a living isn’t worth telling about. He knew about twelve languages and he was rather proud of his linguistic ability. He was one of those men whose very willingness and enthusiasm is their undoing. He wanted to help everybody along, show everybody how to succeed. He wanted more work than we could give him—he was a glutton for work. Perhaps I should have warned him, when I sent him to his office on the East Side, that he was going to work in a tough neighborhood, but he pretended to know so much and he was so insistent on working in that locality (because of his linguistic ability) that I said nothing. I thought to myself—you’ll find out quickly enough for yourself. And sure enough, he was only there a short time when he got into trouble. A tough Jewboy from the neighborhood walked in one day and asked for a blank. Dave, the messenger, was behind the desk. He didn’t like the way the man asked for the blank. He told him he ought to be more polite. For that he got a box in the ears. That made him wag his tongue some more, whereupon he got such a wallop that his teeth flew down his throat and his jawbone was broken in three places. Still he didn’t know enough to hold his trap. Like the damned fool that he was he goes to the police station and registers a complaint. A week later, while he’s sitting on a bench snoozing, a gang of roughnecks break into the place and beat him to a pulp. His head was so battered that his brains looked like an omelette. For good measure they emptied the safe and turned it upside down. Dave died on the way to the hospital. They found five hundred dollars hidden away in the toe of his sock. . . . Then there was Clausen and his wife Lena. They came in together when he applied for the job. Lena had a baby in her arms and he had two little ones by the hand. They were sent to me by some relief agency. I put him on as a night messenger so that he’d have a fixed salary. In a few days I had a letter from him, a batty letter in which he asked me to excuse him for being absent as he had to report to his parole officer. Then another letter saying that his wife had refused to sleep with him because she didn’t want any more babies and would I please come to see them and try to persuade her to sleep with him. I went to his home—a cellar in the Italian quarter. It looked like a bughouse. Lena was pregnant again, about seven months under way, and on the verge of idiocy. She had taken to sleeping on the roof because it was too hot in the cellar, also because she didn’t want him to touch her any more. When I said it wouldn’t make any difference now she just looked at me and grinned. Clausen had been in the war and maybe the gas had made him a bit goofy—at any rate he was foaming at the mouth. He said he would brain her if she didn’t stay off that roof. He insinuated that she was sleeping up there in order to carry on with the coal man who lived in the attic. At this Lena smiled again with that mirthless batrachian grin. Clausen lost his temper and gave her a swift kick in the ass. She went out in a huff taking the brats with her. He told her to stay out for good. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a big Colt. He was keeping it in case he needed it some time, he said. He showed me a few knives, too, and a sort of blackjack which he had made himself. Then he began to weep. He said his wife was making a fool of him. He said he was sick of working for her because she was sleeping with everybody in the neighborhood. The kids weren’t his because he couldn’t make a kid any more even if he wanted to. The very next day, while Lena was out marketing, he took the kids up to the roof and with the blackjack he had shown me he beat their brains out. Then he jumped off the roof head first. When Lena came home and saw what happened she went off her nut. They had to put her in a strait jacket and call for the ambulance. . . . There was Schuldig, the rat who had spent twenty years in prison for a crime he had never committed. He had been beaten almost to death before he confessed; then solitary confinement, starvation, torture, perversion, dope. When they finally released him he was no longer a human being. He described to me one night his last thirty days in jail, the agony of waiting to be released. I have never heard anything like it; I didn’t think a human being could survive such anguish. Freed, he was haunted by the fear that he might be obliged to commit a crime and be sent back to prison again. He complained of being followed, spied on, perpetually tracked. He said “they” were tempting him to do things he had no desire to do. “They” were the dicks who were on his trail, who were paid to bring him back again. At night, when he was asleep, they whispered in his ear. He was powerless against them because they mesmerized him first. Sometimes they placed dope under his pillow, and with it a revolver or a knife. They wanted him to kill some innocent person so that they would have a solid case against him this time. He got worse and worse. One night, after he had walked around for hours with a batch of telegrams in his pocket, he went up to a cop and asked to be locked up. He couldn’t remember his name or address or even the office he was working for. He had completely lost his identity. He repeated over and over—“I’m innocent. . . . I’m innocent.” Again they gave him the third degree. Suddenly he jumped up and shouted like a madman—“I’ll confess . . . I’ll confess”—and with that he began to reel off one crime

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