The Accursed Page 52

  “Eh? Where?”

  “There, Jack! See, he’s blushing now. He is a devotee of you.”

  Without hesitation the broad-shouldered author rose from his chair to do his mistress’s bidding, for nothing pleased him more than to satisfy her easier whims; with feudal swagger he signaled the young man to come join them. At which the embarrassed stranger came hesitantly forward, protesting that he didn’t want to intrude upon their party, and he would not dream of sitting at their table . . .

  Impatiently, Jack London commanded the young man to leave off apologizing, as only the weak-livered did such; and to introduce himself to all.

  Now blushing fiercely, the young man explained that he was a “belated but energetic convert” to the cause of Socialism, having been drawn to it by the writings of both Jack London and Upton Sinclair; he had tried very hard to procure a ticket for the Carnegie Hall event, but had not succeeded; so, he’d waited outside in the street, and had dared to follow them here. “I really should excuse myself, however—I realize that I am intruding on a private party, which is the worst sort of manners.”

  Even in MacDougal’s, Josiah Slade could not behave as if he were not of the New Jersey Slades.

  “You are too ‘well-mannered’ already, kid!” Jack London said in a tone that was both sneering and comradely. “Come have a seat, and tell us your name.”

  “My name—is Josiah Slade,” the young man said, in almost a voice of chagrin, as if his name might already be known to them, “but I am, as I’ve said—”

  “You are one of us, as Charmian saw,” Jack London said, gripping Josiah’s hand and shaking it roughly, “—solid Anglo-Saxon stock: half the earth our heritage, and half the sea: and in three-score generations, we shall rule the world. So, be seated; and be still. I hope you are not another teetotaler!”

  So hospitable was Jack London in his bullying way, he summarily banished one of the Socialist hangers-on at the table, to make room for Josiah; though it seemed clear to Upton Sinclair that the young man, taken aback by London’s manner, and the general air of drunkenness of the group, regretted having stepped forward.

  Upton was grateful that Josiah Slade sat beside him. With a thrill of pleasure thinking: He knows me, by name at least. He is one of my admirers, too.

  SO IT HAPPENED, Josiah Slade shook hands with Upton Sinclair, marveling at the latter’s youth and air of genteel reserve, so differing from London’s brashness; and tried to tell him how much his writing had influenced his thinking, The Jungle most of all. For quite apart from the “instructive intelligence” of the work and its strong argument for Socialism, it seemed to Josiah a remarkably vivid and lifelike portrayal of immigrant Americans, of a kind he had never known.

  Upton Sinclair was deeply moved, to be spoken to in this way, by one of the Princeton Slades. He thanked Josiah, and wracked his brains what to say next. He could not allude to the fact that he knew who Josiah’s family was—hardly. And yet, the young man’s identity was fascinating to Upton, who would not have believed that a scion of the revered old family could be so forthright, and so open; and so willing to tolerate the crude drunkenness of the Jack London party, that was becoming ever more distracting to other diners in MacDougal’s. “You are—did you say?—from Princeton, New Jersey? Where it happens—at least at the present—I am living; I mean, renting a farmhouse on the Rosedale Road . . .”

  Josiah had not identified himself as from Princeton, but perhaps he didn’t remember this; in the melee of the restaurant, it was difficult to think clearly.

  All this while, Miss Charmian was leaning toward the young men, hoping to engage their interest. A gnome-like woman, Josiah thought her, garishly rouged and powdered, and decked out in an inordinate amount of feathers; he was uncertain at first who she was, and what her relationship might be to Jack London. (Not his mother, surely!) Quite openly she stared at Josiah even as her lover harangued the table on the subject of “pure” and “mongrel” races, and how one could distinguish between them.

  It was uncanny, how Miss Charmian seemed to be looking at Josiah, yet looking behind him; for her left eye had a slight cast.

  And how uncanny to Josiah, to discover how very different Jack London was from his photographs. Far coarser, and more slovenly in dress—and his intellect crude as a meat cleaver.

  Josiah thought He is, yet can’t possibly be, “Jack London”—the author. He is a buffoon impostor, yet another demon.

  How melancholy the world in this yet-new century, the twentieth! Filling up, it seemed, with demons of whom some were buffoons, and others not far more dangerous.

  Had Josiah been more prudent, he would have slipped away from London’s table, with a promise to Upton Sinclair to meet with him sometime soon, in quieter circumstances; but in his weakened state, Josiah too succumbed to drink, and found the whiskey-and-beer concoction—“the elixir of the Klondike”—a heady innovation.

  JOSIAH HAD DECIDED impulsively to move away from Princeton, and to live in a modest rented apartment on Eleventh Avenue at Thirty-sixth Street with a view of the river from the fifth floor of a redbrick town house, and no elevator; from here, he could easily take the clattering IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) to the Lower East Side and the Village, as it was called, as to Carnegie Hall at Fifty-seventh Street. He had prowled bookstores, and visited the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. (Vaguely he’d hoped to encounter Wilhelmina Burr, by chance; but he wasn’t sure if she was living in New York, or had returned to Princeton.) He had visited the Little Galleries of the Photo-Succession at 291 Fifth Avenue, owned by Alfred Stieglitz, as well as the major museums. He had eaten in the most remarkable, inexpensive restaurants—German, Polish, Hungarian, Jewish, Ukrainian, Italian and Greek. He had attended several Socialists’ meetings in Union Square but nothing so organized and ambitious as the Intercollegiate evening in Carnegie Hall, with headliner Jack London.

  He’d left Crosswicks abruptly one day after the death—(by paralysis? catatonia?—suffocation?)—of his cousin Todd Slade, for he could no longer bear living amid such devastation; he’d left with a din of jeering voices in his head, chiding him for cowardice in not pouring gasoline through the many rooms of the Manse, and setting it to the torch, as it deserved. He’d left after a long time of standing at the window of his room gazing transfixed into the garden, as if trying to gauge whether, if he threw himself to the ground two floors below, the distance would be sufficient to kill him, or merely to maim him. He thought—I could not tolerate an invalid’s fate. I would grow more cramped in spirit than I am now.

  Then he saw a slender figure on the grass below, a little distance from the house: surprised in her task of cutting Grecian windflowers, and glancing around at him, smiling. It was his beloved Annabel in a white belted blouse with full puffed sleeves, and a yellow “bolero” jacket, and an ankle-length, full skirt; on her head, a straw hat with a wide rim, and trailing a red ribbon. The straw hat was veiled, and, as Annabel turned to Josiah, and slowly lifted the veil, he saw how deathly pale her skin was, and how luminous her blue-violet eyes, piercing his very soul even at this distance . . . With a gesture of the little gardening sickle she mimed that he should join her in the garden, at once.

  “Annabel? Is it you?”

  Josiah leaned out the window, which he’d shoved open; he shut his eyes, and clenched his jaws hard. He must resist the blandishments of the Fiend: for though every beat of his pulse urged him to obey his sister, to acquiesce to her will, some stubborn corner of his soul insisted otherwise.

  “No. It is not Annabel.”

  When Josiah opened his eyes the specter had vanished. And there were no windflowers to be seen—no flowers of any sort growing in the garden—as if a scorching windstorm had blown all away.

  He knew then, he must leave Crosswicks. He packed a few prized items including his private journal, which was covered in morocco leather; and certain mementos of Annabel’s; and a dozen of his most valued books, and a single suitcase of clo
thing. Against his parents’ protestations he took the first train to New York City—to what he hoped would be a new life

  It might be that the Curse would destroy Josiah Slade, but it would not destroy him by his own hand. That, Josiah swore.

  The lurid tale of the barbecued diamondback rattler had left Upton Sinclair seriously nauseated; he had not yet managed to recover. Despite Josiah Slade’s agreeable company, he was calculating when he might leave, without attracting unwanted attention from Jack London and Miss Charmian.

  “I think I must leave, Josiah! Maybe, in Princeton, we might . . .”

  “I’m not living in Princeton now, I’m afraid. I live in . . .”

  “Excuse me, what? Where?”

  The noise in MacDougal’s was deafening. It seemed to Upton that his hosts had ceased to notice him, or Josiah. But when Upton rose to leave the table, immediately London swung to him, glaring, and grinning, baring “wolf” canines, and gripped him by the arm. “Comrade Sinc’ler! You have been very quiet—you are looking very pale. You have not been eating your ‘cannibal sandwich,’ I see—which is why you have the complexion of a corpse. Here—a toast, at least”—London forced a glass of Champagne in Upton’s limp fingers, and lifted a shot-glass of bourbon for himself. “Up’on Sinc’ler—salt of the earth! Up’on Sinc’ler—great hope of the Revolution! Kingdom of Heav’n! Meek shall enter—last! Suffer little children—etcetera.” All at the table lifted their glasses in a toast except for Upton who sat quietly, uneasily smiling, yet stubborn, and resistant; even Josiah Slade could not resist the bully.

  “What? You refuse to drink? And why is that, Comrade?—your Nordic young friend here is drinking, and why not you? Are you fearful of ‘demon rum’ possessing your papery soul?”

  London laughed abusively. Again Upton tried to stand, and again London forced him back into his seat.

  “You are one of us—though not a very ‘potent’ specimen—solid Aryan stock: half the earth our heritage, and all the sea, and in three-score generation we shall possess the earth. Would you deny your heritage, Comrade?”

  Upton tried to protest: he had no idea what London was talking about. And the hour was late, and early next morning he had work to do . . .

  “You would not deny, Comrade, that there are ‘pure’ races and ‘mongrel’ races—surely? If the Socialist movement was not weakened by certain of its leaders—let us speak frankly, Comrade: I mean Jews, like—what is his name—‘Leet-hauzer’—our war against cap’lism would proceed swiftly. But a Jew is lily-livered in his soul—it is against the Jew’s nature to fight—to the death. You would not deny this, Comrade? Would you?”

  In dismay, Upton said yes. He would deny this.

  “The Socialist vision is class war—to the death! History has shown that the natural man—the natural warrior—may be born deprived of his heritage—born into an ‘inferior’ class—this is the stuff of legend, fairy tales—the prince under a curse, as a mere frog—his destiny is to rise up tooth and claw—fang and claw!—to tear out the throats of his persecutors and must rise up against those who exploit him—and drink their sang impur.” Uttering the French phrase—which London pronounced in phonetic English, with a strong, nasal a—London shoved at Upton’s shoulder in a way to provoke.

  Upton protested: “But—the Socialist vision is also—brotherhood—”

  “ ‘Brotherhood’—yessss.” London drawled the word, frowning. A waiter had brought a platter of raw oysters to the table, which London now began to eat, rapidly, tossing the shells onto the floor after he’d sucked the slithery white thing into his mouth, and swallowed it. As he ate he spoke, shaking a stubby forefinger at Upton Sinclair: “But as with our blood-kin, not all are ‘brothers’—not all are ‘kin.’ There is a natural aristocracy—it is useless to prevaricate, Comrade. I suppose you would defend the lowlife ‘Big Bill’ Hayward?—I suppose ‘One-Eye Big Bill’ is your comrade, too?”

  “Why, yes—certainly. Bill Hayward has been a great—brave—leader . . . He has rallied the immigrant workers in New Jersey, and—”

  “ ‘One-Eye Big Bill’!”—London scoffed, in contempt. Miss Charmian tried to placate her lover by feeding him oysters, but London, ever more incensed, was not to be placated. “True, ‘Big Bill’ has organized the silkworker slaves of Paterson—but the strike is intended to showcase him—he has been threatening the owners, and they have insulted him, and—”

  “Wait! Please! You should not be speaking of—a strike . . . No, no!” Upton was horrified: the possibility of a strike in Paterson, of the silkworker union, was meant to be confidential, he was sure. How did Jack London even know about this plan? “From what I know, a strike isn’t definite—Bill Hayward hasn’t yet made a decision.”

  “Hayward is a shameless debauchee,” London said, with a sneer. “The megalomaniac drunkard—blatherer, windbag—never so happy as when he’s speechifying before a fawning audience of the lowest mongrel sort. The lowest mongrel-immigrant sort.”

  “Bill Hayward is one of our Socialist heroes—a savior! Jack, I must disagree—”

  “ ‘Jack, I must disagree’—” London rudely parroted Upton’s words, in a falsetto voice, which inspired laughter at the table, and a flirtatious rebuke from Miss Charmian, who patted Upton’s arm as one might pat a misbehaving puppy. “Rather should you say, ‘Jack, I must agree’—for in your heart you know that I’m right. Should ‘One-Eye Big Bill’ be spread-eagled and dispatched by the Pinkerton’s, it would not be a grievous loss.”

  This remark was so callous, and obscene, Upton rose to leave. He could not bear remaining a minute longer! And when London tried to clutch at him, he lurched away, as a child might do, escaping the embrace of an adult. Except that Miss Charmian quickly restrained her lover, there would have been a scuffle. London’s small red eyes glared: “You are not leaving our party so early! No one turns his back on Jack London’s hospitality—no more than you would decline the hospitality of the Eskimo, if the smelly In’jun offers you his nasty ‘smoked’ fish, and his ‘squaw.’ I did not journey all the way to New York City from California to be rudely snubbed by the only man in the Socialist movement I halfway respect—though—to be brutally frank—much of The Jungle is slovenly work, even for a muckraker, betraying signs of the author’s hack origins—and the last section is a comical sort of plagiarism of my speeches—my Oakland campaign speeches—did you think that no one would notice?”

  Upton was too shocked to speak. He could not believe that London was turning on him—making such an accusation, before strangers.

  “I haven’t revealed the plagiarism to the press, just yet,” London said, “for we Revolutionaries must stick together—like dogs in a pack. There is a lead-dog, yes—but there is the pack. The ‘lead-dog’ requires the ‘pack’—even as the ‘pack’ requires the ‘lead-dog.’ That is a law of nature.”

  Seeing the expression of shock and hurt in Upton’s eyes, London laughingly relinquished him, and leaned back in his chair, teetering precariously on two legs. With forced relish he continued to devour oysters, washing them down with shots of bourbon. A sort of prankish demonism shone in his bloodshot eyes. “My friend, the error of your philosophy—your religion—your bourgeois morality—as your Soc’list morality—is the attempted legislation of impulse. ‘One-Eye’ doesn’t comprehend this basic fact, nor Debs, nor—any of ’em! For the primeval spirit never checks an impulse. The free man never checks an impulse. The rest is all cant, and humbug, and nursery rimes, and Bible verses! When Philosophy puffs itself up to instruct the individual soul YOU MUST, the individual soul at once rejoins I WANT—and does precisely what IT WANTS. So much for philosophy, and religion, and morality—the phantasms of eunuchs! For the brave man, the warrior, the Nordic soul, knows only I WANT—and never I MUST. It is the I WANT that spurs the drinker on to drink, in the face of all the mewling and puling teetotalers of the world—it’s the glorious I WANT that makes the martyr eagerly cloak himself in his hair shirt, if it is the hai
r shirt that calls forth I WANT. The countless things I WANT constitute my scale of values, my private ethics—and there it is! Meat, and drink, and the passion of a free woman—the potency of the novelist’s pen—the power of the voice, the throat, the mouth—and the vengeful class-war of the Soc’list movement. Jack London’s acclaimed achievement is FOR MY OWN DELIGHT. Jack London’s genius is FOR MY OWN DELIGHT. It isn’t ‘spiritual’—it’s ‘organic.’ Every fiber of my being thrills with it. The primeval I WANT, the glorious I WANT, the ineluctable I WANT, now and forever! —Eh, what’s this? Are you mocking me? Are you sending each other signals?”

  London had caught sight of Miss Charmian gazing intently at Josiah Slade with tight-pursed crimson lips, and eyes squeezed near-shut; as if she were indeed sending him a secret signal which the young man, acutely embarrassed, did not wish to acknowledge.

  “You dare—to mock me?”

  Josiah shook his head no, even as Miss Charmian giggled lewdly. Like one guiltily found out, Josiah blushed to the roots of his hair.

  “I—don’t know what you mean, Mr. London . . .” Josiah swallowed hard, he was incapable of uttering the name Jack, even pleadingly. “I’m not mocking—anyone . . .”

  Whether the belligerent London really felt primeval jealousy, or whether prolonged sitting in one place had made him restless and spoiling for a fight, suddenly he erupted into action, with a wolfish cry; he scrambled to grip Josiah in a wrestling hold, shouting his intention to commit murder.

  “Signaling to my woman!—my mate! In front of my eyes! That is punishable by death.”

  Trying to wrest Josiah from his chair, and onto the floor, London lost his balance and fell, pulling both Josiah and Upton Sinclair onto the floor with him. In the frantic scuffle the chair was overturned, there came a shattering of glass and china; there were shouts, and shrieks; Miss Charmian leapt to her feet, quick and fierce as a wild cat intent upon protecting her young. Upton, on principle and by temperament a pacifist, had no idea how to adequately defend himself, still less to fight aggressively, but blindly struck at the heavier man with his fists, inflicting very little damage; while Josiah, no pacifist, struck at London with telling blows, and a surprising outburst of profanity. Now bawling like a maddened beast, London seized a bottle from the table, smashed it and brought the jagged edge against Josiah’s throbbing throat—“Mock Jack London, will you! Mock the Sea Wolf, will you! There are insults to be repaid only in blood.” London outweighed Josiah by at least twenty-five pounds but he was badly winded, and disoriented; Josiah managed to slip beneath his flailing arms and maneuver a chair between him and London—an inanimate, obdurate object that baffled London as if he had no idea what it was or how to contend with it; for London was very drunk, and his bloodshot eyes had lost their focus; and his fists swung wide of their mark. Josiah begged for London to let him go, for he respected the Socialist hero too much to wish to hurt him; but London would not; again London savagely lunged at Josiah with the broken bottle, and this time by sheer panicked strength Josiah managed to overturn the chair onto London, knocking London to the floor a second time on his back, with such force that London’s head struck the floor, hard; you could hear the sickening thud of the man’s hard skull striking the wooden floor like a hammer-blow.