The City of Comrades

by Basil King

The Saturday evening after my talk with Annette was a special one. After the actor, the journalist, Headlights, and Daisy had renewed their pledge for a week, Lovey and I stood up with the Scotchman, the piano-mover, and three or four others, and repeated ours for a month. It probably seems a simple thing to you; but for us who knew what had been our perils during the preceding month and the months preceding that, it was a solemn undertaking. The first vow of all had been relatively easy, since new resolutions have an attraction in themselves. The weekly vows that came afterward were not so fiercely hard, because they were but weekly. When it came to promising for a month—well, I can only say that to us a month had the length which it has to a child. It seemed to stretch on indefinitely ahead of one. The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would be to be captured; and many a time the resolution was made that when this month was up....

And just at these minutes the chaps who seemed stronger would close in about us, or those who seemed weaker would make some appeal, and when the critical Saturday evening came round we would walk up again, impelled by forces beyond our control, and repledge ourselves.

On such occasions there was always some word spoken to us by men who had fought longer than we had and seen the enemy routed more effectively. That night the speaker to the blue-star men was that club benefactor and favorite, Beady Lamont. He was a huge mass of muscle, turning the scale at three hundred and more. Strength was in every movement when he walked and every pose when he stood still. To my architect’s eye he planted his legs as though they were ancient Egyptian monoliths. Comparatively small round the abdomen, his chest was like a great drum. His arms—but why give a description? Hercules must have been like him, and Goliath of Gath, and Charlemagne, and the Giants that were in Those Days. They said that in drink he used to be terrible; but now his big, jolly face was all a quiver of good-will.

His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which the very gurgles make you laugh. To make you laugh was his principle function in the club. On this evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing, disconnected anecdotes which used to be a feature of after-dinner speeches, somewhat as a boy will splash about in the water before he begins to swim. But when he swam it was with vigor.

“And now some of you blue-star guys is probably hittin’ a question that sooner or later knocks at the nuts of most of us chaps that’s trying to make good all over again. That’s families. Say, ain’t families the deuce? You may run like a hare, or climb like a squirrel, or light away like a skeeter—and your family’ll be at your heels. It’s somethin’ fierce. You can never get away from them; they’ll never let you get away from them. Because”—his voice fell to a tone of solemnity—“because no matter how fast you sprint, or how high you climb, or how graceful you can dodge—you carries your family with you. You can no more turn your back on it than you can on your own stummick. You may refuse to pervide for it, you may treat it cruel, you may leave it to look out for itself; but you can never git away from knowin’ in your heart that if you’re a bum husband or father or son you’re considerable more bum as a man. That’s why the family is after us. Can’t shake ’em off! Got ’em where they won’t be shook off. God A’mighty Hisself put ’em there, and, oh, boys, listen to me and I’ll tell you why.”

He made dabs at his wrists as though to turn up his sleeves, like a man warming to his work. Taking a step or two forward he braced his left hand on his barrel-shaped hip, while his gigantic forefinger was pointed dramatically toward his audience.

“Say, did any of you married guys ever wish to God you was single again? Sure you did! Was any of you chaps with two or three little kids to feed ever sorry for the day when he heard the first of his young ones cry? Surest thing you know! Did any of us with a father and a mother, with brothers and sisters, too, very likely, ever kick because we hadn’t been born an orphan and an only child? You bet your sweet life we did! The drinkin’ man don’t want no hangers-on. He wants to be free. Life ain’t worth a burnt match to him when he’s got other people to think of, and a home to keep up, and can’t spend every penny on hisself. Some of us here to-night has cursed our wives; some of us has beat our children; some of us has cut out father and mother as if they’d never done nothin’ for us, and we could cast off from ’em with no more conscience than a tug’ll cast off from a liner.

“But, boys, when God A’mighty put us into this world He put us into a family first of all. He gives us kindness there, and care, and eddication, and the great big thing that fills the whole universe and that we ain’t got no other name for only love. As soon as we’d got pretty well grown He give us another feeling—one that druv us by and by to go and start a family for ourselves. Most of us went and started one, and them that haven’t done it yet’ll do it before the next few years is out. But, boys, what’s it all for? Everything’s got to be for somethin’ or else it’s just lumberin’ up the ground; and this here matter of families is either the worst or the best thing you’ll find anywhere on earth. If it’s not the best it’s the worst, and it has to be one or t’other.

“Now I stand before you as one who used to think it was the worst. I won’t say nothin’ of my father and mother. Them things is too sacred to be trotted out. But I’ll speak of my wife, because she’s that grateful for what’s been done for me—and everything done for me has been done twice as much, ten times as much, for her—that she’d like me to bring her into whatever I’ve got to say. I’ve known the time when I was as crazy to be quit of my family as a dog to be rid of the tin can tied to his tail. I had a wife, then, and three children; and, O my God! but I thought they was a drag! I couldn’t go nowhere without thinkin’ I ought to be with ’em, and I couldn’t take a drink without knowin’ I had to steal it from my little boy and my two little girls. They was the p’ison of my life. There was nights when I was reelin’ home and I used to hope that the house had been burnt down durin’ the day and they buried in the ashes. That’d leave me free again. Not to have no home—not to have to ante up for no one but myself—was the only thing I ever prayed for. And by gum, but my prayer was answered! One night I come home and found the house empty. My wife had decamped, and left a note that run somethin’ like this: ‘Dear Beady,’ says she, ‘I can’t stand this life no more,’ says she. ‘If it was only me I wouldn’t mind; but I can’t see my children kicked and beat and starved and hated, not by no one.’ And then she signed her name.

“Well, say, boys, most of you has heard what happened to me after that. I sure had one grand time while it lasted—and it lasted just about six months. I saw a man oncet—we was movin’ a party from Harlem to the Bronx—fall down a flight of stairs with a sofa on his back, and he sure did get some pace on. Well, my pace was just about as quick—and as dead easy as he struck the landin’ at the bottom I struck the gutter. Now you know the rest of my story, because some of you guys has had a hand in it.