“I am not sorry; it is good,” he said, with characteristic optimism. “In America one cannot be cosmopolitan, I see. America is too strong, it sucks t’ blood out. In Europe I could change my skin and still be—deep—myself, Bardek, Citizen of No Place. Always I could be French and still look on like foreign; or German or Dutch or Spanish or Polish or Italian or anyt’ing. Jus’ so I be in America for long time. Zen somet’ing happen to me. I eat poison grass, or somet’ing. My skin, it does not change; it gets tough.
“Sometimes when I talk French or Italian to my boys or to Miss Gorgas, I must stop and t’ink for the word. Me, Bardek, stop to think! It is terrible, my friend, to have big things bubbling inside and no word at the mout’! And always the English word, it come. And such English! Ach! My boys, dey laugh and make fun—when they t’ink I do not look—and they say, ‘Dago.’ Oof! Sometimes I beat t’em in six languages; but, sometimes, too, I laugh.... ‘Dago!’ It is so.”
A chorus of protests told him how well he spoke English.
Leopold scolded him for his desponding. “It is thinking that counts, my dear Bardek,” he said, “not words. Greek is a wonderful language, but without Plato or Homer and Aesculus or Sophocles and Aristophanes, it would be a dead instrument. You think, my dear Bardek. If you spoke in Pennsylvania-Dutch you would be worth listening to.”
“And your English is better than English,” spoke up the loyal Gorgas. “It is softer and lovelier and beautifully strange.”
“Thank you,” he smiled. “I like you to say zat. A good lie, you owe it to a friend, to make him happy. What! You laugh? But it is not sin to lie. You do not read your Bible, my friend. To kill? steal? yes. To bear false witness? yes. But the good Moses was too wise to say, ‘Thou shalt not lie.’... Yet I am ‘Dago,’ jus’ like dese Italian ol’ men.
“Oh, I know; it is right,” he continued. “The Italian, oh, he will come to America and he say, ‘I will live like pig and make much money and go back to my country and live like prince. Yah! He stay wit’ his own people and talk, talk, talk his own speech. He laugh at funny Americans. Yah! Soon he must hide his fine clothes of colors and put on grease-pants and ol’ hat. It is not good to make money when peoples laugh. Yah! And zen he must learn little English, and he speak ‘Dago,’ jus’ like me. Or how can he make the much money, eh? Yah! To his little boys and girls he talk ze good language of his own land; but zey? Ach! Zey will not. In ze house, yes; so not to get ze beatings. But in ze street, là! là! là! là! Gabble, gabble, gabble. Some day zey make fun of daddy and wink and say, ‘Dago!’
“And he is ‘Dago.’ Soon he find himself talking ‘Dago’ in house, even wit’ his wife. Once he fight and beat her and all cry curses—in his own speech? Ah, no; in ‘Dago.’ He call her ‘Dam dog’ and she say to him ‘Go t’ ’ell!’ and zen he is done. His skin cannot change. All his life he is not’ing—he is American.”
It was the strong America seizing on the immigrant and twisting him into a new mold. The children would be Americans, but the old ones, they were wrecked in the process. The Germans became “Dutchmen”; the Irish became “Micks”; the Poles became “Hunkies,” and the Italians “Dagos.”
“But sometimes they go back,” ventured Blynn.