Martin Eden: Chapter 18

图书介绍

• Author: Jack London

Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to
the washer.

"I say," he began.

"Don't talk to me," Martin snarled.

"I'm sorry, Joe," he said at noon, when they knocked off for
dinner.

Tears came into the other's eyes.

"That's all right, old man," he said.  "We're in hell, an' we can't
help ourselves.  An', you know, I kind of like you a whole lot.
That's what made it - hurt.  I cottoned to you from the first."

Martin shook his hand.

"Let's quit," Joe suggested.  "Let's chuck it, an' go hoboin'.  I
ain't never tried it, but it must be dead easy.  An' nothin' to do.
Just think of it, nothin' to do.  I was sick once, typhoid, in the
hospital, an' it was beautiful.  I wish I'd get sick again."

The week dragged on.  The hotel was full, and extra "fancy starch"
poured in upon them.  They performed prodigies of valor.  They
fought late each night under the electric lights, bolted their
meals, and even got in a half hour's work before breakfast.  Martin
no longer took his cold baths.  Every moment was drive, drive,
drive, and Joe was the masterful shepherd of moments, herding them
carefully, never losing one, counting them over like a miser
counting gold, working on in a frenzy, toil-mad, a feverish
machine, aided ably by that other machine that thought of itself as
once having been one Martin Eden, a man.

But it was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think.  The
house of thought was closed, its windows boarded up, and he was its
shadowy caretaker.  He was a shadow.  Joe was right.  They were
both shadows, and this was the unending limbo of toil.  Or was it a
dream?  Sometimes, in the steaming, sizzling heat, as he swung the
heavy irons back and forth over the white garments, it came to him
that it was a dream.  In a short while, or maybe after a thousand
years or so, he would awake, in his little room with the ink-
stained table, and take up his writing where he had left off the
day before.  Or maybe that was a dream, too, and the awakening
would be the changing of the watches, when he would drop down out
of his bunk in the lurching forecastle and go up on deck, under the
tropic stars, and take the wheel and feel the cool tradewind
blowing through his flesh.

Came Saturday and its hollow victory at three o'clock.

"Guess I'll go down an' get a glass of beer," Joe said, in the
queer, monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.

Martin seemed suddenly to wake up.  He opened the kit bag and oiled
his wheel, putting graphite on the chain and adjusting the
bearings.  Joe was halfway down to the saloon when Martin passed
by, bending low over the handle-bars, his legs driving the ninety-
six gear with rhythmic strength, his face set for seventy miles of
road and grade and dust.  He slept in Oakland that night, and on
Sunday covered the seventy miles back.  And on Monday morning,
weary, he began the new week's work, but he had kept sober.

A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled
as a machine, with just a spark of something more in him, just a
glimmering bit of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to
scorch off the hundred and forty miles.  But this was not rest.  It
was super-machinelike, and it helped to crush out the glimmering
bit of soul that was all that was left him from former life.  At
the end of the seventh week, without intending it, too weak to
resist, he drifted down to the village with Joe and drowned life
and found life until Monday morning.

Again, at the week-ends, he ground out the one hundred and forty
miles, obliterating the numbness of too great exertion by the
numbness of still greater exertion.  At the end of three months he
went down a third time to the village with Joe.  He forgot, and
lived again, and, living, he saw, in clear illumination, the beast
he was making of himself - not by the drink, but by the work.  The
drink was an effect, not a cause.  It followed inevitably upon the
work, as the night follows upon the day.  Not by becoming a toil-
beast could he win to the heights, was the message the whiskey
whispered to him, and he nodded approbation.  The whiskey was wise.
It told secrets on itself.

He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and
while they drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and
scribbled.

"A telegram, Joe," he said.  "Read it."

Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer.  But what he read
seemed to sober him.  He looked at the other reproachfully, tears
oozing into his eyes and down his cheeks.

"You ain't goin' back on me, Mart?" he queried hopelessly.

Martin nodded, and called one of the loungers to him to take the
message to the telegraph office.

"Hold on," Joe muttered thickly.  "Lemme think."

He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin's arm
around him and supporting him, while he thought.

"Make that two laundrymen," he said abruptly.  "Here, lemme fix
it."

"What are you quitting for?" Martin demanded.

"Same reason as you."

"But I'm going to sea.  You can't do that."

"Nope," was the answer, "but I can hobo all right, all right."

Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:-

"By God, I think you're right!  Better a hobo than a beast of toil.
Why, man, you'll live.  And that's more than you ever did before."

"I was in hospital, once," Joe corrected.  "It was beautiful.
Typhoid - did I tell you?"

While Martin changed the telegram to "two laundrymen," Joe went
on:-

"I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital.  Funny, ain't it?
But when I've ben workin' like a slave all week, I just got to bowl
up.  Ever noticed that cooks drink like hell? - an' bakers, too?
It's the work.  They've sure got to.  Here, lemme pay half of that
telegram."

"I'll shake you for it," Martin offered.

"Come on, everybody drink," Joe called, as they rattled the dice
and rolled them out on the damp bar.

Monday morning Joe was wild with anticipation.  He did not mind his
aching head, nor did he take interest in his work.  Whole herds of
moments stole away and were lost while their careless shepherd
gazed out of the window at the sunshine and the trees.

"Just look at it!" he cried.  "An' it's all mine!  It's free.  I
can lie down under them trees an' sleep for a thousan' years if I
want to.  Aw, come on, Mart, let's chuck it.  What's the good of
waitin' another moment.  That's the land of nothin' to do out
there, an' I got a ticket for it - an' it ain't no return ticket,
b'gosh!"

A few minutes later, filling the truck with soiled clothes for the
washer, Joe spied the hotel manager's shirt.  He knew its mark, and
with a sudden glorious consciousness of freedom he threw it on the
floor and stamped on it.

"I wish you was in it, you pig-headed Dutchman!" he shouted.  "In
it, an' right there where I've got you!  Take that! an' that! an'
that! damn you!  Hold me back, somebody!  Hold me back!"

Martin laughed and held him to his work.  On Tuesday night the new
laundrymen arrived, and the rest of the week was spent breaking
them into the routine.  Joe sat around and explained his system,
but he did no more work.

"Not a tap," he announced.  "Not a tap.  They can fire me if they
want to, but if they do, I'll quit.  No more work in mine, thank
you kindly.  Me for the freight cars an' the shade under the trees.
Go to it, you slaves!  That's right.  Slave an' sweat!  Slave an'
sweat!  An' when you're dead, you'll rot the same as me, an' what's
it matter how you live? - eh?  Tell me that - what's it matter in
the long run?"

On Saturday they drew their pay and came to the parting of the
ways.

"They ain't no use in me askin' you to change your mind an' hit the
road with me?" Joe asked hopelessly:

Martin shook his head.  He was standing by his wheel, ready to
start.  They shook hands, and Joe held on to his for a moment, as
he said:-

"I'm goin' to see you again, Mart, before you an' me die.  That's
straight dope.  I feel it in my bones.  Good-by, Mart, an' be good.
I like you like hell, you know."

He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching
until Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight.

"He's a good Indian, that boy," he muttered.  "A good Indian."

Then he plodded down the road himself, to the water tank, where
half a dozen empties lay on a side-track waiting for the up
freight.

1. Ebooks list page : 87
2. Martin Eden: Chapter 5
3. Martin Eden: Chapter 1
4. Martin Eden: Chapter 2
5. Martin Eden: Chapter 3
6. Martin Eden: Chapter 4
7. Martin Eden: Chapter 6
8. Martin Eden: Chapter 12
9. Martin Eden: Chapter 7
10. Martin Eden: Chapter 8
11. Martin Eden: Chapter 9
12. Martin Eden: Chapter 14
13. Martin Eden: Chapter 10
14. Martin Eden: Chapter 11
15. Martin Eden: Chapter 13
16. Martin Eden: Chapter 15
17. Martin Eden: Chapter 17
18. Martin Eden: Chapter 16
19. Martin Eden: Chapter 18
20. Martin Eden: Chapter 20
21. Martin Eden: Chapter 19

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