Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos Read Free Book Online Page B

us?’
    Congo shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not a catholic or a protestant; I haven’t any money and I haven’t any work. Look at that.’ Congo pointed with a dirty finger to a long rip on his trouserknee. ‘That’s anarchist… Hell I’m going out to Senegal and get to be a nigger.’
    ‘You look like one already,’ laughed Emile.
    ‘That’s why they call me Congo.’
    ‘But that’s all silly,’ went on Emile. ‘People are all the same. It’s only that some people get ahead and others dont… That’s why I came to New York.’
    ‘Dio cane I think that too twentyfive years ago… When you’re old like me you know better. Doesnt the shame of it get yousometimes? Here’… he tapped with his knuckles on his stiff shirtfront… ‘I feel it hot and like choking me here… Then I say to myself Courage our day is coming, our day of blood.’
    ‘I say to myself,’ said Emile. ‘When you have some money old kid.’
    ‘Listen, before I leave Torino when I go last time to see the mama I got to a meetin of comrades… A fellow from Capua got up to speak… a very handsome man, tall and very thin… He said that there would be no more force when after the revolution nobody lived off another man’s work… Police, governments, armies, presidents, kings… all that is force. Force is not real; it is illusion. The working man makes all that himself because he believes it. The day that we stop believing in money and property it will be like a dream when we wake up. We will not need bombs or barricades… Religion, politics, democracy all that is to keep us asleep… Everybody must go round telling people: Wake up!’
    ‘When you go down into the street I’ll be with you,’ said Congo.
    ‘You know that man I tell about?… That man Errico Malatesta, in Italy greatest man after Garibaldi… He give his whole life in jail and exile, in Egypt, in England, in South America, everywhere… If I could be a man like that, I dont care what they do; they can string me up, shoot me… I dont care… I am very happy.’
    ‘But he must be crazy a feller like that,’ said Emile slowly. ‘He must be crazy.’
    Marco gulped down the last of his coffee. ‘Wait a minute. You are too young. You will understand… One by one they make us understand… And remember what I say… Maybe I’m too old, maybe I’m dead, but it will come when the working people awake from slavery… You will walk out in the street and the police will run away, you will go into a bank and there will be money poured out on the floor and you wont stoop to pick it up, no more good… All over the world we are preparing. There are comrades even in China… Your Commune in France was the beginning… socialism failed. It’s for the anarchists to strike the next blow… If we fail there will be others…’
    Congo yawned, ‘I am sleepy as a dog.’
    Outside the lemoncolored dawn was drenching the empty streets, dripping from cornices, from the rails of fire escapes, from the rims of ashcans, shattering the blocks of shadow between buildings.The streetlights were out. At a corner they looked up Broadway that was narrow and scorched as if a fire had gutted it.
    ‘I never see the dawn,’ said Marco, his voice rattling in his throat, ‘that I dont say to myself perhaps… perhaps today.’ He cleared his throat and spat against the base of a lamppost; then he moved away from them with his waddling step, taking hard short sniffs of the cool air.
    ‘Is that true, Congo, about shipping again?’
    ‘Why not? Got to see the world a bit…’
    ‘I’ll miss you… I’ll have to find another room.’
    ‘You’ll find another friend to bunk with.’
    ‘But if you do that you’ll stay a sailor all your life.’
    ‘What does it matter? When you are rich and married I’ll come and visit you.’
    They were walking down Sixth Avenue. An L train roared above their heads leaving a humming rattle to fade among the girders after it had passed.
    ‘Why dont you