The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by William Saroyan Read Free Book Online Page B

for sixty-five dollars. (And what an enormous lot of money that is, if you are poor.) At first this machine was strange to me and I was annoyed by the racket it made when it was in use; late at night this racket was unbearably distressing. It resembled more than anything else silence whichhas been magnified a thousand times, if such a thing can be. But after a year or two I began to feel a genuine attachment toward the machine, and loved it as a good pianist, who respects music, loves his piano. I never troubled to clean the machine and no matter how persistently I pounded upon it, the machine did not weaken and fall to pieces. I had great respect for it.
    And then, in a fit of despondency, I placed this small machine in its case and carried it to the city. I left it in the establishment of a money-lender, and walked through the city with fifteen dollars in my pocket. I was sick of being poor.
    I went first to a bootblack and had my shoes polished. When a bootblack is shining my shoes I place him in my place in the chair and I descend and polish his shoes. It is an experience in humility.
    Then I went to a theatre. I sat among people to see myself in patterns of Hollywood. I sat and dreamed, looking into the faces of beautiful women. Then I went to a restaurant and sat at a table and ordered all the different kinds of food I ever thought I would like to eat. I ate two dollars’ worth of food. The waiter thought I was out of my head, but I told him everything was going along first rate. I tipped the waiter. Then I went out into the city again and began walking along the dark streets, the streets where the women are. I was tired of being poor. I put my typewriter in hock and I began to spend the money. No one, not even the greatest writer, can go on being poor hour after hour, year after year. There is such a thing as saying to hell with art. That’s what I said.
    After a week I became a little more sober. After a month I got to be very sober and I began to want my typewriter again. I began to want to put words on paper again. To make another beginning. To say something and see if it was the right thing. But I had no money. Day after day I had this longing for my typewriter.
    This is the whole story. I don’t suppose this is a very artful ending, but it is the ending just the same. The point is this:
day after day I longed for my typewriter
.
    This morning I got it back. It is before me now and I am tapping at it, and this is what I have written.

Love,
Death,
Sacrifice
and So Forth

    Tom Garner, in the movie, on the screen, a big broad-shouldered man, a builder of railroads, President of the Chicago & Southwestern, staggers, does not walk, into his room, and closes the door.
    You know he is going to commit suicide because he has staggered, and it is a movie, and already a long while has passed since the picture began, and something’s got to happen real soon, something big, gigantic, as they say in Hollywood, a suicide or a kiss.
    You are sitting in the theatre waiting for what you know is going to happen.
    Poor Tom has just learned that the male offspring of his second wife is the product of his grown son byhis first wife. Tom’s first wife committed suicide when she learned that Tom had fallen in love with the young woman who finally became his second wife. This young woman was the daughter of the President of the Santa Clara Railroad. She made Tom fall in love with her so that her father would go on being President of the Santa Clara. Tom had bought the Santa Clara for nine million dollars. Tom’s first wife threw herself beneath a streetcar when she found out about Tom’s infatuation. She did it by acting, with her face, her eyes and lips and the way she walked. You didn’t get to see anything sickening, you saw only the motorman’s frantic expression while he tried to bring the car to a stop. You heard and saw the steel wheel grinding, the wheel that killed her. You heard people screaming the way they do about