A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 10

When the manicure girls read this they will snort. Because they know him too well. "Of all the half-witted dumbbells I ever saw in my life," they will say, "he wins the cement earm.u.f.fs. n.o.body home, honest to Gawd, he's nothin' but a nasty little fourflusher. We know him and his kind."

Fortunately I don't know him as well as the manicure girls do, so there is room for this speculation as I watch him in the evening now and then. I see him standing under the blaze of lobby lights, in the thick of pa.s.sing fur coats and dinner jackets, in the midst of laughter, escorts, intrigues, actors, famous names.

He stands perfectly still, with his right arm crooked as if he were going to place his hand over his heart and bow, with his left arm slightly curved at his side. Grace. This is a pose denoting grace. He got it somewhere from an ill.u.s.tration. And he holds it. Here is life. The real stuff. The real thing. Lights and laughter. Glories, coiffures, swell dames, great actors, guys loaded with coin. His little Mongolian eyes blink through his amusing aplomb. Here are gilded pillars and marbled walls, great rugs and marvelous furniture. Here music is playing somewhere and people are eating off gold-edged dishes.

And now you will smile at me, not him. Because watching him of evenings, on and off, a curious notion takes hold of my thoughts. I have noticed the race oddities of his face, the Mongolian eyes, the Slavic cheek bones, the Italian hair. A mixed breed, this little fop. Mixed through a dozen centuries. Fathers and mothers that came from a hundred parts of the earth. But down the centuries they had one thing in common. Servitude. The Carlovingian courts, the courts of the De Medici, the Valois, and long before that, the great houses that lay around the Roman hills. Dragged from their villages, east, west, north and south, they flitted in the trappings of servitude through the vast halls of tyrants, barons, Caesars, sybarites, debauchees. They were the torchbearers, the caitiffs, the varlets, the bathkeepers, the inanimate figures whose faces watched from the shadows the great orgies of Tiberius, the baccha.n.a.ls of satraps, kings, captains and squires.

And here their little great-great-grandson stands as they stood, the ghost of their servitude in his sluggish blood. He is content with his role of watcher as his people were content. These slightly grotesque trappings of his are a disguise. He wishes to disguise the fact that he is of the torchbearers, the varlets, the bathkeepers who produced him. So he imitates servilely what he fancies to be the distinguis.h.i.+ng marks of his betters--their clothes, their manners, their aplomb. This accomplished, he is content to yield himself to the mysterious impulses and dreams that move silently through him.

And so he takes his position beside his people--the mixed breeds dragged from their scattered villages--so he stands as they stood through the centuries, their faces watching from the shadows the gorgeousness and tumult of the great aristocrats.

MOTTKA

Since most of the great minds that have weighed the subject have arrived at the opinion that between poverty and crime there is an inevitable affinity, the suspicion with which the eye of Policeman Billings rested upon Mottka, the vender of roasted chestnuts, reflected creditably upon that good officer's grasp of the higher philosophies.

Policeman Billings, sworn to uphold the law and a.s.sist in the protection of property, viewed the complications and mysteries of the social system with a simple and penetrating logic. The rich are not dangerous, reasoned Policeman Billings, because they have what they want. But the poor who have not what they want are, despite paradox and precedent, always to be watched closely. A raggedly dressed man walking in a dark, lonely street may be honesty itself. Yet rags, even when worn for virtue's sake, are a dubious a.s.surance of virtue. They are always ominous to one sworn to protect property and uphold the law.

There is a maxim by Chateaubriand, or perhaps it was Stendhal--maxims have a way of leaving home--which claims that the equilibrium of society rests upon the acquiescence of its oppressed and unfortunate.

In pa.s.sing the battered chestnut roaster of the unfortunate Mottka, Policeman Billings was aware in his own way of the foregoing elements of social philosophy. Mottka had chosen for his little shop an old soapbox which a wastrel providence had deposited in the alley on Twenty-second Street, a few feet west of State Street. Here Mottka sat, nursing the fire of his chestnut roaster with odd bits of refuse which seldom reached the dignity of coal or even wood.

He was an old man and the world had used him poorly. He was, in fact, one of those upon whom the equilibrium of the social system rests. He was unfortunate, oppressed and acquiescent. Arriving early in the forenoon he set up his shop, lighted his fire and took his place on the soapbox. When the lights began to wink out along this highway of evil ghosts Mottka was still to be seen hunched over his chestnut roaster and waiting.

Policeman Billings strolling over his beat was wont to observe Mottka.

There were many things demanding the philosophical attention of Policeman Billings. Not so long ago the neighborhood which he policed had been renowned to the four corners of the earth as the rendezvous of more temptations than even St. Anthony enumerated in his interesting brochure on the subject. And Policeman Billings felt the presence of much of this evil lingering in the brick walls, broken windows and sagging pavements of the district.

It was after a number of days on the beat that Policeman Billings began to take Mottka seriously. There was something curious about the chestnut vender, and the eye of the good officer grew narrow with suspicion. "This man," reasoned Policeman Billings, "makes pretense of being a vender of roasted chestnuts. He sits all day in the alley between two saloons. I have never noticed him sell any chestnuts. And come to think of it, I have never seen more than a half-dozen chestnuts on his roasting pan. I begin to suspect that this old man is a fraud and that his roasting chestnuts is a blind. He is very likely a lookout for some bootlegger gang or criminal mob. And I will keep an eye on him."

Mottka remained unaware of Policeman Billing's attention. He continued to sit hunched over his roaster, nursing the little fire under it as best he could--and waiting. But finally Policeman Billings called himself to his attention in no uncertain way.

"What's your name?" asked the good officer, stopping before the chestnut vender.

"Mottka," answered Mottka.

"And what are you doing here?" asked Policeman Billings, frowning.

"I roast chestnuts and sell them," said Mottka.

"Hm!" said Policeman Billings, "you do, eh? Well, we'll see about that.

Come along."

Mottka rose without question. One does not ask questions of an officer of the law. Mottka stood up and put the fire out and put the handful of chestnuts in his pocket and picked up his roaster and followed the officer. A half-hour later Mottka stood before the sergeant in the Twenty-second street station.

"What's the trouble?" asked the sergeant.

And Policeman Billings explained.

"He claims to be selling chestnuts and roasting them. But I never see him sell any, much less do I see him roasting any. He's got about a dozen chestnuts altogether and I think he may bear looking into."

"What about it, Mottka?" asked the sergeant.

Mottka shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and smiled deprecatingly.

"Nothing," he said, "I got a chestnut roaster I got from a friend on the West Side. And I try to make business. I got a license."

"But the officer says you never roast any chestnuts and he thinks you're a fake."

"Yes, yes," smiled Mottka; "I don't have so many chestnuts. I can't afford only a little bit at a time. Some time I buy a basket of chestnuts."

"Where do you live, Mottka?"

"Oh, on the West Side. On the West Side."

"And what did you do before you roasted chestnuts?"

"Me? Oh, I was in a business. Yes, in a business. And it failed. So I got the chestnut roaster. I got a license."

"It seems to me I've seen you before, Mottka."

"Yes, yes. A policeman bring me here before when I was on Wabash Avenue with my chestnuts."

"What did he bring you in for?"

"Oh, because he thinks I am a crook, because I don't have enough chestnuts to sell. He says I am a lookout for crooks and he brings me in."

Mottka laughed softly and shrugged his shoulders.

"I am no crook. Only I am too poor to buy more chestnuts."

Policeman Billings frowned, but not at Mottka.

"Here," said the good officer, and he handed Mottka a dollar. Three other upholders of the law were present and they too handed Mottka money.

"Go and buy yourself some chestnuts, Mottka," said the sergeant, "so the officers won't be runnin' you in on suspicion of bein' a criminal."

Now Mottka's chestnut roaster in the alley off State Street is full of chestnuts. A bright fire burns under the pan and Mottka sits watching the chestnuts brown and peel as they roast. And if you were to ask him about things he would say: