“All right.”
They wheeled him in, thin, his skin transparent, his hair black and needing to be cut, his eyes very laughing, his teeth bad when he smiled.
“Hola, amigo! Que tal?”
“As you see,” said Mr. Frazer. “And thou?”
“Alive and with the leg paralyzed.”
“Bad,” Mr. Frazer said. “But the nerve can regenerate and be as good as new.”
“So they tell me.”
“What about the pain?”
“Not now. For a while I was crazy with it in the belly. I thought the pain alone would kill me.”
Sister Cecilia was observing them happily.
“She tells me you never made a sound,” Mr. Frazer said.
“So many people in the ward,” the Mexican said deprecatingly. “What class of pain do you have?”
“Big enough. Clearly not as bad as yours. When the nurse goes out I cry an hour, two hours. It rests me. My nerves are bad now.”
“You have the radio. If I had a private room and a radio I would be crying and yelling all night long.”
“I doubt it.”
“Hombre, si. It’s very healthy. But you cannot do it with so many people.”
“At least,” Mr. Frazer said, “the hands are still good. They tell me you make your living with the hands.”
“And the head,” he said, tapping his forehead. “But the head isn’t worth as much.”
“Three of your countrymen were here.”
“Sent by the police to see me.”
“They brought some beer.”
“It probably was bad.”
“It was bad.”
“Tonight, sent by the police, they come to serenade me.” He laughed, then tapped his stomach. “I cannot laugh yet. As musicians they are fatal.”
“And the one who shot you?”
“Another fool. I won thirty-eight dollars from him at cards. That is not to kill about.”
“The three told me you win much money.”
“And am poorer than the birds.”
“How?”
“I am a poor idealist. I am the victim of illusions.” He laughed, then grinned and tapped his stomach. “I am a professional gambler but I like to gamble. To really gamble. Little gambling is all crooked. For real gambling you need luck. I have no luck.”
“Never?”
“Never. I am completely without luck. Look, this cabron who shoots me just now. Can he shoot? No. The first shot he fires into nothing. The second is intercepted by a poor Russian. That would seem to be luck. What happens? He shoots me twice in the belly. He is a lucky man. I have no luck. He could not hit a horse if he were holding the stirrup. All luck.”
“I thought he shot you first and the Russian after.”
“No, the Russian first, me after. The paper was mistaken.”
“Why didn’t you shoot him?”
“I never carry a gun. With my luck, if I carried a gun I would be hanged ten times a year. I am a cheap card player, only that.” He stopped, then continued. “When I make a sum of money I gamble and when I gamble I lose. I have passed at dice for three thousand dollars and crapped out for the six. With good dice. More than once.”
“Why continue?”
“If I live long enough the luck will change. I have bad luck now for fifteen years. If I ever get any good luck I will be rich.” He grinned. “I am a good gambler, really I would enjoy being rich.”
“Do you have bad luck with all games?”
“With everything and with women.” He smiled again, showing his bad teeth.
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“And what is there to do?”
“Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change.”
“But with women?”
“No gambler has luck with women. He is too concentrated. He works nights. When he should be with the woman. No man who works nights can hold a woman if the woman is worth anything.”
“You are a philosopher.”
“No, hombre. A gambler of the small towns. One small town, then another, another, then a big town, then start over again.”
“Then shot in the belly.”
“The first time,” he said. “That has only happened once.”
“I tire you talking?” Mr. Frazer suggested.
“No,” he said. “I must tire you.”
“And the leg?”
“I have no great use for the leg. I am all right with the leg or not. I will be able to circulate.”
“I wish you luck, truly, and with all my heart,” Mr. Frazer said.
“Equally,” he said. “And that the pain stops.”
“It will not last, certainly. It is passing. It is of no importance.”
“That it passes quickly.”
“Equally.”
That night the Mexicans played the accordion and other instruments in the ward and it was cheerful and the noise of the inhalations and exhalations of the accordion, and of the bells, the traps, and the drum came down the corridor. In that ward there was a rodeo rider who had come out of the chutes on Midnight on a hot dusty afternoon with a big crowd watching, and now, with a broken back, was going to learn to work in leather and to cane chairs when he got well enough to leave the hospital. There was a carpenter who had fallen with a scaffolding and broken both ankles and both wrists.
He had lit like a cat but without a cat’s resiliency. They could fix him up so that he could work again but it would take a long time. There was a boy from a farm, about sixteen years old, with a broken leg that had been badly set and was to be rebroken. There was Cayetano Ruiz, a small-town gambler with a paralyzed leg. Down the corridor Mr. Frazer could hear them all laughing and merry with the music made by the Mexicans who had been sent by the police. The Mexicans were having a good time. They came in, very excited, to see Mr. Frazer and wanted to know if there was anything he wanted them to play, and they came twice more to play at night of their own accord.
The last time they played Mr. Frazer lay in his room with the door open and listened to the noisy, bad music and could not keep from thinking. When they wanted to know what he wished played, he asked for the Cucaracha, which has the sinister lightness and deftness of so many of the tunes men have gone to die to. They played noisily and with emotion. The tune was better than most of such tunes, to Mr. Frazer’s mind, but the effect was all the same.
In spite of this introduction of emotion, Mr. Frazer went on thinking. Usually he avoided thinking all he could, except when he was writing, but now he was thinking about those who were playing and what the little one had said.
Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn’t thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using.
Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people, along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people.
“Listen,” Mr. Frazer said to the nurse when she came. “Get that little thin Mexican in here, will you, please?”
“How did you like it?” the Mexican said at the door.
“Very much.”
“It is a historic tune,” the Mexican said. “It is the tune of the real revolution.”
“Listen,” said Mr. Frazer. “Why should the people be operated on without an anæsthetic?”
“I do not understand.”
“Why are not all the opiums of the people, good? What do you want to do with the people?”
“They should be rescued from ignorance.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Education is an opium of the people. You ought to know that. You’ve had a little.”
“You do not believe in education?”
“No,” said Mr. Frazer. “In knowledge, yes.”
“I do not follow you.”
“Many times I do not follow myself with pleasure.”
“You want to hear the Cucaracha another time?” asked the Mexican worriedly.
“Yes,” said Mr. Frazer. “Play the Cucaracha another time. It’s better than the radio.”
Revolution, Mr. Frazer thought, is no opium. Revolution is a catharsis; an ecstasy which can only be prolonged by tyranny. The opiums are for before and for after. He was thinking well, a little too well.
They would go now in a little while, he thought, and they would take the Cucaracha with them. Then he would have a little spot of the giant killer and play the radio, you could play the radio so that you could hardly hear it.
FATHERS AND SONS
There had been a sign to detour in the centre of the main
