JOHN STEINBECK
TORTILLA FLAT
TO SUSAN GREGORY
OF MONTEREY
CONTENTS:
I. Preface
II. How Danny, home from the wars, found himself an heir, and how he swore to protect the help less.
III. How Pilon was lured by greed of position to forsake Danny’s hospitality.
IV. How the poison of possessions wrought with Pilon, and how evil temporarily triumphed in him.
V. How Jesus Maria Corcoran, a good man, became an unwilling vehicle of evil.
VI. How Saint Francis turned the tide and put a gentle punishment on Pilon and Pablo and Jesus Maria.
VII. How three sinful men, through contrition, attained peace. How Danny’s Friends swore comradeship.
VIII. How Danny’s Friends became a force for good. How they succored the poor Pirate.
IX. How Danny’s Friends sought mystic treasure on Saint Andrew’s Eve. How Pilon found it and later how a pair of serge trousers changed ownership twice.
X. How Danny was ensnared by a vacuum cleaner and how Danny’s Friends rescued him.
XI. How the Friends solaced a Corporal and in return received a lesson in paternal ethics.
XII. How, under the most adverse circumstances, love came to Big Joe Portagee.
XIII. How Danny’s Friends assisted the Pirate to keep a vow, and how as a reward for merit the Pirate’s dogs saw a holy vision.
XIV. How Danny’s Friends threw themselves to the aid of a distressed lady.
XV. Of the good life at Danny’s House, of a gift pig, of the pain of Tall Bob, and of the thwarted love of the Viejo Ravanno.
XVI. How Danny brooded and became mad. How the devil in the shape of Torrelli assaulted Danny’s House.
XVII. Of the sadness of Danny. How through sacrifice Danny’s Friends gave a party. How Danny was Translated.
XVIII. How Danny’s sorrowing Friends defied the conventions. How the Talismanic Bond was burned. How each Friend departed alone.
PREFACE
THIS is the story of Danny and of Danny’s friends and of Danny’s house. It is a story of how these three became one thing, so that in Tortilla Flat if you speak of Danny’s house you do not mean a structure of wood flaked with old whitewash, overgrown with an ancient untrimmed rose of Castile. No, when you speak of Danny’s house you are understood to mean a unit of which the parts are men, from which came sweetness and joy, philanthropy and, in the end, a mystic sorrow. For Danny’s house was not unlike the Round Table, and Danny’s friends were not unlike the knights of it. And this is the story of how that group came into being, of how it flourished and grew to be an organization beautiful and wise. This story deals with the adventuring of Danny’s friends, with the good they did, with their thoughts and their endeavors. In the end, this story tells how the talisman was lost and how the group disintegrated.
In Monterey, that old city on the coast of California, these things are well known, and they are repeated and sometimes elaborated. It is well that this cycle be put down on paper so that in a future time scholars, hearing the legends, may not say as they say of Arthur and of Roland and of Robin Hood—“There was no Danny nor any group of Danny’s friends, nor any house. Danny is a nature god and his friends primitive symbols of the wind, the sky, the sun.” This history is designed now and ever to keep the sneers from the lips of sour scholars.
Monterey sits on the slope of a hill, with a blue bay below it and with a forest of tall dark pine trees at its back. The lower parts of the town are inhabited by Americans, Italians, catchers and canners of fish. But on the hill where [2] the forest and the town intermingle, where the streets are innocent of asphalt and the corners free of street lights, the old inhabitants of Monterey are embattled as the Ancient Britons are embattled in Wales. These are the paisanos.
They live in old wooden houses set in weedy yards, and the pine trees from the forest are about the houses. The paisanos are clean of commercialism, free of the complicated systems of American business, and, having nothing that can be stolen, exploited, or mortgaged, that system has not attacked them very vigorously.
What is a paisano? He is a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in California for a hundred or two years. He speaks English with a paisano accent and Spanish with a paisano accent. When questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white. His color, like that of a well-browned meerschaum pipe, he ascribes to sunburn. He is a paisano, and he lives in the uphill district above the town of Monterey called Tortilla Flat, although it isn’t a flat at all.
Danny was a paisano, and he grew up in Tortilla Flat and everyone liked him, but he did not stand out particularly from the screeching children of Tortilla Flat. He was related to nearly everyone in the Flat by blood or romance. His grandfather was an important man who owned two small houses in Tortilla Flat and was respected for his wealth. If the growing Danny preferred to sleep in the forest, to work on ranches, and to wrest his food and wine from an unwilling world, it was not because he did not have influential relatives. Danny was small and dark and intent. At twenty-five his legs were bent to the exact curves of a horse’s sides.
Now when Danny was twenty-five years old, the war with Germany was declared. Danny and his friend Pilon (Pilon, by the way, is something thrown in when a trade is conducted—a boot) had two gallons of wine when they heard about the war. Big Joe Portagee saw the glitter of the bottles among the pines and he joined Danny and Pilon.
As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and [3] they walked into Monterey. In front of an enlistment station they cheered loudly for America and dared Germany to do her worst. They howled menaces at the German Empire until the enlistment sergeant awakened and put on his uniform and came into the street to silence them. He remained to enlist them.
The sergeant lined them up in front of his desk. They passed everything but the sobriety test and then the sergeant began his questions with Pilon.
“What branch do you want to go in?”
“I don’ give a god-damn,” said Pilon jauntily.
“I guess we need men like you in the infantry.” And Pilon was written so.
He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. “Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go home,” Big Joe said miserably.
The sergeant put him in the infantry too. Finally he confronted Danny, who was sleeping on his feet. “Where do you want to go?”
“Huh?”
“I say, what branch?”
“What do you mean, ‘branch’?”
“What can you do?”
“Me? I can do anything.”
“What did you do before?”
“Me? I’m a mule skinner.”
“Oh, you are? How many mules can you drive?” Danny leaned forward, vaguely and professionally. “How many you got?”
“About thirty thousand,” said the sergeant.
Danny waved his hand. “String ‘em up!” he said.
And so Danny went to Texas and broke mules for the duration of the war. And Pilon marched about Oregon with the infantry, and Big Joe, as shall be later made clear, went to jail.
I
How Danny, home from the wars, found himself an heir, and how he swore to protect the helpless.
WHEN Danny came home from the army he learned that he was an heir and an owner of property. The viejo, that is the grandfather, had died, leaving Danny the two small houses on Tortilla Flat.
When Danny heard about it he was a little weighed down with the responsibility of ownership. Before he ever went to look at his property he bought a gallon of red wine and drank most of it himself. The weight of responsibility left him then, and his very worst nature came to the surface. He shouted; he broke a few chairs in a poolroom on Alvarado Street; he had two short but glorious fights. No one paid much attention to Danny. At last his wavering bowlegs took him toward the wharf where, at this early hour in the morning, the Italian fishermen were walking down in rubber boots to go out to sea.
Race antipathy overcame Danny’s good sense. He menaced the fishermen. “Sicilian bastards,” he called them, and “Scum from the prison island,” and “Dogs of dogs of dogs.” He cried, “Chinga tu madre, Piojo.” He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist. The fishermen only grinned and shifted their oars and said, “Hello, Danny. When’d you get home? Come around tonight. We got new wine.”