Pilon and Pablo entered the little house joyfully. Pilon lighted a candle and produced two fruit jars for glasses.
“Health!” said Pablo.
“Salud!” said Pilon.
And in a few moments, “Salud!” said Pablo.
“Mud in your eye!” said Pilon.
They rested a little while. “Su servidor,” said Pilon.
“Down the rat-hole,” said Pablo.
Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.
But let us go back to the first mark, which says serious and concentrated conversation, for it was at that place that Pilon made his coup. “Pablo,” he said, “dost thou never get tired of sleeping in ditches, wet and homeless, friendless and alone?”
“No,” said Pablo.
Pilon mellowed his voice persuasively. “So I thought, my friend, when I was a dirty gutter-dog. I too was content, for I did not know how sweet a little house is, and a roof, and a garden. Ah, Pablo, this is indeed living.”
[19] “It’s pretty nice,” Pablo agreed.
Pilon pounced. “See, Pablo, how would you like to rent part of my house? There would never be the cold ground for you any more. Never the hard sand under the wharf with crabs getting in your shoes. How would you like to live here with me?”
“Sure,” said Pablo.
“Look, you will pay only fifteen dollars a month! And you may use all the house except my bed, and all the garden. Think of it, Pablo! And if someone should write you a letter, he will have some place to send it to.”
“Sure,” said Pablo. “That’s swell.”
Pilon sighed with relief. He had not realized how the debt to Danny rode on his shoulders. The fact that he was fairly sure Pablo would never pay any rent did not mitigate his triumph. If Danny should ever ask for money, Pilon could say, “I will pay when Pablo pays.”
They moved on to the next graduation, and Pilon remembered how happy he had been when he was a little boy. “No care then, Pablo. I knew not sin. I was very happy.”
“We have never been happy since,” Pablo agreed sadly.
IV
How Jesus Maria Corcoran, a good man, became an unwilling vehicle of evil.
LIFE passed smoothly on for Pilon and Pablo. In the morning when the sun was up clear of the pine trees, when the blue bay rippled and sparkled below them, they arose slowly and thoughtfully from their beds.
It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
[20] Pablo and Pilon in their blue jeans and blue shirts walked in comradeship into the gulch behind the house, and after a little time they returned to sit in the sun on the front porch, to listen to the fish horns on the streets of Monterey, to discuss in wandering, sleepy tones the doings of Tortilla Flat; for there are a thousand climaxes on Tortilla Flat for every day the world wheels through.
They were at peace there on the porch. Only their toes wriggled on the warm boards when the flies landed on them.
“If all the dew were diamonds,” Pablo said, “we would be very rich. We would be drunk all our lives.”
But Pilon, on whom the curse of realism lay uneasily, added, “Everybody would have too many diamonds. There would be no price for them, but wine always costs money. If only it would rain wine for a day, now, and we had a tank to catch it in.”
“But good wine,” interjected Pablo. “Not rotgut swill like the last you got.”
“I didn’t pay for it,” said Pilon. “Someone hid it in the grass by the dance hall. What can you expect of wine you find?”
They sat and waved their hands listlessly at the flies. “Cornelia Ruiz cut up the black Mexican yesterday,” Pilon observed.
Pablo raised his eyes in mild interest. “Fight?” he asked. “Oh, no, the black one did not know Cornelia got a new man yesterday, and he tried to come in. So Cornelia cut him.”
“He should have known,” Pablo said virtuously.
“Well, he was down in the town when Cornelia got her new man. The black one just tried to go in through the window when she locked the door.”
“The black one is a fool,” said Pablo. “Is he dead?”
“Oh, no. She just cut him up a little bit on the arms. Cornelia was not angry. She just didn’t want the black one to come in.”
“Cornelia is not a very steady woman,” said Pablo. “But still she has masses sung for her father, ten years dead.”
“He will need them,” Pilon observed. “He was a bad man and never went to jail for it, and he never went to [21] confession. When old Ruiz was dying the priest came to give him solace, and Ruiz confessed. Cornelia says the priest was white as buckskin when he came out of the sickroom. But afterward that priest said he didn’t believe half what Ruiz confessed.”
Pablo, with a cat-like stroke, killed a fly that landed on his knee. “Ruiz was always a liar,” he said. “That soul will need plenty of masses. But do you think a mass has virtue when the money for that mass comes out of men’s pockets while they sleep in wine at Cornelia’s house?”
“A mass is a mass,” said Pilon. “Where you get two-bits is of no interest to the man who sells you a glass of wine. And where a mass comes from is of no interest to God. He just likes them, the same as you like wine. Father Murphy used to go fishing all the time, and for months the Holy Sacrament tasted like mackerel, but that did not make it less holy. These things are for priests to explain. They are nothing for us to worry about. I wonder where we could get some eggs to eat. It would be good to eat an egg now.”
Pablo tilted his hat down over his eyes to keep the sun from bothering him. “Charlie Meeler told me that Danny is with Rosa Martin, that Portagee girl.”
Pilon sat upright in alarm. “Maybe that girl will want to marry Danny. Those Portagees always want to marry, and they love money. Maybe when they are married Dannv will bother us about the rent. That Rosa will want new dresses. All women do. I know them.”
Pablo too looked annoyed. “Maybe if we went and talked to Danny—” he suggested.
“Maybe Danny has some eggs,” said Pilon. “Those chickens of Mrs. Morales are good layers.”
They put on their shoes and walked slowly toward Danny’s house.
Pilon stooped and picked up a beer bottle cap and cursed and threw it down. “Some evil man has left it there to deceive people,” he said.
“I tried it last night,” said Pablo. He looked into a yard where the green corn was ripe and made a mental note of its ripeness.
They found Danny sitting on his front porch, behind the rose bush, wriggling his toes to keep the flies off.
[22] “Ai, amigos,” he greeted them listlessly.
They sat down beside him and took off their hats and their shoes. Danny took out a sack of tobacco and some papers and passed them to Pilon. Pilon looked mildly shocked, but made no comment.
“Cornelia Ruiz cut up the black Mexican,” he said.
“I heard about it,” said Danny.
Pablo spoke acidly. “These women, there is no virtue in them any more.”
“It is dangerous to lie with them,” said Pilon. “I have heard that there is one young Portagee girl here on the Flat who can give a man something to remember her by, if he goes to the trouble to get it.”
Pablo made disapproving clucking noises with his tongue. He spread his hands in front of him. “What is a man to do?” he asked. “Is there no one to trust?”
They watched Danny’s face and saw no alarm appear there.
“This girl’s name is Rosa,” said Pilon. “I would not say her last name.”
“Oh, you mean Rosa Martin,” Danny observed with very little interest. “Well, what can you expect of a Portagee?”