The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante

system, bastard slaves of the Robber Barons. Slaves, I tell you! I wouldn't take a job at this plant if it was offered me on a golden platter! Work for this system and lose your soul. No thanks. And what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

    He nodded, smiled, agreed, nodded for more. I warmed up. My favorite subject. Labor conditions in the machine age, a topic for a future work.

    "Sheep, I tell you! A lot of gutless sheep!" His eyes brightened. He brought out a pipe and lit it. The pipe stunk. When he took it from his mouth the goo from his nose strung after it. He wiped it off with his thumb and wiped his thumb against his leg. He didn't bother to wipe his nose. No time for that when Bandini speaks.

    "It amuses me," I said. "The spectacle is priceless. Sheep getting their souls sheared. A Rabelaisian spectacle. I have to laugh." And I laughed until there wasn't anymore. He did too, slapping his thighs and shrieking to a high note until his eyes were filled with tears. Here was a man after my own heart, a man of universal humors, no doubt a well-read man despite his overalls and useless belt. From his pocket he took a pad and pencil and wrote on the pad. Now I knew: he was a writer too, of course! The secret was out. He finished writing and handed me the note.

    It read: Please write it down. I am stone deaf.

    No, there was no work for Arturo Bandini. I left feeling better, glad of it. I walked back wishing I had an aeroplane, a million dollars, wishing the seashells were diamonds. I will go to the park. I am not yet a sheep. Read Nietzsche. Be a superman. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Oh that Nietzsche! Don't be a sheep, Bandini. Preserve the sanctity of your mind. Go to the park and read the master under the eucalyptus trees.

     
    Chapter Seven

    ONE MORNING I awoke with an idea. A fine idea, big as a house. My greatest idea ever, a masterpiece. I would find a job as a night clerk in a hotel — that was the idea. This would give me a chance to read and work at the same time. I leaped out of bed, swallowed breakfast and took the stairs six at a time. On the sidewalk I stood a moment and mulled over my idea. The sun scorched the street, burning my eyes to wakefulness. Strange. Now I was wide awake and the idea didn't seem so good, one of those which comes in half-sleep. A dream, a mere dream, a triviality. I couldn't get a job as a night clerk in this harbor town for the simple reason that no hotel in this harbor town used night clerks. A mathematical deduction — simple enough. I went back up the stairs to the apartment and sat down.

    "Why did you run like that?" my mother asked.

    "To get exercise. For my legs."

    The days came with fog. The nights were nights and nothing else. The days didn't change from one to the other, the golden sun blasting away and then dying out. I was always alone. It was hard to remember such monotony. The days would not move. They stood like grey stones. Time passed slowly. Two months crawled by.

    It was always the park. I read a hundred books. There was Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Kant and Spengler and Strachey and others. Oh Spengler! What a book! What weight! Like the Los Angeles Telephone Directory. Day after day I read it, never understanding it, never caring either, but reading it because I liked one growling word after another marching across pages with somber mysterious rumblings. And Schopenhauer! What a writer! For days I read him and read him, remembering a bit here and a bit there. And such things about women! I agreed. Exactly my own feelings on the matter. Ah man, what a writer!

    Once I was reading in the park. I lay on the lawn. There were little black ants among the blades of grass. They looked at me, crawling over the pages, some wondering what I was doing, others not interested and passing by. They crawled up my leg, baffled in a jungle of brown hairs, and I lifted my trousers and killed them with my thumb. They did their best to