The Octopus by Frank Norris (best e reader for academics TXT) 📖

woman a note scrawled on an old blotter, to be given to Minna when she returned. This the landlady had lost. To cover her confusion, she affected a vast indignation, and a turbulent, irascible demeanour.

“I ain’t going to be bothered with such cattle as you,” she vociferated in Minna’s face. “I don’t know where your folks is. Me, I only have dealings with honest people. I ain’t got a word to say so long as the rent is paid. But when I’m soldiered out of a week’s lodging, then I’m done. You get right along now. I don’t know you. I ain’t going to have my place get a bad name by having any South of Market Street chippies hanging around. You get along, or I’ll call an officer.”

Minna sought the street, her head in a whirl. It was about five o’clock. In her pocket was thirty-five cents, all she had in the world. What now?

All at once, the Terror of the City, that blind, unreasoned fear that only the outcast knows, swooped upon her, and clutched her vulture-wise, by the throat.

Her first few days’ experience in the matter of finding employment, had taught her just what she might expect from this new world upon which she had been thrown. What was to become of her? What was she to do, where was she to go? Unanswerable, grim questions, and now she no longer had herself to fear for. Her mother and the baby, little Hilda, both of them equally unable to look after themselves, what was to become of them, where were they gone? Lost, lost, all of them, herself as well. But she rallied herself, as she walked along. The idea of her starving, of her mother and Hilda starving, was out of all reason. Of course, it would not come to that, of course not. It was not thus that starvation came. Something would happen, of course, it would—in time. But meanwhile, meanwhile, how to get through this approaching night, and the next few days. That was the thing to think of just now.

The suddenness of it all was what most unnerved her. During all the nineteen years of her life, she had never known what it meant to shift for herself. Her father had always sufficed for the family; he had taken care of her, then, all of a sudden, her father had been killed, her mother snatched from her. Then all of a sudden there was no help anywhere. Then all of a sudden a terrible voice demanded of her, “Now just what can you do to keep yourself alive?” Life faced her; she looked the huge stone image squarely in the lustreless eyes.

It was nearly twilight. Minna, for the sake of avoiding observation—for it seemed to her that now a thousand prying glances followed her—assumed a matter-of-fact demeanour, and began to walk briskly toward the business quarter of the town.

She was dressed neatly enough, in a blue cloth skirt with a blue plush belt, fairly decent shoes, once her mother’s, a pink shirt waist, and jacket and a straw sailor. She was, in an unusual fashion, pretty. Even her troubles had not dimmed the bright light of her pale, greenish-blue eyes, nor faded the astonishing redness of her lips, nor hollowed her strangely white face. Her blue-black hair was trim. She carried her well-shaped, well-rounded figure erectly. Even in her distress, she observed that men looked keenly at her, and sometimes after her as she went along. But this she noted with a dim sub-conscious faculty. The real Minna, harassed, terrified, lashed with a thousand anxieties, kept murmuring under her breath:

“What shall I do, what shall I do, oh, what shall I do, now?”

After an interminable walk, she gained Kearney Street, and held it till the well-lighted, well-kept neighbourhood of the shopping district gave place to the vice-crowded saloons and concert halls of the Barbary Coast. She turned aside in avoidance of this, only to plunge into the purlieus of Chinatown, whence only she emerged, panic-stricken and out of breath, after a half hour of never-to-be-forgotten terrors, and at a time when it had grown quite dark.

On the corner of California and Dupont streets, she stood a long moment, pondering.

I MUST do something,” she said to herself. “I must do SOMETHING.” She was tired out by now, and the idea occurred to her to enter the Catholic church in whose shadow she stood, and sit down and rest. This she did. The evening service was just being concluded. But long after the priests and altar boys had departed from the chancel, Minna still sat in the dim, echoing interior, confronting her desperate situation as best she might.

Two or three hours later, the sexton woke her. The church was being closed; she must leave. Once more, chilled with the sharp night air, numb with long sitting in the same attitude, still oppressed with drowsiness, confused, frightened, Minna found herself on the pavement. She began to be hungry, and, at length, yielding to the demand that every moment grew more imperious, bought and eagerly devoured a five-cent bag of fruit. Then, once more she took up the round of walking.

At length, in an obscure street that branched from Kearney Street, near the corner of the Plaza, she came upon an illuminated sign, bearing the inscription, “Beds for the Night, 15 and 25 cents.”

Fifteen cents! Could she afford it? It would leave her with only that much more, that much between herself and a state of privation of which she dared not think; and, besides, the forbidding look of the building frightened her. It was dark, gloomy, dirty, a place suggestive of obscure crimes and hidden terrors. For twenty minutes or half an hour, she hesitated, walking twice and three times around the block. At last, she made up her mind. Exhaustion such as she had never known, weighed like lead upon her shoulders and dragged at her heels. She must sleep. She could not walk the streets all night. She entered the doorway under the sign, and found her way up a filthy flight of stairs. At the top, a man in a blue checked “jumper” was filling a lamp behind a high desk. To him Minna applied.

“I should like,” she faltered, “to have a room—a bed for the night. One of those for fifteen cents will be good enough, I think.”

“Well, this place is only for men,” said the man, looking up from the lamp.

“Oh,” said Minna, “oh—I—I didn’t know.”

She looked at him stupidly, and he, with equal stupidity, returned the gaze. Thus, for a long moment, they held each other’s eyes.

“I—I didn’t know,” repeated Minna.

“Yes, it’s for men,” repeated the other. She slowly descended the stairs, and once more came out upon the streets.

And upon those streets that, as the hours advanced, grew more and more deserted, more and more silent, more and more oppressive with the sense of the bitter hardness of life towards those who have no means of living, Minna Hooven spent the first night of her struggle to keep her head above the ebb-tide of the city’s sea, into which she had been plunged.

Morning came, and with it renewed hunger. At this time, she had found her way uptown again, and towards ten o’clock was sitting upon a bench in a little park full of nursemaids and children. A group of the maids drew their baby-buggies to Minna’s bench, and sat down, continuing a conversation they had already begun. Minna listened. A friend of one of the maids had suddenly thrown up her position, leaving her “madame” in what would appear to have been deserved embarrassment.

“Oh,” said Minna, breaking in, and lying with sudden unwonted fluency, “I am a nurse-girl. I am out of a place. Do you think I could get that one?”

The group turned and fixed her—so evidently a country girl—with a supercilious indifference.

“Well, you might try,” said one of them. “Got good references?”

“References?” repeated Minna blankly. She did not know what this meant.

“Oh, Mrs. Field ain’t the kind to stick about references,” spoke up the other, “she’s that soft. Why, anybody could work her.”

“I’ll go there,” said Minna. “Have you the address?” It was told to her.

“Lorin,” she murmured. “Is that out of town?”

“Well, it’s across the Bay.”

“Across the Bay.”

“Um. You’re from the country, ain’t you?”

“Yes. How—how do I get there? Is it far?”

“Well, you take the ferry at the foot of Market Street, and then the train on the other side. No, it ain’t very far. Just ask any one down there. They’ll tell you.”

It was a chance; but Minna, after walking down to the ferry slips, found that the round trip would cost her twenty cents. If the journey proved fruitless, only a dime would stand between her and the end of everything. But it was a chance; the only one that had, as yet, presented itself. She made the trip.

And upon the street-railway cars, upon the ferryboats, on the locomotives and way-coaches of the local trains, she was reminded of her father’s death, and of the giant power that had reduced her to her present straits, by the letters, P. and S. W. R. R. To her mind, they occurred everywhere. She seemed to see them in every direction. She fancied herself surrounded upon every hand by the long arms of the monster.

Minute after minute, her hunger gnawed at her. She could not keep her mind from it. As she sat on the boat, she found herself curiously scanning the faces of the passengers, wondering how long since such a one had breakfasted, how long before this other should sit down to lunch.

When Minna descended from the train, at Lorin on the other side of the Bay, she found that the place was one of those suburban towns, not yet become fashionable, such as may be seen beyond the outskirts of any large American city. All along the line of the railroad thereabouts, houses, small villas—contractors’ ventures—were scattered, the advantages of suburban lots and sites for homes being proclaimed in seven-foot letters upon mammoth bill-boards close to the right of way. Without much trouble, Minna found the house to which she had been directed, a pretty little cottage, set back from the street and shaded by palms, live oaks, and the inevitable eucalyptus. Her heart warmed at the sight of it. Oh, to find a little niche for herself here, a home, a refuge from those horrible city streets, from the rat of famine, with its relentless tooth. How she would work, how strenuously she would endeavour to please, how patient of rebuke she would be, how faithful, how conscientious. Nor were her pretensions altogether false; upon her, while at home, had devolved almost continually the care of the baby Hilda, her little sister. She knew the wants and needs of children.

Her heart beating, her breath failing, she rang the bell set squarely in the middle of the front door.

The lady of the house herself, an elderly lady, with pleasant, kindly face, opened the door. Minna stated her errand.

“But I have already engaged a girl,” she said.

“Oh,” murmured Minna, striving with all her might to maintain appearances. “Oh—I thought perhaps—” She turned away.

“I’m sorry,” said the lady. Then she added, “Would you care to look after so many as three little children, and help around in light housework between whiles?”

“Yes, ma’am.” “Because my sister—she lives in North Berkeley, above here— she’s looking far a girl. Have you had lots of experience? Got good references?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, I’ll give you the address. She lives up in North Berkeley.”

She turned back into the house a moment, and returned, handing Minna a card.

“That’s where she lives—careful not to BLOT it,