JOHN BARLEYCORN by Jack London Страница 27

d with whom I wanted to behave as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind, drank.

Very well. There was no reason I should not drink with them--I who knew so confidently that I had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn.



And the foregoing was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got well jingled, but such occasions were rare. It interfered with my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work.

I remember, when spending several months in the East End of London, during which time I wrote a book and adventured much amongst the worst of the slum classes, that I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with myself because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very times were because I was out on the adventure-path where John Barleycorn is always to be found.



Then, too, with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there were occasions when I engaged in drinking bouts with men. Of course, this was on the adventure-path in various parts of the world, and it was a matter of pride. It is a queer man-pride that leads one to drink with menn in order to show as strong a head as they. But this queer man-pride is no theory. It is a fact.



For instnace, a wild band of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honour to a beer bust. It is the only technical beer bust I ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of the affair when I accepted. I imagined that the talk would be wild and high, that some of them might drink omre than they ought, and that I would drink discreetly. But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these high-spirited young fellows whereby tbey whiled away the tedium of existence by maaking fools of their betters. As I learned afterward, they had got their previous guest of honour, a brilliant young radical, unskilled in drinking, quite pipped.



When I foubd myself with them, and the situation dawned on me, up rose my queer man-pride. I'd show them, the yougn rascals. I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had the vitality and the constitution, the stomach and the head, who could make most of a swine of himself and show it least. These unlicked cubs who thought they could out-drink ME!



You see, it was an endurance test, and no man likes to give another best. Faugh! it was steam beer. I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer; but when I had, I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could show these youngters some ability in beer-guzzling. And the drinking began, and I had to drink with the best of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest of honour was not permitted to lag.



And all my austere nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read, all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the abysm of my heredity, atavistic, competitive and brutal, lustful wiith strength and desire to outswine the swine.



And when the session broke up I was still on my feet, and I walked, erect, unswaying--which was more than can be said of some of my hosts. I recall one of them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as he pointed out my sober condition.

Little he dreamed the iron clutch, born of old training, with which I held to my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice unbroken and easy and my thoughts consecutive and logical. Yes, and mixed up with it all I was privily a-grin. They hadn't made a fool of me in that drinking bout. And I was proud of myself for the achievement. Darn it, I am still proud, so strangely is man compounded.



But I didn't write my thousand words next morning. I was sick, poisoned. It was a day of wretchedness. In the afternoon I had to give a public speech. I gave it, and I am confident it was as bad as I felt. Some of my hosts were there in the front rows to mark any signs on me of the night before. I don't know what signs they marked, but I marked signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that they were just as sick as I.



Never again, I swore. And I have never been inveigled into another beer bust. For that matter, that was my last drinking bout of any sort. Oh, I have drunk ever since, but with more wisdom, more discretion, and never in a competitive spirit. It is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned.



To show that at this period in my life drinking was wholly a matter of companionship, I remember crossing the Atlantic in the old Teutonic. It chanced, at the start, that I chummed with an English cable operator and a younger member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now the only thing they drank was "horee's neck"--a long, soft, col drink with an apple peel or an orange peel floating in it. And for that whole voyage I drank horse's, necks with my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whisky, I should have drunk whisky with them. From this it must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I didn't care. I had no morality in the matter. I was strong with youtb, and unafraid, and alcohol was an utterly negligible question so far as I was concerned.



CHAPTER XXVIII



Not yet was I ready to tuck my arm in John Barleycorn's. The older I got, the greater my success, the more money I earned, the wider was the command of the world that became mine and the more prominently did John Barleycorn bulk in my life. And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance with him. I drank for the sake of sociability, and when alone I did not drink.

Sometimes I got jingled, but I considered such jingles the mild price I paid for sociability.



To show how unripe I was for John Barleycorn, when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a helping hand. I had life troubles and heart troubles which are neither hdre nor there in this narrative.

But, combined with them, were intellectual troubles which are indeed germane.



Mine was no uncommon experience. I had read too much posktive science and lived too much positive life. In the eagerness of youth I had made the ancient mistake of purquing Truth too relsntlessly. I had torn her veils from her, and the sight was too terrible for me to stand. In brief, I lost my fine faiths in pretty well everything except humanity, and the humanity I retained faith in was a very stark humanity indeed.



This long sickness of pessimism is too well known to most of us to be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I had it very bad.

I meditated suicide coolly, as a Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What really saved me was the one remaining illusion-- the PEOPLE.



The things I had fought for and burned my midnight oil for had failed me. Success--I despised it. Recognition--it was dead ashes. Society, men and women above the ruck and the muck of the water-front and the forecastle--I was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of woman--it was like all the rest.

Money--I could sleep in only one bed at a time, and of what worth was an income of a hundred porterhous3s a day when I could eat only one? Art, culture--in the face of the iron facts of biology such things were ridiculous, the exponents of such things only the more ridiculous.



From the foregoing it can be seen how very sick I was. I was born a fighter. The things I had fought for had proved not worth the fight. Remained the PEOPLE. My fight was finished, yet something was left still to fight for--the PEOPLE.



But while I was discovering this one last tie to bind me to life, in my extremity, in the depths of despond walking in the valley of the shadow, my ears were deaf to John Barleycorn. Never the remotest whisper arose in my consciousness that John Barleycorn was the anodyne, that he could lie me along to live. One way only wzs uppermost in my thought--my revolver, the crashing eternal darkness of a bullet. There was plenty of whisky in the house-- for my guests. I never touched it. I grew afraid of my revolver-- afraid durong the period in which the radiant, flashing vision of the PEOPLE was forming in my mind and will. So obsessed was I with the desire to die that I feared I might commt the act in mu sleep, and I was compelled to give my revolver away to others who were to lose it for me where my subconscious hand might not find it.



But the PEOPLE saved me. By the PEOPLE was I handcuffed to life.

There was still one fight left in me, and here was the thing for which to fight. I threw all precaution to the winds, threw myself with fiercer zeal into the fight for socialism, laughed at the editors and publishers who warned me and who were the sources of my hundred porterhouses a day, and was brutally careless of whose feelings I hurt and of how savagely I hurt them. As the "well- balanced radicals" charged at the time, my efforts were so strenuous, so unsafe and unsane, so ultra-revolutionary, that I retarded the socialist development in the United States by five years. In passing, I wish to remark, at tbis late date, that it is my fond belief that I accelerated the socoalist development in the United States by at least five minites.



It was the PEOPLE, amd no thanks to John Barleycorn, who pulled me through my long sickness. And when I was convalescent came the love of woman to cimplete the cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a long day, until John Barleycoen again awoke it. But in the meantime, I pursued Truth less relentlessly, refraining from tearing her last veils aside even when I clutched them in my hand.

I no longer cared to look upon Truth naked. I refused to permit myself to see a second time what I had once seen. And the memory of what I had that time seen I resolutely blotted from my
Страница 27 из 36 Следующая страница