The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante

Author:John Fante
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

ASLEEP OR AWAKE, it did not matter, I hated the cannery, and I always smelled like a basket of mackerel. It never left me, that stench of a dead horse at the edge of the road. It followed me in the streets. It went with me into buildings. When I crawled into bed at night, there it was, like a blanket, all over me. And in my dreams there were fish fish fish, mackerel slithering about in a black pool, with me tied to a limb and being lowered into the pool. It was in my food and clothes, and I even tasted it on my toothbrush. The same thing happened to Mona and my mother. At last it got so bad that when Friday came we had meat for dinner. My mother couldn't bear the idea of fish, even though it was a sin to be without fish.

From boyhood I loathed soap too. I didn't believe I would ever get used to that slimy greasy stuff with its slithering, effeminate smell. But now I used it against the stench of fish. I took more baths than ever before. There was one Saturday when I took two baths — one after work, and another before I went to bed. Every night I stayed in the tub and read books until the water grew cold and looked like old dish water. I nibbed soap into my skin until it shone like an apple. But there was no sense in it all, because it was a waste of time. The only way to get rid of the smell was to quit the cannery. I always left the tub smelling of two mingling stenches - soap and dead mackerel.

Everybody knew who I was and what I did when they saw me coming. Being a writer was no satisfaction. On bus I was recognized instantly, and in the theater too.

He's one of those cannery kids. Good Lord, can't you smell him? I had that well-known smell.

One night I went to the theatre to see a picture show. I sat by myself, all alone in the corner, my smell and I. But distance was a ridiculous obstacle to that thing. It left me and went out and around and returned like something dead fastened to a rubber band. In a while heads began to turn. A cannery worker was somewhere in the vicinity, obviously. There were frowns and sniffs. Then mumbling, and the scraping of feet. People all around me got up and moved away. Keep away from him, he's a cannery worker. And so I went to no more picture shows. But I didn't mind. They were for the rabble anyhow.

At night I stayed home and read books.

I didn't dare go to the library.

I said to Mona, "Bring me books by Nietzsche. Bring me the mighty Spengler. Bring me Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant. Bring me books the rabble can't read."

Mona brought them home. I read them all, most of them very hard

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