 Chapter 1 of McTeague. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. McTeague by Frank Norris. Chapter 1. It was Sunday, and according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at 2 in the afternoon at the car conductor's coffee joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup, heavy underdone meat, very hot on a cold plate, two kinds of vegetables, and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Furness Saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner. Once in his office, or as he called it on his signboard, dental parlors, he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his operating chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, and smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested, cropful, stupid, and warm. By and by, gorged with steam beer, and overcome by the heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon, his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer, very flat and stale by this time, and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in weekdays it kept the company of seven volumes of Allen's Practical Dentist played upon it some half-dozen, very mournful airs. McTig looked forward to these Sunday afternoons as a period of relaxation and enjoyment. He invariably spent them in the same fashion. These were his only pleasures, to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play upon his concertina. The six leguberous airs that he knew always carried him back to the time when he was a car boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten years before. He remembered the years he had spent there trundling the heavy cars of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen days of each fortnight, his father was a steady, hard-working shift boss of the mine. Every other Sunday, he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol. McTig remembered his mother, too, who, with the help of the Chinaman, cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked drudge, fiery and energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her son rise in life and enter a profession. The chance had come at last when the father died, corroded with alcohol, collapsing in a few hours. Two or three years later, a traveling dentist visited the mine and put up his tent near the bunkhouse. He was more or less of a charlatan, but he fired Mrs. McTig's ambition, and young McTig went away with him to learn his profession. He had learned it after a fashion, mostly by watching the charlatan operate. He had read many of the necessary books, but he was too hopelessly stupid to get much benefit from them. Then one day at San Francisco had come the news of his mother's death. She had left him some money, not much, but enough to set him up in business. So he had cut loose from the charlatan and had opened his dental parlors on Polk Street, an accommodation street of small shops in the resident's quarter of the town. Here he had slowly collected a clientele of butcher boys, shop girls, drug clerks, and car conductors. He made but few acquaintances. Polk Street called him the doctor and spoke of his enormous strength. For McTig was a young giant, carrying his huge shock of blonde hair six feet three inches from the ground, moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a fell of stiff yellow hair. They were hard as wooden mallets, strong as vices, the hands of the old-time car boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut, angular, the jaw salient, like that of the carnivora. McTig's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draft horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient. When he opened his dental parlors, he felt that his life was a success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the name, there was but one room. It was a corner room on the second floor over the branch post office and faced the street. McTig made it do for a bedroom as well, sleeping on the big bed lounge against the wall opposite the window. There was a wash stand behind the screen in the corner where he manufactured his molds. In the round bay window were his operating chair, his dental engine, and the movable rack on which he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand store, ranged themselves against the wall with military precision underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de Medici, which he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for the money. Over the bed lounge hung a rifle manufacturer's advertisement calendar, which he never used. The other ornaments were a small marble topped center table covered with back numbers of the American system of dentistry, a stone pug dog sitting before the little stove, and a thermometer. A stand of shelves occupied one corner, filled with the seven volumes of Allen's practical dentist. On the top shelf, McTig kept his concertina and a bag of bird seed for the canary. The whole place exhaled a mingled odor of bedding, creosote, and ether. But for one thing, McTig would have been perfectly contented. Just outside his window was his signboard, a modest affair that read, Dr. McTig, dental parlors, gas given. But that was all. It was his ambition, his dream, to have projecting from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive. He would have it some day. On that he was resolved. But as yet, such a thing was far beyond his means. When he had finished the last of his beer, McTig slowly wiped his lips and huge yellow mustache with the side of his hand. Bull-like, he heaved himself laboriously up and, going to the window, stood looking down into the street. The street never failed to interest him. It was one of those cross streets peculiar to western cities, situated in the heart of the residence quarter, but occupied by small tradespeople who lived in the rooms above their shops. There were corner drugstores with huge jars of red, yellow, and green liquids in their windows, very brave and gay. Stationer stores where illustrated weeklies were tacked upon bulletin boards, barber shops with cigar stands in their vestibules, sad-looking plumber's offices, cheap restaurants in whose windows one saw piles of unopened oysters witted down by cubes of ice, and china pigs and cows knee-deep in layers of white beans. At one end of the street, McTig could see the huge powerhouse of the cable line. Immediately opposite him was a great market, while farther on, over the chimney stacks of the intervening houses, the glass roof of some huge public baths glittered like crystal in the afternoon sun. Underneath him the branch post office was opening its doors, as was its custom between two and three o'clock on Sunday afternoons, and the accurate odor of ink rose upward to him. Occasionally a cable car passed, trundling heavily, with a strident whirring of jostled glass windows. On weekdays the street was very lively. It woke to its work about seven o'clock, at the time when the newsboys made their appearance together with the day laborers. The laborers went trudging past in a straggling file. Plumbers apprentices, their pockets stuffed with sections of lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers. Carpenters carrying nothing but their little pasteboard lunch baskets painted to imitate leather. Gangs of street workers, their overalls soiled with yellow clay. Their picks and long handled shovels over their shoulders. Plasterers, spotted with lime from head to foot. This little army of workers, tramping steadily in one direction, met and mingled with other toilers of a different description. Conductors and swingmen of the cable company going on duty. Heavy eyed night clerks from the drug stores on their way home to sleep. Roundsmen returning to the precinct police station to make their night report. And Chinese market gardeners teetering past under their heavy baskets. The cable cars began to fill up. All along the street could be seen the shopkeepers taking down their shutters. Between seven and eight the street breakfasted. Now and then a waiter from one of the cheap restaurants crossed from one sidewalk to the other. Balancing on one palm a tray covered with a napkin. Everywhere was the smell of coffee and of frying steaks. A little later following in the path of the day laborers came the clerks and shop girls. Dressed with a certain cheap smartness, always in a hurry. Glancing apprehensively at the powerhouse clock. Their employers followed an hour or so later. On the cable cars for the most part whiskered gentlemen with huge stomachs. Reading the morning papers with great gravity. Bank cashiers and insurance clerks with flowers in their buttonholes. At the same time the school children invaded the street. Filling the air with a clamor of shrill voices. Stopping at the stationers shops. Or idling a moment in the doorways of the candy stores. For over half an hour they held possession of the sidewalks. Then suddenly disappeared leaving behind one or two stragglers. Who hurried along with great strides of their little thin legs. Very anxious and preoccupied. Toward eleven o'clock the ladies from the great avenue. A block above Polk Street made their appearance. Prominating the sidewalks leisurely, deliberately. They were at their morning's marketing. They were handsome women. Beautifully dressed. They knew by name their butchers and grocers and vegetable men. From his window Mictig saw them in front of the stalls. Gloved and veiled and dentally shod. The subservient provision men at their elbows. Scribbling hastily in the order books. They all seemed to know one another. These grand ladies from the fashionable avenue. Meetings took place here and there. A conversation was begun. Others arrived. Groups were formed. Little impromptu receptions were held before the chopping blocks of butcher stalls. Or on the sidewalk. Around boxes of berries and fruit. From noon to evening the population of the street was of a mixed character. The street was busiest at that time. A vast and prolonged murmur arose. The mingled shuffling of feet. The rattle of wheels. The heavy trundling of cable cars. At four o'clock the school children once more swarmed the sidewalks. Again disappearing with surprising suddenness. At six the great homeward march commenced. The cars were crowded. The laborers thronged the sidewalks. The news boys chanted the evening papers. Then all at once the street fell quiet. Hardly a soul was in sight. The sidewalks were deserted. It was supper hour. Evening began. And one by one a multitude of lights. From the demoniac glare of the druggist's windows. To the dazzling blue whiteness of the electric globes. Grew thick from street corner to street corner. Once more the street was crowded. Now there was no thought but for amusement. The cable cars were loaded with theater goers. Men in high hats and young girls in furred opera cloaks. On the sidewalks were groups and couples. The plumber's apprentices. The girls of the ribbon counters. The little families that lived on the second stories over their shops. The dressmakers. The small doctors. The harness makers. All the various inhabitants of the street were abroad. Strolling idly from shop window to shop window. Taking the air after the day's work. Groups of girls collected on the corners. Talking and laughing very loud. Making remarks upon the young men that passed them. The tamale men appeared. A band of salvationists began to sing before a saloon. Then little by little Polk Street dropped back to solitude. Eleven o'clock struck from the powerhouse clock. Lights were extinguished. At twelve o'clock the cable stopped. Leaving an abrupt silence in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The ugly noises were the occasional footfalls of a policeman. And the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed market. The street was asleep. Day after day, McTig saw the same panorama unroll itself. The bay window of his dental parlors was for him a point of vantage from which he watched the world go past. On Sundays, however, all was changed. As he stood in the bay window after finishing his beer, wiping his lips and looking out into the street, McTig was conscious of the difference. Nearly all the stores were closed. No wagons passed. A few people hurried up and down the sidewalks. Dressed in cheap Sunday finery. A cable car went by. On the outside seats were a party of returning picnickers. The mother, the father, a young man, and a young girl. And three children. The two older people held empty lunch baskets in their laps while the bands of the children's hats were stuck full of oak leaves. The girl carried a huge bunch of wilting poppies and wildflowers. As the car approached McTig's window, the young man got up and swung himself off the platform, waving goodbye to the party. Suddenly, McTig recognized him. There's Marcus Schuller. He muttered behind his mustache. Marcus Schuller was the dentist's one intimate friend. The acquaintance had begun at the car conductor's coffee joint, and the two occupied the same table and met at every meal. Then they made the discovery that they both lived in the same flat, Marcus occupying a room on the floor above McTig. On different occasions, McTig had treated Marcus for an ulcerated tooth and had refused to accept payment. Soon it came to be an understood thing between them. They were pals. McTig, listening, heard Marcus go upstairs to his room above. In a few minutes, his door opened again. McTig knew that he had come out into the hall and was leaning over the banisters. Oh, Mack, he called. McTig came to his door. Hello, is that you, Mark? Sure, answered Marcus. Come on up. You come on down. No, come on up. Oh, you come on down. Oh, you lazy duck, retorted Marcus, coming down the stairs. Been out to the cliff house on a picnic, he explained as he sat down on the bed lounge, with my uncle and his people, the sepas, you know. By dam, it was hot, he suddenly vociferated. Just look at that, just look at that, he cried, dragging at his limp collar. That's the third one since morning, it is. It is for a fact, and you got your stove going. He began to tell about the picnic, talking very loud and fast, gesturing furiously, very excited over trivial details. Marcus could not talk without getting excited. You ought to have seen, you ought to have seen. I tell you, it was out of sight. It was, it was for a fact. Yes, yes, answered McTig. Bewildered, trying to follow. Yes, that's so. In recounting a certain dispute with an awkward bicyclist, in which it appeared he had become involved, Marcus quivered with rage. Say that again, scissor to him. Just say that once more and hear a rolling explosion of oaths. You'll go back to the city in a morgue wagon. Ain't I got a right to cross a street even? I'd like to know, without being run down. What? I say it's outrageous. I'd unknifed him in another minute. It was an outrage. I say it was an outrage. Sure it was, McTig hastened to reply. Sure, sure. Oh, and we had an accident, shouted the other, suddenly off on another attack. It was awful. Trina was in the swing there, that's my cousin Trina. You know who I mean. And she fell out. By damn. I thought she'd killed herself, struck her face on a rock and knocked out a front tooth. It's a wonder she didn't kill herself. It is a wonder. It is for a fact. Ain't it now? Huh? Ain't it? You ought to have seen. McTig had a vague idea that Marcus Scholler was stuck on his cousin Trina. They kept company a good deal. Marcus took dinner with the SIPAs every Saturday evening at their home at B Street station across the bay. And Sunday afternoons, he and the family usually made little excursions into the suburbs. McTig began to wonder dimly how it was that on this occasion, Marcus had not gone home with his cousin. As sometimes happens, Marcus furnished the explanation upon the instant. I promised a duck up here on the avenue I'd call for his dog at four this afternoon. Marcus was old Grannis' assistant in a little dog hospital that the ladder had opened in a sort of alley just off Polk Street, some four blocks above old Grannis lived in one of the back rooms of McTig's flat. He was an Englishman and an expert dog surgeon, but Marcus Scholler was a bungler in the profession. His father had been a veterinary surgeon who had kept delivery stable nearby on California Street. And Marcus' knowledge of the diseases of domestic animals had been picked up in a half-hazard way, much after the manner of McTig's education. Somehow he managed to impress old Grannis, a gentle, simple-minded old man with a sense of his fitness, bewildering him with a torrent of empty phrases that he delivered with fierce gestures and with a manner of the greatest conviction. You'd better come along with me, Mack. Observe, Marcus. We'll get the duck's dog and then we'll take a little walk, huh? You got nothing to do. Come along. McTig went out with him, and the two friends proceeded up to the avenue to the house where the dog was to be found. It was a huge mansion-like place, set in an enormous garden that occupied a whole third of the block. And while Marcus tramped up the front steps and rang the doorbell boldly to show his independence, McTig remained below on the sidewalk, gazing stupidly at the curtained windows, the marble steps, and the bronze griffins, troubled and a little confused by all this massive luxury. After they had taken the dog to the hospital and had left him to whimper behind the wire netting, they returned to Polk Street and had a glass of beer in the back room of Joe Frenner's Corner Grocery. Ever since they had left the huge mansion on the avenue, Marcus had been attacking the capitalists, a class which he pretended to execrate. It was a pose which he often assumed, certain of impressing the dentist. Marcus had picked up a few half truths of political economy. It was impossible to say where, and as soon as the two had settled themselves to their beer in Frenner's back room, he took up the theme of the labor question. He discussed it at the top of his voice, vociferating, shaking his fists, exciting himself with his own noise. He was continually making use of the stock phrases of the professional politician, phrases he had caught at some of the ward rallies and ratification meetings. These rolled off his tongue with incredible emphasis, appearing at every turn of his conversation. Outrage constituencies, cause of labor, wage earners, opinions biased by personal interests, eyes blinded by party prejudice. McTeague listened to him, awestruck. There's where the evil lies, Marcus would cry. The masses must learn self-control. It stands to reason. Look at the figures. Look at the figures. Decrease the number of wage earners and you increase wages. Don't you? Don't you? Absolutely stupid and understanding never a word McTeague would answer. Yes. Yes, that's it. Self-control. That's the word. It's the capitalists that's ruining the cause of labor. Shouted Marcus, banging the table with his fist till the beer glasses danced, white-livered drones, traders, with their livers white as snow, eating the bread of widows and orphans. That's where the evil lies. Stupified with his clamor, McTeague answered, wagging his head. Yes, that's it. I think it's their livers. Suddenly Marcus fell calm again, forgetting his pose all in an instant. Samek, I told my cousin Trina to come round and see you about that tooth of hers. She'll be in tomorrow, I guess. End of chapter one. Chapter two of McTeague. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. McTeague by Frank Norris. Chapter two. After his breakfast the following Monday morning, McTeague looked over the appointments he had written down in the bookslide that hung against the screen. His writing was immense, very clumsy and very round, with huge, full-bellied L's and H's. He saw that he had made an appointment at one o'clock for Miss Baker, the retired dressmaker, a little old maid who had a tiny room a few doors down the hall. It adjoined that of old Grannis. Quite an affair had arisen from this circumstance. Miss Baker and old Grannis were both over sixty, and yet it was current talk amongst the lodgers of the flat that the two were in love with each other. Singularly enough, they were not even acquaintances. Never a word had passed between them. At intervals they met on the stairway. He, on his way to his little dog hospital, she returning from a bit of marketing in the street. At such times they passed each other with their naked eyes, pretending a certain preoccupation, suddenly seized with a great embarrassment, the timidity of a second childhood. He went on about his business, disturbed and thoughtful. She hurried up to her tiny room, her curious little false curls shaking with her agitation. The faintest suggestion of a flush coming and going in her withered cheeks, the emotion of one of these chance meetings remained with them during all the rest of the day. Was it the first romance in the lives of each? Did Granis ever remember a certain face amongst those that he had known when he was young Granis? The face of some pale-haired girl, such as one sees in the old cathedral towns of England? Did Miss Baker still treasure up in a seldom open drawer or box some faded daguerreotype, some strange old-fashioned likeness with its curling hair and high stock? It was impossible to say. Maria Macapa, the Mexican woman who took care of the lodger's rooms, had been the first to call the flat attention to the affair, from room to room, from floor to floor. Of late, she had made a great discovery. All the women folk of the flat were yet vibrant with it. Old Granis came home from his work at four o'clock, and between that time and six, Miss Baker would sit in her room, her hands idle in her lap, doing nothing, listening, waiting. Old Granis did the same, drawing his armchair near to the wall, knowing that Miss Baker was upon the other side, conscious, perhaps, that she was thinking of him. And there the two would sit through the hours of the afternoon, listening and waiting. They did not know exactly for what, but near to each other, separated only by the thin partition of their rooms. They had come to know each other's habits. Old Granis knew that at quarter of five precisely, Miss Baker made a cup of tea over the oil stove on the stand between the bureau and the window. Miss Baker felt instinctively the exact moment when Old Granis took down his little binding apparatus from the second shelf of his clothes closet, and began his favorite occupation of binding pamphlets, pamphlets that he never read, for all that. In his parlors, McTeague began his week's work. He glanced in the glass saucer in which he kept his sponge gold, and noticing that he had used up all his pellets, set about making some more. In examining Miss Baker's teeth at the preliminary sitting, he had found a cavity in one of the incisors. Miss Baker had decided to have it filled with gold. McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a proximate case, where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold. He told himself that he should have to use mats in the filling. He made some dozen of these mats from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise between the teeth, and consolidated by packing. After he had made his mats, he continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he would have occasion to use during the week. Blocks to be used in large proximal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of times, and then shaping it with the soldering pliers. Cylinders for commencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a needle called a brooch, cutting it afterwards into different lengths. He worked slowly, mechanically, turning the foil between his fingers with the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid persons. His head was quite empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in his morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been maddening to anyone but Mictique, who seemed to have no nerves at all. After he had finished his fillings, he made a hook brooch from a bit of piano wire to replace an old one that he had lost. It was time for his dinner then, and when he returned from the car conductor's coffee joint, he found Miss Baker waiting for him. The ancient little dressmaker was at all times willing to talk of old granness to anybody that would listen, quite unconscious of the gossip of the flat. Mictique found her all flutter with excitement, and something extraordinary had happened. She had found out that the wallpaper in old granness's room was the same as that in hers. It has led me to thinking, Dr. Mictique, she exclaimed, shaking her little false curls at him. You know my room is so small anyhow, and the wallpaper being the same. The pattern from my room continues right into his, I declare. I believe at one time that was all one room. Think of it, do you suppose it was? It almost amounts to our occupying the same room. I don't know. Why really? Do you think I should speak to the landlady about it? He bound pamphlets last night until half past nine. They say that he's the younger son of a baronet, that there are reasons for his not coming to the title. His stepfather wronged him cruelly. No one had ever said such a thing. It was preposterous to imagine any mystery connected with old granness. Miss Baker had chosen to invent the little fiction, had created the title and the unjust stepfather from some dim memories of the novels of her girlhood. She took her place in the operating chair, McTig began the filling. There was a long silence. It was impossible for McTig to work and talk at the same time. He was just burnishing the last mat in Miss Baker's tooth when the door of the parlors opened, jangling the bell which he had hung over it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. McTig turned, one foot on the pedal of his dental engine, the corundum disc whirling between his fingers. It was Marcus Scholler who came in, ushering a young girl of about twenty. Hello, Mac, exclaimed Marcus. Busy? Brought my cousin round about that broken tooth. McTig nodded his head gravely. In a minute, he answered. Marcus and his cousin Trina sat down in the rigid chairs underneath the steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de Medici. They began talking in low tones. The girl looked about the room. Noticing the stone pug dog, the rifle manufacturer's calendar, the canary in its little guilt prison, and the tumbled blankets on the unmade bed lounge against the wall. Marcus began telling her about McTig. Were pals, he explained, just above a whisper. Ah, Max, all right, you bet. Say, Trina, he's the strongest duck you ever saw. What do you suppose? He can pull out your teeth with his fingers. Yes, he can. What do you think of that? With his fingers, mind you. He can, for a fact. Get on to the sides of him anyhow. Ah, Max, all right. Maria Macapa had come into the room while he had been speaking. She was making up McTig's bed. Suddenly, Marcus exclaimed under his breath. Now we'll have some fun. It's the girl that takes care of the rooms. She's a greaser, and she's queer in the head. She ain't regularly crazy, but I don't know, she's queer. You ought to hear her go on about a gold dinner service she says her folks used to own. Ask her what her name is, and see what she'll say. Trina shrank back, a little frightened. No, you ask, she whispered. Ah, go on. What you afraid of? Urged Marcus. Trina shook her head energetically, shutting her lips together. Well, listen here, answered Marcus, nudging her, then raising his voice. He said, How do, Maria? Maria nodded to him over her shoulder as she bent over the lounge. Working hard nowadays, Maria? Pretty hard. Didn't always have to work for your living though, did you, when you ate off of gold dishes? Maria didn't answer, except by putting her chin in the air and shutting her eyes, as though to say she knew a long story about that if she had a mind to talk. All Marcus's efforts to draw her out on the subject were unavailing. She only responded by movements of her head. Can't always start her going, Marcus told his cousin. What does she do, though, when you ask her about her name? Oh, sure, said Marcus, who had forgotten. Say, Maria, what's your name? Huh? Asked Maria, straightening up, her hands on her hips. Tell us your name, repeated Marcus. Name is Maria, Miranda, Macapa. Then, after a pause, she added, as though she had but that moment, thought of it, had a flying squirrel and let him go. Invariably, Maria Macapa made this answer. It was not always she would talk about the famous service of gold plate, but a question asked to her name never failed to elicit the same strange answer, delivered in a rapid undertone. Name is Maria, Miranda, Macapa. Then, as if struck with an afterthought, had a flying squirrel and let him go. Why Maria should associate the release of the mythical squirrel with her name could not be said. About Maria, the flat knew absolutely nothing further than that she was Spanish-American. Miss Baker was the oldest lodger in the flat, and Maria was a fixture there, as made of all work when she had come. There was a legend to the effect that Maria's people had been, at one time, immensely wealthy in Central America. Maria turned again to her work. Trina and Marcus watched her curiously. There was a silence. The corundum bur and mctig's engine hummed in a prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing of the five people in the narrow space made the air close and thick. At long intervals, an acrid odor of ink floated up from the branch post office immediately below. Maria Macapa finished her work and started to leave. As she passed near Marcus and his cousin, she stopped and drew a bunch of blue tickets furtively from her pocket. Buy a ticket in the lottery? She inquired, looking at the girl. Just a dollar. Go along with you, Maria, said Marcus, who had but 30 cents in his pocket. Go along. It's against the law. Buy a ticket, urged Maria, thrusting the bundle toward Trina. Try your luck. The butcher on the next block won $20 as the last drawing. Very uneasy, Trina bought a ticket for the sake of being rid of her. Maria disappeared. Ain't she a queer bird? Mothered Marcus, he was much embarrassed and disturbed because he had not bought the ticket for Trina. But there was a sudden movement. Mctig had just finished with Miss Baker. You should notice, the dressmaker said to the dentist in a low voice, he always leaves the door a little ajar in the afternoon. When she had gone out, Marcus Scholar brought Trina forward. Say, Mac, this is my cousin, Trina Sipa. The two shook hands, dumbly. Mctig slowly nodding his huge head with its great shock of yellow hair. Trina was very small and prettily made. Her face was round and rather pale. Her eyes long and narrow and blue, like the half-open eyes of a little baby. Her lips and the lobes of her tiny ears were pale, a little suggestive of anemia, while across the bridge of her nose ran an adorable little line of freckles. But it was to her hair that one's attention was most attracted. Heaps and heaps of blue black coils and braids, a royal crown of swarly bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant, odorous. All the vitality that should have given color to her face seemed to have been absorbed by this marvelous hair. It was the coiffure of a queen that shadowed the pale temples of this little bourgeois. So heavy was it that it tipped her head backward and the position thrust her chin out a little. It was a charming poise, innocent, confiding, almost infantile. She was dressed all in black, very modest and plain. The effect of her pale face in all this contrasting black was almost monastic. Well, exclaimed Marcus, suddenly, I got to go, musket back to work. Don't hurt her too much, Mack. So long, Trina. Nictig and Trina were left alone. He was embarrassed, troubled. These young girls disturbed and perplexed him. He did not like them, obstinately cherishing that intuitive suspicion of all things feminine, the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy. On the other hand, she was perfectly at her ease. Doubtless the woman in her was not yet awakened. She was yet, as one might say, without sex. She was almost like a boy, frank, candid, unreserved. She took her place in the operating chair and told him what was the matter, looking squarely into his face. She had fallen out of a swing the afternoon of the preceding day. One of her teeth had been knocked loose and the other altogether broken out. Nictig listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his head from time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty. That he even liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so good-natured and straightforward. Let's have a look at your teeth, he said, picking up his mirror. You better take your hat off. She leaned back in her chair and opened her mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white and even as the kernels on an ear of green corn, except where an ugly gap came at the side. Nictig put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and another of her teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he straightened up, wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat sleeve. Well, doctor, said the girl, anxiously, it's a dreadful disfigurement, isn't it? Adding, what can you do about it? Well, answered Nictig, slowly, looking vaguely about on the floor of the room. The roots of the broken tooth are still in the gum. They'll have to come out. And I guess I'll have to pull that other bicuspid. Let me look again. Yes. He went on in a moment, peering into her mouth with the mirror. I guess that'll have to come out, too. The tooth was loose, discolored, and evidently dead. It's a curious case, Nictig went on. I don't know as I ever had a tooth like that before. It's what's called necrosis. It don't often happen. It'll have to come out, sure. Then a discussion was opened on the subject. Trina sitting up in the chair, holding her hat in her lap, Nictig leaning against the window frame, his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering about on the floor. Trina did not want the other tooth removed. One hole like that was bad enough, but two. Ah, no, it was not to be thought of. But Nictig reasoned with her, tried in vain to make her understand that there was no vascular connection between the root and the gum. Trina was blindly persistent, with the persistency of a girl who has made up her mind. Nictig began to like her better and better, and after a while commenced himself to feel that it would be a pity to disfigure such a pretty mouth. He became interested. Perhaps he could do something, something in the way of a crown or bridge. Let's look at that again, he said, picking up his mirror. He began to study the situation very carefully, really desiring to remedy the blemish. It was the first bicuspid that was missing. And though part of the root of the second, the loose one, would remain after its extraction, he was sure it would not be strong enough to sustain a crown. All at once he grew obstinate, resolving with all the strength of a crude and primitive man to conquer the difficulty in spite of everything. He turned over in his mind the technicalities of the case. No, evidently the root was not strong enough to sustain a crown. Besides that, it was placed a little irregularly in the arch, but fortunately there were cavities in the two teeth on either side of the gap, one in the first molar and one in the palatine surface of the cuspid. Might he not drill a socket in the remaining root and sockets in the molar and cuspid, and partly by bridging, partly by crowning, fill in the gap, he made up his mind to do it. Why he should pledge himself to this hazardous case Mctig was puzzled to know. With most of his clients, he would have contented himself with the extraction of the loose tooth and the roots of the broken one. Why should he risk his reputation in this case? He could not say why. It was the most difficult operation he had ever performed. He bungled it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. He extracted the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the broken one as if fulfilling, fitting into them a flattened piece of platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only the beginning. Altogether it was a fortnight's work. Trina came nearly every other day and passed two and even three hours in the chair. By degrees Mctig's first awkwardness and suspicion vanished entirely. The two became good friends. Mctig even arrived at that point where he could work and talk to her at the same time, a thing that had never before been possible for him. Never until then had Mctig become so well acquainted with a girl of Trina's age. The younger women of Polk Street, the shop girls, the young women of the soda fountains, the waitresses in the cheap restaurants preferred another dentist, a young fellow just graduated from the college, a poser, a rider of bicycles, a man about town who wore astonishing waistcoats and bet money on greyhound coursing. Trina was Mctig's first experience. With her, the feminine element suddenly entered his little world. It was not only her that he saw and felt. It was the woman, the whole sex, an entire new humanity, strange and alluring, that he seemed to have discovered. How had he ignored it so long? It was dazzling, delicious, charming beyond all words. His narrow point of view was at once enlarged and confused, and all at once he saw that there was something else in life besides concertinas and steam beer. Everything had to be made over again. His whole rude idea of life had to be changed. The male virile desire in him, totally awakened, aroused itself, strong and brutal. It was resistless, untrained, a thing not to be held in leash, an instant. Little by little, by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees, the thought of Trina Sipa occupied his mind from day to day, from hour to hour. He found himself thinking of her constantly. At every instant he saw her round, pale face, her narrow, milk-blue eyes, her little outthrust chin, her heavy, huge tiara of black hair. At night he lay awake for hours under the thick blankets of the bed lounge, staring upward into the darkness, tormented with the idea of her, exasperated at the delicate, subtle mesh in which he found himself entangled. During the forenoons, while he went about his work, he thought of her. As he made his plaster of Paris molds at the wash stand in the corner behind the screen, he turned over in his mind all that had happened, all that had been said at the previous sitting. Her little tooth that he had extracted, he kept wrapped in a bit of newspaper in his vest pocket. Often he took it out and held it in the palm of his immense, horny hand, seized with some strange elephantine sentiment, whacking his head at it, heaving tremendous size. What a folly. At two o'clock on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Trina arrived and took her place in the operating chair. While at his work, Mctig was every minute obliged to bend closely over her. His hands touched her face, her cheeks, her adorable little chin, her lips pressed against his fingers. She breathed warmly on his forehead and on his eyelids, while the odor of her hair, a charming, feminine perfume, sweet, heavy, innervating, came to his nostrils, so penetrating, so delicious, that his flesh pricked and tingled with it. A veritable sensation of faintness passed over this huge, callus fellow with his enormous bones and corded muscles. He drew a short breath through his nose, his jaw suddenly gripped together, face-like. But this was only at times, a strange vexing spasm that subsided almost immediately. For the most part, Mctig enjoyed the pleasure of these sittings with Trina with a certain strong calmness, blindly happy that she was there. This poor, crude dentist of Polk Street, stupid, ignorant, vulgar, with his shame education and plebeian tastes, whose only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer and to play upon his concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idol. It was delightful. The long hours he passed alone with Trina in the dental parthers, silent, only for the scraping of the instruments and the pouring of bud burrs in the engine, in the foul atmosphere, overheated by the little stove and heavy with the smell of ether, creosote and stale bedding, had all the charm of secret appointments and stolen meetings under the moon. By degrees the operation progressed. One day, just after Mctig had put in the temporary gutta percha fillings and nothing more could be done at that sitting, Trina asked him to examine the rest of her teeth. They were perfect with one exception, a spot of white caries on the lateral surface of an incisor. Mctig filled it with gold, enlarging the cavity with hard bits and hoe excavators and burring in afterward with half-cone burrs. The cavity was deep and Trina began to wince and moan. To hurt Trina was a positive anguish for Mctig, yet an anguish which he was obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting. It was harrowing, he sweated under it, to be forced to torture her, of all women in the world. Could anything be worse than that? Hurt, he inquired anxiously. She answered by frowning with a sharp intake of breath, putting her fingers over her closed lips and nodding her head. Mctig sprayed the tooth with glycerite of tannin, but without effect. Rather than hurt her, he found himself forced to the use of anesthesia, which he hated. He had a notion that the nitrous oxide gas was dangerous, so on this occasion, as on all others, used ether. He put the sponge a half-dozen times to Trina's face, more nervous than he had ever been before, watching the symptoms closely. Her breathing became short and irregular. There was a slight twitching of the muscles. When her thumbs turned inward toward the palms, he took the sponge away. She passed off very quickly and, with a long sigh, sank back into the chair. Mctig straightened up, putting the sponge upon the rack behind him, his eyes fixed upon Trina's face. For some time he stood watching her as she lay there, unconscious and helpless and very pretty. He was alone with her, and she was absolutely without defense. Suddenly the animal in the man stirred and awoke. The evil instincts that in him were so close to the surface of life, shouting and clamoring. It was a crisis, a crisis that had arisen all in an instant, a crisis for which he was totally unprepared. Blindly and without knowing why, Mctig fought against it, moved by an unreasoned instinct of resistance. Within him, a certain second self, another better Mctig rose with the brute. Both were strong, with the huge crude strength of the man himself. The two were at grapples. There, in that cheap and shabby dental parlor, a dreaded struggle began. It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the world, the sudden panther leap of the animal, lips drawn, fangs of flash, hideous, monstrous, not to be resisted, and the simultaneous arousing of the other man, the better self that cries, down, down, without knowing why. That grips the monster, that fights to strangle it, to thrust it down and back. Dizzyed and bewildered with the shock, the like of which he had never known before, Mctig turned from Trina, gazing bewilderedly, about the room. The struggle was bitter. His teeth ground themselves together with a little rasping sound. The blood sang in his ears. His face flushed scarlet. His hands twisted themselves together, like the knotting of cables. The fury in him was as the fury of a young bull in the heat of high summer. But for all that, he shook his huge head from time to time, muttering, No by God. No by God. Finally he seemed to realize that should he yield now, he would never be able to care for Trina again. She would never be the same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable. Her charm for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely see the smudge of a foul orger, the footprint of the monster. It would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He recoiled from it, banding all his strength to the issue. No by God. No by God. He turned to his work, as if seeking a refuge in it. But as he drew near to her again, the charm of her innocence and helplessness came over him afresh. It was a final protest against his resolution. Suddenly he leaned over and kissed her, grossly, full on the mouth. The thing was done before he knew it. Terrified at his weakness, at the very moment he believed himself strong, he threw himself once more into his work with desperate energy. By the time he was fastening the sheet of rubber upon the tooth, he had himself once more in hand. He was disturbed, still trembling, still vibrating with the throes of the crisis. But he was the master, the animal was downed, was cowed for this time at least. But for all that, the brute was there. Long dormant, it was now at last alive, awake. From now on he would feel its presence continually, would feel it tugging at its chain, watching its opportunity. Ah, the pity of it. Why could he not always love her purely, cleanly? What was this perverse, vicious thing that lived within him, knitted to his flesh? Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him ran the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his father and of his father's father to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins. Why should it be? He did not desire it. Was he to blame? But Mictig could not understand this thing. It had faced him, as sooner or later it faces every child of man, but its significance was not for him. To reason with it was beyond him. He could only oppose to it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert. Mictig went on with his work. As he was wrapping in the little blocks and cylinders with the mallet, Trina slowly came back to herself with a long sigh. She still felt a little confused and lay quiet in the chair. There was a long silence, broken only by the uneven tapping of the hardwood mallet. By and by she said, I never felt a thing, and then she smiled at him very prettily beneath the rubber dam. Mictig turned to her suddenly, his mallet in one hand, his pliers holding a pellet of sponge gold in the other. All at once he said, with the unreasoned simplicity and directness of a child, Listen here, Miss Trina, I like you better than anyone else. What's the matter with us getting married? Trina sat up in the chair quickly, and then drew back from him, frightened and bewildered. Will you? Will you? said Mictig. Say, Miss Trina, will you? What is it? What do you mean? She cried, confusedly, her words muffled beneath the rubber. Will you? repeated Mictig. No, no, she exclaimed, refusing without knowing why. Suddenly seized with the fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the male. Mictig could only repeat the same thing over and over again. Trina, more and more frightened at his huge hands, the hands of the old-time car boy, his immense square-cut head and his enormous brute strength, cried out, No, no, behind the rubber dam, shaking her head violently, holding out her hands and shrinking down before him in the operating chair. Mictig came nearer to her, repeating the same question. No, no, she cried, terrified. Then, as she exclaimed, Oh, I am sick, was suddenly taken with a fit of vomiting. It was not the unusual after effect of the ether, aided now by her excitement and nervousness. Mictig was checked. He poured some bromide of potassium into a graduated glass and held it to her lips. Here, swallow this, he said. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Mictig This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Mictig by Frank Norris. Chapter 3 Once every two months, Maria Makapa set the entire flat in commotion. She roamed the building from Garrett to Seller, searching every corner, ferreting through every old box and trunk and barrel, groping about on the top shelves of closets, peering into rag bags, exasperating the lodgers with her persistence and importunity. She was collecting junks, bits of iron, stone jugs, glass bottles, old sacks, and cast-off garments. It was one of her perquisites. She sold the junk to Zerkow, the rags bottle's sacksman, who lived in a filthy den in the alley just back of the flat, and who sometimes paid her as much as three cents a pound. The stone jugs, however, were worth a nickel. The money that Zerkow paid her, Maria spent on shirtweights and dotted blue neckties, trying to dress like the girls who tended the soda water fountain in the candy store on the corner. She was sick with envy of these young women. They were in the world, they were elegant, they were debonair. They had their young men. On this occasion she presented herself at the door of old Granis' room late in the afternoon. His door stood a little open. That of Miss Baker was a jar of few inches. The two old people were keeping company after their fashion. Got any junk, Mr. Granis? inquired Maria, standing in the door, a very dirty, half-filled pillowcase over one arm. No, nothing, nothing that I can think of, Maria, replied old Granis, terribly vexed at the interruption, yet not wishing to be unkind. Nothing I think of. Yet, however, perhaps, if you wish to look. He sat in the middle of the room before a small pine-table. His little binding apparatus was before him. In his fingers was a huge upholsterer's needle threaded with twine. A brad all lay at his elbow. On the floor beside him was a great pile of pamphlets, the pages uncut. Old Granis bought the nation and the breeder and the sportsman. In the latter he occasionally found articles on dogs which interested him. The former he seldom read. He could not afford to subscribe regularly to either of the publications, but purchased their back-numbers by the score, almost solely for the pleasure he took in binding them. What you all are sewing up them books for, Mr. Granis? As Maria, as she began rummaging about in old Granis' closet shelves, there's just hundreds of them in here on your shelves. They ain't no good to you. Well, well, answered old Granis, timidly, rubbing his chin. I'm sure I can't quite say. A little habit, you know, a diversion. It occupies one, you know. I don't smoke. It takes the place of a pipe, perhaps. Here's this old yellow pitcher, said Maria, coming out of the closet with it in her hand. The handle's cracked. You don't want it. Better give me it. Old Granis did want the pitcher. True, he never used it now, but he had kept it a long time. And somehow he held to it as old people hold to trivial, worthless things that they have had for many years. Oh, that pitcher. Well, Maria, I—I don't know. I'm afraid you see that pitcher. Ah, go long, interrupted Maria Macapa. What's the good of it? If you insist, Maria, but I would much rather— He rubbed his chin, perplexed and annoyed, hating to refuse, and wishing that Maria were gone. Why, what's the good of it? persisted Maria. He could give no sufficient answer. That's all right, she asserted, carrying the pitcher out. Ah, Maria, I say you—you might leave the door. Ah, don't quite shut it. It's a bit close in here at times. Maria grinned and swung the door wide. Old Granis was horribly embarrassed, positively. Maria was becoming unbearable. Got any junk? cried Maria at Miss Baker's door. The little old lady was sitting close to the wall in her rocking chair, her hands resting idly in her lap. Now, Maria, she said plaintively, you are always after junk. You know I never have anything laying round like that. It was true. The retired dressmaker's tiny room was a marvel of needness. From the little red table, with its three gorem spoons laid in exact parallels to the decorous geraniums and minionettes growing in the starch box at the window, underneath the fish globe with its one venerable goldfish. That day Miss Baker had been doing a bit of washing. Two pocket handkerchiefs, still moist, adhered to the window panes, drying in the sun. Oh, I guess you got something you don't want. Maria went on, peering into the corners of the room. Looka here what Mr. Granis gimme. And she held out the yellow pitcher. Instantly Miss Baker was an acquiver of confusion. Every word spoken aloud could be perfectly heard in the next room. What a stupid drab was this, Maria. Could anything be more trying than this position? Ain't that right, Mr. Granis, called Maria. Didn't you gimme this pitcher? Old Granis affected not to hear. Perspirations stood on his forehead. His timidity overcame him as if he were a ten-year-old schoolboy. He half rose from his chair, his fingers dancing nervously upon his chin. Maria opened Miss Baker's closet unconcernedly. What's the matter with these old shoes, she exclaimed, turning about with a pair of half-worn silk-gaters in her hand. They were by no means old enough to throw away, but Miss Baker was almost beside herself. There was no telling what might happen next. Her only thought was to be rid of Maria. Yes, yes, anything. You can have them, but go, go. There's nothing else, not a thing. Maria went out into the hall, leaving Miss Baker's door wide open, as if maliciously. She had left the dirty pillowcase on the floor in the hall, and stood outside, between the two open doors, stowing away the old pitcher and the half-worn silk shoes. She made remarks at the top of her voice, calling now to Miss Baker, now to Old Granis. In a way, she brought the two old people face-to-face. Each time they were forced to answer her questions, it was as if they were talking directly to each other. These here are first-rate shoes, Miss Baker. Look here, Mr. Granis, get on to the shoes Miss Baker give me. You ain't got a pair you don't want, have you? You two people have less junk than anyone else in the flat. How do you manage, Mr. Granis? You old bachelors are just like old maids, just as neat as pins. You two are just alike, you and Mr. Granis. Ain't you, Miss Baker? Nothing could have been more horribly constrained, more awkward. The two old people suffered veritable torture. When Maria had gone, each heaved a sigh of unspeakable relief. Softly they pushed to their doors, leaving open a space of a half-dozen inches. Old Granis went back to his binding. Miss Baker brewed a cup of tea to quiet her nerves. Each tried to regain their composure, but in vain. Old Granis' fingers trembled so that he pricked them with his needle. Miss Baker dropped her spoon twice. Their nervousness would not wear off. They were perturbed, upset. In a word, the afternoon was spoiled. Maria went on about the flat from room to room. She had already paid Marcus Shuller a visit early that morning before he had gone out. Marcus had sworn at her, excitedly vociferating. No, by damn. No, he hadn't a thing for her. He hadn't for a fact. It was a positive persecution. Every day his privacy was invaded. He would complain to the landlady he would. He'd move out of the place. In the end he had given Maria seven empty whiskey flasks, an iron grate, and ten cents, the latter because he said she wore her hair like a girl he used to know. After coming from Miss Baker's room, Maria knocked at McTeague's door. Marcus was lying on the bed lounge in his stocking feet, doing nothing apparently, gazing up at the ceiling, lost in thought. Since he had spoken to Trina Seep, asking her so abruptly to marry him, McTeague had passed a week of torment. For him there was no going back. It was Trina now, and none other. It was all one with him that his best friend, Marcus, might be in love with the same girl. He must have Trina in spite of everything. He would have her even in spite of herself. He could not stop to reflect about the matter. He followed his desire blindly, recklessly, furious, and raging at every obstacle. And she had cried, No, no, back at him. He could not forget that. She, so small and pale and delicate, had held him at bay, who was so huge, so immensely strong. Besides that, all the charm of their intimacy was gone. After that unhappy sitting, Trina was no longer frank and straightforward. Now she was circumspect, reserved, distant. He could no longer open his mouth. Words failed him. At one sitting in particular, they had said but good day and goodbye to each other. He felt that he was clumsy and ungainly. He told himself that she despised him. But the memory of her was with him constantly. Night after night he lay brought awake, thinking of Trina, wondering about her, wracked with the infinite desire of her. His head burnt and throbbed. The palms of his hands were dry. He dozed and woke, and walked aimlessly about the dark room, bruising himself against the three chairs drawn up at attention under the steel engraving and stumbling over the stone pug dog that sat in front of the little stove. Besides this, the jealousy of Marcus Scholler harassed him. Maria Makapa, coming into his parlor to ask for junk, found him flung at length upon the bed lounge, gnawing at his fingers in an excess of silent fury. At lunch that day, Marcus had told him of an excursion that was planned for the next Sunday afternoon. Mr. Seep, Trina's father, belonged to a rifle club that was to hold a meet at Schwitzen Park across the bay. All the Seeps were going. There was to be a basket picnic. Marcus, as usual, was invited to be one of the party. McTique was an agony. It was his first experience, and he suffered all the worse for it because he was totally unprepared. What miserable complication was this in which he found himself involved? It seemed so simple to him, since he loved Trina, to take her straight to himself, stopping at nothing, asking no questions to have her, and by main strength to carry her far away somewhere. He did not know exactly where, to some vague country, some undiscovered place where every day was Sunday. Got any junk? Huh? What? What is it? exclaimed McTique, suddenly rousing up from the lounge. Often Maria did very well in the dental parlors. McTique was continually breaking things, which he was too stupid to have mended. For him, anything that was broken was lost. Now it was a cuspidore, now a fire shovel for the little stove, now a china-shaving mug. Got any junk? I don't know. I don't remember, muttered McTique. Maria roamed about the room, McTique following her in his huge, stockinged feet. All at once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand instruments in a coverless cigar box, pluggers, hard bits, and excavators. Maria had long coveted such a find in McTique's parlour, knowing it should be somewhere about. The instruments were of the finest tempered steel, and really valuable. Say, doctor, I can have these, can't I? exclaimed Maria. You got no more use for them. McTique was not at all sure of this. There were many in the sheaf that might be repaired, reshaped. No, no, he said, wagging his head. But Maria Macapa, knowing with whom she had to deal, at once let loose a torrent of words. She made the dentists believe that he had no right to withhold them, that he had promised to save them for her. She affected a great indignation, pursing her lips and putting her chin in the air, as though wounded in some finer sense, changing so rapidly from one mood to the other, filling the room with such shrill clamour that McTique was dazed and benumbed. Yes, all right, all right, he said, trying to make himself heard. It would be mean. I don't want him. As he turned from her to pick up the box, Maria took advantage of the moment to steal three mats of sponge gold out of the glass saucer. Often she stole McTique's gold, almost under his very eyes. Indeed it was so easy to do that there was but little pleasure in the theft. Then Maria took herself off. McTique returned to the sofa and flung himself upon it, face downward. A little before supper time, Maria completed her search. The flat was cleaned of its junk from top to bottom. The dirty pillowcase was full to bursting. She took advantage of the supper hour to carry her bundle around the corner and up into the alley where Zerkow lived. When Maria entered his shop, Zerkow had just come in from his daily rounds. His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a stranded wreck. The miserable horse, with its lamentable swollen joints, fed greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at the back. The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp and foul with all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the raptors was a world of debris, dust blackened, rust corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society, things of iron and cloth and wood, all the detritus that a great city sloths off in its daily life. Zerkow's junk shop was the last abiding place, the almshouse of such articles as had outlived their usefulness. Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of meal over an alcohol stove. Zerkow was a Polish Jew. Curiously enough, his hair was fiery red. He was a dry, shriveled old man of sixty odd. He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous, eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris. And claw-like, prehensile fingers, the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disperses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed. Inordinate, insatiable greed was the dominant passion of the man. He was the man with the rake, groping hourly in the muck heap of the city for gold, for gold, for gold. It was his dream, his passion. At every instant, he seemed to feel the generous solid weight of the crude fat metal in his palms. A glint of it was constantly in his eyes. The jangle of it sang forever in his ears as the jangling of cymbals. Who is it? Who is it? exclaimed Zerkow, as he heard Maria's footsteps in the outer room. His voice was faint, husky, reduced almost to a whisper by his prolonged habit of street-crying. Oh, it's you again, is it? He added, peering through the gloom of the shop. Let's see. You've been here before, ain't you? You're the Mexican woman from Polk Street. Cap is your name, hey? Maria nodded. Had a flying squirrel and let him go, she muttered, absently. Zerkow was puzzled. He looked at her sharply for a moment, then dismissed the matter with the movement of his head. Well, what you got for me, he said. He left his supper to grow cold, absorbed at once in the affair. Then a long wrangle began. Every bit of junk in Maria's pillowcase was disgust and weighed and disputed. They clamored into each other's faces as he grins his cracked pitcher over Miss Baker's silk-gaters, over Marcus Scholler's whiskey flasks, reaching the climax of disagreement when it came to McTig's instruments. Ah, no, no, shouted Maria. Fifteen cents for the lot. I might as well make you a Christmas present. Besides, I got some gold fillings off him. Look at him. Zerkow drew a quick breath as the three pellets suddenly flashed in Maria's palm. There it was, the virgin metal, but o'er, his dream, his consuming desire, his fingers twitched and hooked themselves into his palms, his thin lips drew tight across his teeth. Ah, you got some gold, he muttered, reaching for it. Maria shut her fist over the pellets. The gold goes with the others, she declared. You'll give me a fair price for the lot, or I'll take them back. In the end a bargain was struck that satisfied Maria. Zerkow was not one who would let gold be his price. He counted out to her the price of all her junk, grudging each piece of money as if it had been the blood of his veins. The affair was concluded, but Zerkow still had something to say. As Maria folded up the pillowcase and rose to go, the old Jew said, well, see here a minute, well, you'll have a drink before you go, won't you? Just to show that it's all right between us. Maria sat down again. Yes, I guess I'll have a drink, she answered. Zerkow took down a whiskey bottle and a red-glass tumbler with a broken base from a cupboard on the wall. The two drank together, Zerkow from the bottle, Maria from the broken tumbler. They wiped their lips slowly, drawing breath again. There was a moment's silence. Say, said Zerkow, at last. How about those gold dishes you told me about the last time you were here? What gold dishes, inquired Maria, puzzled. Ah, you know, returned the other. The plate your father owned in Central America a long time ago. Don't you know, it rang like so many bells? Red gold, you know, like oranges? Ah, said Maria, putting her chin in the air as if she knew a long story about that, if she had a mind to tell it. Ah, yes, that gold service. Tell us about it again, said Zerkow, his bloodless lower lip moving against the upper, his claw-like fingers feeling about his mouth and chin. Tell us about it, go on. He was breathing short, his limbs trembled a little. It was as if some hungry beast of prey had scented a quarry. Maria still refused, putting up her head, insisting that she had to be going. Let's have it, insisted the Jew. Take another drink. Maria took another swallow of the whiskey. Now, go on, repeated Zerkow. Let's have the story. Maria squared her elbows on the deal table, looking straight in front of her with eyes that saw nothing. This way, she began. It was when I was little. My folks must have been rich. Oh, rich into the millions. Coffee, I guess. And there was a large house, but I can only remember the plate. Oh, that service of plate. It was wonderful. There were more than a hundred pieces and every one of them gold. You should have seen the sight when the leather trunk was opened. It fair dazzled your eyes. All piled up together, one piece over the other. Why, if the room was dark, you'd think you could see just the same with all that glitter there. There one to piece that was so much as scratched, every one was like a mirror, smooth and bright, just like a little pool when the sun shines into it. There was dinner dishes and soup tourines and pitchers and great big platters as long as that and wide, too, and cream jugs and bowls with carved handles, and drinking mugs, every one a different shape and dishes for gravy and sauces and then a great big punch bowl with the ladle and the bowl was all carved out with figures and bunches of grapes. Why, just only that punch bowl was worth a fortune, I guess. When all that plate was set out on a table it was a sight for a king to look at. Such a service as that was. Each piece was heavy. Oh, so heavy and thick, you know. Thick, fat gold. Red shining pure gold. Orange red. And when you struck it with your knuckle, ah, you should have heard. No church bell ever rang sweeter or clearer. It was soft gold, too. You could bite into it and leave the dent of your teeth. Oh, that gold plate. I can see it just as plain. Solid, solid, heavy, rich, pure gold. Nothing but gold, gold, heaps and heaps of it. What a service that was. Wased, shaking her head, thinking over the vanished splendor, illiterate enough, unimaginative enough on all other subjects, her distorted wits called up this picture with marvelous distinctness. It was plain she saw the plate clearly. Her description was accurate, was almost eloquent. Did that wonderful service of gold plate ever exist outside of her diseased imagination? Was Maria actually remembering some reality of a childhood of barbaric luxury? Were her parents at one time possessed of an incalculable fortune derived from some Central American coffee plantation, a fortune long since confiscated by armies of insurrectionists or squandered in the support of revolutionary governments? It was not impossible. Of Maria Macampas past, prior to the time of her appearance at the flat, absolutely nothing could be learned. She suddenly appeared from the unknown, a strange woman of a mixed race, sane on all subjects but that of the famous service of gold plate, but unusual, complex, mysterious, even at her best. But what misery Zerkau endured as he listened to her tale, for he chose to believe it, forced himself to believe it, lashed and harassed by a pitiless greed that checked at no tale of treasure, however preposterous. The story ravaged him with delight. He was near someone who had possessed this wealth. He saw someone who had seen this pile of gold. He seemed near it, it was there, somewhere close by, under his eyes, under his fingers. It was red, gleaming, ponderous. He gazed about him wildly, nothing, nothing but the sordid junk shop and the rust corroded tins. What exasperation, what positive misery to be so near to it and yet to know that it was irrevocably, irretrievably lost. A spasm of anguish passed through him. He nod at his bloodless lips at the hopelessness of it, the rage, the fury of it. Go on, he whispered. Let's have it all over again. Polished like a mirror, hey, and heavy. Yes, I know, I know. A punch-bowl with a fortune. Ah, and you saw it, you had it all. Maria rose to go. Zerkow accompanied her to the door, urging another drink upon her. Come again, come again, he croaked. Don't wait till you've got junk. Come any time you feel like it and tell me more about the plate. He followed her a step down the alley. How much do you think it was worth, he inquired anxiously. Oh, a million dollars, answered Maria vaguely. When Maria had gone, Zerkow returned to the back room of the shop and stood in front of the alcohol stove, looking down into his cold dinner, preoccupied, thoughtful. A million dollars. He muttered in his rasping, guttural whisper. His fingertips wandering over his thin, cat-like lips. A golden service worth a million dollars. A punch-bowl worth a fortune. Red gold plates, heaps and piles. God! End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of McTeague This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. McTeague by Frank Norris Chapter 4 The days passed. McTeague had finished the operation on Trina's teeth. She did not come anymore to the parlors. Matters had readjusted themselves a little between the two during the last sittings. Trina yet stood upon her reserve, and McTeague still felt himself shambling and ungainly in her presence. But that constraint and embarrassment that had followed upon McTeague's blundering declaration broke up little by little. In spite of themselves, they were gradually resuming the same relative positions they had occupied their first met. But McTeague suffered miserably for all that. He never would have, Trina. He saw that clearly. She was too good for him, too delicate, too refined, too prettily made for him, who was so coarse, so enormous, so stupid. She was for someone else, Marcus no doubt, or at least for some finer-grained man. She should have gone to some other dentists, the young fellow on the corner, for instance, the poser, the rider of bicycles, the coarser of gray hounds. McTeague began to loathe and to envy this fellow. He spied upon him going in and out of his office, and noted his salmon-pink neckties and his astonishing waistcoats. One Sunday, a few days after Trina's last sitting, McTeague met Marcus Scholler at his table in the car conductor's coffee joint next to the harness shop. What you got to do this afternoon, Mack, inquired the other as they ate their suet pudding. He had McTeague shaking his head. His mouth was full of pudding. It made him warm to eat, and little beads of perspiration stood across the bridge of his nose. He looked forward to an afternoon passed in his operating chair as usual. On leaving his parlors, he had put ten cents into his pitcher and had left it at Frenna's to be filled. What do you say we take a walk, huh? Said Marcus. Ah, that's the thing, a walk, a long walk by damn. It'll be out of sight. I got to take three or four of the dogs out for exercise anyhow. Old Grannis thinks they need it. We'll walk out to the Presidio. Of late, it had become the custom of the two friends to take long walks from time to time. On holidays and on those Sunday afternoons when Marcus was not absent with the SIPAs, they went out together. Sometimes to the park, sometimes to the Presidio, sometimes even across the bay. They took a great pleasure in each other's company, but silently and with reservation, having the masculine horror of any demonstration of friendship. They walked for upwards of five hours that afternoon, out to the length of California Street and across the Presidio Reservation to the Golden Gate. Then they turned and following the line of the shore, brought up at the Cliff House. Here they halted for beer, Marcus swearing that his mouth was as dry as a hay bin. Before starting on their walk, they had gone around to the little dog hospital and Marcus had let out four of the convalescents crazed with joy at the release. Look at that dog, he cried to Myctique, showing him a finely bred Irish setter. That's the dog that belonged to the duck on the avenue, the dog we called for that day. I've bought him. The duck thought he had the distemper and just threw him away. Nothing wrong with him but a little guitar. Ain't he a bird? Say, ain't he a bird? Look at his flag. It's perfect. And see how he carries his tail on a line with his back. See how stiff and white his whiskers are. Oh, by dam, you can't fool me on a dog. That dog's a winner. At the Cliff House, the two sat down to their beer in a quiet corner of the billiard room. There were but two players. Somewhere in another part of the building, a mammoth music box was jangling out a quick step. From outside came the long rhythmical rush of the surf and the sonorous barking of the seals upon the seal rocks. The four dogs curled themselves down upon the heated floor. Here's how, said Marcus, half emptying his glass. Ah, he added with a long breath. That's good. It is for a fact. For the last hour of their walk, Marcus had done nearly all the talking, Mictig merely answering him by uncertain movements of the head. For that matter, the dentist had been silent and preoccupied throughout the whole afternoon. At length, Marcus noticed it. As he set down his glass with a bang, he suddenly exclaimed. What's the matter with you these days, Mac? You got a bean about something, hey? Spit it out. No. No. replied Mictig, looking about on the floor, rolling his eyes. Nothing. No. No. Ah, rats! returned the other. Mictig kept silence. The two billiard players departed. The huge music box struck into a fresh tune. Ha! exclaimed Marcus with a short laugh. Guess he was in love. Mictig gasped and shuffled his enormous feet under the table. Well, something's biting you anyhow. Pursued Marcus. Maybe I can help you. We're pals, you know. Better tell me what's up. Guess we can straighten it out. Ah, go on. Spit it out. The situation was abominable. Mictig could not rise to it. Marcus was his best friend, his only friend. They were pals and Mictig was very fond of him. Yet they were both in love, presumably with the same girl. And now Marcus would try and force the secret out of him. Would rush blindly at the rock upon which the two must bled, stirred by the very best of motives, wishing only to be of service. Besides this, there was nobody to whom Mictig would have better preferred to tell his troubles than to Marcus. And yet about this trouble, the greatest trouble of his life, he must keep silent, must refrain from speaking of it to Marcus above everybody. Mictig began dimly to feel that life was too much for him. How had it all come about? A month ago he was perfectly content. He was calm and peaceful, taking his little pleasures as he found them. His life had shaped itself, was, no doubt, to continue always along these same lines. A woman had entered his small world and instantly there was discord. The disturbing element had appeared. Wherever the woman had put her foot, a score of distressing complications had sprung up, like the sudden growth of strange and puzzling flowers. Say, Mac, go on, let's have it straight. Urged Marcus, leaning toward him. Has any duck been doing you dirt? He cried, his face crimson on the instant. No, said Mictig, helplessly. Come along, old man, persistent Marcus, let's have it. What is the row? I'll do all I can to help you. It was more than Mictig could bear. The situation had got beyond him. Suddenly he spoke, his hands deep in his pockets, his head rolled forward. It's, it's Miss Sipa, he said. Trina, my cousin, how do you mean? inquired Marcus sharply. I, I, I don't know, stammered Mictig, hopelessly confounded. You mean, cried Marcus, suddenly enlightened, that you are, that you too. Mictig stirred in his chair, looking at the walls of the room, avoiding the others' glance. He nodded his head, then suddenly broke out. I can't help it. It ain't my fault, is it? Marcus was struck dumb. He dropped back in his chair, breathless. Suddenly Mictig found his tongue. I tell you, Mark, I can't help it. I don't know how it happened. It came on so slow that I was that, that, that it was done before I knew it, before I could help myself. I know where it holds us to, and I knew how, how you and Miss Sipa were. I know now, I knew then, but that wouldn't have made any difference. Before I knew it, it, it, there I was. I can't help it. I wouldn't have had it happen for anything, if I could have stopped it, but I don't know. It's something that's just stronger than you are, that's all. She came there. Miss Sipa came to the parlors there three or four times a week, and she was the first girl I had ever known, and I don't know why I was so close to her I touched her face every minute, and her mouth, and smelt her hair and her breath. Oh, you don't know anything about it. I can't give you any idea. I don't know exactly myself. I only know how I'm fixed. I, I, it's been done. It's too late. There's no going back. Why, I can't think of anything else night and day. It's everything. It's, it's Oh, it's everything. I, I, why, Mark, everything. I can't explain. He made a helpless movement with both hands. Never had McTique been so excited. Never had he made so long a speech. His arms moved in fierce, uncertain gestures. His face flushed. His enormous jaws shut together with a sharp click at every pause. It was like some colossal brute trapped in a delicate, invisible mesh, raging, exasperated, powerless to extricate himself. Marcus Scholler said nothing. There was a long silence. Marcus got up and walked to the window and stood looking out, but seeing nothing. Well, who would have thought of this? He muttered under his breath. Here was a fix. Marcus cared for Trina. There was no doubt in his mind about that. He looked forward eagerly to the Sunday afternoon excursions. He liked to be with Trina. He, too, felt the charm of the little girl, the charm of the small, pale forehead, the little chin thrust out as if in confidence and innocence the heavy, odorous crown of black hair. He liked her immensely. Someday he would speak. He would ask her to marry him. Marcus put off this matter of marriage to some future period. It would be some time, a year perhaps, or two. The thing did not take definite shape in his mind. Marcus kept company with his cousin Trina. But he knew plenty of other girls. For the matter of that, he liked all girls pretty well. Just now the singleness and strength of McTig's passion startled him. McTig would marry Trina that very afternoon if she would have him. But would he? Marcus? No, he would not. If it came to that, no, he would not. Yet he knew he liked Trina. He could say, yes, he could say he loved her. She was his girl. The Sipas acknowledged him as Trina's young man. Marcus came back to the table and sat down on the table and said, well, what are we going to do about it, Mac? He said, I don't know, answered McTig, in great distress. I don't want anything to, to come between us, Mark. Well, nothing will, you bet, vociferated the other. No, sir, you bet not, Mac. Marcus was thinking hard. He could see very clearly that McTig loved Trina more than he did. That in some strange way this huge, brutal fellow was capable of fashion than himself, who was twice as clever. Suddenly Marcus jumped impetuously to a resolution. Well, say, Mac, he cried, striking the table with his fist. Go ahead. I guess you, you want her pretty bad. I'll pull out, yes, I will. I'll give her up to you, old man. The sense of his own magnanimity all at once overcame Marcus. He saw himself as another man, very noble, self-sacrificing. He stood with his second self with boundless admiration and with infinite pity. He was so good, so magnificent, so heroic, that he almost sobbed. Marcus made a sweeping gesture of resignation, throwing out both his arms, crying, Mac, I'll give her up to you. I won't stand between you. There were actually tears in Marcus's eyes as he spoke. There was no doubt he thought himself sincere. At that moment, he almost believed he loved Trina conscientiously, but he was sacrificing himself for the sake of his friend. The two stood up and faced each other, gripping hands. It was a great moment. Even MacTig felt the drama of it. What a fine thing was this friendship between men. The dentist treats his friend for an ulcerated tooth and refuses payment. The friend reciprocates by giving up his girl. This was nobility. Their mutual affection and esteem suddenly increased enormously. It was Damon and Pethias. It was David and Jonathan. Nothing could ever estrange them. Now it was for life or death. I'm much obliged, murmured MacTig. He could think of nothing better to say. I'm much obliged, he repeated. Much obliged, Mark. That's all right. That's all right, returned Marcus Shuler bravely. And it occurred to him to add, you'll be happy together. Tell her for me. Tell her. Tell her. Marcus could not go on. He rung the dentist's hand silently. It had not appeared to either of them that Trina might refuse MacTig. MacTig's spirits rose at once. In Marcus's withdrawal he fancied he saw an end to all his difficulties. Everything would come right, after all. The strained, exalted state of Marcus's nerves ended by putting him into fine humor as well. His grief suddenly changed to an excess of gaiety. The afternoon was a success. They slapped each other back with great blows of the open palms and they drank each other's health in a third round of beer. Ten minutes after his renunciation of Trina's sepa, Marcus astounded MacTig with a tremendous feat. Looka here, Mac. I know something you can't do. I'll bet you two bits I'll stump you. They each put a quarter on the table. Now watch me, cried Marcus. He caught up a billiard ball from the rack, poised at a moment in front of his face, then with a sudden, horrifying distinction of his jaws crammed it into his mouth and shut his lips over it. For an instant, MacTig was stupefied, his eyes bulging. Then an enormous laugh shook him. He roared and shouted, swaying in his chair, slapping his knee. What a jasher was this Marcus. Sure, you never could tell what he would do next. Marcus slipped the ball out, wiped it on the tablecloth and passed it to MacTig. Now let's see you do it. MacTig fell suddenly grave. The matter was serious. He parted his thick mustaches and opened his enormous jaws like an anaconda. The ball disappeared inside his mouth. Marcus applauded vociferously, shouting, good work. MacTig reached for the money and put it in his vest pocket, nodding his head with a knowing air. Then suddenly his face grew purple, his jaws moved convulsively. He pawed at his cheeks with both hands. The billiard ball had slipped into his mouth easily enough. Now, however, he could not get it out again. It was terrible. The dentist rose to his feet, stumbling about among the dogs, his face working, his eyes starting. Try as he would. He could not stretch his jaws wide enough to slip the ball out. Marcus lost his wits, swearing at the top of his voice. MacTig sweated with terror. Inarticulate sounds came from his crammed mouth. He waved his arms wildly. All the four dogs caught the excitement and began to bark. A waiter rushed in. The two billiard players returned. A little crowd formed. There was a veritable scene. All at once the ball slipped out of MacTig's jaws as easily as it had gone in. What a relief. He dropped into a chair, wiping his forehead, gasping for breath. On the strength of the occasion, Marcus Shuler invited the entire group to drink with him. By the time the affair was over and the group dispersed it was after five. Marcus and MacTig decided they would ride home on the cars. But they soon found this impossible. The dogs would not follow. Only Alexander, Marcus's new setter, kept his place at the rear of the car. The other three lost their senses immediately running wildly about the streets with their heads in the air or suddenly starting off at a furious gallop directly away from the car. Marcus whistled and shouted and lathered with rage in vain. The two friends were obliged to walk. When they finally reached Polk Street, Marcus shut up the three dogs in the hospital. Alexander he brought back to the flat with him. There was a minute back yard in the rear where Marcus had made a kennel for Alexander out of an old water barrel. Before he thought of his own supper, Marcus put Alexander to bed and fed him a couple of dog biscuits. MacTig had followed him to the yard to keep him company. Alexander settled to his supper at once, chewing slowly at the biscuit, his head on one side. Whatcha going to do about this? About that? About about my cousin now, Mac? inquired Marcus. MacTig shook his head helplessly. It was dark by now and cold. The little back yard was grimy and full of odors. MacTig was tired with their long walk. All his uneasiness about his affair with Trina had returned. No, surely she was not for him. Marcus or other man would win her in the end. What could she ever see to desire in him? In him a clumsy giant with hands like wooden mallets. She had told him once that she would not marry him. Was that not final? I don't know what to do, Mark, he said. Well, you must make up to her now, answered Marcus. Go and call on her. MacTig started. He had not thought of calling on her. The idea frightened him a little. Of course, persisted Marcus. That's the proper caper. What did you expect? Did you think he was never going to see her again? I don't know. I don't know, responded the dentist, looking stupidly at the dog. You know where they live, continued Marcus Shuller, over at B Street Station, across the bay. I'll take you over there whenever you want to go. I tell you what, we'll go over there Washington's birthday. That's this next Wednesday. Sure, they'll be glad to see you. It was good of Marcus. All at once MacTig rose to an appreciation of what his friend was doing for him. He stammered. Say, Mark, you're... you're all right anyhow. Why, Pashaugh, said Marcus. That's all right, old man. I'd like to see you two fixed, that's all. We'll go over Wednesday. Sure. They turned back to the house. Alexander left off eating and watched them go away, first with one eye, then with the other. But he was too self-respecting to watch. However, by the time the two friends had reached the second landing on the back stairs, a terrible commotion was underway in the little yard. They rushed to an open window at the end of the hall and looked down. A thin board of fence separated the flat's backyard from that used by the branch post office. In the latter place lived a collie dog. He and Alexander had smelt each other out, blowing through the cracks of the fence at each other. Suddenly the quarrel had exploded on either side. The dogs raged at each other, snarling and barking, frantic with hate. Their teeth gleamed. They tore at the fence with their front paws. They filled the whole night with their clamor. By damn cried Marcus. They don't love each other. Just listen, wouldn't that make a fight if the two got together? Have to try it some day. End of Chapter 4