22
PARTISAN REVIEW
savmgs. But he was never able to get much money saved, be·
cause he was always quitting his job or being discharged, and
forced to live on his savings until he secured a new one.
And he learned another thing-how to dance like Amer·
icans danced. A Greek-American young friend of his took him
to a dancing school, called a taxi-dance, on West Madison street.
He paid a dollar, and was given ten tickets, each one good for
a dance which lasts from one minute to a minute and a half.
Any girl in the place would dance with him, because she received
five cents for each dance. His tickets were quickly exhausted,
and he bought more. It did not matter if he could dance or not,
and the girls were glad to teach him. He went to this taxi–
dance regularly, spending three, four, and five dollars every
visit, and once in a while, a girl would ask him if he wanted to
take her home, and for a few more dollars, he could get other
things too. After he commenced attending regularly to this
taxi dance hall, he was able to save less money.
Takiss then spent some of his savings for a suit with bell
bottom trousers. He cultivated a moustache and long side burns,
greased his hair and parted it in the middle with meticulous atten·
tion. He began to look like a sheik, and listened to pick up all the
words which the American sheiks used. He went to public
dance halls where there was only an admission fee and longer
dances. At these places, there were always swarms of girls,
pretty American girls, some of them tall and beautiful blondes
with milky skins, and red lips like cherries. He would ask them
to dance. Often they would dance with him, once. He would
talk, and they would notice his accent and when he asked them
for a second dance, they would thank him with great regret, and
exclaim that all their other dances were· taken. So he would
quickly be driven to dancing with the homely and ugly girls who
were called wall flowers. And then, he would go back to the
taxi dances where all the girls would dance with him for ten
cents a dance.
One day, Takiss was twenty-five. His native Greek moun·
tains seemed to have receded in time, and he saw them only in
painful mists of memory, recalling their details with lessening
concreteness. He had been in America for twelve years, and he
was working ten hours a day in a hot dog stand for ten dollars
a week, and able to graft from three to five dollars a week extra.
He wanted to make money, and when he was a rich man with
a hot dog stand or restaurant of his own, return to Greece with
