And a man's voice yelled, "Call a cop. You've got
no injunction to keep me out of the house."
The landlady compained, "Not even a thank you
for opening the door."
"Thank you?" he shouted. "Did I ever get thanks
for unlocking doors, for putting drunks out ...
"
In the morning, still no money had come, and I
hegan shouting at Marcheta, just as the other people
were shouting; and she wept. We had left our door
slightly open, and then it was opened wide, and there
stood the neighbor, and she wanted her iron. She
looked at me with contempt, and she said to lYlar-
cheta, "Don't let that loafer beat you."
If I had had something in my hand I would have
thrown it at her. I walked out of the room and into
the streets. Here I was, married in San Francisco,
and living in an awful room; quarreli~g, and I didn't
even have a job. And I knew I couldn't get relief;
I hadn't been long enough in town. I took the bus
ticket out of my pocket; but it was almost useless.
I would never get out.
I went back to the house, and there was Marcheta
smiling through her tears, and she had dinner ready,
the not very good dinner that she cooked. And she
was very tender, told me stories about her childhood
on the ranch, about the cattle and the dust storms
each spring; and then she told me of the terrible
things her step-father had done to her, how her
mother had known, but she had been so much in
love with him, she had done nothing about it. How
she had run away and gotten a job in the /lour fac-
tory in Cheyenne, and how she had met her hus-
hand, a bookkeeper in the factory, and how she had
married him, the only man there who did not try to
seduce her. There was a very good reason for his
not having tried; and there she had lived, getting
food together for him every night and lying in bed
next to him, "this cold hunk of meat, and he couldn't
do anything about it, and he was mortally scared
somebody else would get it and watched me like a
hawk. And once he got his courage together and
he wasn't even drunk, just so sober he was crazy,"
and she was so afraid of him that she got a gun and
told him she'd kill him if he tried to touch her.
They wrestled, and she pulled the trigger and she
shot herself through the breast.
It was night, and I couldn't see her when I asked
her what she proposed doing. She didn't answer me.
She crouched near the wall and didn't move all night.
In the morning, the nightmare passed; money
came for me, and the husband sent her fare to come
back to Cheyenne.
She would not go back. She was going to stay in
San Francisco and get a job. She packed my bag
and walked with me to Mission Street, and we shook
hands, and we said goodby.
I stayed a few more days in San Francisco. I had
a letter to the friend of aNew York friend, and he
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
took me riding through the lovely town, I went to a
party on Telegraph Hill, and almost everyone lived
on relief. I rode up and down the hills in the cable
cars. I ate a sea-food dinner on the wharf. I walked
down to the Embarcadero and went to the office of
the longshoremen's union, and they were talking
about a strike. But when I went to the Post Office
for mail, I was afraid I would meet Marcheta; and
on the street often some woman's back would seem
familiar, and I would turn on my heels and go back.
San Francisco was haunted by the ghost of Mar-
cheta. She was there some place, looking for a job,
thinking of her husband and screaming she would
kill him. All the time I thought of her, and I was
certain that if I stayed on, I would some evening go
back to that house and up the stairs through the
smelly hall, go back to the room, and maybe stay
there.
One evening I took a north-bound bus, and two
days later I was in Seattle.
The 27th of
September
,
ANDRE
GIDE
[It was at the suggestion of Maxim Gorky that
writers in countries all ,over the world were asked to
describe how they had spent the day of September
27
th last. The day was chosen quite without fore-
thought, the writers being requested to make note of
some event or, bearing the date in mind, to shape as
they might see fit their contribution to the piece of
colle-ctive writing to be entitled
A
DAY ROUND THE
WORLD.
Following is the text which Andre Gide
sent to Gorky.]
TWO friends, in the morning, came in to have
breakfast with me. One of them, a Belgian miner of
Le Borinage, had been delegated to make certain
investigations in our northern districts and was plan-
ning to leave that very night; he wished to consult
me on certain points. The other was my traveling
companion of the Congo.
"This day," I informed them, "Friday, the 27th,
is a special one, in that I am supposed to give an
exact account of it and set down everything that I
see and hear during the course of the day."
"Well," exclaimed my Co'ngo friend, "if that's
the case, I'm going to leave you right here and
now
I"
And he lost no time in doing so.
Events on this day treated me in much the same
fashion as had my friend. As it happened, having
