Tortilla Flat Read online

  Table of Contents Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  1 - HOW DANNY, HOME FROM THE WARS, FOUND HIMSELF AN HEIR, AND HOW HE SWORE TO ...

  2 - HOW PILON WAS LURED BY GREED OF POSITION TO FORSAKE DANNY'S HOSPITALITY.

  3 - HOW THE POISON OF POSSESSIONS WROUGHT WITH PILON, AND HOW EVIL TEMPORARILY ...

  4 - HOW JESUS MARIA CORCORAN, A GOOD MAN, BECAME AN UNWILLING VEHICLE OF EVIL.

  5 - HOW SAINT FRANCIS TURNED THE TIDE AND PUT A GENTLE PUNISHMENT ON PILON AND ...

  6 - HOW THREE SINFUL MEN, THROUGH CONTRITION, ATTAINED PEACE. HOW DANNY'S ...

  7 - HOW DANNY'S FRIENDS BECAME A FORCE FOR GOOD. HOW THEY SUCCORED THE POOR PIRATE.

  8 - HOW DANNY'S FRIENDS SOUGHT MYSTIC TREASURE ON SAINT ANDREW'S EVE. HOW PILON ...

  9 - HOW DANNY WAS ENSNARED BY A VACUUM-CLEANER AND HOW DANNY'S FRIENDS RESCUED HIM.

  10 - HOW THE FRIENDS SOLACED A CORPORAL AND IN RETURN RECEIVED A LESSON IN ...

  11 - HOW, UNDER THE MOST ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES, LOVE CAME TO BIG JOE PORTAGEE.

  12 - HOW DANNY'S FRIENDS ASSISTED THE PIRATE TO KEEP A VOW, AND HOW AS A REWARD ...

  13 - HOW DANNY'S FRIENDS THREW THEMSELVES TO THE AID OF A DISTRESSED LADY.

  14 - OF THE GOOD LIFE AT DANNY'S HOUSE, OF A GIFT PIG, OF THE PAIN OF TALL BOB, ...

  15 - HOW DANNY BROODED AND BECAME MAD. HOW THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF TORRELLI ...

  16 - OF THE SADNESS OF DANNY. HOW THROUGH SACRIFICE DANNY'S FRIENDS GAVE A ...

  17 - HOW DANNY'S SORROWING FRIENDS DEFIED THE CONVENTIONS. HOW THE TALISMANIC ...

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  PENGUIN BOOKS TORTILLA FLAT

  Born in Salinas, California, in 1902, JOHN STEINBECK grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast--and both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City and then as a caretaker for a Lake Ta-hoe estate, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California fictions, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey's paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez. He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon Is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), The Pearl (1947), A Russian Journal (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family's history. The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989). He died in 1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962.

  BY JOHN STEINBECK

  FICTION

  Cup of Gold

  The Pastures of Heaven

  To a God Unknown

  Tortilla Flat

  In Dubious Battle

  Saint Katy the Virgin

  Of Mice and Men

  The Red Pony

  The Long Valley

  The Grapes of Wrath

  The Moon Is Down

  Cannery Row

  The Wayward Bus

  The Pearl

  Burning Bright

  East of Eden

  Sweet Thursday

  The Winter of Our Discontent

  The Short Reign of Pippin IV

  NONFICTION

  Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research

  (in collaboration with Edward F. Ricketts)

  Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team

  A Russian Journal (with pictures by Robert Capa)

  The Log from the Sea of Cortez

  Once There Was a War

  Travels with Charley in Search of America

  America and Americans

  Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters PLAYS

  Of Mice and Men

  The Moon Is Down COLLECTIONS

  The Portable Steinbeck

  The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

  Steinbeck: A Life in Letters OTHER WORKS

  The Forgotten Village (documentary)

  Viva Zapata! (screenplay) CRITICAL LIBRARY EDITION

  The Grapes of Wrath (edited by Peter Lisca)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright John Steinbeck, 1935

  Copyright renewed by John Steinbeck, 1963

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.

  Tortilla flat.

  I. Title.

  PS3537.T3234T65 1968b 813'.52 86-2349

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3884-8

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  SUSAN GREGORY

  of Monterey

  Preface

  This is the story of Danny and of Danny's friends and of Danny's house. It is a story of how these three became one thing, so that in Tortilla Flat if you speak of Danny's house you do not mean a structure of wood flaked with old whitewash, overgrown with an ancient untrimmed rose of Castile. No, when you speak of Danny's house you are understood to mean a unit of which the parts
are men, from which came sweetness and joy, philanthropy and, in the end, a mystic sorrow. For Danny's house was not unlike the Round Table, and Danny's friends were not unlike the knights of it. And this is the story of how that group came into being, of how it flourished and grew to be an organization beautiful and wise. This story deals with the adventuring of Danny's friends, with the good they did, with their thoughts and their endeavors. In the end, this story tells how the talisman was lost and how the group disintegrated.

  In Monterey, that old city on the coast of California, these things are well known, and they are repeated and sometimes elaborated. It is well that this cycle be put down on paper so that in a future time scholars, hearing the legends, may not say as they say of Arthur and of Roland and of Robin Hood--"There was no Danny nor any group of Danny's friends, nor any house. Danny is a nature god and his friends primitive symbols of the wind, the sky, the sun." This history is designed now and ever to keep the sneers from the lips of sour scholars.

  Monterey sits on the slope of a hill, with a blue bay below it and with a forest of tall dark pine trees at its back. The lower parts of the town are inhabited by Americans, Italians, catchers and canners of fish. But on the hill where the forest and the town intermingle, where the streets are innocent of asphalt and the corners free of street lights, the old inhabitants of Monterey are embattled as the Ancient Britons are embattled in Wales. These are the paisanos.

  They live in old wooden houses set in weedy yards, and the pine trees from the forest are about the houses. The paisanos are clean of commercialism, free of the complicated systems of American business, and, having nothing that can be stolen, exploited, or mortgaged, that system has not attacked them very vigorously.

  What is a paisano? He is a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in California for a hundred or two years. He speaks English with a paisano accent and Spanish with a paisano accent. When questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white. His color, like that of a well-browned meerschaum pipe, he ascribes to sunburn. He is a paisano, and he lives in the uphill district above the town of Monterey called Tortilla Flat, although it isn't a flat at all.

  Danny was a paisano, and he grew up in Tortilla Flat and everyone liked him, but he did not stand out particularly from the screeching children of Tortilla Flat. He was related to nearly everyone in the Flat by blood or romance. His grandfather was an important man who owned two small houses in Tortilla Flat and was respected for his wealth. If the growing Danny preferred to sleep in the forest, to work on ranches, and to wrest his food and wine from an unwilling world, it was not because he did not have influential relatives. Danny was small and dark and intent. At twenty-five his legs were bent to the exact curves of a horse's sides.

  Now when Danny was twenty-five years old, the war with Germany was declared. Danny and his friend Pilon (Pilon, by the way, is something thrown in when a trade is conducted--a boot) had two gallons of wine when they heard about the war. Big Joe Portagee saw the glitter of the bottles among the pines and he joined Danny and Pilon.

  As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and they walked into Monterey. In front of an enlistment station they cheered loudly for America and dared Germany to do her worst. They howled menaces at the German Empire until the enlistment sergeant awakened and put on his uniform and came into the street to silence them. He remained to enlist them.

  The sergeant lined them up in front of his desk. They passed everything but the sobriety test and then the sergeant began his questions with Pilon.

  "What branch do you want to go in?"

  "I don' give a god-damn," said Pilon jauntily.

  "I guess we need men like you in the infantry." And Pilon was written so.

  He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. "Where do you want to go?"

  "I want to go home," Big Joe said miserably.

  The sergeant put him in the infantry too. Finally he confronted Danny, who was sleeping on his feet. "Where do you want to go?"

  "Huh?"

  "I say, what branch?"

  "What do you mean, 'branch'?"

  "What can you do?"

  "Me? I can do anything."

  "What did you do before?"

  "Me? I'm a mule skinner."

  "Oh, you are? How many mules can you drive?"

  Danny leaned forward, vaguely and professionally. "How many you got?"

  "About thirty thousand," said the sergeant.

  Danny waved his hand. "String 'em up!" he said.

  And so Danny went to Texas and broke mules for the duration of the war. And Pilon marched about Oregon with the infantry, and Big Joe, as shall be later made clear, went to jail.

  1

  HOW DANNY, HOME FROM THE WARS, FOUND HIMSELF AN HEIR, AND HOW HE SWORE TO PROTECT THE HELPLESS.

  When Danny came home from the army he learned that he was an heir and an owner of property. The viejo, that is the grandfather, had died, leaving Danny the two small houses on Tortilla Flat.

  When Danny heard about it he was a little weighed down with the responsibility of ownership. Before he ever went to look at his property he bought a gallon of red wine and drank most of it himself. The weight of responsibility left him then, and his very worst nature came to the surface. He shouted; he broke a few chairs in a poolroom on Alvarado Street; he had two short but glorious fights. No one paid much attention to Danny. At last his wavering bowlegs took him toward the wharf where, at this early hour in the morning, the Italian fishermen were walking down in rubber boots to go out to sea.

  Race antipathy overcame Danny's good sense. He menaced the fishermen. "Sicilian bastards," he called them, and "Scum from the prison island," and "Dogs of dogs of dogs." He cried, "Chinga tu madre, Piojo." He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist. The fishermen only grinned and shifted their oars and said, "Hello, Danny. When'd you get home? Come around tonight. We got new wine."

  Danny was outraged. He screamed, "Pon un condo a la cabeza."

  They called, "Good-by, Danny. See you tonight." And they climbed into their little boats and rowed out to the lampara launches and started their engines and chugged away.

  Danny was insulted. He walked back up Alvarado Street, breaking windows as he went, and in the second block a policeman took him in hand. Danny's great respect for the law caused him to go quietly. If he had not just been discharged from the army after the victory over Germany, he would have been sentenced to six months. As it was, the judge gave him only thirty days.

  And so for one month Danny sat on his cot in the Monterey city jail. Sometimes he drew obscene pictures on the walls, and sometimes he thought over his army career. Time hung heavy on Danny's hands there in his cell in the city jail. Now and then a drunk was put in for the night, but for the most part crime in Monterey was stagnant, and Danny was lonely. The bedbugs bothered him a little at first, but as they got used to the taste of him and he grew accustomed to their bites, they got along peacefully.

  He started playing a satiric game. He caught a bed-bug, squashed it against the wall, drew a circle around it with a pencil and named it "Mayor Clough." Then he caught others and named them after the City Council. In a little while he had one wall decorated with squashed bedbugs, each named for a local dignitary. He drew ears and tails on them, gave them big noses and mustaches. Tito Ralph, the jailer, was scandalized; but he made no complaint because Danny had not included either the justice of the peace who had sentenced him or any of the police force. He had a vast respect for the law.

  One night when the jail was lonely, Tito Ralph came into Danny's cell bearing two bottles of wine. An hour later he went out for more wine, and Danny went with him. It was cheerless in the jail. They stayed at Torrelli's, where they bought the wine, unti
l Torrelli threw them out. After that Danny went up among the pines and fell asleep, while Tito Ralph staggered back and reported his escape.

  When the brilliant sun awakened Danny about noon, he determined to hide all day to escape pursuit. He ran and dodged behind bushes. He peered out of the undergrowth like a hunted fox. And, at evening, the rules having been satisfied, he came out and went about his business.

  Danny's business was fairly direct. He went to the back door of a restaurant. "Got any old bread I can give my dog?" he asked the cook. And while that gullible man was wrapping up the food, Danny stole two slices of ham, four eggs, a lamb chop, and a fly swatter.

  "I will pay you sometime," he said.

  "No need to pay for scraps. I throw them away if you don't take them."

  Danny felt better about the theft then. If that was the way they felt, on the surface he was guiltless. He went back to Torrelli's, traded the four eggs, the lamb chop, and the fly swatter for a water glass of grappa and retired toward the woods to cook his supper.

  The night was dark and damp. The fog hung like limp gauze among the black pines that guard the landward limits of Monterey. Danny put his head down and hurried for the shelter of the woods. Ahead of him he made out another hurrying figure; and as he narrowed the distance, he recognized the scuttling walk of his old friend Pilon. Danny was a generous man, but he recalled that he had sold all his food except the two slices of ham and the bag of stale bread.

  "I will pass Pilon by," he decided. "He walks like a man who is full of roast turkey and things like that."

  Then suddenly Danny noticed the Pilon clutched his coat lovingly across his bosom.

  "Ai, Pilon, amigo!" Danny cried.

  Pilon scuttled on faster. Danny broke into a trot. "Pilon, my little friend! Where goest thou so fast?"

  Pilon resigned himself to the inevitable and waited. Danny approached warily, but his tone was enthusiastic. "I looked for thee, dearest of little angelic friends, for see, I have here two great steaks from God's own pig, and a sack of sweet white bread. Share my bounty, Pilon, little dumpling."

  Pilon shrugged his shoulders. "As you say," he muttered savagely. They walked on together into the woods. Pilon was puzzled. At length he stopped and faced his friend. "Danny," he asked sadly, "how knewest thou I had a bottle of brandy under my coat?"