Sơ lược tiểu sử của Văn Hào John E. Steinbeck
***
Thung Lũng Salinas
Trên các dãi đất bằng phẳng, người ta cày sâu vào làm tơi lên màu đất đen kim loại. Mấy nông trại nằm ở chân đồi cạnh con sông Salinas. Sắc vàng do những đám đất còn trơ gốc rạ đang tắm ánh nắng yếu ớt mùa đông. Thực ra chẳng có ánh nắng nào trong cái thung lũng này vào tháng Chạp. Bụi liễu khô rậm cạnh bờ sông rực rở hẳn lên từ đám lá nhọn hoắc, vàng đậm.
Đây là lúc của im lặng và đợi chờ. Làn không khí lành lạnh, êm đềm. Ngọn gió nhẹ nhàng từ hướng Tây Nam làm anh nông dân mơ màng về một trận mưa lớn sẽ tới; nhưng khi trời sương mù thì làm gì có chuyện mưa?
Elisa Allen vừa làm trong mảnh vườn hoa của nàng vừa ngó xuống phía dưới thì thấy Henry, chồng nàng đang nói chuyện với hai gả đàn ông. Hai người khách này ăn bận theo kiểu thương nhân. Cả ba đứng cạnh mái nhà chứa xe kéo.Hai người khách để một chân bên hông chiếc xe nhỏ hiệu Fordson, hút thuốc, bàn chuyện máy móc...
-Em lại thêm một vụ cúc nữa đây rồi, khá chứ em?
Elisa thẳng lưng dậy, nàng lại kéo bao tay ra:
-Vâng, vụ hoa năm này chắc hẳn là khá lắm.
Nàng cao giọng, sắc mặt đầy vẻ tự hào.
-Những thứ này là món quà cho em đấy.
Henry nhận xét.
Mắt nàng bỗng sắc sảo hơn:
-Ô, không.
Nàng nghe tiếng chồng gọi Scotty cạnh kho rơm. Lát sau, có bóng hai người đàn ông cưỡi ngựa ngược lên triền đồi vàng chệch màu cỏ úa vàng vọt kia để lùa bò về.
Salinas Valley
một cảnh trong phim The Chrysanthemums
Nồi, chảo, dao , céo (sic), làm cỏ. SỬA HẾT MỌI THỨ
Hai hàng chữ ở trên cùng chữ SỬA to tướng có vẻ tự tin ở dưới. Gã còn cẩu thả để những vết sơn đen chảy dài xuống chữ gã viết.
edit 11/12/2017
The Chrysanthemums
by John
Steinbeck
The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the
Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every
side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a
closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and
left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the
foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to
be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley
now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp
and positive yellow leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was
cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the
farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain
did not go together.
Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch
there was little work to be done, for the hay was cut and stored and the
orchards were plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should come.
The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming shaggy and
rough-coated.
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked
down across the yard and saw Henry, her husband, talking to two men in
business suits. The three of them stood by the tractor shed, each man
with one foot on the side of the little Fordson. They smoked cigarettes
and studied the machine as they talked.
Elisa watched them for a moment and then went back
to her work. She was thirty five. Her face was lean and strong and her eyes
were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her
gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled low down over her eyes,
clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a
big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel
and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy
leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked.
She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum
stalks with a pair of short and powerful scissors. She looked down toward
the men by the tractor shed now and then. Her face was eager and mature
and handsome; even her work with the scissors was over-eager,
over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her
energy.
She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with
the back of her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing
it. Behind her stood the neat white farm house with red geraniums
close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a hard-swept
looking little house, with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on
the front steps.
Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed.
The strangers were getting into their Ford coupe. She took off a glove
and put her strong fingers down into the forest of new green
chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around the old roots. She spread
the leaves and looked down among the close-growing stems. No aphids were
there, no sowbugs or snails or cutworms. Her terrier fingers destroyed
such pests before they could get started.
Elisa started at the sound of her husband's voice.
He had come near quietly, and he leaned over the wire fence that
protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens.
"At it again," he said. "You've got
a strong new crop coming."
Elisa straightened her back and pulled on the
gardening glove again. "Yes. They'll be strong this coming
year." In her tone and on her face there was a little smugness.
You've got a gift with things," Henry
observed. "Some of those yellow chrysanthemums you had this year
were ten inches across. I wish you'd work out in the orchard and raise
some apples that big."
Her eyes sharpened. "Maybe I could do it, too.
I've a gift with things, all right. My mother had it. She could stick
anything in the ground and make it grow. She said it was having planters'
hands that knew how to do it."
"Well, it sure works with flowers," he
said.
"Henry, who were those men you were talking
to?"
"Why, sure, that's what I came to tell you.
They were from the Western Meat Company. I sold those thirty head of
three-year-old steers. Got nearly my own price, too."
"Good," she said. "Good for
you.
"And I thought," he continued, "I
thought how it's Saturday afternoon, and we might go into Salinas for
dinner at a restaurant, and then to a picture show—to celebrate, you
see."
"Good," she repeated. "Oh, yes. That
will be good."
Henry put on his joking tone. "There's fights
tonight. How'd you like to go to the fights?"
"Oh, no," she said breathlessly.
"No, I wouldn't like fights."
"Just fooling, Elisa. We'll go to a movie.
Let's see. It's two now. I'm going to take Scotty and bring down those
steers from the hill. It'll take us maybe two hours. We'll go in town
about five and have dinner at the Cominos Hotel. Like that?"
"Of course I'll like it. It's good to eat away
from home."
"All right, then. I'll go get up a couple of
horses."
She said, "I'll have plenty of time to
transplant some of these sets, I guess."
She heard her husband calling Scotty down by the
barn. And a little later she saw the two men ride up the pale yellow
hillside in search of the steers.
There was a little square sandy bed kept for
rooting the chrysanthemums. With her trowel she turned the soil over and
over, and smoothed it and patted it firm. Then she dug ten parallel
trenches to receive the sets. Back at the chrysanthemum bed she pulled
out the little crisp shoots, trimmed off the leaves of each one with her
scissors and laid it on a small orderly pile.
A squeak of wheels and plod of hoofs came from the
road. Elisa looked up. The country road ran along the dense bank of
willows and cotton-woods that bordered the river, and up this road came a
curious vehicle, curiously drawn. It was an old spring-wagon, with a
round canvas top on it like the cover of a prairie schooner. It was drawn
by an old bay horse and a little grey-and-white burro. A big stubble bearded
man sat between the cover flaps and drove the crawling team. Underneath
the wagon, between the hind wheels, a lean and rangy mongrel dog walked sedately.
Words were painted on the canvas in clumsy, crooked letters. "Pots, pans,
knives, sisors, lawn mores, Fixed." Two rows of articles, and the
triumphantly definitive "Fixed" below. The black paint had run
down in little sharp points beneath each letter.
Elisa, squatting on the ground, watched to see the
crazy, loose-jointed wagon pass by. But it didn't pass. It turned into
the farm road in front of her house, crooked old wheels skirling and
squeaking. The rangy dog darted from between the wheels and ran ahead.
Instantly the two ranch shepherds flew out at him. Then all three
stopped, and with stiff and quivering tails, with taut straight legs,
with ambassadorial dignity, they slowly circled, sniffing daintily. The
caravan pulled up to Elisa's wire fence and stopped. Now the newcomer
dog, feeling outnumbered, lowered his tail and retired under the wagon
with raised hackles and bared teeth.
The man on the wagon seat called out, "That's
a bad dog in a fight when he gets started."
Elisa laughed. "I see he is. How soon does he
generally get started?" The man caught up her laughter and echoed
it heartily. "Sometimes not for weeks
and weeks," he said. He climbed stiffly down, over
the wheel. The horse and the donkey drooped like unwatered flowers.
Elisa saw that he was a very big man. Although his
hair and beard were graying, he did not look old. His worn black suit was
wrinkled and spotted with grease. The laughter had disappeared from his
face and eyes the moment his laughing voice ceased. His eyes were dark,
and they were full of the brooding that gets in the eyes of teamsters and
of sailors. The calloused hands he rested on the wire fence were cracked,
and every crack was a black line. He took off his battered hat.
"I'm off my general road, ma'am," he
said. "Does this dirt road cut over across the river to the Los
Angeles highway?"
Elisa stood up and shoved the thick scissors in her
apron pocket. "Well, yes, it does, but it winds around and then
fords the river. I don't think your team could pull through the
sand."
He replied with some asperity, "It might
surprise you what them beasts can pull through."
"When they get started?" she asked.
He smiled for a second. "Yes. When they get started."
"Well," said Elisa, "I think you'll
save time if you go back to the Salinas road and pick up the highway
there."
He drew a big finger down the chicken wire and made
it sing. "I ain't in any hurry, ma am. I go from Seattle to San
Diego and back every year. Takes all my time. About six months each way.
I aim to follow nice weather."
Elisa took off her gloves and stuffed them in the
apron pocket with the scissors. She touched the under edge of her man's
hat, searching for fugitive hairs. "That sounds like a nice kind of
a way to live," she said.
He leaned confidentially over the fence.
"Maybe you noticed the writing on my wagon. I mend pots and sharpen
knives and scissors. You got any of them things to do?"
"Oh,
no," she said quickly. "Nothing like that." Her eyes hardened
with resistance.
"Scissors
is the worst thing," he explained. "Most people just ruin scissors
trying to sharpen 'em, but I know how. I got a special tool. It's a
little bobbit kind of thing, and patented. But it sure does the
trick."
"No. My scissors are all sharp."
"All right,
then. Take a pot," he continued earnestly, "a bent pot, or a pot with
a hole. I can make it like new so you don't have to buy no new ones.
That's a saving for you.
"No," she said shortly. "I tell you
I have nothing like that for you to do."
His face fell to an exaggerated sadness. His voice
took on a whining undertone. "I ain't had a thing to do today. Maybe
I won't have no supper tonight. You see I'm off my regular road. I know
folks on the highway clear from Seattle to San Diego. They
save their things for me to sharpen up because they know
I do it so good and save them money.
"I'm sorry," Elisa said irritably.
"I haven't anything for you to do."
His eyes left her face and fell to searching the
ground. They roamed about until they came to the chrysanthemum bed where
she had been working. "What's them plants, ma'am?"
The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa's
face. "Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant whites and yellows. I
raise them every year, bigger than anybody around here."
"Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a
quick puff of colored smoke?" he asked.
"That's it. What a nice way to describe
them."
"They smell kind of nasty till you get used to
them," he said.
"It's a good bitter smell," she retorted,
"not nasty at all."
He changed his tone quickly. "I like the smell
myself."
"I had ten-inch blooms this year," she
said.
The man leaned farther over the fence. "Look.
I know a lady down the road a piece, has got the nicest garden you ever
seen. Got nearly every kind of flower but no chrysanthemums. Last time I
was mending a copper-bottom washtub for her (that's a hard job but I do
it good), she said to me, 'If you ever run acrost some nice
chrysanthemums I wish you'd try to get me a few seeds.' That's what she told
me."
Elisa's eyes grew alert and eager. "She
couldn't have known much about chrysanthemums. You can raise
them from seed, but it's much easier to root the little sprouts you see
there."
"Oh," he said. "I s'pose I can't
take none to her, then."
"Why yes you can," Elisa cried. "I
can put some in damp sand, and you can carry them right along with you.
They'll take root in the pot if you keep them damp. And then she can
transplant them."
"She'd sure like to have some, ma'am. You say
they're nice ones?"
"Beautiful," she said. "Oh,
beautiful." Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered hat and shook
out her dark pretty hair. "I'll put them in a flower pot, and you
can take them right with you. Come into the yard."
While the man came through the picket fence Elisa
ran excitedly along the geranium-bordered path to the back of the house.
And she returned carrying a big red flower pot. The gloves were forgotten
now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting bed and dug up the sandy
soil with her fingers and scooped it into the bright new flower pot. Then
she picked up the little pile of shoots she had prepared. With her strong
fingers she pressed them into the sand and tamped around them with her
knuckles. The man stood over her. "I'll tell you what to do," she
said. "You remember so you can tell the lady."
"Yes, I'll try to remember."
"Well, look. These will take root in about a
month. Then she must set them out, about a foot apart in good rich earth
like this, see?" She lifted a handful of dark soil for him to look
at. "They'll grow fast and tall. Now remember this. In July tell her to
cut them down, about eight inches from the ground."
"Before they bloom?" he asked.
"Yes, before they bloom." Her face was
tight with eagerness. "They'll grow right up again. About the last
of September the buds will start."
She stopped and seemed perplexed. "It's the
budding that takes the most care," she said hesitantlv. "I
don't know how to tell you." She looked deep into his eyes,
searchingly. Her mouth opened a little, and she seemed to be listening. "I'll
try to tell you," she said. "Did you ever hear of planting
hands?"
"Can't say I have, ma'am."
"Well, I can only tell you what it feels like.
It's when you're picking off the buds you don't want. Everything goes
right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work. They do it
themselves. You can feel how it is. They pick and pick the buds. They
never make a mistake. They're with the plant. Do you see? Your fingers
and the plant. You can feel that, right up your arm. They know. They never make
a mistake. You can feel it. When you're like that you can't do anything
wrong. Do you
see that? Can you understand that?"
She was kneeling on the ground looking up at him.
Her breast swelled passionately.
The man's eyes narrowed. He looked away
self-consciously. "Maybe I know," he said. "Sometimes in
the night in the wagon there—"
Elisa's voice grew husky. She broke in on him.
"I've never lived as you do, but I know what you mean. When the
night is dark—why, the stars are sharp-pointed, and there's quiet. Why,
you rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's
like that. Hot and sharp and—lovely."
Kneeling there, her hand went out toward his legs
in the greasy black trousers. Her hesitant fingers almost touched the
cloth. Then her hand dropped to the ground. She crouched low like a
fawning dog.
He said,
"It's nice, just like you say. Only when you don't have no dinner, it
ain't."
She stood up
then, very straight, and her face was ashamed. She held the flower pot
out to him and placed it gently in his arms. "Here. Put it in your wagon,
on the seat, where you can watch it. Maybe I can find something for you
to do."
At the back of
the house she dug in the can pile and found two old and battered aluminum
saucepans. She carried them back and gave them to him. "Here, maybe
you can fix these."
His manner changed. He became professional.
"Good as new I can fix them." At the back of his wagon he set a
little anvil, and out of an oily tool box dug a small machine hammer.
Elisa came through the gate to watch him while he pounded out the dents
in the kettles. His mouth grew sure and knowing. At a difficult part of
the work he sucked his under-lip.
"You sleep right in the wagon?" Elisa
asked.
"Right in the wagon, ma'am. Rain or shine I'm
dry as a cow in there."
It must be nice," she said. "It must be
very nice. I wish women could do such things."
"It ain't the right kind of a life for a
woman.
Her upper lip raised a little, showing her teeth.
"How do you know? How can you tell?" she said.
"I don't know, ma'am," he protested.
"Of course I don't know. Now here's your
kettles, done. You don't have to buy no new
ones."
"How much?"
"Oh, fifty cents'll do. I keep my prices down
and my work good. That's why I have all them satisfied customers up and
down the highway."
Elisa brought him a fifty-cent piece from the house
and dropped it in his hand. "You might be surprised to have a rival
some time. I can sharpen scissors, too. And I can beat the dents out of
little pots. I could show you what a woman might do."
He put his hammer back in the oily box and shoved
the little anvil out of sight. "It would be a lonely life for a
woman, ma'am, and a scarey life, too, with animals creeping under the
wagon all night." He climbed over the singletree, steadying himself
with a hand on the burro's white rump. He settled himself in the seat,
picked up the lines. "Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said.
"I'll do like you told me; I'll go back and catch the Salinas
road."
"Mind," she called, "if you're long
in getting there, keep the sand damp."
"Sand, ma'am?. .. Sand? Oh, sure. You mean
around the chrysanthemums. Sure I will." He clucked his tongue. The
beasts leaned luxuriously into their collars. The mongrel dog took his
place between the back wheels. The wagon turned and crawled out the
entrance road and back the way it had come, along the river.
Elisa stood in front of her wire fence watching the
slow progress of the caravan. Her shoulders were straight, her head
thrown back, her eyes half-closed, so that the scene came vaguely into
them. Her lips moved silently, forming the words "Good bye—good-bye."
Then she whispered, "That's a bright direction. There's a glowing
there." The sound of her whisper startled her. She
shook herself free and looked about to see whether anyone had been
listening. Only the dogs had heard. They lifted their heads toward her
from their sleeping in the dust, and then stretched out their chins and
settled asleep again. Elisa turned and ran hurriedly into the house.
In the kitchen she reached behind the stove and
felt the water tank. It was full of hot water from the noonday cooking.
In the bathroom she tore off her soiled clothes and flung them into the
corner. And then she scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice, legs
and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until her skin was scratched and
red. When she had dried herself she stood in front of a
mirror in her bedroom and looked at her body. She tightened her stomach
and threw out her chest. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her
back.
After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put
on her newest underclothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which
was the symbol of her prettiness. She worked carefully on her hair,
pencilled her eyebrows and rouged her lips.
Before she was finished she heard the little
thunder of hoofs and the shouts of Henry and his helper as they drove the
red steers into the corral. She heard the gate bang shut and set herself
for Henry's arrival.
His step sounded on the porch. He entered the house
calling, "Elisa, where are you?"
"In my room, dressing. I'm not ready. There's
hot water for your bath. Hurry up. It's getting late."
When she heard him splashing in the tub, Elisa laid
his dark suit on the bed, and shirt and socks and tie beside it. She
stood his polished shoes on the floor beside the bed. Then she went to
the porch and sat primly and stiffly down. She looked toward the river
road where the willow-line was still yellow with frosted leaves so that
under the high grey fog they seemed a thin band of sunshine. This was the only
color in the grey afternoon. She sat unmoving for a long time. Her eyes
blinked rarely.
Henry came banging out of the door, shoving his tie
inside his vest as he came. Elisa stiffened and her face grew tight.
Henry stopped short and looked at her. "Why—why, Elisa. You look so
nice!"
"Nice? You think I look nice? What do you mean
by 'nice'?"
Henry blundered on. "I don't know. I mean you
look different, strong and happy." "I am strong? Yes, strong.
What do you mean 'strong'?"
He looked
bewildered. "You're playing some kind of a game," he said
helplessly. "It's a kind of a play. You look strong enough to break
a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a
watermelon."
For a second she lost her rigidity. "Henry!
Don't talk like that. You didn't know what you said." She grew
complete again. "I'm strong," she boasted. "I never knew
before how strong."
Henry looked down toward the tractor shed, and when
he brought his eyes back to her, they were his own again. "I'll get
out the car. You can put on your coat while I'm starting."
Elisa went into the house. She heard him drive to
the gate and idle down his motor, and then she took a long time to put on
her hat. She pulled it here and pressed it there. When Henry turned the
motor off she slipped into her coat and went out.
The little roadster bounced along on the dirt road
by the river, raising the birds and driving the rabbits into the brush.
Two cranes flapped heavily over the willow-
line and dropped into the river-bed.
Far ahead on the road Elisa saw a dark speck. She
knew.
She tried not to look as they passed it, but her
eyes would not obey. She whispered to herself sadly, "He might have
thrown them off the road. That wouldn't have been much trouble, not very
much. But he kept the pot," she explained. "He had to keep the
pot. That's why he couldn't get them off the road."
The roadster turned a bend and she saw the caravan
ahead. She swung full around toward her husband so she could not see the
little covered wagon and the mismatched team as the car passed
them.
In a moment it was over. The thing was done. She
did not look back.
She said loudly, to be heard above the motor,
"It will be good, tonight, a good dinner."
"Now you're changed again," Henry
complained. He took one hand from the wheel and patted her knee. "I
ought to take you in to dinner oftener. It would be good for both of us.
We get so heavy out on the ranch."
"Henry," she asked, "could we have
wine at dinner?"
"Sure we could. Say! That will be
fine."
She was silent for a while; then she said,
"Henry, at those prize fights, do the men hurt each other very
much?"
"Sometimes a little, not often.
Why?"
"Well, I've read how they break noses, and
blood runs down their chests. I've read how the fighting gloves get heavy
and soggy with blood."
He looked around at her. "What's the matter,
Elisa? I didn't know you read things like that." He brought the car
to a stop, then turned to the right over the Salinas River bridge.
"Do any women ever go to the fights?" she
asked.
"Oh, sure, some. What's the matter, Elisa? Do
you want to go? I don't think you'd like it, but I'll take you if you
really want to go."
She relaxed limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I
don't want to go. I'm sure I don't." Her face was turned away from
him. "It will be enough if we can have wine. It will
be plenty." She turned up her coat collar so he
could not see that she was crying weakly—like an old woman.
John E Steinbeck
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