The Bell Tolls for No One. Charles Bukowski

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      “How about it, Mona?”

      “All right, goddamn it, but he shouldn’t!”

      I’d go get him a quart and he’d light up all over. We’d go inside and he’d show me photos taken when he’d first met Mona in France. He was in his uniform. He’d met her on a train. Something about a train. He’d gotten her a seat on the train when the brass had wanted to kick her off. Something like that. The photos were of 2 young and beautiful people. I could not believe that they were the same people. My guts hurt like murder. They gave me some kummel they said Mick couldn’t have. I made fast work of the kummel. “You were a very handsome man, Mick.” There he sat, puffed out of belief, all chance gone. “And Mona. What a babe! I still love you!” I said. Mick really liked that. He wanted me to know that he’d caught a good one. I think it was about a week later I saw Mona outside the apartment house.

      “Mick died last night,” she said.

      I just kept looking at her. “Shit, I don’t know what to say. Even all puffed up like that I didn’t think he would die.”

      “I know,” she said. “And we both liked you very much.”

      I couldn’t handle it. I turned around and walked into the apartment house entrance, right past apt. #1 where we had had so many good nights. He wasn’t in there anymore. He was gone like last year’s Christmas or an old pair of shoes. What shit. I made my way up the stairs and started in. The Coward. I drank, I drank, I drank, I drank. Escapism. Drunkards are escapists, they say, unable to face reality.

      Later, I heard, she went to Denver to live with a sister.

      And the writers keep writing and the artists keep painting but it doesn’t mean too much.

      I was always rather indifferent to politics, but before the election, I couldn’t help but see some of the fools while turning toward the race results. Horserace results, I mean. They all said Nixon was in. Which I felt was a little worse than Humphrey, but when Wallace won by a landslide I was as stupefied as the next. And when he was sworn into office, things began to happen. Le May stated that unless the war were won within a month or the enemy surrendered he might have to H-bomb N. Vietnam, maybe China. Maybe Russia. “A man’s got to be a MAN!” he stated. “He’s got to show his guts! Old Teddy Roosevelt knew how to handle bums!” Wallace simply grinned. He grinned simply. “Atta boy, baby!” he said. “Wow!”

      They set up machine guns in the black districts and rapidly began solving the housing problem. “I’m not a racist,” said Wallace, “but I figure if a man is poor or black, it’s his own fault.”

      Le May grinned, “Yeh.”

      Layoffs began everywhere. One man had to do the work of two at half the wages of one man. The relief rolls were closed down, old age pensions terminated. The police force was tripled, new concentration camps and jails were built. At any hour of the day or night you could hear machinegun fire. Blacks were only allowed on the streets between sunup and sundown, and they were restricted to designated areas. An underground product hit the market: WHITEWASH, a white coloring to cover black. A white man’s wig and a bit of WHITEWASH and you had a bit of a better chance. But most Negroes refused to use it. The Mexican and Indian population received similar treatment, though not as harsh.

      There were 30 million unemployed and aged wandering the streets. When a man or woman or child fell dead of starvation or were murdered by the police or troops, they had what were called “A” cars—“A” for assholes who didn’t know HOW to survive, baby. The “A” cars patrolled the streets constantly, working something on the order of street sweeper machines. Only instead of sucking up leaves and paper, various trash, the “A” cars sucked up the newly dead bodies of women, children, the aged, and various unfortunate men. “We must keep our cities sanitary,” President Wallace stated. The bodies were burned just like the books in the library. Not all the books in the library were burned, but a good 85 percent. A good 95 percent of paintings and statuary were destroyed as being “decadent to a good American Society.” All editors of left-wing newspapers were tortured before hundreds of thousands of spectators in the baseball and football stadiums of America. And as the editors screamed in their agony, being cut and torn slowly to bits, a record was played over the loudspeakers: GOD BLESS AMERICA! While the torturers said to their victims as they worked: “Remember Hungary! Remember Prague!” And evangelical Baptist ministers stood behind the victims’ heads, dangling huge silver crucifixes before their eyes. No admission was charged, whether the man to be tortured was black or white.

      Of course, I had lost my job and was sitting on my last month’s rent. The end was working toward me. They had just finished the demolition of the L.A. County General Hospital so I had no place to go. I had lost 48 pounds, was starving, but still, in a cowardly way, I thought, well, at least almost ALL of my writing has been non-political. I will be allowed to die of starvation instead of being murdered, but like George said, it was my own fault: I just couldn’t play a good game of chess. God protects those who protect themselves. All that shit.

      So I was somewhat surprised when the 3 men arrived and showed me their badges. They seated themselves about me.

      “Well, Slim, we gotta ask ya some questions.”

      “Shoot!” I said.

      One of the motherfuckers drew out a gun and leveled it at me, clicking off the safety latch.

      “WAIT, MAN! THAT’S JUST AN EXPRESSION!”

      “Oh?” he said and put the gun back.

      “You’re Charles Bukowski?” the big one asked.

      “Yeh.”

      “You used to work for that son of a bitch Bryan?”

      “Yeh.”

      “We’ve gone over your stuff. Mostly sex shit. I kinda liked it. Especially where you stuck your dick up your buddy’s ass because you were drunk and you thought you were in bed with your girl. Did that really happen?”

      “Yeh.”

      “So we checked out the 192 articles you wrote in 192 weeks and only ONE of them wuz about POLITICS . . .”

      “The one on the merits and demerits of Revolution. Yes, I remember it.”

      “But we don’t quite understand it. What did it mean?”

      “It meant that unless your soul and hand were straight, Revolution was useless—it only meant substituting one kind of Economic Slavery for another. It meant, if you were going to kill somebody make sure you had something at least 5 times as good to replace it with.”

      All three of them sat back writing in little notebooks.

      “Is Hitler really alive in Argentina?” I asked.

      “Uhh, huh,” the big one said. “He’s coming up next month to vacation in Vegas. He keeps asking for postcards of those chorus girls. You know, the last thing to die on an old German is his dick.”

      “Yeh?”

      “Hey.”

      They all put their pencils down and looked at me. They didn’t say anything for 5 minutes. Part of some kind of training they were put through. Finally the big one said, “Mr. Bukowski?”

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