The Bell Tolls for No One. Charles Bukowski

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?”

      “Yeh?”

      “Would you allow your daughter to marry a nigger?”

      “Yeh.”

      “WHAT?”

      They all leaned a bit forward.

      “Oh,” I said, “I mean, it’s all up to her. I mean, the kid’s only four. I don’t think she wants to marry anybody yet.”

      They stared at me a long time again.

      “Did you like the hippies?” (The hippies had long ago been exterminated.)

      “Not really. But they never hurt me or bothered me. What more can you ask?”

      “Are you for the war in Vietnam?”

      “I’ve never been for any war. I wasn’t even for the war against Hitler.”

      “Atta boy!” said the middle-sized one, putting his gun back.

      Again they sat for a long time, just looking at me.

      “Well, I’m afraid we gotta take you in, Bukowski,” the big guy said.

      “All right, at least I’ll get some food in jail.”

      They all laughed at that.

      “No, the new jail system is juz jail them. Don’t feed them. Saves a hellulota money for the state.”

      “God bless the State,” I said, “and while He’s at it He might as well bless the Saturday Evening Post.”

      “Oh no,” said the big one. “The Saturday Evening Post has been burned.”

      “Why?” I asked.

      “Too left-wing,” said the fat boy.

      “Jesus Christ,” I said, “let’s get out of here and get it done with.”

      “Before we get you down there and work you over,” said the fat boy, “I just want to let you have one bit of mental unhappiness.”

      “Shoot!” I said. “No, I mean, tell me about it.”

      They put the bracelets on me. And walked me toward the door. The middle-sized one farted. A sign of happiness.

      “Since you are being taken out of circulation, I am free to tell you this.”

      He looked at his watch. “We have been careful not to have any leaks, so I can tell you this. A shit like you deserves unhappiness.”

      “All right. Let me have it.”

      We walked toward the door. Fat boy looked at his watch.

      “In exactly 2 hours and 16 minutes Vice President Le-May will push the button that will set a fusillade of Hbombs upon N. Vietnam, China, Russia and other selected spots. What do you think of that?”

      “I think it is a tactical mistake,” I said.

      Fat boy reached to open the door. As he opened it, a sheet of red and grey and green and purple spread everywhere. There was lightning. And lily slivers. There were teaspoons and half-dogs, ladies stockings, torn cunt, history books, rugs, belts, turtles, teacups, marmalade and spiders flying through the air. I looked around and Fatso was gone and middle-size was gone and the little little shit was gone and the bracelets were broken on my wrists and I was standing in a bathtub and I looked down and I had one ball, a piece of cock, and there were eyes rolling along the ground like ants. Green, brown, blue, yellow, even albino eyes. Fuck. I got out of the tub. Found half a chair. Sat down. I watched my whole left arm shrivel up at once like a piece of burning cellophane.

      How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm? Everything gone: Picasso, Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Rodin, Mozart . . . Jackie Gleason. All the lovely girls. Even the pigs eating any kind of swill, so godly. Even the cops in their tight black pants. Even the cops that I had felt so sorry for, trapped in their nastiness. Life had been good, horrible but good and a few heroes had kept us going. Perhaps wrongly chosen heroes, but what the fuck. The polls had been wrong again—the old Harry Truman shit—Wallace had won, sitting in his mountain top hideaway. Spitting out redneck teeth of hatred—2 hours and 16 minutes too late!

      Hiroshima was re-named America.

      I was in the King’s Crow Bar and this guy sitting next to me asked, “You got any place to stay tonight?”

      And I said, “Hell, no, I don’t have any place to stay.”

      “O.K., come with me. My name’s Teddy Ralstead.”

      So I went with him. That first night I sat in their front room while Teddy and his wife wrestled on the floor. Her dress kept slipping up around her ass and she smiled at me and pulled it down. They wrestled and wrestled and I drank beer.

      Teddy’s wife’s name was Helen. And Teddy wasn’t always around. Helen acted like I had known her for years instead of one night.

      “You’ve never tried to fuck me, have you,