Jack London

When God Laughs Jack London

Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows, looked upwardat the beamed roof, and listened for a moment to the savage roar of the south-easter as itcaught the bungalow in its bellowing jaws. Then he held his glass between him and the fireand laughed for joy through the golden wine."It is beautiful," he said. "It is sweetly sweet. It is a woman's wine, and it was made forgray-robed saints to drink.""We grow it on our own warm hills," I said, with pardonable California pride. "You rodeup yesterday through the vines from which it was made."It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really himself until hefelt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, alwaysan artist; but somehow, sober, the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes andhe was prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday-not dull as other men are dull, butdull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez was when he was reallyhimself. From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear friend and dearercomrade, was a sot. Far from it. He rarely erred. As I have said, he was an artist. He knewwhen he had enough, and enough, with him, was equilibrium-the equilibrium that isyours and mine when we are sober. His was a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek. Yet he was farfrom Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I have heard him say. And in truth helooked it, a compound of strange and ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and theasymmetry and primitiveness of his features. His eyes, under massively arched brows, were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while before them wasperpetually falling down a great black mop of hair through which he gazed like a roguishsatyr from a thicket. He invariably wore a soft flannel shirt under his velvet-corduroyjacket, and his necktie was red. This latter stood for the red flag (he had once lived with thesocialists of Paris), and it symbolized the blood and brotherhood of man. Also, he had neverbeen known to wear anything on his head save a leather-banded sombrero. It was evenrumoured that he had been born with this particular piece of headgear. And in myexperience it was provocative of nothing short of sheer delight to see that Mexicansombrero hailing a cab in Piccadilly or storm-tossed in the crush for the New YorkElevated