Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

“Who may sleep here?”

“Anyone. No one is asked his name. No one is asked about his occupation or his past. Here night lodgers receive bed, coffee, and bread free of charge. In the morning they also get coffee and bread. Then they are free to go away. The sole condition is that they must take part in the evening and morning prayers.”

The singing that reached us from the house gave evidence of the fact that at this very moment this sole condition was being fulfilled. We went in.

Previously, about twenty-five years ago, there was a Chinese opium smoking den in this dwelling. It had been a dirty and dismal den of iniquity. Since then it had become cleaner, but, while losing its erstwhile exoticism, it did not become less dismal. The upper part of the former den of iniquity was devoted to prayer meetings, while below, the sleeping quarters consisted of bare walls, a bare stone floor, and canvas folding cots. That odour of coffee and dampness, which is always a part of hospital and charity cleanliness, permeated all.

In a word, this was an American staging of Gorky’s Lower Depths.

In this bedraggled hall the night lodgers sat stiffly on benches that came down in an amphitheatre toward a small stage. As soon as the singing stopped, the next number on the programme began.

Between an American national flag, which stood on the stage, and Biblical texts, which hung all over the walls, a pinkish old man in a black suit jumped like a clown.

He talked and gesticulated with such passion that he gave the impression of selling something. Yet he was merely telling the instructive history of his life, telling about the beneficent crisis when he turned his heart back to God.

He had been a tramp (“as frightful a tramp as you, old devils!”), he had carried on horribly, had used profane language (“remember your own habits, my friends”), he stole – yes, all of that happened, too, alas! But now it was all done with.

Now he owned his own home and lived like a decent man (“Hasn’t God created us in his own image, in his own manner?”). Not long ago he had even bought himself a radio receiving set. And all this he had received directly with the help of God.

The old man talked with extraordinary facility; it seemed therefore I hat he was now appearing for at least the thousandth time.