He could in no wise become accustomed to the thought that all of our Yanshins and Khmelevs had already grown up and had become, great artists. He could not get accustomed to it, because he measured them by Hollywood standards. Essentially, nothing at all had happened to him in the course of thirteen years. True, he received more money and had his own automobile, but he did not become a famous actor. Only recently, literally a month ago, they began to place his name in the list of players. But before that he did not have even that distinction. They simply used him—some anonymous motion-picture genius with Mexican sideburns and sparkling eyes. Yet he is a very talented actor!

Late that night, accompanying us through the hushed Hollywood streets, he suddenly became excited and began to curse everything.

"Hollywood is a village!" he cried in a passionate voice." It's a fact! A wild village! There is nothing to breathe here!"

And for a long time after that his rich Russian voice was heard throughout California:

"A village! I assure you, it's a village! It's a fact!"

This wailing in the night was the last thing we heard in Hollywood. In the morning we left by train for San Diego, by way of the Santa Fe Railway.

To do this we first went to Los Angeles, which is separated from Hollywood ... as a matter of fact, it is not at all separated from Hollywood, but merges with it, just as Hollywood itself unnoticeably passes into Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills passes into Santa Monica, and Santa Monica into something else.

Los Angeles in translation means "city of angels." Yes, it is a city of angels, smeared in oil. Here, as in Oklahoma City, the oil was found in the city itself, and entire streets are occupied by metal derricks—they tap, pump, make money.

Los Angeles is a ponderous city with large buildings, dirty and populous streets, iron fire escapes which stick out of the facades of houses. This is a California Chicago—brick, slums, the realest kind of poverty and the most revolting wealth.

Just before our departure we saw a long line of people standing before the entrance to a restaurant. A piece of cloth over the regular sign an-246

nounced that here the Salvation Army was giving away free Christmas dinners to the unemployed. The doors of the restaurant were closed. It was still a long wait for the dinner hour. The queue represented all kinds and types of American unemployed—from the tramp with cheeks and chin long unshaven to the tractable clerk who had not yet cast aside his necktie and who had not yet lost the hope of returning to respectable society. Here stood youths—they who had already grown up at the time when jobs vanished, they who had never worked, do not know how to do anything, and have no place to learn a trade. No one needs them, who are full of strength, who are capable young men. Here stood old men, who had worked all their lives, but who will never work again. Fathers of families, honest toilers, who during their toiling lives had enriched more than one boss—they, too, are no longer needed by anyone now. They still hope for something, but nothing will happen.

Upton Sinclair, whom we had met several days before in Pasadena, a small and beautiful California town, said to us:

"Capitalism as a system for bringing to people profit and wages, as a system for giving people means of livelihood, has long ago come to an end in America. But I regret to say that the people have not yet realized it. They think that this is a temporary mishap, of the kind that happened before. They do not understand that never again will capitalism give jobs to fifteen million American unemployed. Since 1930, when it began, the depression has lightened considerably, business is considerably better, yet unemployment does not decrease. People have been replaced by new machines and by the rationalization of production. The richest country in the world, ' God's country,' as Americans call it, a great country, is capable of assuring its people neither jobs, nor bread, nor lodging."

And this great passionate man who all his life had rushed about in search of truth, who had been a liberal and a socialist, and the founder of his own social theory, under the flag of which he had been nominated for governor of California on the Democratic party ticket and even polled nine hundred thousand votes, wearily dropped his head. We sat in his house, a darkish, old-fashioned, dusty house, which did not look livable. The house, too, was old and tired. His attempt to make of California an isolated state where there would be no unemployment came to nothing. Sinclair was not elected governor. But nothing would have come of it even if he had been elected governor.

"I am through with that," Sinclair told us in farewell. " I am returning to my literary work."

Sinclair has a handsome silver head. He was in a grey flannel suit and summer shoes, woven out of narrow strips of leather. In his hand he held a gnarled and crooked stick. He has thus remained in our memory—an old man, standing in the door of his modest old house, lighted by a California sunset, smiling and tired.

The streets of festive Los Angeles were unusually quiet. The railway station seemed empty. At the kiosk were sold newspapers, coloured postcards, five-cent packages of candy. These round candies have a hole in the middle, and they look like a corn plaster. Their taste confirms their visual impression.

Some railroad official snored behind his partition, having pulled his service cap with its lacquered visor down his nose. We entered a Pullman car and sat down on the movable velvet chair which had an antimacassar on its back. The Negro porter soundlessly brought in our suitcases, soundlessly placed them on the baggage rack, and departed without a word.

flight outside the city appeared orange groves. Their bright fruit peeked out of shaggy bearlike foliage. Scores of thousands of trees stood in even rows. The soil between those trees was ideally cleaned, and under each tree stood a kerosene stove. Ten thousand trees and ten thousand stoves. The nights were quite cool, and the oranges needed warm air. After all, winter was on. The stoves produced a greater impression on us than even the orange groves themselves. Again we saw faultless and grandiose American organization.

Unnoticeably orange orchards were supplanted by oil orchards. These were not even orchards, rather thick jungles of oil derricks. They stood on the ocean beach and marched even into the ocean itself.

Then everything was jumbled. Orange and oil groves succeeded each other and into the window at the same time broke the aroma of oranges and the heavy smell of crude oil. Finally, the production of man's hand disappeared from view and before us opened the ocean, vast, proud, and calm. It was the hour of ebb tide and the ocean had retreated far from the shore. The wet bottom of the sea reflected the setting sun. Both suns (the real and reflected one) ran at full speed after the train. The sun descended quickly on the horizon, turned redder than ever, became flat, folded up, lost its shape. Now it was a listless luminary devoid of all splendour. But the ocean continued to run along with the train, rolling a light greenish blue wave without bustling and without pressing for our attention.

The passengers rustled their newspapers, dozed in chairs, walked into the smoking-room, where one could also have a Bacardi or Manhattan cocktail or something else of that kind, talk with a neighbour, chant the ever-recurring "Sure!" or simply doze on velvet divans.

It was already dark when we reached San Diego. At the station we were met by the glad wailing of the Adamses. They were full of Mexican impressions and they simply could not wait to share them with us.