In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

38 ARRAYS
Barcelona's Plaza Catalufia" (145). Like the shelves behind the bartenders
and the minds of the sailors, the chest of a mysterious old man
standing at the door of a bar serves as surface for the inscription of a
similar map in Monsieur Cadeau Intime: "By the door, an old man, a
giant Atlas, sat on a little stone bench, from morning till evening and
even into the night. The children who passed on their way to school
marveled at a panorama of the world-his chest, covered with flashing
signs which represented all the parts of the globe: Indochina, the Congo,
the Sahara, Tunisia, Mexico, Germany" (33).
The most paradoxical effect of Prohibition is that bars proliferate in
American cities during the dry years: "Two years after Corradini had
been able to find but 463 saloons [i.e., in 1924], Izzy Einstein, most
celebrated of Prohibition agents, estimated that there were a hundred
thousand speakeasies in [New York] ... Dr. Charles Norris, chief medical
examiner, said in his report to the mayor for 1925-26 that the
'speakeasies greatly outnumber the licensed saloons of former days'"
(Ashbury, 210). With strategies of repression failing, Prohibition agents
intensify their efforts-thus becoming part of a potentially endless
growth in illegal liquor traffic and illegal drinking: "The very fact that
the law is difficult to enforce ... is the clearest proof of the need for its
existence" (Merz, 185). In B. Traven's novel Das Tatenschiff (The Death
Ship), an American naval officer strongly admonishes the hero to abstain
from illicit pleasures, and the warning itself is enough to launch the sailor
on a tour of the harbor's bars and brothels-and subsequently on a
future of endless travel: "'Don't drink. This is a bad place,' said the
officer ... 'No,' I responded, 'I never drink a drop of this poison. I know
what lowe my country even from far away. Yes, sir. I can be relied upon,
I swear to God, and I'm absolutely dry. You can rely on me.' I was out
and off the boat" (9-10). As the speakeasies constantly move to "yet
another place" in order to throw enforcement agents off the track, their
customers follow the principle of "yet another drink" (Kobler, 228).
Likewise, the metropolitan life of the protagonists in The Sun Also Rises
consists of a constant migration through the "wonderful gentility" (255)
of countless American bars, and even the rural atmosphere of a roadside
inn triggers the specific structure of the drinking ritual: "Two of our
Basques came in and insisted on buying a drink. So they bought a drink
and then we bought a drink, and then they slapped us on the back and
bought another drink. Then we bought, and then we all went back out