John Passos - Manhattan transfer

The gaslamps tremble a while down the purplecold streets and then go out under the lurid dawn. Gus McNiel, the sleep still gumming his eyes, walks beside his wagon swinging a wire basket of milkbottles, stopping at doors, collecting the empties, climbing chilly stairs, remembering grades A and B and pints of cream and buttermilk, while the sky behind cornices, tanks, roofpeaks, chimneys becomes rosy and yellow. Hoarfrost glistens on doorsteps and curbs. The horse with dangling head lurches jerkily from door to door. There begin to be dark footprints on the frosty pavement. A heavy brewers’ dray rumbles down the street.

‘Howdy Moike, a little chilled are ye?’ shouts Gus McNiel at a cop threshing his arms on the corner of Eighth Avenue.

‘Howdy Gus. Cows still milkin’?’

It’s broad daylight when he finally slaps the reins down on the gelding’s threadbare rump and starts back to the dairy, empties bouncing and jiggling in the cart behind him. At Ninth Avenue a train shoots overhead clattering downtown behind a little green engine that emits blobs of smoke white and dense as cottonwool to melt in the raw air between the stiff blackwindowed houses. The first rays of the sun pick out the gilt lettering of DANIEL MC-GILLYCUDDY’S WINES AND LIQUORS at the corner of Tenth Avenue. Gus McNiel’s tongue is dry and the dawn has a salty taste in his mouth. A can o beer’d be the makin of a guy a cold mornin like this. He takes a turn with the reins round the whip and jumps over the wheel. His numb feet sting when they hit the pavement. Stamping to get the blood back into his toes he shoves through the swinging doors.

‘Well I’ll be damned if it aint the milkman bringin us a pint o cream for our coffee.’ Gus spits into the newly polished cuspidor beside the bar.

‘Boy, I got a thoist on me…’

‘Been drinkin too much milk again, Gus, I’ll warrant,’ roars the barkeep out of a square steak face.

The saloon smells of brasspolish and fresh sawdust. Through an open window a streak of ruddy sunlight caresses the rump of a naked lady who reclines calm as a hardboiled egg on a bed of spinach in a giltframed picture behind the bar.

‘Well Gus what’s yer pleasure a foine cold mornin loike this?’

‘I guess beer’ll do, Mac’

The foam rises in the glass, trembles up, slops over. The barkeep cuts across the top with a wooden scoop, lets the foam settle a second, then puts the glass under the faintly wheezing spigot again. Gus is settling his heel comfortably against the brass rail.

‘Well how’s the job?’

Gus gulps the glass of beer and makes a mark on his neck with his flat hand before wiping his mouth with it. ‘Full up to the neck wid it… I tell yer what I’m goin to do, I’m goin to go out West, take up free land in North Dakota or somewhere an raise wheat… I’m pretty handy round a farm… This here livin in the city’s no good.’

‘How’ll Nellie take that?’

‘She wont cotton to it much at foist, loikes her comforts of home an all that she’s been used to, but I think she’ll loike it foine onct she’s out there an all. This aint no loife for her nor me neyther.’

‘You’re right there. This town’s goin to hell… Me and the misses’ll sell out here some day soon I guess. If we could buy a noice genteel restaurant uptown or a roadhouse, that’s what’d suit us. Got me eye on a little property out Bronxville way, within easy drivin distance.’ He lifts a malletshaped fist meditatively to his chin. ‘I’m sick o bouncin these goddam drunks every night. Whade hell did I get outen the ring for xep to stop fightin? Jus last night two guys starts asluggin an I has to mix it up with both of em to clear the place out… I’m sick o fighten every drunk on Tenth Avenoo… Have somethin on the house?’

‘Jez I’m afraid Nellie’ll smell it on me.’

‘Oh, niver moind that. Nellie ought to be used to a bit of drinkin. Her ole man loikes it well enough.’

‘But honest Mac I aint been slopped once since me weddinday.’

‘I dont blame ye. She’s a real sweet girl Nellie is. Those little spitcurls o hers’d near drive a feller crazy.’

The second beer sends a foamy acrid flush to Gus’s fingertips. Laughing he slaps his thigh.

‘She’s a pippin, that’s what she is Gus, so ladylike an all.’

‘Well I reckon I’ll be gettin back to her.’

‘You lucky young divil to be goin home to bed wid your wife when we’re all startin to go to work.’

Gus’s red face gets redder. His ears tingle. ‘Sometimes she’s abed yet… So long Mac.’ He stamps out into the street again.

The morning has grown bleak. Leaden clouds have settled down over the city. ‘Git up old skin an bones,’ shouts Gus jerking at the gelding’s head. Eleventh Avenue is full of icy dust, of grinding rattle of wheels and scrape of hoofs on the cobblestones. Down the railroad tracks comes the clang of a locomotive bell and the clatter of shunting freightcars. Gus is in bed with his wife talking gently to her: Look here Nellie, you wouldn’t moind movin West would yez? I’ve filed application for free farmin land in the state o North Dakota, black soil land where we can make a pile o money in wheat; some fellers git rich in foive good crops… Healthier for the kids anyway… ‘Hello Moike!’ There’s poor old Moike still on his beat. Cold work bein a cop. Better be a wheatfarmer an have a big farmhouse an barns an pigs an horses an cows an chickens… Pretty curlyheaded Nellie feedin the chickens at the kitchen door…

‘Hay dere for crissake…’ a man is yelling at Gus from the curb. ‘Look out for de cars!’

A yelling mouth gaping under a visored cap, a green flag waving. ‘Godamighty I’m on the tracks.’ He yanks the horse’s head round. A crash rips the wagon behind him. Cars, the gelding, a green flag, red houses whirl and crumble into blackness.

All along the rails there were faces; in the portholes there were faces. Leeward a stale smell came from the tubby steamer that rode at anchor listed a little to one side with the yellow quarantine flag drooping at the foremast.

‘I’d give a million dollars,’ said the old man resting on his oars, ‘to know what they come for.’

‘Just for that pop,’ said the young man who sat in the stern. ‘Aint it the land of opportoonity?’

‘One thing I do know,’ said the old man. ‘When I was a boy it was wild Irish came in the spring with the first run of shad… Now there aint no more shad, an them folks, Lord knows where they come from.’

‘It’s the land of opportoonity.’

A leanfaced young man with steel eyes and a thin highbridged nose sat back in a swivel chair with his feet on his new mahogany-finish desk. His skin was sallow, his lips gently pouting. He wriggled in the swivel chair watching the little scratches his shoes were making on the veneer. Damn it I dont care. Then he sat up suddenly making the swivel shriek and banged on his knee with his clenched fist. ‘Results,’ he shouted. Three months I’ve sat rubbing my tail in this swivel chair… What’s the use of going through lawschool and being admitted to the bar if you cant find anybody to practice on? He frowned at the gold lettering through the groundglass door.

NIWDLABEGROEG

WAL-TA-YENROTT A

Niwdlab, Welsh. He jumped to his feet. I’ve read that damn sign backwards every day for three months. I’m going crazy. I’ll go out and eat lunch.

He straightened his vest and brushed some flecks of dust off his shoes with a handkerchief, then, contracting his face into an expression of intense preoccupation, he hurried out of his office, trotted down the stairs and out onto Maiden Lane. In front of the chophouse he saw the headline on a pink extra; JAPS THROWN BACK FROM MUKDEN. He bought the paper and folded it under his arm as he went in through the swinging door. He took a table and pored over the bill of fare. Mustn’t be extravagant now. ‘Waiter you can bring me a New England boiled dinner, a slice of applepie and coffee.’ The longnosed waiter wrote the order on his slip looking at it sideways with a careful frown… That’s the lunch for a lawyer without any practice. Baldwin cleared his throat and unfolded the paper… Ought to liven up the Russian bonds a bit. Veterans Visit President… ANOTHER ACCIDENT ON ELEVENTH AVENUE TRACKS. Milkman seriously injured. Hello, that’d make a neat little damage suit.