John Passos - Manhattan transfer

The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.

‘Is it too hot?’ mother asked laughing. ‘You must learn to like hot things… He always liked hot things.’

‘Who mother?’

‘Someone I loved very much.’

They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap - dirty words. Mustard’s the color of…

‘A penny for your thoughts.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of anything.’

‘We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.’

‘I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.’

‘Very chilly I should think.’

‘But you wouldn’t feel it… Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.’

‘But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.’

‘When?’

‘Going abroad and coming back.’ She was laughing at him with bright eyes.

‘Oh but that’s in a boat.’

‘And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.’

‘Oh tell me about that muddy.’

There was a knock. ‘Come.’ The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.

‘Can I clear mum?’

‘Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut… Things are wretched this evening.’

Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum,’ he puffed.

‘All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter… What’ll you have Jimmy?’

‘May I have a meringue glacé muddy?’

‘All right if you’ll be very good.’

‘Yea,’ Jimmy let out a yell.

‘Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.’

‘But we dont mind when there are just the two of us… Hooray meringue glacé.’

‘James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.’

‘Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.’

‘I’d be terrified, dear.’

‘I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers… Yes I would.’

The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out… I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.’

‘Oh mother.’

‘Never mind dear… It would have been too rich anyway… You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.’

‘Oh goody.’

‘But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.’

‘I’m all through.’

‘You bolted it you little wretch… Put on your rubbers honey.’

‘But it’s not raining at all.’

‘Do as your mother wants you dear… please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers…’

He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. ‘Oh my darling.’

She was crying.

‘Mother you mustnt.’ He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.’

On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. ‘Goin fer a walk?’ the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.

Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from bandits, thugs, holdup-men, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder with a long automatic, bing… one of em down! that’s the worst of em, bing… there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates, whee… up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of Brooklyn Bridge.

Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. ‘Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,’ he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. ‘Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.’

‘All right, everybody in their turn,’ she snaps. He stands blinking at her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a check on it ‘Pay at the desk.’ I’m not going to cry. The lady at the desk is small and gray-haired. She takes his dollar through a little door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile. He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond lady.

‘Ha… been out abuyin candy,’ said the lighthaired bellhop. ‘I’ll give you some if you come up later,’ whispered Jimmy as he passed. The brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the chocolatecolored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.

‘Mother.’ She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone out, she’d gone away. ‘Mother!’

‘Come here dear,’ came her voice weakly from the bedroom.

He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. ‘Mother what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing honey… I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache… Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.’

She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong, prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.