John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘That’s so good,’ came her voice feebly. ‘Dear call up Aunt Emily, Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want to talk to her… Oh my head’s bursting.’

His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.

‘Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick… She wants you to come around… She’s coming right away mother dear,’ he shouted, ‘isn’t that fine? She’s coming right around.’ He tiptoed back into his mother’s room, picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.

‘Deary’ came her frail voice ‘take the hairpins out of my hair, they hurt my head… Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst…’ He felt gently through her brown hair that was silkier than the teagown and pulled out the hairpins.

‘Ou dont, you are hurting me.’

‘Mother I didn’t mean to.’

Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress, hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She saw her sister lying twisted with pain on the bed and the skinny whitefaced boy in short pants standing beside her with his hands full of hairpins.

‘What is it Lil?’ she asked quietly.

‘My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,’ came Lily Herf’s voice in a gasping hiss.

‘James,’ said Aunt Emily harshly, ‘you must run off to bed… Mother needs perfect quiet.’

‘Good night muddy dear,’ he said.

Aunt Emily patted him on the back. ‘Dont worry James I’ll attend to everything.’ She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a low precise voice.

The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened. Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently lighting up the cabin of the schooner Mary Stuart . All right Captain weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse. He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas. Nowilayme-downtosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake Ipraythelordmysoultotake.

Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into a squashysweet filling. Let’s see…

A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth…

Darn it that’s a hairy one.

AA, Aachen (see Aix-la-Chapelle)

Aardvark…

Gee he’s funny looking…

(orycteropus capensis), a plantigrade animal of the class mammalia, order edentata, peculiar to Africa.

Abd,

Abd-el-halim, an Egyptian prince, son of Mehmet Ali and a white slave woman…

His cheeks burned as he read:

The Queen of the White Slaves.

Abdomen (lat. of undetermined etymology)… the lower part of the body included between the level of the diaphragm and that of the pelvis…

Abelard… The relation of master and pupil was not long preserved. A warmer sentiment than esteem filled their hearts and the unlimited opportunities of intercourse which were afforded them by the canon who confided in Abelard’s age (he was now almost forty), and in his public character, were fatal to the peace of both. The condition of Heloise was on the point of betraying their intimacy… Fulbert now abandoned himself to a transport of savage vindictiveness… burst into Abelard’s chamber with a band of ruffians and gratified his revenge by inflicting on him an atrocious mutilation…

Abelites… denounced sexual intercourse as service of Satan.

Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of Thebez…

Abortion…

No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so many chocolates.

Abracadabra.

Abydos…

He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.

His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead… ? He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop crying.

He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing stickily from its box. The watch had stopped at 1.45. He opened the window, put the chocolates in the bureau drawer and was about to snap off the light when he remembered. Shivering with terror he put on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed down the darkened hall. He listened outside the door. People were talking low. He knocked faintly and turned the knob. A hand pulled the door open hard and Jimmy was blinking in the face of a tall cleanshaven man with gold eyeglasses. The folding doors were closed; in front of them stood a starched nurse.

‘James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,’ said Aunt Emily in a tired whisper. ‘Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s no more danger.’

‘Not for the present at least, Mrs Merivale,’ said the doctor breathing on his eyeglasses.

‘The little dear,’ came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring, ‘he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.’

‘I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘My James always likes that.’

‘May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.’ Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.

The doctor nodded. ‘Well I must go… I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go… Goodnight Mrs Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son…’

‘This way…’ The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.

There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. ‘All right I’ll go back to bed now,’ he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. ‘I hate them. I hate them,’ he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.

‘With all the business you have, madame,’ Emile was saying in a singsong voice, ‘I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.’

‘I know that… I’m killing myself with work; I know that,’ sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: ‘A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.’