John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.’

Bud was tackling the free lunch. ‘Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,’ he explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a baseball game Saturday afternoon.

‘Put it there Lap,’ he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back. ‘You an me’s friends from now on.’

‘Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?’

‘Sure we will.’

‘Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.’

‘Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,’ shouted a tall drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between as they swayed in the swinging doors.

‘Zey vont, vont zey?’ said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.

‘I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,’ roared Bud and slapped him on the back again.

Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked woman tatooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging faces laughed.

Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic, voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets bellying and curling like smoke in the stiff wind shoving down the Hudson out of the northwest.

‘Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Look…’ He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. ‘Isn’t that the Anonda coming in now?’

Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses.

‘Sure it is.’ He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like the sound of a sea shell.

‘Jiminy they were quick about it… They’ll be docked in half an hour… You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan. He’s all fixed… Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in half… Do you get that?’

Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. ‘No danger sir… You ought to know me by this time.’

‘Of course I do… You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.’

Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and rang an electric bell. ‘All right Charlie, show em in,’ he growled at the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from his desk and held out a hand. ‘How do you do Mr Storrow… How do you do Mr Gold… Make yourselves comfortable… That’s it… Now look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know that… I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence, that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably… Of course you must meet me halfway… We have I know the same interests at heart, the interests of this great city, of this great seaport…’ Mr Gold moved his hat to the back of his head and cleared his throat with a loud barking noise. ‘Gentlemen, one of two roads lies before us…’

In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm. He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down the airshaft through the dusty pane where the sun gave a tiny glitter to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing came up faintly from the kitchens.

He stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school.

‘Say Herfy have you learned to fight yet?’

‘Herfy an the Kid are goin to fight for the flyweight championship before lights.’

‘But I don’t want to.’

‘Kid wants to… Here he comes. Make a ring there you ginks.’

‘I dont want to, please.’

‘You’ve damn well got to, we’ll beat hell outa both of ye if you dont.’

‘Say Freddy that’s a nickel fine from you for swearing.’

‘Jez I forgot.’

‘There you go again… Paste him in the slats.’

‘Go it Herfy, I’m bettin on yer.’

‘That’s it sock him.’

The Kid’s white screwedup face bouncing in front of him like a balloon; his fist gets Jimmy in the mouth; a salty taste of blood from the cut lip. Jimmy strikes out, gets him down on the bed, pokes his knee in his belly. They pull him off and throw him back against the wall.

‘Go it Kid.’

‘Go it Herfy.’

There’s a smell of blood in his nose and lungs; his breath rasps. A foot shoots out and trips him up.

‘That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.’

‘Girlboy… Girlboy.’

‘But hell Freddy he had the Kid down.’

‘Shut up, don’t make such a racket… Old Hoppy’ll be coming up.’

‘Just a little friendly bout, wasn’t it Herfy?’

‘Get outa my room, all of you, all of you,’ Jimmy screeches, tear-blinded, striking out with both arms.

‘Crybaby… crybaby.’

He slams the door behind them, pushes the desk against it and crawls trembling into bed. He turns over on his face and lies squirming with shame, biting the pillow.

Jimmy stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.

Your poor mother was very unhappy when she finally put you on the train and went back to her big empty rooms at the hotel. Dear, I am very lonely without you. Do you know what I did? I got out all your toy soldiers, the ones that used to be in the taking of Port Arthur, and set them all out in battalions on the library shelf. Wasn’t that silly? Never mind dear, Christmas’ll soon come round and I’ll have my boy again…

A crumpled face on a pillow; mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Darkgrained skin growing flabby under her eyes, gray creeping up her brown hair. Mother never laughs. The stroke.

He turned back suddenly into the room, threw himself on the bed with a thin leather book in his hand. The surf thundered loud on the barrier reef. He didn’t need to read. Jack was swimming fast through the calm blue waters of the lagoon, stood in the sun on the yellow beach shaking the briny drops off him, opened his nostrils wide to the smell of breadfruit roasting beside his solitary campfire. Birds of bright plumage shrieked and tittered from the tall ferny tops of the coconut palms. The room was drowsy hot. Jimmy fell asleep. There was a strawberry lemon smell, a smell of pineapples on the deck and mother was there in a white suit and a dark man in a yachtingcap, and the sunlight rippled on the milkytall sails. Mother’s soft laugh rises into a shriek O-o-o-o-ohee. A fly the size of a ferryboat walks towards them across the water, reaching out jagged crabclaws. ‘Yump Yimmy, yump; you can do it in two yumps,’ the dark man yells in his ear. ‘But please I dont want to… I dont want to,’ Jimmy whines. The dark man’s beating him, yump, yump, yump… ‘Yes one moment. Who is it?’