John Passos - Manhattan transfer

Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses… $325,666.00

Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at the darkjutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden, Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids, breathed in his ear.

Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.

Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling tons of sky.

A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:

There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead… He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.

He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG… And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars… He walked on.

‘Hullo Emile!’ Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. ‘That’s the way you treat your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that delicatessen queen…’

Emile yanked his hand away. ‘I am in a ‘urree zat’s all.’

‘How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to make her fall for yez.’

‘Zat was Congo’s idea.’

‘Well didn’t it woik?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well aint there sumpen due me?’

‘May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is Wednesday… I’ll come by an take you to a show… ‘Ow’s ‘ustlin?’

‘Worse’n hell… I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus… That’s where you meet guys wid jack… No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs… I’m gettin respectable.’

‘May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?’

‘Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name of… Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git’s a postal ca-ard… That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night… An he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?’

‘Goodby May.’ He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.

‘Hey quit dat Frogslegs… Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a girl,’ she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. ‘I could git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.’

Emile walked off.

A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then on the other with his billy.

‘It’s a shine ‘at set the fire.’

‘They caught the firebug.’

‘’At’s ’e incendiary.’

‘God he’s a meanlookin smoke.’

The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front of the door of her store.

‘Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong… J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.’

Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, ‘Everyting awright. Look no more fire, only smoke… But you are insured, aint you?’

‘Oh yes for fifteen tousand.’ He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. ‘Viens ma petite on va rentrer.’

Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. ‘Ernestine when we get married?’

‘Next month.’

‘I no wait zat long, imposseeble… Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock… I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.’

She patted him on the cheek. ‘P’tit ambitieux,’ she said through her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.

They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.