John Passos - Manhattan transfer

The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her billowy blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks squashed flat and soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and the fedoras and the majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hat-chetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them.

They can all go plumb to hell. He squares his shoulders and shoves his way to the revolving doors. His heel comes down on a foot. ‘For crissake look where yer steppin.’ He’s out in the street. A swirling wind down Broadway blows grit in his mouth and eyes. He walks down towards the Battery with the wind in his back. In Trinity Churchyard stenographers and officeboys are eating sandwiches among the tombs. Outlandish people cluster outside steamship lines; towhaired Norwegians, broadfaced Swedes, Polacks, swarthy stumps of men that smell of garlic from the Mediterranean, mountainous Slavs, three Chinamen, a bunch of Lascars. On the little triangle in front of the Customhouse, Jim Herf turns and stares long up the deep gash of Broadway, facing the wind squarely. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell.

Bud sat on the edge of his cot and stretched out his arms and yawned. From all round through a smell of sweat and sour breath and wet clothes came snores, the sound of men stirring in their sleep, creaking of bedsprings. Far away through the murk burned a single electric light. Bud closed his eyes and let his head fall over on his shoulder. O God I want to go to sleep. Sweet Jesus I want to go to sleep. He pressed his knees together against his clasped hands to keep them from trembling. Our father which art in Heaven I want to go to sleep.

‘Wassa matter pardner cant ye sleep?’ came a quiet whisper from the next cot.

‘Hell, no.’ ‘Me neither.’

Bud looked at the big head of curly hair held up on an elbow turned towards him.

‘This is a hell of a lousy stinking flop,’ went on the voice evenly. ‘I’ll tell the world… Forty cents too! They can take their Hotel Plaza an…’

‘Been long in the city?’

‘Ten years come August.’

‘Great snakes!’

A voice rasped down the line of cots, ‘Cut de comedy yous guys, what do you tink dis is, a Jewish picnic?’

Bud lowered his voice: ‘Funny, it’s years I been thinkin an wantin to come to the city… I was born an raised on a farm upstate.’

‘Why dont ye go back?’

‘I cant go back.’ Bud was cold; he wanted to stop trembling. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and rolled over facing the man who was talking. ‘Every spring I says to myself I’ll hit the road again, go out an plant myself among the weeds an the grass an the cows comin home milkin time, but I dont; I juss kinder hangs on.’

‘What d’ye do all this time in the city?’

‘I dunno… I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I set in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and Flatbush an now I’m a Bowery bum.’

‘God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered here. Too many bulls an detectives in this town.’

‘You could make a livin in handouts… But take it from me kid you go back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.’

Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder. ‘Come over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.’ Bud’s own voice crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane of cots. The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair and beard and eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully dressed out from the blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud unbuttoned the front of his unionsuit and pulled it off his knottymuscled gaunt arms and shoulders. ‘Look at my back.’

‘Christ Jesus,’ whispered the man running a grimy hand with long yellow nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. ‘I aint never seen nothin like it.’

‘That’s what the ole man done to me. For twelve years he licked me when he had a mind to. Used to strip me and take a piece of light chain to my back. They said he was my dad but I know he aint. I run away when I was thirteen. That was when he ketched me an began to lick me. I’m twentyfive now.’

They went back without speaking to their cots and lay down.

Bud lay staring at the ceiling with the blanket up to his eyes. When he looked down towards the door at the end of the room, he saw standing there a man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth. He crushed his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out. When he looked again the man was gone. ‘Say are you awake yet?’ he whispered.

The bum grunted. ‘I was goin to tell yer. I mashed his head in with the grubbinhoe, mashed it in like when you kick a rotten punkin. I told him to lay offn me an he wouldn’t… He was a hard godfearin man an he wanted you to be sceered of him. We was grubbin the sumach outa the old pasture to plant pertoters there… I let him lay till night with his head mashed in like a rotten punkin. A bit of scrub along the fence hid him from the road. Then I buried him an went up to the house an made me a pot of coffee. He hadn’t never let me drink no coffee. Before light I got up an walked down the road. I was tellin myself in a big city it’d be like lookin for a needle in a haystack to find yer. I knowed where the ole man kep his money; he had a roll as big as your head but I was sceered to take more’en ten dollars… You awake yet?’

The bum grunted. ‘When I was a kid I kep company with ole man Sackett’s girl. Her and me used to keep company in the ole icehouse down in Sackett’s woods an we used to talk about how we’d come to New York City an git rich and now I’m here I cant git work an I cant git over bein sceered. There’s detectives follow me all round, men in derbyhats with badges under their coats. Last night I wanted to go with a hooker an she saw it in my eyes an throwed me out… She could see it in my eyes.’ He was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning over, talking into the other man’s face in a hissing whisper. The bum suddenly grabbed him by the wrists.

‘Look here kid, you’re goin blooy if you keep up like this… Got any mazuma?’ Bud nodded. ‘You better give it to me to keep. I’m an old timer an I’ll git yez outa this. You put yer clothes on a take a walk round the block to a hash joint an eat up strong. How much you got?’

‘Change from a dollar.’

‘You give me a quarter an eat all the stuff you kin git offn the rest.’ Bud pulled on his trousers and handed the man a quarter. ‘Then you come back here an you’ll sleep good an tomorrer me’n you’ll go upstate an git that roll of bills. Did ye say it was as big as yer head? Then we’ll beat it where they cant ketch us. We’ll split fifty fifty. Are you on?’

Bud shook his hand with a wooden jerk, then with the laces flickering round his shoes he shuffled to the door and down the spitmarked stairs.