John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?’

‘I’m crazy about it Stan.’

‘I guess that Western Union burglar knew that… Gosh… Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along gutters. Judas it’s a great life.’

Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward Broadway. He had his hand under her arm, she squeezed it tight against her ribs with her elbow. Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in store-windows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist’s, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thin lips, pouting lips, Cupid’s bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.

Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. ‘No Stan I cant drink anything… You go ahead.’

‘But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?’

‘Sweller… I just couldnt stand feeling any better… I couldnt keep my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.’ She winced under the brightness of his eyes.

Stan was bubbling drunk. ‘I wish earth had the body as fruit to eat,’ he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing the tango. She got to her feet.

‘Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.’

He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. ‘Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, damn fine, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandaled, Jiminy… Shine as fire of sunset on western waters. Saw the reluctant… goddam fine sapphics.’

Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In the pit inside her thousands of gnomes were building tall brittle glittering towers. The car swooped ringing along the rails, stopped. As she climbed in she remembered swooningly the smell of Stan’s body sweating in her arms. She let herself drop into a seat, biting her lips to keep from crying out. God it’s terrible to be in love. Opposite two men with chinless bluefish faces were talking hilariously, slapping fat knees.

‘I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me… To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.’

‘Naw she’s too skinny.’

‘But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.’

Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.

She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.

‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’ Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost corner of a clattery lowceilinged restaurant. ‘All the ham actors in the world seem to eat here.’

‘All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs Sunderland’s.’

‘What’s the latest news from the Balkans?’

‘Balkans is right…’

Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.

‘Whee I feel so drunk,’ she was spluttering. ‘It went straight to my head… Isnt it terrible?’

‘Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?’

‘O you missed it. It was a shriek… Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas…’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Just a juvenile… But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.’

Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his place. ‘Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?’ he said stiffly.

‘Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.’

‘No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.’

‘Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek… Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know… The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Oglethorpe… You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.’

‘Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.’

‘Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber… Can you picture it?’ Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, ‘But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us… And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night… Honestly I was just so shocked.’

‘Is Oglethorpe that way too?’

Ruth nodded several times.

‘Then why did she marry him?’

‘Why that girl’d marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.’

‘Ruth honestly I think you’ve got the whole thing sized up wrong.’

‘Jimmy you’re too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale… After those two had disappeared and locked the door behind them the most awful powwow you’ve ever imagined went on in the hall. Of course Cassie had been having hysterics all along just to add to the excitement. When I came back from getting her some sweet spirits of ammonia in the bathroom I found the court in session. It was a shriek. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes thrown out at dawn and said she’d leave if they didn’t and Mrs Sunderland kept moaning that in thirty years of theatrical experience she’d never seen a scene like that, and the man in the dress suit who was Benjamin Arden… you know he played a character part in Honeysuckle Jim… said he thought people like Tony Hunter ought to be in jail. When I went to bed it was still going on. Do you wonder that I slept late after all that and kept you waiting, poor child, an hour in the Times Drug Store?’