John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘If only I wasn’t so goddam broke.’

‘I don’t care Morris.’

‘I do by God.’

At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green, violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their hatbrims.

‘You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned.’

‘You mean you were fired.’

‘No honest I resigned before he had a chance… He’s a stinker d’you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa the office he called after me… Young man lemme tell ye sumpen. You wont never make good till you learn who’s boss around this town, till you learn that it aint you.’

Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her. ‘Dreamin’ again Cassie; anybody’d think you was a snowbird.’ Smiling bright-eyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of icecream. ‘Ou Morris it’s delicious.’

The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.

‘Oh I love it in the Park,’ chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch. ‘D’you know Morris I oughtnt to have eaten that icecweam. It always gives me gas.’

Morris said nothing. He put his arm round her and held her tight to him so that his thigh rubbed against hers as they walked. ‘Well Pierpont Morgan is dead… I wish he’d left me a couple of million.’

‘Oh Morris wouldn’t it be wonderful? Where’d we live? On Central Park South.’ They stood looking back at the glow of electric signs that came from Columbus Circle. To the left they could see curtained lights in the windows of a whitefaced apartmenthouse. He looked stealthily to the right and left and then kissed her. She twisted her mouth out from under his.

‘Dont… Somebody might see us,’ she whispered breathless. Inside something like a dynamo was whirring, whirring. ‘Morris I’ve been saving it up to tell you. I think Goldweiser’s going to give me a specialty bit in his next show. He’s stagemanager of the second woad company and he’s got a lot of pull up at the office. He saw me dance yesterday.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he’d fix it up for me to see the big boss Monday… Oh but Morris it’s not the sort of thing I want to do, it’s so vulgar and howid… I want to do such beautiful things. I feel I’ve got it in me, something without a name fluttering inside, a bird of beautiful plumage in a howid iron cage.’

‘That’s the trouble with you, you’ll never make good, you’re too upstage.’ She looked up at him with streaming eyes that glistened in the white powdery light of an arclamp.

‘Oh don’t cry for God’s sake. I didnt mean anythin.’

‘I’m not upstage with you Morris, am I?’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

‘You are kinda, that’s what makes me sore. I like my little girl to pet me an love me up a little. Hell Cassie life aint all beer an sourkraut.’ As they walked tightly pressed one to another they felt rock under their feet. They were on a little hill of granite outcrop with shrubbery all round. The lights from the buildings that hemmed in the end of the Park shone in their faces. They stood apart holding each other’s hands.

‘Take that redhaired girl up at 105th Street… I bet she wouldnt be upstage when she was alone with a feller.’

‘She’s a dweadful woman, she dont care what kind of a wep she has… Oh I think you’re howid.’ She began to cry again.

He pulled her to him roughly, pressed her to him hard with his spread hands on her back. She felt her legs tremble and go weak. She was falling through colored shafts of faintness. His mouth wouldnt let her catch her breath.

‘Look out,’ he whispered pulling himself away from her. They walked on unsteadily down the path through the shrubbery. ‘I guess it aint.’

‘What Morris?’

‘A cop. God it’s hell not havin anywhere to go. Cant we go to your room?’

‘But Morris they’ll all see us.’

‘Who cares? They all do it in that house.’

‘Oh I hate you when you talk that way… Weal love is all pure and lovely… Morris you don’t love me.’

‘Quit pickin on me cant you Cassie for a minute… ? Goddam it’s hell to be broke.’

They sat down on a bench in the light. Behind them automobiles slithered with a constant hissing scuttle in two streams along the roadway. She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his big stubby hand.

‘Morris I feel that we are going to be very happy from now on, I feel it. You’re going to get a fine job, I’m sure you are.’

‘I aint so sure… I’m not so young as I was Cassie. I aint got any time to lose.’

‘Why you’re terribly young, you’re only thirtyfive Morris… And I think that something wonderful is going to happen. I’m going to get a chance to dance.’

‘Why you ought to make more than that redhaired girl.’

‘Elaine Oglethorpe… She doesnt make so much. But I’m different from her. I dont care about money; I want to live for my dancing.’

‘I want money. Once you got money you can do what you like.’

‘But Morris dont you believe that you can do anything if you just want to hard enough? I believe that.’ He edged his free arm round her waist. Gradually she let her head fall on his shoulder. ‘Oh I dont care,’ she whispered with dry lips. Behind them limousines, roadsters, touringcars, sedans, slithered along the roadway with snaky glint of lights running in two smooth continuous streams.

The brown serge smelled of mothballs as she folded it. She stooped to lay it in the trunk; a layer of tissuepaper below rustled when she smoothed the wrinkles with her hand. The first violet morning light outside the window was making the electriclight bulb grow red like a sleepless eye. Ellen straightened herself suddenly and stood stiff with her arms at her sides, her face flushed pink. ‘It’s just too low,’ she said. She spread a towel over the dresses and piled brushes, a handmirror, slippers, chemises, boxes of powder in pellmell on top of them. Then she slammed down the lid of the trunk, locked it and put the key in her flat alligatorskin purse. She stood looking dazedly about the room sucking a broken fingernail. Yellow sunlight was obliquely drenching the chimneypots and cornices of the houses across the street. She found herself staring at the white E.T.O. at the end of her trunk. ‘It’s all too terribly disgustingly low,’ she said again. Then she grabbed a nailfile off the bureau and scratched out the O. ‘Whee,’ she whispered and snapped her fingers. After she had put on a little bucketshaped black hat and a veil, so that people wouldn’t see she’d been crying, she piled a lot of books, Youth’s Encounter, Thus Spoke Zara-thustra, The Golden Ass, Imaginary Conversations, Aphrodite, Chansons de Bilitis and the Oxford Book of French Verse in a silk shawl and tied them together.

There was a faint tapping at the door. ‘Who’s that,’ she whispered.

‘It just me,’ came a tearful voice.

Ellen unlocked the door. ‘Why Cassie what’s the matter?’ Cassie rubbed her wet face in the hollow of Ellen’s neck. ‘Oh Cassie you’re gumming my veil… What on earth’s the matter?’

‘I’ve been up all night thinking how unhappy you must be.’

‘But Cassie I’ve never been happier in my life.’

‘Aren’t men dweadful?’

‘No… They are much nicer than women anyway.’