John Passos: Manhattan transfer

‘That’s nothing but gambling,’ snapped Thatcher.

‘Well sir it’s a gamblin game,’ said the barkeep as he walked back to the bar swinging the two empty bottles.

‘A gamblin game. He aint so far out,’ said Mr Zucher, looking down into his beer with a glassy meditative eye. ‘A man vat is ambeetious must take chances. Ambeetions is vat I came here from Frankfort mit at the age of tvelf years, und now that I haf a son to vork for… Ach, his name shall be Vilhelm after the mighty Kaiser.’

‘My little girl’s name will be Ellen after my mother.’ Ed Thatcher’s eyes filled with tears.

Mr Zucher got to his feet. ‘Vell goodpy Mr Thatcher. Happy to have met you. I must go hom to my little girls.’

Thatcher shook the chubby hand again, and thinking warm soft thoughts of motherhood and fatherhood and birthday cakes and Christmas watched through a sepia-tinged foamy haze Mr Zucher waddle out through the swinging doors. After a while he stretched out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here… Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.

‘Hey there yous how about settlin?’ bawled the barkeep after him when he reached the door.

‘Didn’t the other feller pay?’

‘Like hell he did.’

‘But he was t-t-treating me…’

The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. ‘I guess that bloat believes in savin.’

A small bearded bandylegged man in a derby walked up Allen Street, up the sunstriped tunnel hung with skyblue and smoked-salmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands clasped over the tails of his frockcoat, picking his way among packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.

At a yellowpainted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was a highbrowed cleanshaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto NO Stropping No Honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the dollarproud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists, threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.

His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water on the gasburner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving very carefully with the new nickelbright safety razor. He stood trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard a voice behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollarbland smile. The two little girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. ‘Mommer… it’s popper,’ the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundrybag into the rocker and threw the apron over her head.

‘Oyoy! Oyoy!’ she moaned rocking back and forth.

‘Vat’s a matter? Dontye like it?’ He walked back and forth with the safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his smooth chin.

There were Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble colums. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.

When the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year… Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five hundred and twenty dollars at four per cent. He walked excitedly about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the coalscuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie to the hospital.

MORTON SIGNS THE GREATER NEW YORK BILL

COMPLETES THE ACT MAKING NEW YORK WORLD’S

SECOND METROPOLIS

Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table. The world’s second metropolis… And Dad wanted me to stay in his ole fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadnt been for Susie… Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl, my wife. I owe everything to her.

In the bow he made towards the grate his coat-tails flicked a piece of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from her body. ‘And poor Susie’s so fond of her knicknacks. I’d better go to bed.’

He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.

The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath let out the word Fire.

‘Where at?’

The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering hoofbeats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.

‘Which way is it?’

‘Down on the next block.’

‘It’s a tenement house.’

It was a narrowwindowed sixstory tenement. The hookandladder had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the middle of the street the fire engine and the red hosewagon shone with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a romancandle.

‘The airshaft,’ whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a windowledge. The other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire engines were arriving.