John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Phil you’re getting all excited over nothing.’ The other man took his cigar out of his mouth and leaned back in his swivel chair and yawned.

‘Oh hell I want a vacation. Golly it’ll be good to get out in those old Maine woods again.’

‘What with Jew lawyers and Irish judges…’ spluttered Phil.

‘Aw pull the chain, old man.’

‘A fine specimen of a public-spirited citizen you are Hartly.’

Hartly laughed and rubbed the palm of his hand over his bald head. ‘Oh that stuff’s all right in winter, but I cant go it in summer… Hell all I live for is three weeks’ vacation anyway. What do I care if all the architects in New York get bumped off as long as it dont raise the price of commutation to New Rochelle… Let’s go eat.’ As they went down in the elevator Phil went on talking: ‘The only other man I ever knew who was really a born in the bone architect was ole Specker, the feller I worked for when I first came north, a fine old Dane he was too. Poor devil died o cancer two years ago. Man, he was an architect. I got a set of plans and specifications home for what he called a communal building… Seventyfive stories high stepped back in terraces with a sort of hanging garden on every floor, hotels, theaters, Turkish baths, swimming pools, department stores, heating plant, refrigerating and market space all in the same buildin.’

‘Did he eat coke?’

‘No siree he didnt.’

They were walking east along Thirtyfourth Street, sparse of people in the sultry midday. ‘Gad,’ burst out Phil Sandbourne, suddenly. ‘The girls in this town get prettier every year. ‘Like these new fashions, do you?’

‘Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.’

‘Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.’

‘That’s fortunate for us or we’d have our wives out after us with bloodhounds… Man when I think of those mighthavebeens!’

As they crossed Fifth Avenue Phil caught sight of a girl in a taxicab. From under the black brim of a little hat with a red cockade in it two gray eyes flash green black into his. He swallowed his breath. The traffic roars dwindled into distance. She shant take her eyes away. Two steps and open the door and sit beside her, beside her slenderness perched like a bird on the seat. Driver drive to beat hell. Her lips are pouting towards him, her eyes flutter gray caught birds. ‘Hay look out…’ A pouncing iron rumble crashes down on him from behind. Fifth Avenue spins in red blue purple spirals. O Kerist. ‘That’s all right, let me be. I’ll get up myself in a minute.’ ‘Move along there. Git back there.’ Braying voices, blue pillars of policemen. His back, his legs are all warm gummy with blood. Fifth Avenue throbs with loudening pain. A little bell jingle-jangling nearer. As they lift him into the ambulance Fifth Avenue shrieks to throttling agony and bursts. He cranes his neck to see her, weakly, like a terrapin on its back; didnt my eyes snap steel traps on her? He finds himself whimpering. She might have stayed to see if I was killed. The jinglejangling bell dwindles fainter, fainter into the night.

The burglaralarm across the street had rung on steadily. Jimmy’s sleep had been strung on it in hard knobs like beads on a string. Knocking woke him. He sat up in bed with a lurch and found Stan Emery, his face gray with dust, his hands in the pockets of a red leather coat, standing at the foot of the bed. He was laughing swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet.

‘Gosh what time is it?’ Jimmy sat up in bed digging his knuckles into his eyes. He yawned and looked about with bitter dislike, at the wallpaper the dead green of Poland Water bottles, at the split green shade that let in a long trickle of sunlight, at the marble fireplace blocked up by an enameled tin plate painted with scaly roses, at the frayed blue bathrobe on the foot of the bed, at the mashed cigarettebutts in the mauve glass ashtray.

Stan’s face was red and brown and laughing under the chalky mask of dust. ‘Eleven thirty,’ he was saying.

‘Let’s see that’s six hours and a half. I guess that’ll do. But Stan what the hell are you doing here?’

‘You haven’t got a little nip of liquor anywhere have you Herf? Dingo and I are extraordinarily thirsty. We came all the way from Boston and only stopped once for gas and water. I haven’t been to bed for two days. I want to see if I can last out the week.’

‘Kerist I wish I could last out the week in bed.’

‘What you need’s a job on a newspaper to keep you busy Herfy.’

‘What’s going to happen to you Stan…’ Jimmy twisted himself round so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed ‘… is that you’re going to wake up one morning and find yourself on a marble slab at the morgue.’

The bathroom smelled of other people’s toothpaste and of chloride disinfectant. The bathmat was wet and Jimmy folded it into a small square before he stepped gingerly out of his slippers. The cold water set the blood jolting through him. He ducked his head under and jumped out and stood shaking himself like a dog, the water streaming into his eyes and ears. Then he put on his bathrobe and lathered his face.

he hummed off key as he scraped his chin with the safetyrazor. Mr Grover I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up the job after next week. Yes I’m going abroad; I’m going to do foreign correspondent work for the A. P. To Mexico for the U. P. To Jericho more likely, Halifax Correspondent of the Mudturtle Gazette. It was Christmas in the harem and the eunuchs all were there .

He doused his face with listerine, bundled his toilet things into his wet towel and smarting ran back up a flight of greencarpeted cabbagy stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. Halfway he passed the landlady dumpy in a mob cap who stopped her carpet sweeper to give an icy look at his skinny bare legs under the blue bathrobe.

‘Good morning Mrs Maginnis.’

‘It’s goin to be powerful hot today, Mr Herf.’

‘I guess it is all right.’

Stan was lying on the bed reading La Revolte des Anges . ‘Darn it, I wish I knew some languages the way you do Herfy.’

‘Oh I dont know any French any more. I forget em so much quicker than I learn em.’

‘By the way I’m fired from college.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Dean told me he thought it advisable I shouldnt come back next year… felt that there were other fields of activity where my activities could be more actively active. You know the crap.’

‘That’s a darn shame.’

‘No it isnt; I’m tickled to death. I asked him why he hadnt fired me before if he felt that way. Father’ll be sore as a crab… but I’ve got enough cash on me not to go home for a week. I dont give a damn anyway. Honest havent you got any liquor?’

‘Now Stan how’s a poor wageslave like myself going to have a cellar on thirty dollars a week?’

‘This is a pretty lousy room… You ought to have been born a capitalist like me.’

‘Room’s not so bad… What drives me crazy is that paranoiac alarm across the street that rings all night.’

‘That’s a burglar alarm isn’t it?’

‘There cant be any burglars because the place is vacant. The wires must get crossed or something. I dont know when it stopped but it certainly drove me wild when I went to bed this morning.’

‘Now James Herf you dont mean me to infer that you come home sober every night?’

‘A man’d have to be deaf not to hear that damn thing, drunk or sober.’

‘Well in my capacity of bloated bondholder I want you to come out and eat lunch. Do you realize that you’ve been playing round with your toilet for exactly one hour by the clock?’