John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Why Mr Oglethorpe I am sure you are mistaken.’

‘I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.’

‘Yea, you tell em,’ suddenly shouted Stan from the bed. He got to his feet clapping his hands. ‘I should prefer to be the meanest stagehand. I should prefer to be the old and feeble charwoman who scrubs off the stage… than to sit on velvet in the office of the editor of the greatest daily in the city. Acting is a profession honorable, decent, humble, gentlemanly.’ The oration ended abruptly.

‘Well I dont see what you expect me to do about it,’ said Jimmy crossing his arms.

‘And now it’s starting to rain,’ went on Oglethorpe in a squeaky whining voice.

‘You’d better go home,’ said Jimmy.

‘I shall go I shall go where there are no sluts… no male and female sluts… I shall go into the great night.’

‘Do you think he can get home all right Stan?’

Stan had sat down on the edge of the bed shaking with laughter. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘My blood will be on your head Elaine forever… Forever, do you hear me?… into the night where people dont sit laughing and sneering. Dont you think I dont see you… If the worst happens it will not be my fault.’

‘Go-od night,’ shouted Stan. In a last spasm of laughing he fell off the edge of the bed and rolled on the floor. Jimmy went to the window and looked down the fire escape into the alley. Oglethorpe had gone. It was raining hard. A smell of wet bricks rose from the housewalls.

‘Well if this isnt the darnedest fool business?’ He walked back into his room without looking at Stan. In the door Ellen brushed silkily past him.

‘I’m terribly sorry Jimmy…’ she began.

He closed the door sharply in her face and locked it. ‘The goddam fools they act like crazy people,’ he said through his teeth. ‘What the hell do they think this is?’

His hands were cold and trembling. He pulled a blanket up over him. He lay listening to the steady beat of the rain and the hissing spatter of a gutter. Now and then a puff of wind blew a faint cool spray in his face. There still lingered in the room a frail cedarwood gruff smell of her heavycoiled hair, a silkiness of her body where she had crouched wrapped in the sheet hiding.

Ed Thatcher sat in his bay window among the Sunday papers. His hair was grizzled and there were deep folds in his cheeks. The upper buttons of his pongee trousers were undone to ease his sudden little potbelly. He sat in the open window looking out over the blistering asphalt at the endless stream of automobiles that whirred in either direction past the yellowbrick row of stores and the redbrick station under the eaves of which on a black ground gold letters glinted feebly in the sun: PASSAIC. Apartments round about emitted a querulous Sunday grinding of phonographs playing It’s a Bear . The Sextette from Lucia, selections from The Quaker Girl . On his knees lay the theatrical section of the New York Times . He looked out with bleared eyes into the quivering heat feeling his ribs tighten with a breathless ache. He had just read a paragraph in a marked copy of Town Topics .

Malicious tongues are set wagging by the undeniable fact that young Stanwood Emery’s car is seen standing every night outside the Knickerbocker Theatre and never does it leave they say, without a certain charming young actress whose career is fast approaching stellar magnitude. This same young gentleman, whose father is the head of one of the city’s most respected lawfirms, who recently left Harvard under slightly unfortunate circumstances, has been astonishing the natives for some time with his exploits which we are sure are merely the result of the ebullience of boyish spirits. A word to the wise.

The bell rang three times. Ed Thatcher dropped his papers and hurried quaking to the door. ‘Ellie you’re so late. I was afraid you weren’t coming.’

‘Daddy dont I always come when I say I will?’

‘Of course you do deary.’

‘How are you getting on? How’s everything at the office?’

‘Mr Elbert’s on his vacation… I guess I’ll go when he comes back. I wish you’d come down to Spring Lake with me for a few days. It’d do you good.’

‘But daddy I cant.’… She pulled off her hat and dropped it on the davenport. ‘Look I brought you some roses, daddy.’

‘Think of it; they’re red roses like your mother used to like. That was very thoughtful of you I must say… But I dont like going all alone on my vacation.’

‘Oh you’ll meet lots of cronies daddy, sure you will.’

‘Why couldnt you come just for a week?’

‘In the first place I’ve got to look for a job… show’s going on the road and I’m not going just at present. Harry Goldweiser’s awfully sore about it.’ Thatcher sat down in the bay window again and began piling up the Sunday papers on a chair. ‘Why daddy what on earth are you doing with that copy of Town Topics? ’

‘Oh nothing. I’d never read it; I just bought it to see what it was like.’ He flushed and compressed his lips as he shoved it in among the Times .

‘It’s just a blackmail sheet.’ Ellen was walking about the room. She had put the roses in a vase. A spiced coolness was spreading from them through the dustheavy air. ‘Daddy, there’s something I want to tell you about… Jojo and I are going to get divorced.’ Ed Thatcher sat with his hands on his knees nodding with tight lips, saying nothing. His face was gray and dark, almost the speckled gray of his pongee suit. ‘It’s nothing to take on about. We’ve just decided we cant get along together. It’s all going through quietly in the most approved style… George Baldwin, who’s a friend of mine, is going to run it through.’

‘He with Emery and Emery?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hum.’

They were silent. Ellen leaned over to breathe deep of the roses. She watched a little green measuring worm cross a bronzed leaf.

‘Honestly I’m terribly fond of Jojo, but it drives me wild to live with him… I owe him a whole lot, I know that.’

‘I wish you’d never set eyes on him.’

Thatcher cleared his throat and turned his face away from her to look out the window at the two endless bands of automobiles that passed along the road in front of the station. Dust rose from them and angular glitter of glass enamel and nickel. Tires made a swish on the oily macadam. Ellen dropped onto the davenport and let her eyes wander among the faded red roses of the carpet.

The bell rang. ‘I’ll go daddy… How do you do Mrs Culveteer?’

A redfaced broad woman in a black and white chiffon dress came into the room puffing. ‘Oh you must forgive my butting in, I’m just dropping by for a second… How are you Mr Thatcher?… You know my dear your poor father has really been very poorly.’

‘Nonsense; all I had was a little backache.’

‘Lumbago my dear.’

‘Why daddy you ought to have let me know.’

‘The sermon today was most inspiring, Mr Thatcher… Mr Lourton was at his very best.’

‘I guess I ought to rout out and go to church now and then, but you see I like to lay round the house Sundays.’

‘Of course Mr Thatcher it’s the only day you have. My husband was just like that… But I think it’s different with Mr Lourton than with most clergymen. He has such an uptodate commonsense view of things. It’s really more like attending an intensely interesting lecture than going to church… You understand what I mean.’