John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘And I’ve never been to Europe either… A war must be an extraordinary thing to see.’ Ellen in her blue velvet dress with a buff cloak over it leaned back against the cushions of the taxi that whirred smoothly under them. ‘I always think of history as lithographs in a schoolbook, generals making proclamations, little tiny figures running across fields with their arms spread out, facsimiles of signatures.’ Cones of light cutting into cones of light along the hot humming roadside, headlights splashing trees, houses, billboards, telegraph poles with broad brushes of whitewash. The taxi made a half turn and stopped in front of a roadhouse that oozed pink light and ragtime through every chink.

‘Big crowd tonight,’ said the taximan to Baldwin when he paid him.

‘I wonder why,’ asked Ellen.

‘De Canarsie moider has sumpen to do wid it I guess.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Sumpen terrible. I seen it.’

‘You saw the murder?’

‘I didn’t see him do it. I seen de bodies laid out stiff before dey took em to de morgue. Us kids used to call de guy Santa Claus cause he had white whiskers… Knowed him since I was a little feller.’ The cars behind were honking and rasping their klaxons. ‘I better git a move on… Good night lady.’

The red hallway smelt of lobster and steamed clams and cocktails.

‘Why hello Gus!… Elaine let me introduce Mr and Mrs McNiel… This is Miss Oglethorpe.’ Ellen shook the big hand of a rednecked snubnosed man and the small precisely gloved hand of his wife. ‘Gus I’ll see you before we go…’

Ellen was following the headwaiter’s swallowtails along the edge of the dancefloor. They sat at a table beside the wall. The music was playing Everybody’s Doing It . Baldwin hummed it as he hung over her a second arranging the wrap on the back of her chair.

‘Elaine you are the loveliest person…’ he began as he sat down opposite her. ‘It seems so horrible. I dont see how it’s possible.’

‘What?’

‘This war. I cant think of anything else.’

‘I can…’ She kept her eyes on the menu. ‘Did you notice those two people I introduced to you?’

‘Yes. Is that the NcNiel whose name is in the paper all the time? Some row about a builders’ strike and the Interborough bond issue.’

‘It’s all politics. I bet he’s glad of the war, poor old Gus. It’ll do one thing, it’ll keep that row off the front page… I’ll tell you about him in a minute… I dont suppose you like steamed clams do you? They are very good here.’

‘George I adore steamed clams.’

‘Then we’ll have a regular old fashioned Long Island shore dinner. What do you think of that?’ Laying her gloves away on the edge of the table her hand brushed against the vase of rusty red and yellow roses. A shower of faded petals fluttered onto her hand, her gloves, the table. She shook them off her hands.

‘And do have him take these wretched roses away George… I hate faded flowers.’

Steam from the plated bowl of clams uncoiled in the rosy glow from the lampshade. Baldwin watched her fingers, pink and limber, pulling the clams by their long necks out of their shells, dipping them in melted butter, and popping them dripping in her mouth. She was deep in eating clams. He sighed. ‘Elaine… I’m a very unhappy man… Seeing Gus McNiel’s wife. It’s the first time in years. Think of it I was crazy in love with her and now I cant remember what her first name was… Funny isn’t it? Things had been extremely slow ever since I had set up in practice for myself. It was a rash thing to do, as I was only two years out of lawschool and had no money to run on. I was rash in those days. I’d decided that if I didn’t get a case that day I’d chuck everything and go back to a clerkship. I went out for a walk to clear my head and saw a freightcar shunting down Eleventh Avenue run into a milkwagon. It was a horrid mess and when we’d picked the fellow up I said to myself I’d get him his rightful damages or bankrupt myself in the attempt. I won his case and that brought me to the notice of various people downtown, and that started him on his career and me on mine.’

‘So he drove a milkwagon did he? I think milkmen are the nicest people in the world. Mine’s the cutest thing.’

‘Elaine you wont repeat this to anyone… I feel the completest confidence in you.’

‘That’s very nice of you George. Isn’t it amazing the way girls are getting to look more like Mrs Castle every day? Just look round this room.’

‘She was like a wild rose Elaine, fresh and pink and full of the Irish, and now she’s a rather stumpy businesslike looking little woman.’

‘And you’re as fit as you ever were. That’s the way it goes.’

‘I wonder… You dont know how empty and hollow everything was before I met you. All Cecily and I can do is make each other miserable.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s up at Bar Harbor… I had luck and all sorts of success when I was still a young man… I’m not forty yet.’

‘But I should think it would be fascinating. You must enjoy the law or you wouldn’t be such a success at it.’

‘Oh success… success… what does it mean?’

‘I’d like a little of it.’

‘But my dear girl you have it.’

‘Oh not what I mean.’

‘But it isn’t any fun any more. All I do is sit in the office and let the young fellows do the work. My future’s all cut out for me. I suppose I could get solemn and pompous and practice little private vices… but there’s more in me than that.’

‘Why dont you go into politics?’

‘Why should I go up to Washington into that greasy backwater when I’m right on the spot where they give the orders? The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.’

Ellen was watching the people in light summer clothes dancing on the waxed square of floor in the center; she caught sight of Tony Hunter’s oval pink and white face at a table on the far side of the room. Oglethorpe was not with him. Stan’s friend Herf sat with his back to her. She watched him laughing, his long rumpled black head poised a little askew on a scraggly neck. The other two men she didn’t know.

‘Who are you looking at?’

‘Just some friends of Jojo’s… I wonder how on earth they got way out here. It’s not exactly on that gang’s beat.’

‘Always the way when I try to get away with something,’ said Baldwin with a wry smile.

‘I should say you’d done exactly what you wanted to all your life.’

‘Oh Elaine if you’d only let me do what I want to now. I want you to let me make you happy. You’re such a brave little girl making your way all alone the way you do. By gad you are so full of love and mystery and glitter…’ He faltered, took a deep swallow of wine, went on with flushing face. ‘I feel like a schoolboy… I’m making a fool of myself. Elaine I’d do anything in the world for you.’

‘Well all I’m going to ask you to do is to send away this lobster. I dont think it’s terribly good.’

‘The devil… maybe it isn’t… Here waiter!… I was so rattled I didn’t know I was eating it.’

‘You can get me some supreme of chicken instead.’

‘Surely you poor child you must be starved.’

‘… And a little corn on the cob… I understand now why you make such a good lawyer, George. Any jury would have burst out sobbing long ago at such an impassioned plea.’

‘How about you Elaine?’

‘George please don’t ask me.’

At the table where Jimmy Herf sat they were drinking whiskey and soda. A yellowskinned man with light hair and a thin nose standing out crooked between childish blue eyes was talking in a confidential singsong: ‘Honest I had em lashed to the mast. The police department is cookoo, absolutely cookoo treating it as a rape and suicide case. That old man and his lovely innocent daughter were murdered, foully murdered. And do you know who by… ?’ He pointed a chubby cigarettestained finger at Tony Hunter.