John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Let’s think. Was it cantonnières?’

‘Something like that… I’d like to do that.’

An electric train whistled far to the right of them, rattled nearer and faded into whining distance.

Dripping with a tango the roadhouse melted pink like a block of icecream. Jimmy was following her into the taxicab.

‘No I want to be alone, Herf.’

‘But I’d like very much to take you home… I dont like the idea of letting you go all alone.’

‘Please as a friend I ask you.’

They didnt shake hands. The taxi kicked dust and a rasp of burnt gasoline in his face. He stood on the steps reluctant to go back into the noise and fume.

Nellie McNiel was alone at the table. In front of her was the chair pushed back with his napkin on the back of it where her husband had sat. She was staring straight ahead of her; the dancers passed like shadows across her eyes. At the other end of the room she saw George Baldwin, pale and lean, walk slowly like a sick man to his table. He stood beside the table examining his check carefully, paid it and stood looking distractedly round the room. He was going to look at her. The waiter brought the change on a plate and bowed low. Baldwin swept the faces of the dancers with a black glance, turned his back square and walked out. Remembering the insupportable sweetness of Chinese lilies, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She took her engagement book out of her silver mesh bag and went through it hurriedly, marking carets with a silver pencil. She looked up after a little while, the tired skin of her face in a pucker of spite, and beckoned to a waiter. ‘Will you please tell Mr McNiel that Mrs McNiel wants to speak to him? He’s in the bar.’

‘Sarajevo, Sarajevo; that’s the place that set the wires on fire,’ Bullock was shouting at the frieze of faces and glasses along the bar.

‘Say bo,’ said Joe O’Keefe confidentially to no one in particular, ‘a guy works in a telegraph office told me there’d been a big seabattle off St John’s, Newfoundland and the Britishers had sunk the German fleet of forty battleships.’

‘Jiminy that’d stop the war right there.’

‘But they aint declared war yet.’

‘How do you know? The cables are so choked up you cant get any news through.’

‘Did you see there were four more failures on Wall Street?’

‘Tell me Chicago wheat pit’s gone crazy.’

‘They ought to close all the exchanges till this blows over.’

‘Well maybe when the Germans have licked the pants off her England’ll give Ireland her freedom.’

‘But they are… Stock market wont be open tomorrow.’

‘If a man’s got the capital to cover and could keep his head this here would be the time to clean up.’

‘Well Bullock old man I’m going home,’ said Jimmy. ‘This is my night of rest and I ought to be getting after it.’

Bullock winked one eye and waved a drunken hand. The voices in Jimmy’s ears were throbbing elastic roar, near, far, near, far. Dies like a dog, march on he said. He’d spent all his money but a quarter. Shot at sunrise. Declaration of war. Commencement of hostilities. And they left him alone in his glory. Leipzig, the Wilderness, Waterloo, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round… Cant take a taxi, want to walk anyway. Ultimatum. Trooptrains singing to the shambles with flowers on their ears. And shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when…

As he was walking down the gravel drive to the road an arm hooked in his.

‘Do you mind if I come along? I dont want to stay here.’

‘Sure come ahead Tony I’m going to walk.’

Herf walked with a long stride, looking straight ahead of him. Clouds had darkened the sky where remained the faintest milkiness of moonlight. To the right and left there was outside of the violetgray cones of occasional arclights black pricked by few lights, ahead the glare of streets rose in blurred cliffs yellow and ruddy.

‘You dont like me do you?’ said Tony Hunter breathlessly after a few minutes.

Herf slowed his pace. ‘Why I dont know you very well. You seem to me a very pleasant person…’

‘Dont lie; there’s no reason why you should… I think I’m going to kill myself tonight.’

‘Heavens! dont do that… What’s the matter?’

‘You have no right to tell me not to kill myself. You dont know anything about me. If I was a woman you wouldn’t be so indifferent.’

‘What’s eating you anyway?’

‘I’m going crazy that’s all, everything’s so horrible. When I first met you with Ruth one evening I thought we were going to be friends, Herf. You seemed so sympathetic and understanding… I thought you were like me, but now you’re getting so callous.’

‘I guess it’s the Times … I’ll get fired soon, don’t worry.’

‘I’m tired of being poor; I want to make a hit.’

‘Well you’re young yet; you must be younger than I am.’ Tony didnt answer.

They were walking down a broad avenue between two rows of blackened frame houses. A streetcar long and yellow hissed rasping past.

‘Why we must be in Flatbush.’

‘Herf I used to think you were like me, but now I never see you except with some woman.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve never told anybody in the world… By God if you tell anybody… When I was a child I was horribly oversexed, when I was about ten or eleven or thirteen.’ He was sobbing. As they passed under an arclight, Jimmy caught the glisten of the tears on his cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasnt drunk.’

‘But things like that happened to almost everybody when they were kids… You oughtnt to worry about that.’

‘But I’m that way now, that’s what’s so horrible. I cant like women. I’ve tried and tried… You see I was caught. I was so ashamed I wouldn’t go to school for weeks. My mother cried and cried. I’m so ashamed. I’m so afraid people will find out about it. I’m always fighting to keep it hidden, to hide my feelings.’

‘But it all may be an idea. You may be able to get over it. Go to a psychoanalyist.’

‘I cant talk to anybody. It’s just that tonight I’m drunk. I’ve tried to look it up in the encyclopaedia… It’s not even in the dictionary.’ He stopped and leaned against a lamppost with his face in his hands. ‘It’s not even in the dictionary.’

Jimmy Herf patted him on the back. ‘Buck up for Heaven’s sake. They’re lots of people in the same boat. The stage is full of them.’

‘I hate them all… It’s not people like that I fall in love with. I hate myself. I suppose you’ll hate me after tonight.’

‘What nonsense. It’s no business of mine.’

‘Now you know why I want to kill myself… Oh it’s not fair Herf, it’s not fair… I’ve had no luck in my life. I started earning my living as soon as I got out of highschool. I used to be bellhop in summer hotels. My mother lived in Lakewood and I used to send her everything I earned. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. If it were known, if there were a scandal and it all came out I’d be ruined.’

‘But everybody says that of all juveniles and nobody lets it worry them.’

‘Whenever I fail to get a part I think it’s on account of that. I hate and despise all that kind of men… I dont want to be a juvenile. I want to act. Oh it’s hell… It’s hell.’

‘But you’re rehearsing now aren’t you?’

‘A fool show that’ll never get beyond Stamford. Now when you hear that I’ve done it you wont be surprised.’

‘Done what?’

‘Killed myself.’

They walked without speaking. It had started to rain. Down the street behind the low greenblack shoebox houses there was an occasional mothpink flutter of lightning. A wet dusty smell came up from the asphalt beaten by the big plunking drops.