John Passos - Manhattan transfer

Kerist I wish I was a skyscraper.

The lock spun round in a circle to keep out the key. Dexterously Stan bided his time and caught it. He shot headlong through the open door and down the long hall shouting Pearline into the livingroom. It smelled funny, Pearline’s smell, to hell with it. He picked up a chair; the chair wanted to fly, it swung round his head and crashed into the window, the glass shivered and tinkled. He looked out through the window. The street stood up on end. A hookandladder and a fire engine were climbing it licketysplit trailing a droning sirenshriek. Fire fire, pour on water, Scotland’s burning . A thousand dollar fire, a hundredthousand dollar fire, a million dollar fire. Skyscrapers go up like flames, in flames, flames. He spun back into the room. The table turned a somersault. The chinacloset jumped on the table. Oak chairs climbed on top to the gas jet. Pour on water, Scotland’s burning . Don’t like the smell in this place in the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York. He lay on his back on the floor of the revolving kitchen and laughed and laughed. The only man who survived the flood rode a great lady on a white horse. Up in flames, up, up. Kerosene whispered a greasyfaced can in the corner of the kitchen. Pour on water . He stood swaying on the crackling upside down chairs on the upside down table. The kerosene licked him with a white cold tongue. He pitched, grabbed the gasjet, the gasjet gave way, he lay in a puddle on his back striking matches, wet wouldn’t light. A match spluttered, lit; he held the flame carefully between his hands.

‘Oh yes but my husband’s awfully ambitious.’ Pearline was telling the blue gingham lady in the grocery-store. ‘Likes to have a good time an all that but he’s much more ambitious than anybody I ever knew. He’s goin to get his old man to send us abroad so he can study architecture. He wants to be an architect.’

‘My that’ll be nice for you wont it? A trip like that… Anything else miss?’ ‘No I guess I didn’t forget anythin… If it was anybody else I’d be worryin about him. I haven’t seen him for two days. Had to go and see his dad I guess.’

‘And you just newly wed too.’

‘I wouldnt be tellin ye if I thought there was anythin wrong, would I? No he’s playin straight all right… Well goodby Mrs Robinson.’ She tucked her packages under one arm and swinging her bead bag in the free hand walked down the street. The sun was still warm although there was a tang of fall in the wind. She gave a penny to a blind man cranking the Merry Widow waltz out of a grindorgan. Still she’d better bawl him out a little when he came home, might get to doing it often. She turned into 200th Street. People were looking out of windows, there was a crowd gathering. It was a fire. She sniffed the singed air. It gave her gooseflesh; she loved seeing fires. She hurried. Why it’s outside our building. Outside our apartmenthouse. Smoke dense as gunnysacks rolled out of the fifthstory window. She suddenly found herself all atremble. The colored elevatorboy ran up to her. His face was green. ‘Oh it’s in our apartment’ she shrieked, ‘and the furniture just came a week ago. Let me get by.’ The packages fell from her, a bottle of cream broke on the sidewalk. A policeman stood in her way, she threw herself at him and pounded on the broad blue chest. She couldnt stop shrieking. ‘That’s all right little lady, that’s all right,’ he kept booming in a deep voice. As she beat her head against it she could feel his voice rumbling in his chest. ‘They’re bringing him down, just overcome by smoke that’s all, just overcome by smoke.’

‘O Stanwood my husband,’ she shrieked. Everything was blacking out. She grabbed at two bright buttons on the policeman’s coat and fainted.

A man is shouting from a soapbox at Second Avenue and Houston in front of the Cosmopolitan Café: ‘… these fellers, men… wageslaves like I was… are stitin on your chest… they’re takin the food outen your mouths. Where’s all the pretty girls I used to see walkin up and down the bullevard? Look for em in the uptown cabarets… They squeeze us dry friends… feller workers, slaves I’d oughter say… they take our work and our ideers and our women… They build their Plaza Hotels and their millionaire’s clubs and their million dollar theayters and their battleships and what do they leave us?… They leave us shopsickness an the rickets and a lot of dirty streets full of garbage cans… You look pale you fellers… You need blood… Why dont you get some blood in your veins?… Back in Russia the poor people… not so much poorer’n we are… believe in wampires, things come suck your blood at night… That’s what Capitalism is, a wampire that sucks your blood… day… and… night.’

It is beginning to snow. The flakes are giltedged where they pass the streetlamp. Through the plate glass the Cosmopolitan Café full of blue and green opal rifts of smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces blob whitely round the tables like illassorted fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob in clusters up the snowmottled street. The orator turns up his collar and walks briskly east along Houston, holding the muddy soapbox away from his trousers.

Faces, hats, hands, newspapers jiggled in the fetid roaring subway car like corn in a popper. The downtown express passed clattering in yellow light, window telescoping window till they overlapped like scales.

‘Look George,’ said Sandbourne to George Baldwin who hung on a strap beside him, ‘you can see Fitzgerald’s contraction.’

‘I’ll be seeing the inside of an undertaking parlor if I dont get out of this subway soon.’

‘It does you plutocrats good now and then to see how the other half travels… Maybe it’ll make you induce some of your little playmates down at Tammany Hall to stop squabbling and give us wageslaves a little transportation… cristamighty I could tell em a thing or two… My idea’s for a series of endless moving platforms under Fifth Avenue.’

‘Did you cook that up when you were in hospital Phil?’

‘I cooked a whole lot of things up while I was in hospital.’

‘Look here lets get out at Grand Central and walk. I cant stand this… I’m not used to it.’

‘Sure… I’ll phone Elsie I’ll be a little late to dinner… Not often I get to see you nowadays George… Gee it’s like the old days.’

In a tangled clot of men and women, arms, legs, hats aslant on perspiring necks, they were pushed out on the platform. They walked up Lexington Avenue quiet in the claretmisted afterglow.

‘But Phil how did you come to step out in front of a truck that way?’

‘Honestly George I dunno… The last I remember is craning my neck to look at a terribly pretty girl went by in a taxicab and there I was drinking icewater out of a teapot in the hospital.’

‘Shame on you Phil at your age.’

‘Cristamighty dont I know it? But I’m not the only one.’

‘It is funny the way a thing like that comes over you… Why what have you heard about me?’

‘Gosh George dont get nervous, it’s all right… I’ve seen her in The Zinnia Girl… She walks away with it. That other girl who’s the star dont have a show.’

‘Look here Phil if you hear any rumors about Miss Oglethorpe for Heaven’s sake shut them up. It’s so damn silly you cant go out to tea with a woman without everybody starting their dirty gabble all over town… By God I will not have a scandal, I dont care what happens.’