John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Ed for Heaven’s sake pick the child up; she’s tearing the paper.’

He brought his fingers down in a lingering chord. ‘Deary you mustnt do that. Daddy’s not finished reading it.’

Ellen went right on. Thatcher swooped down on her from the pianostool and set her squirming and laughing on his knee. ‘Ellen you should always mind when mummy speaks to you, and dear you shouldnt be destructive. It costs money to make that paper and people worked on it and daddy went out to buy it and he hasnt finished reading it yet. Ellie understands dont she now? We need con-struction and not de-struction in this world.’ Then he went on with the Barcarole and Ellen went on dancing, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet.

There were six men at the table in the lunchroom eating fast with their hats on the backs of their heads.

‘Jiminy crickets!’ cried the young man at the end of the table who was holding a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. ‘Kin you beat it?’

‘Beat what?’ growled a longfaced man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

‘Big snake appears on Fifth Avenue… Ladies screamed and ran in all directions this morning at eleven thirty when a big snake crawled out of a crack in the masonry of the retaining wall of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Fortysecond Street and started to cross the sidewalk…’

‘Some fish story…’

‘That aint nothin,’ said an old man. ‘When I was a boy we used to go snipeshootin on Brooklyn Flats…’

‘Holy Moses! it’s quarter of nine,’ muttered the young man folding his paper and hurrying out into Hudson Street that was full of men and girls walking briskly through the ruddy morning. The scrape of the shoes of hairyhoofed drayhorses and the grind of the wheels of producewagons made a deafening clatter and filled the air with sharp dust. A girl in a flowered bonnet with a big lavender bow under her pert tilted chin was waiting for him in the door of M. Sullivan & Co., Storage and Warehousing. The young man felt all fizzy inside, like a freshly uncorked bottle of pop.

‘Hello Emily!… Say Emily I’ve got a raise.’

‘You’re pretty near late, d’you know that?’

‘But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.’

She tilted her chin first to oneside and then to the other.

‘I dont give a rap.’

‘You know what you said if I got a raise.’ She looked in his eyes giggling.

‘An this is just the beginnin…’

‘But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?’

‘Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import business.’

‘Silly boy you’ll be late.’ She suddenly turned and ran up the littered stairs, her pleated bellshaped skirt swishing from side to side.

‘God! I hate her. I hate her.’ Sniffing up the tears that were hot in his eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle & Gulick, West India Importers.

The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells of the Gulf Stream.

‘J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp à New York… The minute we tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.’ The cabinboy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. ‘Merde!’ He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and bounced into the scuppers.

‘Let it go. I’ve got plenty,’ said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. ‘The consul will just have you shipped back.’

‘He wont catch me.’

‘And your military service?’

‘To hell with it. And with France for that matter.’

‘You want to make yourself an American citizen?’

‘Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.’

The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a long whistle. ‘Emile you’re a wise guy,’ he said.

‘But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.’

Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his head that was thick with kinky black hair.

‘Say how much does a woman cost in New York?’

‘I dunno, expensive I guess… I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?’

‘What’s the use? Why not?’ said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again, burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed arms.

‘I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth dont matter, education dont matter. It’s all getting ahead.’

‘And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here now where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?’

‘After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.’

‘And they dont have any military service?’

‘Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to fight people; they want to do business with them.’

Congo did not answer.

The cabinboy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.

‘Merde v’là l’heure.’ The paired strokes of the bell in the crowsnest came faintly to their ears. ‘But dont forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore…’ He made a popping noise with his lips. ‘We’re gone.’

‘I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadnt waked me.’ The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs clattering on his bare feet as he went.

Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled ends down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:

‘I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.’

Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: ‘But Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and vork for her husband.’

‘I wont. I cant help it. I wont go back to the dirty brute.’

Susie sat up in bed, but she couldn’t hear the next thing the old woman said.

‘But I aint a Jew no more,’ suddenly screeched the young girl. ‘This aint Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights here.’ Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.

Susie Thatcher stirred in bed moaning fretfully. Those awful people never give me a moment’s peace. From below came the jingle of a pianola playing the Merry Widow Waltz. O Lord! why dont Ed come home? It’s cruel of them to leave a sick woman alone like this. Selfish. She twisted up her mouth and began to cry. Then she lay quiet again, staring at the ceiling watching the flies buzz teasingly round the electriclight fixture. A wagon clattered by down the street. She could hear children’s voices screeching. A boy passed yelling an extra. Suppose there’d been a fire. That terrible Chicago theater fire. Oh I’ll go mad! She tossed about in the bed, her pointed nails digging into the palms of her hands. I’ll take another tablet. Maybe I can get some sleep. She raised herself on her elbow and took the last tablet out of a little tin box. The gulp of water that washed the tablet down was soothing to her throat. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.