John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Hello Dutch… I thought I’d never get here.’ A grayfaced girl in a red hat and gray rabbit coat sat down beside him.

‘Jez I’m sick o readin want ads.’ He stretched out his arms and yawned letting the paper slip down his legs.

‘Aint you chilly, sittin out here on the bridge?’

‘Maybe I am… Let’s go and eat.’ He jumped to his feet and put his red face with its thin broken nose close to hers and looked in her black eyes with his pale gray eyes. He tapped her arm sharply. ‘Hello Francie… How’s my lil girl?’

They walked back towards Manhattan, the way she had come. Under them the river glinted through the mist. A big steamer drifted by slowly, lights already lit; over the edge of the walk they looked down the black smokestacks.

‘Was it a boat as big as that you went overseas on Dutch?’

‘Bigger ’n that.’

‘Gee I’d like to go.’

‘I’ll take you over some time and show you all them places over there… I went to a lot of places that time I went A.W.O.L.’

In the L station they hesitated. ‘Francie got any jack on you?’

‘Sure I got a dollar… I ought to keep that for tomorrer though.’

‘All I got’s my last quarter. Let’s go eat two fiftyfive cent dinners at that chink place… That’ll be a dollar ten.’

‘I got to have a nickel to get down to the office in the mornin.’

‘Oh Hell! Goddam it I wish we could have some money.’

‘Got anything lined up yet?’

‘Wouldn’t I have told ye if I had?’

‘Come ahead I’ve got a half a dollar saved up in my room. I can take carfare outa that.’ She changed the dollar and put two nickels into the turnstile. They sat down in a Third Avenue train.

‘Say Francie will they let us dance in a khaki shirt?’

‘Why not Dutch it looks all right.’

‘I feel kinder fussed about it.’

The jazzband in the restaurant was playing Hindustan. It smelled of chop suey and Chinese sauce. They slipped into a booth. Slickhaired young men and little bobhaired girls were dancing hugged close. As they sat down they smiled into each other’s eyes.

‘Jez I’m hungry.’

‘Are you Dutch?’

He pushed forward his knees until they locked with hers. ‘Gee you’re a good kid,’ he said when he had finished his soup. ‘Honest I’ll get a job this week. And then we’ll get a nice room an get married an everything.’

When they got up to dance they were trembling so they could barely keep time to the music.

‘Mister… no dance without ploper dless…’ said a dapper Chinaman putting his hand on Dutch’s arm.

‘Waz he want?’ he growled dancing on.

‘I guess it’s the shirt, Dutch.’

‘The hell it is.’

‘I’m tired. I’d rather talk than dance anyway…’ They went back to their booth and their sliced pineapple for dessert.

Afterwards they walked east along Fourteenth. ‘Dutch cant we go to your room?’

‘I ain’t got no room. The old stiff wont let me stay and she’s got all my stuff. Honest if I dont get a job this week I’m goin to a recruiting sergeant an re-enlist.’

‘Oh dont do that; we wouldn’t ever get married then Dutch… Gee though why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to worry you Francie… Six months out of work… Jez it’s enough to drive a guy cookoo.’

‘But Dutch where can we go?’

‘We might go out that wharf… I know a wharf.’

‘It’s so cold.’

‘I couldn’t get cold when you were with me kid.’

‘Dont talk like that… I dont like it.’

They walked leaning together in the darkness up the muddy rutted riverside streets, between huge swelling gastanks, broken-down fences, long manywindowed warehouses. At a corner under a streetlamp a boy catcalled as they passed.

‘I’ll poke your face in you little bastard,’ Dutch let fly out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Dont answer him,’ Francie whispered, ‘or we’ll have the whole gang down on us.’

They slipped through a little door in a tall fence above which crazy lumberpiles towered. They could smell the river and cedarwood and sawdust. They could hear the river lapping at the piles under their feet. Dutch drew her to him and pressed his mouth down on hers.

‘Hay dere dont you know you cant come out here at night disaway?’ a voice yapped at them. The watchman flashed a lantern in their eyes.

‘All right keep your shirt on, we were just taking a little walk.’

‘Some walk.’

They were dragging themselves down the street again with the black riverwind in their teeth.

‘Look out.’ A policeman passed whistling softly to himself. They drew apart. ‘Oh Francie they’ll be takin us to the nuthouse if we keep this up. Let’s go to your room.’

‘Landlady’ll throw me out, that’s all.’

‘I wont make any noise… You got your key aint ye? I’ll sneak out before light. Goddam it they make you feel like a skunk.’

‘All right Dutch let’s go home… I dont care no more what happens.’

They walked up mudtracked stairs to the top floor of the tenement.

‘Take off your shoes,’ she hissed in his ear as she slipped the key in the lock.

‘I got holes in my stockings.’

‘That dont matter, silly. I’ll see if it’s all right. My room’s way back past the kitchen so if they’re all in bed they cant hear us.’

When she left him he could hear his heart beating. In a second she came back. He tiptoed after her down a creaky hall. A sound of snoring came through a door. There was a smell of cabbage and sleep in the hall. Once in her room she locked the door and put a chair against it under the knob. A triangle of ashen light came in from the street. ‘Now for crissake keep still Dutch.’ One shoe still in each hand he reached for her and hugged her.

He lay beside her whispering on and on with his lips against her ear. ‘And Francie I’ll make good, honest I will; I got to be a sergeant overseas till they busted me for goin A.W.O.L. That shows I got it in me. Onct I get a chance I’ll make a whole lot of jack and you an me’ll go back an see Château Teery an Paree an all that stuff; honest you’d like it Francie… Jez the towns are old and funny and quiet and cozylike an they have the swellest ginmills where you sit outside at little tables in the sun an watch the people pass an the food’s swell too once you get to like it an they have hotels all over where we could have gone like tonight an they dont care if your married or nutten. An they have big beds all cozy made of wood and they bring ye up breakfast in bed. Jez Francie you’d like it.’

They were walking to dinner through the snow. Big snowfeathers spun and spiraled about them mottling the glare of the streets with blue and pink and yellow, blotting perspectives.

‘Ellie I hate to have you take that job… You ought to keep on with your acting.’

‘But Jimps, we’ve got to live.’

‘I know… I know. You’d certainly didnt have your wits about you Ellie when you married me.’

‘Oh let’s not talk about it any more.’

‘Do let’s have a good time tonight… It’s the first snow.’

‘Is this the place?’ They stood before an unlighted basement door covered by a closemeshed grating. ‘Let’s try.’

‘Did the bell ring?’

‘I think so.’

The inner door opened and a girl in a pink apron peered out at them. ‘Bon soir mademoiselle.’

‘Ah… bon soir monsieur ’dame.’ She ushered them into a foodsmelling gaslit hall hung with overcoats and hats and mufflers. Through a curtained door the restaurant blew in their faces a hot breath of bread and cocktails and frying butter and perfumes and lipsticks and clatter and jingling talk.

‘I can smell absinthe,’ said Ellen. ‘Let’s get terribly tight.’