John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Good Lord, there’s Congo… Dont you remember Congo Jake at the Seaside Inn?’

He stood bulky at the end of the corridor beckoning to them. His face was very tanned and he had a glossy black mustache. ‘Hello Meester ’Erf… Ow are you?’

‘Fine as silk. Congo I want you to meet my wife.’

‘If you dont mind the keetchen we will ’ave a drink.’

‘Of course we dont… It’s the best place in the house. Why you’re limping… What did you do to your leg?’

‘Foutu… I left it en Italie… I couldnt breeng it along once they’d cut it off.’

‘How was that?’

‘Damn fool thing on Mont Tomba… My bruderinlaw e gave me a very beautiful artificial leemb… Sit ’ere. Look madame now can you tell which is which?’

‘No I cant,’ said Ellie laughing. They were at a little marble table in the corner of the crowded kitchen. A girl was dishing out at a deal table in the center. Two cooks worked over the stove. The air was rich with sizzling fatty foodsmells. Congo hobbled back to them with three glasses on a small tray. He stood over them while they drank.

‘Salut,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Absinthe cocktail, like they make it in New Orleans.’

‘It’s a knockout.’ Congo took a card out of his vest pocket:

MARQUIS DES COULOMMIERS

IMPORTS

Riverside 11121

‘Maybe some day you need some little ting… I deal in nutting but prewar imported. I am the best bootleggair in New York.’

‘If I ever get any money I certainly will spend it on you Congo… How do you find business?’

‘Veree good… I tell you about it. Tonight I’m too busee… Now I find you a table in the restaurant.’

‘Do you run this place too?’

‘No this my bruderinlaw’s place.’

‘I didnt know you had a sister.’

‘Neither did I.’

When Congo limped away from their table silence came down between them like an asbestos curtain in a theater.

‘He’s a funny duck,’ said Jimmy forcing a laugh.

‘He certainly is.’

‘Look Ellie let’s have another cocktail.’

‘Allright.’

‘I must get hold of him and get some stories about bootleggers out of him.’

When he stretched his legs out under the table he touched her feet. She drew them away. Jimmy could feel his jaws chewing, they clanked so loud under his cheeks he thought Ellie must hear them. She sat opposite him in a gray tailoredsuit, her neck curving up heartbreakingly from the ivory V left by the crisp frilled collar of her blouse, her head tilted under her tight gray hat, her lips made up; cutting up little pieces of meat and not eating them, not saying a word.

‘Gosh… let’s have another cocktail.’ He felt paralyzed like in a nightmare; she was a porcelaine figure under a bellglass. A current of fresh snowrinsed air from somewhere eddied all of a sudden through the blurred packed jangling glare of the restaurant, cut the reek of food and drink and tobacco. For an instant he caught the smell of her hair. The cocktails burned in him. God I dont want to pass out.

Sitting in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, side by side on the black leather bench. His cheek brushes hers when he reaches to put herring, butter, sardines, anchovies, sausage on her plate. They eat in a hurry, gobbling, giggling, gulp wine, start at every screech of an engine…

The train pulls out of Avignon, they two awake, looking in each other’s eyes in the compartment full of sleep-sodden snoring people. He lurches clambering over tangled legs, to smoke a cigarette at the end of the dim oscillating corridor. Diddledeump, going south, Diddledeump, going south, sing the wheels over the rails down the valley of the Rhône. Leaning in the window, smoking a broken cigarette, trying to smoke a crumbling cigarette, holding a finger over the torn place. Glubglub glubglub from the bushes, from the silverdripping poplars along the track.

‘Ellie, Ellie there are nightingales singing along the track.’

‘Oh I was asleep darling.’ She gropes to him stumbling across the legs of sleepers. Side by side in the window in the lurching jiggling corridor.

Deedledeump, going south. Gasp of nightingales along the track among the silverdripping poplars. The insane cloudy night of moonlight smells of gardens garlic rivers freshdunged field roses. Gasp of nightingales.

Opposite him the Elliedoll was speaking. ‘He says the lobstersalad’s all out… Isnt that discouraging?’

Suddenly he had his tongue. ‘Gosh if that were the only thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did we come back to this rotten town anyway?’

‘You’ve been burbling about how wonderful it was ever since we came back.’

‘I know. I guess it’s sour grapes… I’m going to have another cocktail… Ellie for heaven’s sake what’s the matter with us?’

‘We’re going to be sick if we keep this up I tell you.’

‘Well let’s be sick… Let’s be good and sick.’

When they sit up in the great bed they can see across the harbor, can see the yards of a windjammer and a white sloop and a red and green toy tug and plainfaced houses opposite beyond a peacock stripe of water; when they lie down they can see gulls in the sky. At dusk dressing rockily, shakily stumbling through the mildewed corridors of the hotel out into streets noisy as a brass band, full of tambourine rattle, brassy shine, crystal glitter, honk and whir of motors… Alone together in the dusk drinking sherry under a broadleaved plane, alone together in the juggled particolored crowds like people invisible. And the spring night comes up over the sea terrible out of Africa and settles about them.

They had finished their coffee. Jimmy had drunk his very slowly as if some agony waited for him when he finished it.

‘Well I was afraid we’d find the Barneys here,’ said Ellen.

‘Do they know about this place?’

‘You brought them here yourself Jimps… And that dreadful woman insisted on talking babies with me all the evening. I hate talking babies.’

‘Gosh I wish we could go to a show.’

‘It would be too late anyway.’

‘And just spending money I havent got… Lets have a cognac to top off with. I don’t care if it ruins us.’

‘It probably will in more ways than one.’

‘Well Ellie, here’s to the breadwinner who’s taken up the white man’s burden.’

‘Why Jimmy I think it’ll be rather fun to have an editorial job for a while.’

‘I’d find it fun to have any kind of job… Well I can always stay home and mind the baby.’

‘Dont be so bitter Jimmy, it’s just temporary.’

‘Life’s just temporary for that matter.’

The taxi drew up. Jimmy paid him with his last dollar. Ellie had her key in the outside door. The street was a confusion of driving absintheblurred snow. The door of their apartment closed behind them. Chairs, tables, books, windowcurtains crowded about them bitter with the dust of yesterday, the day before, the day before that. Smells of diapers and coffeepots and typewriter oil and Dutch Cleanser oppressed them. Ellen put out the empty milkbottle and went to bed. Jimmy kept walking nervously about the front room. His drunkenness ebbed away leaving him icily sober. In the empty chamber of his brain a doublefaced word clinked like a coin: Success Failure, Success Failure.

she hums under her breath as she dances. It’s a long hall with a band at one end, lit greenishly by two clusters of electric lights hanging among paper festoons in the center. At the end where the door is, a varnished rail holds back the line of men. This one Anna’s dancing with is a tall square built Swede, his big feet trail clumsily after her tiny lightly tripping feet. The music stops. Now it’s a little blackhaired slender Jew. He tries to snuggle close.