John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Hello is this the district attorney’s office?… I want to speak to Mr Baldwin please… George… It’s lucky I knew where you were. Is the district attorney there? That’s fine… no you tell him about it. There has been a horrible mistake. I’m at Hester Voorhees’; you know she has a dancing studio. She was presenting some dances to some friends and through some mistake the police are raiding the place…’

The man in the derby was standing over her. ‘All right phoning wont do no good… Go ’long in the other room.’

‘I’ve got the district attorney’s office on the wire. You speak to him… Hello is this Mr Winthrop?… Yes O… How do you do? Will you please speak to this man?’ She handed the telephone to the detective and walked out into the center of the room. My I wish I hadnt taken my hat off, she was thinking.

From the other room came a sound of sobbing and Hester Voorhees’ stagy voice shrieking, ‘It’s a horrible mistake… I wont be insulted like this.’

The detective put down the telephone. He came over to Ellen. ‘I want to apologize miss… We acted on insufficient information. I’ll withdraw my men immediately.’

‘You’d better apologize to Mrs Voorhees… It’s her studio.’

‘Well ladies and gents,’ the detective began in a loud cheerful voice, ‘we’ve made a little mistake and we’re very sorry… Accidents will happen…’

Ellen slipped into the side room to get her hat and coat. She stood some time before the mirror powdering her nose. When she went out into the studio again everybody was talking at once. Men and women stood round with sheets and bathrobes draped over their scanty dancingclothes. The detectives had melted away as suddenly as they came. Oglethorpe was talking in loud impassioned tones in the middle of a group of young men.

‘The scoundrels to attack women,’ he was shouting, red in the face, waving his headdress in one hand. ‘Fortunately I was able to control myself or I might have committed an act that I should have regretted to my dying day… It was only with the greatest self-control…’

Ellen managed to slip out, ran down the stairs and out into drizzly streets. She hailed a taxi and went home. When she had got her things off she called up George Baldwin at his house. ‘Hello George, I’m terribly sorry I had to trouble you and Mr Winthrop. Well if you hadnt happened to say at lunch you’d be there all the evening they probably would be just piling us out of the black maria at the Jefferson Market Court… Of course it was funny. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but I’m so sick of all that stuff… Oh just everything like that æsthetic dancing and literature and radicalism and psychoanalysis… Just an overdose I guess… Yes I guess that’s it George… I guess I’m growing up.’

The night was one great chunk of black grinding cold. The smell of the presses still in his nose, the chirrup of typewriters still in his ears, Jimmy Herf stood in City Hall Square with his hands in his pockets watching ragged men with caps and earsflaps pulled down over faces and necks the color of raw steak shovel snow. Old and young their faces were the same color, their clothes were the same color. A razor wind cut his ears and made his forehead ache between the eyes.

‘Hello Herf, think you’ll take the job?’ said a milkfaced young man who came up to him breezily and pointed to the pile of snow. ‘Why not, Dan. I dont know why it wouldnt be better than spending all your life rooting into other people’s affairs until you’re nothing but a goddam traveling dictograph.’

‘It’d be a fine job in summer all right… Taking the West Side?’

‘I’m going to walk up… I’ve got the heebyjeebies tonight.’

‘Jez man you’ll freeze to death.’

‘I dont care if I do… You get so you dont have any private life, you’re just an automatic writing machine.’

‘Well I wish I could get rid of a little of my private life… Well goodnight. I hope you find some private life Jimmy.’

Laughing, Jimmy Herf turned his back on the snowshovelers and started walking up Broadway, leaning into the wind with his chin buried in his coatcollar. At Houston Street he looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Gosh he was late today. Wouldnt be a place in the world where he could get a drink. He whimpered to himself at the thought of the icy blocks he still had to walk before he could get to his room. Now and then he stopped to pat some life into his numb ears. At last he got back to his room, lit the gasstove and hung over it tingling. His room was a small square bleak room on the south side of Washington Square. Its only furnishings were a bed, a chair, a table piled with books, and the gasstove. When he had begun to be a little less cold he reached under the bed for a basketcovered bottle of rum. He put some water to heat in a tin cup on the gasstove and began drinking hot rum and water. Inside him all sorts of unnamed agonies were breaking loose. He felt like the man in the fairy story with an iron band round his heart. The iron band was breaking.

He had finished the rum. Occasionally the room would start going round him solemnly and methodically. Suddenly he said aloud: ‘I’ve got to talk to her… I’ve got to talk to her.’ He shoved his hat down on his head and pulled on his coat. Outside the cold was balmy. Six milkwagons in a row passed jingling.

On West Twelfth two black cats were chasing each other. Everywhere was full of their crazy yowling. He felt that something would snap in his head, that he himself would scuttle off suddenly down the frozen street eerily caterwauling.

He stood shivering in the dark passage, ringing the bell marked Herf again and again. Then he knocked as loud as he could. Ellen came to the door in a green wrapper. ‘What’s the matter Jimps? Havent you got a key?’ Her face was soft with sleep; there was a happy cozy suave smell of sleep about her. He talked through clenched teeth breathlessly.

‘Ellie I’ve got to talk to you.’

‘Are you lit, Jimps?’

‘Well I know what I’m saying.’

‘I’m terribly sleepy.’

He followed her into her bedroom. She kicked off her slippers and got back into bed, sat up looking at him with sleepweighted eyes.

‘Dont talk too loud on account of Martin.’

‘Ellie I dont know why it’s always so difficult for me to speak out about anything… I always have to get drunk to speak out… Look here do you like me any more?’

‘You know I’m awfully fond of you and always shall be.’

‘I mean love, you know what I mean, whatever it is…’ he broke in harshly.

‘I guess I dont love anybody for long unless they’re dead… I’m a terrible sort of person. It’s no use talking about it.’

‘I knew it. You knew I knew it. O God things are pretty rotten for me Ellie.’

She sat with her knees hunched up and her hands clasped round them looking at him with wide eyes. ‘Are you really so crazy about me Jimps?’

‘Look here lets get a divorce and be done with it.’

‘Dont be in such a hurry, Jimps… And there’s Martin. What about him?’

‘I can scrape up enough money for him occasionally, poor little kid.’

‘I make more than you do, Jimps… You shouldnt do that yet.’

‘I know. I know. Dont I know it?’

They sat looking at each other without speaking. Their eyes burned from looking at each other. Suddenly Jimmy wanted terribly to be asleep, not to remember anything, to let his head sink into blackness, as into his mother’s lap when he was a kid.

‘Well I’m going home.’ He gave a little dry laugh. ‘We didn’t think it’d all go pop like this, did we?’

‘Goodnight Jimps,’ she whined in the middle of a yawn. ‘But things dont end… If only I weren’ so terribly sleepy… Will you put out the light?’