John Passos - Manhattan transfer

He groped his way in the dark to the door. Outside the arctic morning was growing gray with dawn. He hurried back to his room. He wanted to get into bed and be asleep before it was light.

A long low room with long tables down the middle piled with silk and crêpe fabrics, brown, salmonpink, emeraldgreen. A smell of snipped thread and dress materials. All down the tables bowed heads auburn, blond, black, brown of girls sewing. Errandboys pushing rolling stands of hung dresses up and down the aisles. A bell rings and the room breaks out with noise and talk shrill as a birdhouse.

Anna gets up and stretches out her arms. ‘My I’ve got a head,’ she says to the girl next her.

‘Up last night?’

She nods.

‘Ought to quit it dearie, it’ll spoil your looks. A girl cant burn the candle at both ends like a feller can.’ The other girl is thin and blond and has a crooked nose. She puts her arm round Anna’s waist. ‘My I wish I could put on a little of your weight.’

‘I wish you could,’ says Anna. ‘Dont matter what I eat it turns to fat.’

‘Still you aint too fat… You’re juss plump so’s they like to squeeze ye. You try wearing boyishform like I told an you’ll look fine.’

‘My boyfriend says he likes a girl to have shape.’

On the stairs they push their way through a group of girls listening to a little girl with red hair who talks fast, opening her mouth wide and rolling her eyes. ’…She lived just on the next block at 2230 Cameron Avenue an she’d been to the Hippodrome with some girlfriends and when they got home it was late an they let her go home alone, up Cameron Avenue, see? An the next morning when her folks began looking for her they found her behind a Spearmint sign in a back lot.’

‘Was she dead?’

‘Sure she was… A negro had done somethin terrible to her and then he’d strangled her… I felt terrible. I used to go to school with her. An there aint a girl on Cameron Avenue been out after dark they’re so scared.’

‘Sure I saw all about it in the paper last night. Imagine livin right on the next block.’

‘Did you see me touch that hump back?’ cried Rosie as he settled down beside her in the taxi. ‘In the lobby of the theater?’ He pulled at the trousers that were tight over his knees. ‘That’s goin to give us luck Jake. I never seen a hump back to fail… if you touch him on the hump… Ou it makes me sick how fast these taxis go.’ They were thrown forward by the taxi’s sudden stop. ‘My God we almost ran over a boy.’ Jake Silverman patted her knee. ‘Poor ikle kid, was it all worked up?’ As they drove up to the hotel she shivered and buried her face in her coatcollar. When they went to the desk to get the key, the clerk said to Silverman, ‘There’s a gentleman waiting to see you sir.’ A thickset man came up to him taking a cigar out of his mouth. ‘Will you step this way a minute please Mr Silverman.’ Rosie thought she was going to faint. She stood perfectly still, frozen, with her cheeks deep in the fur collar of her coat.

They sat in two deep armchairs and whispered with their heads together. Step by step, she got nearer, listening. ‘Warrant… Department of Justice… using the mails to defraud…’ She couldnt hear what Jake said in between. He kept nodding his head as if agreeing. Then suddenly he spoke out smoothly, smiling.

‘Well I’ve heard your side Mr Rogers… Here’s mine. If you arrest me now I shall be ruined and a great many people who have put their money in this enterprise will be ruined… In a week I can liquidate the whole concern with a profit… Mr Rogers I am a man who has been deeply wronged through foolishness in misplacing confidence in others.’

‘I cant help that… My duty is to execute the warrant… I’m afraid I’ll have to search your room… You see we have several little items…’ The man flicked the ash off his cigar and began to read in a monotonous voice. ‘Jacob Silverman, alias Edward Faversham, Simeon J. Arbuthnot, Jack Hinkley, J. J. Gold… Oh we’ve got a pretty little list… We’ve done some very pretty work on your case, if I do say it what shouldnt.’

They got to their feet. The man with the cigar jerked his head at a lean man in a cap who sat reading a paper on the opposite side of the lobby.

Silverman walked over to the desk. ‘I’m called away on business,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Will you please have my bill prepared? Mrs Silverman will keep the room for a few days.’

Rosie couldnt speak. She followed the three men into the elevator. ‘Sorry to have to do this maam,’ said the lean detective pulling at the visor of his cap. Silverman opened the room door for them and closed it carefully behind him. ‘Thank you for your consideration, gentlemen… My wife thanks you.’ Rosie sat in a straight chair in the corner of the room. She was biting her tongue hard, harder to try to keep her lips from twitching.

‘We realize Mr Silverman that this is not quite the ordinary criminal case.’

‘Wont you have a drink gentlemen?’

They shook their heads. The thickset man was lighting a fresh cigar.

‘Allright Mike,’ he said to the lean man. ‘Go through the drawers and closet.’

‘Is that regular?’

‘If this was regular we’d have the handcuffs on you and be running the lady here as an accessory.’

Rosie sat with her icy hands clasped between her knees swaying her body from side to side. Her eyes were closed. While the detectives were rummaging in the closet, Silverman took the opportunity to put his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes. ‘The minute the goddam dicks take me out phone Schatz and tell him everything. Get hold of him if you have to wake up everybody in New York.’ He spoke low and fast, his lips barely moving.

Almost immediately he was gone, followed by the two detectives with a satchel full of letters. His kiss was still wet on her lips. She looked dazedly round the empty deathly quiet room. She noticed some writing on the lavender blotter on the desk. It was his handwriting, very scrawly: Hock everything and beat it; you are a good kid. Tears began running down her cheeks. She sat a long while with her head dropped on the desk kissing the penciled words on the blotter.

The young man without legs has stopped still in the middle of the south sidewalk of Fourteenth Street. He wears a blue knitted sweater and a blue stocking cap. His eyes staring up widen until they fill the paperwhite face. Drifts across the sky a dirigible, bright tinfoil cigar misted with height, gently prodding the rainwashed sky and the soft clouds. The young man without legs stops still propped on his arms in the middle of the south sidewalk of Fourteenth Street. Among striding legs, lean legs, waddling legs, legs in skirts and pants and knickerbockers, he stops perfectly still, propped on his arms, looking up at the dirigible.

Jobless, Jimmy Herf came out of the Pulitzer Building. He stood beside a pile of pink newspapers on the curb, taking deep breaths, looking up the glistening shaft of the Woolworth. It was a sunny day, the sky was a robin’s egg blue. He turned north and began to walk uptown. As he got away from it the Woolworth pulled out like a telescope. He walked north through the city of shiny windows, through the city of scrambled alphabets, through the city of gilt letter signs.

Spring rich in gluten… Chockful of golden richness, delight in every bite, THE DADDY OF THEM ALL, spring rich in gluten. Nobody can buy better bread than PRINCE ALBERT. Wrought steel, monel, copper, nickel, wrought iron. All the world loves natural beauty . LOVE’S BARGAIN that suit at Gumpel’s best value in town. Keep that schoolgirl complexion… JOE KISS, starting, lightning, ignition and generators.