John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Dutch if you go and get arrested there’ll be nothin left for me to do but jump in the river.’

‘Didnt I tell you I wasnt goin to get arrested?’

Mrs Cohen, a bent old woman with a face brown and blotched like a russet apple, stands beside the kitchen table with her gnarled hands folded over her belly. She sways from the hips as she scolds in an endless querulous stream of Yiddish at Anna sitting blearyeyed with sleep over a cup of coffee: ‘If you had been blasted in the cradle it would have been better, if you had been born dead… Oy what for have I raised four children that they should all of them be no good, agitators and streetwalkers and bums…? Benny in jail twice, and Sol God knows where making trouble, and Sarah accursed given up to sin kicking up her legs at Minski’s, and now you, may you wither in your chair, picketing for the garment workers, walking along the street shameless with a sign on your back.’

Anna dipped a piece of bread in the coffee and put it in her mouth. ‘Aw mommer you dont understand,’ she said with her mouth full.

‘Understand, understand harlotry and sinfulness…? Oy why dont you attend to your work and keep your mouth shut, and draw your pay quietly? You used to make good money and could have got married decent before you took to running wild in dance halls with a goy. Oy Oy that I’ve raised daughters in my old age no decent man’d want to take to his house and marry…’

Anna got to her feet shrieking ‘It’s no business of yours… I’ve always paid my part of the rent regular. You think a girl’s worth nothin but for a slave and to grind her fingers off workin all her life… I think different, do you hear? Dont you dare scold at me…’

‘Oy you will talk back to your old mother. If Solomon was alive he’d take a stick to you. Better to have been born dead than talk back to your mother like a goy. Get out of the house and quick before I blast you.’

‘All right I will.’ Anna ran through the narrow trunkobstructed hallway to the bedroom and threw herself on her bed. Her cheeks were burning. She lay quiet trying to think. From the kitchen came the old woman’s fierce monotonous sobbing.

Anna raised herself to a sitting posture on the bed. She caught sight in the mirror opposite of a strained teardabbled face and rumpled stringy hair. ‘My Gawd I’m a sight,’ she sighed. As she got to her feet her heel caught on the braid of her dress. The dress tore sharply. Anna sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. Then she sewed the rent in the dress up carefully with tiny meticulous stitches. Sewing made her feel calmer. She put on her hat, powdered her nose copiously, put a little rouge on her lips, got into her coat and went out. April was coaxing unexpected colors out of the East Side streets. Sweet voluptuous freshness came from a pushcart full of pineapples. At the corner she found Rose Segal and Lillian Diamond drinking coca-cola at the softdrink stand.

‘Anna have a coke with us,’ they chimed.

‘I will if you’ll blow me… I’m broke.’

‘Vy, didnt you get your strike pay?’

‘I gave it all to the old woman… Dont do no good though. She goes on scoldin all day long. She’s too old.’

‘Did you hear how gunmen broke in and busted up Ike Goldstein’s shop? Busted up everythin wid hammers an left him unconscious on top of a lot of dressgoods.’

‘Oh that’s terrible.’

‘Soive him right I say.’

‘But they oughtnt to destroy property like that. We make our livin by it as much as he does.’

‘A pretty fine livin… I’m near dead wid it,’ said Anna banging her empty glass down on the counter.

‘Easy easy,’ said the man in the stand. ‘Look out for the crockery.’

‘But the worst thing was,’ went on Rose Segal, ‘that while they was fightin up in Goldstein’s a rivet flew out the winder an fell nine stories an killed a fireman passin on a truck so’s he dropped dead in the street.’

‘What for did they do that?’

‘Some guy must have slung it at some other guy and it pitched out of the winder.’

‘And killed a fireman.’

Anna saw Elmer coming towards them down the avenue, his thin face stuck forward, his hands hidden in the pockets of his frayed overcoat. She left the two girls and walked towards him. ‘Was you goin down to the house? Dont lets go, cause the old woman’s scoldin somethin terrible… I wish I could get her into the Daughters of Israel. I cant stand her no more.’

‘Then let’s walk over and sit in the square,’ said Elmer. ‘Dont you feel the spring?’

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘Dont I? Oh Elmer I wish this strike was over… It gets me crazy doin nothin all day.’

‘But Anna the strike is the worker’s great opportunity, the worker’s university. It gives you a chance to study and read and go to the Public Library.’

‘But you always think it’ll be over in a day or two, an what’s the use anyway?’

‘The more educated a feller is the more use he is to his class.’

They sat down on a bench with their backs to the playground. The sky overhead was glittering with motherofpearl flakes of sunset. Dirty children yelled and racketed about the asphalt paths.

‘Oh,’ said Anna looking up at the sky, ‘I’d like to have a Paris evening dress an you have a dress suit and go out to dinner at a swell restaurant an go to the theater an everything.’

‘If we lived in a decent society we might be able to… There’d be gayety for the workers then, after the revolution.’

‘But Elmer what’s the use if we’re old and scoldin like the old woman?’

‘Our children will have those things.’

Anna sat bolt upright on the seat. ‘I aint never goin to have any children,’ she said between her teeth, ‘never, never, never.’

Alice touched his arm as they turned to look in the window of an Italian pastryshop. On each cake ornamented with bright analin flowers and flutings stood a sugar lamb for Easter and the resurrection banner. ‘Jimmy,’ she said turning up to him her little oval face with her lips too red like the roses on the cakes, ‘you’ve got to do something about Roy… He’s got to get to work. I’ll go crazy if I have him sitting round the house any more reading the papers wearing that dreadful adenoid expression… You know what I mean… He respects you.’

‘But he’s trying to get a job.’

‘He doesnt really try, you know it.’

‘He thinks he does. I guess he’s got a funny idea about himself… But I’m a fine person to talk about jobs…’

‘Oh I know, I think it’s wonderful. Everybody says you’ve given up newspaper work and are going to write.’

Jimmy found himself looking down into her widening brown eyes, that had a glimmer at the bottom like the glimmer of water in a well. He turned his head away; there was a catch in his throat; he coughed. They walked on along the lilting brightcolored street.

At the door of the restaurant they found Roy and Martin Schiff waiting for them. They went through an outer room into a long hall crowded with tables packed between two greenish bluish paintings of the Bay of Naples. The air was heavy with a smell of parmesan cheese and cigarettesmoke and tomato sauce. Alice made a little face as she settled herself in a chair.

‘Ou I want a cocktail right away quick.’

‘I must be kinder simpleminded,’ said Herf, ‘but these boats coquetting in front of Vesuvius always make me feel like getting a move on somewhere… I think I’ll be getting along out of here in a couple of weeks.’

‘But Jimmy where are you going?’ asked Roy. ‘Isnt this something new?’

‘Hasnt Helena got something to say about that?’ put in Alice.

Herf turned red. ‘Why should she?’ he said sharply.