John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Yes ma’am,’ came the maid’s voice from behind him.

He gave his shoulders a shrug and walked to the window. He felt tired and sick and heavy with flesh. An errand boy on a bicycle passed along the street; he was laughing and his cheeks were pink. Densch saw himself, felt himself for a second hot and slender running bareheaded down Pine Street years ago catching the girls’ ankles in the corner of his eye. He turned back into the room. The maid had gone.

‘Serena,’ he began, ‘cant you understand the seriousness…? It’s this slump. And on top of it all the bean market has gone to hell. It’s ruin I tell you…’

‘Well my dear I dont see what you expect me to do about it.’

‘Economize… economize. Look where the price of rubber’s gone to… That dress from Hickson’s…’

‘Well you wouldnt have me going to the Blackhead’s party looking like a country schoolteacher, would you?’

Mr Densch groaned and shook his head. ‘O you wont understand; probably there wont be any party… Look Serena there’s no nonsense about this… I want you to have a trunk packed so that we can sail any day… I need a rest. I’m thinking of going to Marienbad for the cure… It’ll do you good too.’

Her eye suddenly caught his. All the little wrinkles on her face deepened; the skin under her eyes was like the skin of a shrunken toy balloon. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder and was puckering his lips to kiss her when suddenly she flared up.

‘I wont have you meddling between me and my dressmakers… I wont have it… I wont have it…’

‘Oh have it your own way.’ He left the room with his head hunched between his thick sloping shoulders.

‘Ann-ee!’

‘Yes ma’am.’ The maid came back into the room.

Mrs Densch had sunk down in the middle of a little spindlelegged sofa. Her face was green. ‘Annie please get me that bottle of sweet spirits of ammonia and a little water… And Annie you can call up Hickson’s and tell them that that dress was sent back through a mistake of… of the butler’s and please to send it right back as I’ve got to wear it tonight.’

Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. ‘By Jesus I admit that I’m stumped,’ he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold dress, Ellie made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from every window. And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things… Please mister where’s the door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.

‘How do you do Mr Goldstein?’ the reporter breezily chanted as he squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the cigar store. ‘My name’s Brewster… I’m writing up the crime wave for the News .’

Mr Goldstein was a larvashaped man with a hooked nose a little crooked in a gray face, behind which pink attentive ears stood out unexpectedly. He looked at the reporter out of suspicious screwedup eyes.

‘If you’d be so good I’d like to have your story of last night’s little… misadventure…’

‘Vont get no story from me young man. Vat vill you do but print it so that other boys and goils vill get the same idear.’

‘It’s too bad you feel that way Mr Goldstein… Will you give me a Robert Burns please…? Publicity it seems to me is as necessary as ventilation… It lets in fresh air.’ The reporter bit off the end of the cigar, lit it, and stood looking thoughtfully at Mr Goldstein through a swirling ring of blue smoke. ‘You see Mr Goldstein it’s this way,’ he began impressively. ‘We are handling this matter from the human interest angle… pity and tears… you understand. A photographer was on his way out here to get your photograph… I bet you it would increase your volume of business for the next couple of weeks… I suppose I’ll have to phone him not to come now.’

‘Well this guy,’ began Mr Goldstein abruptly, ‘he’s a welldressed lookin feller, new spring overcoat an all that and he comes in to buy a package o Camels… “A nice night,” he says openin the package an takin out a cigarette to smoke it. Then I notices the goil with him had a veil on.’

‘Then she didnt have bobbed hair?’

‘All I seen was a kind o mournin veil. The foist thing I knew she was behind the counter an had a gun stuck in my ribs an began talkin… you know kinder kiddin like… and afore I knew what to think the guy’d cleaned out the cashregister an says to me, “Got any cash in your jeans Buddy?” I’ll tell ye I was sweatin some…’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Sure by the time I’d got hold of a cop they vere off to hell an gone.’

‘How much did they get?’

‘Oh about fifty berries an six dollars off me.’

‘Was the girl pretty?’

‘I dunno, maybe she was. I’d like to smashed her face in. They ought to make it the electric chair for those babies… Aint no security nowhere. Vy should anybody voirk if all you’ve got to do is get a gun an stick up your neighbors?’

‘You say they were welldressed… like welltodo people?’

‘Yare.’

‘I’m working on the theory that he’s a college boy and that she’s a society girl and that they do it for sport.’

‘The feller vas a hardlookin bastard.’

‘Well there are hardlooking college men… You wait for the story called “The Gilded Bandits” in next Sunday’s paper Mr Goldstein… You take the News dont you?’

Mr Goldstein shook his head.

‘I’ll send you a copy anyway.’

‘I want to see those babies convicted, do you understand? If there’s anythin I can do I sure vill do it… Aint no security no more… I dont care about no Sunday supplement publicity.’

‘Well the photographer’ll be right along. I’m sure you’ll consent to pose Mr Goldstein… Well thank you very much… Good day Mr Goldstein.’

Mr Goldstein suddenly produced a shiny new revolver from under the counter and pointed it at the reporter.

‘Hay go easy with that.’

Mr Goldstein laughed a sardonic laugh. ‘I’m ready for em next time they come,’ he shouted after the reporter who was already making for the Subway.

‘Our business, my dear Mrs Herf,’ declaimed Mr Harpsicourt, looking sweetly in her eyes and smiling his gray Cheshire cat smile, ‘is to roll ashore on the wave of fashion the second before it breaks, like riding a surfboard.’

Ellen was delicately digging with her spoon into half an alligator pear; she kept her eyes on her plate, her lips a little parted; she felt cool and slender in the tightfitting darkblue dress, shyly alert in the middle of the tangle of sideways glances and the singsong modish talk of the restaurant.