John Passos: Manhattan transfer

‘Yes. Mrs Roy Sheffield… Yes I have a charge account, here’s my card… I’ll be having quite a lot of things sent.’ And to herself she said all the while: Ridiculous how I’ve been going round in rags all winter… When the bill comes Roy’ll have to find some way of paying it that’s all. Time he stopped mooning round anyway. I’ve paid enough bills for him in my time, God knows.’ Then she started looking at fleshcolored silk stockings. She left the store her head still in a whirl of long vistas of counters in a violet electric haze, of braided embroidery and tassles and nasturtiumtinted silks; she had ordered two summer dresses and an evening wrap.

At Maillard’s she met a tall blond Englishman with a coneshaped head and pointed wisps of towcolored mustaches under his long nose.

‘Oh Buck I’m having the grandest time. I’ve been going berserk in Lord & Taylor’s. Do you know that it must be a year and a half since I’ve bought any clothes?’

‘Poor old thing,’ he said as he motioned her to a table. ‘Tell me about it.’

She let herself flop into a chair suddenly whimpering, ‘Oh Buck I’m so tired of it all… I dont know how much longer I can stand it.’

‘Well you cant blame me… You know what I want you to do…’

‘Well suppose I did?’

‘It’d be topping, we’d hit it off like anything… But you must have a bit of beef tea or something. You need picking up.’ She giggled. ‘You old dear that’s just what I do need.’

‘Well how about making tracks for Calgary? I know a fellow there who’ll give me a job I think.’

‘Oh let’s go right away. I dont care about clothes or anything… Roy can send those things back to Lord & Taylor’s… Got any money Buck?’

A flush started on his cheekbones and spread over his temples to his flat irregular ears. ‘I confess, Al darling, that I havent a penny. I can pay for lunch.’

‘Oh hell I’ll cash a check; the account’s in both our names.’

‘They’ll cash it for me at the Biltmore, they know me there. When we get to Canada everything will be quite all right I can assure you. In His Majesty’s Dominion, the name of Buckminster has rather more weight than in the U.S.’

‘Oh I know darling, it’s nothing but money in New York.’

When they were walking up Fifth Avenue she hooked her arm in his suddenly. ‘O Buck I have the most horrible thing to tell you. It made me deathly ill… You know what I told you about the awful smell we had in the apartment we thought was rats? This morning I met the woman who lives on the ground floor… O it makes me sick to think of it. Her face was green as that bus… It seems they’ve been having the plumbing examined by an inspector… They arrested the woman upstairs. O it’s too disgusting. I cant tell you about it… I’ll never go back there. I’d die if I did… There wasnt a drop of water in the house all day yesterday.’

‘What was the matter?’

‘It’s too horrible.’

‘Tell it to popper.’

‘Buck they wont know you when you get back home to Orpen Manor.’

‘But what was it?’

‘There was a woman upstairs who did illegal operations, abortions… That was what stopped up the plumbing.’

‘Good God.’

‘Somehow that’s the last straw… And Roy sitting limp over his damn paper in the middle of that stench with that horrible adenoid expression on his face.’

‘Poor little girl.’

‘But Buck I couldn’t cash a check for more than two hundred… It’ll be an overdraft as it is. Will that get us to Calgary?’

‘Not very comfortably… There’s a man I know in Montreal who’ll give me a job writing society notes… Beastly thing to do, but I can use an assumed name. Then we can trot along from there when we get a little more spondulix as you call it… How about cashing that check now?’

She stood waiting for him beside the information desk while he went to get the tickets. She felt alone and tiny in the middle of the great white vault of the station. All her life with Roy was going by her like a movie reeled off backwards, faster and faster. Buck came back looking happy and masterful, his hands full of greenbacks and railway tickets. ‘No train till seven ten Al,’ he said. ‘Suppose you go to the Palace and leave me a seat at the boxoffice… I’ll run up and fetch my kit. Wont take a sec… Here’s a fiver.’ And he had gone, and she was walking alone across Fortythird Street on a hot May afternoon. For some reason she began to cry. People stared at her; she couldnt help it. She walked on doggedly with the tears streaming down her face.

‘Earthquake insurance, that’s what they calls it! A whole lot of good it’ll do ’em when the anger of the Lord smokes out the city like you would a hornet’s nest and he picks it up and shakes it like a cat shakes a rat… Earthquake insurance!’

Joe and Skinny wished that the man with whiskers like a bottle-cleaner who stood over their campfire mumbling and shouting would go away. They didn’t know whether he was talking to them or to himself. They pretended he wasnt there and went on nervously preparing to grill a piece of ham on a gridiron made of an old umbrellaframe. Below them beyond a sulphurgreen lace of budding trees was the Hudson going silver with evening and the white palisade of apartmenthouses of upper Manhattan.

‘Dont say nutten,’ whispered Joe, making a swift cranking motion in the region of his ear. ‘He’s nuts.’

Skinny had gooseflesh down the back, he felt his lips getting cold, he wanted to run.

‘That ham?’ Suddenly the man addressed them in a purring benevolent voice.

‘Yessir,’ said Joe shakily after a pause.

‘Dont you know that the Lord God forbad his chillun to eat the flesh of swine?’ His voice went to its singsong mumbling and shouting. ‘Gabriel, Brother Gabriel… is it all right for these kids to eat ham?… Sure. The angel Gabriel, he’s a good frien o mine see, he said it’s all right this once if you dont do it no more… Look out brother you’ll burn it.’ Skinny had got to his feet. ‘Sit down brother. I wont hurt you. I understand kids. We like kids me an the Lord God… Scared of me cause I’m a tramp aint you? Well lemme tell you somethin, dont you never be afraid of a tramp. Tramps wont hurt ye, they’re good people. The Lord God was a tramp when he lived on earth. My buddy the angel Gabriel says he’s been a tramp many a time… Look I got some fried chicken an old colored woman gave me… O Lordy me!’ groaning he sat down on a rock beside the two boys.

‘We was goin to play injuns, but now I guess we’ll play tramps,’ said Joe warming up a little. The tramp brought a newspaper package out of the formless pocket of his weathergreened coat and began unwrapping it carefully. A good smell began to come from the sizzling ham. Skinny sat down again, still keeping as far away as he could without missing anything. The tramp divided up his chicken and they began to eat together.

‘Gabriel old scout will you just look at that?’ The tramp started his singsong shouting that made the boys feel scared again. It was beginning to get dark. The tramp was shouting with his mouth full pointing with a drumstick towards the flickering checkerboard of lights going on up Riverside Drive. ‘Juss set here a minute an look at her Gabriel… Look at the old bitch if you’ll pardon the expression. Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long God took to destroy the tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City an Brooklyn an the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven seconds… Say kiddo what’s your name?’ He dropped into his low purring voice and made a pass at Joe with his drumstick.