Manhattan Transfer (13 page)

‘May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.’ Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.

The doctor nodded. ‘Well I must go… I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go… Goodnight Mrs Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son…’

‘This way…’ The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.

There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. ‘All right I’ll go back to bed now,’ he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. ‘I hate them. I hate them,’ he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.

‘With all the business you have, madame,’ Emile was saying in a singsong voice, ‘I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.’

‘I know that… I’m killing myself with work; I know that,’ sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was
silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: ‘A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.’

‘Ah ça… I have lived too much in my time… I have no more confidence… Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!’

‘History and literature…’ began Emile.

The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.

‘Now Billy dont be extravagant,’ she was saying.

‘But Norah we got have sumpen te eat… An I’ll be all jake by Saturday.’

‘Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.’

‘Aw go long wud yer… Let’s have some liverwurst… My that cold breast of turkey looks good…’

‘Piggywiggy,’ cooed the yellowhaired girl.

‘Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.’

‘Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud… We ave ole cheekens too, steel ‘ot… Emile mong ami cherchez moi un de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e.’ Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool by the cashdesk. The man was fanning himself with a thickbrimmed straw hat that had a checked band.

‘Varm tonight,’ said Madame Rigaud.

‘It sure is… Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead of bummin round this town.’

‘Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.’

‘Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.’

‘History and literature,’ continued Emile when the customers had gone off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to lock up in the till… ‘history and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence…’

‘History and literature!’ Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter. ‘A lot of good that’ll do us.’

‘But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this… ? Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart… I cant stand it any more.’

Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing off the stool. ‘Emile, you’re a goodlooking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world… But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again… I’ve suffered too much… Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.’

‘You’re a very cruel woman.’

Madame Rigaud laughed again. ‘Come along now, you can help me close up.’

Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a calf bound lawbook. Now and then he wrote down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and strode over to answer it.

‘Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.’ He put down the receiver. ‘God damn it,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in front of the window.

‘Hello Nellie,’ he said without looking up; she stood still staring at him.

‘Look here Georgy this cant go on.’

‘Why cant it?’

‘I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.’

‘Nobody’s found out anything, have they?’

‘Oh of course not.’

She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color and had a blue sunshade in her hand.

‘How’s things Georgy?’

‘Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable connections.’

‘Little luck it’s brought me. I haven’t dared go to confession yet. The priest’ll be thinkin I’ve turned heathen.’

‘How’s Gus?’

‘Oh full of his plans… Might think he’d earned the money, he’s gettin that cocky about it.

‘Look Nellie how would it be if you left Gus and came and lived
with me? You could get a divorce and we could get married… Everything would be all right then.’

‘Like fun it would… You don’t mean it anyhow.’

‘But it’s been worth it Nellie, honestly it has.’ He put his arms round her and kissed her hard still lips. She pushed him away.

‘Anyways I aint comin here again… Oh I was so happy comin up the stairs thinkin about seein you… You’re paid an the business is all finished.’

He noticed that the little curls round her forehead were loose. A wisp of hair hung over one eyebrow.

‘Nellie we mustn’t part bitterly like this.’

‘Why not will ye tell me?’

‘Because we’ve both loved one another.’

‘I’m not goin to cry.’ She patted her nose with a little rolledup handkerchief. ‘Georgy I’m goin to hate ye… Goodby.’ The door snapped sharply to behind her.

Baldwin sat at his desk and chewed the end of a pencil. A faint pungence of her hair lingered in his nostrils. His throat was stiff and lumpy. He coughed. The pencil fell out of his mouth. He wiped the saliva off with his handkerchief and settled himself in his chair. From bleary the crowded paragraphs of the lawbook became clear. He tore the written sheet off the scratchpad and clipped it to the top of a pile of documents. On the new sheet he began: Decision of the Supreme Court of the State of New York… Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair, and started biting the end of his pencil again. From outside came the endless sultry whistle of a peanut wagon. ‘Oh well, that’s that,’ he said aloud. He went on writing in a wide regular hand: Case of Patterson vs. The State of New York… Decision of the Supreme…

Bud sat by a window in the Seamen’s Union reading slowly and carefully through a newspaper. Next him two men with freshly shaved rawsteak cheeks cramped into white collars and blue serge storesuits were ponderously playing chess. One of them smoked a pipe that made a little clucking noise when he drew on it. Outside rain beat incessantly on a wide glimmering square.

Banzai, live a thousand years, cried the little gray men of the fourth platoon of Japanese sappers as they advanced to repair the bridge over the Yalu River… Special correspondent of the New York Herald…

‘Checkmate,’ said the man with the pipe. ‘Damn it all let’s go have a drink. This is no night to be sitting here sober.’

‘I promised the ole woman…’

‘None o that crap Jess, I know your kinda promises.’ A big crimson hand thickly furred with yellow hairs brushed the chessmen into their box. ‘Tell the ole woman you had to have a nip to keep the weather out.’

‘That’s no lie neither.’

Bud watched their shadows hunched into the rain pass the window.

‘What you name?’

Bud turned sharp from the window startled by a shrill squeaky voice in his ear. He was looking into the fireblue eyes of a little yellow man who had a face like a toad, large mouth, protruding eyes and thick closecropped black hair.

Bud’s jaw set. ‘My name’s Smith, what about it?’

The little man held out a square callouspalmed hand. ‘Plis to meet yez. Me Matty.’

Bud took the hand in spite of himself. It squeezed his until he winced. ‘Matty what?’ he asked. ‘Me juss Matty… Laplander Matty… Come have drink.’

‘I’m flat,’ said Bud. ‘Aint got a red cent.’

‘On me. Me too much money, take some…’ Matty shoved a hand into either pocket of his baggy checked suit and punched Bud in the chest with two fistfuls of greenbacks.

‘Aw keep yer money… I’ll take a drink with yous though.’

By the time they got to the saloon on the corner of Pearl Street Bud’s elbows and knees were soaked and a trickle of cold rain was running down his neck. When they went up to the bar Laplander Matty put down a five dollar bill.

‘Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.’

Bud was tackling the free lunch. ‘Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,’ he explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a baseball game Saturday afternoon.

‘Put it there Lap,’ he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back. ‘You an me’s friends from now on.’

‘Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?’

‘Sure we will.’

‘Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.’

‘Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,’ shouted a tall drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between as they swayed in the swinging doors.

‘Zey vont, vont zey?’ said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.

‘I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,’ roared Bud and slapped him on the back again.

Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked woman tatooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging faces laughed.

Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic, voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets bellying and curling like smoke in the stiff wind shoving down the Hudson out of the northwest.

‘Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Look…’ He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. ‘Isn’t that the
Anonda
coming in now?’

Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses.

‘Sure it is.’ He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like the sound of a sea shell.

‘Jiminy they were quick about it… They’ll be docked in half an hour… You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan. He’s all fixed… Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in half… Do you get that?’

Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. ‘No danger sir… You ought to know me by this time.’

‘Of course I do… You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.’

Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and rang an electric bell. ‘All right Charlie, show em in,’ he growled at the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from his desk and held out a hand. ‘How do you do Mr Storrow… How do you do Mr Gold… Make yourselves comfortable… That’s it… Now look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know that… I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence, that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably… Of course you must meet me halfway… We have I know the same interests at heart, the interests of this great city, of this great seaport…’ Mr Gold moved his hat to the back of his head and cleared his throat with a loud barking noise. ‘Gentlemen, one of two roads lies before us…’

In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm. He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down the airshaft through the dusty pane
where the sun gave a tiny glitter to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing came up faintly from the kitchens.