Manhattan Transfer (16 page)

I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.

There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead… He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.

I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.

He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG… And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars… He walked on.

‘Hullo Emile!’ Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. ‘That’s the way you treat your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that delicatessen queen…’

Emile yanked his hand away. ‘I am in a ‘urree zat’s all.’

‘How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to make her fall for yez.’

‘Zat was Congo’s idea.’

‘Well didn’t it woik?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well aint there sumpen due me?’

‘May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is Wednesday… I’ll come by an take you to a show… ‘Ow’s ‘ustlin?’

‘Worse’n hell… I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus… That’s where you meet guys wid jack… No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs… I’m gettin respectable.’

‘May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?’

‘Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name of… Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git’s a postal ca-ard… That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night… An he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?’

‘Goodby May.’ He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.

‘Hey quit dat Frogslegs… Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a girl,’ she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. ‘I could git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.’

Emile walked off.

A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then on the other with his billy.

‘It’s a shine ‘at set the fire.’

‘They caught the firebug.’

‘’At’s ’e incendiary.’

‘God he’s a meanlookin smoke.’

The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front of the door of her store.

‘Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong… J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.’

Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl
slowly round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, ‘Everyting awright. Look no more fire, only smoke… But you are insured, aint you?’

‘Oh yes for fifteen tousand.’ He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. ‘Viens ma petite on va rentrer.’

Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. ‘Ernestine when we get married?’

‘Next month.’

‘I no wait zat long, imposseeble… Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock… I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.’

She patted him on the cheek. ‘P’tit ambitieux,’ she said through her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.

They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.

‘Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get the train that comes from the Penn station… It’s funny this waiting in the wilds of New Jersey this way.’ They got into the parlorcar. John made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made dark dimes on his pale hat. ‘Well we’re off, little girl… Behold thou art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks.’

Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to feel very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but something had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out at the brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and the puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and barns and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all barred and crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes on the window ran straight down when the train stopped and got more and more oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her head, saying Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Manhattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it was a long time before Atlantic City.
By the time we get to Atlantic City…
Oh it rained forty days…
I’ll be feeling gay…
And it rained forty nights
… I’ve got to be feeling gay.

‘Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe, that’s a very fine name, isn’t it, darling? Oh stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am sick of love…’

It was so comfortable in the empty parlorcar in the green velvet chair with John leaning towards her reciting nonsense with the brown marshlands slipping by behind the rainstriped window and a smell like clams seeping into the car. She looked into his face and laughed. A blush ran all over his face to the roots of his redblond hair. He put his hand in its yellow glove over her hand in its white glove. ‘You’re my wife now Elaine.’

‘You’re my husband now John.’ And laughing they looked at each other in the coziness of the empty parlorcar.

White letters, ATLANTIC CITY, spelled doom over the rainpitted water.

Rain lashed down the glaring boardwalk and crashed in gusts against the window like water thrown out of a bucket. Beyond the rain she could hear the intermittent rumble of the surf along the beach between the illuminated piers. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Beside her in the big bed John lay asleep breathing quietly like a child with a pillow doubled up under his head. She was icy cold. She slid out of bed very carefully not to wake him, and stood looking out the window down the very long V of lights of the boardwalk. She pushed up the window. The rain lashed in her face spitefully stinging her flesh, wetting her nightdress. She pushed her forehead against the frame. Oh I want to die. I want to die. All the tight coldness of her body was clenching in her stomach. Oh I’m going to be sick. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. When she had vomited she felt better. Then she climbed into bed again careful not to touch John. If she touched him she would die. She lay on her back with her hands tight against her sides and her feet together. The parlorcar rumbled cozily in her head; she fell asleep.

Wind rattling the windowframes wakened her. John was far away, the other side of the big bed. With the wind and the rain streaming in the window it was as if the room and the big bed and everything were moving, running forward like an airship over the
sea.
Oh it rained forty days…
Through a crack in the cold stiffness the little tune trickled warm as blood…
And it rained forty nights
. Gingerly she drew a hand over her husband’s hair. He screwed his face up in his sleep and whined ‘Dont’ in a littleboy’s voice that made her giggle. She lay giggling on the far edge of the bed, giggling desperately as she used to with girls at school. And the rain lashed through the window and the song grew louder until it was a brass band in her ears:

Oh it rained forty days
And it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man that survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.

Jimmy Herf sits opposite Uncle Jeff. Each has before him on a blue plate a chop, a baked potato, a little mound of peas and a sprig of parsley.

‘Well look about you Jimmy,’ says Uncle Jeff. Bright topstory light brims the walnutpaneled diningroom, glints twistedly on silver knives and forks, gold teeth, watch-chains, scarfpins, is swallowed up in the darkness of broadcloth and tweed, shines roundly on polished plates and bald heads and covers of dishes. ‘Well what do you think of it?’ asks Uncle Jeff burying his thumbs in the pockets of his fuzzy buff vest.

‘It’s a fine club all right,’ says Jimmy.

‘The wealthiest and the most successful men in the country eat lunch up here. Look at the round table in the corner. That’s the Gausenheimers’ table. Just to the left.’… Uncle Jeff leans forward lowering his voice, ‘the man with the powerful jaw is J. Wilder Laporte.’ Jimmy cuts into his muttonchop without answering. ‘Well Jimmy, you probably know why I brought you down here… I want to talk to you. Now that your poor mother has… has been taken, Emily and I are your guardians in the eyes of the law and the executors of poor Lily’s will… I want to explain to you just how things stand.’ Jimmy puts down his knife and fork and sits staring at his uncle, clutching the arms of his chair with cold hands, watching the jowl move blue and heavy above the ruby stickpin in the wide satin cravat. ‘You are sixteen now aren’t you Jimmy?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Well it’s this way… When your mother’s estate is all settled up you’ll find yourself in the possession of approximately fiftyfive hundred dollars. Luckily you are a bright fellow and will be ready for college early. Now, properly husbanded that sum ought to see you through Columbia, since you insist on going to Columbia… I myself, and I’m sure your Aunt Emily feels the same way about it, would much rather see you go to Yale or Princeton… You are a very lucky fellow in my estimation. At your age I was sweeping out an office in Fredericksburg and earning fifteen dollars a month. Now what I wanted to say was this… I have not noticed that you felt sufficient responsibility about moneymatters… er… sufficient enthusiasm about earning your living, making good in a man’s world. Look around you… Thrift and enthusiasm has made these men what they are. It’s made me, put me in the position to offer you the comfortable home, the cultured surroundings that I do offer you… I realize that your education has been a little peculiar, that poor Lily did not have quite the same ideas that we have on many subjects, but the really formative period of your life is beginning. Now’s the time to take a brace and lay the foundations of your future career… What I advise is that you follow James’s example and work your way up through the firm… From now on you are both sons of mine… It will mean hard work but it’ll eventually offer a very substantial opening. And dont forget this, if a man’s a success in New York, he’s a success!’ Jimmy sits watching his uncle’s broad serious mouth forming words, without tasting the juicy mutton of the chop he is eating. ‘Well what are you going to make of yourself?’ Uncle Jeff leaned towards him across the table with bulging gray eyes.

Jimmy chokes on a piece of bread, blushes, at last stammers weakly, ‘Whatever you say Uncle Jeff.’

‘Does that mean you’ll go to work for a month this summer in my office? Get a taste of how it feels to make a living, like a man in a man’s world, get an idea of how the business is run?’ Jimmy nods his head. ‘Well I think you’ve come to a very sensible decision,’ booms Uncle Jeff leaning back in his chair so that the light strikes across the wave of his steelgray hair. ‘By the way what’ll you have for dessert?… Years from now Jimmy, when you are a successful
man with a business of your own we’ll remember this talk. It’s the beginning of your career.’

The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her billowy blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks squashed flat and soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and the fedoras and the majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hat-chetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them.