Manhattan Transfer (25 page)

‘Oh I’m the most miserable woman,’ she groaned and got to her feet. Her head ached as if it were bound with hot wire. She went to the window and leaned out into the sunlight. Across Park Avenue
the flameblue sky was barred with the red girder cage of a new building. Steam riveters rattled incessantly; now and then a donkey-engine whistled and there was a jingle of chains and a fresh girder soared crosswise in the air. Men in blue overalls moved about the scaffolding. Beyond to the northwest a shining head of clouds soared blooming compactly like a cauliflower. Oh if it would only rain. As the thought came to her there was a low growl of thunder above the din of building and of traffic. Oh if it would only rain.

Ellen had just hung a chintz curtain in the window to hide with its blotchy pattern of red and purple flowers the vista of desert backyards and brick flanks of downtown houses. In the middle of the bare room was a boxcouch cumbered with teacups, a copper chafingdish and percolator; the yellow hardwood floor was littered with snippings of chintz and curtainpins; books, dresses, bedlinen cascaded from a trunk in the corner; from a new mop in the fireplace exuded a smell of cedar oil. Ellen was leaning against the wall in a daffodilcolored kimono looking happily about the big shoebox-shaped room when the buzzer startled her. She pushed a rope of hair up off her forehead and pressed the button that worked the latch. There was a little knock on the door. A woman was standing in the dark of the hall.

‘Why Cassie I couldn’t make out who you were. Come in… What’s the matter?’

‘You are sure I’m not intwuding?’

‘Of course not.’ Ellen leaned to give her a little pecking kiss. Cassandra Wilkins was very pale and there was a nervous quiver about her eyelids. ‘You can give me some advice. I’m just getting my curtains up… Look do you think that purple goes all right with the gray wall? It looks kind of funny to me.’

‘I think it’s beautiful. What a beautiful woom. How happy you’re going to be here.’

‘Put that chafingdish down on the floor and sit down. I’ll make some tea. There’s a kind of bathroom kitchenette in the alcove there.’

‘You’re sure it wouldn’t be too much twouble?’

‘Of course not… But Cassie what’s the matter?’

‘Oh everything… I came down to tell you but I cant. I cant ever tell anybody.’

‘I’m so excited about this apartment. Imagine Cassie it’s the first place of my own I ever had in my life. Daddy wants me to live with him in Passaic, but I just felt I couldn’t.’

‘And what does Mr Oglethorpe… ? Oh but that’s impertinent of me… Do forgive me Elaine. I’m almost cwazy. I don’t know what I’m saying.’

‘Oh Jojo’s a dear. He’s even going to let me divorce him if I want to… Would you if you were me?’ Without waiting for an answer she disappeared between the folding doors. Cassie remained hunched up on the edge of the couch.

Ellen came back with a blue teapot in one hand and a pan of steaming water in the other. ‘Do you mind not having lemon or cream? There’s some sugar on the mantelpiece. These cups are clean because I just washed them. Dont you think they are pretty? Oh you cant imagine how wonderful and domestic it makes you feel to have a place all to yourself. I hate living in a hotel. Honestly this place makes me just so domestic… Of course the ridiculous thing is that I’ll probably have to give it up or sublet as soon as I’ve got it decently fixed up. Show’s going on the road in three weeks. I want to get out of it but Harry Goldweiser wont let me.’ Cassie was taking little sips of tea out of her spoon. She began to cry softly. ‘Why Cassie buck up, what’s the matter?’

‘Oh, you’re so lucky in everything Elaine and I’m so miserable.’

‘Why I always thought it was my jinx that got the beautyprize, but what is the matter?’

Cassie put down her cup and pushed her two clenched hands into her neck. ‘It’s just this,’ she said in a strangled voice… ‘I think I’m going to have a baby.’ She put her head down on her knees and sobbed.

‘Are you sure? Everybody’s always having scares.’

‘I wanted our love to be always pure and beautiful, but he said he’d never see me again if I didn’t… and I hate him.’ She shook the words out one by one between tearing sobs.

‘Why don’t you get married?’

‘I cant. I wont. It would interfere.’

‘How long since you knew?’

‘Oh it must have been ten days ago easily. I know it’s that… I dont want to have anything but my dancing.’ She stopped sobbing and began taking little sips of tea again.

Ellen walked back and forth in front of the fireplace. ‘Look here Cassie there’s no use getting all wrought up over things, is there? I know a woman who’ll help you… Do pull yourself together please.’

‘Oh I couldn’t, I couldn’t.’… The saucer slid off her knees and broke in two on the floor. ‘Tell me Elaine have you ever been through this?… Oh I’m so sowy. I’ll buy you another saucer Elaine.’ She got totteringly to her feet and put the cup and spoon on the mantelpiece.

‘Oh of course I have. When we were first married I had a terrible time…’

‘Oh Elaine isn’t it hideous all this? Life would be so beautiful and free and natural without it… I can feel the howor of it cweeping up on me, killing me.’

‘Things are rather like that,’ said Ellen gruffly.

Cassie was crying again. ‘Men are so bwutal and selfish.’

‘Have another cup of tea, Cassie.’

‘Oh I couldn’t. My dear I feel a deadly nausea… Oh I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘The bathroom is right through the folding doors and to the left.’

Ellen walked up and down the room with clenched teeth. I hate women. I hate women.

After a while Cassie came back into the room, her face greenish white, dabbing her forehead with a washrag.

‘Here lie down here you poor kid,’ said Ellen clearing a space on the couch. ‘… Now you’ll feel much better.’

‘Oh will you ever forgive me for causing all this twouble?’

‘Just lie still a minute and forget everything.’

‘Oh if I could only relax.’

Ellen’s hands were cold. She went to the window and looked out. A little boy in a cowboy suit was running about the yard waving an end of clothesline. He tripped and fell. Ellen could see his face puckered with tears as he got to his feet again. In the yard beyond a stumpy woman with black hair was hanging out clothes. Sparrows were chirping and fighting on the fence.

‘Elaine dear could you let me have a little powder? I’ve lost my vanity case.’

She turned back into the room. ‘I think… Yes there’s some on the mantelpiece… Do you feel better now Cassie?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cassie in a trembly voice. ‘And have you got a lipstick?’

‘I’m awfully sorry… I’ve never worn any street makeup. I’ll have to soon enough if I keep on acting.’ She went into the alcove to take off her kimono, slipped on a plain green dress, coiled up her hair and pushed a small black hat down over it. ‘Let’s run along Cassie. I want to have something to eat at six… I hate bolting my dinner five minutes before a performance.’

‘Oh I’m so tewified… Pwomise you wont leave me alone.’

‘Oh she wouldnt do anything today… She’ll just look you over and maybe give you something to take… Let’s see, have I got my key?’

‘We’ll have to take a taxi. And my dear I’ve only got six dollars in the world.’

‘I’ll make daddy give me a hundred dollars to buy furniture. That’ll be all right.’

‘Elaine you’re the most angelic cweature in the world… You deserve every bit of your success.’

At the corner of Sixth Avenue they got into a taxi.

Cassie’s teeth were chattering. ‘Please let’s go another time. I’m too fwightened to go now.’

‘My dear child it’s the only thing to do.’

Joe Harland, puffing on his pipe, pulled to and bolted the wide quaking board gates. A last splash of garnetcolored sunlight was fading on the tall housewall across the excavation. Blue arms of cranes stood out dark against it. Harland’s pipe had gone out, he stood puffing at it with his back to the gate looking at the files of empty wheelbarrows, the piles of picks and shovels, the little shed for the donkeyengine and the steam drills that sat perched on a split rock like a mountaineer’s shack. It seemed to him peaceful in spite of the rasp of traffic from the street that seeped through the hoarding. He went into the leanto by the gate where the telephone was, sat down in the chair, knocked out, filled and lit his pipe and spread the newspaper out on his knees. C
ONTRACTORS
P
LAN
L
OCKOUT TO
A
NSWER
B
UILDERS
’ S
TRIKE.
He yawned and threw back his head. The light was too blue-dim to read. He sat a long time staring at the stub scarred toes of his boots. His mind was a fuzzy comfortable blank. Suddenly he saw himself in a dress-suit
wearing a top hat with an orchid in his buttonhole. The Wizard of Wall Street looked at the lined red face and the gray hair under the mangy cap and the big hands with their grimy swollen knuckles and faded with a snicker. He remembered faintly the smell of a Corona-Corona as he reached into the pocket of the peajacket for a can of Prince Albert to refill his pipe. ‘What dif does it make I’d like to know?’ he said aloud. When he lit a match the night went suddenly inky all round. He blew out the match. His pipe was a tiny genial red volcano that made a discreet cluck each time he pulled on it. He smoked very slowly inhaling deep. The tall buildings all round were haloed with ruddy glare from streets and electriclight signs. Looking straight up through glimmering veils of reflected light he could see the blueblack sky and stars. The tobacco was sweet. He was very happy.

A glowing cigarend crossed the door of the shack. Harland grabbed his lantern and went out. He held the lantern up in the face of a blond young man with a thick nose and lips and a cigar in the side of his mouth.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘Side door was open.’

‘The hell it was? Who are you looking for?’

‘You the night watchman round here?’ Harland nodded. ‘Glad to meet yez.… Have a cigar. I jus wanted to have a little talk wid ye, see?… I’m organizer for Local 47, see? Let’s see your card.’

‘I’m not a union man.’

‘Well ye’re goin to be aint ye… Us guys of the buildin trades have got to stick together. We’re tryin to get every bloke from night watchmen to inspectors lined up to make a solid front against this here lockout sitooation.’

Harland lit his cigar. ‘Look here, bo, you’re wasting your breath on me. They’ll always need a watchman, strike or no strike… I’m an old man and I haven’t got much fight left in me. This is the first decent job I’ve had in five years and they’ll have to shoot me to get it away from me… All that stuff’s for kids like you. I’m out of it. You sure are wasting your breath if you’re going round trying to organize night watchmen.’

‘Say you don’t talk like you’d always been in this kind o woik.’

‘Well maybe I aint.’

The young man took off his hat and rubbed his hand over his
forehead and up across his dense cropped hair. ‘Hell it’s warm work arguin… Swell night though aint it?’

‘Oh the night’s all right,’ said Harland.

‘Say my name’s O’Keefe, Joe O’Keefe… Gee I bet you could tell a guy a lot o things.’ He held out his hand.

‘My name’s Joe too… Harland… Twenty years ago that name meant something to people.’

‘Twenty years from now…’

‘Say you’re a funny fellow for a walking delegate… You take an old man’s advice before I run you off the lot, and quit it… It’s no game for a likely young feller who wants to make his way in the world.’

‘Times are changin you know… There’s big fellers back o this here strike, see? I was talkin over the sitooation with Assemblyman McNiel jus this afternoon in his office.’

‘But I’m telling you straight if there’s one thing that’ll queer you in this town it’s this labor stuff… You’ll remember someday that an old drunken bum told you that and it’ll be too late.’

‘Oh it was drink was it? That’s one thing I’m not afraid of. I don’t touch the stuff, except beer to be sociable.’

‘Look here bo the company detective’ll be makin his rounds soon. You’d better be making tracks.’

‘I ain’t ascared of any goddam company detective… Well so long I’ll come in to see you again someday.’

‘Close that door behind you.’

Joe Harland drew a little water from a tin container, settled himself in his chair and stretched his arms out and yawned. Eleven o’clock. They would just be getting out of the theaters, men in eveningclothes, girls in lowneck dresses; men were going home to their wives and mistresses; the city was going to bed. Taxis honked and rasped outside the hoarding, the sky shimmered with gold powder from electric signs. He dropped the butt of the cigar and crushed it on the floor with his heel. He shuddered and got to his feet, then paced slowly round the edge of the buildinglot swinging his lantern.

The light from the street yellowed faintly a big sign on which was a picture of a skyscraper, white with black windows against blue sky and white clouds. S
EGAL AND
H
AYNES
will erect on this site a modern uptodate T
WENTYFOUR
S
TORY
O
FFICE
B
UILDING
open for occupancy January 1915 renting space still available inquire…

Jimmy Herf sat reading on a green couch under a bulb that lit up a corner of a wide bare room. He had come to the death of Olivier in
Jean Christophe
and read with tightening gullet. In his memory lingered the sound of the Rhine swirling, restlessly gnawing the foot of the garden of the house where Jean Christophe was born. Europe was a green park in his mind full of music and red flags and mobs marching. Occasionally the sound of a steamboat whistle from the river settled breathless snowysoft into the room. From the street came a rattle of taxis and the whining sound of streetcars.

There was a knock at the door. Jimmy got up, his eyes blurred and hot from reading.

‘Hello Stan, where the devil did you come from?’

‘Herfy I’m tight as a drum.’

‘That’s no novelty.’

‘I was just giving you the weather report.’