Manhattan Transfer (4 page)

‘Yessir’ a deepvoiced man droned from the next chair, ‘it’s time the Democratic party nominated a strong…’

‘Want a neckshave as well?’ The barber’s greasyskinned moonface poked into his.

He nodded.

‘Shampoo?’

‘No.’

When the barber threw back the chair to shave him he wanted to
crane his neck like a mudturtle turned over on its back. The lather spread drowsily on his face, prickling his nose, filling up his ears. Drowning in featherbeds of lather, blue lather, black, slit by the faraway glint of the razor, glint of the grubbing hoe through blueblack lather clouds. The old man on his back in the potatofield, his beard sticking up lathery white full of blood. Full of blood his socks from those blisters on his heels. His hands gripped each other cold and horny like a dead man’s hands under the sheet. Lemme git up… He opened his eyes. Padded fingertips were stroking his chin. He stared up at the ceiling where four flies made figure eights round a red crêpe-paper bell. His tongue was dry leather in his mouth. The barber righted the chair again. Bud looked about blinking. ‘Four bits, and a nickel for the shine.’

ADMITS KILLING CRIPPLED MOTHER…

‘D’yous mind if I set here a minute an read that paper?’ he hears his voice drawling in his pounding ears.

‘Go right ahead.’

PARKER’S FRIENDS PROTECT…

The black print squirms before his eyes. Russians…
MOB STONES
… (Special Dispatch to the
Herald
) Trenton, NJ

Nathan Sibbetts, fourteen years old, broke down today after two weeks of steady denial of guilt and confessed to the police that he was responsible for the death of his aged and crippled mother, Hannah Sibbetts, after a quarrel in their home at Jacob’s Creek, six miles above this city. Tonight he was committed to await the action of the Grand Jury.

RELIEVE PORT ARTHUR IN FACE OF ENEMY
… Mrs Rix Loses Husband’s Ashes.

On Tuesday May 24 at about half past eight o’clock I came home after sleeping on the steam roller all night, he said, and went upstairs to sleep some more. I had only gotten to sleep when my mother came upstairs and told me to get up and if I didn’t get up she would throw me downstairs. My mother grabbed hold of me to throw me downstairs. I threw her first and she fell to the bottom. I went downstairs and found that her head was twisted to one side. I then saw that she was dead and then I straightened her neck and covered her up with the cover from my bed.

Bud folds the paper carefully, lays it on the chair and leaves the barbershop. Outside the air smells of crowds, is full of noise and sunlight. No more’n a needle in a haystack… ‘An I’m twentyfive
years old,’ he muttered aloud. Think of a kid fourteen… He walks faster along roaring pavements where the sun shines through the Elevated striping the blue street with warm seething yellow stripes. No more’n a needle in a haystack.

Ed Thatcher sat hunched over the pianokeys picking out the Mosquito Parade. Sunday afternoon sunlight streamed dustily through the heavy lace curtains of the window, squirmed in the red roses of the carpet, filled the cluttered parlor with specks and splinters of light. Susie Thatcher sat limp by the window watching him out of eyes too blue for her sallow face. Between them, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet, little Ellen danced. Two small hands held up the pinkfrilled dress and now and then an emphatic little voice said, ‘Mummy watch my expression.’

‘Just look at the child,’ said Thatcher, still playing. ‘She’s a regular little balletdancer.’

Sheets of the Sunday paper lay where they had fallen from the table; Ellen started dancing on them, tearing the sheets under her nimble tiny feet.

‘Dont do that Ellen dear,’ whined Susie from the pink plush chair.

‘But mummy I can do it while I dance.’

‘Dont do that mother said.’ Ed Thatcher had slid into the Barcarole. Ellen was dancing to it, her arms swaying to it, her feet nimbly tearing the paper.

‘Ed for Heaven’s sake pick the child up; she’s tearing the paper.’

He brought his fingers down in a lingering chord. ‘Deary you mustnt do that. Daddy’s not finished reading it.’

Ellen went right on. Thatcher swooped down on her from the pianostool and set her squirming and laughing on his knee. ‘Ellen you should always mind when mummy speaks to you, and dear you shouldnt be destructive. It costs money to make that paper and people worked on it and daddy went out to buy it and he hasnt finished reading it yet. Ellie understands dont she now? We need con-struction and not de-struction in this world.’ Then he went on with the Barcarole and Ellen went on dancing, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet.

*

There were six men at the table in the lunchroom eating fast with their hats on the backs of their heads.

‘Jiminy crickets!’ cried the young man at the end of the table who was holding a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. ‘Kin you beat it?’

‘Beat what?’ growled a longfaced man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

‘Big snake appears on Fifth Avenue… Ladies screamed and ran in all directions this morning at eleven thirty when a big snake crawled out of a crack in the masonry of the retaining wall of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Fortysecond Street and started to cross the sidewalk…’

‘Some fish story…’

‘That aint nothin,’ said an old man. ‘When I was a boy we used to go snipeshootin on Brooklyn Flats…’

‘Holy Moses! it’s quarter of nine,’ muttered the young man folding his paper and hurrying out into Hudson Street that was full of men and girls walking briskly through the ruddy morning. The scrape of the shoes of hairyhoofed drayhorses and the grind of the wheels of producewagons made a deafening clatter and filled the air with sharp dust. A girl in a flowered bonnet with a big lavender bow under her pert tilted chin was waiting for him in the door of M. Sullivan & Co., Storage and Warehousing. The young man felt all fizzy inside, like a freshly uncorked bottle of pop.

‘Hello Emily!… Say Emily I’ve got a raise.’

‘You’re pretty near late, d’you know that?’

‘But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.’

She tilted her chin first to oneside and then to the other.

‘I dont give a rap.’

‘You know what you said if I got a raise.’ She looked in his eyes giggling.

‘An this is just the beginnin…’

‘But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?’

‘Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import business.’

‘Silly boy you’ll be late.’ She suddenly turned and ran up the littered stairs, her pleated bellshaped skirt swishing from side to side.

‘God! I hate her. I hate her.’ Sniffing up the tears that were hot in
his eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle & Gulick, West India Importers.

The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells of the Gulf Stream.

‘J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp à New York… The minute we tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.’ The cabinboy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. ‘Merde!’ He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and bounced into the scuppers.

‘Let it go. I’ve got plenty,’ said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. ‘The consul will just have you shipped back.’

‘He wont catch me.’

‘And your military service?’

‘To hell with it. And with France for that matter.’

‘You want to make yourself an American citizen?’

‘Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.’

The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a long whistle. ‘Emile you’re a wise guy,’ he said.

‘But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.’

Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his head that was thick with kinky black hair.

‘Say how much does a woman cost in New York?’

‘I dunno, expensive I guess… I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?’

‘What’s the use? Why not?’ said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again, burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed arms.

‘I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth dont matter, education dont matter. It’s all getting ahead.’

‘And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here
now where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?’

‘After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.’

‘And they dont have any military service?’

‘Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to fight people; they want to do business with them.’

Congo did not answer.

The cabinboy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.

‘Merde v’là l’heure.’ The paired strokes of the bell in the crowsnest came faintly to their ears. ‘But dont forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore…’ He made a popping noise with his lips. ‘We’re gone.’

‘I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadnt waked me.’ The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs clattering on his bare feet as he went.

Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled ends down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:

‘I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.’

Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: ‘But Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and vork for her husband.’

‘I wont. I cant help it. I wont go back to the dirty brute.’

Susie sat up in bed, but she couldn’t hear the next thing the old woman said.

‘But I aint a Jew no more,’ suddenly screeched the young girl. ‘This aint Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights here.’ Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.

Susie Thatcher stirred in bed moaning fretfully. Those awful
people never give me a moment’s peace. From below came the jingle of a pianola playing the Merry Widow Waltz. O Lord! why dont Ed come home? It’s cruel of them to leave a sick woman alone like this. Selfish. She twisted up her mouth and began to cry. Then she lay quiet again, staring at the ceiling watching the flies buzz teasingly round the electriclight fixture. A wagon clattered by down the street. She could hear children’s voices screeching. A boy passed yelling an extra. Suppose there’d been a fire. That terrible Chicago theater fire. Oh I’ll go mad! She tossed about in the bed, her pointed nails digging into the palms of her hands. I’ll take another tablet. Maybe I can get some sleep. She raised herself on her elbow and took the last tablet out of a little tin box. The gulp of water that washed the tablet down was soothing to her throat. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.

She woke with a start. Ellen was jumping round the room, her green tam falling off the back of her head, her coppery curls wild.

‘Oh mummy I want to be a little boy.’

‘Quieter dear. Mother’s not feeling a bit well.’

‘I want to be a little boy.’

‘Why Ed what have you done to the child? She’s all wrought up.’

‘We’re just excited, Susie. We’ve been to the most wonderful play. You’d have loved it, it’s so poetic and all that sort of thing. And Maude Adams was fine. Ellie loved every minute of it.’

‘It seems silly, as I said before, to take such a young child…’

‘Oh daddy I want to be a boy.’

‘I like my little girl the way she is. We’ll have to go again Susie and take you.’

‘Ed you know very well I wont be well enough.’ She sat bolt upright, her hair hanging a straight faded yellow down her back. ‘Oh, I wish I’d die… I wish I’d die, and not be a burden to you any more… You hate me both of you. If you didnt hate me you wouldnt leave me alone like this.’ She choked and put her face in her hands. ‘Oh I wish I’d die,’ she sobbed through her fingers.

‘Now Susie for Heaven’s sakes, it’s wicked to talk like that.’ He put his arm round her and sat on the bed beside her.

Crying quietly she dropped her head on his shoulder. Ellen stood staring at them out of round gray eyes. Then she started jumping up and down, chanting to herself, ‘Ellie’s goin to be a boy, Ellie’s goin to be a boy.’

*

With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat: