Manhattan Transfer (6 page)

‘Wait a minute, you learn by and by.’

The door opened. They bowed respectfully towards the diamond stud. Somebody had drawn a pair of woman’s legs on his shirtfront. There was a bright flush on each of his cheeks. The lower lid of one eye sagged, giving his weasle face a quizzical lobsided look.

‘Wazzahell, Marco wazzahell?’ he was muttering. ‘We aint got a thing to drink… Bring the Atlantic Ozz-shen and two quarts.’

‘De suite monsieur…’ The old waiter bowed. ‘Emile tell Auguste, immediatement et bien frappé.’

As Emile went down the corridor he could hear singing.

O would the Atlantic were all champagne
Bright bi-i-i…

The moonface and the bottlenose were coming back from the lavatory reeling arm in arm among the palms in the hall.

‘These damn fools make me sick.’

‘Yessir these aint the champagne suppers we used to have in Frisco in the ole days.’

‘Ah those were great days those.’

‘By the way,’ the moonfaced man steadied himself against the wall, ‘Holyoke ole fella, did you shee that very nobby little article on the rubber trade I got into the morning papers… That’ll make the investors nibble… like lil mishe.’

‘Whash you know about rubber?… The stuff aint no good.’

‘You wait an shee, Holyoke ole fella or you looshing opportunity of your life… Drunk or sober I can smell money… on the wind.’

‘Why aint you got any then?’ The bottlenosed man’s beefred face went purple; he doubled up letting out great hoots of laughter.

‘Because I always let my friends in on my tips,’ said the other man soberly. ‘Hay boy where’s zis here private dinin room?’

‘Par ici monsieur.’

A red accordionpleated dress swirled past them, a little oval face framed by brown flat curls, pearly teeth in an open-mouthed laugh.

‘Fifi Waters,’ everyone shouted. ‘Why my darlin lil Fifi, come to my arms.’

She was lifted onto a chair where she stood jiggling from one foot to the other, champagne dripping out of a tipped glass.

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘Happy New Year.’

‘Many returns of the day…’

A fair young man who had followed her in was reeling intricately round the table singing:

O we went to the animals’ fair
And the birds and the beasts were there
And the big baboon
By the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

‘Hoopla,’ cried Fifi Waters and mussed the gray hair of the man with the diamond stud. ‘Hoopla.’ She jumped down with a kick, pranced round the room, kicking high with her skirts fluffed up around her knees.

‘Oh la la ze French high kicker!’

‘Look out for the Pony Ballet.’

Her slender legs, shiny black silk stockings tapering to red rosetted slippers flashed in the men’s faces.

‘She’s a mad thing,’ cried the lady in the tiara.

Hoopla. Holyoke was swaying in the doorway with his top hat tilted over the glowing bulb of his nose. She let out a whoop and kicked it off.

‘It’s a goal,’ everyone cried.

‘For crissake you kicked me in the eye.’

She stared at him a second with round eyes and then burst into tears on the broad shirtfront of the diamond stud. ‘I wont be insulted like that,’ she sobbed.

‘Rub the other eye.’

‘Get a bandage someone.’

‘Goddam it she may have put his eye out.’

‘Call a cab there waiter.’

‘Where’s a doctor?’

‘That’s hell to pay ole fella.’

A handkerchief full of tears and blood pressed to his eye the bottlenosed man stumbled out. The men and women crowded through the door after him; last went the blond young man, reeling and singing:

An the big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

Fifi Waters was sobbing with her head on the table.

‘Don’t cry Fifi,’ said the Colonel who was still sitting where he had sat all the evening. ‘Here’s something I rather fancy might do you good.’ He pushed a glass of champagne towards her down the table.

She sniffled and began drinking it in little sips. ‘Hullo Roger, how’s the boy?’

‘The boy’s quite well thank you… Rather bored, dont you know? An evening with such infernal bounders…’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘There doesnt seem to be anything left to eat.’

‘I didnt know you’d be here or I’d have come earlier, honest.’

‘Would you indeed?… Now that’s very nice.’

The long ash dropped from the Colonel’s cigar; he got to his feet. ‘Now Fifi, I’ll call a cab and we’ll go for a ride in the Park…’

She drank down her champagne and nodded brightly. ‘Dear me it’s four o’clock…’ ‘You have the proper wraps haven’t you?’

She nodded again.

‘Splendid Fifi… I say you are in form.’ The Colonel’s cigarcolored face was unraveling in smiles. ‘Well, come along.’

She looked about her in a dazed way. ‘Didnt I come with somebody?’

‘Quite unnecessary!’

In the hall they came upon the fair young man quietly vomiting into a firebucket under an artificial palm.

‘Oh let’s leave him,’ she said wrinkling up her nose.

‘Quite unnecessary,’ said the Colonel.

Emile brought their wraps. The redhaired girl had gone home.

‘Look here, boy.’ The Colonel waved his cane. ‘Call me a cab please… Be sure the horse is decent and the driver is sober.’

‘De suite monsieur.’

The sky beyond roofs and chimneys was the blue of a sapphire. The Colonel took three or four deep sniffs of the dawnsmelling air and threw his cigar into the gutter. ‘Suppose we have a bit of breakfast at Cleremont. I haven’t had anything fit to eat all night. That beastly sweet champagne, ugh!’

Fifi giggled. After the Colonel had examined the horse’s fetlocks and patted his head, they climbed into the cab. The Colonel fitted in Fifi carefully under his arm and they drove off. Emile stood a second in the door of the restaurant uncrumpling a five dollar bill. He was tired and his insteps ached.

When Emile came out of the back door of the restaurant he found Congo waiting for him sitting on the doorstep. Congo’s skin had a green chilly look under the frayed turned up coatcollar.

‘This is my friend,’ Emile said to Marco. ‘Came over on the same boat.’

‘You havent a bottle of fine under your coat have you? Sapristi I’ve seen some chickens not half bad come out of this place.’

‘But what’s the matter?’

‘Lost my job that’s all… I wont have to take any more off that guy. Come over and drink a coffee.’

They ordered coffee and doughnuts in a lunchwagon on a vacant lot.

‘Eh bien you like it this sacred pig of a country?’ asked Marco.

‘Why not! I like it anywhere. It’s all the same, in France you are paid badly and live well; here you are paid well and live badly.’

‘Questo paese e completamente soto sopra.’

‘I think I’ll go to sea again…’

‘Say why de hell doan yous guys loin English?’ said the man with a cauliflower face who slapped the three mugs of coffee down on the counter.

‘If we talk Engleesh,’ snapped Marco ‘maybe you no lika what we say.’

‘Why did they fire you?’

‘Merde. I dont know. I had an argument with the old camel who runs the place… He lived next door to the stables; as well as washing the carriages he made me scrub the floors in his house…
His wife, she had a face like this.’ Congo sucked in his lips and tried to look crosseyed.

Marco laughed. ‘Santissima Maria putana!’

‘How did you talk to them?’

‘They pointed to things; then I nodded my head and said Awright. I went there at eight and worked till six and they gave me every day more filthy things to do… Last night they tell me to clean out the toilet in the bathroom. I shook my head… That’s woman’s work… She got very angry and started screeching. Then I began to learn Angleesh… Go awright to ‘ell, I says to her… Then the old man comes and chases me out into a street with a carriage whip and says he wont pay me my week… While we were arguing he got a policeman, and when I try to explain to the policeman that the old man owed me ten dollars for the week, he says Beat it you lousy wop, and cracks me on the coco with his nightstick… Merde alors…’

Marco was red in the face. ‘He call you lousy wop?’

Congo nodded his mouth full of doughnut.

‘Notten but shanty Irish himself,’ muttered Marco in English. ‘I’m fed up with this rotten town…’

‘It’s the same all over the world, the police beating us up, rich people cheating us out of their starvation wages, and who’s fault?… Dio cane! Your fault, my fault, Emile’s fault…’

‘We didn’t make the world… They did or maybe God did.’

‘God’s on their side, like a policeman… When the day comes we’ll kill God… I am an anarchist.’

Congo hummed ‘les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu.’

‘Are you one of us?’

Congo shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not a catholic or a protestant; I haven’t any money and I haven’t any work. Look at that.’ Congo pointed with a dirty finger to a long rip on his trouserknee. ‘That’s anarchist… Hell I’m going out to Senegal and get to be a nigger.’

‘You look like one already,’ laughed Emile.

‘That’s why they call me Congo.’

‘But that’s all silly,’ went on Emile. ‘People are all the same. It’s only that some people get ahead and others dont… That’s why I came to New York.’

‘Dio cane I think that too twentyfive years ago… When you’re old like me you know better. Doesnt the shame of it get you
sometimes? Here’… he tapped with his knuckles on his stiff shirtfront… ‘I feel it hot and like choking me here… Then I say to myself Courage our day is coming, our day of blood.’

‘I say to myself,’ said Emile. ‘When you have some money old kid.’

‘Listen, before I leave Torino when I go last time to see the mama I got to a meetin of comrades… A fellow from Capua got up to speak… a very handsome man, tall and very thin… He said that there would be no more force when after the revolution nobody lived off another man’s work… Police, governments, armies, presidents, kings… all that is force. Force is not real; it is illusion. The working man makes all that himself because he believes it. The day that we stop believing in money and property it will be like a dream when we wake up. We will not need bombs or barricades… Religion, politics, democracy all that is to keep us asleep… Everybody must go round telling people: Wake up!’

‘When you go down into the street I’ll be with you,’ said Congo.

‘You know that man I tell about?… That man Errico Malatesta, in Italy greatest man after Garibaldi… He give his whole life in jail and exile, in Egypt, in England, in South America, everywhere… If I could be a man like that, I dont care what they do; they can string me up, shoot me… I dont care… I am very happy.’

‘But he must be crazy a feller like that,’ said Emile slowly. ‘He must be crazy.’

Marco gulped down the last of his coffee. ‘Wait a minute. You are too young. You will understand… One by one they make us understand… And remember what I say… Maybe I’m too old, maybe I’m dead, but it will come when the working people awake from slavery… You will walk out in the street and the police will run away, you will go into a bank and there will be money poured out on the floor and you wont stoop to pick it up, no more good… All over the world we are preparing. There are comrades even in China… Your Commune in France was the beginning… socialism failed. It’s for the anarchists to strike the next blow… If we fail there will be others…’

Congo yawned, ‘I am sleepy as a dog.’

Outside the lemoncolored dawn was drenching the empty streets, dripping from cornices, from the rails of fire escapes, from the rims of ashcans, shattering the blocks of shadow between buildings.
The streetlights were out. At a corner they looked up Broadway that was narrow and scorched as if a fire had gutted it.

‘I never see the dawn,’ said Marco, his voice rattling in his throat, ‘that I dont say to myself perhaps… perhaps today.’ He cleared his throat and spat against the base of a lamppost; then he moved away from them with his waddling step, taking hard short sniffs of the cool air.

‘Is that true, Congo, about shipping again?’

‘Why not? Got to see the world a bit…’

‘I’ll miss you… I’ll have to find another room.’

‘You’ll find another friend to bunk with.’

‘But if you do that you’ll stay a sailor all your life.’

‘What does it matter? When you are rich and married I’ll come and visit you.’

They were walking down Sixth Avenue. An L train roared above their heads leaving a humming rattle to fade among the girders after it had passed.

‘Why dont you get another job and stay on a while?’

Congo produced two bent cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his coat, handed one to Emile, struck a match on the seat of his trousers, and let the smoke out slowly through his nose. ‘I’m fed up with it here I tell you…’ He brought his flat hand up across his Adam’s apple, ‘up to here… Maybe I’ll go home an visit the little girls of Bordeaux… At least they are not all made of whalebone… I’ll engage myself as a volunteer in the navy and wear a red pompom… The girls like that. That’s the only life… Get drunk and raise cain payday and see the extreme orient.’

‘And die of the syph in a hospital at thirty…’

‘What’s it matter?… Your body renews itself every seven years.’

The steps of their rooming house smelled of cabbage and stale beer. They stumbled up yawning.

‘Waiting’s a rotton tiring job… Makes the soles of your feet ache… Look it’s going to be a fine day; I can see the sun on the watertank opposite.’

Congo pulled off his shoes and socks and trousers and curled up in bed like a cat.

‘Those dirty shades let in all the light,’ muttered Emile as he stretched himself on the outer edge of the bed. He lay tossing
uneasily on the rumpled sheets. Congo’s breathing beside him was low and regular. If I was only like that, thought Emile, never worrying about a thing… But it’s not that way you get along in the world. My God it’s stupid… Marco’s gaga the old fool.

And he lay on his back looking up at the rusty stains on the ceiling, shuddering every time an elevated train shook the room. Sacred name of God I must save up my money. When he turned over the knob on the bedstead rattled and he remembered Marco’s hissing husky voice: I never see the dawn that I dont say to myself perhaps.