Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
‘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. CONTRACTORS PLAN LOCKOUT TO ANSWER BUILDERS’ STRIKE. 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. SEGAL AND HAYNES will erect on this site a modern uptodate TWENTYFOUR STORY OFFICE BUILDING 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.’
‘Well perhaps you can tell me why in this country nobody ever does anything. Nobody ever writes any music or starts any revolutions or falls in love. All anybody ever does is to get drunk and tell smutty stories. I think it’s disgusting…’
‘’Ear, ’ear… But speak for yourself. I’m going to stop drinking… No good drinking, liquor just gets monotonous… Say, got a bathtub?’
‘Of course there’s a bathtub. Whose apartment do you think this is, mine?’
‘Well whose is it Herfy?’
‘It belongs to Lester. I’m just caretaker while he’s abroad, the lucky dog.’ Stan started peeling off his clothes letting them drop in a pile about his feet. ‘Gee I’d like to go swimming… Why the hell do people live in cities?’
‘Why do I go on dragging out a miserable existence in this crazy epileptic town… that’s what I want to know.’
‘Lead on Horatius, to the baawth slave,’ bellowed Stan who stood on top of
‘It’s right through that door.’ Jimmy pulled a towel out of the steamertrunk in the corner of the room, threw it after him and went back to reading.
Stan tumbled back into the room, dripping, talking through the towel. ‘What do you think, I forgot to take my hat off. And look Herfy, there’s something I want you to do for me. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. What is it?’
‘Will you let me use your back room tonight, this room?’
‘Sure you can.’
‘I mean with somebody.’
‘Go as far as you like. You can bring the entire Winter Garden Chorus in here and nobody will see them. And there’s an emergency exit down the fire escape into the alley. I’ll go to bed and close my door so you can have this room and the bath all to yourselves.’
‘It’s a rotten imposition but somebody’s husband is on the rampage and we have to be very careful.’
‘Dont worry about the morning. I’ll sneak out early and you can have the place to yourselves.’
‘Well I’m off so long.’
Jimmy gathered up his book and went into his bedroom and undressed. His watch said fifteen past twelve. The night was sultry. When he had turned out the light he sat a long while on the edge of the bed. The faraway sounds of sirens from the river gave him gooseflesh. From the street he heard footsteps, the sound of men and women’s voices, low youthful laughs of people going home two by two. A phonograph was playing Secondhand Rose. He lay on his back on top of the sheet. There came on the air through the window a sourness of garbage, a smell of burnt gasoline and traffic and dusty pavements, a huddled stuffiness of pigeonhole rooms where men and women’s bodies writhed alone tortured by the night and the young summer. He lay with seared eyeballs staring at the ceiling, his body glowed in a brittle shivering agony like redhot metal.
A woman’s voice whispering eagerly woke him; someone was pushing open the door. ‘I wont see him. I wont see him. Jimmy for Heaven’s sake you go talk to him. I wont see him.’ Elaine Oglethorpe draped in a sheet walked into the room.
Jimmy tumbled out of bed. ‘What on earth?’
‘Isn’t there a closet or something in here… I will not talk to Jojo when he’s in that condition.’
Jimmy straightened his pyjamas. ‘There’s a closet at the head of the bed.’
‘Of course… Now Jimmy do be an angel, talk to him and make him go away.’
Jimmy walked dazedly into the outside room. ‘Slut, slut,’ was yelling a voice from the window. The lights were on. Stan, draped like an Indian in a gray and pinkstriped blanket was squatting in the middle of the two couches made up together into a vast bed. He was staring impassively at John Oglethorpe who leaned in through the upper part of the window screaming and waving his arms and scolding like a Punch and Judy show. His hair was in a tangle over his eyes, in one hand he waved a stick, in the other a cream-andcoffeecolored felt hat. ‘Slut come here… Flagrante delictu that’s what it is… Flagrante delictu. It was not for nothing that inspiration led me up Lester Jones’s fire escape.’ He stopped and stared a minute at Jimmy with wide drunken eyes. ‘So here’s the cub reporter, the yellow journalist is it, looking as if butter wouldnt melt in his mouth is it? Do you know what my opinion of you is, would you like to know what my opinion of you is? Oh I’ve heard about you from Ruth and all that. I know you think you’re one of the dynamiters and aloof from all that… How do you like being a paid prostitute of the public press? How d’you like your yellow ticket? The brass check, that’s the kind of thing… You think that as an actor, an artiste, I dont know about those things. I’ve heard from Ruth your opinion of actors and all that.’
‘Why Mr Oglethorpe I am sure you are mistaken.’
‘I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.’
‘Yea, you tell em,’ suddenly shouted Stan from the bed. He got to his feet clapping his hands. ‘I should prefer to be the meanest stagehand. I should prefer to be the old and feeble charwoman who scrubs off the stage… than to sit on velvet in the office of the editor of the greatest daily in the city. Acting is a profession honorable, decent, humble, gentlemanly.’ The oration ended abruptly.
‘Well I dont see what you expect me to do about it,’ said Jimmy crossing his arms.
‘And now it’s starting to rain,’ went on Oglethorpe in a squeaky whining voice.
‘You’d better go home,’ said Jimmy.
‘I shall go I shall go where there are no sluts… no male and female sluts… I shall go into the great night.’
‘Do you think he can get home all right Stan?’
Stan had sat down on the edge of the bed shaking with laughter. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘My blood will be on your head Elaine forever… Forever, do you hear me?… into the night where people dont sit laughing and sneering. Dont you think I dont see you… If the worst happens it will not be my fault.’
‘Go-od night,’ shouted Stan. In a last spasm of laughing he fell off the edge of the bed and rolled on the floor. Jimmy went to the window and looked down the fire escape into the alley. Oglethorpe had gone. It was raining hard. A smell of wet bricks rose from the housewalls.
‘Well if this isnt the darnedest fool business?’ He walked back into his room without looking at Stan. In the door Ellen brushed silkily past him.
‘I’m terribly sorry Jimmy…’ she began.
He closed the door sharply in her face and locked it. ‘The goddam fools they act like crazy people,’ he said through his teeth. ‘What the hell do they think this is?’
His hands were cold and trembling. He pulled a blanket up over him. He lay listening to the steady beat of the rain and the hissing spatter of a gutter. Now and then a puff of wind blew a faint cool spray in his face. There still lingered in the room a frail cedarwood gruff smell of her heavycoiled hair, a silkiness of her body where she had crouched wrapped in the sheet hiding.
Ed Thatcher sat in his bay window among the Sunday papers. His hair was grizzled and there were deep folds in his cheeks. The upper buttons of his pongee trousers were undone to ease his sudden little potbelly. He sat in the open window looking out over the blistering asphalt at the endless stream of automobiles that whirred in either direction past the yellowbrick row of stores and the redbrick station under the eaves of which on a black ground gold letters glinted feebly in the sun: PASSAIC. Apartments round about emitted a querulous Sunday grinding of phonographs playing It’s a Bear. The Sextette from Lucia, selections from The Quaker Girl. On his knees lay the theatrical section of the New York Times. He looked out with bleared eyes into the quivering heat feeling his ribs tighten with a breathless ache. He had just read a paragraph in a marked copy of Town Topics.
Malicious tongues are set wagging by the undeniable fact that young Stanwood Emery’s car is seen standing every night outside the Knickerbocker Theatre and never does it leave they say, without a certain charming young actress whose career is fast approaching stellar magnitude. This same young gentleman, whose father is the head of one of the city’s most respected lawfirms, who recently left Harvard under slightly unfortunate circumstances, has been astonishing the natives for some time with his exploits which we are sure are merely the result of the ebullience of boyish spirits. A word to the wise.
The bell rang three times. Ed Thatcher dropped his papers and hurried quaking to the door. ‘Ellie you’re so late. I was afraid you weren’t coming.’
‘Daddy dont I always come when I say I will?’
‘Of course you do deary.’
‘How are you getting on? How’s everything at the office?’
‘Mr Elbert’s on his vacation… I guess I’ll go when he comes back. I wish you?
‘But daddy I cant.’… She pulled off her hat and dropped it on the davenport. ‘Look I brought you some roses, daddy.’
‘Think of it; they’re red roses like your mother used to like. That was very thoughtful of you I must say… But I dont like going all alone on my vacation.’
‘Oh you’ll meet lots of cronies daddy, sure you will.’
‘Why couldnt you come just for a week?’
‘In the first place I’ve got to look for a job… show’s going on the road and I’m not going just at present. Harry Goldweiser’s awfully sore about it.’ Thatcher sat down in the bay window again and began piling up the Sunday papers on a chair. ‘Why daddy what on earth are you doing with that copy of Town Topics?’
‘Oh nothing. I’d never read it; I just bought it to see what it was like.’ He flushed and compressed his lips as he shoved it in among the Times.
‘It’s just a blackmail sheet.’ Ellen was walking about the room. She had put the roses in a vase. A spiced coolness was spreading from them through the dustheavy air. ‘Daddy, there’s something I want to tell you about… Jojo and I are going to get divorced.’ Ed Thatcher sat with his hands on his knees nodding with tight lips, saying nothing. His face was gray and dark, almost the speckled gray of his pongee suit. ‘It’s nothing to take on about. We’ve just decided we cant get along together. It’s all going through quietly in the most approved style… George Baldwin, who’s a friend of mine, is going to run it through.’
‘He with Emery and Emery?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hum.’
They were silent. Ellen leaned over to breathe deep of the roses. She watched a little green measuring worm cross a bronzed leaf.
‘Honestly I’m terribly fond of Jojo, but it drives me wild to live with him… I owe him a whole lot, I know that.’