Manhattan Transfer

  ‘So he drove a milkwagon did he? I think milkmen are the nicest people in the world. Mine’s the cutest thing.’

  ‘Elaine you wont repeat this to anyone… I feel the completest confidence in you.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you George. Isn’t it amazing the way girls are getting to look more like Mrs Castle every day? Just look round this room.’

  ‘She was like a wild rose Elaine, fresh and pink and full of the Irish, and now she’s a rather stumpy businesslike looking little woman.’

  ‘And you’re as fit as you ever were. That’s the way it goes.’

  ‘I wonder… You dont know how empty and hollow everything was before I met you. All Cecily and I can do is make each other miserable.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s up at Bar Harbor… I had luck and all sorts of success when I was still a young man… I’m not forty yet.’

  ‘But I should think it would be fascinating. You must enjoy the law or you wouldn’t be such a success at it.’

  ‘Oh success… success… what does it mean?’

  ‘I’d like a little of it.’

  ‘But my dear girl you have it.’

  ‘Oh not what I mean.’

  ‘But it isn’t any fun any more. All I do is sit in the office and let the young fellows do the work. My future’s all cut out for me. I suppose I could get solemn and pompous and practice little private vices… but there’s more in me than that.’

  ‘Why dont you go into politics?’

  ‘Why should I go up to Washington into that greasy backwater when I’m right on the spot where they give the orders? The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.’

  Ellen was watching the people in light summer clothes dancing on the waxed square of floor in the center; she caught sight of Tony Hunter’s oval pink and white face at a table on the far side of the room. Oglethorpe was not with him. Stan’s friend Herf sat with his back to her. She watched him laughing, his long rumpled black head poised a little askew on a scraggly neck. The other two men she didn’t know.

  ‘Who are you looking at?’

  ‘Just some friends of Jojo’s… I wonder how on earth they got way out here. It’s not exactly on that gang’s beat.’

  ‘Always the way when I try to get away with something,’ said Baldwin with a wry smile.

  ‘I should say you’d done exactly what you wanted to all your life.’

  ‘Oh Elaine if you’d only let me do what I want to now. I want you to let me make you happy. You’re such a brave little girl making your way all alone the way you do. By gad you are so full of love and mystery and glitter…’ He faltered, took a deep swallow of wine, went on with flushing face. ‘I feel like a schoolboy… I’m making a fool of myself. Elaine I’d do anything in the world for you.’

  ‘Well all I’m going to ask you to do is to send away this lobster. I dont think it’s terribly good.’

  ‘The devil… maybe it isn’t… Here waiter!… I was so rattled I didn’t know I was eating it.’

  ‘You can get me some supreme of chicken instead.’

  ‘Surely you poor child you must be starved.’

  ‘… And a little corn on the cob… I understand now why you make such a good lawyer, George. Any jury would have burst out sobbing long ago at such an impassioned plea.’

  ‘How about you Elaine?’

  ‘George please don’t ask me.’

  At the table where Jimmy Herf sat they were drinking whiskey and soda. A yellowskinned man with light hair and a thin nose standing out crooked between childish blue eyes was talking in a confidential singsong: ‘Honest I had em lashed to the mast. The police department is cookoo, absolutely cookoo treating it as a rape and suicide case. That old man and his lovely innocent daughter were murdered, foully murdered. And do you know who by… ?’ He pointed a chubby cigarettestained finger at Tony Hunter.

  ‘Dont give me the third degree judge I dont know anything about it’ he said dropping his long lashes over his eyes.

  ‘By the Black Hand.’

  ‘You tell em Bullock,’ said Jimmy Herf laughing. Bullock brought his fist down on the table so that the plates and glasses jingled. ‘Canarsie’s full of the Black Hand, full of anarchists and kidnappers and undesirable citizens. It’s our business to ferret em out and vindicate the honor of this poor old man and his beloved daughter. We are going to vindicate the honor of poor old monkeyface, what’s his name?’

  ‘Mackintosh,’ said Jimmy. ‘And the people round here used to call him Santa Claus. Of course everybody admits he’s been crazy for years.’

  ‘We admit nothing but the majesty of American citizenhood… But hell’s bells what’s the use when this goddam war takes the whole front page? I was going to have a fullpage spread and they’ve cut me down to half a column. Aint it the life?’

  ‘You might work up something about how he was a lost heir to the Austrian throne and had been murdered for political reasons.’

  ‘Not such a bad idear Jimmy.’

  ‘But it’s such a horrible thing,’ said Tony Hunter.

  ‘You think we’re a lot of callous brutes, dont you Tony?’

  ‘No I just dont see the pleasure people get out of reading about it.’

  ‘Oh it’s all in the day’s work,’ said Jimmy. ‘What gives me gooseflesh is the armies mobilizing, Belgrade bombarded, Belgium invaded… all that stuff. I just cant imagine it… They’ve killed Jaures.’ ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘A French Socialist.’

  ‘Those goddam French are so goddam degenerate all they can do is fight duels and sleep with each other’s wives. I bet the Germans are in Paris in two weeks.’

  ‘It couldn’t last long,’ said Framingham, a tall ceremonious man with a whispy blond moustache who sat beside Hunter.

  ‘Well I’d like to get an assignment as warcorrespondent.’

  ‘Say Jimmy do you know this French guy who’s barkeep here?’

  ‘Congo Jake? Sure I know him.’

  ‘Is he a good guy?’

  ‘He’s swell.’

  ‘Let’s go out and talk to him. He might give us some dope about this here murder. God I’d like it if I could hitch it on to the World Conflict.’

  ‘I have the greatest confidence,’ had begun Framingham, ‘that the British will patch it up somehow.’ Jimmy followed Bullock towards the bar.

  Crossing the room he caught sight of Ellen. Her hair was very red in the glow from the lamp beside her. Baldwin was leaning towards her across the table with moist lips and bright eyes. Jimmy felt something glittering go off in his chest like a released spring. He turned his head away suddenly for fear she should see him.

  Bullock turned and nudged him in the ribs. ‘Say Jimmy who the hell are those two guys came out with us?’

  ‘They are friends of Ruth’s. I dont know them particularly well. Framingham’s an interior decorator I think.’

  At the bar under a picture of the Lusitania stood a dark man in a white coat distended by a deep gorilla chest. He was vibrating a shaker between his very hairy hands. A waiter stood in front of the bar with a tray of cocktail glasses. The cocktail foamed into them greenishwhite.

  ‘Hello Congo,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Ah bonsoir monsieur ’Erf, ça biche?’

  ‘Pretty good… Say Congo I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Grant Bullock of the American.’

  ‘Very please. You an Mr ’Erf ave someting on the ’ouse sir.’

  The waiter raised the clinking tray of glasses to shoulder height and carried them out on the flat of his hand.

  ‘I suppose a gin fizz’ll ruin all that whiskey but I’d like one… Drink something with us wont you Congo?’ Bullock put a foot up on the brass rail and took a sip. ‘I was wondering,’ he said slowly, ‘if there was any dope going round about this murder down the road.’

  ‘Everybody ave his tey
orie…’

  Jimmy caught a faint wink from one of Congo’s deepset black eyes. ‘Do you live out here?’ he asked to keep from giggling.

  ‘In the middle of the night I hear an automobile go by very fast wid de cutout open. I tink maybe it run into someting because it stopped very quick and come back much faster, licketysplit.’

  ‘Did you hear a shot?’

  Congo shook his head mysteriously. ‘I ear voices, very angree voices.’

  ‘Gosh I’m going to look into this,’ said Bullock tossing off the end of his drink. ‘Let’s go back to the girls.’

  Ellen was looking at the face wrinkled like a walnut and the dead codfish eyes of the waiter pouring coffee. Baldwin was leaning back in his chair staring at her through his eyelashes. He was talking in a low monotone:

  ‘Cant you see that I’ll go mad if I cant have you. You are the only thing in the world I ever wanted.’

  ‘George I dont want to be had by anybody… Cant you understand that a woman wants some freedom? Do be a sport about it. I’ll have to go home if you talk like that.’

  ‘Why have you kept me dangling then? I’m not the sort of man you can play like a trout. You know that perfectly well.’

  She looked straight at him with wide gray eyes; the light gave a sheen of gold to the little brown specks in the iris.

  ‘It’s not so easy never to be able to have friends.’ She looked down at her fingers on the edge of the table. His eyes were on the glint of copper along her eyelashes. Suddenly he snapped the silence that was tightening between them.

  ‘Anyway let’s dance.’

  *

  J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde

  Dans mes voyages,

  hummed Congo Jake as the big shining shaker quivered between his hairy hands. The narrow greenpapered bar was swelled and warped with bubbling voices, spiral exhalations of drinks, sharp clink of ice and glasses, an occasional strain of music from the other room. Jimmy Herf stood alone in the corner sipping a gin fizz. Next him Gus McNiel was slapping Bullock on the back and roaring in his ear:

  ‘Why if they dont close the Stock Exchange… godamighty… before the blowup comes there’ll be an opportunity… Well be-gorry dont you forget it. A panic’s the time for a man with a cool head to make money.’

  ‘There have been some big failures already and this is just the first whiff…’

  ‘Opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door… You listen to me when there’s a big failure of one o them brokerage firms honest men can bless themselves… But you’re not putting everythin I’m tellin ye in the paper, are you? There’s a good guy… Most of you fellers go around puttin words in a man’s mouth. Cant trust one of you. I’ll tell you one thing though the lockout is a wonderful thing for the contractors. Wont be no housebuildin with a war on anyway.’ ‘It wont last more’n two weeks and I dont see what it has to do with us anyway.’

  ‘But conditions’ll be affected all over the world… Conditions… Hello Joey what the hell do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you private for a minute sir. There’s some big news…’

  The bar emptied gradually. Jimmy Herf was still standing at the end against the wall.

  ‘You never get drunk, Mr ’Erf.’ Congo Jake sat down back of the bar to drink a cup of coffee.

  ‘I’d rather watch the other fellows.’

  ‘Very good. No use spend a lot o money ave a eadache next day.’

  ‘That’s no way for a barkeep to talk.’

  ‘I say what I tink.’

  ‘Say I’ve always wanted to ask you… Do you mind telling me?… How did you get the name of Congo Jake?’

  Congo laughed deep in his chest. ‘I dunno… When I very leetle I first go to sea dey call me Congo because I have cuily hair an dark like a nigger. Den when I work in America, on American ship an all zat, guy ask me How you feel Congo? and I say Jake… so dey call me Congo Jake.’

  ‘It’s some nickname… I thought you’d followed the sea.’

  ‘It’s a ‘ard life… I tell you Mr ’Erf, there’s someting about me unlucky. When I first remember on a peniche, you know what I mean… in canal, a big man not my fader beat me up every day. Then I run away and work on sailboats in and out of Bordeaux, you know?’

  ‘I was there when I was a kid I think…’

  ‘Sure… You understand them things Mr ’Erf. But a feller like you, good education, all ‘at, you dont know what life is. When I was seventeen I come to New York… no good. I tink of notten but raising Cain. Den I shipped out again and went everywhere to hell an gone. In Shanghai I learned spik American an tend bar. I come back to Frisco an got married. Now I want to be American. But unlucky again see? Before I marry zat girl her and me lived togedder a year sweet as pie, but when we get married no good. She make fun of me and call me Frenchy because I no spik American good and den she kick no out of the house an I tell her go to hell. Funny ting a man’s life.’

  J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde

  Dans mes voyages…

  he started in his growling baritone.

  There was a hand on Jimmy’s arm. He turned. ‘Why Ellie what’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m with a crazy man you’ve got to help me get away.’

  ‘Look this is Congo Jake… You ought to know him Ellie, he’s a fine man… This is une tres grande artiste, Congo.’

  ‘Wont the lady have a leetle anizette?’

  ‘Have a little drink with us… It’s awfully cozy in here now that everybody’s gone.’

  ‘No thanks I’m going home.’

  ‘But it’s just the neck of the evening.’

  ‘Well you’ll have to take the consequences of my crazy man… Look Herf, have you seen Stan today?’

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  ‘He didn’t turn up when I expected him.’

  ‘I wish you’d keep him from drinking so much, Ellie. I’m getting worried about him.’

  ‘I’m not his keeper.’

  ‘I know, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘What does our friend here think about all this wartalk?’

  ‘I wont go… A workingman has no country. I’m going to be American citizen… I was in the marine once but…’ He slapped his jerking bent forearm with one hand, and a deep laugh rattled in his throat… ‘Twentee tree. Moi je suis anarchiste vous comprennez monsieur.’

  ‘But then you cant be an American citizen.’

  Congo shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Oh I love him, he’s wonderful,’ whispered Ellen in Jimmy’s ear.

  ‘You know why they have this here war… So that workingmen all over wont make big revolution… Too busy fighting. So Guillaume and Viviani and l’Empereur d’Autriche and Krupp and Rothschild and Morgan they say let’s have a war… You know the first thing they do? They shoot Jaures, because he socialiste. The socialists are traitors to the International but all de samee…’

  ‘But how can they make people fight if they dont want to?’

  ‘In Europe people are slaves for thousands of years. Not like ’ere… But I ’ve seen war. Very funny. I tended bar in Port Arthur, nutten but a kid den. It was very funny.’

  ‘Gee I wish I could get a job as warcorrespondent.’

  ‘I might go as a Red Cross nurse.’

  ‘Correspondent very good ting… Always drunk in American bar very far from battlefield.’

  They laughed.

  ‘But arent we rather far from the battlefield, Herf?’

  ‘All right let’s dance. You must forgive me if I dance very badly.’

  ‘I’ll kick you if you do anything wrong.’

  His arm was like plaster when he put it round her to dance with her. High ashy walls broke and crackled within him. He was soaring like a fireballoon on the smell of her hair.

  ‘Get up on your toes and walk in time to the music… Move in straight lines that’s the whole trick.’ Her voice cut the quick coldly like a tiny flexible sharp metalsaw. Elbows joggling, faces s
et, gollywog eyes, fat men and thin women, thin women and fat men rotated densely about them. He was crumbling plaster with something that rattled achingly in his chest, she was an intricate machine of sawtooth steel whitebright bluebright copperbright in his arms. When they stopped her breast and the side of her body and her thigh came against him. He was suddenly full of blood steaming with sweat like a runaway horse. A breeze through an open door hustled the tobaccosmoke and the clotted pink air of the restaurant.

  ‘Herf I want to go down to see the murder cottage; please take me.’

  ‘As if I hadn’t seen enough of X’s marking the spot where the crime was committed.’

  In the hall George Baldwin stepped in front of them. He was pale as chalk, his black tie was crooked, the nostrils of his thin nose were dilated and marked with little veins of red.

  ‘Hello George.’

  His voice croaked tartly like a klaxon. ‘Elaine I’ve been looking for you. I must speak to you… Maybe you think I’m joking. I never joke.’

  ‘Herf excuse me a minute… Now what is the matter George? Come back to the table.’

  ‘George I was not joking either… Herf do you mind ordering me a taxi?’

  Baldwin grabbed hold of her wrist. ‘You’ve been playing with me long enough, do you hear me? Some day some man’s going to take a gun and shoot you. You think you can play me like all the other little sniveling fools… You’re no better than a common prostitute.’

  ‘Herf I told you to go get me a taxi.’

  Jimmy bit his lip and went out the front door.

  ‘Elaine what are you going to do?’

  ‘George I will not be bullied.’

  Something nickel flashed in Baldwin’s hand. Gus McNiel stepped forward and gripped his wrist with a big red hand.

  ‘Gimme that George… For God’s sake man pull yourself together.’ He shoved the revolver into his pocket. Baldwin tottered to the wall in front of him. The trigger finger of his right hand was bleeding.