Her eye suddenly caught his. All the little wrinkles on her face deepened; the skin under her eyes was like the skin of a shrunken toy balloon. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder and was puckering his lips to kiss her when suddenly she flared up.
‘I wont have you meddling between me and my dressmakers… I wont have it… I wont have it…’
‘Oh have it your own way.’ He left the room with his head hunched between his thick sloping shoulders.
‘Ann-ee!’
‘Yes ma’am.’ The maid came back into the room.
Mrs Densch had sunk down in the middle of a little spindlelegged sofa. Her face was green. ‘Annie please get me that bottle of sweet spirits of ammonia and a little water… And Annie you can call up Hickson’s and tell them that that dress was sent back through a mistake of… of the butler’s and please to send it right back as I’ve got to wear it tonight.’
Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. ‘By Jesus I admit that I’m stumped,’ he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold dress, Ellie made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from every window. And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things… Please mister where’s the door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.
‘How do you do Mr Goldstein?’ the reporter breezily chanted as he squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the cigar store. ‘My name’s Brewster… I’m writing up the crime wave for the News.’
Mr Goldstein was a larvashaped man with a hooked nose a little crooked in a gray face, behind which pink attentive ears stood out unexpectedly. He looked at the reporter out of suspicious screwedup eyes.
‘If you’d be so good I’d like to have your story of last night’s little… misadventure…’
‘Vont get no story from me young man. Vat vill you do but print it so that other boys and goils vill get the same idear.’
‘It’s too bad you feel that way Mr Goldstein… Will you give me a Robert Burns please…? Publicity it seems to me is as necessary as ventilation… It lets in fresh air.’ The reporter bit off the end of the cigar, lit it, and stood looking thoughtfully at Mr Goldstein through a swirling ring of blue smoke. ‘You see Mr Goldstein it’s this way,’ he began impressively. ‘We are handling this matter from the human interest angle… pity and tears… you understand. A photographer was on his way out here to get your photograph… I bet you it would increase your volume of business for the next couple of weeks… I suppose I’ll have to phone him not to come now.’
‘Well this guy,’ began Mr Goldstein abruptly, ‘he’s a welldressed lookin feller, new spring overcoat an all that and he comes in to buy a package o Camels… “A nice night,” he says openin the package an takin out a cigarette to smoke it. Then I notices the goil with him had a veil on.’
‘Then she didnt have bobbed hair?’
‘All I seen was a kind o mournin veil. The foist thing I knew she was behind the counter an had a gun stuck in my ribs an began talkin… you know kinder kiddin like… and afore I knew what to think the guy’d cleaned out the cashregister an says to me, “Got any cash in your jeans Buddy?” I’ll tell ye I was sweatin some…’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Sure by the time I’d got hold of a cop they vere off to hell an gone.’
‘How much did they get?’
‘Oh about fifty berries an six dollars off me.’
‘Was the girl pretty?’
‘I dunno, maybe she was. I’d like to smashed her face in. They ought to make it the electric chair for those babies… Aint no security nowhere. Vy should anybody voirk if all you’ve got to do is get a gun an stick up your neighbors?’
‘You say they were welldressed… like welltodo people?’
‘Yare.’
‘I’m working on the theory that he’s a college boy and that she’s a society girl and that they do it for sport.’
‘The feller vas a hardlookin bastard.’
‘Well there are hardlooking college men… You wait for the story called “The Gilded Bandits” in next Sunday’s paper Mr Goldstein… You take the News dont you?’
Mr Goldstein shook his head.
‘I’ll send you a copy anyway.’
‘I want to see those babies convicted, do you understand? If there’s anythin I can do I sure vill do it… Aint no security no more… I dont care about no Sunday supplement publicity.’
‘Well the photographer’ll be right along. I’m sure you’ll consent to pose Mr Goldstein… Well thank you very much… Good day Mr Goldstein.’
Mr Goldstein suddenly produced a shiny new revolver from under the counter and pointed it at the reporter.
‘Hay go easy with that.’
Mr Goldstein laughed a sardonic laugh. ‘I’m ready for em next time they come,’ he shouted after the reporter who was already making for the Subway.
‘Our business, my dear Mrs Herf,’ declaimed Mr Harpsicourt, looking sweetly in her eyes and smiling his gray Cheshire cat smile, ‘is to roll ashore on the wave of fashion the second before it breaks, like riding a surfboard.’
Ellen was delicately digging with her spoon into half an alligator pear; she kept her eyes on her plate, her lips a little parted; she felt cool and slender in the tightfitting darkblue dress, shyly alert in the middle of the tangle of sideways glances and the singsong modish talk of the restaurant.
‘It’s a knack that I can prophesy in you more than in any girl, and more charmingly than any girl I’ve ever known.’
‘Prophesy?’ asked Ellen, looking up at him laughing.
‘You shouldnt pick up an old man’s word… I’m expressing myself badly… That’s always a dangerous sign. No, you understand so perfectly, though you disdain it a little… admit that… What we need on such a periodical, that I’m sure you could explain it to me far better.’
‘Of course what you want to do is make every reader feel Johnny on the spot in the center of things.’
‘As if she were having lunch right here at the Algonquin.’
‘Not today but tomorrow,’ added Ellen.
Mr Harpsicourt laughed his creaky little laugh and tried to look deep among the laughing gold specs in her gray eyes. Blushing she looked down into the gutted half of an alligator pear in her plate. Like the sense of a mirror behind her she felt the smart probing glances of men and women at the tables round about.
The pancakes were comfortably furry against his ginbitten tongue. Jimmy Herf sat in Child’s in the middle of a noisy drunken company. Eyes, lips, evening dresses, the smell of bacon and coffee blurred and throbbed about him. He ate the pancakes painstakingly, called for more coffee. He felt better. He had been afraid he was going to feel sick. He began reading the paper. The print swam and spread like Japanese flowers. Then it was sharp again, orderly, running in a smooth black and white paste over his orderly black and white brain:
Misguided youth again took its toll of tragedy am
id the tinsel gayeties of Coney Island fresh painted for the season when plainclothes men arrested ‘Dutch’ Robinson and a girl companion alleged to be the Flapper Bandit. The pair are accused of committing more than a score of holdups in Brooklyn and Queens. The police had been watching the couple for some days. They had rented a small kitchenette apartment at 7356 Seacroft Avenue. Suspicion was first aroused when the girl, about to become a mother, was taken in an ambulance to the Canarsie Presbyterian Hospital. Hospital attendants were surprised by Robinson’s seemingly endless supply of money. The girl had a private room, expensive flowers and fruit were sent in to her daily, and a well-known physician was called into consultation at the man’s request. When it came to the point of registering the name of the baby girl the young man admitted to the physician that they were not married. One of the hospital attendants, noticing that the woman answered to the description published in the Evening Times of the flapper bandit and her pal, telephoned the police. Plainclothes men sleuthed the couple for some days after they had returned to the apartment on Seacroft Avenue and this afternoon made the arrests.
The arrest of the flapper bandit…
A hot biscuit landed on Herf’s paper. He looked up with a start; a darkeyed Jewish girl at the next table was making a face at him. He nodded and took off an imaginary hat. ‘I thank thee lovely nymph,’ he said thickly and began eating the biscuit.
‘Quit dat djer hear?’ the young man who sat beside her, who looked like a prizefighter’s trainer, bellowed in her ear.
The people at Herf’s table all had their mouths open laughing. He picked up his check, vaguely said good night and walked out. The clock over the cashier’s desk said three o’clock. Outside a rowdy scattering of people still milled about Columbus Circle. A smell of rainy pavements mingled with the exhausts of cars and occasionally there was a whiff of wet earth and sprouting grass from the Park. He stood a long time on the corner not knowing which way to go. These nights he hated to go home. He felt vaguely sorry that the Flapper Bandit and her pal had been arrested. He wished they could have escaped. He had looked forward to reading their exploits every day in the papers. Poor devils, he thought. And with a newborn baby too.
Meanwhile a rumpus had started behind him in Child’s. He went back and looked through the window across the griddle where sizzled three abandoned buttercakes. The waiters were struggling to eject a tall man in a dress suit. The thickjawed friend of the Jewish girl who had thrown the biscuit was being held back by his friends. Then the bouncer elbowed his way through the crowd. He was a small broadshouldered man with deepset tired monkey eyes. Calmly and without enthusiasm he took hold of the tall man. In a flash he had him shooting through the door. Out on the pavement the tall man looked about him dazedly and tried to straighten his collar. At that moment a policewagon drove up jingling. Two policemen jumped out and quickly arrested three Italians who stood chatting quietly on the corner. Herf and the tall man in the dress suit looked at each other, almost spoke and walked off greatly sobered in opposite directions.
5 The Burthen of Nineveh
Seeping in red twilight out of the Gulf Stream fog, throbbing brassthroat that howls through the stiff-fingered streets, prying open glazed eyes of skyscrapers, splashing red lead on the girdered thighs of the five bridges, teasing caterwauling tugboats into heat under the toppling smoketrees of the harbor.
Spring puckering our mouths, spring giving us gooseflesh grows gigantic out of the droning of sirens, crashes with enormous scaring din through the halted traffic, between attentive frozen tiptoe blocks.
Mr Densch with the collar of his woolly ulster up round his ears and a big English cap pulled down far over his eyes, walked nervously back and forth on the damp boat deck of the Volendam. He looked out through a drizzly rain at the gray wharfhouses and the waterfront buildings etched against a sky of inconceivable bitterness. A ruined man, a ruined man, he kept whispering to himself. At last the ship’s whistle boomed out for the third time. Mr Densch, his fingers in his ears, stood screened by a lifeboat watching the rift of dirty water between the ship’s side and the wharf widen, widen. The deck trembled under his feet as the screws bit into the current. Gray like a photograph the buildings of Manhattan began sliding by. Below decks the band was playing O Titin-e Titin-e. Red ferryboats, carferries, tugs, sandscows, lumberschooners, tramp steamers drifted between him and the steaming towering city that gathered itself into a pyramid and began to sink mistily into the browngreen water of the bay.
Mr Densch went below to his stateroom. Mrs Densch in a cloche hat hung with a yellow veil was crying quietly with her head on a basket of fruit. ‘Dont Serena,’ he said huskily. ‘Dont… We like Marienbad… We need a rest. Our position isnt so hopeless. I’ll go and send Blackhead a radio… After all it’s his stubbornness and rashness that brought the firm to… to this. That man thinks he’s a king on earth… This’ll… this’ll get under his skin. If curses can kill I’ll be a dead man tomorrow.’ To his surprise he found the gray drawn lines of his face cracking into a smile. Mrs Densch lifted her head and opened her mouth to speak to him, but the tears got the better of her. He looked at himself in the glass, squared his shoulders and adjusted his cap. ‘Well Serena,’ he said with a trace of jauntiness in his voice, ‘this is the end of my business career… I’ll go send that radio.’
Mother’s face swoops down and kisses him; his hands clutch her dress, and she has gone leaving him in the dark, leaving a frail lingering fragrance in the dark that makes him cry. Little Martin lies tossing within the iron bars of his crib. Outside dark, and beyond walls and outside again the horrible great dark of grownup people, rumbling, jiggling, creeping in chunks through the windows, putting fingers through the crack in the door. From outside above the roar of wheels comes a strangling wail clutching his throat. Pyramids of dark piled above him fall crumpling on top of him. He yells, gagging between yells. Nounou walks towards the crib along a saving gangplank of light ‘Dont you be scared… that aint nothin.’ Her black face grins at him, her black hand straightens the covers. ‘Just a fire engine passin… You wouldn’t be sceered of a fire engine.’
Ellen leaned back in the taxi and closed her eyes for a second. Not even the bath and the halfhour’s nap had washed out the fagging memory of the office, the smell of it, the chirruping of typewriters, the endlessly repeated phrases, faces, typewritten sheets. She felt very tired; she must have rings under her eyes. The taxi had stopped. There was a red light in the traffic tower ahead. Fifth Avenue was jammed to the curbs with taxis, limousines, motorbusses. She was late; she had left her watch at home. The minutes hung about her neck leaden as hours. She sat up on the edge of the seat, her fists so tightly clenched that she could feel through her gloves her sharp nails digging into the palms of her hands. At last the taxi jerked forward, there was a gust of exhausts and whir of motors, the clot of traffic began moving up Murray Hill. At a corner she caught sight of a clock. Quarter of eight. The traffic stopped again, the brakes of the taxi shrieked, she was thrown forward on the seat. She leaned back with her eyes closed, the blood throbbing in her temples. All her nerves were sharp steel jangled wires cutting into her. ‘What does it matter?’ she kept asking herself. ‘He’ll wait. I’m in no hurry to see him. Let’s see, how many blocks?… Less than twenty, eighteen.’ It must have been to keep from going crazy people invented numbers. The multiplication table better than Coué as a cure for jangled nerves. Probably that’s what old Peter Stuyvesant thought, or whoever laid the city out in numbers. She was smiling to herself. The taxi had started moving again.
George Baldwin was walking back and forth in the lobby of the hotel, taking short puffs of a cigarette. Now and then he glanced at the clock. His whole body was screwed up taut like a high violin-string. He was hungry and full up with things he wanted to say; he hated waiting for people. When she walked in, cool and silky and smiling, he wanted to go up to her and hit her in the face.
‘George do you realize that it’s only because numbers are so
cold and emotionless that we’re not all crazy?’ she said giving him a little pat on the arm.
‘Fortyfive minutes waiting is enough to drive anybody crazy, that’s all I know.’
‘I must explain it. It’s a system. I thought it all up coming up in the taxi… You go in and order anything you like. I’m going to the ladies’ room a minute… And please have me a Martini. I’m dead tonight, just dead.’
‘You poor little thing, of course I will… And dont be long please.’
His knees were weak under him, he felt like melting ice as he went into the gilt ponderously ornamented diningroom. Good lord Baldwin you’re acting like a hobbledehoy of seventeen… after all these years too. Never get anywhere that way… ‘Well Joseph what are you going to give us to eat tonight? I’m hungry… But first you can get Fred to make the best Martini cocktail he ever made in his life.’
‘Très bien monsieur,’ said the longnosed Roumanian waiter and handed him the menu with a flourish.
Ellen stayed a long time looking in the mirror, dabbing a little superfluous powder off her face, trying to make up her mind. She kept winding up a hypothetical dollself and setting it in various positions. Tiny gestures ensued, acted out on various model stages. Suddenly she turned away from the mirror with a shrug of her toowhite shoulders and hurried to the diningroom.
‘Oh George I’m starved, simply starved.’
‘So am I’ he said in a crackling voice. ‘And Elaine I’ve got news for you,’ he went on hurriedly as if he were afraid she’d interrupt him.
‘Cecily has consented to a divorce. We’re going to rush it through quietly in Paris this summer. Now what I want to know is, will you… ?’
She leaned over and patted his hand that grasped the edge of the table. ‘George lets eat our dinner first… We’ve got to be sensible. God knows we’ve messed things up enough in the past both of us… Let’s drink to the crime wave.’ The smooth infinitesimal foam of the cocktail was soothing in her tongue and throat, glowed gradually warmly through her. She looked at him laughing with sparkling eyes. He drank his at a gulp.