Manhattan Transfer

  ‘By gad Elaine,’ he said flaming up helplessly, ‘you’re the most wonderful thing in the world.’

  Through dinner she felt a gradual icy coldness stealing through her like novocaine. She had made up her mind. It seemed as if she had set the photograph of herself in her own place, forever frozen into a single gesture. An invisible silk band of bitterness was tightening round her throat, strangling. Beyond the plates, the ivory pink lamp, the broken pieces of bread, his face above the blank shirtfront jerked and nodded; the flush grew on his cheeks; his nose caught the light now on one side, now on the other, his taut lips moved eloquently over his yellow teeth. Ellen felt herself sitting with her ankles crossed, rigid as a porcelain figure under her clothes, everything about her seemed to be growing hard and enameled, the air bluestreaked with cigarettesmoke, was turning to glass. His wooden face of a marionette waggled senselessly in front of her. She shuddered and hunched up her shoulders.

  ‘What’s the matter, Elaine?’ he burst out. She lied:

  ‘Nothing George… Somebody walked over my grave I guess.’

  ‘Couldnt I get you a wrap or something?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well what about it?’ he said as they got up from the table.

  ‘What?’ she asked smiling. ‘After Paris?’

  ‘I guess I can stand it if you can George,’ she said quietly.

  He was waiting for her, standing at the open door of a taxi. She saw him poised spry against the darkness in a tan felt hat and a light tan overcoat, smiling like some celebrity in the rotogravure section of a Sunday paper. Mechanically she squeezed the hand that helped her into the cab.

  ‘Elaine,’ he said shakily, ‘life’s going to mean something to me now… God if you knew how empty life had been for so many years. I’ve been like a tin mechanical toy, all hollow inside.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about mechanical toys,’ she said in a strangled voice.

  ‘No let’s talk about our happiness,’ he shouted.

  Inexorably his lips closed on to hers. Beyond the shaking glass window of the taxi, like someone drowning, she saw out of a corner of an eye whirling faces, streetlights, zooming nickleglinting wheels.

  The old man in the checked cap sits on the brownstone stoop with his face in his hands. With the glare of Broadway in their backs there is a continual flickering of people past him towards the theaters down the street. The old man is sobbing through his fingers in a sour reek of gin. Once in a while he raises his head and shouts hoarsely, ‘I cant, dont you see I cant?’ The voice is inhuman like the splitting of a plank. Footsteps quicken. Middleaged people look the other way. Two girls giggle shrilly as they look at him. Streeturchins nudging each other peer in and out through the dark crowd. ‘Bum Hootch.’ ‘He’ll get his when the cop on the block comes by.’ ‘Prohibition liquor.’ The old man lifts his wet face out of his hands, staring out of sightless bloodyrimmed eyes. People back off, step on the feet of the people behind them. Like splintering wood the voice comes out of him. ‘Don’t you see I cant…? I cant… I cant.’

  When Alice Sheffield dropped into the stream of women going through the doors of Lord & Taylor’s and felt the close smell of stuffs in her nostrils something went click in her head. First she went to the glovecounter. The girl was very young and had long curved black lashes and a pretty smile; they talked of permanent waves while Alice tried on gray kids, white kids with a little fringe like a gauntlet. Before she tried it on, the girl deftly powdered the inside of each glove out of a longnecked wooden shaker. Alice ordered six pairs.

  ‘Yes. Mrs Roy Sheffield… Yes I have a charge account, here’s my card… I’ll be having quite a lot of things sent.’ And to herself she said all the while: Ridiculous how I’ve been going round in rags all winter… When the bill comes Roy’ll have to find some way of paying it that’s all. Time he stopped mooning round anyway. I’ve paid enough bills for him in my time, God knows.’ Then she started looking at fleshcolored silk stockings. She left the store her head still in a whirl of long vistas of counters in a violet electric haze, of braided embroidery and tassles and nasturtiumtinted silks; she had ordered two summer dresses and an evening wrap.

  At Maillard’s she met a tall blond Englishman with a coneshaped head and pointed wisps of towcolored mustaches under his long nose.

  ‘Oh Buck I’m having the grandest time. I’ve been going berserk in Lord & Taylor’s. Do you know that it must be a year and a half since I’ve bought any clothes?’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ he said as he motioned her to a table. ‘Tell me about it.’

  She let herself flop into a chair suddenly whimpering, ‘Oh Buck I’m so tired of it all… I dont know how much longer I can stand it.’

  ‘Well you cant blame me… You know what I want you to do…’

  ‘Well suppose I did?’

  ‘It’d be topping, we’d hit it off like anything… But you must have a bit of beef tea or something. You need picking up.’ She giggled. ‘You old dear that’s just what I do need.’

  ‘Well how about making tracks for Calgary? I know a fellow there who’ll give me a job I think.’

  ‘Oh let’s go right away. I dont care about clothes or anything… Roy can send those things back to Lord & Taylor’s… Got any money Buck?’

  A flush started on his cheekbones and spread over his temples to his flat irregular ears. ‘I confess, Al darling, that I havent a penny. I can pay for lunch.’

  ‘Oh hell I’ll cash a check; the account’s in both our names.’

  ‘They’ll cash it for me at the Biltmore, they know me there. When we get to Canada everything will be quite all right I can assure you. In His Majesty’s Dominion, the name of Buckminster has rather more weight than in the U.S.’

  ‘Oh I know darling, it’s nothing but money in New York.’

  When they were walking up Fifth Avenue she hooked her arm in his suddenly. ‘O Buck I have the most horrible thing to tell you. It made me deathly ill… You know what I told you about the awful smell we had in the apartment we thought was rats? This morning I met the woman who lives on the ground floor… O it makes me sick to think of it. Her face was green as that bus… It seems they’ve been having the plumbing examined by an inspector… They arrested the woman upstairs. O it’s too disgusting. I cant tell you about it… I’ll never go back there. I’d die if I did… There wasnt a drop of water in the house all day yesterday.’

  ‘What was the matter?’

  ‘It’s too horrible.’

  ‘Tell it to popper.’

  ‘Buck they wont know you when you get back home to Orpen Manor.’

  ‘But what was it?’

  ‘There was a woman upstairs who did illegal operations, abortions… That was what stopped up the plumbing.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘Somehow that’s the last straw… And Roy sitting limp over his damn paper in the middle of that stench with that horrible adenoid expression on his face.’

  ‘Poor little girl.’

  ‘But Buck I couldn’t cash a check for more than two hundred… It’ll be an overdraft as it is. Will that get us to Calgary?’

  ‘Not very comfortably… There’s a man I know in Montreal who’ll give me a job writing society notes… Beastly thing to do, but I can use an assumed name. Then we can trot along from there when we get a little more spondulix as you call it… How about cashing that check now?’

  She stood waiting for him beside the information desk while he went to get the tickets. She felt alone and tiny in the middle of the great white vault of the station. All her life with Roy was going by her like a movie reeled off backwards, faster and faster. Buck came back looking happy and masterful, his hands full of greenbacks and railway tickets. ‘No train till seven ten Al,’ he said. ‘Suppose you go to the Palace and leave me a seat at the boxoffice… I’ll run up and fetch my kit. Wont take a sec… Here’s a fiver.’ And he had gone, and she was walking alone across Fortythird Street on a hot May afternoon. For some r
eason she began to cry. People stared at her; she couldnt help it. She walked on doggedly with the tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Earthquake insurance, that’s what they calls it! A whole lot of good it’ll do ’em when the anger of the Lord smokes out the city like you would a hornet’s nest and he picks it up and shakes it like a cat shakes a rat… Earthquake insurance!’

  Joe and Skinny wished that the man with whiskers like a bottle-cleaner who stood over their campfire mumbling and shouting would go away. They didn’t know whether he was talking to them or to himself. They pretended he wasnt there and went on nervously preparing to grill a piece of ham on a gridiron made of an old umbrellaframe. Below them beyond a sulphurgreen lace of budding trees was the Hudson going silver with evening and the white palisade of apartmenthouses of upper Manhattan.

  ‘Dont say nutten,’ whispered Joe, making a swift cranking motion in the region of his ear. ‘He’s nuts.’

  Skinny had gooseflesh down the back, he felt his lips getting cold, he wanted to run.

  ‘That ham?’ Suddenly the man addressed them in a purring benevolent voice.

  ‘Yessir,’ said Joe shakily after a pause.

  ‘Dont you know that the Lord God forbad his chillun to eat the flesh of swine?’ His voice went to its singsong mumbling and shouting. ‘Gabriel, Brother Gabriel… is it all right for these kids to eat ham?… Sure. The angel Gabriel, he’s a good frien o mine see, he said it’s all right this once if you dont do it no more… Look out brother you’ll burn it.’ Skinny had got to his feet. ‘Sit down brother. I wont hurt you. I understand kids. We like kids me an the Lord God… Scared of me cause I’m a tramp aint you? Well lemme tell you somethin, dont you never be afraid of a tramp. Tramps wont hurt ye, they’re good people. The Lord God was a tramp when he lived on earth. My buddy the angel Gabriel says he’s been a tramp many a time… Look I got some fried chicken an old colored woman gave me… O Lordy me!’ groaning he sat down on a rock beside the two boys.

  ‘We was goin to play injuns, but now I guess we’ll play tramps,’ said Joe warming up a little. The tramp brought a newspaper package out of the formless pocket of his weathergreened coat and began unwrapping it carefully. A good smell began to come from the sizzling ham. Skinny sat down again, still keeping as far away as he could without missing anything. The tramp divided up his chicken and they began to eat together.

  ‘Gabriel old scout will you just look at that?’ The tramp started his singsong shouting that made the boys feel scared again. It was beginning to get dark. The tramp was shouting with his mouth full pointing with a drumstick towards the flickering checkerboard of lights going on up Riverside Drive. ‘Juss set here a minute an look at her Gabriel… Look at the old bitch if you’ll pardon the expression. Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long God took to destroy the tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City an Brooklyn an the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven seconds… Say kiddo what’s your name?’ He dropped into his low purring voice and made a pass at Joe with his drumstick.

  ‘Joseph Cameron Parker… We live in Union.’

  ‘An what’s yours?’

  ‘Antonio Camerone… de guys call me Skinny. Dis guy’s my cousin. His folks dey changed deir name to Parker, see?’

  ‘Changing your name wont do no good… they got all the aliases down in the judgment book… And verily I say unto you the Lord’s day is at hand… It was only yesterday that Gabriel says to me “Well Jonah, shall we let her rip?” an I says to him, “Gabriel ole scout think of the women and children an the little babies that dont know no better. If you shake it down with an earthquake an fire an brimstone from heaven they’ll all be killed same as the rich people an sinners,” and he says to me, “All right Jonah old horse, have it your own way… We wont foreclose on em for a week or two.”… But it’s terrible to think of, folks, the fire an brimstone an the earthquake an the tidal wave an the tall buildins crashing together.’

  Joe suddenly slapped Skinny on the back. ‘You’re it,’ he said and ran off. Skinny followed him stumbling along the narrow path among the bushes. He caught up to him on the asphalt. ‘Jez, that guy’s nuts,’ he called.

  ‘Shut up cant ye?’ snapped Joe. He was peering back through the bushes. They could still see the thin smoke of their little fire against the sky. The tramp was out of sight. They could just hear his voice calling, ‘Gabriel, Gabriel.’ They ran on breathless towards the regularly spaced safe arclights and the street.

  Jimmy Herf stepped out from in front of the truck; the mudguard just grazed the skirt of his raincoat. He stood a moment behind an L stanchion while the icicle thawed out of his spine. The door of a limousine suddenly opened in front of him and he heard a familiar voice that he couldnt place.

  ‘Jump in Meester ’Erf… Can I take you somewhere?’ As he stepped in mechanically he noticed that he was stepping into a Rolls-Royce.

  The stout redfaced man in a derby hat was Congo. ‘Sit down Meester ’Erf… Very pleas’ to see you. Where were you going?’

  ‘I wasnt going anywhere in particular.’ ‘Come up to the house, I want to show you someting. Ow are you today?’

  ‘Oh fine; no I mean I’m in a rotten mess, but it’s all the same.’

  ‘Tomorrow maybe I go to jail… six mont’… but maybe not.’ Congo laughed in his throat and straightened carefully his artificial leg.

  ‘So they’ve nailed you at last, Congo?’

  ‘Conspiracy… But no more Congo Jake, Meester ’Erf. Call me Armand. I’m married now; Armand Duval, Park Avenue.’

  ‘How about the Marquis des Coulommiers?’

  ‘That’s just for the trade.’

  ‘So things look pretty good do they?’

  Congo nodded. ‘If I go to Atlanta which I ’ope not, in six mont’ I come out of jail a millionaire… Meester ’Erf if you need money, juss say the word… I lend you tousand dollars. In five years even you pay it back. I know you.’

  ‘Thanks, it’s not exactly money I need, that’s the hell of it.’

  ‘How’s your wife?… She’s so beautiful.’

  ‘We’re getting a divorce… She served the papers on me this morning… That’s all I was waiting in this goddam town for.’

  Congo bit his lips. Then he tapped Jimmy gently on the knee with his forefinger. ‘In a minute we’ll get to the ’ouse… I give you one very good drink.’… Yes wait,’ Congo shouted to the chauffeur as he walked with a stately limp, leaning on a goldknobbed cane, into the streaky marble hallway of the apartmenthouse. As they went up in the elevator he said, ‘Maybe you stay to dinner.’ ‘I’m afraid I cant tonight, Con… Armand.’

  ‘I have one very good cook… When I first come to New York maybe twenty years ago, there was a feller on the boat… This is the door, see A. D., Armand Duval. Him and me ran away togedder an always he say to me, “Armand you never make a success, too lazy, run after the leetle girls too much.… Now he’s my cook… first class chef, cordon bleu, eh? Life is one funny ting, Meester ’Erf.’

  ‘Gee this is fine,’ said Jimmy Herf leaning back in a highbacked Spanish chair in the blackwalnut library with a glass of old Bourbon in his hand. ‘Congo… I mean Armand, if I’d been God and had to decide who in this city should make a million dollars and who shouldnt I swear you’re the man I should have picked.’

  ‘Maybe by and by the misses come in. Very pretty I show you.’ He made curly motions with his fingers round his head. ‘Very much blond hair.’ Suddenly he frowned. ‘But Meester ’Erf, if dere is anyting any time I can do for you, money or like dat, you let me know eh? It’s ten years now you and me very good frien… One more drink?’

  On his third glass of Bourbon Herf began to talk. Congo sat listening with his heavy lips a little open,
occasionally nodding his head. ‘The difference between you and me is that you’re going up in the social scale, Armand, and I’m going down… When you were a messboy on a steamboat I was a horrid little chalkyfaced kid living at the Ritz. My mother and father did all this Vermont marble blackwalnut grand Babylonian stuff… there’s nothing more for me to do about it… Women are like rats, you know, they leave a sinking ship. She’s going to marry this man Baldwin who’s just been appointed District Attorney. They’re said to be grooming him for mayor on a fusion reform ticket… The delusion of power, that’s what’s biting him. Women fall for it like hell. If I thought it’d be any good to me I swear I’ve got the energy to sit up and make a million dollars. But I get no organic sensation out of that stuff any more. I’ve got to have something new, different… Your sons’ll be like that Congo… If I’d had a decent education and started soon enough I might have been a great scientist. If I’d been a little more highly sexed I might have been an artist or gone in for religion… But here I am by Jesus Christ almost thirty years old and very anxious to live… If I were sufficiently romantic I suppose I’d have killed myself long ago just to make people talk about me. I havent even got the conviction to make a successful drunkard.’

  ‘Looks like,’ said Congo filling the little glasses again with a slow smile, ‘Meester ’Erf you tink too much.’

  ‘Of course I do Congo, of course I do, but what the hell am I going to do about it?’

  ‘Well when you need a little money remember Armand Duval… Want a chaser?’

  Herf shook his head. ‘I’ve got to chase myself… So long Armand.’

  In the colonnaded marble hall he ran into Nevada Jones. She was wearing orchids. ‘Hullo Nevada, what are you doing in this palace of sin?’