Manhattan Transfer

  ‘Yes deary I’m afraid it is… A holiday is a dreadful time to arrive. Still I guess they’ll all be down to meet us.’

  She has her blue serge on and a long trailing brown veil and the little brown animal with red eyes and teeth that are real teeth round her neck. A smell of mothballs comes from it, of unpacking trunks, of wardrobes littered with tissuepaper. It’s hot in the dining saloon, the engines sob soothingly behind the bulkhead. His head nods over his cup of hot milk just colored with coffee. Three bells. His head snaps up with a start. The dishes tinkle and the coffee spills with the trembling of the ship. Then a thud and rattle of anchorchains and gradually quiet. Muddy gets up to look through the porthole.

  ‘Why it’s going to be a fine day after all. I think the sun will burn through the mist… Think of it dear; home at last. This is where you were born deary.’

  ‘And it’s the Fourth of July.’

  ‘Worst luck… Now Jimmy you must promise me to stay on the promenade deck and be very careful. Mother has to finish packing. Promise me you wont get into any mischief.’

  ‘I promise.’

  He catches his toe on the brass threshold of the smoking-room door and sprawls on deck, gets up rubbing his bare knee just in time to see the sun break through chocolate clouds and swash a red stream of brightness over the puttycolored water. Billy with the freckles on his ears whose people are for Roosevelt instead of for Parker like mother is waving a silk flag the size of a handkerchief at the men on a yellow and white tugboat.

  ‘Didjer see the sun rise?’ he asks as if he owned it.

  ‘You bet I saw it from my porthole,’ says Jimmy walking away after a lingering look at the silk flag. There’s land close on the other side; nearest a green bank with trees and wide white gray-roofed houses.

  ‘Well young feller, how does it feel to be home?’ asks the tweedy gentleman with droopy mustaches.

  ‘Is that way New York?’ Jimmy points out over the still water broadening in the sunlight.

  ‘Yessiree-bobby, behind yonder bank of fog lies Manhattan.’

  ‘Please sir what’s that?’

  ‘That’s New York… You see New York is on Manhattan Island.’

  ‘Is it really on an island?’

  ‘Well what do you think of a boy who dont know that his own home town is on an island?’

  The tweedy gentleman’s gold teeth glitter as he laughs with his mouth wide open. Jimmy walks on round the deck, kicking his heels, all foamy inside; New York’s on an island.

  ‘You look right glad to get home little boy,’ says the Southern lady.

  ‘Oh I am, I could fall down and kiss the ground.’

  ‘Well that’s a fine patriotic sentiment… I’m glad to hear you say it.’

  Jimmy scalds all over. Kiss the ground, kiss the ground, echoes in his head like a catcall. Round the deck.

  ‘That with the yellow flag’s the quarantine boat.’ A stout man with rings on his fingers - he’s a Jew - is talking to the tweedy man. ‘Ha we’re under way again… That was quick, what?’

  ‘We’ll be in for breakfast, an American breakfast, a good old home breakfast.’

  Muddy coming down the deck, her brown veil floating. ‘Here’s your overcoat Jimmy, you’ve got to carry it.’

  ‘Muddy, can I get out that flag?’

  ‘What flag?’

  ‘The silk American flag.’

  ‘No dear it’s all put away.’

  ‘Please I’d so like to have that flag cause it’s the Fourth of July an everything.’

  ‘Now dont whine Jimmy. When mother says no she means no.’

  Sting of tears; he swallows a lump and looks up in her eyes.

  ‘Jimmy it’s put away in the shawlstrap and mother’s so tired of fussing with those wretched bags.’

  ‘But Billy Jones has one.’

  ‘Look deary you’re missing things… There’s the statue of Liberty.’ A tall green woman in a dressing gown standing on an island holding up her hand.

  ‘What’s that in her hand?’

  ‘That’s a light, dear… Liberty enlightening the world… And there’s Governors Island the other side. There where the trees are… and see, that’s Brooklyn Bridge… That is a fine sight. And look at all the docks… that’s the Battery… and the masts and the ships… and there’s the spire of Trinity Church and the Pulitzer building.’… Mooing of steamboat whistles, ferries red and waddly like ducks churning up white water, a whole train of cars on a barge pushed by a tug chugging inside it that lets out cotton steampuffs all the same size. Jimmy’s hands are cold and he’s chugging and chugging inside.

  ‘Dear you mustn’t get too excited. Come on down and see if mother left anything in the stateroom.’

  Streak of water crusted with splinters, groceryboxes, orangepeel, cabbageleaves, narrowing, narrowing between the boat and the dock. A brass band shining in the sun, white caps, sweaty red faces, playing Yankee Doodle. ‘That’s for the ambassador, you know the tall man who never left his cabin.’ Down the slanting gangplank, careful not to trip. Yankee Doodle went to town… Shiny black face, white enameled eyes, white enameled teeth. ‘Yas ma’am, yas ma’am’… Stucka feather in his hat, an called it macaroni… ‘We have the freedom of the port.’ Blue custom officer shows a bald head bowing low… Tumte boomboom BOOM BOOM BOOM… cakes and sugar candy…

  ‘Here’s Aunt Emily and everybody… Dear how sweet of you to come.’

  ‘My dear I’ve been here since six o’clock!’

  ‘My how he’s grown.’

  Light dresses, sparkle of brooches, faces poked into Jimmy’s, smell of roses and uncle’s cigar.

  ‘Why he’s quite a little man. Come here sir, let me look at you.’

  ‘Well goodby Mrs Herf. If you ever come down our way… Jimmy I didn’t see you kiss the ground young man.’

  ‘Oh he’s killing, he’s so oldfashioned… such an oldfashioned child.’

  The cab smells musty, goes rumbling and lurching up a wide avenue swirling with dust, through brick streets soursmelling full of grimy yelling children, and all the while the trunks creak and thump on top.

  ‘Muddy dear, you dont think it’ll break through do you?’

  ‘No dear,’ she laughs tilting her head to one side. She has pink cheeks and her eyes sparkle under the brown veil.

  ‘Oh muddy.’ He stands up and kisses her on the chin. ‘What lots of people muddy.’

  ‘That’s on account of the Fourth of July.’

  ‘What’s that man doing?’

  ‘He’s been drinking dear I’m afraid.’

  From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. ‘That’s a Fourth of July orator… He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the Fourth of July.’

  Crang!… that’s a cannon-cracker. ‘That wretched boy might have frightened the horse… The Fourth of July dear is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.’

  A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.

  ‘That’s the Elevated… and look this is Twentythird Street… and the Flatiron Building.’

  The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in brass buttons run forward.

  ‘And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.’

  Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the ship you can still feel the motion. Blue chunks of dusk melting into the squarecut uptown streets. Rockets spurting bright in the blue dusk, colored balls falling, Bengal fire, Uncle Jeff tacking pinwheels on the tree outside the apartmenthouse door, lighting them with his cigar. Roman candles you have to hold. ‘Be sure and turn your face away, kiddo.’ Hot thud and splutter in your hands, e
gg-shaped balls soaring, red, yellow, green, smell of powder and singed paper. Down the fizzing glowing street a bell clangs, clangs nearer, clangs faster. Hoofs of lashed horses striking sparks, a fire engine roars by, round the corner red and smoking and brassy. ‘Must be on Broadway.’ After it the hookandladder and the firechief’s high-pacing horses. Then the tinkletinkle of an ambulance. ‘Somebody got his.’

  The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. ‘We must set these off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.’ They have squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind some real fire engines.

  Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching legs. ‘Growing pains darling,’ muddy said when she tucked him in, leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.

  ‘Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?’

  ‘That,’ she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, ‘is to make mother look prettier.’

  He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off, and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of its sizzling tail.

  The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel chair at the desk.

  ‘Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he found yez at his desk.’

  She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. ‘Gus I declare you’re scared to death.’

  ‘You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all in. I think he was lyin though.’

  ‘Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do the talkin’.’

  ‘Sure I wont let a peep outa me.’

  Nellie stood behind his chair and began stroking the crisp hair back from his forehead.

  ‘It’ll be great to be home again, Nellie, wid your cookin an all.’ He put an arm round her waist and drew her to him.

  ‘Juss think, maybe I wont have to do any.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d loike that so well… Gosh if we dont git that money I dunno how we’ll make out.’

  ‘Oh pop’ll help us like he’s been doin.’

  ‘Hope to the Lord I aint going to be sick all me loife.’

  George Baldwin came in slamming the glass door behind him. He stood looking at the man and his wife a second with his hands in his pockets. Then he said quietly smiling:

  ‘Well it’s done people. As soon as the waiver of any further claims is signed the railroad’s attorneys will hand me a check for twelve thousand five hundred. That’s what we finally compromised on.’

  ‘Twelve thousand iron men,’ gasped Gus. ‘Twelve thousand five hundred. Say wait a second… Hold me crutches while I go out an git run over again… Wait till I tell McGillycuddy about it. The ole divil’ll be throwin hisself in front of a market train… Well Mr Baldwin sir,’ Gus propped himself onto his feet… ‘you’re a great man… Aint he Nellie?’

  ‘To be sure he is.’

  Baldwin tried to keep from looking her in the eye. Spurts of jangling agitation were going through him, making his legs feel weak and trembly.

  ‘I’ll tell yez what let’s do,’ said Gus. ‘Sposin we all take a horsecab up to old McGillycuddy’s an have somethin to wet our whistles in the private bar… My treat. I need a bit of a drink to cheer me up. Come on Nellie.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Baldwin, ‘but I’m afraid I cant. I’m pretty busy these days. But just give me your signature before you go and I’ll have the check for you tomorrow… Sign here… and here.’

  McNiel had stumped over to the desk and was leaning over the papers. Baldwin felt that Nellie was trying to make a sign to him. He kept his eyes down. After they had left he noticed her purse, a little leather purse with pansies burned on the back, on the corner of the desk. There was a tap on the glass door. He opened.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you look at me?’ she said breathlessly low.

  ‘How could I with him here.’ He held the purse out to her.

  She put her arms round his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. ‘What are we goin to do? Shall I come in this afternoon? Gus’ll be liquorin up to get himself sick again now he’s out of the hospital.’

  ‘No I cant Nellie… Business… business… I’m busy every minute.’

  ‘Oh yes you are… All right have it your own way.’ She slammed the door.

  Baldwin sat at his desk biting his knuckles without seeing the pile of papers he was staring at. ‘I’ve got to cut it out,’ he said aloud and got to his feet. He paced back and forth across the narrow office looking at the shelves of lawbooks and the Gibson girl calendar over the telephone and the dusty square of sunlight by the window. He looked at his watch. Lunchtime. He drew the palm of a hand over his forehead and went to the telephone.

  ‘Rector 1237… Mr Sandbourne there?… Say Phil suppose I come by for you for lunch? Do you want to go out right now?… Sure… Say Phil I clinched it, I got the milkman his damages. I’m pleased as the dickens. I’ll set you up to a regular lunch on the strength of it… So long…’

  He came away from the telephone smiling, took his hat off its hook, fitted it carefully on his head in front of the little mirror over the hatrack, and hurried down the stairs.

  On the last flight he met Mr Emery of Emery & Emery who had their offices on the first floor.

  ‘Well Mr Baldwin how’s things?’ Mr Emery of Emery & Emery was a flatfaced man with gray hair and eyebrows and a protruding wedgeshaped jaw. ‘Pretty well sir, pretty well.’

  ‘They tell me you are doing mighty well… Something about the New York Central Railroad.’

  ‘Oh Simsbury and I settled it out of court.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Mr Emery of Emery & Emery.

  As they were about to part in the street Mr Emery said suddenly ‘Would you care to dine with me and my wife some time?’

  ‘Why… er… I’d be delighted.’

  ‘I like to see something of the younger fellows in the profession you understand… Well I’ll drop you a line… Some evening next week. It would give us a chance to have a chat.’

  Baldwin shook a blueveined hand in a shinystarched cuff and went off down Maiden Lane hustling with a springy step through the noon crowd. On Pearl Street he climbed a steep flight of black stairs that smelt of roasting coffee and knocked on a groundglass door.

  ‘Come in,’ shouted a bass voice. A swarthy man lanky in his shirtsleeves strode forward to meet him. ‘Hello George, thought you were never comin’. I’m hongry as hell.’

  ‘Phil I’m going to set you up to the best lunch you ever ate in your life.’

  ‘Well I’m juss waitin’ to be set.’

  Phil Sandbourne put on his coat, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the corner of a draftingtable, and shouted into a dark inner office, ‘Goin out to eat, Mr Specker.’

  ‘All right go ahead,’ replied a goaty quavering from the inner office.

  ‘How’s the old man?’ asked Baldwin as they went out the door.

  ‘Ole Specker? Bout on his last legs… but he’s been thataway for years poa ole soul. Honest George I’d feel mighty mean if anythin happened to poa ole Specker… He’s the only honest man in the city of New York, an he’s got a head on his shoulders too.’

  ‘He’s never made anything
much by it,’ said Baldwin.

  ‘He may yet… He may yet… Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He’s got an idea the skyscraper of the future’ll be built of steel and glass. We’ve been experimenting with vitrous tile recently… cristamighty some of his plans would knock yer eye out… He’s got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he’s found New York of brick an that he’s goin to leave it of steel… steel an glass. I’ll have to show you his project for a rebuilt city. It’s some pipedream.’

  They settled on a cushioned bench in the corner of the restaurant that smelled of steak and the grill. Sandbourne stretched his legs out under the table.

  ‘Wow this is luxury,’ he said.

  ‘Phil let’s have a cocktail,’ said Baldwin from behind the bill of fare. ‘I tell you Phil, it’s the first five years that’s the hardest.’

  ‘You needn’t worry George, you’re the hustlin kind… I’m the ole stick in the mud.’

  ‘I don’t see why, you can always get a job as a draftsman.’

  ‘That’s a fine future I muss say, to spend ma life with the corner of a draftintable stuck in ma bally… Christamighty man!’

  ‘Well Specker and Sandbourne may be a famous firm yet.’

  ‘People’ll be goin round in flyin machines by that time an you and me’ll be laid out with our toes to the daisies.’

  ‘Here’s luck anyway.’

  ‘Here’s lead in yer pencil, George.’

  They drank down the Martinis and started eating their oysters.

  ‘I wonder if it’s true that oysters turn to leather in your stomach when you drink alcohol with em.’

  ‘Search me… Say by the way Phil how are you getting on with that little stenographer you were taking out?’

  ‘Man the food an drink an theaters I’ve wasted on that lil girl… She’s got me run to a standstill… Honest she has. You’re a sensible feller, George, to keep away from the women.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Baldwin slowly and spat an olive stone into his clenched fist.

  The first thing they heard was the quavering whistle that came from a little wagon at the curb opposite the entrance to the ferry. A small boy broke away from the group of immigrants that lingered in the ferryhouse and ran over to the little wagon.