Manhattan Transfer (39 page)

They were walking to dinner through the snow. Big snowfeathers spun and spiraled about them mottling the glare of the streets with blue and pink and yellow, blotting perspectives.

‘Ellie I hate to have you take that job… You ought to keep on with your acting.’

‘But Jimps, we’ve got to live.’

‘I know… I know. You’d certainly didnt have your wits about you Ellie when you married me.’

‘Oh let’s not talk about it any more.’

‘Do let’s have a good time tonight… It’s the first snow.’

‘Is this the place?’ They stood before an unlighted basement door covered by a closemeshed grating. ‘Let’s try.’

‘Did the bell ring?’

‘I think so.’

The inner door opened and a girl in a pink apron peered out at them. ‘Bon soir mademoiselle.’

‘Ah… bon soir monsieur ’dame.’ She ushered them into a foodsmelling gaslit hall hung with overcoats and hats and mufflers. Through a curtained door the restaurant blew in their faces a hot breath of bread and cocktails and frying butter and perfumes and lipsticks and clatter and jingling talk.

‘I can smell absinthe,’ said Ellen. ‘Let’s get terribly tight.’

‘Good Lord, there’s Congo… Dont you remember Congo Jake at the Seaside Inn?’

He stood bulky at the end of the corridor beckoning to them. His face was very tanned and he had a glossy black mustache. ‘Hello Meester ’Erf… Ow are you?’

‘Fine as silk. Congo I want you to meet my wife.’

‘If you dont mind the keetchen we will ’ave a drink.’

‘Of course we dont… It’s the best place in the house. Why you’re limping… What did you do to your leg?’

‘Foutu… I left it en Italie… I couldnt breeng it along once they’d cut it off.’

‘How was that?’

‘Damn fool thing on Mont Tomba… My bruderinlaw e gave me a very beautiful artificial leemb… Sit ’ere. Look madame now can you tell which is which?’

‘No I cant,’ said Ellie laughing. They were at a little marble table in the corner of the crowded kitchen. A girl was dishing out at a deal table in the center. Two cooks worked over the stove. The air was rich with sizzling fatty foodsmells. Congo hobbled back to them with three glasses on a small tray. He stood over them while they drank.

‘Salut,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Absinthe cocktail, like they make it in New Orleans.’

‘It’s a knockout.’ Congo took a card out of his vest pocket:

MARQUIS DES COULOMMIERS
I
MPORTS

Riverside 11121

‘Maybe some day you need some little ting… I deal in nutting but prewar imported. I am the best bootleggair in New York.’

‘If I ever get any money I certainly will spend it on you Congo… How do you find business?’

‘Veree good… I tell you about it. Tonight I’m too busee… Now I find you a table in the restaurant.’

‘Do you run this place too?’

‘No this my bruderinlaw’s place.’

‘I didnt know you had a sister.’

‘Neither did I.’

When Congo limped away from their table silence came down between them like an asbestos curtain in a theater.

‘He’s a funny duck,’ said Jimmy forcing a laugh.

‘He certainly is.’

‘Look Ellie let’s have another cocktail.’

‘Allright.’

‘I must get hold of him and get some stories about bootleggers out of him.’

When he stretched his legs out under the table he touched her feet. She drew them away. Jimmy could feel his jaws chewing, they clanked so loud under his cheeks he thought Ellie must hear them. She sat opposite him in a gray tailoredsuit, her neck curving up heartbreakingly from the ivory V left by the crisp frilled collar of her blouse, her head tilted under her tight gray hat, her lips made up; cutting up little pieces of meat and not eating them, not saying a word.

‘Gosh… let’s have another cocktail.’ He felt paralyzed like in a nightmare; she was a porcelaine figure under a bellglass. A current of fresh snowrinsed air from somewhere eddied all of a sudden through the blurred packed jangling glare of the restaurant, cut the reek of food and drink and tobacco. For an instant he caught the smell of her hair. The cocktails burned in him. God I dont want to pass out.

Sitting in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, side by side on the black leather bench. His cheek brushes hers when he reaches to put herring, butter, sardines, anchovies, sausage on her plate. They eat in a hurry, gobbling, giggling, gulp wine, start at every screech of an engine…

The train pulls out of Avignon, they two awake, looking in each other’s eyes in the compartment full of sleep-sodden snoring people. He lurches clambering over tangled legs, to smoke a cigarette at the end of the dim oscillating corridor. Diddledeump, going south, Diddledeump, going south, sing the wheels over the rails down the valley of the Rhône. Leaning in the window, smoking a broken cigarette, trying to smoke a crumbling cigarette, holding a finger over the torn place. Glubglub glubglub from the bushes, from the silverdripping poplars along the track.

‘Ellie, Ellie there are nightingales singing along the track.’

‘Oh I was asleep darling.’ She gropes to him stumbling across
the legs of sleepers. Side by side in the window in the lurching jiggling corridor.

Deedledeump, going south. Gasp of nightingales along the track among the silverdripping poplars. The insane cloudy night of moonlight smells of gardens garlic rivers freshdunged field roses. Gasp of nightingales.

Opposite him the Elliedoll was speaking. ‘He says the lobstersalad’s all out… Isnt that discouraging?’

Suddenly he had his tongue. ‘Gosh if that were the only thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did we come back to this rotten town anyway?’

‘You’ve been burbling about how wonderful it was ever since we came back.’

‘I know. I guess it’s sour grapes… I’m going to have another cocktail… Ellie for heaven’s sake what’s the matter with us?’

‘We’re going to be sick if we keep this up I tell you.’

‘Well let’s be sick… Let’s be good and sick.’

When they sit up in the great bed they can see across the harbor, can see the yards of a windjammer and a white sloop and a red and green toy tug and plainfaced houses opposite beyond a peacock stripe of water; when they lie down they can see gulls in the sky. At dusk dressing rockily, shakily stumbling through the mildewed corridors of the hotel out into streets noisy as a brass band, full of tambourine rattle, brassy shine, crystal glitter, honk and whir of motors… Alone together in the dusk drinking sherry under a broadleaved plane, alone together in the juggled particolored crowds like people invisible. And the spring night comes up over the sea terrible out of Africa and settles about them.

They had finished their coffee. Jimmy had drunk his very slowly as if some agony waited for him when he finished it.

‘Well I was afraid we’d find the Barneys here,’ said Ellen.

‘Do they know about this place?’

‘You brought them here yourself Jimps… And that dreadful woman insisted on talking babies with me all the evening. I hate talking babies.’

‘Gosh I wish we could go to a show.’

‘It would be too late anyway.’

‘And just spending money I havent got… Lets have a cognac to top off with. I don’t care if it ruins us.’

‘It probably will in more ways than one.’

‘Well Ellie, here’s to the breadwinner who’s taken up the white man’s burden.’

‘Why Jimmy I think it’ll be rather fun to have an editorial job for a while.’

‘I’d find it fun to have any kind of job… Well I can always stay home and mind the baby.’

‘Dont be so bitter Jimmy, it’s just temporary.’

‘Life’s just temporary for that matter.’

The taxi drew up. Jimmy paid him with his last dollar. Ellie had her key in the outside door. The street was a confusion of driving absintheblurred snow. The door of their apartment closed behind them. Chairs, tables, books, windowcurtains crowded about them bitter with the dust of yesterday, the day before, the day before that. Smells of diapers and coffeepots and typewriter oil and Dutch Cleanser oppressed them. Ellen put out the empty milkbottle and went to bed. Jimmy kept walking nervously about the front room. His drunkenness ebbed away leaving him icily sober. In the empty chamber of his brain a doublefaced word clinked like a coin: Success Failure, Success Failure.

I’m just wild about Harree
And Harry’s just wild about me

she hums under her breath as she dances. It’s a long hall with a band at one end, lit greenishly by two clusters of electric lights hanging among paper festoons in the center. At the end where the door is, a varnished rail holds back the line of men. This one Anna’s dancing with is a tall square built Swede, his big feet trail clumsily after her tiny lightly tripping feet. The music stops. Now it’s a little blackhaired slender Jew. He tries to snuggle close.

‘Quit that.’ She holds him away from her.

‘Aw have a heart.’

She doesn’t answer, dances with cold precision; she’s sickeningly tired.

Me and my boyfriend
My boyfriend and I

An Italian breathes garlic in her face, a marine sergeant, a Greek, a blond young kid with pink cheeks, she gives him a smile; a
drunken elderly man who tries to kiss her…
Charley my boy O Charley my boy…
slickhaired, freckled rumplehaired, pimple-faced, snubnosed, straightnosed, quick dancers, heavy dancers…
Goin souf… Wid de taste o de sugarcane right in my mouf…
against her back big hands, hot hands, sweaty hands, cold hands, while her dancechecks mount up, get to be a wad in her fist. This one’s a good waltzer, genteel-like in a black suit.

‘Gee I’m tired,’ she whispers.

‘Dancing never tires me.’

‘Oh it’s dancin with everybody like this.’

‘Dont you want to come an dance with me all alone somewhere?’

‘Boyfrien’s waitin for me after.’

With nothin but a photograph
To tell my troubles to…
What’ll I do… ?

‘What time’s it?’ she asked a broadchested wise guy. ‘Time you an me was akwainted, sister…’ She shakes her head. Suddenly the music bursts into Auld Lang Syne. She breaks away from him and runs to the desk in a crowd of girls elbowing to turn in their dancechecks. ‘Say Anna,’ says a broadhipped blond girl… ‘did ye see that sap was dancin wid me?… He says to me the sap he says See you later an I says to him the sap I says see yez in hell foist… an then he says, Goily he says…’

Glowworm trains shuttle in the gloaming through the foggy looms of spiderweb bridges, elevators soar and drop in their shafts, harbor lights wink.

Like sap at the first frost at five o’clock men and women begin to drain gradually out of the tall buildings downtown, grayfaced throngs flood subways and tubes, vanish underground.

All night the great buildings stand quiet and empty, their million windows dark. Drooling light the ferries chew tracks across the lacquered harbor. At midnight the fourfunneled express steamers slide into the dark out of their glary berths. Bankers blearyeyed from secret conferences hear the hooting of the tugs as they are let out of side doors by lightningbug watchmen; they settle grunting into the back seats of limousines, and are whisked uptown into the Forties, clinking streets of ginwhite whiskey-yellow ciderfizzling lights.

She sat at the dressingtable coiling her hair. He stood over her with the lavender suspenders hanging from his dress trousers prodding the diamond studs into his shirt with stumpy fingers.

‘Jake I wish we were out of it,’ she whined through the hairpins in her mouth.

‘Out of what Rosie?’

‘The Prudence Promotion Company… Honest I’m worried.’

‘Why everything’s goin swell. We’ve got to bluff out Nichols that’s all.’

‘Suppose he prosecutes?’

‘Oh he wont. He’d lose a lot of money by it. He’d much better come in with us… I can pay him in cash in a week anyways. If we can keep him thinkin we got money we’ll have him eatin out of our hands. Didn’t he say he’d be at the El Fey tonight?’

Rosie had just put a rhinestone comb into the coil of her black hair. She nodded and got to her feet. She was a plump broadhipped woman with big black eyes and higharched eyebrows. She wore a corset trimmed with yellow lace and a pink silk chemise.

‘Put on everythin you’ve got Rosie. I want yez all dressed up like a Christmas tree. We’re goin to the El Fey an stare Nichols down tonight. Then tomorrer I’ll go round and put the proposition up to him… Lets have a little snifter anyways…’ He went to the phone. ‘Send up some cracked ice and a couple of bottles of White Rock to four o four. Silverman’s the name. Make it snappy.’

‘Jake let’s make a getaway,’ Rosie cried suddenly. She stood in the closet door with a dress over her arm. ‘I cant stand all this worry… It’s killin me. Let’s you an me beat it to Paris or Havana or somewheres and start out fresh.’

‘Then we would be up the creek. You can be extradited for grand larceny. Jez you wouldnt have me goin round with dark glasses and false whiskers all my life.’

Rosie laughed. ‘No I guess you wouldnt look so good in a fake zit… Oh I wish we were really married at least.’

‘Dont make no difference between us Rosie. Then they’d be after me for bigamy too. That’d be pretty.’