Manhattan Transfer (46 page)

And as I sit here, thought Jimmy Herf, print itches like a rash inside me. I sit here pockmarked with print. He got to his feet. A little yellow dog was curled up asleep under the bench. The little yellow dog looked very happy. ‘What I need’s a good sleep,’ Jimmy said aloud.

‘What are you goin to do with it, Dutch, are you goin to hock it?’

‘Francie I wouldnt take a million dollars for that little gun.’

‘For Gawd’s sake dont start talkin about money, now… Next thing some cop’ll see it on your hip and arrest you for the Sullivan law.’

‘The cop who’s goin to arrest me’s not born yet… Just you forget that stuff.’

Francie began to whimper. ‘But Dutch what are we goin to do, what are we goin to do?’

Dutch suddenly rammed the pistol into his pocket and jumped to his feet. He walked jerkily back and forth on the asphalt path. It was a foggy evening, raw; automobiles moving along the slushy road made an endless interweaving flicker of cobwebby light among the skeleton shrubberies.

‘Jez you make me nervous with your whimperin an cryin… Cant you shut up?’ He sat down beside her sullenly again. ‘I thought I heard somebody movin in the bushes… This goddam park’s full of plainclothes men… There’s nowhere you can go in the whole crummy city without people watchin you.’

‘I wouldnt mind it if I didnt feel so rotten. I cant eat anythin without throwin up an I’m so scared all the time the other girls’ll notice something.’

‘But I’ve told you I had a way o fixin everythin, aint I? I promise
you I’ll fix everythin fine in a couple of days… We’ll go away an git married. We’ll go down South… I bet there’s lots of jobs in other places… I’m gettin cold, let’s get the hell outa here.’

‘Oh Dutch,’ said Francie in a tired voice as they walked down the muddyglistening asphalt path, ‘do you think we’re ever goin to have a good time again like we used to?’

‘We’re S.O.L. now but that dont mean we’re always goin to be. I lived through those gas attacks in the Oregon forest didnt I? I been dopin out a lot of things these last few days.’

‘Dutch if you go and get arrested there’ll be nothin left for me to do but jump in the river.’

‘Didnt I tell you I wasnt goin to get arrested?’

Mrs Cohen, a bent old woman with a face brown and blotched like a russet apple, stands beside the kitchen table with her gnarled hands folded over her belly. She sways from the hips as she scolds in an endless querulous stream of Yiddish at Anna sitting blearyeyed with sleep over a cup of coffee: ‘If you had been blasted in the cradle it would have been better, if you had been born dead… Oy what for have I raised four children that they should all of them be no good, agitators and streetwalkers and bums…? Benny in jail twice, and Sol God knows where making trouble, and Sarah accursed given up to sin kicking up her legs at Minski’s, and now you, may you wither in your chair, picketing for the garment workers, walking along the street shameless with a sign on your back.’

Anna dipped a piece of bread in the coffee and put it in her mouth. ‘Aw mommer you dont understand,’ she said with her mouth full.

‘Understand, understand harlotry and sinfulness…? Oy why dont you attend to your work and keep your mouth shut, and draw your pay quietly? You used to make good money and could have got married decent before you took to running wild in dance halls with a goy. Oy Oy that I’ve raised daughters in my old age no decent man’d want to take to his house and marry…’

Anna got to her feet shrieking ‘It’s no business of yours… I’ve always paid my part of the rent regular. You think a girl’s worth nothin but for a slave and to grind her fingers off workin all her life… I think different, do you hear? Dont you dare scold at me…’

‘Oy you will talk back to your old mother. If Solomon was alive he’d take a stick to you. Better to have been born dead than talk back to your mother like a goy. Get out of the house and quick before I blast you.’

‘All right I will.’ Anna ran through the narrow trunkobstructed hallway to the bedroom and threw herself on her bed. Her cheeks were burning. She lay quiet trying to think. From the kitchen came the old woman’s fierce monotonous sobbing.

Anna raised herself to a sitting posture on the bed. She caught sight in the mirror opposite of a strained teardabbled face and rumpled stringy hair. ‘My Gawd I’m a sight,’ she sighed. As she got to her feet her heel caught on the braid of her dress. The dress tore sharply. Anna sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. Then she sewed the rent in the dress up carefully with tiny meticulous stitches. Sewing made her feel calmer. She put on her hat, powdered her nose copiously, put a little rouge on her lips, got into her coat and went out. April was coaxing unexpected colors out of the East Side streets. Sweet voluptuous freshness came from a pushcart full of pineapples. At the corner she found Rose Segal and Lillian Diamond drinking coca-cola at the softdrink stand.

‘Anna have a coke with us,’ they chimed.

‘I will if you’ll blow me… I’m broke.’

‘Vy, didnt you get your strike pay?’

‘I gave it all to the old woman… Dont do no good though. She goes on scoldin all day long. She’s too old.’

‘Did you hear how gunmen broke in and busted up Ike Goldstein’s shop? Busted up everythin wid hammers an left him unconscious on top of a lot of dressgoods.’

‘Oh that’s terrible.’

‘Soive him right I say.’

‘But they oughtnt to destroy property like that. We make our livin by it as much as he does.’

‘A pretty fine livin… I’m near dead wid it,’ said Anna banging her empty glass down on the counter.

‘Easy easy,’ said the man in the stand. ‘Look out for the crockery.’

‘But the worst thing was,’ went on Rose Segal, ‘that while they was fightin up in Goldstein’s a rivet flew out the winder an fell nine stories an killed a fireman passin on a truck so’s he dropped dead in the street.’

‘What for did they do that?’

‘Some guy must have slung it at some other guy and it pitched out of the winder.’

‘And killed a fireman.’

Anna saw Elmer coming towards them down the avenue, his thin face stuck forward, his hands hidden in the pockets of his frayed overcoat. She left the two girls and walked towards him. ‘Was you goin down to the house? Dont lets go, cause the old woman’s scoldin somethin terrible… I wish I could get her into the Daughters of Israel. I cant stand her no more.’

‘Then let’s walk over and sit in the square,’ said Elmer. ‘Dont you feel the spring?’

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘Dont I? Oh Elmer I wish this strike was over… It gets me crazy doin nothin all day.’

‘But Anna the strike is the worker’s great opportunity, the worker’s university. It gives you a chance to study and read and go to the Public Library.’

‘But you always think it’ll be over in a day or two, an what’s the use anyway?’

‘The more educated a feller is the more use he is to his class.’

They sat down on a bench with their backs to the playground. The sky overhead was glittering with motherofpearl flakes of sunset. Dirty children yelled and racketed about the asphalt paths.

‘Oh,’ said Anna looking up at the sky, ‘I’d like to have a Paris evening dress an you have a dress suit and go out to dinner at a swell restaurant an go to the theater an everything.’

‘If we lived in a decent society we might be able to… There’d be gayety for the workers then, after the revolution.’

‘But Elmer what’s the use if we’re old and scoldin like the old woman?’

‘Our children will have those things.’

Anna sat bolt upright on the seat. ‘I aint never goin to have any children,’ she said between her teeth, ‘never, never, never.’

Alice touched his arm as they turned to look in the window of an Italian pastryshop. On each cake ornamented with bright analin flowers and flutings stood a sugar lamb for Easter and the resurrection banner. ‘Jimmy,’ she said turning up to him her little oval
face with her lips too red like the roses on the cakes, ‘you’ve got to do something about Roy… He’s got to get to work. I’ll go crazy if I have him sitting round the house any more reading the papers wearing that dreadful adenoid expression… You know what I mean… He respects you.’

‘But he’s trying to get a job.’

‘He doesnt really try, you know it.’

‘He thinks he does. I guess he’s got a funny idea about himself… But I’m a fine person to talk about jobs…’

‘Oh I know, I think it’s wonderful. Everybody says you’ve given up newspaper work and are going to write.’

Jimmy found himself looking down into her widening brown eyes, that had a glimmer at the bottom like the glimmer of water in a well. He turned his head away; there was a catch in his throat; he coughed. They walked on along the lilting brightcolored street.

At the door of the restaurant they found Roy and Martin Schiff waiting for them. They went through an outer room into a long hall crowded with tables packed between two greenish bluish paintings of the Bay of Naples. The air was heavy with a smell of parmesan cheese and cigarettesmoke and tomato sauce. Alice made a little face as she settled herself in a chair.

‘Ou I want a cocktail right away quick.’

‘I must be kinder simpleminded,’ said Herf, ‘but these boats coquetting in front of Vesuvius always make me feel like getting a move on somewhere… I think I’ll be getting along out of here in a couple of weeks.’

‘But Jimmy where are you going?’ asked Roy. ‘Isnt this something new?’

‘Hasnt Helena got something to say about that?’ put in Alice.

Herf turned red. ‘Why should she?’ he said sharply.

‘I just found there was nothing in it for me,’ he found himself saying a little later.

‘Oh we none of us know what we want,’ burst out Martin. ‘That’s why we’re such a peewee generation.’

‘I’m beginning to learn a few of the things I dont want,’ said Herf quietly. ‘At least I’m beginning to have the nerve to admit to myself how much I dislike all the things I dont want.’

‘But it’s wonderful,’ cried Alice, ‘throwing away a career for an ideal.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Herf pushing back his chair. In the toilet he looked himself in the eye in the wavy lookingglass.

‘Dont talk,’ he whispered. ‘What you talk about you never do…’ His face had a drunken look. He filled the hollow of his two hands with water and washed it. At the table they cheered when he sat down.

‘Yea for the wanderer,’ said Roy.

Alice was eating cheese on long slices of pear. ‘I think it’s thrilling,’ she said.

‘Roy is bored,’ shouted Martin Schiff after a silence. His face with its big eyes and bone glasses swam through the smoke of the restaurant like a fish in a murky aquarium.

‘I was just thinking of all the places I had to go to look for a job tomorrow.’

‘You want a job?’ Martin went on melodramatically. ‘You want to sell your soul to the highest bidder?’

‘Jez if that’s all you had to sell…’ moaned Roy.

‘It’s my morning sleep that worries me… Still it is lousy putting over your personality and all that stuff. It’s not your ability to do the work it’s your personality.’

‘Prostitutes are the only honest…’

‘But good Lord a prostitute sells her personality.’

‘She only rents it.’

‘But Roy is bored… You are all bored… I’m boring you all.’

‘We’re having the time of our lives,’ insisted Alice. ‘Now Martin we wouldn’t be sitting here if we were bored, would we?… I wish Jimmy would tell us where he expected to go on his mysterious travels.’

‘No, you are saying to yourselves what a bore he is, what use is he to society? He has no money, he has no pretty wife, no good conversation, no tips on the stockmarket. He’s a useless fardel on society… The artist is a fardel.’

‘That’s not so Martin… You’re talking through your hat.’

Martin waved an arm across the table. Two wineglasses upset. A scaredlooking waiter laid a napkin over the red streams. Without noticing, Martin went on, ‘It’s all pretense… When you talk you talk with the little lying tips of your tongues. You dont dare lay bare your real souls… But now you must listen to me for the last time… For the last time I say… Come here waiter you too, lean
over and look into the black pit of the soul of man. And Herf is bored. You are all bored, bored flies buzzing on the windowpane. You think the windowpane is the room. You dont know what there is deep black inside… I am very drunk. Waiter another bottle.’

‘Say hold your horses Martin… I dont know if we can pay the bill as it is… We dont need any more.’

‘Waiter another bottle of wine and four grappas.’

‘Well it looks as if we were in for a rough night,’ groaned Roy.

‘If there is need my body can pay… Alice take off your mask… You are a beautiful little child behind your mask… Come with me to the edge of the pit… O I am too drunk to tell you what I feel.’ He brushed off his tortoiseshell glasses and crumpled them in his hand, the lenses shot glittering across the floor. The gaping waiter ducked among the tables after them.

For a moment Martin sat blinking. The rest of them looked at each other. Then he shot to his feet. ‘I see your little smirking supercil-superciliosity. No wonder we can no longer have decent dinners, decent conversations… I must prove my atavistic sincerity, prove…’ He started pulling at his necktie.

‘Say Martin old man, pipe down,’ Roy was reiterating.

‘Nobody shall stop me… I must run into the sincerity of black… I must run to the end of the black wharf on the East River and throw myself off.’

Herf ran after him through the restaurant to the street. At the door he threw off his coat, at the corner his vest.

‘Gosh he runs like a deer,’ panted Roy staggering against Herf’s shoulder. Herf picked up the coat and vest, folded them under his arm and went back to the restaurant. They were pale when they sat down on either side of Alice.

‘Will he really do it? Will he really do it?’ she kept asking.

‘No of course not,’ said Roy. ‘He’ll go home; he was making fools of us because we played up to him.’

‘Suppose he really did it?’

‘I’d hate to see him… I like him very much. We named our kid after him,’ said Jimmy gloomily. ‘But if he really feels so terribly unhappy what right have we to stop him?’