Manhattan Transfer (51 page)

Gladys went out crying. Outside her husband was pacing up and down the hall. ‘It’s those damned reporters… I dont know what to tell ’em. They say the creditors want to prosecute.’

‘Mrs Gaston,’ interrupted the nurse, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get male nurses… Really I cant do anything with him…’ On the lower floor a telephone was ringing ringing.

When the Hindu brought the bottle of whiskey Blackhead filled a highball glass and took a deep gulp of it.

‘Ah that makes you feel better, by the living Jingo it does. Achmet you’re a good fellow… Well I guess we’ll have to face the music and sell out… Thank God Gladys is settled. I’ll sell out every goddam thing I’ve got. I wish that precious son-in-law wasnt such a simp. Always my luck to be surrounded by a lot of capons… By gad I’d just as soon go to jail if it’ll do em any good; why not? it’s
all in a lifetime. And afterwards when I come out I’ll get a job as a bargeman or watchman on a wharf. I’d like that. Why not take it easy after tearing things up all my life, eh Achmet?’

‘Yes Sahib,’ said the Hindu with a bow.

Blackhead mimicked him, ‘Yes Sahib… You always say yes, Achmet, isn’t that funny?’ He began to laugh with a choked rattling laugh. ‘I guess that’s the easiest way.’ He laughed and laughed, then suddenly he couldnt laugh any more. A perking spasm went through all his limbs. He twisted his mouth in an effort to speak. For a second his eyes looked about the room, the eyes of a little child that has been hurt before it begins to cry, until he fell back limp, his open mouth biting at his shoulder. Achmet looked at him coolly for a long time then he went up to him and spat in his face. Immediately he took a handkerchief out of the pocket of his linen jacket and wiped the spittle off the taut ivory skin. Then he closed the mouth and propped the body among the pillows and walked softly out of the room. In the hall Gladys sat in a big chair reading a magazine. ‘Sahib much better, he sleep a little bit maybe.’

‘Oh Achmet I’m so glad,’ she said and looked back to her magazine.

Ellen got off the bus at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftythird Street. Rosy twilight was gushing out of the brilliant west, glittered in brass and nickel, on buttons, in people’s eyes. All the windows on the east side of the avenue were aflame. As she stood with set teeth on the curb waiting to cross, a frail tendril of fragrance brushed her face. A skinny lad with towhair stringy under a foreignlooking cap was offering her arbutus in a basket. She bought a bunch and pressed her nose in it. May woods melted like sugar against her palate.

The whistle blew, gears ground as cars started to pour out of the side streets, the crossing thronged with people. Ellen felt the lad brush against her as he crossed at her side. She shrank away. Through the smell of the arbutus she caught for a second the unwashed smell of his body, the smell of immigrants, of Ellis Island, of crowded tenements. Under all the nickelplated, goldplated streets enameled with May, uneasily she could feel the huddling smell, spreading in dark slow crouching masses like corruption oozing from broken sewers, like a mob. She walked briskly down the
cross-street. She went in a door beside a small immaculately polished brass plate.

M
ADAME
S
OUBRINE

ROBES

She forgot everything in the catlike smile of Madame Soubrine herself, a stout blackhaired perhaps Russian woman who came out to her from behind a curtain with outstretched arms, while other customers waiting on sofas in a sort of Empress Josephine parlor, looked on enviously.

‘My dear Mrs Herf, where have you been? We’ve had your dress for a week,’ she exclaimed in too perfect English. ‘Ah my dear, you wait… it’s magnificent… And how is Mr Harrpsi-court?’

‘I’ve been very busy… You see I’m giving up my job.’

Madame Soubrine nodded and blinked knowingly and led the way through the tapestry curtains into the back of the shop.

‘Ah ça se voit… Il ne faut pas trravailler, on peut voir déjà des toutes petites rrides. Mais ils dispareaitront. Forgive me, dear.’ The thick arm round her waist squeezed her. Ellen edged off a little… ‘Vous la femme la plus belle de New Yorrk… Angelica Mrs Herf’s evening dress,’ she shouted in a shrill grating voice like a guineahen’s.

A hollowcheeked washedout blond girl came in with the dress on a hanger. Ellen slipped off her gray tailored walkingsuit. Madame Soubrine circled round her, purring. ‘Angelica look at those shoulders, the color of the hair… Ah c’est le rêve,’ edging a little too near like a cat that wants its back rubbed. The dress was pale green with a slash of scarlet and dark blue.

‘This is the last time I have a dress like this, I’m sick of always wearing blue and green…’ Madame Soubrine, her mouth full of pins, was at her feet, fussing with the hem.

‘Perfect Greek simplicity, wellgirdled like Diana… Spiritual with Spring… the ultimate restraint of an Annette Kellermann, holding up the lamp of liberty, the wise virgin,’ she was muttering through her lips.

She’s right, Ellen was thinking, I am getting a hard look. She was looking at herself in the tall pierglass. Then my figure’ll go, the
menopause haunting beauty parlors, packed in boncilla, having your face raised.

‘Regardez-moi ça, cherrie;’ said the dressmaker getting to her feet and taking the pins out of her mouth ‘C’est le chef-d’œuvre de la maison Soubrine.’

Ellen suddenly felt hot, tangled in some prickly web, a horrible stuffiness of dyed silks and crêpes and muslins was making her head ache; she was anxious to be out on the street again.

‘I smell smoke, there’s something the matter,’ the blond girl suddenly cried out. ‘Sh-sh-sh,’ hissed Madame Soubrine. They both disappeared through a mirrorcovered door.

Under a skylight in the back room of Soubrine’s Anna Cohen sits sewing the trimming on a dress with swift tiny stitches. On the table in front of her a great pile of tulle rises full of light like beaten white of egg.
Charley my boy, Oh Charley my boy,
she hums, stitching the future with swift tiny stitches. If Elmer wants to marry me we might as well; poor Elmer, he’s a nice boy but so dreamy. Funny he’d fall for a girl like me. He’ll grow out of it, or maybe in the Revolution, he’ll be a great man… Have to cut out parties when I’m Elmer’s wife. But maybe we can save up money and open a little store on Avenue A in a good location, make better money there than uptown. La Parisienne, Modes.

I bet I could do as good as that old bitch. If you was your own boss there wouldn’t be this fightin about strikers and scabs… Equal Opportunity for All. Elmer says that’s all applesauce. No hope for the workers but in the Revolution.
Oh I’m juss wild about Harree, And Harry’s juss wild about me…
Elmer in a telephone central in a dinnercoat, with eartabs, tall as Valentino, strong as Doug. The Revolution is declared. The Red Guard is marching up Fifth Avenue. Anna in golden curls with a little kitten under her arm leans with him out of the tallest window. White tumbler pigeons flutter against the city below them. Fifth Avenue bleeding red flags, glittering with marching bands, hoarse voices singing Die Rote Fahne in Yiddish; far away, from the Woolworth a banner shakes into the wind. ‘Look Elmer darling’
ELMER DUSKIN FOR MAYOR
. And they’re dancing the Charleston in all the officebuildings…
Thump. Thump. That Charleston dance… Thump. Thump…
Perhaps I do love him. Elmer take me. Elmer, loving as Valentino, crushing me to him with Dougstrong arms, hot as flame, Elmer.

Through the dream she is stitching white fingers beckon. The white tulle shines too bright. Red hands clutch suddenly out of the tulle, she cant fight off the red tulle all round her biting into her, coiled about her head. The skylight’s blackened with swirling smoke. The room’s full of smoke and screaming. Anna is on her feet whirling round fighting with her hands the burning tulle all round her.

Ellen stands looking at herself in the pierglass in the fitting room. The smell of singed fabrics gets stronger. After walking to and fro nervously a little while she goes through the glass door, down a passage hung with dresses, ducks under a cloud of smoke, and sees through streaming eyes the big workroom, screaming girls huddling behind Madame Soubrine, who is pointing a chemical extinguisher at charred piles of goods about a table. They are picking something moaning out of the charred goods. Out of the corner of her eye she sees an arm in shreds, a seared black red face, a horrible naked head.

‘Oh Mrs Herf, please tell them in front it’s nothing, absolutely nothing… I’ll be there at once,’ Madame Soubrine shrieks breathlessly at her. Ellen runs with closed eyes through the smoke-filled corridor into the clean air of the fitting room, then, when her eyes have stopped running, she goes through the curtains to the agitated women in the waiting room.

‘Madame Soubrine asked me to tell everybody it was nothing, absolutely nothing. Just a little blaze in a pile of rubbish… She put it out herself with an extinguisher.’

‘Nothing, absolutely nothing,’ the women say one to another settling back onto the Empress Josephine sofas.

Ellen goes out to the street. The fireengines are arriving. Policemen are beating back the crowds. She wants to go away but she cant, she’s waiting for something. At last she hears it tinkling down the street. As the fireengines go clanging away, the ambulance drives up. Attendants carry in the folded stretcher. Ellen can hardly breathe. She stands beside the ambulance behind a broad blue policeman. She tries to puzzle out why she is so moved; it is as if some part of her were going to be wrapped in bandages, carried away on a stretcher. Too soon it comes out, between the routine faces, the dark uniforms of the attendants.

‘Was she terribly burned?’ somehow she manages to ask under the policeman’s arm.

‘She wont die… but it’s tough on a girl.’ Ellen elbows her way through the crowd and hurries towards Fifth Avenue. It’s almost dark. Lights swim brightly in night clear blue like the deep sea.

Why should I be so excited? she keeps asking herself. Just somebody’s bad luck, the sort of thing that happens every day. The moaning turmoil and the clanging of the fireengines wont seem to fade away inside her. She stands irresolutely on a corner while cars, faces, flicker clatteringly past her. A young man in a new straw hat is looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, trying to pick her up. She stares him blankly in the face. He has on a red, green, and blue striped necktie. She walks past him fast, crosses to the other side of the avenue, and turns uptown. Seven thirty. She’s got to meet some one somewhere, she cant think where. There’s a horrible tired blankness inside her. O dear what shall I do? she whimpers to herself. At the next corner she hails a taxi. ‘Go to the Algonquin please.’

She remembers it all now, at eight o’clock she’s going to have dinner with Judge Shammeyer and his wife. Ought to have gone home to dress. George’ll be mad when he sees me come breezing in like this. Likes to show me off all dressed up like a Christmas tree, like an Effenbee walking talking doll, damn him.

She sits back in the corner of the taxi with her eyes closed. Relax, she must let herself relax more. Ridiculous to go round always keyed up so that everything is like chalk shrieking on a blackboard. Suppose I’d been horribly burned, like that girl, disfigured for life. Probably she can get a lot of money out of old Soubrine, the beginning of a career. Suppose I’d gone with that young man with the ugly necktie who tried to pick me up… Kidding over a banana split in a soda fountain, riding uptown and then down again on the bus, with his knee pressing my knee and his arm round my waist, a little heavy petting in a doorway… There are lives to be lived if only you didn’t care. Care for what, for what; the opinion of mankind, money, success, hotel lobbies, health, umbrellas, Uneeda biscuits… ? It’s like a busted mechanical toy the way my mind goes brrr all the time. I hope they havent ordered dinner. I’ll make them go somewhere else if they havent. She opens her vanity case and begins to powder her nose.

When the taxi stops and the tall doorman opens the door, she steps out with dancing pointed girlish steps, pays, and turns, her
cheeks a little flushed, her eyes sparkling with the glinting seablue night of deep streets, into the revolving doors.

As she goes through the shining soundless revolving doors, that spin before her gloved hand touches the glass, there shoots through her a sudden pang of something forgotten. Gloves, purse, vanity case, handkerchief, I have them all. Didn’t have an umbrella. What did I forget in the taxicab? But already she is advancing smiling towards two gray men in black with white shirtfronts getting to their feet, smiling, holding out their hands.

Bob Hildebrand in dressing gown and pyjamas walked up and down in front of the long windows smoking a pipe. Through the sliding doors into the front came a sound of glasses tinkling and shuffling feet and laughing and
Running Wild
grating hazily out of a blunt needle on the phonograph.

‘Why dont you park here for the night?’ Hildebrand was saying in his deep serious voice. ‘Those people’ll fade out gradually… We can put you up on the couch.’

‘No thanks,’ said Jimmy. ‘They’ll start talking psychoanalysis in a minute and they’ll be here till dawn.’

‘But you’d much better take a morning train.’

‘I’m not going to take any kind of a train.’

‘Say Herf did you read about the man in Philadelphia who was killed because he wore his straw hat on the fourteenth of May?’

‘By God if I was starting a new religion he’d be made a saint.’

‘Didnt you read about it? It was funny as a crutch… This man had the temerity to defend his straw hat. Somebody had busted it and he started to fight, and in the middle of it one of these street-corner heroes came up behind him and brained him with a piece of lead pipe. They picked him up with a cracked skull and he died in the hospital.’

‘Bob what was his name?’

‘I didnt notice.’

‘Talk about the Unknown Soldier… That’s a real hero for you; the golden legend of the man who would wear a straw hat out of season.’

A head was stuck between the double doors. A flushfaced man with his hair over his eyes looked in. ‘Cant I bring you fellers a shot of gin… Whose funeral is being celebrated anyway?’