Manhattan transfer

1 Ferryslip

Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken water, slides, settles slowly into the slip. Handwinches whirl with jingle of chains. Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferry-house, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press.

The nurse, holding the basket at arm’s length as if it were a bedpan, opened the door to a big dry hot room with greenish distempered walls where in the air tinctured with smells of alcohol and iodoform hung writhing a faint sourish squalling from other baskets along the wall. As she set her basket down she glanced into it with pursed-up lips. The newborn baby squirmed in the cottonwool feebly like a knot of earthworms.

On the ferry there was an old man playing the violin. He had a monkey’s face puckered up in one corner and kept time with the toe of a cracked patent-leather shoe. Bud Korpenning sat on the rail watching him, his back to the river. The breeze made the hair stir round the tight line of his cap and dried the sweat on his temples. His feet were blistered, he was leadentired, but when the ferry moved out of the slip, bucking the little slapping scalloped waves of the river he felt something warm and tingling shoot suddenly through all his veins. ‘Say, friend, how fur is it into the city from where this ferry lands?’ he asked a young man in a straw hat wearing a blue and white striped necktie who stood beside him.

The young man’s glance moved up from Bud’s road-swelled shoes to the red wrist that stuck out from the frayed sleeves of his coat, past the skinny turkey’s throat and slid up cockily into the intent eyes under the broken-visored cap.

‘That depends where you want to get to.’

‘How do I get to Broadway?…I want to get to the center of things.’

‘Walk east a block and turn down Broadway and you’ll find the center of things if you walk far enough.’

‘Thank you sir. I’ll do that.’

The violinist was going through the crowd with his hat held out, the wind ruffling the wisps of gray hair on his shabby bald head. Bud found the face tilted up at him, the crushed eyes like two black pins looking into his. ‘Nothin,’ he said gruffly and turned away to look at the expanse of river bright as knifeblades. The plank walls of the slip closed in, cracked as the ferry lurched against them; there was rattling of chains, and Bud was pushed forward among the crowd through the ferryhouse. He walked between two coal wagons and out over a dusty expanse of street towards yellow streetcars. A trembling took hold of his knees. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

EAT on a lunchwagon halfway down the block. He slid stiffly onto a revolving stool and looked for a long while at the pricelist.

‘Fried eggs and a cup o coffee.’

‘Want ’em turned over?’ asked the redhaired man behind the counter who was wiping off his beefy freckled forearms with his apron. Bud Korpenning sat up with a start.

‘What?’

‘The eggs? Want em turned over or sunny side up?’

‘Oh sure, turn ’em over.’ Bud slouched over the counter again with his head between his hands.

‘You look all in, feller,’ the man said as he broke the eggs into the sizzling grease of the frying pan.

‘Came down from upstate. I walked fifteen miles this mornin.’

The man made a whistling sound through his eyeteeth. ‘Comin to the big city to look for a job, eh?’

Bud nodded. The man flopped the eggs sizzling and netted with brown out onto the plate and pushed it towards Bud with some bread and butter on the edge of it. ‘I’m going to slip you a bit of advice, feller, and it won’t cost you nutten. You go an git a shave and a haircut and brush the hayseeds out o yer suit a bit before you start lookin. You’ll be more likely to git somthin. It’s looks that count in this city.’

‘I kin work all right. I’m a good worker,’ growled Bud with his mouth full.

‘I’m tellin yez, that’s all,’ said the redhaired man and turned back to his stove.

When Ed Thatcher climbed the marble steps of the wide hospital entry he was trembling. The smell of drugs caught at his throat. A woman with a starched face was looking at him over the top of a desk. He tried to steady his voice.

‘Can you tell me how Mrs Thatcher is?’

‘Yes, you can go up.’

‘But please, miss, is everything all right?’

‘The nurse on the floor will know anything about the case. Stairs to the left, third floor, maternity ward.’

Ed Thatcher held a bunch of flowers wrapped in green waxed paper. The broad stairs swayed as he stumbled up, his toes kicking against the brass rods that held the fiber matting down. The closing of a door cut off a strangled shriek. He stopped a nurse.

‘I want to see Mrs Thatcher, please.’

‘Go right ahead if you know where she is.’

‘But they’ve moved her.’

‘You’ll have to ask at the desk at the end of the hall.’

He gnawed his cold lips. At the end of the hall a redfaced woman looked at him, smiling.

‘Everything’s fine. You’re the happy father of a bouncing baby girl.’

‘You see it’s our first and Susie’s so delicate,’ he stammered with blinking eyes.

‘Oh yes, I understand, naturally you worried… You can go in and talk to her when she wakes up. The baby was born two hours ago. Be sure not to tire her.’

Ed Thatcher was a little man with two blond wisps of mustache and washedout gray eyes. He seized the nurse’s hand and shook it showing all his uneven yellow teeth in a smile.

‘You see it’s our first.’

‘Congratulations,’ said the nurse.

Rows of beds under bilious gaslight, a sick smell of restlessly stirring bedclothes, faces fat, lean, yellow, white; that’s her. Susie’s yellow hair lay in a loose coil round her little white face that looked shriveled and twisted. He unwrapped the roses and put them on the night table. Looking out the window was like looking down into water. The trees in the square were tangled in blue cobwebs. Down the avenue lamps were coming on marking off with green shimmer brickpurple blocks of houses; chimney pots and water tanks cut sharp into a sky flushed like flesh. The blue lids slipped back off her eyes.

‘That you, Ed?… Why Ed they are Jacks. How extravagant of you.’

‘I couldn’t help it dearest. I knew you liked them.’

A nurse was hovering near the end of the bed.

‘Couldn’t you let us see the baby, miss?’

The nurse nodded. She was a lanternjawed grayfaced woman with tight lips.

‘I hate her,’ whispered Susie. ‘She gives me the fidgets that woman does; she’s nothing but a mean old maid.’

‘Never mind dear, it’s just for a day or two.’ Susie closed her eyes.

‘Do you still want to call her Ellen?’

The nurse brought back a basket and set it on the bed beside Susie.

‘Oh isn’t she wonderful!’ said Ed. ‘Look she’s breathing… And they’ve oiled her.’ He helped his wife to raise herself on her elbow; the yellow coil of her hair unrolled, fell over his hand and arm. ‘How can you tell them apart nurse?’

‘Sometimes we cant,’ said the nurse, stretching her mouth in a smile. Susie was looking querulously into the minute purple face. ‘You’re sure this is mine.’

‘Of course.’

‘But it hasnt any label on it.’

‘I’ll label it right away.’

‘But mine was dark.’ Susie lay back on the pillow, gasping for breath.

‘She has lovely little light fuzz just the color of your hair.’

Susie stretched her arms out above her head and shrieked: ‘It’s not mine. It’s not mine. Take it away… That woman’s stolen my baby.’

‘Dear, for Heaven’s sake! Dear, for Heaven’s sake!’ He tried to tuck the covers about her.

‘Too bad,’ said the nurse, calmly, picking up the basket. ‘I’ll have to give her a sedative.’

Susie sat up stiff in bed. ‘Take it away,’ she yelled and fell back in hysterics, letting out continuous frail moaning shrieks.

‘O my God!’ cried Ed Thatcher, clasping his hands.

‘You’d better go away for this evening, Mr Thatcher… She’ll quiet down, once you’ve gone… I’ll put the roses in water.’

On the last flight he caught up with a chubby man who was strolling down slowly, rubbing his hands as he went. Their eyes met.

‘Everything all right, sir?’ asked the chubby man.

‘Oh yes, I guess so,’ said Thatcher faintly.

The chubby man turned on him, delight bubbling through his thick voice. ‘Congradulade me, congradulade me; mein vife has giben birth to a poy.’

Thatcher shook a fat little hand. ‘Mine’s a girl,’ he admitted, sheepishly.

‘It is fif years yet and every year a girl, and now dink of it, a poy.’

‘Yes,’ said Ed Thatcher as they stepped out on the pavement, ‘it’s a great moment.’

‘Vill yous allow me sir to invite you to drink a congradulation drink mit me?’

‘Why with pleasure.’

The latticed halfdoors were swinging in the saloon at the corner of Third Avenue. Shuffling their feet politely they went through into the back room.

‘Ach,’ said the German as they sat down at a scarred brown table, ‘family life is full of vorries.’

‘That it is sir; this is my first.’

‘Vill you haf beer?’

‘All right anything suits me.’

‘Two pottles Culmbacher imported to drink to our little folk.’ The bottles popped and the sepia-tinged foam rose in the glasses. ‘Here’s success… Prosit,’ said the German, and raised his glass. He rubbed the foam out of his mustache and pounded on the table with a pink fist. ‘Vould it be indiscreet meester…?’

‘Thatcher’s my name.’

‘Vould it be indiscreet, Mr Thatcher, to inquvire vat might your profession be?’

‘Accountant. I hope before long to be a certified accountant.’

‘I am a printer and my name is Zucher - Marcus Antonius Zucher.’

‘Pleased to meet you Mr Zucher.’

They shook hands across the table between the bottles.

‘A certified accountant makes big money,’ said Mr Zucher.

‘Big money’s what I’ll have to have, for my little girl.’

‘Kids, they eat money,’ continued Mr Zucher, in a deep voice.

‘Wont you let me set you up to a bottle?’ said Thatcher, figuring up how much he had in his pocket. Poor Susie wouldn’t like me to be drinking in a saloon like this. But just this once, and I’m learning, learning about fatherhood.

‘The more the merrier,’ said Mr Zucher. ‘… But kids they eat money… Dont do nutten but eat and vear out clothes. Vonce I get my business on its feet… Ach! Now vot mit hypothecations and the difficult borrowing of money and vot mit vages going up und these here crazy tradeunion socialists and bomsters…’

‘Well here’s how, Mr Zucher.’ Mr Zucher squeezed the foam out of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. ‘It ain’t ever day ve pring into the voirld a papy poy, Mr Thatcher.’

‘Or a baby girl, Mr Zucher.’

The barkeep wiped the spillings off the table when he brought the new bottles, and stood near listening, the rag dangling from his red hands.

‘And I have the hope in mein heart that ven my poy drinks to his poy, it vill be in champagne vine. Ach, that is how things go in this great city.’

‘I’d like my girl to be a quiet homey girl, not like these young women nowadays, all frills and furbelows and tight lacings. And I’ll have retired by that time and have a little place up the Hudson, work in the garden evenings… I know fellers downtown who have retired with three thousand a year. It’s saving that does it.’

‘Aint no good in savin,’ said the barkeep. ‘I saved for ten years and the savings bank went broke and left me nutten but a bankbook for my trouble. Get a close tip and take a chance, that’s the only system.’

‘That’s nothing but gambling,’ snapped Thatcher.

‘Well sir it’s a gamblin game,’ said the barkeep as he walked back to the bar swinging the two empty bottles.

‘A gamblin game. He aint so far out,’ said Mr Zucher, looking down into his beer with a glassy meditative eye. ‘A man vat is ambeetious must take chances. Ambeetions is vat I came here from Frankfort mit at the age of tvelf years, und now that I haf a son to vork for… Ach, his name shall be Vilhelm after the mighty Kaiser.’

‘My little girl’s name will be Ellen after my mother.’ Ed Thatcher’s eyes filled with tears.

Mr Zucher got to his feet. ‘Vell goodpy Mr Thatcher. Happy to have met you. I must go hom to my little girls.’

Thatcher shook the chubby hand again, and thinking warm soft thoughts of motherhood and fatherhood and birthday cakes and Christmas watched through a sepia-tinged foamy haze Mr Zucher waddle out through the swinging doors. After a while he stretched out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here… Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.

‘Hey there yous how about settlin?’ bawled the barkeep after him when he reached the door.

‘Didn’t the other feller pay?’

‘Like hell he did.’

‘But he was t-t-treating me…’

The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. ‘I guess that bloat believes in savin.’

A small bearded bandylegged man in a derby walked up Allen Street, up the sunstriped tunnel hung with skyblue and smoked-salmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands clasped over the tails of his frockcoat, picking his way among packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.

At a yellowpainted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was a highbrowed cleanshaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto NO Stropping No Honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the dollarproud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists, threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.

His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water on the gasburner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving very carefully with the new nickelbright safety razor. He stood trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard a voice behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollarbland smile. The two little girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. ‘Mommer… it’s popper,’ the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundrybag into the rocker and threw the apron over her head.

‘Oyoy! Oyoy!’ she moaned rocking back and forth.

‘Vat’s a matter? Dontye like it?’ He walked back and forth with the safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his smooth chin.

2 Metropolis

There were Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble colums. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.

When the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year… Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five hundred and twenty dollars at four per cent. He walked excitedly about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the coalscuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie to the hospital.

Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table. The world’s second metropolis… And Dad wanted me to stay in his ole fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadnt been for Susie… Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl, my wife. I owe everything to her.

In the bow he made towards the grate his coat-tails flicked a piece of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from her body. ‘And poor Susie’s so fond of her knicknacks. I’d better go to bed.’

He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.

The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath let out the word Fire.

‘Where at?’

The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering hoofbeats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.

‘Which way is it?’

‘Down on the next block.’

‘It’s a tenement house.’

It was a narrowwindowed sixstory tenement. The hookandladder had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the middle of the street the fire engine and the red hosewagon shone with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a romancandle.

‘The airshaft,’ whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a windowledge. The other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire engines were arriving.

‘Theyve got five alarms in,’ a man said. ‘What do you think of that? Everyone of ’em on the two top floors was trapped. It’s an incendiary done it. Some goddam firebug.’

A young man sat huddled on the curb beside the gas lamp. Thatcher found himself standing over him pushed by the crowd from behind.

‘He’s an Italian.’

‘His wife’s in that buildin.’

‘Cops wont let him get by.’ ‘His wife’s in a family way. He cant talk English to ask the cops.’

The man wore blue suspenders tied up with a piece of string in back. His back was heaving and now and then he left out a string of groaning words nobody understood.

Thatcher was working his way out of the crowd. At the corner a man was looking into the fire alarm box. As Thatcher brushed past him he caught a smell of coaloil from the man’s clothes. The man looked up into his face with a smile. He had tallowy sagging cheeks and bright popeyes. Thatcher’s hands and feet went suddenly cold. The firebug. The papers say they hang round like that to watch it. He walked home fast, ran up the stairs, and locked the room door behind him. The room was quiet and empty. He’d forgotten that Susie wouldnt be there waiting for him. He began to undress. He couldnt forget the smell of coaloil on the man’s clothes.

Mr Perry flicked at the burdock leaves with his cane. The real-estate agent was pleading in a singsong voice:

‘I dont mind telling you, Mr Perry, it’s an opportunity not to be missed. You know the old saying sir… opportunity knocks but once on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part of New York, the second city in the world, sir, dont forget that… Why the time will come, and I firmly believe that you and I will see it, when bridge after bridge spanning the East River have made Long Island and Manhattan one, when the Borough of Queens will be as much the heart and throbbing center of the great metropolis as is Astor Place today.’

‘I know, I know, but I’m looking for something dead safe. And besides I want to build. My wife hasnt been very well these last few years…’

‘But what could be safer than my proposition? Do you realize Mr Perry, that at considerable personal loss I’m letting you in on the ground floor of one of the greatest real-estate certainties of modern times. I’m putting at your disposal not only security, but ease, comfort, luxury. We are caught up Mr Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. A great deal is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical inventions – telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles – they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in the forefront of progress… My God! I cant begin to tell you what it will mean…’ Poking amid the dry grass and the burdock leaves Mr Perry had moved something with his stick. He stooped and picked up a triangular skull with a pair of spiralfluted horns. ‘By gad!’ he said. ‘That must have been a fine ram.’

Drowsy from the smell of lather and bayrum and singed hair that weighed down the close air of the barbershop, Bud sat nodding, his hands dangling big and red between his knees. In his eardrums he could still feel through the snipping of scissors the pounding of his feet on the hungry road down from Nyack.

‘Next!’

‘Whassat?… All right I just want a shave an a haircut.’

The barber’s pudgy hands moved through his hair, the scissors whirred like a hornet behind his ears. His eyes kept closing; he jerked them open fighting sleep. He could see beyond the striped sheet littered with sandy hair the bobbing hammerhead of the colored boy shining his shoes.

‘Yessir’ a deepvoiced man droned from the next chair, ‘it’s time the Democratic party nominated a strong…’

‘Want a neckshave as well?’ The barber’s greasyskinned moonface poked into his.

He nodded.

‘Shampoo?’

‘No.’

When the barber threw back the chair to shave him he wanted to crane his neck like a mudturtle turned over on its back. The lather spread drowsily on his face, prickling his nose, filling up his ears. Drowning in featherbeds of lather, blue lather, black, slit by the faraway glint of the razor, glint of the grubbing hoe through blueblack lather clouds. The old man on his back in the potatofield, his beard sticking up lathery white full of blood. Full of blood his socks from those blisters on his heels. His hands gripped each other cold and horny like a dead man’s hands under the sheet. Lemme git up… He opened his eyes. Padded fingertips were stroking his chin. He stared up at the ceiling where four flies made figure eights round a red crêpe-paper bell. His tongue was dry leather in his mouth. The barber righted the chair again. Bud looked about blinking. ‘Four bits, and a nickel for the shine.’

‘D’yous mind if I set here a minute an read that paper?’ he hears his voice drawling in his pounding ears.

‘Go right ahead.’

The black print squirms before his eyes. Russians… MOB STONES… (Special Dispatch to the Herald) Trenton, NJ

Nathan Sibbetts, fourteen years old, broke down today after two weeks of steady denial of guilt and confessed to the police that he was responsible for the death of his aged and crippled mother, Hannah Sibbetts, after a quarrel in their home at Jacob’s Creek, six miles above this city. Tonight he was committed to await the action of the Grand Jury.

RELIEVE PORT ARTHUR IN FACE OF ENEMY… Mrs Rix Loses Husband’s Ashes.

On Tuesday May 24 at about half past eight o’clock I came home after sleeping on the steam roller all night, he said, and went upstairs to sleep some more. I had only gotten to sleep when my mother came upstairs and told me to get up and if I didn’t get up she would throw me downstairs. My mother grabbed hold of me to throw me downstairs. I threw her first and she fell to the bottom. I went downstairs and found that her head was twisted to one side. I then saw that she was dead and then I straightened her neck and covered her up with the cover from my bed.

Bud folds the paper carefully, lays it on the chair and leaves the barbershop. Outside the air smells of crowds, is full of noise and sunlight. No more’n a needle in a haystack… ‘An I’m twentyfive years old,’ he muttered aloud. Think of a kid fourteen… He walks faster along roaring pavements where the sun shines through the Elevated striping the blue street with warm seething yellow stripes. No more’n a needle in a haystack.

Ed Thatcher sat hunched over the pianokeys picking out the Mosquito Parade. Sunday afternoon sunlight streamed dustily through the heavy lace curtains of the window, squirmed in the red roses of the carpet, filled the cluttered parlor with specks and splinters of light. Susie Thatcher sat limp by the window watching him out of eyes too blue for her sallow face. Between them, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet, little Ellen danced. Two small hands held up the pinkfrilled dress and now and then an emphatic little voice said, ‘Mummy watch my expression.’

‘Just look at the child,’ said Thatcher, still playing. ‘She’s a regular little balletdancer.’

Sheets of the Sunday paper lay where they had fallen from the table; Ellen started dancing on them, tearing the sheets under her nimble tiny feet.

‘Dont do that Ellen dear,’ whined Susie from the pink plush chair.

‘But mummy I can do it while I dance.’

‘Dont do that mother said.’ Ed Thatcher had slid into the Barcarole. Ellen was dancing to it, her arms swaying to it, her feet nimbly tearing the paper.

‘Ed for Heaven’s sake pick the child up; she’s tearing the paper.’

He brought his fingers down in a lingering chord. ‘Deary you mustnt do that. Daddy’s not finished reading it.’

Ellen went right on. Thatcher swooped down on her from the pianostool and set her squirming and laughing on his knee. ‘Ellen you should always mind when mummy speaks to you, and dear you shouldnt be destructive. It costs money to make that paper and people worked on it and daddy went out to buy it and he hasnt finished reading it yet. Ellie understands dont she now? We need con-struction and not de-struction in this world.’ Then he went on with the Barcarole and Ellen went on dancing, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet.

There were six men at the table in the lunchroom eating fast with their hats on the backs of their heads.

‘Jiminy crickets!’ cried the young man at the end of the table who was holding a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. ‘Kin you beat it?’

‘Beat what?’ growled a longfaced man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

‘Big snake appears on Fifth Avenue… Ladies screamed and ran in all directions this morning at eleven thirty when a big snake crawled out of a crack in the masonry of the retaining wall of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Fortysecond Street and started to cross the sidewalk…’

‘Some fish story…’

‘That aint nothin,’ said an old man. ‘When I was a boy we used to go snipeshootin on Brooklyn Flats…’

‘Holy Moses! it’s quarter of nine,’ muttered the young man folding his paper and hurrying out into Hudson Street that was full of men and girls walking briskly through the ruddy morning. The scrape of the shoes of hairyhoofed drayhorses and the grind of the wheels of producewagons made a deafening clatter and filled the air with sharp dust. A girl in a flowered bonnet with a big lavender bow under her pert tilted chin was waiting for him in the door of M. Sullivan & Co., Storage and Warehousing. The young man felt all fizzy inside, like a freshly uncorked bottle of pop.

‘Hello Emily!… Say Emily I’ve got a raise.’

‘You’re pretty near late, d’you know that?’

‘But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.’

She tilted her chin first to oneside and then to the other.

‘I dont give a rap.’

‘You know what you said if I got a raise.’ She looked in his eyes giggling.

‘An this is just the beginnin…’

‘But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?’

‘Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import business.’

‘Silly boy you’ll be late.’ She suddenly turned and ran up the littered stairs, her pleated bellshaped skirt swishing from side to side.

‘God! I hate her. I hate her.’ Sniffing up the tears that were hot in his eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle & Gulick, West India Importers.

The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells of the Gulf Stream.

‘J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp à New York… The minute we tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.’ The cabinboy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. ‘Merde!’ He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and bounced into the scuppers.

‘Let it go. I’ve got plenty,’ said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. ‘The consul will just have you shipped back.’

‘He wont catch me.’

‘And your military service?’

‘To hell with it. And with France for that matter.’

‘You want to make yourself an American citizen?’

‘Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.’

The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a long whistle. ‘Emile you’re a wise guy,’ he said.

‘But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.’

Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his head that was thick with kinky black hair.

‘Say how much does a woman cost in New York?’

‘I dunno, expensive I guess… I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?’

‘What’s the use? Why not?’ said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again, burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed arms.

‘I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth dont matter, education dont matter. It’s all getting ahead.’

‘And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here now where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?’

‘After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.’

‘And they dont have any military service?’

‘Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to fight people; they want to do business with them.’

Congo did not answer.

The cabinboy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.

‘Merde v’là l’heure.’ The paired strokes of the bell in the crowsnest came faintly to their ears. ‘But dont forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore…’ He made a popping noise with his lips. ‘We’re gone.’

‘I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadnt waked me.’ The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs clattering on his bare feet as he went.

Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled ends down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:

‘I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.’

Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: ‘But Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and vork for her husband.’

‘I wont. I cant help it. I wont go back to the dirty brute.’

Susie sat up in bed, but she couldn’t hear the next thing the old woman said.

‘But I aint a Jew no more,’ suddenly screeched the young girl. ‘This aint Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights here.’ Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.

Susie Thatcher stirred in bed moaning fretfully. Those awful people never give me a moment’s peace. From below came the jingle of a pianola playing the Merry Widow Waltz. O Lord! why dont Ed come home? It’s cruel of them to leave a sick woman alone like this. Selfish. She twisted up her mouth and began to cry. Then she lay quiet again, staring at the ceiling watching the flies buzz teasingly round the electriclight fixture. A wagon clattered by down the street. She could hear children’s voices screeching. A boy passed yelling an extra. Suppose there’d been a fire. That terrible Chicago theater fire. Oh I’ll go mad! She tossed about in the bed, her pointed nails digging into the palms of her hands. I’ll take another tablet. Maybe I can get some sleep. She raised herself on her elbow and took the last tablet out of a little tin box. The gulp of water that washed the tablet down was soothing to her throat. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.

She woke with a start. Ellen was jumping round the room, her green tam falling off the back of her head, her coppery curls wild.

‘Oh mummy I want to be a little boy.’

‘Quieter dear. Mother’s not feeling a bit well.’

‘I want to be a little boy.’

‘Why Ed what have you done to the child? She’s all wrought up.’

‘We’re just excited, Susie. We’ve been to the most wonderful play. You’d have loved it, it’s so poetic and all that sort of thing. And Maude Adams was fine. Ellie loved every minute of it.’

‘It seems silly, as I said before, to take such a young child…’

‘Oh daddy I want to be a boy.’

‘I like my little girl the way she is. We’ll have to go again Susie and take you.’

‘Ed you know very well I wont be well enough.’ She sat bolt upright, her hair hanging a straight faded yellow down her back. ‘Oh, I wish I’d die… I wish I’d die, and not be a burden to you any more… You hate me both of you. If you didnt hate me you wouldnt leave me alone like this.’ She choked and put her face in her hands. ‘Oh I wish I’d die,’ she sobbed through her fingers.

‘Now Susie for Heaven’s sakes, it’s wicked to talk like that.’ He put his arm round her and sat on the bed beside her.

Crying quietly she dropped her head on his shoulder. Ellen stood staring at them out of round gray eyes. Then she started jumping up and down, chanting to herself, ‘Ellie’s goin to be a boy, Ellie’s goin to be a boy.’

With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat:

‘Say mister you couldnt tell a feller where a good place was to look for a job?’

‘Aint no good place to look for a job, young feller… There’s jobs all right… I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve worked since I was five I reckon, an I aint found a good job yet.’

‘Anything that’s a job’ll do me.’

‘Got a union card?’

‘I aint got nothin.’

‘Cant git no job in the buildin trades without a union card,’ said the old man. He rubbed the gray bristles of his chin with the back of his hand and leaned over the lamps again. Bud stood staring into the dustreeking girder forest of the new building until he found the eyes of a man in a derby hat fixed on him through the window of the watchman’s shelter. He shuffled his feet uneasily and walked on. If I could git more into the center of things…

At the next corner a crowd was collecting round a high-slung white automobile. Clouds of steam poured out of its rear end. A policeman was holding up a small boy by the armpits. From the car a redfaced man with white walrus whiskers was talking angrily.

‘I tell you officer he threw a stone… This sort of thing has got to stop. For an officer to countenance hoodlums and rowdies…’

A woman with her hair done up in a tight bunch on top of her head was screaming, shaking her fist at the man in the car, ‘Officer he near run me down he did, he near run me down.’

Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had a baseball cap on backwards.

‘Wassa matter?’

‘Hell I dunno… One o them automoebile riots I guess. Aint you read the paper? I dont blame em do you? What right have those golblamed automoebiles got racin round the city knocking down wimen an children?’

‘Gosh do they do that?’

‘Sure they do.’

‘Say… er… kin you tell me about where’s a good place to find out about getting a job?’ The butcherboy threw back head and laughed.

‘Kerist I thought you was goin to ask for a handout… I guess you aint a Newyorker… I’ll tell you what to do. You keep right on down Broadway till you get to City Hall…’

‘Is that kinder the center of things?’

‘Sure it is… An then you go upstairs and ask the Mayor… Tell me there are some seats on the board of aldermen…’

‘Like hell they are,’ growled Bud and walked away fast.

‘Roll ye babies… roll ye lobsided sons o bitches.’

‘That’s it talk to em Slats.’

‘Come seven!’ Slats shot the bones out of his hand, brought the thumb along his sweaty fingers with a snap. ‘Aw hell.’

‘You’re some great crapshooter I’ll say, Slats.’

Dirty hands added each a nickel to the pile in the center of the circle of patched knees stuck forward. The five boys were sitting on their heels under a lamp on South Street.

‘Come on girlies we’re waitin for it… Roll ye little bastards, goddam ye, roll.’

‘Cheeze it fellers! There’s Big Leonard an his gang acomin down the block.’

‘I’d knock his block off for a…’

Four of them were already slouching off along the wharf, gradually scattering without looking back. The smallest boy with a chinless face shaped like a beak stayed behind quietly picking up the coins. Then he ran along the wall and vanished into the dark passageway between two houses. He flattened himself behind a chimney and waited. The confused voices of the gang broke into the passageway; then they had gone on down the street. The boy was counting the nickels in his hand. Ten. ‘Jez, that’s fifty cents… I’ll tell ’em Big Leonard scooped up the dough.’ His pockets had no bottoms, so he tied the nickels into one of his shirt tails.

A goblet for Rhine wine hobnobbed with a champagne glass at each place along the glittering white oval table. On eight glossy white plates eight canapés of caviar were like rounds of black beads on the lettuceleaves, flanked by sections of lemon, sprinkled with a sparse chopping of onion and white of egg. ‘Beaucoup de soing and dont you forget it,’ said the old waiter puckering up his knobbly forehead. He was a short waddling man with a few black strands of hair plastered tight across a domed skull

‘Awright.’ Emile nodded his head gravely. His collar was too tight for him. He was shaking a last bottle of champagne into the nickelbound bucket of ice on the serving-table.

‘Beaucoup de soing, sporca madonna… Thisa guy trows money about lika confetti, see… Gives tips, see. He’s a verra rich gentleman. He dont care how much he spend.’ Emile patted the crease of the tablecloth to flatten it. ‘Fais pas, como, ça… Your hand’s dirty, maybe leava mark.’

Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates, came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.

When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a long-toothed blond woman in a salmon operacloak swishing on the arm of a moonfaced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a bumper; there was a little curlyhaired girl in blue who was showing her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigarcolored face… shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront. The redhaired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter nudged Emile. ‘He’s de big boss,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.

‘But where’s Fifi Waters?’ shouted the man with the diamond stud.

‘She said she couldnt get here for half an hour. I guess the Johnnies wont let her get by the stage door.’

‘Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited for anyone in my life.’ He stood a second running a roving eye over the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar vanished in a twinkling. ‘And waiter what about that Rhine wine coupe?’ he croaked huskily. ‘De suite monsieur…’ Emile holding his breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long slivvers of cucumber.

‘Aha, this’ll do the trick.’ The man with the diamond stud raised his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:

‘I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.’

‘That dont keep you from drinkin Mary does it?’

She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with her closed fan. ‘O Lord, you’re a card, you are.’

‘Allume moi ça, sporca madonna,’ hissed the old waiter in Emile’s ear.

When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and perfume and smoke. After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to her had his leg locked with hers. She was young, Emile’s age, and kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.

‘But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?’ creaked the man with the diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. ‘I suppose that she made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party dont appeal to her.’

‘It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.’

‘Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to wait. Haw, haw, haw,’ laughed the man with the diamond stud. ‘I never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.’

Down the table the moonfaced man had pushed back his plate and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside him. ‘You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.’

‘I’m sitting for my portrait now,’ she said holding up her goblet against the light.

‘To Gibson?’

‘No to a real painter.’

‘By Gad I’ll buy it.’

‘Maybe you wont have a chance.’

She nodded her blond pompadour at him.

‘You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.’

She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.

A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.

‘No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has crashed… That’s generally admitted… But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr Godalming, is this… How’s all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish… In real estate of course. Now it’s up to us to get in on the next great clean-up… It’s almost here… Buy Forty…’

The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. ‘For one night on Beauty’s lap, O put gross care away… or something of the sort… Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?’ He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:

Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagnecork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.

For he’s a jolly good fellow…

‘Now what kind of a dish d’ye call this?’ the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.

‘This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth… D’ye know young leddy, I dont come to this town often… He gulped down the rest of his glass. An when I do I usually go away kinder disgusted…’ His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. ‘But this time I kinder think…’

‘It must be a great life prospecting,’ she interrupted flushing.

‘It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life… I’m glad I made my pile in the old days… Wouldnt have the same luck now.’

She looked up at him. ‘How modest you are to call it luck.’

Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was nothing more to serve. The redhaired girl from the cloakroom walked by with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye. She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Wont look at me because I’m a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.

‘Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and Chandon, Gout Americain,’ came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.

The moonfaced man was on his feet. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’

‘Silence in the pigsty…’ piped up a voice.

‘The big sow wants to talk,’ said Olga under her breath.

‘Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of Bethlehem and fulltime act…’

‘Gilly dont blaspheme,’ said the lady with the tiara.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am…’

‘Gilly you’re drunk.’

‘… Whether the tide… I mean whether the waters be with us or against us…’

Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moonfaced man sat down suddenly in his chair.

‘It’s terrible,’ said the lady in the tiara addressing herself to a man with a long face the color of tobacco who sat at the end of the table… ‘It’s terrible, Colonel, the way Gilly gets blasphemous when he’s been drinking…’

The Colonel was meticulously rolling the tinfoil off a cigar. ‘Dear me, you dont say?’ he drawled. Above the bristly gray mustache his face was expressionless. ‘There’s a most dreadful story about poor old Atkins, Elliott Atkins who used to be with Mansfield…’

‘Indeed?’ said the Colonel icily as he slit the end of the cigar with a small pearlhandled penknife.

‘Say Chester did you hear that Mabie Evans was making a hit?’

‘Honestly Olga I dont see how she does it. She has no figure…’

‘Well he made a speech, drunk as a lord you understand, one night when they were barnstorming in Kansas…’

‘She cant sing…’

‘The poor fellow never did go very strong in the bright lights…’

‘She hasnt the slightest particle of figure…’

‘And made a sort of Bob Ingersoll speech . .’

‘The dear old feller… Ah I knew him well out in Chicago in the old days…’

‘You dont say.’ The Colonel held a lighted match carefully to the end of his cigar…

‘And there was a terrible flash of lightning and a ball of fire came in one window and went out the other.’

‘Was he… er… killed?’ The Colonel sent a blue puff of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘What, did you say Bob Ingersoll had been struck by lightning?’ cried Olga shrilly. ‘Serve him right the horrid atheist.’

‘No not exactly, but it scared him into a realization of the important things of life and now he’s joined the Methodist church.’

‘Funny how many actors get to be ministers.’

‘Cant get an audience any other way,’ creaked the man with the diamond stud.

The two waiters hovered outside the door listening to the racket inside. ‘Tas de sacrés cochons… sporca madonna!’ hissed the old waiter. Emile shrugged his shoulders. ‘That brunette girl make eyes at you all night…’ He brought his face near Emile’s and winked. ‘Sure, maybe you pick up somethin good.’

‘I dont want any of them or their dirty diseases either.’

The old waiter slapped his thigh. ‘No young men nowadays… When I was young man I take heap o chances.’

‘They dont even look at you…’ said Emile through clenched teeth. ‘An animated dress suit that’s all.’

‘Wait a minute, you learn by and by.’

The door opened. They bowed respectfully towards the diamond stud. Somebody had drawn a pair of woman’s legs on his shirtfront. There was a bright flush on each of his cheeks. The lower lid of one eye sagged, giving his weasle face a quizzical lobsided look.

‘Wazzahell, Marco wazzahell?’ he was muttering. ‘We aint got a thing to drink… Bring the Atlantic Ozz-shen and two quarts.’

‘De suite monsieur…’ The old waiter bowed. ‘Emile tell Auguste, immediatement et bien frappé.’

As Emile went down the corridor he could hear singing.

The moonface and the bottlenose were coming back from the lavatory reeling arm in arm among the palms in the hall.

‘These damn fools make me sick.’

‘Yessir these aint the champagne suppers we used to have in Frisco in the ole days.’

‘Ah those were great days those.’

‘By the way,’ the moonfaced man steadied himself against the wall, ‘Holyoke ole fella, did you shee that very nobby little article on the rubber trade I got into the morning papers… That’ll make the investors nibble… like lil mishe.’

‘Whash you know about rubber?… The stuff aint no good.’

‘You wait an shee, Holyoke ole fella or you looshing opportunity of your life… Drunk or sober I can smell money… on the wind.’

‘Why aint you got any then?’ The bottlenosed man’s beefred face went purple; he doubled up letting out great hoots of laughter.

‘Because I always let my friends in on my tips,’ said the other man soberly. ‘Hay boy where’s zis here private dinin room?’

‘Par ici monsieur.’

A red accordionpleated dress swirled past them, a little oval face framed by brown flat curls, pearly teeth in an open-mouthed laugh.

‘Fifi Waters,’ everyone shouted. ‘Why my darlin lil Fifi, come to my arms.’

She was lifted onto a chair where she stood jiggling from one foot to the other, champagne dripping out of a tipped glass.

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘Happy New Year.’

‘Many returns of the day…’

A fair young man who had followed her in was reeling intricately round the table singing:

‘Hoopla,’ cried Fifi Waters and mussed the gray hair of the man with the diamond stud. ‘Hoopla.’ She jumped down with a kick, pranced round the room, kicking high with her skirts fluffed up around her knees.

‘Oh la la ze French high kicker!’

‘Look out for the Pony Ballet.’

Her slender legs, shiny black silk stockings tapering to red rosetted slippers flashed in the men’s faces.

‘She’s a mad thing,’ cried the lady in the tiara.

Hoopla. Holyoke was swaying in the doorway with his top hat tilted over the glowing bulb of his nose. She let out a whoop and kicked it off.

‘It’s a goal,’ everyone cried.

‘For crissake you kicked me in the eye.’

She stared at him a second with round eyes and then burst into tears on the broad shirtfront of the diamond stud. ‘I wont be insulted like that,’ she sobbed.

‘Rub the other eye.’

‘Get a bandage someone.’

‘Goddam it she may have put his eye out.’

‘Call a cab there waiter.’

‘Where’s a doctor?’

‘That’s hell to pay ole fella.’

A handkerchief full of tears and blood pressed to his eye the bottlenosed man stumbled out. The men and women crowded through the door after him; last went the blond young man, reeling and singing:

Fifi Waters was sobbing with her head on the table.

‘Don’t cry Fifi,’ said the Colonel who was still sitting where he had sat all the evening. ‘Here’s something I rather fancy might do you good.’ He pushed a glass of champagne towards her down the table.

She sniffled and began drinking it in little sips. ‘Hullo Roger, how’s the boy?’

‘The boy’s quite well thank you… Rather bored, dont you know? An evening with such infernal bounders…’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘There doesnt seem to be anything left to eat.’

‘I didnt know you’d be here or I’d have come earlier, honest.’

‘Would you indeed?… Now that’s very nice.’

The long ash dropped from the Colonel’s cigar; he got to his feet. ‘Now Fifi, I’ll call a cab and we’ll go for a ride in the Park…’

She drank down her champagne and nodded brightly. ‘Dear me it’s four o’clock…’ ‘You have the proper wraps haven’t you?’

She nodded again.

‘Splendid Fifi… I say you are in form.’ The Colonel’s cigarcolored face was unraveling in smiles. ‘Well, come along.’

She looked about her in a dazed way. ‘Didnt I come with somebody?’

‘Quite unnecessary!’

In the hall they came upon the fair young man quietly vomiting into a firebucket under an artificial palm.

‘Oh let’s leave him,’ she said wrinkling up her nose.

‘Quite unnecessary,’ said the Colonel.

Emile brought their wraps. The redhaired girl had gone home.

‘Look here, boy.’ The Colonel waved his cane. ‘Call me a cab please… Be sure the horse is decent and the driver is sober.’

‘De suite monsieur.’

The sky beyond roofs and chimneys was the blue of a sapphire. The Colonel took three or four deep sniffs of the dawnsmelling air and threw his cigar into the gutter. ‘Suppose we have a bit of breakfast at Cleremont. I haven’t had anything fit to eat all night. That beastly sweet champagne, ugh!’

Fifi giggled. After the Colonel had examined the horse’s fetlocks and patted his head, they climbed into the cab. The Colonel fitted in Fifi carefully under his arm and they drove off. Emile stood a second in the door of the restaurant uncrumpling a five dollar bill. He was tired and his insteps ached.

When Emile came out of the back door of the restaurant he found Congo waiting for him sitting on the doorstep. Congo’s skin had a green chilly look under the frayed turned up coatcollar.

‘This is my friend,’ Emile said to Marco. ‘Came over on the same boat.’

‘You havent a bottle of fine under your coat have you? Sapristi I’ve seen some chickens not half bad come out of this place.’

‘But what’s the matter?’

‘Lost my job that’s all… I wont have to take any more off that guy. Come over and drink a coffee.’

They ordered coffee and doughnuts in a lunchwagon on a vacant lot.

‘Eh bien you like it this sacred pig of a country?’ asked Marco.

‘Why not! I like it anywhere. It’s all the same, in France you are paid badly and live well; here you are paid well and live badly.’

‘Questo paese e completamente soto sopra.’

‘I think I’ll go to sea again…’

‘Say why de hell doan yous guys loin English?’ said the man with a cauliflower face who slapped the three mugs of coffee down on the counter.

‘If we talk Engleesh,’ snapped Marco ‘maybe you no lika what we say.’

‘Why did they fire you?’

‘Merde. I dont know. I had an argument with the old camel who runs the place… He lived next door to the stables; as well as washing the carriages he made me scrub the floors in his house… His wife, she had a face like this.’ Congo sucked in his lips and tried to look crosseyed.

Marco laughed. ‘Santissima Maria putana!’

‘How did you talk to them?’

‘They pointed to things; then I nodded my head and said Awright. I went there at eight and worked till six and they gave me every day more filthy things to do… Last night they tell me to clean out the toilet in the bathroom. I shook my head… That’s woman’s work… She got very angry and started screeching. Then I began to learn Angleesh… Go awright to ‘ell, I says to her… Then the old man comes and chases me out into a street with a carriage whip and says he wont pay me my week… While we were arguing he got a policeman, and when I try to explain to the policeman that the old man owed me ten dollars for the week, he says Beat it you lousy wop, and cracks me on the coco with his nightstick… Merde alors…’

Marco was red in the face. ‘He call you lousy wop?’

Congo nodded his mouth full of doughnut.

‘Notten but shanty Irish himself,’ muttered Marco in English. ‘I’m fed up with this rotten town…’

‘It’s the same all over the world, the police beating us up, rich people cheating us out of their starvation wages, and who’s fault?… Dio cane! Your fault, my fault, Emile’s fault…’

‘We didn’t make the world… They did or maybe God did.’

‘God’s on their side, like a policeman… When the day comes we’ll kill God… I am an anarchist.’

Congo hummed ‘les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu.’

‘Are you one of us?’

Congo shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not a catholic or a protestant; I haven’t any money and I haven’t any work. Look at that.’ Congo pointed with a dirty finger to a long rip on his trouserknee. ‘That’s anarchist… Hell I’m going out to Senegal and get to be a nigger.’

‘You look like one already,’ laughed Emile.

‘That’s why they call me Congo.’

‘But that’s all silly,’ went on Emile. ‘People are all the same. It’s only that some people get ahead and others dont… That’s why I came to New York.’

‘Dio cane I think that too twentyfive years ago… When you’re old like me you know better. Doesnt the shame of it get you sometimes? Here’… he tapped with his knuckles on his stiff shirtfront… ‘I feel it hot and like choking me here… Then I say to myself Courage our day is coming, our day of blood.’

‘I say to myself,’ said Emile. ‘When you have some money old kid.’

‘Listen, before I leave Torino when I go last time to see the mama I got to a meetin of comrades… A fellow from Capua got up to speak… a very handsome man, tall and very thin… He said that there would be no more force when after the revolution nobody lived off another man’s work… Police, governments, armies, presidents, kings… all that is force. Force is not real; it is illusion. The working man makes all that himself because he believes it. The day that we stop believing in money and property it will be like a dream when we wake up. We will not need bombs or barricades… Religion, politics, democracy all that is to keep us asleep… Everybody must go round telling people: Wake up!’

‘When you go down into the street I’ll be with you,’ said Congo.

‘You know that man I tell about?… That man Errico Malatesta, in Italy greatest man after Garibaldi… He give his whole life in jail and exile, in Egypt, in England, in South America, everywhere… If I could be a man like that, I dont care what they do; they can string me up, shoot me… I dont care… I am very happy.’

‘But he must be crazy a feller like that,’ said Emile slowly. ‘He must be crazy.’

Marco gulped down the last of his coffee. ‘Wait a minute. You are too young. You will understand… One by one they make us understand… And remember what I say… Maybe I’m too old, maybe I’m dead, but it will come when the working people awake from slavery… You will walk out in the street and the police will run away, you will go into a bank and there will be money poured out on the floor and you wont stoop to pick it up, no more good… All over the world we are preparing. There are comrades even in China… Your Commune in France was the beginning… socialism failed. It’s for the anarchists to strike the next blow… If we fail there will be others…’

Congo yawned, ‘I am sleepy as a dog.’

Outside the lemoncolored dawn was drenching the empty streets, dripping from cornices, from the rails of fire escapes, from the rims of ashcans, shattering the blocks of shadow between buildings. The streetlights were out. At a corner they looked up Broadway that was narrow and scorched as if a fire had gutted it.

‘I never see the dawn,’ said Marco, his voice rattling in his throat, ‘that I dont say to myself perhaps… perhaps today.’ He cleared his throat and spat against the base of a lamppost; then he moved away from them with his waddling step, taking hard short sniffs of the cool air.

‘Is that true, Congo, about shipping again?’

‘Why not? Got to see the world a bit…’

‘I’ll miss you… I’ll have to find another room.’

‘You’ll find another friend to bunk with.’

‘But if you do that you’ll stay a sailor all your life.’

‘What does it matter? When you are rich and married I’ll come and visit you.’

They were walking down Sixth Avenue. An L train roared above their heads leaving a humming rattle to fade among the girders after it had passed.

‘Why dont you get another job and stay on a while?’

Congo produced two bent cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his coat, handed one to Emile, struck a match on the seat of his trousers, and let the smoke out slowly through his nose. ‘I’m fed up with it here I tell you…’ He brought his flat hand up across his Adam’s apple, ‘up to here… Maybe I’ll go home an visit the little girls of Bordeaux… At least they are not all made of whalebone… I’ll engage myself as a volunteer in the navy and wear a red pompom… The girls like that. That’s the only life… Get drunk and raise cain payday and see the extreme orient.’

‘And die of the syph in a hospital at thirty…’

‘What’s it matter?… Your body renews itself every seven years.’

The steps of their rooming house smelled of cabbage and stale beer. They stumbled up yawning.

‘Waiting’s a rotton tiring job… Makes the soles of your feet ache… Look it’s going to be a fine day; I can see the sun on the watertank opposite.’

Congo pulled off his shoes and socks and trousers and curled up in bed like a cat.

‘Those dirty shades let in all the light,’ muttered Emile as he stretched himself on the outer edge of the bed. He lay tossing uneasily on the rumpled sheets. Congo’s breathing beside him was low and regular. If I was only like that, thought Emile, never worrying about a thing… But it’s not that way you get along in the world. My God it’s stupid… Marco’s gaga the old fool.

And he lay on his back looking up at the rusty stains on the ceiling, shuddering every time an elevated train shook the room. Sacred name of God I must save up my money. When he turned over the knob on the bedstead rattled and he remembered Marco’s hissing husky voice: I never see the dawn that I dont say to myself perhaps.

‘If you’ll excuse me just a moment Mr Olafson,’ said the house-agent. ‘While you and the madam are deciding about the apartment…’ They stood side by side in the empty room, looking out the window at the slatecolored Hudson and the warships at anchor and a schooner tacking upstream.

Suddenly she turned to him with glistening eyes; ‘O Billy, just think of it.’

He took hold of her shoulders and drew her to him slowly. ‘You can smell the sea, almost.’

‘Just think Billy that we are going to live here, on Riverside Drive. I’ll have to have a day at home… Mrs William C. Olafson, 218 Riverside Drive… I wonder if it is all right to put the address on our visiting cards.’ She took his hand and led him through the empty cleanswept rooms that no one had ever lived in. He was a big shambling man with eyes of a washed out blue deepset in a white infantile head.

‘It’s a lot of money Bertha.’

‘We can afford it now, of course we can. We must live up to our income… Your position demands it… And think how happy we’ll be.’

The house agent came back down the hall rubbing his hands. ‘Well, well, well… Ah I see that we’ve come to a favorable decision… You are very wise too, not a finer location in the city of New York and in a few months you wont be able to get anything out this way for love or money…’

‘Yes we’ll take it from the first of the month.’

‘Very good… You won’t regret your decision, Mr Olafson.’

‘I’ll send you a check for the amount in the morning.’

‘At your own convenience… And what is your present address please…’ The houseagent took out a notebook and moistened a stub of pencil with his tongue.

‘You had better put Hotel Astor.’ She stepped in front of her husband.

‘Our things are stored just at the moment.’

Mr Olafson turned red.

‘And… er… we’d like the names of two references please in the city of New York.’

‘I’m with Keating and Bradley, Sanitary Engineers, 43 Park Avenue…’

‘He’s just been made assistant general manager,’ added Mrs Olafson.

When they got out on the Drive walking downtown against a tussling wind she cried out: ‘Darling I’m so happy… It’s really going to be worth living now.’

‘But why did you tell him we lived at the Astor?’

‘I couldn’t tell him we lived in the Bronx could I? He’d have thought we were Jews and wouldnt have rented us the apartment.’

‘But you know I dont like that sort of thing.’

‘Well we’ll just move down to the Astor for the rest of the week, if you’re feeling so truthful… I’ve never in my life stopped in a big downtown hotel.’

‘Oh Bertha it’s the principle of the thing… I don’t like you to be like that.’

She turned and looked at him with twitching nostrils. ‘You’re so nambypamby, Billy… I wish to heavens I’d married a man for a husband.’

He took her by the arm. ‘Let’s go up here,’ he said gruffly with his face turned away.

They walked up a cross street between buildinglots. At a corner the rickety half of a weatherboarded farmhouse was still standing. There was half a room with a blueflowered paper eaten by brown stains on the walls, a smoked fireplace, a shattered builtin cupboard, and an iron bedstead bent double.

Plates slip endlessly through Bud’s greasy fingers. Smell of swill and hot soapsuds. Twice round with the little mop, dip, rinse and pile in the rack for the longnosed Jewish boy to wipe. Knees wet from spillings, grease creeping up his forearms, elbows cramped.

‘Hell this aint no job for a white man.’

‘I dont care so long as I eat,’ said the Jewish boy above the rattle of dishes and the clatter and seething of the range where three sweating cooks fried eggs and ham and hamburger steak and browned potatoes and cornedbeef hash.

‘Sure I et all right,’ said Bud and ran his tongue round his mouth dislodging a sliver of salt meat that he mashed against his palate with his tongue. Twice round with the little mop, dip, rinse and pile in the rack for the longnosed Jewish boy to wipe. There was a lull. The Jewish boy handed Bud a cigarette. They stood leaning against the sink.

‘Aint no way to make money dishwashing.’ The cigarette wabbled on the Jewish boy’s heavy lip as he spoke.

‘Aint no job for a white man nohow,’ said Bud. ‘Waitin’s better, they’s the tips.’

A man in a brown derby came in through the swinging door from the lunchroom. He was a bigjawed man with pigeyes and a long cigar sticking straight out of the middle of his mouth. Bud caught his eye and felt the cold glint twisting his bowels.

‘Whosat?’ he whispered.

‘Dunno… Customer I guess.’

‘Dont he look to you like one o them detectives?’

‘How de hell should I know? I aint never been in jail.’ The Jewish boy turned red and stuck out his jaw.

The busboy set down a new pile of dirty dishes. Twice round with the little mop, dip, rinse and pile in the rack. When the man in the brown derby passed back through the kitchen, Bud kept his eyes on his red greasy hands. What the hell even if he is a detective… When Bud had finished the batch, he strolled to the door wiping his hands, took his coat and hat from the hook and slipped out the side door past garbage cans out into the street. Fool to jump two hours pay. In an optician’s window the clock was twentyfive past two. He walked down Broadway, past Lincoln Square, across Columbus Circle, further downtown towards the center of things where it’d be more crowded.

She lay with her knees doubled up to her chin, the nightgown pulled tight under her toes.

‘Now straighten out and go to sleep dear… Promise mother you’ll go to sleep.’

‘Wont daddy come and kiss me good night?’

‘He will when he comes in; he’s gone back down to the office and mother’s going to Mrs Spingarn’s to play euchre.’

‘When’ll daddy be home?’

‘Ellie I said go to sleep… I’ll leave the light.’

‘Dont mummy, it makes shadows… When’ll daddy be home?’

‘When he gets good and ready.’ She was turning down the gaslight. Shadows out of the corners joined wings and rushed together. ‘Good night Ellen.’ The streak of light of the door narrowed behind mummy, slowly narrowed to a thread up and along the top. The knob clicked; the steps went away down the hall; the front door slammed. A clock ticked somewhere in the silent room; outside the apartment, outside the house, wheels and gallumping of hoofs, trailing voices; the roar grew. It was black except for the two strings of light that made an upside down L in the corner of the door.

Ellie wanted to stretch out her feet but she was afraid to. She didnt dare take her eyes from the upside down L in the corner of the door. If she closed her eyes the light would go out. Behind the bed, out of the windowcurtains, out of the closet, from under the table shadows nudged creakily towards her. She held on tight to her ankles, pressed her chin in between her knees. The pillow bulged with shadow, rummaging shadows were slipping into the bed. If she closed her eyes the light would go out.

Black spiraling roar outside was melting through the walls making the cuddled shadows throb. Her tongue clicked against her teeth like the ticking of the clock. Her arms and legs were stiff; her neck was stiff; she was going to yell. Yell above the roaring and the rattat outside, yell to make daddy hear, daddy come home. She drew in her breath and shrieked again. Make daddy come home. The roaring shadows staggered and danced, the shadows lurched round and round. Then she was crying, her eyes were full of safe warm tears, they were running over her cheeks and into her ears. She turned over and lay crying with her face in the pillow.

The gaslamps tremble a while down the purplecold streets and then go out under the lurid dawn. Gus McNiel, the sleep still gumming his eyes, walks beside his wagon swinging a wire basket of milkbottles, stopping at doors, collecting the empties, climbing chilly stairs, remembering grades A and B and pints of cream and buttermilk, while the sky behind cornices, tanks, roofpeaks, chimneys becomes rosy and yellow. Hoarfrost glistens on doorsteps and curbs. The horse with dangling head lurches jerkily from door to door. There begin to be dark footprints on the frosty pavement. A heavy brewers’ dray rumbles down the street.

‘Howdy Moike, a little chilled are ye?’ shouts Gus McNiel at a cop threshing his arms on the corner of Eighth Avenue.

‘Howdy Gus. Cows still milkin’?’

It’s broad daylight when he finally slaps the reins down on the gelding’s threadbare rump and starts back to the dairy, empties bouncing and jiggling in the cart behind him. At Ninth Avenue a train shoots overhead clattering downtown behind a little green engine that emits blobs of smoke white and dense as cottonwool to melt in the raw air between the stiff blackwindowed houses. The first rays of the sun pick out the gilt lettering of DANIEL MC-GILLYCUDDY’S WINES AND LIQUORS at the corner of Tenth Avenue. Gus McNiel’s tongue is dry and the dawn has a salty taste in his mouth. A can o beer’d be the makin of a guy a cold mornin like this. He takes a turn with the reins round the whip and jumps over the wheel. His numb feet sting when they hit the pavement. Stamping to get the blood back into his toes he shoves through the swinging doors.

‘Well I’ll be damned if it aint the milkman bringin us a pint o cream for our coffee.’ Gus spits into the newly polished cuspidor beside the bar.

‘Boy, I got a thoist on me…’

‘Been drinkin too much milk again, Gus, I’ll warrant,’ roars the barkeep out of a square steak face.

The saloon smells of brasspolish and fresh sawdust. Through an open window a streak of ruddy sunlight caresses the rump of a naked lady who reclines calm as a hardboiled egg on a bed of spinach in a giltframed picture behind the bar.

‘Well Gus what’s yer pleasure a foine cold mornin loike this?’

‘I guess beer’ll do, Mac’

The foam rises in the glass, trembles up, slops over. The barkeep cuts across the top with a wooden scoop, lets the foam settle a second, then puts the glass under the faintly wheezing spigot again. Gus is settling his heel comfortably against the brass rail.

‘Well how’s the job?’

Gus gulps the glass of beer and makes a mark on his neck with his flat hand before wiping his mouth with it. ‘Full up to the neck wid it… I tell yer what I’m goin to do, I’m goin to go out West, take up free land in North Dakota or somewhere an raise wheat… I’m pretty handy round a farm… This here livin in the city’s no good.’

‘How’ll Nellie take that?’

‘She wont cotton to it much at foist, loikes her comforts of home an all that she’s been used to, but I think she’ll loike it foine onct she’s out there an all. This aint no loife for her nor me neyther.’

‘You’re right there. This town’s goin to hell… Me and the misses’ll sell out here some day soon I guess. If we could buy a noice genteel restaurant uptown or a roadhouse, that’s what’d suit us. Got me eye on a little property out Bronxville way, within easy drivin distance.’ He lifts a malletshaped fist meditatively to his chin. ‘I’m sick o bouncin these goddam drunks every night. Whade hell did I get outen the ring for xep to stop fightin? Jus last night two guys starts asluggin an I has to mix it up with both of em to clear the place out… I’m sick o fighten every drunk on Tenth Avenoo… Have somethin on the house?’

‘Jez I’m afraid Nellie’ll smell it on me.’

‘Oh, niver moind that. Nellie ought to be used to a bit of drinkin. Her ole man loikes it well enough.’

‘But honest Mac I aint been slopped once since me weddinday.’

‘I dont blame ye. She’s a real sweet girl Nellie is. Those little spitcurls o hers’d near drive a feller crazy.’

The second beer sends a foamy acrid flush to Gus’s fingertips. Laughing he slaps his thigh.

‘She’s a pippin, that’s what she is Gus, so ladylike an all.’

‘Well I reckon I’ll be gettin back to her.’

‘You lucky young divil to be goin home to bed wid your wife when we’re all startin to go to work.’

Gus’s red face gets redder. His ears tingle. ‘Sometimes she’s abed yet… So long Mac.’ He stamps out into the street again.

The morning has grown bleak. Leaden clouds have settled down over the city. ‘Git up old skin an bones,’ shouts Gus jerking at the gelding’s head. Eleventh Avenue is full of icy dust, of grinding rattle of wheels and scrape of hoofs on the cobblestones. Down the railroad tracks comes the clang of a locomotive bell and the clatter of shunting freightcars. Gus is in bed with his wife talking gently to her: Look here Nellie, you wouldn’t moind movin West would yez? I’ve filed application for free farmin land in the state o North Dakota, black soil land where we can make a pile o money in wheat; some fellers git rich in foive good crops… Healthier for the kids anyway… ‘Hello Moike!’ There’s poor old Moike still on his beat. Cold work bein a cop. Better be a wheatfarmer an have a big farmhouse an barns an pigs an horses an cows an chickens… Pretty curlyheaded Nellie feedin the chickens at the kitchen door…

‘Hay dere for crissake…’ a man is yelling at Gus from the curb. ‘Look out for de cars!’

A yelling mouth gaping under a visored cap, a green flag waving. ‘Godamighty I’m on the tracks.’ He yanks the horse’s head round. A crash rips the wagon behind him. Cars, the gelding, a green flag, red houses whirl and crumble into blackness.

3 Dollars

All along the rails there were faces; in the portholes there were faces. Leeward a stale smell came from the tubby steamer that rode at anchor listed a little to one side with the yellow quarantine flag drooping at the foremast.

‘I’d give a million dollars,’ said the old man resting on his oars, ‘to know what they come for.’

‘Just for that pop,’ said the young man who sat in the stern. ‘Aint it the land of opportoonity?’

‘One thing I do know,’ said the old man. ‘When I was a boy it was wild Irish came in the spring with the first run of shad… Now there aint no more shad, an them folks, Lord knows where they come from.’

‘It’s the land of opportoonity.’

A leanfaced young man with steel eyes and a thin highbridged nose sat back in a swivel chair with his feet on his new mahogany-finish desk. His skin was sallow, his lips gently pouting. He wriggled in the swivel chair watching the little scratches his shoes were making on the veneer. Damn it I dont care. Then he sat up suddenly making the swivel shriek and banged on his knee with his clenched fist. ‘Results,’ he shouted. Three months I’ve sat rubbing my tail in this swivel chair… What’s the use of going through lawschool and being admitted to the bar if you cant find anybody to practice on? He frowned at the gold lettering through the groundglass door.

Niwdlab, Welsh. He jumped to his feet. I’ve read that damn sign backwards every day for three months. I’m going crazy. I’ll go out and eat lunch.

He straightened his vest and brushed some flecks of dust off his shoes with a handkerchief, then, contracting his face into an expression of intense preoccupation, he hurried out of his office, trotted down the stairs and out onto Maiden Lane. In front of the chophouse he saw the headline on a pink extra; JAPS THROWN BACK FROM MUKDEN. He bought the paper and folded it under his arm as he went in through the swinging door. He took a table and pored over the bill of fare. Mustn’t be extravagant now. ‘Waiter you can bring me a New England boiled dinner, a slice of applepie and coffee.’ The longnosed waiter wrote the order on his slip looking at it sideways with a careful frown… That’s the lunch for a lawyer without any practice. Baldwin cleared his throat and unfolded the paper… Ought to liven up the Russian bonds a bit. Veterans Visit President… ANOTHER ACCIDENT ON ELEVENTH AVENUE TRACKS. Milkman seriously injured. Hello, that’d make a neat little damage suit.

Augustus McNiel, 253 W. 4th Street, who drives a milkwagon for the Excelsior Dairy Co. was severely injured early this morning when a freight train backing down the New York Central tracks…

He ought to sue the railroad. By gum I ought to get hold of that man and make him sue the railroad… Not yet recovered consciousness… Maybe he’s dead. Then his wife can sue them all the more… I’ll go to the hospital this very afternoon… Get in ahead of any of these shysters. He took a determined bite of bread and chewed it vigorously. Of course not; I’ll go to the house and see if there isn’t a wife or mother or something: Forgive me Mrs McNiel if I intrude upon your deep affliction, but I am engaged in an investigation at this moment… Yes, retained by prominent interests… He drank up the last of the coffee and paid the bill.

Repeating 253 W. 4th Street over and over he boarded an uptown car on Broadway. Walking west along 4th he skirted Washington Square. The trees spread branches of brittle purple into a dove-colored sky; the largewindowed houses opposite glowed very pink, nonchalant, prosperous. The very place for a lawyer with a large conservative practice to make his residence. We’ll just see about that. He crossed Sixth Avenue and followed the street into the dingy West Side, where there was a smell of stables and the sidewalks were littered with scraps of garbage and crawling children. Imagine living down here among low Irish and foreigners, the scum of the universe. At 253 there were several unmarked bells. A woman with gingham sleeves rolled up on sausageshaped arms stuck a gray mophead out of the window.

‘Can you tell me if Augustus McNiel lives here?’

‘Him that’s up there alayin in horspital. Sure he does.’

‘That’s it. And has he any relatives living here?’

‘An what would you be wantin wid ’em?’

‘It’s a little matter of business.’

‘Go up to the top floor an you’ll foind his wife there but most likely she cant see yez… The poor thing’s powerful wrought up about her husband, an them only eighteen months married.’

The stairs were tracked with muddy footprints and sprinkled here and there with the spilling of ashcans. At the top he found a freshpainted darkgreen door and knocked.

‘Who’s there?’ came a girl’s voice that sent a little shiver through him. Must be young.

‘Is Mrs McNiel in?’

‘Yes,’ came the lilting girl’s voice again. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a matter of business about Mr McNiel’s accident.’

‘About the accident is it?’ The door opened in little cautious jerks. She had a sharpcut pearlywhite nose and chin and a pile of wavy redbrown hair that lay in little flat curls round her high narrow forehead. Gray eyes sharp and suspicious looked him hard in the face.

‘May I speak to you a minute about Mr McNiel’s accident? There are certain legal points involved that I feel it my duty to make known to you… By the way I hope he’s better.’

‘Oh yes he’s come to.’

‘May I come in? It’s a little long to explain.’

‘I guess you can.’ Her pouting lips flattened into a wry smile. ‘I guess you wont eat me.’

‘No honestly I wont.’ He laughed nervously in his throat.

She led the way into the darkened sitting room. ‘I’m not pulling up the shades so’s you wont see the pickle everythin’s in.’

‘Allow me to introduce myself, Mrs McNiel… George Baldwin, 88 Maiden Lane… You see I make a specialty of cases like this… To put the whole matter in a nutshell… Your husband was run down and nearly killed through the culpable or possibly criminal negligence of the employees of the New York Central Railroad. There is full and ample cause for a suit against the railroad. Now I have reason to believe that the Excelsior Dairy Company will bring suit for the losses incurred, horse and wagon etcetera…’

‘You mean you think Gus is more likely to get damages himself?’

‘Exactly.’

‘How much do you think he could get?’

‘Why that depends on how badly hurt he is, on the attitude of the court, and perhaps on the skill of the lawyer… I think ten thousand dollars is a conservative figure.’

‘And you dont ask no money down?’

‘The lawyer’s fee is rarely paid until the case is brought to a successful termination.’

‘An you’re a lawyer, honest? You look kinder young to be a lawyer.’

The gray eyes flashed in his. They both laughed. He felt a warm inexplicable flush go through him.

‘I’m a lawyer all the same. I make a specialty of cases like these. Why only last Tuesday I got six thousand dollars for a client who was kicked by a relay horse riding on the loop… Just at this moment as you may know there is considerable agitation for revoking altogether the franchise of the Eleventh Avenue tracks… I think this is a most favorable moment.’

‘Say do you always talk like that, or is it just business?’

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Poor old Gus, I always said he had a streak of luck in him.’

The wail of a child crept thinly through the partition into the room.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s only the baby… The little wretch dont do nothin but squall.’

‘So you’ve got children Mrs McNiel?’ The thought chilled him somehow.

‘Juss one… what kin ye expect?’

‘Is it the Emergency Hospital?’

‘Yes I reckon they’ll let you see him as it’s a matter of business. He’s groanin somethin dreadful.’

‘Now if I could get a few good witnesses.’

‘Mike Doheny seen it all… He’s on the force. He’s a good frien of Gus’s.’

‘By gad we’ve got a case and a half… Why they’ll settle out of court… I’ll go right up to the hospital.’

A fresh volley of wails came from the other room.

‘Oh, that brat,’ she whispered, screwing up her face. ‘We could use the money all right Mr Baldwin…’

‘Well I must go.’ He picked up his hat. ‘And I certainly will do my best in this case. May I come by and report progress to you from time to time?’

‘I hope you will.’

When they shook hands at the door he couldn’t seem to let go her hand. She blushed.

‘Well goodby and thank you very much for callin,’ she said stiffly.

Baldwin staggered dizzily down the stairs. His head was full of blood. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. Outside it had begun to snow. The snowflakes were cold furtive caresses to his hot cheeks.

The sky over the Park was mottled with little tiptailed clouds like a field of white chickens.

‘Look Alice, lets us go down this little path.’

‘But Ellen, my dad told me to come straight home from school.’

‘Scarecat!’

‘But Ellen those dreadful kidnappers…’

‘I told you not to call me Ellen any more.’

‘Well Elaine then, Elaine the lily maid of Astalot.’

Ellen had on her new Black Watch plaid dress. Alice wore glasses and had legs thin as hairpins.

‘Scarecat!’

‘They’re dreadful men sitting on that bench. Come along Elaine the fair, let’s go home.’

‘I’m not scared of them. I could fly like Peter Pan if I wanted to.’

‘Why dont you do it?’

‘I dont want to just now.’

Alice began to whimper. ‘Oh Ellen I think you’re mean… Come along home Elaine.’

‘No I’m going for a walk in the Park.’

Ellen started down the steps. Alice stood a minute on the top step balancing first on one foot then on the other.

‘Scaredy scaredy scarecat!’ yelled Ellen.

Alice ran off blubbering. ‘I’m goin to tell your mommer.’

Ellen walked down the asphalt path among the shrubbery kicking her toes in the air.

Ellen in her new dress of Black Watch plaid mummy’d bought at Hearn’s walked down the asphalt path kicking her toes in the air. There was a silver thistle brooch on the shoulder of the new dress of Black Watch plaid mummy’d bought at Hearn’s. Elaine of Lammermoor was going to be married. The Betrothed. Wangnaan nainainai, went the bagpipes going through the rye. The man on the bench has a patch over his eye. A watching black patch. A black watching patch. The kidnapper of the Black Watch, among the rustling shrubs kidnappers keep their Black Watch. Ellen’s toes dont kick in the air. Ellen is terribly scared of the kidnapper of the Black Watch, big smelly man of the Black Watch with a patch over his eye. She’s scared to run. Her heavy feet scrape on the asphalt as she tries to run fast down the path. She’s scared to turn her head. The kidnapper of the Black Watch is right behind. When I get to the lamppost I’ll run as far as the nurse and the baby, when I get to the nurse and the baby I’ll run as far as the big tree, when I get to the big tree… Oh I’m so tired… I’ll run out onto Central Park West and down the street home. She was scared to turn round. She ran with a stitch in her side. She ran till her mouth tasted like pennies.

‘What are you running for Ellie?’ asked Gloria Drayton who was skipping rope outside the Norelands.

‘Because I wanted to,’ panted Ellen.

Winey afterglow stained the muslin curtains and filtered into the blue gloom of the room. They stood on either side of the table. Out of a pot of narcissus still wrapped in tissue paper starshaped flowers gleamed with dim phosphorescence, giving off a damp earthsmell enmeshed in indolent prickly perfume.

‘It was nice of you to bring me these Mr Baldwin. I’ll take them up to Gus at the hospital tomorrow.’

‘For God’s sake dont call me that.’

‘But I dont like the name of George.’

‘I dont care, I like your name, Nellie.’

He stood looking at her; perfumed weights coiled about his arms. His hands dangled like empty gloves. Her eyes were black, dilating, her lips pouting towards him across the flowers. She jerked her hands up to cover her face. His arm was round her little thin shoulders.

‘But honest Georgy, we’ve got to be careful. You mustn’t come here so often. I don’t want all the old hens in the house to start talkin.’

‘Don’t worry about that… We mustn’t worry about anything.’

‘I’ve been actin’ like I was crazy this last week… I’ve got to quit.’

‘You dont think I’ve been acting naturally, do you? I swear to God Nellie I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not that kind of a person.’

She showed her even teeth in a laugh. ‘Oh you kin never tell about men.’

‘But if it weren’t something extraordinary and exceptional you dont think I’d be running after you this way do you? I’ve never been in love with anybody but you Nellie.’

‘That’s a good one.’

‘But it’s true… I’ve never gone in for that sort of thing. I’ve worked too hard getting through lawschool and all that to have time for girls.’

‘Makin up for lost time I should say.’

‘Oh Nellie dont talk like that.’

‘But honestly Georgy I’ve got to cut this stuff out. What’ll we do when Gus comes out of the hospital? An I’m neglectin the kid an everythin.’

‘Christ I dont care what happens… Oh Nellie.’ He pulled her face round. They clung to each other swaying, mouths furiously mingling.

‘Look out we almost had the lamp over.’

‘God you’re wonderful, Nellie.’ Her head had dropped on his chest, he could feel the pungence of her tumbled hair all through him. It was dark. Snakes of light from the streetlamp wound greenly about them. Her eyes looked up into his frighteningly solemnly black.

‘Look Nellie lets go in the other room,’ he whispered in a tiny trembling voice.

‘Baby’s in there.’

They stood apart with cold hands looking at each other. ‘Come here an help me. I’ll move the cradle in here… Careful not to wake her or she’ll bawl her head off.’ Her voice crackled huskily.

The baby was asleep, her little rubbery face tight closed, minute pink fists clenched on the coverlet.

‘She looks happy,’ he said with a forced titter.

‘Keep quiet cant you… Here take yer shoes off… There’s been enough trampin o men’s shoes up here… Georgy I wouldn’t do this, but I juss cant help…’

He fumbled for her in the dark. ‘You darling…’ Clumsy he brooded over her, breathing crazily deep.

‘Flatfoot you’re stringin us…’

‘I aint, honest I’d swear by me muder’s grave it’s de trutt… Latitude toityseven soutt by twelve west… You go dere an see… On dat island we made in de second officer’s boat when de Elliot P. Simkins foundered der was four males and fortyseven females includin women an children. Waren’t it me dat tole de reporter guy all about it an it came out in all de Sunday papers?’

‘But Flatfoot how the hell did they ever get you away from there?’

‘Dey carried me off on a stretcher or I’m a cockeyed Iyer. I’ll be a sonofabitch if I warnt founderin, goin down by de bows like de ole Elliot P.’

Heads tossed back on thick necks let out volleys of laughter, glasses were banged on the round ringmarked table, thighs resounded with slaps, elbows were poked into ribs.

‘An how many guys was in de boat?’

‘Six includin Mr Dorkins de second officer.’

‘Seven and four makes eleven… Jez… Four an three-elevenths broads per capita… Some island.’

‘When does the next ferry leave?’

‘Better have another drink on that… Hay Charlie fill ’em up.’

Emile pulled at Congo’s elbow. ‘Come outside a sec, J’ai que’-quechose à te dire.’ Congo’s eyes were wet, he staggered a little as he followed Emile into the outer bar. ‘O le p’tit mysterieux.’

‘Look here, I’ve got to go call on a lady friend.’

‘Oh that’s what’s eating you is it? I always said you was a wise guy Emile.’

‘Look, here’s my address on a piece of paper in case you forget it: 945 West 22nd. You can come and sleep there if you’re not too pickled, and dont you bring any friends or women or anything. I’m in right with the landlady and I dont want to spoil it… Tu comprends.’

‘But I wanted you to come on a swell party… Faut faire un peu la noce, nom de dieu!…’

‘I got to work in the morning.’

‘But I got eight months’ pay in my pocket…

‘Anyway come round tomorrow at about six. I’ll wait for you.’

‘Tu m’emmerdes tu sais avec tes manières;’ Congo aimed a jet of saliva at the spittoon in the corner of the bar and turned back frowning into the inside room.

‘Hay dere sit down Congo; Barney’s goin to sing de Bastard King of England.’

Emile jumped on a streetcar and rode uptown. At Eighteenth Street he got off and walked west to Eighth Avenue. Two doors from the corner was a small store. Over one window was CONFISERIE, over the other DELICATESSEN. In the middle of the glass door white enamel letters read Emile Rigaud, High Class Table Dainties. Emile went in. The bell jangled on the door. A dark stout woman with black hairs over the corners of her mouth was drowsing behind the counter. Emile took off his hat. ‘Bonsoir Madame Rigaud.’ She looked up with a start, then showed two dimples in a profound smile.

‘Tieng c’est comma ça qu’ong oublie ses ami-es,’ she said in a booming Bordelais voice. ‘Here’s a week that I say to myself, Monsieur Loustec is forgetting his friends.’

‘I never have any time any more.’

‘Lots of work, lots of money, heing?’ When she laughed her shoulders shook and the big breasts under the tight blue bodice.

Emile screwed up one eye. ‘Might be worse… But I’m sick of waiting… It’s so tiring; nobody regards a waiter.’

‘You are a man of ambition, Monsieur Loustec’.

‘Que voulez vous?’ He blushed, and said timidly ‘My name’s Emile.’

Mme. Rigaud rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘That was my dead husband’s name. I’m used to that name.’ She sighed heavily.

‘And how’s business?’

‘Comma ci comma ça… Ham’s gone up again.’

‘It’s the Chicago ring’s doing that… A corner in pork, that’s the way to make money.’

Emile found Mme. Rigaud’s bulgy black eyes probing his. ‘I enjoyed your singing so last time… I’ve thought of it often… Music does one good dont it?’ Mme. Rigaud’s dimples stretched and stretched as she smiled. ‘My poor husband had no ear… That gave me a great deal of pain.’

‘Couldn’t you sing me something this evening?’

‘If you want me to, Emile?… But there is nobody to wait on customers.’

‘I’ll run in when we hear the bell, if you will permit me.’

‘Very well… I’ve learned a new American song… C’est chic vous savez.’

Mme. Rigaud locked the till with a key from the bunch that hung at her belt and went through the glass door in the back of the shop. Emile followed with his hat in his hand.

‘Give me your hat Emile.’

‘Oh dont trouble yourself.’

The room beyond was a little parlor with yellow flowered wallpaper, old salmon pink portières and, under the gas-bracket from which hung a bunch of crystals, a piano with photographs on it. The pianostool creaked when Mme. Rigaud sat down. She ran her fingers over the keys. Emile sat carefully on the very edge of the chair beside the piano with his hat on his knees and pushed his face forward so that as she played she could see it out of the corner of her eye tilted up towards hers. Madame Rigaud began to sing:

The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.

‘Permettez,’ cried Emile running out.

‘Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced,’ said a little girl with pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:

Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver up to his mouth. The horses reared and plunged in the middle of a shoving crowd. Policemen elbowing through. They had the man out on the curbstone vomiting blood, head hanging limp over his checked vest. The woman stood tall and white beside him twisting her feather boa in her hands, the gray plumes in her hat nodding in the striped sunlight under the elevated.

‘His wife was taking him to Europe… The Deutschland sailing at twelve. I’d said goodby to him forever. He was sailing on the Deutschland at twelve. He’d said goodby to me forever.’

‘Git oute de way dere;’ a cop jabbed Bud in the stomach with his elbow. His knees trembled. He got to the edge of the crowd and walked away trembling. Mechanically he shelled a peanut and put it in his mouth. Better save the rest till evenin. He twisted the mouth of the bag and dropped it into his pocket.

Under the arclight that spluttered pink and green-edged violet the man in the checked suit passed two girls. The full-lipped oval face of the girl nearest to him; her eyes were like a knifethrust. He walked a few paces then turned and followed them fingering his new satin necktie. He made sure the horseshoe diamond pin was firm in its place. He passed them again. Her face was turned away. Maybe she was… No he couldn’t tell. Good luck he had fifty dollars on him. He sat on a bench and let them pass him. Wouldnt do to make a mistake and get arrested. They didnt notice him. He followed them down the path and out of the Park. His heart was pounding. I’d give a million dollars for… Pray pardon me, isn’t this Miss Anderson? The girls walked fast. In the crowd crossing Columbus Circle he lost sight of them. He hurried down Broadway block after block. The full lips, the eyes like the thrust of a knife. He stared in girls’ faces right and left. Where could she have gone? He hurried on down Broadway.

Ellen was sitting beside her father on a bench at the Battery. She was looking at her new brown button shoes. A glint of sunlight caught on the toes and on each of the little round buttons when she swung her feet out from under the shadow of her dress.

‘Think how it’d be,’ Ed Thatcher was saying, ‘to go abroad on one of those liners. Imagine crossing the great Atlantic in seven days.’

‘But daddy what do people do all that time on a boat?’

‘I dunno… I suppose they walk round the deck and play cards and read and all that sort of thing. Then they have dances.’

‘Dances on a boat! I should think it’d be awful tippy.’ Ellen giggled.

‘On the big modern liners they do.’

‘Daddy why dont we go?’

‘Maybe we will some day if I can save up the money.’

‘Oh daddy do hurry up an save a lot of money. Alice Vaughan’s mother an father go to the White Mountains every summer, but next summer they’re going abroad.’

Ed Thatcher looked out across the bay that stretched in blue sparkling reaches into the brown haze towards the Narrows. The statue of Liberty stood up vague as a sleepwalker among the curling smoke of tugboats and the masts of schooners and the blunt lumbering masses of brickbarges and sandscows. Here and there the glary sun shone out white on a sail or on the superstructure of a steamer. Red ferryboats shuttled back and forth.

‘Daddy why arent we rich?’

‘There are lots of people poorer than us Ellie… You wouldn’t like your daddy any better if he were rich would you?’

‘Oh yes I would daddy.’

Thatcher laughed. ‘Well it might happen someday… How would you like the firm of Edward C. Thatcher and Co., Certified Accountants?’

Ellen jumped to her feet: ‘Oh look at that big boat… That’s the boat I want to go on.’

‘That there’s the Harabic,’ croaked a cockney voice beside them.

‘Oh is it really?’ said Thatcher.

‘Indeed it is, sir; as fahne a ship as syles the sea sir,’ explained eagerly a frayed creakyvoiced man who sat on the bench beside them. A cap with a broken patentleather visor was pulled down over a little peaked face that exuded a faded smell of whiskey. ‘Yes sir, the Harabic sir.’

‘Looks like a good big boat that does.’

‘One of the biggest afloat sir. I syled on er many’s the tahme and on the Majestic and the Teutonic too sir, fahne ships both, though a bit light’eaded in a sea as you might say. I’ve signed as steward on the Hinman and White Star lahnes these thirty years and now in me old age they’ve lyed me hoff.’

‘Oh well, we all have hard luck sometimes.’

‘And some of us as it hall the tahme sir… I’d be a appy man sir, if I could get back to the old country. This arent any plyce for an old man, it’s for the young and strong, this is.’ He drew a gout-twisted hand across the bay and pointed to the statue. ‘Look at er, she’s alookin towards Hengland she is.’

‘Daddy let’s go away. I dont like this man,’ whispered Ellen tremulously in her father’s ear.

‘All right we’ll go and take a look at the sealions… Good day.’

‘You couldn’t fahnd me the price of a cup of coffee, could you now, sir? I’m fair foundered.’ Thatcher put a dime in the grimy knobbed hand.

‘But daddy, mummy said never to let people speak to you in the street an to call a policeman if they did an to run away as fast as you could on account of those horrible kidnappers.’

‘No danger of their kidnapping me Ellie. That’s just for little girls.’

‘When I grow up will I be able to talk to people on the street like that?’

‘No deary you certainly will not.’

‘If I’d been a boy could I?’

‘I guess you could.’

In front of the Aquarium they stopped a minute to look down the bay. The liner with a tug puffing white smoke against either bow was abreast of them towering above the ferryboats and harborcraft. Gulls wheeled and screamed. The sun shone creamily on the upper decks and on the big yellow blackcapped funnel. From the foremast a string of little flags fluttered jauntily against the slate sky.

‘And there are lots of people coming over from abroad on that boat arent there daddy?’

‘Look you can see… the decks are black with people.’

Walking across Fiftythird Street from the East River Bud Korpenning found himself standing beside a pile of coal on the sidewalk. On the other side of the pile of coal a gray-haired woman in a flounced lace shirtwaist with a big pink cameo poised on the curve of her high bosom was looking at his stubbly chin and at the wrists that hung raw below the frayed sleeves of his coat. Then he heard himself speak:

‘Dont spose I could take that load of coal in back for you ma’am?’ Bud shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

‘That’s just what you could do,’ the woman said in a cracked voice. ‘That wretched coal man left it this morning and said he’d be back to bring it in. I suppose he’s drunk like the rest of them. I wonder if I can trust you in the house.’

‘I’m from upstate ma’am,’ stammered Bud.

‘From where?’

‘From Cooperstown.’

‘Hum… I’m from Buffalo. This is certainly the city for everyone being from somewhere else… Well you’re probably a burglar’s accomplice, but I cant help it I’ve got to have that coal in… Come in my man, I’ll give you a shovel and a basket and if you dont drop any in the passage or on the kitchen floor, because the scrubwoman’s just left… naturally the coal had to come when the floor was clean… I’ll give you a dollar.’

When he carried in the first load she was hovering in the kitchen. His caving hungersniff stomach made him totter lightheadedly, but he was happy to be working instead of dragging his feet endlessly along pavements, across streets, dodging drays and carts and streetcars.

‘How is it you haven’t got a regular job my man,’ she asked as he came back breathless with the empty basket.

‘I reckon it’s as I aint caught on to city ways yet. I was born an raised on a farm.’

‘And what did you want to come to this horrible city for?’

‘Couldn’t stay on the farm no more.’

‘It’s terrible what’s going to become of this country if all the fine strong young men leave the farms and come into the cities.’

‘Thought I could git a work as a longshoreman, ma’am, but they’re layin’ men off down on the wharves. Mebbe I kin go to sea as a sailor but nobody wants a green hand… I aint et for two days now.’

‘How terrible… Why you poor man couldn’t you have gone to some mission or something?’

When Bud had brought the last load in he found a plate of cold stew on the corner of the kitchen table, half a loaf of stale bread and a glass of milk that was a little sour. He ate quickly barely chewing and put the last of the stale bread in his pocket.

‘Well did you enjoy your little lunch?’

‘Thankye ma’am.’ He nodded with his mouth full.

‘Well you can go now and thank you very much.’ She put a quarter into his hand. Bud blinked at the quarter in the palm of his hand.

‘But ma’am you said you’d give me a dollar.’

‘I never said any such thing. The idea… I’ll call my husband if you dont get out of here immediately. In fact I’ve a great mind to notify the police as it is…’

Without a word Bud pocketed the quarter and shuffled out.

‘Such ingratitude,’ he heard the woman snort as he closed the door behind him.

A cramp was tying knots in his stomach. He turned east again and walked the long blocks to the river with his fists pressed tight in under his ribs. At any moment he expected to throw up. If I lose it it wont do me no good. When he got to the end of the street he lay down on the gray rubbish slide beside the wharf. A smell of hops seeped gruelly and sweet out of the humming brewery behind him. The light of the sunset flamed in the windows of factories on the Long Island side, flashed in the portholes of tugs, lay in swaths of curling yellow and orange over the swift browngreen water, glowed on the curved sails of a schooner that was slowly bucking the tide up into Hell Gate. Inside him the pain was less. Something flamed and glowed like the sunset seeping through his body. He sat up. Thank Gawd I aint agoin to lose it.

On deck it’s damp and shivery in the dawn. The ship’s rail is wet when you put your hand on it. The brown harborwater smells of washbasins, rustles gently against the steamer’s sides. Sailors are taking the hatches off the hold. There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the donkey-engine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.

‘Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?’

Mother’s hand has grasped his firmly trailing him down the companionway into the dining saloon. Stewards are piling up baggage at the foot of the stairs.

‘Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?’

‘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, egg-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.

‘Sure it’s like a steam engine an its fulla monkeynuts,’ he yelled running back.

‘Padraic you stay here.’

‘And this here’s the L station, South Ferry,’ went on Tim Halloran who had come down to meet them. ‘Up thataway’s Battery Park an Bowling Green an Wall Street an th’ financial district… Come along Padraic your Uncle Timothy’s goin to take ye on th’ Ninth Avenoo L.’

There were only three people left at the ferrylanding, an old woman with a blue handkerchief on her head and a young woman with a magenta shawl, standing at either end of a big corded trunk studded with brass tacks; and an old man with a greenish stub of a beard and a face lined and twisted like the root of a dead oak. The old woman was whimpering with wet eyes: ‘Dove andiamo Madonna mia, Madonna mia?’ The young woman was unfolding a letter blinking at the ornate writing. Suddenly she went over to the old man, ‘Non posso leggere,’ holding out the letter to him. He wrung his hands, letting his head roll back and forth, saying over and over again something she couldn’t understand. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled and went back to the trunk. A Sicilian with sideburns was talking to the old woman. He grabbed the trunk by its cord and pulled it over to a spring wagon with a white horse that stood across the street. The two women followed the trunk. The Sicilian held out his hand to the young woman. The old woman still muttering and whimpering hoisted herself painfully onto the back of the wagon. When the Sicilian leaned over to read the letter he nudged the young woman with his shoulder. She stiffened. ‘Awright,’ he said. Then as he shook the reins on the horse’s back he turned back towards the old woman and shouted, ‘Cinque le due… Awright.’

4 Tracks

The rumpetybump rumpetybump spaced out, slackened; bumpers banged all down the train. The man dropped off the rods. He couldnt move for stiffness. It was pitchblack. Very slowly he crawled out, hoisted himself to his knees, to his feet until he leaned panting against the freightcar. His body was not his own; his muscles were smashed wood, his bones were twisted rods. A lantern burst his eyes.

‘Get outa here quick yous. Company detectives is beatin through de yards.’

‘Say feller, is this New York?’

‘You’re goddam right it is. Juss foller my lantern; you kin git out along de waterfront.’

His feet could barely stumble through the long gleaming v’s and crisscrossed lines of tracks, he tripped and fell over a bundle of signal rods. At last he was sitting on the edge of a wharf with his head in his hands. The water made a soothing noise against the piles like the lapping of a dog. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and unwrapped a hunk of bread and a slice of gristly meat. He ate them dry, chewing and chewing before he could get any moisture in his mouth. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, brushed the crumbs off his knees, and looked about him. Southward beyond the tracks the murky sky was drenched with orange glow.

‘The Gay White Way,’ he said aloud in a croaking voice. ‘The Gay White Way.’

Through the rainstriped window Jimmy Herf was watching the umbrellas bob in the slowly swirling traffic that flowed up Broadway. There was a knock at the door; ‘Come in,’ said Jimmy and turned back to the window when he saw that the waiter wasn’t Pat. The waiter switched on the light. Jimmy saw him reflected in the windowpane, a lean spikyhaired man holding aloft in one hand the dinnertray on which the silver covers were grouped like domes. Breathing hard the waiter advanced into the room dragging a folding stand after him with his free hand. He jerked open the stand, set the tray on it and laid a cloth on the round table. A greasy pantry smell came from him. Jimmy waited till he’d gone to turn round. Then he walked about the table tipping up the silver covers; soup with little green things in it, roast lamb, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, spinach, no desert either.

‘Muddy.’ ‘Yes deary,’ the voice wailed frailly through the folding doors.

‘Dinner’s ready mother dear.’

‘You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in…’

‘But I dont want to begin without you mother.’

He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the Navigator and…

‘Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?’

‘But they both had their heads chopped off honey… I dont want to have my head chopped off.’ Mother had on her salmon-colored teagown. When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting it between two long blueveined hands.

He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. ‘Oh I forgot the croûtons, honey.’

‘Muddy… mother why arent you eating your soup?’

‘I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t think what to order tonight my head ached so. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate everything that was put before her like a good little girl.’

‘Even pearls… She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it down…’ Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. ‘Only you and me Jimmy boy… Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?’

‘What’s the matter muddy dear?’

‘Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening… Oh I’m so tired of never really feeling well.’

‘But after you’ve had your operation…’

‘Oh yes after I’ve had my operation… Deary there’s a paper of fresh butter on the windowledge in the bathroom… I’ll put some on these turnips if you fetch it for me… I’m afraid I’ll have to complain about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont make us sick.’

Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft, breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.

‘Jimmee!’

‘Coming mother.’ Blushing he slammed down the window and walked back to the sittingroom, slowly so that the red would have time to fade out of his face.

‘Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.’

He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.

‘Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.’

The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.

‘Is it too hot?’ mother asked laughing. ‘You must learn to like hot things… He always liked hot things.’

‘Who mother?’

‘Someone I loved very much.’

They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap - dirty words. Mustard’s the color of…

‘A penny for your thoughts.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of anything.’

‘We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.’

‘I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.’

‘Very chilly I should think.’

‘But you wouldn’t feel it… Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.’

‘But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.’

‘When?’

‘Going abroad and coming back.’ She was laughing at him with bright eyes.

‘Oh but that’s in a boat.’

‘And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.’

‘Oh tell me about that muddy.’

There was a knock. ‘Come.’ The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.

‘Can I clear mum?’

‘Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut… Things are wretched this evening.’

Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum,’ he puffed.

‘All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter… What’ll you have Jimmy?’

‘May I have a meringue glacé muddy?’

‘All right if you’ll be very good.’

‘Yea,’ Jimmy let out a yell.

‘Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.’

‘But we dont mind when there are just the two of us… Hooray meringue glacé.’

‘James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.’

‘Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.’

‘I’d be terrified, dear.’

‘I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers… Yes I would.’

The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out… I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.’

‘Oh mother.’

‘Never mind dear… It would have been too rich anyway… You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.’

‘Oh goody.’

‘But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.’

‘I’m all through.’

‘You bolted it you little wretch… Put on your rubbers honey.’

‘But it’s not raining at all.’

‘Do as your mother wants you dear… please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers…’

He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. ‘Oh my darling.’

She was crying.

‘Mother you mustnt.’ He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.’

On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. ‘Goin fer a walk?’ the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.

Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from bandits, thugs, holdup-men, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder with a long automatic, bing… one of em down! that’s the worst of em, bing… there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates, whee… up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of Brooklyn Bridge.

Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. ‘Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,’ he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. ‘Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.’

‘All right, everybody in their turn,’ she snaps. He stands blinking at her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a check on it ‘Pay at the desk.’ I’m not going to cry. The lady at the desk is small and gray-haired. She takes his dollar through a little door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile. He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond lady.

‘Ha… been out abuyin candy,’ said the lighthaired bellhop. ‘I’ll give you some if you come up later,’ whispered Jimmy as he passed. The brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the chocolatecolored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.

‘Mother.’ She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone out, she’d gone away. ‘Mother!’

‘Come here dear,’ came her voice weakly from the bedroom.

He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. ‘Mother what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing honey… I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache… Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.’

She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong, prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.

‘That’s so good,’ came her voice feebly. ‘Dear call up Aunt Emily, Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want to talk to her… Oh my head’s bursting.’

His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.

‘Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick… She wants you to come around… She’s coming right away mother dear,’ he shouted, ‘isn’t that fine? She’s coming right around.’ He tiptoed back into his mother’s room, picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.

‘Deary’ came her frail voice ‘take the hairpins out of my hair, they hurt my head… Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst…’ He felt gently through her brown hair that was silkier than the teagown and pulled out the hairpins.

‘Ou dont, you are hurting me.’

‘Mother I didn’t mean to.’

Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress, hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She saw her sister lying twisted with pain on the bed and the skinny whitefaced boy in short pants standing beside her with his hands full of hairpins.

‘What is it Lil?’ she asked quietly.

‘My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,’ came Lily Herf’s voice in a gasping hiss.

‘James,’ said Aunt Emily harshly, ‘you must run off to bed… Mother needs perfect quiet.’

‘Good night muddy dear,’ he said.

Aunt Emily patted him on the back. ‘Dont worry James I’ll attend to everything.’ She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a low precise voice.

The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened. Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently lighting up the cabin of the schooner Mary Stuart. All right Captain weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse. He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas. Nowilayme-downtosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake Ipraythelordmysoultotake.

Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into a squashysweet filling. Let’s see…

A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth…

Darn it that’s a hairy one.

AA, Aachen (see Aix-la-Chapelle)

Aardvark…

Gee he’s funny looking…

(orycteropus capensis), a plantigrade animal of the class mammalia, order edentata, peculiar to Africa.

Abd,

Abd-el-halim, an Egyptian prince, son of Mehmet Ali and a white slave woman…

His cheeks burned as he read:

The Queen of the White Slaves.

Abdomen (lat. of undetermined etymology)… the lower part of the body included between the level of the diaphragm and that of the pelvis…

Abelard… The relation of master and pupil was not long preserved. A warmer sentiment than esteem filled their hearts and the unlimited opportunities of intercourse which were afforded them by the canon who confided in Abelard’s age (he was now almost forty), and in his public character, were fatal to the peace of both. The condition of Heloise was on the point of betraying their intimacy… Fulbert now abandoned himself to a transport of savage vindictiveness… burst into Abelard’s chamber with a band of ruffians and gratified his revenge by inflicting on him an atrocious mutilation…

Abelites… denounced sexual intercourse as service of Satan.

Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of Thebez…

Abortion…

No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so many chocolates.

Abracadabra.

Abydos…

He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.

His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead… ? He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop crying.

He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing stickily from its box. The watch had stopped at 1.45. He opened the window, put the chocolates in the bureau drawer and was about to snap off the light when he remembered. Shivering with terror he put on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed down the darkened hall. He listened outside the door. People were talking low. He knocked faintly and turned the knob. A hand pulled the door open hard and Jimmy was blinking in the face of a tall cleanshaven man with gold eyeglasses. The folding doors were closed; in front of them stood a starched nurse.

‘James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,’ said Aunt Emily in a tired whisper. ‘Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s no more danger.’

‘Not for the present at least, Mrs Merivale,’ said the doctor breathing on his eyeglasses.

‘The little dear,’ came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring, ‘he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.’

‘I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘My James always likes that.’

‘May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.’ Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.

The doctor nodded. ‘Well I must go… I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go… Goodnight Mrs Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son…’

‘This way…’ The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.

There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. ‘All right I’ll go back to bed now,’ he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. ‘I hate them. I hate them,’ he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.

‘With all the business you have, madame,’ Emile was saying in a singsong voice, ‘I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.’

‘I know that… I’m killing myself with work; I know that,’ sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: ‘A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.’

‘Ah ça… I have lived too much in my time… I have no more confidence… Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!’

‘History and literature…’ began Emile.

The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.

‘Now Billy dont be extravagant,’ she was saying.

‘But Norah we got have sumpen te eat… An I’ll be all jake by Saturday.’

‘Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.’

‘Aw go long wud yer… Let’s have some liverwurst… My that cold breast of turkey looks good…’

‘Piggywiggy,’ cooed the yellowhaired girl.

‘Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.’

‘Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud… We ave ole cheekens too, steel ‘ot… Emile mong ami cherchez moi un de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e.’ Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool by the cashdesk. The man was fanning himself with a thickbrimmed straw hat that had a checked band.

‘Varm tonight,’ said Madame Rigaud.

‘It sure is… Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead of bummin round this town.’

‘Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.’

‘Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.’

‘History and literature,’ continued Emile when the customers had gone off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to lock up in the till… ‘history and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence…’

‘History and literature!’ Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter. ‘A lot of good that’ll do us.’

‘But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this… ? Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart… I cant stand it any more.’

Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing off the stool. ‘Emile, you’re a goodlooking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world… But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again… I’ve suffered too much… Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.’

‘You’re a very cruel woman.’

Madame Rigaud laughed again. ‘Come along now, you can help me close up.’

Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a calf bound lawbook. Now and then he wrote down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and strode over to answer it.

‘Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.’ He put down the receiver. ‘God damn it,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in front of the window.

‘Hello Nellie,’ he said without looking up; she stood still staring at him.

‘Look here Georgy this cant go on.’

‘Why cant it?’

‘I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.’

‘Nobody’s found out anything, have they?’

‘Oh of course not.’

She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color and had a blue sunshade in her hand.

‘How’s things Georgy?’

‘Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable connections.’

‘Little luck it’s brought me. I haven’t dared go to confession yet. The priest’ll be thinkin I’ve turned heathen.’

‘How’s Gus?’

‘Oh full of his plans… Might think he’d earned the money, he’s gettin that cocky about it.

‘Look Nellie how would it be if you left Gus and came and lived with me? You could get a divorce and we could get married… Everything would be all right then.’

‘Like fun it would… You don’t mean it anyhow.’

‘But it’s been worth it Nellie, honestly it has.’ He put his arms round her and kissed her hard still lips. She pushed him away.

‘Anyways I aint comin here again… Oh I was so happy comin up the stairs thinkin about seein you… You’re paid an the business is all finished.’

He noticed that the little curls round her forehead were loose. A wisp of hair hung over one eyebrow.

‘Nellie we mustn’t part bitterly like this.’

‘Why not will ye tell me?’

‘Because we’ve both loved one another.’

‘I’m not goin to cry.’ She patted her nose with a little rolledup handkerchief. ‘Georgy I’m goin to hate ye… Goodby.’ The door snapped sharply to behind her.

Baldwin sat at his desk and chewed the end of a pencil. A faint pungence of her hair lingered in his nostrils. His throat was stiff and lumpy. He coughed. The pencil fell out of his mouth. He wiped the saliva off with his handkerchief and settled himself in his chair. From bleary the crowded paragraphs of the lawbook became clear. He tore the written sheet off the scratchpad and clipped it to the top of a pile of documents. On the new sheet he began: Decision of the Supreme Court of the State of New York… Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair, and started biting the end of his pencil again. From outside came the endless sultry whistle of a peanut wagon. ‘Oh well, that’s that,’ he said aloud. He went on writing in a wide regular hand: Case of Patterson vs. The State of New York… Decision of the Supreme…

Bud sat by a window in the Seamen’s Union reading slowly and carefully through a newspaper. Next him two men with freshly shaved rawsteak cheeks cramped into white collars and blue serge storesuits were ponderously playing chess. One of them smoked a pipe that made a little clucking noise when he drew on it. Outside rain beat incessantly on a wide glimmering square.

Banzai, live a thousand years, cried the little gray men of the fourth platoon of Japanese sappers as they advanced to repair the bridge over the Yalu River… Special correspondent of the New York Herald…

‘Checkmate,’ said the man with the pipe. ‘Damn it all let’s go have a drink. This is no night to be sitting here sober.’

‘I promised the ole woman…’

‘None o that crap Jess, I know your kinda promises.’ A big crimson hand thickly furred with yellow hairs brushed the chessmen into their box. ‘Tell the ole woman you had to have a nip to keep the weather out.’

‘That’s no lie neither.’

Bud watched their shadows hunched into the rain pass the window.

‘What you name?’

Bud turned sharp from the window startled by a shrill squeaky voice in his ear. He was looking into the fireblue eyes of a little yellow man who had a face like a toad, large mouth, protruding eyes and thick closecropped black hair.

Bud’s jaw set. ‘My name’s Smith, what about it?’

The little man held out a square callouspalmed hand. ‘Plis to meet yez. Me Matty.’

Bud took the hand in spite of himself. It squeezed his until he winced. ‘Matty what?’ he asked. ‘Me juss Matty… Laplander Matty… Come have drink.’

‘I’m flat,’ said Bud. ‘Aint got a red cent.’

‘On me. Me too much money, take some…’ Matty shoved a hand into either pocket of his baggy checked suit and punched Bud in the chest with two fistfuls of greenbacks.

‘Aw keep yer money… I’ll take a drink with yous though.’

By the time they got to the saloon on the corner of Pearl Street Bud’s elbows and knees were soaked and a trickle of cold rain was running down his neck. When they went up to the bar Laplander Matty put down a five dollar bill.

‘Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.’

Bud was tackling the free lunch. ‘Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,’ he explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a baseball game Saturday afternoon.

‘Put it there Lap,’ he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back. ‘You an me’s friends from now on.’

‘Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?’

‘Sure we will.’

‘Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.’

‘Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,’ shouted a tall drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between as they swayed in the swinging doors.

‘Zey vont, vont zey?’ said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.

‘I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,’ roared Bud and slapped him on the back again.

Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked woman tatooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging faces laughed.

Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic, voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets bellying and curling like smoke in the stiff wind shoving down the Hudson out of the northwest.

‘Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Look…’ He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. ‘Isn’t that the Anonda coming in now?’

Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses.

‘Sure it is.’ He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like the sound of a sea shell.

‘Jiminy they were quick about it… They’ll be docked in half an hour… You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan. He’s all fixed… Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in half… Do you get that?’

Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. ‘No danger sir… You ought to know me by this time.’

‘Of course I do… You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.’

Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and rang an electric bell. ‘All right Charlie, show em in,’ he growled at the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from his desk and held out a hand. ‘How do you do Mr Storrow… How do you do Mr Gold… Make yourselves comfortable… That’s it… Now look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know that… I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence, that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably… Of course you must meet me halfway… We have I know the same interests at heart, the interests of this great city, of this great seaport…’ Mr Gold moved his hat to the back of his head and cleared his throat with a loud barking noise. ‘Gentlemen, one of two roads lies before us…’

In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm. He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down the airshaft through the dusty pane where the sun gave a tiny glitter to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing came up faintly from the kitchens.

He stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school.

‘Say Herfy have you learned to fight yet?’

‘Herfy an the Kid are goin to fight for the flyweight championship before lights.’

‘But I don’t want to.’

‘Kid wants to… Here he comes. Make a ring there you ginks.’

‘I dont want to, please.’

‘You’ve damn well got to, we’ll beat hell outa both of ye if you dont.’

‘Say Freddy that’s a nickel fine from you for swearing.’

‘Jez I forgot.’

‘There you go again… Paste him in the slats.’

‘Go it Herfy, I’m bettin on yer.’

‘That’s it sock him.’

The Kid’s white screwedup face bouncing in front of him like a balloon; his fist gets Jimmy in the mouth; a salty taste of blood from the cut lip. Jimmy strikes out, gets him down on the bed, pokes his knee in his belly. They pull him off and throw him back against the wall.

‘Go it Kid.’

‘Go it Herfy.’

There’s a smell of blood in his nose and lungs; his breath rasps. A foot shoots out and trips him up.

‘That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.’

‘Girlboy… Girlboy.’

‘But hell Freddy he had the Kid down.’

‘Shut up, don’t make such a racket… Old Hoppy’ll be coming up.’

‘Just a little friendly bout, wasn’t it Herfy?’

‘Get outa my room, all of you, all of you,’ Jimmy screeches, tear-blinded, striking out with both arms.

‘Crybaby… crybaby.’

He slams the door behind them, pushes the desk against it and crawls trembling into bed. He turns over on his face and lies squirming with shame, biting the pillow.

Jimmy stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.

Your poor mother was very unhappy when she finally put you on the train and went back to her big empty rooms at the hotel. Dear, I am very lonely without you. Do you know what I did? I got out all your toy soldiers, the ones that used to be in the taking of Port Arthur, and set them all out in battalions on the library shelf. Wasn’t that silly? Never mind dear, Christmas’ll soon come round and I’ll have my boy again…

A crumpled face on a pillow; mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Darkgrained skin growing flabby under her eyes, gray creeping up her brown hair. Mother never laughs. The stroke.

He turned back suddenly into the room, threw himself on the bed with a thin leather book in his hand. The surf thundered loud on the barrier reef. He didn’t need to read. Jack was swimming fast through the calm blue waters of the lagoon, stood in the sun on the yellow beach shaking the briny drops off him, opened his nostrils wide to the smell of breadfruit roasting beside his solitary campfire. Birds of bright plumage shrieked and tittered from the tall ferny tops of the coconut palms. The room was drowsy hot. Jimmy fell asleep. There was a strawberry lemon smell, a smell of pineapples on the deck and mother was there in a white suit and a dark man in a yachtingcap, and the sunlight rippled on the milkytall sails. Mother’s soft laugh rises into a shriek O-o-o-o-ohee. A fly the size of a ferryboat walks towards them across the water, reaching out jagged crabclaws. ‘Yump Yimmy, yump; you can do it in two yumps,’ the dark man yells in his ear. ‘But please I dont want to… I dont want to,’ Jimmy whines. The dark man’s beating him, yump, yump, yump… ‘Yes one moment. Who is it?’

Aunt Emily was at the door. ‘Why do you keep your door locked Jimmy… I never allow James to lock his door.’

‘I like it better that way, Aunt Emily.’

‘Imagine a boy asleep this time of the afternoon.’

‘I was reading The Coral Island and I fell asleep.’ Jimmy was blushing.

‘All right. Come along. Miss Billings said not to stop by mother’s room. She’s asleep.’

They were in the narrow elevator that smelled of castor oil; the colored boy grinned at Jimmy.

‘What did the doctor say Aunt Emily?’

‘Everything’s going as well as could be expected… But you mustn’t worry about that. This evening you must have a real good time with your little cousins… You dont see enough children of your own age Jimmy.’

They were walking towards the river leaning into a gritty wind that swirled up the street cast out of iron under a dark silvershot sky.

‘I guess you’ll be glad to get back to school, James.’

‘Yes Aunt Emily.’

‘A boy’s school days are the happiest time in his life. You must be sure to write your mother once a week at least James… You are all she has now… Miss Billings and I will keep you informed.’

‘Yes Aunt Emily.’

‘And James I want you to know my James better. He’s the same age you are, only perhaps a little more developed and all that, and you ought to be good friends… I wish Lily had sent you to Hotchkiss too.’

‘Yes Aunt Emily.’

There were pillars of pink marble in the lower hall of Aunt Emily’s apartmenthouse and the elevatorboy wore a chocolate livery with brass buttons and the elevator was square and decorated with mirrors. Aunt Emily stopped before a wide red mahogany door on the seventh floor and fumbled in her purse for her key. At the end of the hall was a leaded window through which you could see the Hudson and steamboats and tall trees of smoke rising against the yellow sunset from the yards along the river. When Aunt Emily got the door open they heard the piano. ‘That’s Maisie doing her practicing.’ In the room where the piano was the rug was thick and mossy, the wallpaper was yellow with silveryshiny roses between the cream woodwork and the gold frames of oilpaintings of woods and people in a gondola and a fat cardinal drinking. Maisie tossed the pigtails off her shoulders as she jumped off the pianostool. She had a round creamy face and a slight pugnose. The metronome went on ticking.

‘Hello James,’ she said after she had tilted her mouth up to her mother’s to be kissed. ‘I’m awfully sorry poor Aunt Lily’s so sick.’

‘Arent you going to kiss your cousin, James?’ said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy shambled up to Maisie and pushed his face against hers.

‘That’s a funny kind of a kiss,’ said Maisie.

‘Well you two children can keep each other company till dinner.’ Aunt Emily rustled through the blue velvet curtains into the next room.

‘We wont be able to go on calling you James.’ After she had stopped the metronome, Maisie stood staring with serious brown eyes at her cousin. ‘There cant be two Jameses can there?’

‘Mother calls me Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy’s a kinder common name, but I guess it’ll have to do till we can think of a better one… How many jacks can you pick up?’

‘What are jacks?’

‘Gracious dont you know what jackstones are? Wait till James comes back, wont he laugh!’

‘I know Jack roses. Mother used to like them better’n any other kind.’

‘American Beauties are the only roses I like,’ announced Maisie flopping into a Morris chair. Jimmy stood on one leg kicking his heel with the toes of the other foot.

‘Where’s James?’

‘He’ll be home soon… He’s having his riding lesson.’

The twilight became leadensilent between them. From the trainyards came the scream of a locomotivewhistle and the clank of couplings on shunted freight cars. Jimmy ran to the window.

‘Say Maisie, do you like engines?’ he asked.

‘I think they are horrid. Daddy says we’re going to move on account of the noise and smoke.’

Through the gloom Jimmy could make out the beveled smooth bulk of a big locomotive. The smoke rolled out of the stack in huge bronze and lilac coils. Down the track a red light snapped green. The bell started to ring slowly, lazily. Forced draft snorting loud the train clankingly moved, gathered speed, slid into dusk swinging a red taillight.

‘Gee I wish we lived here,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve got two hundred and seventytwo pictures of locomotives, I’ll show em to you sometime if you like. I collect em.’

‘What a funny thing to collect… Look Jimmy you pull the shade down and I’ll light the light.’

When Maisie pushed the switch they saw James Merivale standing in the door. He had light wiry hair and a freckled face with a pugnose like Maisie’s. He had on riding breeches and black leather gaiters and was flicking a long peeled stick about.

‘Hullo Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Welcome to our city.’

‘Say James,’ cried Maisie. ‘Jimmy doesn’t know what jackstones are.’

Aunt Emily appeared through the blue velvet curtains. She wore a highnecked green silk blouse with lace on it. Her white hair rose in a smooth curve from her forehead. ‘It’s time you children were washing up,’ she said, ‘dinner’s in five minutes… James take your cousin back to your room and hurry up and take off those ridingclothes.’

Everybody was already seated when Jimmy followed his cousin into the diningroom. Knives and forks tinkled discreetly in the light of six candles in red and silver shades. At the end of the table sat Aunt Emily, next to her a red-necked man with no back to his head, and at the other end Uncle Jeff with a pearl pin in his checked necktie filled a broad armchair. The colored maid hovered about the fringe of light passing toasted crackers. Jimmy ate his soup stiffly, afraid of making a noise. Uncle Jeff was talking in a booming voice between spoonfuls of soup.

‘No I tell you, Wilkinson, New York is no longer what it used to be when Emily and I first moved up here about the time the Ark landed… City’s overrun with kikes and low Irish, that’s what’s the matter with it… In ten years a Christian wont be able to make a living… I tell you the Catholics and the Jews are going to run us out of our own country, that’s what they are going to do.’

‘It’s the New Jerusalem,’ put in Aunt Emily laughing.

‘It’s no laughing matter; when a man’s worked hard all his life to build up a business and that sort of thing he dont want to be run out by a lot of damn foreigners, does he Wilkinson?’

‘Jeff you are getting all excited. You know it gives you indigestion…’

‘I’ll keep cool, mother.’

‘The trouble with the people of this country is this, Mr Merivale’… Mr Wilkinson frowned ponderously. ‘The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it… After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.’

‘The fact of the matter is that an honest man wont soil his hands with politics, and he’s given no inducement to take public office.’

‘That’s true, a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can make honestly in public life… Naturally the best men turn to other channels.’

‘And add to that the ignorance of these dirty kikes and shanty Irish that we make voters before they can even talk English…’ began Uncle Jeff.

The maid set a highpiled dish of fried chicken edged by corn fritters before Aunt Emily. Talk lapsed while everyone was helped. ‘Oh I forgot to tell you Jeff,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘we’re to go up to Scarsdale Sunday.’

‘Oh mother I hate going out Sundays.’

‘He’s a perfect baby about staying home.’

‘But Sunday’s the only day I get at home.’

‘Well it was this way: I was having tea with the Harland girls at Maillard’s and who should sit down at the next table but Mrs Burkhart…’

‘Is that Mrs John B. Burkhart? Isnt he one of the vicepresidents of the National City Bank?’

‘John’s a fine feller and a coming man downtown.’

‘Well as I was saying dear, Mrs Burkhart said we just had to come up and spend Sunday with them and I just couldn’t refuse.’

‘My father,’ continued Mr Wilkinson, ‘used to be old Johannes Burkhart’s physician. The old man was a cranky old bird, he’d made his pile in the fur trade way back in Colonel Astor’s day. He had the gout and used to swear something terrible… I remember seeing him once, a redfaced old man with long white hair and a silk skullcap over his baldspot. He had a parrot named Tobias and people going along the street never knew whether it was Tobias or Judge Burkhart cussing.’

‘Ah well, times have changed,’ said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy sat in his chair with pins and needles in his legs. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday… He and Skinny coming back from playing with the hoptoads down by the pond, in their blue suits because it was Sunday afternoon. Smokebushes were in bloom behind the barn. A lot of fellows teasing little Harris, calling him Iky because he was supposed to be a Jew. His voice rose in a singsong whine; ‘Cut it fellers, cant you fellers. I’ve got my best suit on fellers.’

‘Oy oy Meester Solomon Levy with his best Yiddisher garments all marked down,’ piped jeering voices. ‘Did you buy it in a five and ten Iky?’

‘I bet he got it at a firesale.’

‘If he got it at a firesale we ought to turn the hose on him.’

‘Let’s turn the hose on Solomon Levy.’

‘Oh stop it fellers.’

‘Shut up; dont yell so loud.’

‘They’re juss kiddin, they wont hurt him,’ whispered Skinny.

Iky was carried kicking and bawling down towards the pond, his white tearwet face upside down. ‘He’s not a Jew at all,’ said Skinny. ‘But I’ll tell you who is a Jew, that big bully Fat Swanson.’

‘Howjer know?’

‘His roommate told me.’

‘Gee whiz they’re going to do it.’

They ran in all directions. Little Harris with his hair full of mud was crawling up the bank, water running out of his coatsleeves.

There was hot chocolate sauce with the icecream. ‘An Irishman and a Scotchman were walking down the street and the Irishman said to the Scotchman; Sandy let’s have a drink…’ A prolonged ringing at the front door bell was making them inattentive to Uncle Jeff’s story. The colored maid flurried back into the diningroom and began whispering in Aunt Emily’s ear. ‘… And the Scotchman said, Mike… Why what’s the matter?’

‘It’s Mr Joe sir.’

‘The hell it is.’

‘Well maybe he’s all right,’ said Aunt Emily hastily.

‘A bit whipsey, ma’am.’

‘Sarah why the dickens did you let him in?’

‘I didnt let him, he juss came.’

Uncle Jeff pushed his plate away and slapped down his napkin. ‘Oh hell… I’ll go talk to him.’

‘Try and make him go…’ Aunt Emily had begun; she stopped with her mouth partly open. A head was stuck through the curtains that hung in the wide doorway to the livingroom. It had a birdlike face, with a thin drooping nose, topped by a mass of straight black hair like an Indian’s. One of the redrimmed eyes winked quietly.

‘Hullo everybody!… How’s every lil thing? Mind if I butt in?’ His voice perked hoarsely as a tall skinny body followed the head through the curtains. Aunt Emily’s mouth arranged itself in a frosty smile. ‘Why Emily you must… er… excuse me; I felt an evening… er… round the family hearth… er… would be… er… er… beneficial. You understand, the refining influence of the home.’ He stood jiggling his head behind Uncle Jeff’s chair. ‘Well Jefferson ole boy, how’s the market?’ He brought a hand down on Uncle Jeff’s shoulder.

‘Oh all right. Want to sit down?’ he growled.

‘They tell me… if you’ll take a tip from an old timer… er… a retired broker… broker and broker every day… ha-ha… But they tell me that Interborough Rapid Transit’s worth trying a snifter of… Doan look at me crosseyed like that Emily. I’m going right away… Why howdedo Mr Wilkinson… Kids are looking well. Well I’ll be if that isn’t Lily Herf’s lil boy… Jimmy you dont remember your… er… cousin, Joe Harland do you? Nobody remembers Joe Harland… Except you Emily and you wish you could forget him… ha-ha… How’s your mother Jimmy?’

‘A little better thank you,’ Jimmy forced the words out through a tight throat.

‘Well when you go home you give her my love… she’ll understand. Lily and I have always been good friends even if I am the family skeleton… They dont like me, they wish I’d go away… I’ll tell you what boy, Lily’s the best of the lot. Isn’t she Emily, isn’t she the best of the lot of us?’

Aunt Emily cleared her throat. ‘Sure she is, the best looking, the cleverest, the realest… Jimmy your mother’s an emperess… Aways been too fine for all this. By gorry I’d like to drink her health.’

‘Joe you might moderate your voice a little;’ Aunt Emily clicked out the words like a typewriter.

‘Aw you all think I’m drunk… Remember this Jimmy’… he leaned across the table, stroked Jimmy’s face with his grainy whisky breath… ‘these things aren’t always a man’s fault… circumstances… er… circumstances.’ He upset a glass staggering to his feet. ‘If Emily insists on looking at me crosseyed I’m goin out… But remember give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition bowbows.’ He lurched out through the curtains again.

‘Jeff I know he’ll upset the Sèvres vase… See that he gets out all right and get him a cab.’ James and Maisie burst into shrill giggles from behind their napkins. Uncle Jeff was purple.

‘I’ll be damned to hell if I put him in a cab. He’s not my cousin… He ought to be locked up. And next time you see him you can tell him this from me, Emily: if he ever comes here in that disgusting condition again I’ll throw him out.’

‘Jefferson dear, it’s no use getting angry… There’s no harm done. He’s gone.’

‘No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a stranger here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of our home?’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ croaked Mr Wilkinson, ‘accidents will happen in the best regulated families.’

‘Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘And think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the whole Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him the King of the Curb, dont you remember?’ ‘That was before the Lottie Smithers affair…’

‘Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while we have our coffee,’ chirped Aunt Emily. ‘Yes, they ought to have gone long ago.’

‘Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?’ asked Maisie.

‘No I cant.’

‘What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant play Five Hundred.’

‘Well they’re both girl’s games,’ said James loftily. ‘I wouldn’t play em either xept on account of you.’

‘Oh wouldn’t you, Mr Smarty.’

‘Let’s play animal grabs.’

‘But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a crowd.’

‘An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.’

‘Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in the funnybone an made him cry.’

‘Spose we go down an look at the trains,’ put in Jimmy.

‘We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,’ said Maisie severely.

‘I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange… I’ve got a million dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be the bears.’

‘All right, what do we do?’

‘Oh juss run round an yell mostly… I’m selling short.’

‘All right Mr Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.’

‘No you cant say that… You say ninetysix and a half or something like that.’

‘I’ll give you five million for them,’ cried Maisie waving the blotter of the writing desk.

‘But you fool, they’re only worth one million,’ shouted Jimmy.

Maisie stood still in her tracks. ‘Jimmy what did you say then?’ Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. ‘I said, you fool.’

‘Haven’t you ever been to Sunday School? Don’t you know that God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in danger of hellfire?’

Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.

‘Well I’m not going to play any more,’ said Maisie drawing herself up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.

‘Well are you married yet?’ was the first thing Congo asked when Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.

‘Where are you in from this time?’

‘Bizerta and Trondjeb… I’m an able seaman.’

‘That’s a rotten job, going to sea… I’ve saved two hundred dollars. I’m working at Delmonico’s.’

They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo produced a package of gold tipped Egyptian Deities. ‘Four months’ pay’; he slapped his thigh. ‘Seen May Sweitzer?’ Emile shook his head. ‘I’ll have to find the little son of a gun… In those goddam Scandinavian ports they come out in boats, big fat blond women in bumboats…’

They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a whistle. ‘Whee… C’est chic ça, Delmonico… Why haven’t you married her?’

‘She likes to have me hang around… I’d run the store better than she does.’

‘You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get anything outa them… Make her jealous.’

‘She’s got me going.’

‘Want to see some postalcards?’ Congo pulled a package, wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket. ‘Look these are Naples; everybody there wants to come to New York… That’s an Arab dancing girl. Nom d’une vache they got slippery bellybuttons…’

‘Say, I know what I’ll do,’ cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards on the bed. ‘I’ll make her jealous…’

‘Who?’

‘Ernestine… Madame Rigaud…’

‘Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times an I bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.’

The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile jumped up to stop it and began splashing water on his face in the washbasin.

‘Merde I got to go to work.’

‘I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.’

‘Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,’ said Emile who stood at the cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons in the front of a clean boiled shirt.

‘It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,’ said the man again and again, bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk with his flat hand.

‘Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I dont see how I can risk it.’

‘Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring an the baby’s mug… It’s a sure sure thing… I wouldn’t let you in on it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an everythin… You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon… Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re as safe as… as the Rock of Gibraltar.’

‘I know Viler, it certainly sounds good…’

‘Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.’

‘I am, that’s the trouble.’

‘But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at three cents when the market closed this evening… Klein got wise an’ll be right there with bells on first thing in the morning. The market’ll go crazy on it…’

‘Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know that stuff through and through, Viler… Sounds like a topnotch proposition… But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.’

Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. ‘Well do as you like, damn it all… I guess you must like commuting from Hackensack an working twelve hours a day…’

‘I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.’

‘What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old and cant get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.’

‘Go to it Viler… You tellem,’ muttered Thatcher as the other man stamped out slamming the office door.

The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying memoranda on a long sheet of legal cap.

Fan Tan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities up to and including February 29)… Branches New York, Shanghai, Hongkong and Straights Settlements…

‘A bunch of goddam crooks,’ growled Thatcher out loud. ‘Not an item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any branches in Hongkong or anywhere…’

He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park… And downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President… Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge… they’re all crooks and gamblers anyway… take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the Fan Tan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.

Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses… $325,666.00

Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at the darkjutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden, Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids, breathed in his ear.

Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.

5 Steamroller

Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling tons of sky.

A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:

There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead… He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.

He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG… And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars… He walked on.

‘Hullo Emile!’ Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. ‘That’s the way you treat your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that delicatessen queen…’

Emile yanked his hand away. ‘I am in a ‘urree zat’s all.’

‘How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to make her fall for yez.’

‘Zat was Congo’s idea.’

‘Well didn’t it woik?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well aint there sumpen due me?’

‘May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is Wednesday… I’ll come by an take you to a show… ‘Ow’s ‘ustlin?’

‘Worse’n hell… I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus… That’s where you meet guys wid jack… No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs… I’m gettin respectable.’

‘May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?’

‘Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name of… Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git’s a postal ca-ard… That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night… An he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?’

‘Goodby May.’ He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.

‘Hey quit dat Frogslegs… Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a girl,’ she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. ‘I could git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.’

Emile walked off.

A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then on the other with his billy.

‘It’s a shine ‘at set the fire.’

‘They caught the firebug.’

‘’At’s ’e incendiary.’

‘God he’s a meanlookin smoke.’

The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front of the door of her store.

‘Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong… J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.’

Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, ‘Everyting awright. Look no more fire, only smoke… But you are insured, aint you?’

‘Oh yes for fifteen tousand.’ He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. ‘Viens ma petite on va rentrer.’

Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. ‘Ernestine when we get married?’

‘Next month.’

‘I no wait zat long, imposseeble… Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock… I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.’

She patted him on the cheek. ‘P’tit ambitieux,’ she said through her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.

They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.

‘Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get the train that comes from the Penn station… It’s funny this waiting in the wilds of New Jersey this way.’ They got into the parlorcar. John made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made dark dimes on his pale hat. ‘Well we’re off, little girl… Behold thou art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks.’

Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to feel very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but something had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out at the brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and the puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and barns and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all barred and crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes on the window ran straight down when the train stopped and got more and more oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her head, saying Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Manhattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it was a long time before Atlantic City. By the time we get to Atlantic City… Oh it rained forty days… I’ll be feeling gay… And it rained forty nights… I’ve got to be feeling gay.

‘Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe, that’s a very fine name, isn’t it, darling? Oh stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am sick of love…’

It was so comfortable in the empty parlorcar in the green velvet chair with John leaning towards her reciting nonsense with the brown marshlands slipping by behind the rainstriped window and a smell like clams seeping into the car. She looked into his face and laughed. A blush ran all over his face to the roots of his redblond hair. He put his hand in its yellow glove over her hand in its white glove. ‘You’re my wife now Elaine.’

‘You’re my husband now John.’ And laughing they looked at each other in the coziness of the empty parlorcar.

White letters, ATLANTIC CITY, spelled doom over the rainpitted water.

Rain lashed down the glaring boardwalk and crashed in gusts against the window like water thrown out of a bucket. Beyond the rain she could hear the intermittent rumble of the surf along the beach between the illuminated piers. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Beside her in the big bed John lay asleep breathing quietly like a child with a pillow doubled up under his head. She was icy cold. She slid out of bed very carefully not to wake him, and stood looking out the window down the very long V of lights of the boardwalk. She pushed up the window. The rain lashed in her face spitefully stinging her flesh, wetting her nightdress. She pushed her forehead against the frame. Oh I want to die. I want to die. All the tight coldness of her body was clenching in her stomach. Oh I’m going to be sick. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. When she had vomited she felt better. Then she climbed into bed again careful not to touch John. If she touched him she would die. She lay on her back with her hands tight against her sides and her feet together. The parlorcar rumbled cozily in her head; she fell asleep.

Wind rattling the windowframes wakened her. John was far away, the other side of the big bed. With the wind and the rain streaming in the window it was as if the room and the big bed and everything were moving, running forward like an airship over the sea. Oh it rained forty days… Through a crack in the cold stiffness the little tune trickled warm as blood… And it rained forty nights. Gingerly she drew a hand over her husband’s hair. He screwed his face up in his sleep and whined ‘Dont’ in a littleboy’s voice that made her giggle. She lay giggling on the far edge of the bed, giggling desperately as she used to with girls at school. And the rain lashed through the window and the song grew louder until it was a brass band in her ears:

Jimmy Herf sits opposite Uncle Jeff. Each has before him on a blue plate a chop, a baked potato, a little mound of peas and a sprig of parsley.

‘Well look about you Jimmy,’ says Uncle Jeff. Bright topstory light brims the walnutpaneled diningroom, glints twistedly on silver knives and forks, gold teeth, watch-chains, scarfpins, is swallowed up in the darkness of broadcloth and tweed, shines roundly on polished plates and bald heads and covers of dishes. ‘Well what do you think of it?’ asks Uncle Jeff burying his thumbs in the pockets of his fuzzy buff vest.

‘It’s a fine club all right,’ says Jimmy.

‘The wealthiest and the most successful men in the country eat lunch up here. Look at the round table in the corner. That’s the Gausenheimers’ table. Just to the left.’… Uncle Jeff leans forward lowering his voice, ‘the man with the powerful jaw is J. Wilder Laporte.’ Jimmy cuts into his muttonchop without answering. ‘Well Jimmy, you probably know why I brought you down here… I want to talk to you. Now that your poor mother has… has been taken, Emily and I are your guardians in the eyes of the law and the executors of poor Lily’s will… I want to explain to you just how things stand.’ Jimmy puts down his knife and fork and sits staring at his uncle, clutching the arms of his chair with cold hands, watching the jowl move blue and heavy above the ruby stickpin in the wide satin cravat. ‘You are sixteen now aren’t you Jimmy?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Well it’s this way… When your mother’s estate is all settled up you’ll find yourself in the possession of approximately fiftyfive hundred dollars. Luckily you are a bright fellow and will be ready for college early. Now, properly husbanded that sum ought to see you through Columbia, since you insist on going to Columbia… I myself, and I’m sure your Aunt Emily feels the same way about it, would much rather see you go to Yale or Princeton… You are a very lucky fellow in my estimation. At your age I was sweeping out an office in Fredericksburg and earning fifteen dollars a month. Now what I wanted to say was this… I have not noticed that you felt sufficient responsibility about moneymatters… er… sufficient enthusiasm about earning your living, making good in a man’s world. Look around you… Thrift and enthusiasm has made these men what they are. It’s made me, put me in the position to offer you the comfortable home, the cultured surroundings that I do offer you… I realize that your education has been a little peculiar, that poor Lily did not have quite the same ideas that we have on many subjects, but the really formative period of your life is beginning. Now’s the time to take a brace and lay the foundations of your future career… What I advise is that you follow James’s example and work your way up through the firm… From now on you are both sons of mine… It will mean hard work but it’ll eventually offer a very substantial opening. And dont forget this, if a man’s a success in New York, he’s a success!’ Jimmy sits watching his uncle’s broad serious mouth forming words, without tasting the juicy mutton of the chop he is eating. ‘Well what are you going to make of yourself?’ Uncle Jeff leaned towards him across the table with bulging gray eyes.

Jimmy chokes on a piece of bread, blushes, at last stammers weakly, ‘Whatever you say Uncle Jeff.’

‘Does that mean you’ll go to work for a month this summer in my office? Get a taste of how it feels to make a living, like a man in a man’s world, get an idea of how the business is run?’ Jimmy nods his head. ‘Well I think you’ve come to a very sensible decision,’ booms Uncle Jeff leaning back in his chair so that the light strikes across the wave of his steelgray hair. ‘By the way what’ll you have for dessert?… Years from now Jimmy, when you are a successful man with a business of your own we’ll remember this talk. It’s the beginning of your career.’

The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her billowy blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks squashed flat and soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and the fedoras and the majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hat-chetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them.

They can all go plumb to hell. He squares his shoulders and shoves his way to the revolving doors. His heel comes down on a foot. ‘For crissake look where yer steppin.’ He’s out in the street. A swirling wind down Broadway blows grit in his mouth and eyes. He walks down towards the Battery with the wind in his back. In Trinity Churchyard stenographers and officeboys are eating sandwiches among the tombs. Outlandish people cluster outside steamship lines; towhaired Norwegians, broadfaced Swedes, Polacks, swarthy stumps of men that smell of garlic from the Mediterranean, mountainous Slavs, three Chinamen, a bunch of Lascars. On the little triangle in front of the Customhouse, Jim Herf turns and stares long up the deep gash of Broadway, facing the wind squarely. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell.

Bud sat on the edge of his cot and stretched out his arms and yawned. From all round through a smell of sweat and sour breath and wet clothes came snores, the sound of men stirring in their sleep, creaking of bedsprings. Far away through the murk burned a single electric light. Bud closed his eyes and let his head fall over on his shoulder. O God I want to go to sleep. Sweet Jesus I want to go to sleep. He pressed his knees together against his clasped hands to keep them from trembling. Our father which art in Heaven I want to go to sleep.

‘Wassa matter pardner cant ye sleep?’ came a quiet whisper from the next cot.

‘Hell, no.’ ‘Me neither.’

Bud looked at the big head of curly hair held up on an elbow turned towards him.

‘This is a hell of a lousy stinking flop,’ went on the voice evenly. ‘I’ll tell the world… Forty cents too! They can take their Hotel Plaza an…’

‘Been long in the city?’

‘Ten years come August.’

‘Great snakes!’

A voice rasped down the line of cots, ‘Cut de comedy yous guys, what do you tink dis is, a Jewish picnic?’

Bud lowered his voice: ‘Funny, it’s years I been thinkin an wantin to come to the city… I was born an raised on a farm upstate.’

‘Why dont ye go back?’

‘I cant go back.’ Bud was cold; he wanted to stop trembling. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and rolled over facing the man who was talking. ‘Every spring I says to myself I’ll hit the road again, go out an plant myself among the weeds an the grass an the cows comin home milkin time, but I dont; I juss kinder hangs on.’

‘What d’ye do all this time in the city?’

‘I dunno… I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I set in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and Flatbush an now I’m a Bowery bum.’

‘God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered here. Too many bulls an detectives in this town.’

‘You could make a livin in handouts… But take it from me kid you go back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.’

Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder. ‘Come over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.’ Bud’s own voice crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane of cots. The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair and beard and eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully dressed out from the blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud unbuttoned the front of his unionsuit and pulled it off his knottymuscled gaunt arms and shoulders. ‘Look at my back.’

‘Christ Jesus,’ whispered the man running a grimy hand with long yellow nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. ‘I aint never seen nothin like it.’

‘That’s what the ole man done to me. For twelve years he licked me when he had a mind to. Used to strip me and take a piece of light chain to my back. They said he was my dad but I know he aint. I run away when I was thirteen. That was when he ketched me an began to lick me. I’m twentyfive now.’

They went back without speaking to their cots and lay down.

Bud lay staring at the ceiling with the blanket up to his eyes. When he looked down towards the door at the end of the room, he saw standing there a man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth. He crushed his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out. When he looked again the man was gone. ‘Say are you awake yet?’ he whispered.

The bum grunted. ‘I was goin to tell yer. I mashed his head in with the grubbinhoe, mashed it in like when you kick a rotten punkin. I told him to lay offn me an he wouldn’t… He was a hard godfearin man an he wanted you to be sceered of him. We was grubbin the sumach outa the old pasture to plant pertoters there… I let him lay till night with his head mashed in like a rotten punkin. A bit of scrub along the fence hid him from the road. Then I buried him an went up to the house an made me a pot of coffee. He hadn’t never let me drink no coffee. Before light I got up an walked down the road. I was tellin myself in a big city it’d be like lookin for a needle in a haystack to find yer. I knowed where the ole man kep his money; he had a roll as big as your head but I was sceered to take more’en ten dollars… You awake yet?’

The bum grunted. ‘When I was a kid I kep company with ole man Sackett’s girl. Her and me used to keep company in the ole icehouse down in Sackett’s woods an we used to talk about how we’d come to New York City an git rich and now I’m here I cant git work an I cant git over bein sceered. There’s detectives follow me all round, men in derbyhats with badges under their coats. Last night I wanted to go with a hooker an she saw it in my eyes an throwed me out… She could see it in my eyes.’ He was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning over, talking into the other man’s face in a hissing whisper. The bum suddenly grabbed him by the wrists.

‘Look here kid, you’re goin blooy if you keep up like this… Got any mazuma?’ Bud nodded. ‘You better give it to me to keep. I’m an old timer an I’ll git yez outa this. You put yer clothes on a take a walk round the block to a hash joint an eat up strong. How much you got?’

‘Change from a dollar.’

‘You give me a quarter an eat all the stuff you kin git offn the rest.’ Bud pulled on his trousers and handed the man a quarter. ‘Then you come back here an you’ll sleep good an tomorrer me’n you’ll go upstate an git that roll of bills. Did ye say it was as big as yer head? Then we’ll beat it where they cant ketch us. We’ll split fifty fifty. Are you on?’

Bud shook his hand with a wooden jerk, then with the laces flickering round his shoes he shuffled to the door and down the spitmarked stairs.

The rain had stopped, a cool wind that smelled of woods and grass was ruffling the puddles in the cleanwashed streets. In the lunchroom in Chatham Square three men sat asleep with their hats over their eyes. The man behind the counter was reading a pink sportingsheet. Bud waited long for his order. He felt cool, unthinking, happy. When it came he ate the browned corned beef hash, deliberately enjoying every mouthful, mashing the crisp bits of potato against his teeth with his tongue, between sips of heavily sugared coffee. After polishing the plate with a crust of bread he took a toothpick and went out.

Picking his teeth he walked through the grimydark entrance to Brooklyn Bridge. A man in a derby hat was smoking a cigar in the middle of the broad tunnel. Bud brushed past him walking with a tough swagger. I dont care about him; let him follow me. The arching footwalk was empty except for a single policeman who stood yawning, looking up at the sky. It was like walking among the stars. Below in either direction streets tapered into dotted lines of lights between square blackwindowed buildings. The river glimmered underneath like the Milky Way above. Silently smoothly the bunch of lights of a tug slipped through the moist darkness. A car whirred across the bridge making the girders rattle and the spiderwork of cables thrum like a shaken banjo.

When he got to the tangle of girders of the elevated railroads of the Brooklyn side, he turned back along the southern driveway. Dont matter where I go, cant go nowhere now. An edge of the blue night had started to glow behind him the way iron starts to glow in a forge. Beyond black chimneys and lines of roofs faint rosy contours of the downtown buildings were brightening. All the darkness was growing pearly, warming. They’re all of em detectives chasin me, all of em, men in derbies, bums on the Bowery, old women in kitchens, barkeeps, streetcar conductors, bulls, hookers, sailors, longshoremen, stiffs in employment agencies… He thought I’d tell him where the ole man’s roll was, the lousy bum… One on him. One on all them goddam detectives. The river was smooth, sleek as a bluesteel gunbarrel. Dont matter where I go; cant go nowhere now. The shadows between the wharves and the buildings were powdery like washingblue. Masts fringed the river; smoke, purple chocolatecolor fleshpink climbed into light. Cant go nowhere now.

In a swallowtail suit with a gold watchchain and a red seal ring riding to his wedding beside Maria Sackett, riding in a carriage to City Hall with four white horses to be made an alderman by the mayor; and the light grows behind them brighter brighter, riding in satins and silks to his wedding, riding in pinkplush in a white carriage with Maria Sackett by his side through rows of men waving cigars, bowing, doffing brown derbies, Alderman Bud riding in a carriage full of diamonds with his milliondollar bride… Bud is sitting on the rail of the bridge. The sun has risen behind Brooklyn. The windows of Manhattan have caught fire. He jerks himself forward, slips, dangles by a hand with the sun in his eyes. The yell strangles in his throat as he drops.

Captain McAvoy of the tugboat Prudence stood in the pilothouse with one hand on the wheel. In the other he held a piece of biscuit he had just dipped into a cup of coffee that stood on the shelf beside the binnacle. He was a wellset man with bushy eyebrows and a bushy black mustache waxed at the tips. He was about to put the piece of coffeesoaked biscuit into his mouth when something black dropped and hit the water with a thudding splash a few yards off the bow. At the same moment a man leaning out of the engineroom door shouted, ‘A guy juss jumped offn de bridge.’

‘God damn it to hell,’ said Captain McAvoy dropping his piece of biscuit and spinning the wheel. The strong ebbtide whisked the boat round like a straw. Three bells jangled in the engineroom. A negro ran forward to the bow with a boathook.

‘Give a hand there Red,’ shouted Captain McAvoy.

After a tussle they landed a long black limp thing on the deck. One bell. Two bells, Captain McAvoy frowning and haggard spun the tug’s nose into the current again.

‘Any life in him Red?’ he asked hoarsely. The negro’s face was green, his teeth were chattering.

‘Naw sir,’ said the redhaired man slowly. ‘His neck’s broke clear off.’

Captain McAvoy sucked a good half of his mustache into his mouth. ‘God damn it to hell,’ he groaned. ‘A pretty thing to happen on a man’s wedding day.’