Manhattan Transfer (14 page)

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.

D
ARLING

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.’