Manhattan Transfer (30 page)

‘Anyway let’s dance.’

*

J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde
Dans mes voyages,

hummed Congo Jake as the big shining shaker quivered between his hairy hands. The narrow greenpapered bar was swelled and warped with bubbling voices, spiral exhalations of drinks, sharp clink of ice and glasses, an occasional strain of music from the other room. Jimmy Herf stood alone in the corner sipping a gin fizz. Next him Gus McNiel was slapping Bullock on the back and roaring in his ear:

‘Why if they dont close the Stock Exchange… godamighty… before the blowup comes there’ll be an opportunity… Well be-gorry dont you forget it. A panic’s the time for a man with a cool head to make money.’

‘There have been some big failures already and this is just the first whiff…’

‘Opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door… You listen to me when there’s a big failure of one o them brokerage firms honest men can bless themselves… But you’re not putting everythin I’m tellin ye in the paper, are you? There’s a good guy… Most of you fellers go around puttin words in a man’s mouth. Cant trust one of you. I’ll tell you one thing though the lockout is a wonderful thing for the contractors. Wont be no housebuildin with a war on anyway.’ ‘It wont last more’n two weeks and I dont see what it has to do with us anyway.’

‘But conditions’ll be affected all over the world… Conditions… Hello Joey what the hell do you want?’

‘I’d like to talk to you private for a minute sir. There’s some big news…’

The bar emptied gradually. Jimmy Herf was still standing at the end against the wall.

‘You never get drunk, Mr ’Erf.’ Congo Jake sat down back of the bar to drink a cup of coffee.

‘I’d rather watch the other fellows.’

‘Very good. No use spend a lot o money ave a eadache next day.’

‘That’s no way for a barkeep to talk.’

‘I say what I tink.’

‘Say I’ve always wanted to ask you… Do you mind telling me?… How did you get the name of Congo Jake?’

Congo laughed deep in his chest. ‘I dunno… When I very leetle I first go to sea dey call me Congo because I have cuily hair an dark like a nigger. Den when I work in America, on American ship an all zat, guy ask me How you feel Congo? and I say Jake… so dey call me Congo Jake.’

‘It’s some nickname… I thought you’d followed the sea.’

‘It’s a ‘ard life… I tell you Mr ’Erf, there’s someting about me unlucky. When I first remember on a peniche, you know what I mean… in canal, a big man not my fader beat me up every day. Then I run away and work on sailboats in and out of Bordeaux, you know?’

‘I was there when I was a kid I think…’

‘Sure… You understand them things Mr ’Erf. But a feller like you, good education, all ‘at, you dont know what life is. When I was seventeen I come to New York… no good. I tink of notten but raising Cain. Den I shipped out again and went everywhere to hell an gone. In Shanghai I learned spik American an tend bar. I come back to Frisco an got married. Now I want to be American. But unlucky again see? Before I marry zat girl her and me lived togedder a year sweet as pie, but when we get married no good. She make fun of me and call me Frenchy because I no spik American good and den she kick no out of the house an I tell her go to hell. Funny ting a man’s life.’

J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde
Dans mes voyages…

he started in his growling baritone.

There was a hand on Jimmy’s arm. He turned. ‘Why Ellie what’s the matter?’

‘I’m with a crazy man you’ve got to help me get away.’

‘Look this is Congo Jake… You ought to know him Ellie, he’s a fine man… This is une tres grande artiste, Congo.’

‘Wont the lady have a leetle anizette?’

‘Have a little drink with us… It’s awfully cozy in here now that everybody’s gone.’

‘No thanks I’m going home.’

‘But it’s just the neck of the evening.’

‘Well you’ll have to take the consequences of my crazy man… Look Herf, have you seen Stan today?’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘He didn’t turn up when I expected him.’

‘I wish you’d keep him from drinking so much, Ellie. I’m getting worried about him.’

‘I’m not his keeper.’

‘I know, but you know what I mean.’

‘What does our friend here think about all this wartalk?’

‘I wont go… A workingman has no country. I’m going to be American citizen… I was in the marine once but…’ He slapped his jerking bent forearm with one hand, and a deep laugh rattled in his throat… ‘Twentee tree. Moi je suis anarchiste vous comprennez monsieur.’

‘But then you cant be an American citizen.’

Congo shrugged his shoulders.

‘Oh I love him, he’s wonderful,’ whispered Ellen in Jimmy’s ear.

‘You know why they have this here war… So that workingmen all over wont make big revolution… Too busy fighting. So Guillaume and Viviani and l’Empereur d’Autriche and Krupp and Rothschild and Morgan they say let’s have a war… You know the first thing they do? They shoot Jaures, because he socialiste. The socialists are traitors to the International but all de samee…’

‘But how can they make people fight if they dont want to?’

‘In Europe people are slaves for thousands of years. Not like ’ere… But I ’ve seen war. Very funny. I tended bar in Port Arthur, nutten but a kid den. It was very funny.’

‘Gee I wish I could get a job as warcorrespondent.’

‘I might go as a Red Cross nurse.’

‘Correspondent very good ting… Always drunk in American bar very far from battlefield.’

They laughed.

‘But arent we rather far from the battlefield, Herf?’

‘All right let’s dance. You must forgive me if I dance very badly.’

‘I’ll kick you if you do anything wrong.’

His arm was like plaster when he put it round her to dance with her. High ashy walls broke and crackled within him. He was soaring like a fireballoon on the smell of her hair.

‘Get up on your toes and walk in time to the music… Move in straight lines that’s the whole trick.’ Her voice cut the quick coldly like a tiny flexible sharp metalsaw. Elbows joggling, faces set,
gollywog eyes, fat men and thin women, thin women and fat men rotated densely about them. He was crumbling plaster with something that rattled achingly in his chest, she was an intricate machine of sawtooth steel whitebright bluebright copperbright in his arms. When they stopped her breast and the side of her body and her thigh came against him. He was suddenly full of blood steaming with sweat like a runaway horse. A breeze through an open door hustled the tobaccosmoke and the clotted pink air of the restaurant.

‘Herf I want to go down to see the murder cottage; please take me.’

‘As if I hadn’t seen enough of X’s marking the spot where the crime was committed.’

In the hall George Baldwin stepped in front of them. He was pale as chalk, his black tie was crooked, the nostrils of his thin nose were dilated and marked with little veins of red.

‘Hello George.’

His voice croaked tartly like a klaxon. ‘Elaine I’ve been looking for you. I must speak to you… Maybe you think I’m joking. I never joke.’

‘Herf excuse me a minute… Now what is the matter George? Come back to the table.’

‘George I was not joking either… Herf do you mind ordering me a taxi?’

Baldwin grabbed hold of her wrist. ‘You’ve been playing with me long enough, do you hear me? Some day some man’s going to take a gun and shoot you. You think you can play me like all the other little sniveling fools… You’re no better than a common prostitute.’

‘Herf I told you to go get me a taxi.’

Jimmy bit his lip and went out the front door.

‘Elaine what are you going to do?’

‘George I will not be bullied.’

Something nickel flashed in Baldwin’s hand. Gus McNiel stepped forward and gripped his wrist with a big red hand.

‘Gimme that George… For God’s sake man pull yourself together.’ He shoved the revolver into his pocket. Baldwin tottered to the wall in front of him. The trigger finger of his right hand was bleeding.

‘Here’s a taxi,’ said Herf looking from one to another of the taut white faces.

‘All right you take the girl home… No harm done, just a little nervous attack, see? No cause for alarm,’ McNiel was shouting in the voice of a man speaking from a soapbox. The headwaiter and the coatgirl were looking at each other uneasily. ‘Didn’t nutten happen… Gentleman’s a little nervous… overwork you understand,’ McNiel brought his voice down to a reassuring purr. ‘You just forget it.’

As they were getting into the taxi Ellen suddenly said in a little child’s voice: ‘I forgot we were going down to see the murder cottage… Let’s make him wait. I’d like to walk up and down in the air for a minute.’ There was a smell of saltmarshes. The night was marbled with clouds and moonlight. The toads in the ditches sounded like sleighbells.

‘Is it far?’ she asked.

‘No it’s right down at the corner.’

Their feet crackled on gravel then ground softly on macadam. A headlight blinded them, they stopped to let the car whir by; the exhaust filled their nostrils, faded into the smell of saltmarshes again.

It was a peaked gray house with a small porch facing the road screened with broken lattice. A big locust shaded it from behind. A policeman walked to and fro in front of it whistling gently to himself. A mildewed scrap of moon came out from behind the clouds for a minute, made tinfoil of a bit of broken glass in a gaping window, picked out the little rounded leaves of the locust and rolled like a lost dime into a crack in the clouds.

Neither of them said anything. They walked back towards the roadhouse.

‘Honestly Herf havent you seen Stan?’

‘No I havent an idea where he could be hiding himself.’

‘If you see him tell him I want him to call me up at once… Herf what were those women called who followed the armies in the French Revolution?’

‘Let’s think. Was it cantonnières?’

‘Something like that… I’d like to do that.’

An electric train whistled far to the right of them, rattled nearer and faded into whining distance.

Dripping with a tango the roadhouse melted pink like a block of icecream. Jimmy was following her into the taxicab.

‘No I want to be alone, Herf.’

‘But I’d like very much to take you home… I dont like the idea of letting you go all alone.’

‘Please as a friend I ask you.’

They didnt shake hands. The taxi kicked dust and a rasp of burnt gasoline in his face. He stood on the steps reluctant to go back into the noise and fume.

Nellie McNiel was alone at the table. In front of her was the chair pushed back with his napkin on the back of it where her husband had sat. She was staring straight ahead of her; the dancers passed like shadows across her eyes. At the other end of the room she saw George Baldwin, pale and lean, walk slowly like a sick man to his table. He stood beside the table examining his check carefully, paid it and stood looking distractedly round the room. He was going to look at her. The waiter brought the change on a plate and bowed low. Baldwin swept the faces of the dancers with a black glance, turned his back square and walked out. Remembering the insupportable sweetness of Chinese lilies, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She took her engagement book out of her silver mesh bag and went through it hurriedly, marking carets with a silver pencil. She looked up after a little while, the tired skin of her face in a pucker of spite, and beckoned to a waiter. ‘Will you please tell Mr McNiel that Mrs McNiel wants to speak to him? He’s in the bar.’

‘Sarajevo, Sarajevo; that’s the place that set the wires on fire,’ Bullock was shouting at the frieze of faces and glasses along the bar.

‘Say bo,’ said Joe O’Keefe confidentially to no one in particular, ‘a guy works in a telegraph office told me there’d been a big seabattle off St John’s, Newfoundland and the Britishers had sunk the German fleet of forty battleships.’

‘Jiminy that’d stop the war right there.’

‘But they aint declared war yet.’

‘How do you know? The cables are so choked up you cant get any news through.’

‘Did you see there were four more failures on Wall Street?’

‘Tell me Chicago wheat pit’s gone crazy.’

‘They ought to close all the exchanges till this blows over.’

‘Well maybe when the Germans have licked the pants off her England’ll give Ireland her freedom.’

‘But they are… Stock market wont be open tomorrow.’

‘If a man’s got the capital to cover and could keep his head this here would be the time to clean up.’

‘Well Bullock old man I’m going home,’ said Jimmy. ‘This is my night of rest and I ought to be getting after it.’

Bullock winked one eye and waved a drunken hand. The voices in Jimmy’s ears were throbbing elastic roar, near, far, near, far. Dies like a dog, march on he said. He’d spent all his money but a quarter. Shot at sunrise. Declaration of war. Commencement of hostilities. And they left him alone in his glory. Leipzig, the Wilderness, Waterloo, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round… Cant take a taxi, want to walk anyway. Ultimatum. Trooptrains singing to the shambles with flowers on their ears. And shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when…

As he was walking down the gravel drive to the road an arm hooked in his.

‘Do you mind if I come along? I dont want to stay here.’

‘Sure come ahead Tony I’m going to walk.’

Herf walked with a long stride, looking straight ahead of him. Clouds had darkened the sky where remained the faintest milkiness of moonlight. To the right and left there was outside of the violetgray cones of occasional arclights black pricked by few lights, ahead the glare of streets rose in blurred cliffs yellow and ruddy.

‘You dont like me do you?’ said Tony Hunter breathlessly after a few minutes.

Herf slowed his pace. ‘Why I dont know you very well. You seem to me a very pleasant person…’

‘Dont lie; there’s no reason why you should… I think I’m going to kill myself tonight.’

‘Heavens! dont do that… What’s the matter?’

‘You have no right to tell me not to kill myself. You dont know anything about me. If I was a woman you wouldn’t be so indifferent.’