Manhattan Transfer (36 page)

‘How do you do, Captain Merivale,’ said the elevator man.

‘Well, are you out James?’ cried his mother running into his arms.

He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosy-cheeked behind her. ‘It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.’

‘Of course we are… as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time… You’re the head of the family now, James.’

‘Poor daddy… to go off like that.’

‘That was something you missed… Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.’

He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.

‘Well,’ said Merivale walking into the living room, ‘it was a great war while it lasted.’ His mother and sister followed on his
heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. ‘You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.’

Mrs Merivale drew up her chair close to his. ‘Now dear you just tell us all about it.’

In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. ‘Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.’ His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. ‘Oh I cant stand it.’ He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.

‘Nutten to worry about,’ he whispers gently.

‘I’ve got to go, it’s late… I have to get up at six.’

‘Well what time do you think I get up?’

‘It’s mommer who might catch me…’

‘Tell her to go to hell.’

‘I will some day… worse’n that… if she dont quit pickin on me.’ She takes hold of his stubbly cheeks and kisses him quickly on the mouth and has broken away from him and run up the four flights of grimy stairs.

The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt.
Somebody loves me, I wonder who
… The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.

‘That you Anna?’ comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.

‘Went to get a drink o water mommer.’ The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.

Somebody loves me, I wonder who
. She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. I
wonder who
. Shuffle shuffle, bright lights,
pink blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet.
I wonder who
. Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek,
Somebody loves me…
Shuffle shuffle. I
wonder who
.

The baby with tiny shut purplishpink face and fists lay asleep on the berth. Ellen was leaning over a black leather suitcase. Jimmy Herf in his shirtsleeves was looking out the porthole.

‘Well there’s the statue of Liberty… Ellie we ought to be out on deck.’

‘It’ll be ages before we dock… Go ahead up. I’ll come up with Martin in a minute.’

‘Oh come ahead; we’ll put the baby’s stuff in the bag while we’re warping into the slip.’

They came out on deck into a dazzling September afternoon. The water was greenindigo. A steady wind kept sweeping coils of brown smoke and blobs of whitecotton steam off the high enormous blueindigo arch of sky. Against a sootsmudged horizon, tangled with barges, steamers, chimneys of powerplants, covered wharves, bridges, lower New York was a pink and white tapering pyramid cut slenderly out of cardboard.

‘Ellie we ought to have Martin out so he can see.’

‘And start yelling like a tugboat… He’s better off where he is.’

They ducked under some ropes, slipped past the rattling steamwinch and out to the bow.

‘God Ellie it’s the greatest sight in the world… I never thought I’d ever come back, did you?’

‘I had every intention of coming back.’

‘Not like this.’

‘No I dont suppose I did.’

‘S’il vous plait madame…’

A sailor was motioning them back. Ellen turned her face into the wind to get the coppery whisps of hair out of her eyes. ‘C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?’ She smiled into the wind into the sailor’s red face.

‘J’aime mieux le Havre… S’il vous plait madame.’

‘Well I’ll go down and pack Martin up.’

The hard chug, chug of the tugboat coming alongside beat Jimmy’s answer out of her ears. She slipped away from him and went down to the cabin again.

They were wedged in the jam of people at the end of the gangplank.

‘Look we could wait for a porter,’ said Ellen.

‘No dear I’ve got them.’ Jimmy was sweating and staggering with a suitcase in each hand and packages under his arms. In Ellen’s arms the baby was cooing stretching tiny spread hands towards the faces all round.

‘D’you know it?’ said Jimmy as they crossed the gangplank, ‘I kinder wish we were just going on board… I hate getting home.’

‘I dont hate it… There’s H… I’ll follow right along… I wanted to look for Frances and Bob. Hello…’ ‘Well I’ll be…’ ‘Helena you’ve gained, you’re looking wonderfully. Where’s Jimps?’ Jimmy was rubbing his hands together, stiff and chafed from handles of the heavy suitcases.

‘Hello Herf. Hello Frances. Isn’t this swell?’

‘Gosh I’m glad to see you…’

‘Jimps the thing for me to do is go right on to the Brevoort with the baby…’

‘Isn’t he sweet.’

‘… Have you got five dollars?’

‘I’ve only got a dollar in change. That hundred is in express checks.’

‘I’ve got plenty of money. Helena and I’ll go to the hotel and you boys can come along with the baggage.’

‘Inspector is it all right if I go through with the baby? My husband will look after the trunks.’

‘Why surely madam, go right ahead.’

‘Isnt he nice? Oh Frances this is lots of fun.’

‘Go ahead Bob I can finish this up alone quicker… You convoy the ladies to the Brevoort.’

‘Well we hate to leave you.’

‘Oh go ahead… I’ll be right along.’

‘Mr James Herf and wife and infant… is that it?’

‘Yes that’s right.’

‘I’ll be right with you, Mr Herf… Is all the baggage there?’

‘Yes everything’s there.’

‘Isnt he good?’ clucked Frances as she and Hildebrand followed Ellen into the cab.

‘Who?’

‘The baby of course…’

‘Oh you ought to see him sometimes… He seems to like traveling.’

A plainclothesman opened the door of the cab and looked in as they went out the gate. ‘Want to smell our breaths?’ asked Hildebrand. The man had a face like a block of wood. He closed the door. ‘Helena doesn’t know prohibition yet, does she?’

‘He gave me a scare… Look.’

‘Good gracious!’ From under the blanket that was wrapped round the baby she produced a brownpaper package… ‘Two quarts of our special cognac… gout famille ’Erf… and I’ve got another quart in a hotwaterbottle under my waistband… That’s why I look as if I was going to have another baby.’

The Hildebrands began hooting with laughter.

‘Jimp’s got a hotwaterbottle round his middle too and chartreuse in a flask on his hip… We’ll probably have to go and bail him out of jail.’

They were still laughing so that tears were streaming down their faces when they drew up at the hotel. In the elevator the baby began to wail.

As soon as she had closed the door of the big sunny room she fished the hotwaterbottle from under her dress. ‘Look Bob phone down for some cracked ice and seltzer… We’ll all have a cognac a l’eau de selz…’

‘Hadn’t we better wait for Jimps?’

‘Oh he’ll be right here… We haven’t anything dutiable… Much too broke to have anything… Frances what do you do about milk in New York?’

‘How should I know, Helena?’ Frances Hildebrand flushed and walked to the window.

‘Oh well we’ll give him his food again… He’s done fairly well on it on the trip.’ Ellen had laid the baby on the bed. He lay kicking, looking about with dark round goldstone eyes.

‘Isnt he fat?’

‘He’s so healthy I’m sure he must be halfwitted… Oh Heavens and I’ve got to call up my father… Isnt family life just too desperately complicated?’

Ellen was setting up her little alcohol stove on the washstand. The bellboy came with glasses and a bowl of clinking ice and White Rock on a tray.

‘You fix us a drink out of the hotwaterbottle. We’ve got to use that up or it’ll eat the rubber… And we’ll drink to the Café d’Harcourt.’

‘Of course what you kids dont realize,’ said Hildebrand, ‘is that the difficulty under prohibition is keeping sober.’

Ellen laughed; she stood over the little lamp that gave out a quiet domestic smell of hot nickel and burned alcohol.

George Baldwin was walking up Madison Avenue with his light overcoat on his arm. His fagged spirits were reviving in the sparkling autumn twilight of the streets. From block to block through the taxiwhirring gasoline gloaming two lawyers in black frock coats and stiff wing collars argued in his head. If you go home it will be cozy in the library. The apartment will be gloomy and quiet and you can sit in your slippers under the bust of Scipio Africanus in the leather chair and read and have dinner sent in to you… Nevada would be jolly and coarse and tell you funny stories… She would have all the City Hall gossip… good to know… But you’re not going to see Nevada any more… too dangerous; she gets you all wrought up… And Cecily sitting faded and elegant and slender biting her lips and hating me, hating life… Good God how am I going to get my existence straightened out? He stopped in front of a flowerstore. A moist warm honied expensive smell came from the door, densely out into the keen steelblue street. If I could at least make my financial position impregnable… In the window was a minature Japanese garden with brokenback bridges and ponds where the goldfish looked big as whales. Proportion, that’s it. To lay out your life like a prudent gardener, plowing and sowing. No I wont go to see Nevada tonight. I might send her some flowers though. Yellow roses, those coppery roses… it’s Elaine who ought to wear those. Imagine her married again and with a baby. He went into the store. ‘What’s that rose?’

‘It’s Gold of Ophir sir.’

‘All right I want two dozen sent down to the Brevoort immediately… Miss Elaine… No Mr and Mrs James Herf… I’ll write a card.’

He sat down at the desk with a pen in his hand. Incense of roses, incense out of the dark fire of her hair… No nonsense for Heaven’s sake…

D
EAR
E
LAINE

I hope you will allow an old friend to call on you and your husband one of these days. And please remember that I am always sincerely anxious – you know me too well to take this for an empty offer of politeness – to serve you and him in any way that could possibly contribute to your happiness. Forgive me if I subscribe myself your lifelong slave and admirer

G
EORGE
B
ALDWIN

The letter covered three of the florists’ white cards. He read it over with pursed lips, carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Then he paid the florist from the roll of bills he took from his back pocket and went out into the street again. It was already night, going on to seven o’clock. Still hesitating he stood at the corner watching the taxis pass, yellow, red, green, tangerine-colored.

The snubnosed transport sludges slowly through the Narrows in the rain. Sergeant-Major O’Keefe and Private 1st Class Dutch Robertson stand in the lee of the deckhouse looking at the liners at anchor in quarantine and the low wharfcluttered shores.

‘Look some of em still got their warpaint – Shippin Board boats… Not worth the powder to blow em up.’

‘The hell they aint,’ said Joey O’Keefe vaguely.

‘Gosh little old New York’s goin to look good to me…’

‘Me too Sarge, rain or shine I dont care.’

They are passing close to a mass of steamers anchored in a block, some of them listing to one side or the other, lanky ships with short funnels, stumpy ships with tall funnels red with rust, some of them striped and splashed and dotted with puttycolor and blue and green of camouflage paint. A man in a motorboat waved his arms. The men in khaki slickers huddled on the gray dripping deck of the transport begin to sing

Oh the infantry, the infantry,
   With the dirt behind their ears…

Through the brightbeaded mist behind the low buildings of Governors Island they can make out the tall pylons, the curving cables, the airy lace of Brooklyn Bridge. Robertson pulls a package out of his pocket and pitches it overboard.

‘What was that?’

‘Just my propho kit… Wont need it no more.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Oh I’m goin to live clean an get a good job and maybe get married.’

‘I guess that’s not such a bad idear. I’m tired o playin round myself. Jez somebody must a cleaned up good on them Shippin Board boats.’ ‘That’s where the dollar a year men get theirs I guess.’

‘I’ll tell the world they do.’

Up forward they are singing

Oh she works in a jam factoree
And that may be all right…

‘Jez we’re goin up the East River Sarge. Where the devil do they think they’re goin to land us?’

‘God, I’d be willin to swim ashore myself. An just think of all the guys been here all this time cleanin up on us… Ten dollars a day workin in a shipyard mind you…’

‘Hell Sarge we got the experience.’

‘Experience…’

Après la guerre finee
        Back to the States for me…

‘I bet the skipper’s been drinkin beaucoup highballs an thinks Brooklyn’s Hoboken.’

‘Well there’s Wall Street, bo.’

They are passing under Brooklyn Bridge. There is a humming whine of electric trains over their heads, an occasional violet flash from the wet rails. Behind them beyond barges tugboats carferries the tall buildings, streaked white with whisps of steam and mist, tower gray into sagged clouds.