Manhattan Transfer (7 page)

‘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.