“It was all a blur to me. I remember later on we were standing in a courtyard somewhere in midtown Boston and the seaman with me was calling up to a second-story window where a whore was supposed to live. The window opened and this big Negro stuck his head out and poured a bucket of hot water down on us.
“Well, finally, the sun came up, and I was lying on a City Department toolbox on Atlantic Avenue, right on the waterfront, and there were all these little fishing smacks docked right beside me with the red sun touching their masts. I watched that for a while, then I sort of dragged myself to North Station to get my gear, and then had to go across town in a taxi to South Station and buy a ticket for New York. I’ll never forget that glorious return to our fair shores.”
Phillip was smiling all the way through my story. It was almost dark outside, so cloudy and gray it looked like a rainy dusk. The old Swede had finished his sweeping.
“Let’s go to Dennison’s,” Phil said. “All this makes me want to get drunk and we haven’t any money.”
“Okay with me,” I said and we started out of the hall.
We were on the steps and suddenly I saw a familiar figure coming down 17th Street toward the hall.
“Look who’s coming,” I said.
It was Ramsay Allen, and he hadn’t seen us yet. He was hurrying in long, eager strides, and the expression on his face was like that of the mother of a lost child rushing to the police station to find out if the child they’re holding there is hers. Then he saw us. His face lit up instantly with recognition and joy, then the old affable and sophisticated expression readjusted itself.
“Well,” he said as he came up, “what’s been going on behind my back?” We all smiled as though we were proud of our separate achievements. Then Al looked seriously at Phillip: “You haven’t got a ship, have you?”
“Not yet,” said Phillip.
We started walking. Neither one of them said a word about anything of much point. Phil started to tell him about our new plan to jump ship in France and go to Paris, and Al said, “Do you think it’s safe?”
“We’re not worried about that,” Phil said.
We walked down to Dennison’s place and sat on his doorstep to wait for him to come home from work. We waited awhile, and then we walked over to Chumley’s, where he generally eats.
7
WILL DENNISON
TUESDAY NIGHT I MET HELEN IN CHUMLEY’S. Helen was a hostess from the Continental Café. We had some vermouth and soda, and I drank the first one right down. I was so thirsty from running around all day, I felt like my mouth was going to jump right out at that vermouth like a Mexican drawing I saw once in a museum where a guy was represented with his mouth sticking out on the end of a long tube like it couldn’t wait for the rest of his face. In the middle of the second vermouth I felt a little better and dropped my hand down on Helen’s bare knee and squeezed it.
She said, “Why, Mr. Dennison!” and I gave her a paternal smile.
I looked up and saw a good-looking young man in merchant marine khaki come through the door. It was a fraction of a second before I realized it was Phillip. I looked right at him and didn’t recognize him. Then I saw Al and Ryko behind him.
They came over to the table and we said hello all round. Then the waiter put two tables together and we moved over.
Phillip said, “Well Dennison, we’re shipping out tomorrow. This may be the last time we’ll ever see each other.”
“So I hear.”
Al said, “They plan to go to France and jump ship.”
I turned to Phillip and said, “What are you going to do in France?”
He went into a long spiel. “When we get there we’re going to jump ship and start off cross-country for Paris. By then the Allies will have broken through to Paris and maybe the war will be over. We’re going to pose as Frenchmen. Since I can’t speak French very fluently, I’m to be a sort of idiot peasant. Mike, who speaks good French, is going to do all the talking. We’ll travel by oxcart and sleep in haylofts till we get to the Left Bank.”
I listened to this for a while, then I said, “What are you going to do for food? Everything is rationed. You need books for everything.”
He said, “Oh we’ll just say we lost our books. We’ll say we’re refugees just back from a concentration camp.”
“Who’s going to say all this?”
“Ryko. He’s half French. I’m going to be deaf and dumb.”
I looked dubiously at Ryko and he said, “That’s right. My mother taught me French. And I can speak Finnish too.”
“Oh well,” I said, “do what you like. It’s no skin off me.”
Then Al said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all.”
I said, “Caution is no virtue in the young. In fact, come to think of it, it’s a good idea.”
Al gave me a furious look which I ignored.
“France ...” I said dreamily. “Well, give my regards to the place when you gets there—if you gets there.”
The food began to arrive at this point. First shrimps, then hot soup, which was put on the table at the same time as another round of cocktails. This is something that usually happens, and the result is that either the soup gets cold while you’re drinking the cocktail or you drink the soup, which spoils the effect of the cocktail.
We finished dinner a while later and Helen said she was going home to Queens. Al gave me four dollars, which was supposed to pay for all the food and cocktails he and Ryko and Phillip had guzzled down, but I was glad to get even that much.
We went out in the street and walked around talking about what we were going to do. Al said, “Well, we might go and see Connie.”
Phillip asked, “Who’s Connie?”
“She’s the girl that works on P.M.,” Al answered. “The one I told you about I laid on the roof two weeks ago.”
So Ryko said, “Okay, let’s go.”
Al said, “But the only trouble is she moved, and I haven’t got her new address, or I lost it. I’d have to find out from Agnes or somebody.”
“Well,” I put in, “we can’t go there then.”
Al said, “No, I guess not.”
At this point a black-haired boy of about twelve walked by, and Al said, “Hiya, Harry,” and the boy said, “Hiya, Al.”
There was a big crap game in front of Romany Marie’s, several hundred dollars in the street. We stopped for a while to watch the game. A fat greasy character with a big cigar picked up the dice, throwing down five dollars. He rolled a ten. The gamblers stood around with money in their hands and money pinned under their feet to keep it from blowing away. They started laying bets with the shooter and side bets with each other.
“Four to two no ten.”
“Five no ten eleven.”
“Two no ten a three.”
The shooter took about thirty dollars of the twoto-one bets. He hit the ten and collected money from all sides, gathering bills from under people’s shoes and from outstretched hands. Leaving ten on the ground, he said, “Shoot it.” Someone faded him. The come-out was a seven. He doubled again, shooting the twenty.
They were all taut and tense with purpose. The dice hit a board and bounced off, coming out a nine. The wrong bettors started laying the odds.
“Six to four no nine.”
“Ten no nine a three.”
“Five he’s right on the come-out.”
There was no small talk whatever.
We walked on. Al said, “We might go see Mary-Ann. She’s pretty nice. Only trouble is, she’s got that godawful husband, and they never serve any liquor.”
Phillip said, “Let’s go in George’s and have a drink.”
“How about Betty-Lou?” I put in.
“All right, let’s go there.”
We walked toward Betty-Lou’s place, which is back the way we had come from, in irregular straggling groups.
On the way, Phillip jumped up and pulled a branch off a tree. Al looked at me and said, “Isn’t he wonderful?”
I told her it sounded awful to me, and she said I was “terribly cynical.”
When we got there Betty-Lou had a visitor. He was a little man from Brooklyn who looked like a cabdriver. He wore a double-breasted suit and a loud tie in spite of the weather and was obviously on his best behavior. He had brought a bottle of California Burgundy and some sliced cold roast beef for Betty-Lou. Phillip greeted him in an offhand way and proceeded immediately to help himself to beef and wine. Al did the same and they both ignored the man from Brooklyn.
Ryko and I sat down and lapsed into a gloomy silence. Phillip was still eating roast beef with one hand while he began pulling books out of the case and turning the pages with his greasy fingers. I pulled myself together and asked Betty-Lou a few questions about radio.
After a few minutes the man from Brooklyn got up to leave. He shook hands with Ryko and me. He glanced uncertainly at Al and Phillip. Phillip was now shuffling through a stack of records and Al was sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up at him.
The man from Brooklyn said, “Well I gotta be getting along.”
Betty-Lou walked to the door with him and told him to come again.
Phillip and Al were fooling with the phonograph and got it working, so they put on a record from Swan Lake.
Suddenly a large brown rat ran out of the kitchen and into the middle of the room. He stood there indecisively for a moment, then gave a squeak and ran into the bathroom.
Betty-Lou said, “Landsakes! There’s that old rat again.”
She went into the kitchen and buttered a graham cracker with phosphorus paste. She broke the cracker up and scattered pieces of it around the kitchen and in the bathroom. I knew this wouldn’t do any good because rats get wise to phosphorus paste. And besides, there were so many holes in her apartment that all the rats in New York could come in.
Presently two men and a girl arrived, and I started a dull conversation with one of the men. We were talking about the bad quality of Cuban gin, and high prices of liquor generally. He said his favorite drink was scotch and I said mine was cognac, but you couldn’t get it anymore. He said, “Yes, you can still get it.”
I said, “Yes, at a dollar a shot.” I took a deep breath and went on to say that cognac apparently couldn’t be produced anywhere except in Cognac, France. “No brandy anywhere else tastes anything like it.”
He considered this awhile and said, “California brandy is terrible.”
I said, “I don’t like Spanish brandy.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t care much for brandy.”
There was a long silence. I excused myself and went to the toilet and leaned against the wall, keeping a sharp eye out for the rats.
When I returned, Al and Phillip were preparing to go out and buy a bottle of rum with money subscribed by the two men. I went over and began playing records to avoid conversation. Ryko was talking to Betty-Lou, and I could overhear that it was about Phillip. Ryko seemed to be making headway with her.
Al and Phillip finally came back with two French sailors they had picked up in George’s. Everyone began to talk bad French, except the sailors who were talking bad English. They were trying to get across that they were respectable characters who were not used to taking up with strangers and everyone kept telling them that it was all right.
Finally, the party disbanded and we walked out onto the street. Phillip wanted something to eat, so we started up Seventh Avenue toward Riker’s.
Phillip hit a bus stop sign, which waved back and forth, so Al jumped up on a wooden shelf for newspapers that was in front of a candy store and knocked it down. The Greek rushed out of the store and grabbed Al, and Al had to give him a dollar.
Later, when we were sitting in Riker’s at the counter eating eggs, Ryko told me that Betty-Lou had taken a great dislike to Phillip.
“There’s something rotten about him,” she had said. “He has the smell of death about him.”
“That’s one for the book all right,” I said.
Later, as we were leaving Riker’s, Phillip showed me a dollar and said he’d stolen it out of Betty-Lou’s purse.
8
MIKE RYKO
WEDNESDAY TURNED OUT TO BE A BEAUTIFUL DAY. It was one of those clear and cool June days when everything is blue and rose and turret-brown. I stuck my head out Janie’s bedroom window and looked around. It was eleven o’clock yet everything looked fresh and keen like early morning.
Janie was sore at Phillip and me for coming home late, so she didn’t get up to make us breakfast, and Barbara was home in Manhasset.
We started off for the Union Hall and just as we turned down 17th Street there was Ramsay Allen, waiting for us on the steps of the hall with a big smile on his face.
We went in the hall and there was a whole flock of new jobs on the board. The first thing I did was go back in one of the offices and start beefing about my card.
“I can’t get a ship with this member-in-arrears card,” I told the official, “and I’ve got to go right away because I’m broke.”
“Can’t do anything for you,” he said flatly.
I went back to Phillip and Al. They were sitting in a row of chairs and Phillip was reading Briffault’s Europa while Al watched him. I told them what the official had said.
Al said he knew a girl from the Village who worked in one of the offices upstairs. “I’ll try to cook something up,” he said, and went upstairs to see her.
He got back fifteen minutes later and told us he had made an appointment with her for lunch.
Phillip said, “What are you going to pay her lunch with?”
Al said he’d be back in a half hour with some money, and he left.
“Well,” I said to Phillip, “I wonder why he’s helping us?”
“He probably thinks I’ll let him ship out with me,” said Phil.
It was about a quarter to one when Al got back with five bucks he had borrowed from some friends in the Village. He went upstairs and came down again with the union girl. It was plain to see that this girl was stuck on Al, and maybe she would do anything for him.
We started off for lunch and went into a Spanish restaurant on Eighth Avenue. The girl said she ate here every day and that it was a real “mañana” place. Then she asked me what my problem was and I told her.
“You see,” I concluded, “the reason why I’m behind in dues and overstayed my leave is because I was down with the flu for two weeks and it sort of knocked me off my stride.”
“Didn’t you tell them that?”
“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think it would make any difference.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “even if it was only for two weeks.”
Then I started ingratiating myself with her by asking if she knew such-and-such in the Village, or had she met such-and-such, giving her a list of my old-time left-wing friends. She knew some of them. Then I began to overdo it, telling her about my communist activities in Pennsylvania and how once I’d been arrested on the Boston Common as an agitator. She was impressed by all this. She figured me as one of the boys.
Then Al started telling funny stories, and the luncheon developed into a miniature party, only Phillip almost botched the whole works by laughing when she mentioned “the common man.”
Finally Al made a date with her for next week, and that sort of clinched the whole deal. When we were finished she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and said, “Well I think I can do something about that card of yours, Mike.”
So we all went back to 17th Street and she told us to wait while she made a few interoffice calls. “I’ll have definite news for you by
three o’clock,” she said, and we saw her to the Union Hall door.
In the Anchor Bar, we ordered a round of beers, and when Phillip went into the men’s room Al said to me, “Well, Mike, so you’re headed for France. I sure wish I could come along.”
“Why don’t you?” I said.
“Phillip wouldn’t have it, I don’t think. What do you think?”
“We haven’t talked about it. As far as I’m concerned I’d like to have you along. The more the merrier, and with you around we’d make a better go of it on the tramp, I imagine.”
“Yes,” said Al nodding his head, “I think the three of us would make a better go of it. Both of you are young and impractical, you wouldn’t know how to get food or money.”
“That’s logical,” I said. “Alone I imagine we’d starve.”
“I believe you’re right,” Al said. Then he went on: “Mike, why don’t you persuade Phillip to let me come along?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s okay with me, as I told you. And I guess there’s nothing to lose trying to persuade Phillip, he may relent. Sure, I’ll ask him.”
“Give him all the arguments about food and money.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do that, Mike.”
“I will.”
Al patted me on the shoulder and ordered me another beer.
Phillip got back, and he and Al began talking about the New Vision again. Phil was wondering maybe it was impossible to achieve since we were all equipped with a limited number of senses.
Al nodded his head and said, “That’s interesting. But you might find a great deal of interesting occultist material in Yeats and also in cabalistic doctrine.”
“Rimbaud thought he was God,” Phillip said. “Maybe that’s the primary requisite. In cabala man stands on the threshold of vegetable life, and between him and God remains only a misty shroud. But suppose you actually projected yourself as God, as the sun, then what would you see and know?”
“Yes,” said Al. “You might have something there. But of course Rimbaud eventually failed after a projection of that sort.”
Phillip knotted his fist. “Of course he did, and I think I understand why, though I’m not certain I could explain it coherently.”
And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks Page 6
