When Ed Thatcher climbed the marble steps of the wide hospital entry he was trembling. The smell of drugs caught at his throat. A woman with a starched face was looking at him over the top of a desk. He tried to steady his voice.
‘Can you tell me how Mrs Thatcher is?’
‘Yes, you can go up.’
‘But please, miss, is everything all right?’
‘The nurse on the floor will know anything about the case. Stairs to the left, third floor, maternity ward.’
Ed Thatcher held a bunch of flowers wrapped in green waxed paper. The broad stairs swayed as he stumbled up, his toes kicking against the brass rods that held the fiber matting down. The closing of a door cut off a strangled shriek. He stopped a nurse.
‘I want to see Mrs Thatcher, please.’
‘Go right ahead if you know where she is.’
‘But they’ve moved her.’
‘You’ll have to ask at the desk at the end of the hall.’
He gnawed his cold lips. At the end of the hall a redfaced woman looked at him, smiling.
‘Everything’s fine. You’re the happy father of a bouncing baby girl.’
‘You see it’s our first and Susie’s so delicate,’ he stammered with blinking eyes.
‘Oh yes, I understand, naturally you worried… You can go in and talk to her when she wakes up. The baby was born two hours ago. Be sure not to tire her.’
Ed Thatcher was a little man with two blond wisps of mustache and washedout gray eyes. He seized the nurse’s hand and shook it showing all his uneven yellow teeth in a smile.
‘You see it’s our first.’
‘Congratulations,’ said the nurse.
Rows of beds under bilious gaslight, a sick smell of restlessly stirring bedclothes, faces fat, lean, yellow, white; that’s her. Susie’s yellow hair lay in a loose coil round her little white face that looked shriveled and twisted. He unwrapped the roses and put them on the night table. Looking out the window was like looking down into water. The trees in the square were tangled in blue cobwebs. Down the avenue lamps were coming on marking off with green shimmer brickpurple blocks of houses; chimney pots and water tanks cut sharp into a sky flushed like flesh. The blue lids slipped back off her eyes.
‘That you, Ed?… Why Ed they are Jacks. How extravagant of you.’
‘I couldn’t help it dearest. I knew you liked them.’
A nurse was hovering near the end of the bed.
‘Couldn’t you let us see the baby, miss?’
The nurse nodded. She was a lanternjawed grayfaced woman with tight lips.
‘I hate her,’ whispered Susie. ‘She gives me the fidgets that woman does; she’s nothing but a mean old maid.’
‘Never mind dear, it’s just for a day or two.’ Susie closed her eyes.
‘Do you still want to call her Ellen?’
The nurse brought back a basket and set it on the bed beside Susie.
‘Oh isn’t she wonderful!’ said Ed. ‘Look she’s breathing… And they’ve oiled her.’ He helped his wife to raise herself on her elbow; the yellow coil of her hair unrolled, fell over his hand and arm. ‘How can you tell them apart nurse?’
‘Sometimes we cant,’ said the nurse, stretching her mouth in a smile. Susie was looking querulously into the minute purple face. ‘You’re sure this is mine.’
‘Of course.’
‘But it hasnt any label on it.’
‘I’ll label it right away.’
‘But mine was dark.’ Susie lay back on the pillow, gasping for breath.
‘She has lovely little light fuzz just the color of your hair.’
Susie stretched her arms out above her head and shrieked: ‘It’s not mine. It’s not mine. Take it away… That woman’s stolen my baby.’
‘Dear, for Heaven’s sake! Dear, for Heaven’s sake!’ He tried to tuck the covers about her.
‘Too bad,’ said the nurse, calmly, picking up the basket. ‘I’ll have to give her a sedative.’
Susie sat up stiff in bed. ‘Take it away,’ she yelled and fell back in hysterics, letting out continuous frail moaning shrieks.
‘O my God!’ cried Ed Thatcher, clasping his hands.
‘You’d better go away for this evening, Mr Thatcher… She’ll quiet down, once you’ve gone… I’ll put the roses in water.’
On the last flight he caught up with a chubby man who was strolling down slowly, rubbing his hands as he went. Their eyes met.
‘Everything all right, sir?’ asked the chubby man.
‘Oh yes, I guess so,’ said Thatcher faintly.
The chubby man turned on him, delight bubbling through his thick voice. ‘Congradulade me, congradulade me; mein vife has giben birth to a poy.’
Thatcher shook a fat little hand. ‘Mine’s a girl,’ he admitted, sheepishly.
‘It is fif years yet and every year a girl, and now dink of it, a poy.’
‘Yes,’ said Ed Thatcher as they stepped out on the pavement, ‘it’s a great moment.’
‘Vill yous allow me sir to invite you to drink a congradulation drink mit me?’
‘Why with pleasure.’
The latticed halfdoors were swinging in the saloon at the corner of Third Avenue. Shuffling their feet politely they went through into the back room.
‘Ach,’ said the German as they sat down at a scarred brown table, ‘family life is full of vorries.’
‘That it is sir; this is my first.’
‘Vill you haf beer?’
‘All right anything suits me.’
‘Two pottles Culmbacher imported to drink to our little folk.’ The bottles popped and the sepia-tinged foam rose in the glasses. ‘Here’s success… Prosit,’ said the German, and raised his glass. He rubbed the foam out of his mustache and pounded on the table with a pink fist. ‘Vould it be indiscreet meester…?’
‘Thatcher’s my name.’
‘Vould it be indiscreet, Mr Thatcher, to inquvire vat might your profession be?’
‘Accountant. I hope before long to be a certified accountant.’
‘I am a printer and my name is Zucher - Marcus Antonius Zucher.’
‘Pleased to meet you Mr Zucher.’
They shook hands across the table between the bottles.
‘A certified accountant makes big money,’ said Mr Zucher.
‘Big money’s what I’ll have to have, for my little girl.’
‘Kids, they eat money,’ continued Mr Zucher, in a deep voice.
‘Wont you let me set you up to a bottle?’ said Thatcher, figuring up how much he had in his pocket. Poor Susie wouldn’t like me to be drinking in a saloon like this. But just this once, and I’m learning, learning about fatherhood.
‘The more the merrier,’ said Mr Zucher. ‘… But kids they eat money… Dont do nutten but eat and vear out clothes. Vonce I get my business on its feet… Ach! Now vot mit hypothecations and the difficult borrowing of money and vot mit vages going up und these here crazy tradeunion socialists and bomsters…’
‘Well here’s how, Mr Zucher.’ Mr Zucher squeezed the foam out of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. ‘It ain’t ever day ve pring into the voirld a papy poy, Mr Thatcher.’
‘Or a baby girl, Mr Zucher.’
The barkeep wiped the spillings off the table when he brought the new bottles, and stood near listening, the rag dangling from his red hands.
‘And I have the hope in mein heart that ven my poy drinks to his poy, it vill be in champagne vine. Ach, that is how things go in this great city.’
‘I’d like my girl to be a quiet homey girl, not like these young women nowadays, all frills and furbelows and tight lacings. And I’ll have retired by that time and have a little place up the Hudson, work in the garden evenings… I know fellers downtown who have retired with three thousand a year. It’s saving that does it.’
‘Aint no good in savin,’ said the barkeep. ‘I saved for ten years and the savings bank went broke and left me nutten but a bankbook for
my trouble. Get a close tip and take a chance, that’s the only system.’
‘That’s nothing but gambling,’ snapped Thatcher.
‘Well sir it’s a gamblin game,’ said the barkeep as he walked back to the bar swinging the two empty bottles.
‘A gamblin game. He aint so far out,’ said Mr Zucher, looking down into his beer with a glassy meditative eye. ‘A man vat is ambeetious must take chances. Ambeetions is vat I came here from Frankfort mit at the age of tvelf years, und now that I haf a son to vork for… Ach, his name shall be Vilhelm after the mighty Kaiser.’
‘My little girl’s name will be Ellen after my mother.’ Ed Thatcher’s eyes filled with tears.
Mr Zucher got to his feet. ‘Vell goodpy Mr Thatcher. Happy to have met you. I must go hom to my little girls.’
Thatcher shook the chubby hand again, and thinking warm soft thoughts of motherhood and fatherhood and birthday cakes and Christmas watched through a sepia-tinged foamy haze Mr Zucher waddle out through the swinging doors. After a while he stretched out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here… Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.
‘Hey there yous how about settlin?’ bawled the barkeep after him when he reached the door.
‘Didn’t the other feller pay?’
‘Like hell he did.’
‘But he was t-t-treating me…’
The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. ‘I guess that bloat believes in savin.’
A small bearded bandylegged man in a derby walked up Allen Street, up the sunstriped tunnel hung with skyblue and smoked-salmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands clasped over the tails of his frockcoat, picking his way among packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.
At a yellowpainted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was a highbrowed cleanshaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto NO Stropping No Honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the dollarproud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists, threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.
His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water on the gasburner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving very carefully with the new nickelbright safety razor. He stood trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard a voice behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollarbland smile. The two little girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. ‘Mommer… it’s popper,’ the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundrybag into the rocker and threw the apron over her head.
‘Oyoy! Oyoy!’ she moaned rocking back and forth.
‘Vat’s a matter? Dontye like it?’ He walked back and forth with the safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his smooth chin.
2 Metropolis
There were Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble colums. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.
When the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year… Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five hundred and twenty dollars at four per cent. He walked excitedly about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the coalscuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie to the hospital.
MORTON SIGNS THE GREATER NEW YORK BILL
COMPLETES THE ACT MAKING NEW YORK WORLD’S
SECOND METROPOLIS
Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table. The world’s second metropolis… And Dad wanted me to stay in his ole fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadnt been for Susie… Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl, my wife. I owe everything to her.
In the bow he made towards the grate his coat-tails flicked a piece of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from her body. ‘And poor Susie’s so fond of her knicknacks. I’d better go to bed.’
He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.
The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath let out the word Fire.
‘Where at?’
The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering hoofbeats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.
‘Which way is it?’
‘Down on the next block.’
‘It’s a tenement house.’
It was a narrowwindowed sixstory tenement. The hookandladder had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the middle of the street the fire engine and the red hosewagon shone with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a romancandle.
‘The airshaft,’ whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a windowledge. The other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire engines were arriving.
‘Theyve got five alarms in,’ a man said. ‘What do you think of that? Everyone of ’em on the two top floors was trapped. It’s an incendiary done it. Some goddam firebug.’
A young man sat huddled on the curb beside the gas lamp. Thatcher found himself standing over him pushed by the crowd from behind.
‘He’s an Italia
n.’
‘His wife’s in that buildin.’
‘Cops wont let him get by.’ ‘His wife’s in a family way. He cant talk English to ask the cops.’
The man wore blue suspenders tied up with a piece of string in back. His back was heaving and now and then he left out a string of groaning words nobody understood.
Thatcher was working his way out of the crowd. At the corner a man was looking into the fire alarm box. As Thatcher brushed past him he caught a smell of coaloil from the man’s clothes. The man looked up into his face with a smile. He had tallowy sagging cheeks and bright popeyes. Thatcher’s hands and feet went suddenly cold. The firebug. The papers say they hang round like that to watch it. He walked home fast, ran up the stairs, and locked the room door behind him. The room was quiet and empty. He’d forgotten that Susie wouldnt be there waiting for him. He began to undress. He couldnt forget the smell of coaloil on the man’s clothes.
Mr Perry flicked at the burdock leaves with his cane. The real-estate agent was pleading in a singsong voice:
‘I dont mind telling you, Mr Perry, it’s an opportunity not to be missed. You know the old saying sir… opportunity knocks but once on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part of New York, the second city in the world, sir, dont forget that… Why the time will come, and I firmly believe that you and I will see it, when bridge after bridge spanning the East River have made Long Island and Manhattan one, when the Borough of Queens will be as much the heart and throbbing center of the great metropolis as is Astor Place today.’
‘I know, I know, but I’m looking for something dead safe. And besides I want to build. My wife hasnt been very well these last few years…’
‘But what could be safer than my proposition? Do you realize Mr Perry, that at considerable personal loss I’m letting you in on the ground floor of one of the greatest real-estate certainties of modern times. I’m putting at your disposal not only security, but ease, comfort, luxury. We are caught up Mr Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. A great deal is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical inventions – telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles – they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in the forefront of progress… My God! I cant begin to tell you what it will mean…’ Poking amid the dry grass and the burdock leaves Mr Perry had moved something with his stick. He stooped and picked up a triangular skull with a pair of spiralfluted horns. ‘By gad!’ he said. ‘That must have been a fine ram.’
Manhattan Transfer Page 2
