Manhattan Transfer

by John Dos Passos

  ‘Sure it’s like a steam engine an its fulla monkeynuts,’ he yelled running back.

  ‘Padraic you stay here.’

  ‘And this here’s the L station, South Ferry,’ went on Tim Halloran who had come down to meet them. ‘Up thataway’s Battery Park an Bowling Green an Wall Street an th’ financial district… Come along Padraic your Uncle Timothy’s goin to take ye on th’ Ninth Avenoo L.’

  There were only three people left at the ferrylanding, an old woman with a blue handkerchief on her head and a young woman with a magenta shawl, standing at either end of a big corded trunk studded with brass tacks; and an old man with a greenish stub of a beard and a face lined and twisted like the root of a dead oak. The old woman was whimpering with wet eyes: ‘Dove andiamo Madonna mia, Madonna mia?’ The young woman was unfolding a letter blinking at the ornate writing. Suddenly she went over to the old man, ‘Non posso leggere,’ holding out the letter to him. He wrung his hands, letting his head roll back and forth, saying over and over again something she couldn’t understand. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled and went back to the trunk. A Sicilian with sideburns was talking to the old woman. He grabbed the trunk by its cord and pulled it over to a spring wagon with a white horse that stood across the street. The two women followed the trunk. The Sicilian held out his hand to the young woman. The old woman still muttering and whimpering hoisted herself painfully onto the back of the wagon. When the Sicilian leaned over to read the letter he nudged the young woman with his shoulder. She stiffened. ‘Awright,’ he said. Then as he shook the reins on the horse’s back he turned back towards the old woman and shouted, ‘Cinque le due… Awright.’

  4 Tracks

  The rumpetybump rumpetybump spaced out, slackened; bumpers banged all down the train. The man dropped off the rods. He couldnt move for stiffness. It was pitchblack. Very slowly he crawled out, hoisted himself to his knees, to his feet until he leaned panting against the freightcar. His body was not his own; his muscles were smashed wood, his bones were twisted rods. A lantern burst his eyes.

  ‘Get outa here quick yous. Company detectives is beatin through de yards.’

  ‘Say feller, is this New York?’

  ‘You’re goddam right it is. Juss foller my lantern; you kin git out along de waterfront.’

  His feet could barely stumble through the long gleaming v’s and crisscrossed lines of tracks, he tripped and fell over a bundle of signal rods. At last he was sitting on the edge of a wharf with his head in his hands. The water made a soothing noise against the piles like the lapping of a dog. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and unwrapped a hunk of bread and a slice of gristly meat. He ate them dry, chewing and chewing before he could get any moisture in his mouth. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, brushed the crumbs off his knees, and looked about him. Southward beyond the tracks the murky sky was drenched with orange glow.

  ‘The Gay White Way,’ he said aloud in a croaking voice. ‘The Gay White Way.’

  Through the rainstriped window Jimmy Herf was watching the umbrellas bob in the slowly swirling traffic that flowed up Broadway. There was a knock at the door; ‘Come in,’ said Jimmy and turned back to the window when he saw that the waiter wasn’t Pat. The waiter switched on the light. Jimmy saw him reflected in the windowpane, a lean spikyhaired man holding aloft in one hand the dinnertray on which the silver covers were grouped like domes. Breathing hard the waiter advanced into the room dragging a folding stand after him with his free hand. He jerked open the stand, set the tray on it and laid a cloth on the round table. A greasy pantry smell came from him. Jimmy waited till he’d gone to turn round. Then he walked about the table tipping up the silver covers; soup with little green things in it, roast lamb, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, spinach, no desert either.

  ‘Muddy.’ ‘Yes deary,’ the voice wailed frailly through the folding doors.

  ‘Dinner’s ready mother dear.’

  ‘You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in…’

  ‘But I dont want to begin without you mother.’

  He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the Navigator and…

  ‘Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?’

  ‘But they both had their heads chopped off honey… I dont want to have my head chopped off.’ Mother had on her salmon-colored teagown. When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting it between two long blueveined hands.

  He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. ‘Oh I forgot the croûtons, honey.’

  ‘Muddy… mother why arent you eating your soup?’

  ‘I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t think what to order tonight my head ached so. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate everything that was put before her like a good little girl.’

  ‘Even pearls… She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it down…’ Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. ‘Only you and me Jimmy boy… Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?’

  ‘What’s the matter muddy dear?’

  ‘Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening… Oh I’m so tired of never really feeling well.’

  ‘But after you’ve had your operation…’

  ‘Oh yes after I’ve had my operation… Deary there’s a paper of fresh butter on the windowledge in the bathroom… I’ll put some on these turnips if you fetch it for me… I’m afraid I’ll have to complain about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont make us sick.’

  Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft, breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.

  ‘Jimmee!’

  ‘Coming mother.’ Blushing he slammed down the window and walked back to the sittingroom, slowly so that the red would have time to fade out of his face.

  ‘Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.’

  He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.

  ‘Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.’

  The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘Is it too hot?’ mother asked laughing. ‘You must learn to like hot things… He always liked hot things.’

  ‘Who mother?’

  ‘Someone I loved very much.’

  They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap - dirty words. Mustard’s the color of…

  ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything.’

  ‘We mustn�
��t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.’

  ‘I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.’

  ‘Very chilly I should think.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t feel it… Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.’

  ‘But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Going abroad and coming back.’ She was laughing at him with bright eyes.

  ‘Oh but that’s in a boat.’

  ‘And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.’

  ‘Oh tell me about that muddy.’

  There was a knock. ‘Come.’ The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.

  ‘Can I clear mum?’

  ‘Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut… Things are wretched this evening.’

  Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum,’ he puffed.

  ‘All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter… What’ll you have Jimmy?’

  ‘May I have a meringue glacé muddy?’

  ‘All right if you’ll be very good.’

  ‘Yea,’ Jimmy let out a yell.

  ‘Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.’

  ‘But we dont mind when there are just the two of us… Hooray meringue glacé.’

  ‘James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.’

  ‘Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.’

  ‘I’d be terrified, dear.’

  ‘I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers… Yes I would.’

  The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out… I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.’

  ‘Oh mother.’

  ‘Never mind dear… It would have been too rich anyway… You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.’

  ‘Oh goody.’

  ‘But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.’

  ‘I’m all through.’

  ‘You bolted it you little wretch… Put on your rubbers honey.’

  ‘But it’s not raining at all.’

  ‘Do as your mother wants you dear… please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers…’

  He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. ‘Oh my darling.’

  She was crying.

  ‘Mother you mustnt.’ He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.’

  On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. ‘Goin fer a walk?’ the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.

  Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from bandits, thugs, holdup-men, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder with a long automatic, bing… one of em down! that’s the worst of em, bing… there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates, whee… up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of Brooklyn Bridge.

  Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. ‘Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,’ he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. ‘Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.’

  ‘All right, everybody in their turn,’ she snaps. He stands blinking at her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a check on it ‘Pay at the desk.’ I’m not going to cry. The lady at the desk is small and gray-haired. She takes his dollar through a little door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile. He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond lady.

  ‘Ha… been out abuyin candy,’ said the lighthaired bellhop. ‘I’ll give you some if you come up later,’ whispered Jimmy as he passed. The brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the chocolatecolored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.

  ‘Mother.’ She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone out, she’d gone away. ‘Mother!’

  ‘Come here dear,’ came her voice weakly from the bedroom.

  He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. ‘Mother what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing honey… I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache… Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.’

  She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong, prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.

  ‘That’s so good,’ came her voice feebly. ‘Dear call up Aunt Emily, Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want to talk to her… Oh my head’s bursting.’

  His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.

  ‘Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick… She wants you to come around… She’s coming right away mother dear,’ he shouted, ‘isn’t that fine? She’s coming right around.’ He tiptoed back into his mother’s room, picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.

  ‘Deary’ came her frail voice ‘take the hairpins out of my hair, they hurt my head… Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst…’ He felt gently through her brown hair that was s
ilkier than the teagown and pulled out the hairpins.

  ‘Ou dont, you are hurting me.’

  ‘Mother I didn’t mean to.’

  Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress, hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She saw her sister lying twisted with pain on the bed and the skinny whitefaced boy in short pants standing beside her with his hands full of hairpins.

  ‘What is it Lil?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,’ came Lily Herf’s voice in a gasping hiss.

  ‘James,’ said Aunt Emily harshly, ‘you must run off to bed… Mother needs perfect quiet.’

  ‘Good night muddy dear,’ he said.

  Aunt Emily patted him on the back. ‘Dont worry James I’ll attend to everything.’ She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a low precise voice.

  The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened. Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently lighting up the cabin of the schooner Mary Stuart. All right Captain weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse. He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas. Nowilayme-downtosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake Ipraythelordmysoultotake.

  Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into a squashysweet filling. Let’s see…

  A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth…