Manhattan Transfer

by John Dos Passos

  ‘Here’s a taxi,’ said Herf looking from one to another of the taut white faces.

  ‘All right you take the girl home… No harm done, just a little nervous attack, see? No cause for alarm,’ McNiel was shouting in the voice of a man speaking from a soapbox. The headwaiter and the coatgirl were looking at each other uneasily. ‘Didn’t nutten happen… Gentleman’s a little nervous… overwork you understand,’ McNiel brought his voice down to a reassuring purr. ‘You just forget it.’

  As they were getting into the taxi Ellen suddenly said in a little child’s voice: ‘I forgot we were going down to see the murder cottage… Let’s make him wait. I’d like to walk up and down in the air for a minute.’ There was a smell of saltmarshes. The night was marbled with clouds and moonlight. The toads in the ditches sounded like sleighbells.

  ‘Is it far?’ she asked.

  ‘No it’s right down at the corner.’

  Their feet crackled on gravel then ground softly on macadam. A headlight blinded them, they stopped to let the car whir by; the exhaust filled their nostrils, faded into the smell of saltmarshes again.

  It was a peaked gray house with a small porch facing the road screened with broken lattice. A big locust shaded it from behind. A policeman walked to and fro in front of it whistling gently to himself. A mildewed scrap of moon came out from behind the clouds for a minute, made tinfoil of a bit of broken glass in a gaping window, picked out the little rounded leaves of the locust and rolled like a lost dime into a crack in the clouds.

  Neither of them said anything. They walked back towards the roadhouse.

  ‘Honestly Herf havent you seen Stan?’

  ‘No I havent an idea where he could be hiding himself.’

  ‘If you see him tell him I want him to call me up at once… Herf what were those women called who followed the armies in the French Revolution?’

  ‘Let’s think. Was it cantonnières?’

  ‘Something like that… I’d like to do that.’

  An electric train whistled far to the right of them, rattled nearer and faded into whining distance.

  Dripping with a tango the roadhouse melted pink like a block of icecream. Jimmy was following her into the taxicab.

  ‘No I want to be alone, Herf.’

  ‘But I’d like very much to take you home… I dont like the idea of letting you go all alone.’

  ‘Please as a friend I ask you.’

  They didnt shake hands. The taxi kicked dust and a rasp of burnt gasoline in his face. He stood on the steps reluctant to go back into the noise and fume.

  Nellie McNiel was alone at the table. In front of her was the chair pushed back with his napkin on the back of it where her husband had sat. She was staring straight ahead of her; the dancers passed like shadows across her eyes. At the other end of the room she saw George Baldwin, pale and lean, walk slowly like a sick man to his table. He stood beside the table examining his check carefully, paid it and stood looking distractedly round the room. He was going to look at her. The waiter brought the change on a plate and bowed low. Baldwin swept the faces of the dancers with a black glance, turned his back square and walked out. Remembering the insupportable sweetness of Chinese lilies, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She took her engagement book out of her silver mesh bag and went through it hurriedly, marking carets with a silver pencil. She looked up after a little while, the tired skin of her face in a pucker of spite, and beckoned to a waiter. ‘Will you please tell Mr McNiel that Mrs McNiel wants to speak to him? He’s in the bar.’

  ‘Sarajevo, Sarajevo; that’s the place that set the wires on fire,’ Bullock was shouting at the frieze of faces and glasses along the bar.

  ‘Say bo,’ said Joe O’Keefe confidentially to no one in particular, ‘a guy works in a telegraph office told me there’d been a big seabattle off St John’s, Newfoundland and the Britishers had sunk the German fleet of forty battleships.’

  ‘Jiminy that’d stop the war right there.’

  ‘But they aint declared war yet.’

  ‘How do you know? The cables are so choked up you cant get any news through.’

  ‘Did you see there were four more failures on Wall Street?’

  ‘Tell me Chicago wheat pit’s gone crazy.’

  ‘They ought to close all the exchanges till this blows over.’

  ‘Well maybe when the Germans have licked the pants off her England’ll give Ireland her freedom.’

  ‘But they are… Stock market wont be open tomorrow.’

  ‘If a man’s got the capital to cover and could keep his head this here would be the time to clean up.’

  ‘Well Bullock old man I’m going home,’ said Jimmy. ‘This is my night of rest and I ought to be getting after it.’

  Bullock winked one eye and waved a drunken hand. The voices in Jimmy’s ears were throbbing elastic roar, near, far, near, far. Dies like a dog, march on he said. He’d spent all his money but a quarter. Shot at sunrise. Declaration of war. Commencement of hostilities. And they left him alone in his glory. Leipzig, the Wilderness, Waterloo, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round… Cant take a taxi, want to walk anyway. Ultimatum. Trooptrains singing to the shambles with flowers on their ears. And shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when…

  As he was walking down the gravel drive to the road an arm hooked in his.

  ‘Do you mind if I come along? I dont want to stay here.’

  ‘Sure come ahead Tony I’m going to walk.’

  Herf walked with a long stride, looking straight ahead of him. Clouds had darkened the sky where remained the faintest milkiness of moonlight. To the right and left there was outside of the violetgray cones of occasional arclights black pricked by few lights, ahead the glare of streets rose in blurred cliffs yellow and ruddy.

  ‘You dont like me do you?’ said Tony Hunter breathlessly after a few minutes.

  Herf slowed his pace. ‘Why I dont know you very well. You seem to me a very pleasant person…’

  ‘Dont lie; there’s no reason why you should… I think I’m going to kill myself tonight.’

  ‘Heavens! dont do that… What’s the matter?’

  ‘You have no right to tell me not to kill myself. You dont know anything about me. If I was a woman you wouldn’t be so indifferent.’

  ‘What’s eating you anyway?’

  ‘I’m going crazy that’s all, everything’s so horrible. When I first met you with Ruth one evening I thought we were going to be friends, Herf. You seemed so sympathetic and understanding… I thought you were like me, but now you’re getting so callous.’

  ‘I guess it’s the Times… I’ll get fired soon, don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m tired of being poor; I want to make a hit.’

  ‘Well you’re young yet; you must be younger than I am.’ Tony didnt answer.

  They were walking down a broad avenue between two rows of blackened frame houses. A streetcar long and yellow hissed rasping past.

  ‘Why we must be in Flatbush.’

  ‘Herf I used to think you were like me, but now I never see you except with some woman.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve never told anybody in the world… By God if you tell anybody… When I was a child I was horribly oversexed, when I was about ten or eleven or thirteen.’ He was sobbing. As they passed under an arclight, Jimmy caught the glisten of the tears on his cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasnt drunk.’

  ‘But things like that happened to almost everybody when they were kids… You oughtnt to worry about that.’

  ‘But I’m that way now, that’s what’s so horrible. I cant like women. I’ve tried and tried… You see I was caught. I was so ashamed I wouldn’t go to school for weeks. My mother cried and cried. I’m so ashamed. I’m so afraid people will find out about it. I’m always fighting to keep it hidden, to hide my feelings.’

  ‘But it all may be an idea. You may be able to get over it. Go to a psychoanalyist.’
>
  ‘I cant talk to anybody. It’s just that tonight I’m drunk. I’ve tried to look it up in the encyclopaedia… It’s not even in the dictionary.’ He stopped and leaned against a lamppost with his face in his hands. ‘It’s not even in the dictionary.’

  Jimmy Herf patted him on the back. ‘Buck up for Heaven’s sake. They’re lots of people in the same boat. The stage is full of them.’

  ‘I hate them all… It’s not people like that I fall in love with. I hate myself. I suppose you’ll hate me after tonight.’

  ‘What nonsense. It’s no business of mine.’

  ‘Now you know why I want to kill myself… Oh it’s not fair Herf, it’s not fair… I’ve had no luck in my life. I started earning my living as soon as I got out of highschool. I used to be bellhop in summer hotels. My mother lived in Lakewood and I used to send her everything I earned. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. If it were known, if there were a scandal and it all came out I’d be ruined.’

  ‘But everybody says that of all juveniles and nobody lets it worry them.’

  ‘Whenever I fail to get a part I think it’s on account of that. I hate and despise all that kind of men… I dont want to be a juvenile. I want to act. Oh it’s hell… It’s hell.’

  ‘But you’re rehearsing now aren’t you?’

  ‘A fool show that’ll never get beyond Stamford. Now when you hear that I’ve done it you wont be surprised.’

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘Killed myself.’

  They walked without speaking. It had started to rain. Down the street behind the low greenblack shoebox houses there was an occasional mothpink flutter of lightning. A wet dusty smell came up from the asphalt beaten by the big plunking drops.

  ‘There ought to be a subway station near… Isn’t that a blue light down there? Let’s hurry or we’ll get soaked.’

  ‘Oh hell Tony I’d just as soon get soaked as not.’ Jimmy took off his felt hat and swung it in one hand. The raindrops were cool on his forehead, the smell of the rain, of roofs and mud and asphalt, took the biting taste of whiskey and cigarettes out of his mouth.

  ‘Gosh it’s horrible,’ he shouted suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All the hushdope about sex. I’d never realized it before tonight, the full extent of the agony. God you must have a rotten time… We all of us have a rotten time. In your case it’s just luck, hellish bad luck. Martin used to say: Everything would be so much better if suddenly a bell rang and everybody told everybody else honestly what they did about it, how they lived, how they loved. It’s hiding things makes them putrefy. By God it’s horrible. As if life wasn’t difficult enough without that.’

  ‘Well I’m going down into this subway station.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait hours for a train.’

  ‘I cant help it I’m tired and I dont want to get wet.’

  ‘Well good night.’

  ‘Good night Herf.’

  There was a long rolling thunderclap. It began to rain hard. Jimmy rammed his hat down on his head and yanked his coatcollar up. He wanted to run along yelling sonsobitches at the top of his lungs. Lightning flickered along the staring rows of dead windows. The rain seethed along the pavements, against storewindows, on brownstone steps. His knees were wet, a slow trickle started down his back, there were chilly cascades off his sleeves onto his wrists, his whole body itched and tingled. He walked on through Brooklyn. Obsession of all the beds in all the pigeonhole bedrooms, tangled sleepers twisted and strangled like the roots of potbound plants. Obsession of feet creaking on the stairs of lodginghouses, hands fumbling at doorknobs. Obsession of pounding temples and solitary bodies rigid on their beds

  J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde

  Vive le sang, vive le sang…

  Moi monsieur je suis anarchiste… And three times round went our gallant ship, and three times round went… goddam it between that and money… and she sank to the bottom of the sea… we’re in a treadmill for fair.

  J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde

  Dans mes voy… ages.

  Declaration of war… rumble of drums… beefeaters march in red after the flashing baton of a drummajor in a hat like a longhaired muff, silver knob spins flashing grump, grump, grump… in the face of revolution mondiale. Commencement of hostilities in a long parade through the empty rainlashed streets. Extra, extra, extra. Santa Claus shoots daughter he has tried to attack. SLAYS SELF WITH SHOTGUN… put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger with his big toe. The stars look down on Fredericktown. Workers of the world, unite. Vive le sang, vive le sang.

  ‘Golly I’m wet,’ Jimmy Herf said aloud. As far as he could see the street stretched empty in the rain between ranks of dead windows studded here and there with violet knobs of arclights. Desperately he walked on.

  6 Five Statutory Questions

  They pair off hurriedly. STANDING UP IN CARS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. The climbing chain grates, grips the cogs; jerkily the car climbs the incline out of the whirring lights, out of the smell of crowds and steamed corn and peanuts, up jerkily grating up through the tall night of September meteors.

  Sea, marshsmell, the lights of an Iron Steamboat leaving the dock. Across wide violet indigo a lighthouse blinks. Then the swoop. The sea does a flipflop, the lights soar. Her hair in his mouth, his hand in her ribs, thighs grind together.

  The wind of their falling has snatched their yells, they jerk rattling upwards through the tangled girderstructure. Swoop. Soar. Bubbling lights in a sandwich of darkness and sea. Swoop. KEEP YOUR SEATS FOR THE NEXT RIDE.

  ‘Come on in Joe, I’ll see if the old lady kin git us some grub.’

  ‘Very kind of you… er… I’m not… er… exactly dressed to meet a lady you see.’

  ‘Oh she wont care. She’s just my mother; sit down, I’ll git her.’

  Harland sat down on a chair beside the door in the dark kitchen and put his hands on his knees. He sat staring at his hands; they were red and dirtgrained and trembling, his tongue was like a nutmeg grater from the cheap whiskey he had been drinking the last week, his whole body felt numb and sodden and sour. He stared at his hands.

  Joe O’Keefe came back into the kitchen. ‘She’s loin down. She says there’s some soup on the back of the stove… Here ye are. That’ll make a man of ye… Joe you ought to been where I was last night. Went out to this here Seaside Inn to take a message to the chief about somebody tippin him off that they was going to close the market… It was the goddamnedest thing you ever saw in your life. This guy who’s a wellknown lawyer down town was out in the hall bawlin out his gash about something. Jez he looked hard. And then he had a gun out an was goin to shoot her or some goddam thing when the chief comes up cool as you make em limpin on his stick like he does and took the gun away from him an put it in his pocket before anybody’d half seen what happened… This guy Baldwin’s a frien o his see? It was the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. Then he all crumpled up like…’

  ‘I tell you kid,’ said Joe Harland, ‘it gets em all sooner or later…’

  ‘Hay there eat up strong. You aint eaten enough.’

  ‘I can’t eat very well.’

  ‘Sure you can… Say Joe what’s the dope about this war business?’

  ‘I guess they are in for it this time… I’ve known it was coming ever since the Agadir incident.’

  ‘Jez I like to see somebody wallop the pants off England after the way they wont give home rule to Ireland.’

  ‘We’d have to help em… Anyway I dont see how this can last long. The men who control international finance wont allow it. After all it’s the banker who holds the purse strings.’

  ‘We wouldn’t come to the help of England, no sir, not after the way they acted in Ireland and in the Revolution and in the Civil War…’

  ‘Joey you’re getting all choked up with that history you’re reading up in the public library every night… You follow the stock quotations and keep on your toes and dont let em fool you with all this
newspaper talk about strikes and upheavals and socialism… I’d like to see you make good Joey… Well I guess I’d better be going.’

  ‘Naw stick around awhile, we’ll open a bottle of glue.’ They heard a heavy stumbling in the passage outside the kitchen.

  ‘Whossat?’

  ‘Zat you Joe?’ A big towheaded boy with lumpy shoulders and a square red face and thickset neck lurched into the room.

  ‘What the hell do you think this is?… This is my kid brother Mike.’

  ‘Well what about it?’ Mike stood swaying with his chin on his chest. His shoulders bulged against the low ceiling of the kitchen.

  ‘Aint he a whale? But for crissake Mike aint I told you not to come home when you was drinkin?… He’s loible to tear the house down.’

  ‘I got to come home sometime aint I? Since you got to be a wardheeler Joey you been pickin on me worsen the old man. I’m glad I aint going to stay round this goddam town long. It’s enough to drive a feller cookoo. If I can get on some kind of a tub that puts to sea before the Golden Gate by God I’m going to do it.’

  ‘Hell I dont mind you stayin here. It’s just that I dont like you raisin hell all the time, see?’

  ‘I’m goin to do what I please, git me?’

  ‘You get outa here, Mike… Come back home when you’re sober.’

  ‘I’d like to see you put me outa here, git me? I’d like to see you put me outa here.’

  Harland got to his feet. ‘Well I’m going,’ he said. ‘Got to see if I can get that job.’

  Mike was advancing across the kitchen with his fists clenched. Joey’s jaw set; he picked up a chair.

  ‘I’ll crown you with it.’

  ‘O saints and martyrs cant a woman have no peace in her own house?’ A small grayhaired woman ran screaming between them; she had lustrous black eyes set far apart in a face shrunken like a last year’s apple; she beat the air with worktwisted hands. ‘Shut yer traps both of ye, always cursing an fightin round the house like there warnt no God… Mike you go upstairs an lay down on your bed till yer sober.’