Chapter IV: Part 4

Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who
made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren
except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of
Thebez ...

Abortion ...

No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so many chocolates.

Abracadabra.

Abydos ...

He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.

His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead...? He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop crying.

He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing stickily from its box. The watch had stopped at 1.45. He opened the window, put the chocolates in the bureau drawer and was about to snap off the light when he remembered. Shivering with terror he put on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed down the darkened hall. He listened outside the door. People were talking low. He knocked faintly and turned the knob. A hand pulled the door open hard and Jimmy was blinking in the face of a tall cleanshaven man with gold eyeglasses. The folding doors were closed; in front of them stood a starched nurse.

“James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,” said Aunt Emily in a tired whisper. “Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s no more danger.”

“Not for the present at least, Mrs. Merivale,” said the doctor breathing on his eyeglasses.

“The little dear,” came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring, “he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.”

“I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,” said Aunt Emily. “My James always likes that.”

“May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.” Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.

The doctor nodded. “Well I must go.... I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go.... Goodnight Mrs. Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son....”

“This way....” The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.

There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. “All right I’ll go back to bed now,” he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. “I hate them. I hate them,” he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.

* * * * *

“With all the business you have, madame,” Emile was saying in a singsong voice, “I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.”

“I know that ... I’m killing myself with work; I know that,” sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: “A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.”

“Ah ça.... I have lived too much in my time.... I have no more confidence.... Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!”

“History and literature ...” began Emile.

The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.

“Now Billy dont be extravagant,” she was saying.

“But Norah we got have sumpen te eat.... An I’ll be all jake by Saturday.”

“Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.”

“Aw go long wud yer.... Let’s have some liverwurst.... My that cold breast of turkey looks good....”

“Piggywiggy,” cooed the yellowhaired girl.

“Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.”

“Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud.... We ave ole cheekens too, steel ’ot.... Emile mong ami cherchez moi uns de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e.” Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool by the cashdesk. The man was fanning himself with a thickbrimmed straw hat that had a checked band.

“Varm tonight,” said Madame Rigaud.

“It sure is.... Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead of bummin round this town.”

“Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.”

“Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.”

“History and literature,” continued Emile when the customers had gone off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to lock up in the till ... “history and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence....”

“History and literature!” Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter. “A lot of good that’ll do us.”

“But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this...? Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart.... I cant stand it any more.”

Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing off the stool. “Emile, you’re a good-looking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world.... But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again.... I’ve suffered too much.... Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.”

“You’re a very cruel woman.”

Madame Rigaud laughed again. “Come along now, you can help me close up.”

* * * * *

Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a calfbound lawbook. Now and then he wrote down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and strode over to answer it.

“Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.” He put down the receiver. “God damn it,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in front of the window.

“Hello Nellie,” he said without looking up; she stood still staring at him.

“Look here Georgy this cant go on.”

“Why cant it?”

“I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.”

“Nobody’s found out anything, have they?”

“Oh of course not.”

She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color and had a blue sunshade in her hand.

“How’s things Georgy?”

“Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable connections.”

“Little luck it’s brought me. I haven’t dared go to confession yet. The priest’ll be thinkin I’ve turned heathen.”

“How’s Gus?”

“Oh full of his plans.... Might think he’d earned the money, he’s gettin that cocky about it.”

“Look Nellie how would it be if you left Gus and came and lived with me? You could get a divorce and we could get married.... Everything would be all right then.”

“Like fun it would.... You dont mean it anyhow.”

“But it’s been worth it Nellie, honestly it has.” He put his arms round her and kissed her hard still lips. She pushed him away.

“Anyways I aint comin here again.... Oh I was so happy comin up the stairs thinkin about seein you.... You’re paid an the business is all finished.”

He noticed that the little curls round her forehead were loose. A wisp of hair hung over one eyebrow.

“Nellie we mustn’t part bitterly like this.”

“Why not will ye tell me?”

“Because we’ve both loved one another.”

“I’m not goin to cry.” She patted her nose with a little rolledup handkerchief. “Georgy I’m goin to hate ye.... Goodby.” The door snapped sharply to behind her.

Baldwin sat at his desk and chewed the end of a pencil. A faint pungence of her hair lingered in his nostrils. His throat was stiff and lumpy. He coughed. The pencil fell out of his mouth. He wiped the saliva off with his handkerchief and settled himself in his chair. From bleary the crowded paragraphs of the lawbook became clear. He tore the written sheet off the scratchpad and clipped it to the top of a pile of documents. On the new sheet he began: Decision of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.... Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair, and started biting the end of his pencil again. From outside came the endless sultry whistle of a peanut wagon. “Oh well, that’s that,” he said aloud. He went on writing in a wide regular hand: Case of Patterson vs. The State of New York.... Decision of the Supreme ...

* * * * *

Bud sat by a window in the Seamen’s Union reading slowly and carefully through a newspaper. Next him two men with freshly shaved rawsteak cheeks cramped into white collars and blue serge storesuits were ponderously playing chess. One of them smoked a pipe that made a little clucking noise when he drew on it. Outside rain beat incessantly on a wide glimmering square.

Banzai, live a thousand years, cried the little gray men
of the fourth platoon of Japanese sappers as they advanced
to repair the bridge over the Yalu River ... Special
correspondent of the New York Herald ...

“Checkmate,” said the man with the pipe. “Damn it all let’s go have a drink. This is no night to be sitting here sober.”

“I promised the ole woman ...”

“None o that crap Jess, I know your kinda promises.” A big crimson hand thickly furred with yellow hairs brushed the chessmen into their box. “Tell the ole woman you had to have a nip to keep the weather out.”

“That’s no lie neither.”

Bud watched their shadows hunched into the rain pass the window.

“What you name?”

Bud turned sharp from the window startled by a shrill squeaky voice in his ear. He was looking into the fireblue eyes of a little yellow man who had a face like a toad, large mouth, protruding eyes and thick closecropped black hair.

Bud’s jaw set. “My name’s Smith, what about it?”

The little man held out a square callouspalmed hand, “Plis to meet yez. Me Matty.”

Bud took the hand in spite of himself. It squeezed his until he winced. “Matty what?” he asked. “Me juss Matty ... Laplander Matty ... Come have drink.”

“I’m flat,” said Bud. “Aint got a red cent.”

“On me. Me too much money, take some....” Matty shoved a hand into either pocket of his baggy checked suit and punched Bud in the chest with two fistfuls of greenbacks.

“Aw keep yer money ... I’ll take a drink with yous though.”

By the time they got to the saloon on the corner of Pearl Street Bud’s elbows and knees were soaked and a trickle of cold rain was running down his neck. When they went up to the bar Laplander Matty put down a five dollar bill.

“Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.”

Bud was tackling the free lunch. “Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,” he explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a baseball game Saturday afternoon.

“Put it there Lap,” he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back. “You an me’s friends from now on.”

“Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?”

“Sure we will.”

“Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.”

“Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,” shouted a tall drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between them as they swayed in the swinging doors.

“Zey vont, vont zey?” said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” roared Bud and slapped him on the back again.

Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked woman tattooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging faces laughed.

* * * * *

Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic, voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets bellying and curling like smoke in the stiff wind shoving down the Hudson out of the northwest.

“Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,” he called over his shoulder. “Look ...” He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. “Isn’t that the _Anonda_ coming in now?”

Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses. “Sure it is.” He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like the sound of a sea shell.

“Jiminy they were quick about it.... They’ll be docked in half an hour.... You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan. He’s all fixed.... Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in half.... Do you get that?”

Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. “No danger sir.... You ought to know me by this time.”

“Of course I do.... You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.”

Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and rang an electric bell. “All right Charlie, show em in,” he growled at the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from his desk and held out a hand. “How do you do Mr. Storrow ... How do you do Mr. Gold.... Make yourselves comfortable.... That’s it.... Now look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know that.... I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence, that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably.... Of course you must meet me halfway.... We have I know the same interests at heart, the interests of this great city, of this great seaport....” Mr. Gold moved his hat to the back of his head and cleared his throat with a loud barking noise. “Gentlemen, one of two roads lies before us ...”

* * * * *

In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm. He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down the airshaft through the dusty pane where the sun gave a tiny glitter to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing came up faintly from the kitchens.

He stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school.

“Say Herfy have you learned to fight yet?”

“Herfy an the Kid are goin to fight for the flyweight championship before lights.”

“But I dont want to.”

“Kid wants to.... Here he comes. Make a ring there you ginks.”

“I dont want to, please.”

“You’ve damn well got to, we’ll beat hell outa both of ye if you dont.”

“Say Freddy that’s a nickel fine from you for swearing.”

“Jez I forgot.”

“There you go again.... Paste him in the slats.”

“Go it Herfy, I’m bettin on yer.”

“That’s it sock him.”

The Kid’s white screwedup face bouncing in front of him like a balloon; his fist gets Jimmy in the mouth; a salty taste of blood from the cut lip. Jimmy strikes out, gets him down on the bed, pokes his knee in his belly. They pull him off and throw him back against the wall.

“Go it Kid.”

“Go it Herfy.”

There’s a smell of blood in his nose and lungs; his breath rasps. A foot shoots out and trips him up.

“That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.”

“Girlboy ... Girlboy.”

“But hell Freddy he had the Kid down.”

“Shut up, don’t make such a racket.... Old Hoppy’ll be coming up.”

“Just a little friendly bout, wasn’t it Herfy?”

“Get outa my room, all of you, all of you,” Jimmy screeches, tear-blinded, striking out with both arms.

“Crybaby ... crybaby.”

He slams the door behind them, pushes the desk against it and crawls trembling into bed. He turns over on his face and lies squirming with shame, biting the pillow.

Jimmy stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.

DARLING

Your poor mother was very unhappy when she finally put you
on the train and went back to her big empty rooms at the
hotel. Dear, I am very lonely without you. Do you know what
I did? I got out all your toy soldiers, the ones that used
to be in the taking of Port Arthur, and set them all out in
battalions on the library shelf. Wasn’t that silly? Never
mind dear, Christmas’ll soon come round and I’ll have my
boy again....

A crumpled face on a pillow; mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Darkgrained skin growing flabby under her eyes, gray creeping up her brown hair. Mother never laughs. The stroke.

He turned back suddenly into the room, threw himself on the bed with a thin leather book in his hand. The surf thundered loud on the barrier reef. He didn’t need to read. Jack was swimming fast through the calm blue waters of the lagoon, stood in the sun on the yellow beach shaking the briny drops off him, opened his nostrils wide to the smell of breadfruit roasting beside his solitary campfire. Birds of bright plumage shrieked and tittered from the tall ferny tops of the coconut palms. The room was drowsy hot. Jimmy fell asleep. There was a strawberry lemon smell, a smell of pineapples on the deck and mother was there in a white suit and a dark man in a yachtingcap, and the sunlight rippled on the milkytall sails. Mother’s soft laugh rises into a shriek O-o-o-ohee. A fly the size of a ferryboat walks towards them across the water, reaching out jagged crabclaws. “Yump Yimmy, yump; you can do it in two yumps,” the dark man yells in his ear. “But please I dont want to ... I dont want to,” Jimmy whines. The dark man’s beating him, yump yump yump.... “Yes one moment. Who is it?”

Aunt Emily was at the door. “Why do you keep your door locked Jimmy.... I never allow James to lock his door.”

“I like it better that way, Aunt Emily.”

“Imagine a boy asleep this time of the afternoon.”

“I was reading _The Coral Island_ and I fell asleep.” Jimmy was blushing.

“All right. Come along. Miss Billings said not to stop by mother’s room. She’s asleep.”

They were in the narrow elevator that smelled of castor oil; the colored boy grinned at Jimmy.

“What did the doctor say Aunt Emily?”

“Everything’s going as well as could be expected.... But you mustn’t worry about that. This evening you must have a real good time with your little cousins.... You dont see enough children of your own age Jimmy.”

They were walking towards the river leaning into a gritty wind that swirled up the street cast out of iron under a dark silvershot sky.

“I guess you’ll be glad to get back to school, James.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

“A boy’s school days are the happiest time in his life. You must be sure to write your mother once a week at least James.... You are all she has now.... Miss Billings and I will keep you informed.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

“And James I want you to know my James better. He’s the same age you are, only perhaps a little more developed and all that, and you ought to be good friends.... I wish Lily had sent you to Hotchkiss too.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

There were pillars of pink marble in the lower hall of Aunt Emily’s apartmenthouse and the elevatorboy wore a chocolate livery with brass buttons and the elevator was square and decorated with mirrors. Aunt Emily stopped before a wide red mahogany door on the seventh floor and fumbled in her purse for her key. At the end of the hall was a leaded window through which you could see the Hudson and steamboats and tall trees of smoke rising against the yellow sunset from the yards along the river. When Aunt Emily got the door open they heard the piano. “That’s Maisie doing her practicing.” In the room where the piano was the rug was thick and mossy, the wallpaper was yellow with silveryshiny roses between the cream woodwork and the gold frames of oilpaintings of woods and people in a gondola and a fat cardinal drinking. Maisie tossed the pigtails off her shoulders as she jumped off the pianostool. She had a round creamy face and a slight pugnose. The metronome went on ticking.

“Hello James,” she said after she had tilted her mouth up to her mother’s to be kissed. “I’m awfully sorry poor Aunt Lily’s so sick.”

“Arent you going to kiss your cousin, James?” said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy shambled up to Maisie and pushed his face against hers.

“That’s a funny kind of a kiss,” said Maisie.

“Well you two children can keep each other company till dinner.” Aunt Emily rustled through the blue velvet curtains into the next room.

“We wont be able to go on calling you James.” After she had stopped the metronome, Maisie stood staring with serious brown eyes at her cousin. “There cant be two Jameses can there?”

“Mother calls me Jimmy.”

“Jimmy’s a kinder common name, but I guess it’ll have to do till we can think of a better one.... How many jacks can you pick up?”

“What are jacks?”

“Gracious dont you know what jackstones are? Wait till James comes back, wont he laugh!”

“I know Jack roses. Mother used to like them better’n any other kind.”

“American Beauties are the only roses I like,” announced Maisie flopping into a Morris chair. Jimmy stood on one leg kicking his heel with the toes of the other foot.

“Where’s James?”

“He’ll be home soon.... He’s having his riding lesson.”

The twilight became leadensilent between them. From the trainyards came the scream of a locomotivewhistle and the clank of couplings on shunted freight cars. Jimmy ran to the window.

“Say Maisie, do you like engines?” he asked.

“I think they are horrid. Daddy says we’re going to move on account of the noise and smoke.”

Through the gloom Jimmy could make out the beveled smooth bulk of a big locomotive. The smoke rolled out of the stack in huge bronze and lilac coils. Down the track a red light snapped green. The bell started to ring slowly, lazily. Forced draft snorting loud the train clankingly moved, gathered speed, slid into dusk swinging a red taillight.

“Gee I wish we lived here,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got two hundred and seventytwo pictures of locomotives, I’ll show em to you sometime if you like. I collect em.”

“What a funny thing to collect.... Look Jimmy you pull the shade down and I’ll light the light.”

When Maisie pushed the switch they saw James Merivale standing in the door. He had light wiry hair and a freckled face with a pugnose like Maisie’s. He had on riding breeches and black leather gaiters and was flicking a long peeled stick about.

“Hullo Jimmy,” he said. “Welcome to our city.”

“Say James,” cried Maisie, “Jimmy doesn’t know what jackstones are.”

Aunt Emily appeared through the blue velvet curtains. She wore a highnecked green silk blouse with lace on it. Her white hair rose in a smooth curve from her forehead. “It’s time you children were washing up,” she said, “dinner’s in five minutes.... James take your cousin back to your room and hurry up and take off those ridingclothes.”

Everybody was already seated when Jimmy followed his cousin into the diningroom. Knives and forks tinkled discreetly in the light of six candles in red and silver shades. At the end of the table sat Aunt Emily, next to her a rednecked man with no back to his head, and at the other end Uncle Jeff with a pearl pin in his checked necktie filled a broad armchair. The colored maid hovered about the fringe of light passing toasted crackers. Jimmy ate his soup stiffly, afraid of making a noise. Uncle Jeff was talking in a booming voice between spoonfuls of soup.

“No I tell you, Wilkinson, New York is no longer what it used to be when Emily and I first moved up here about the time the Ark landed.... City’s overrun with kikes and low Irish, that’s what’s the matter with it.... In ten years a Christian wont be able to make a living.... I tell you the Catholics and the Jews are going to run us out of our own country, that’s what they are going to do.”

“It’s the New Jerusalem,” put in Aunt Emily laughing.

“It’s no laughing matter; when a man’s worked hard all his life to build up a business and that sort of thing he dont want to be run out by a lot of damn foreigners, does he Wilkinson?”

“Jeff you are getting all excited. You know it gives you indigestion....”

“I’ll keep cool, mother.”

“The trouble with the people of this country is this, Mr. Merivale” ... Mr. Wilkinson frowned ponderously. “The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it.... After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.”

“The fact of the matter is that an honest man wont soil his hands with politics, and he’s given no inducement to take public office.”

“That’s true, a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can make honestly in public life.... Naturally the best men turn to other channels.”

“And add to that the ignorance of these dirty kikes and shanty Irish that we make voters before they can even talk English ...” began Uncle Jeff.

The maid set a highpiled dish of fried chicken edged by corn fritters before Aunt Emily. Talk lapsed while everyone was helped. “Oh I forgot to tell you Jeff,” said Aunt Emily, “we’re to go up to Scarsdale Sunday.”

“Oh mother I hate going out Sundays.”

“He’s a perfect baby about staying home.”

“But Sunday’s the only day I get at home.”

“Well it was this way: I was having tea with the Harland girls at Maillard’s and who should sit down at the next table but Mrs. Burkhart ...”

“Is that Mrs. John B. Burkhart? Isn’t he one of the vicepresidents of the National City Bank?”

“John’s a fine feller and a coming man downtown.”

“Well as I was saying dear, Mrs. Burkhart said we just had to come up and spend Sunday with them and I just couldn’t refuse.”

“My father,” continued Mr. Wilkinson, “used to be old Johannes Burkhart’s physician. The old man was a cranky old bird, he’d made his pile in the fur trade way back in Colonel Astor’s day. He had the gout and used to swear something terrible.... I remember seeing him once, a redfaced old man with long white hair and a silk skullcap over his baldspot. He had a parrot named Tobias and people going along the street never knew whether it was Tobias or Judge Burkhart cussing.”

“Ah well, times have changed,” said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy sat in his chair with pins and needles in his legs. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.... He and Skinny coming back from playing with the hoptoads down by the pond, in their blue suits because it was Sunday afternoon. Smokebushes were in bloom behind the barn. A lot of fellows teasing little Harris, calling him Iky because he was supposed to be a Jew. His voice rose in a singsong whine; “Cut it fellers, cant you fellers. I’ve got my best suit on fellers.”

“Oy Oy Meester Solomon Levy with his best Yiddisher garments all marked down,” piped jeering voices. “Did you buy it in a five and ten Iky?”

“I bet he got it at a firesale.”

“If he got it at a firesale we ought to turn the hose on him.”

“Let’s turn the hose on Solomon Levy.”

“Oh stop it fellers.”

“Shut up; dont yell so loud.”

“They’re juss kiddin, they wont hurt him,” whispered Skinny.

Iky was carried kicking and bawling down towards the pond, his white tearwet face upside down. “He’s not a Jew at all,” said Skinny. “But I’ll tell you who is a Jew, that big bully Fat Swanson.”

“Howjer know?”

“His roommate told me.”

“Gee whiz they’re going to do it.”

They ran in all directions. Little Harris with his hair full of mud was crawling up the bank, water running out of his coatsleeves.

There was hot chocolate sauce with the icecream. “An Irishman and a Scotchman were walking down the street and the Irishman said to the Scotchman; Sandy let’s have a drink....” A prolonged ringing at the front door bell was making them inattentive to Uncle Jeff’s story. The colored maid flurried back into the diningroom and began whispering in Aunt Emily’s ear. “... And the Scotchman said, Mike ... Why what’s the matter?”

“It’s Mr. Joe sir.”

“The hell it is.”

“Well maybe he’s all right,” said Aunt Emily hastily.

“A bit whipsey, ma’am.”

“Sarah why the dickens did you let him in?”

“I didnt let him, he juss came.”

Uncle Jeff pushed his plate away and slapped down his napkin. “Oh hell ... I’ll go talk to him.”

“Try and make him go ...” Aunt Emily had begun; she stopped with her mouth partly open. A head was stuck through the curtains that hung in the wide doorway to the livingroom. It had a birdlike face, with a thin drooping nose, topped by a mass of straight black hair like an Indian’s. One of the redrimmed eyes winked quietly.

“Hullo everybody!... How’s every lil thing? Mind if I butt in?” His voice perked hoarsely as a tall skinny body followed the head through the curtains. Aunt Emily’s mouth arranged itself in a frosty smile. “Why Emily you must ... er ... excuse me; I felt an evening ... er ... round the family hearth ... er ... would be ... er ... er ... beneficial. You understand, the refining influence of the home.” He stood jiggling his head behind Uncle Jeff’s chair. “Well Jefferson ole boy, how’s the market?” He brought a hand down on Uncle Jeff’s shoulder.

“Oh all right. Want to sit down?” he growled.

“They tell me ... if you’ll take a tip from an old timer ... er ... a retired broker ... broker and broker every day ... ha-ha.... But they tell me that Interborough Rapid Transit’s worth trying a snifter of.... Doan look at me crosseyed like that Emily. I’m going right away.... Why howdedo Mr. Wilkinson.... Kids are looking well. Well I’ll be if that isn’t Lily Herf’s lil boy.... Jimmy you dont remember your ... er ... cousin, Joe Harland do you? Nobody remembers Joe Harland.... Except you Emily and you wish you could forget him ... ha-ha.... How’s your mother Jimmy?”

“A little better thank you,” Jimmy forced the words out through a tight throat.

“Well when you go home you give her my love ... she’ll understand. Lily and I have always been good friends even if I am the family skeleton.... They dont like me, they wish I’d go away.... I’ll tell you what boy, Lily’s the best of the lot. Isn’t she Emily, isn’t she the best of the lot of us?”

Aunt Emily cleared her throat. “Sure she is, the best looking, the cleverest, the realest.... Jimmy your mother’s an emperess.... Aways been too fine for all this. By gorry I’d like to drink her health.”

“Joe you might moderate your voice a little;” Aunt Emily clicked out the words like a typewriter.

“Aw you all think I’m drunk.... Remember this Jimmy” ... he leaned across the table, stroked Jimmy’s face with his grainy whisky breath ... “these things aren’t always a man’s fault ... circumstances ... er ... circumstances.” He upset a glass staggering to his feet. “If Emily insists on looking at me crosseyed I’m goin out.... But remember give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition bowbows.” He lurched out through the curtains again.

“Jeff I know he’ll upset the Sèvres vase.... See that he gets out all right and get him a cab.” James and Maisie burst into shrill giggles from behind their napkins. Uncle Jeff was purple.

“I’ll be damned to hell if I put him in a cab. He’s not my cousin.... He ought to be locked up. And next time you see him you can tell him this from me, Emily: if he ever comes here in that disgusting condition again I’ll throw him out.”

“Jefferson dear, it’s no use getting angry.... There’s no harm done. He’s gone.”

“No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a stranger here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of our home?”

“Dont worry about that,” croaked Mr. Wilkinson, “accidents will happen in the best regulated families.”

“Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,” said Aunt Emily. “And think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the whole Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him the King of the Curb, dont you remember?” “That was before the Lottie Smithers affair....”

“Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while we have our coffee,” chirped Aunt Emily. “Yes, they ought to have gone long ago.”

“Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?” asked Maisie.

“No I cant.”

“What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant play Five Hundred.”

“Well they’re both girl’s games,” said James loftily. “I wouldn’t play em either xept on account of you.”

“Oh wouldn’t you, Mr. Smarty.”

“Let’s play animal grabs.”

“But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a crowd.”

“An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.”

“Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in the funnybone an made him cry.”

“Spose we go down an look at the trains,” put in Jimmy.

“We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,” said Maisie severely.

“I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange.... I’ve got a million dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be the bears.”

“All right, what do we do?”

“Oh juss run round an yell mostly.... I’m selling short.”

“All right Mr. Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.”

“No you cant say that.... You say ninetysix and a half or something like that.”

“I’ll give you five million for them,” cried Maisie waving the blotter of the writing desk.

“But you fool, they’re only worth one million,” shouted Jimmy.

Maisie stood still in her tracks. “Jimmy what did you say then?” Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. “I said, you fool.”

“Haven’t you ever been to Sunday school? Don’t you know that God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in danger of hellfire?”

Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.

“Well I’m not going to play any more,” said Maisie drawing herself up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.

* * * * *

“Well are you married yet?” was the first thing Congo asked when Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.

“Where are you in from this time?”

“Bizerta and Trondjeb.... I’m an able seaman.”

“That’s a rotten job, going to sea.... I’ve saved two hundred dollars. I’m working at Delmonico’s.”

They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo produced a package of gold tipped Egyptian Deities. “Four months’ pay”; he slapped his thigh. “Seen May Sweitzer?” Emile shook his head. “I’ll have to find the little son of a gun.... In those goddam Scandinavian ports they come out in boats, big fat blond women in bumboats....”

They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a whistle. “Whee ... C’est chic ça, Delmonico ... Why havent you married her?”

“She likes to have me hang around.... I’d run the store better than she does.”

“You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get anything outa them.... Make her jealous.”

“She’s got me going.”

“Want to see some postalcards?” Congo pulled a package, wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket. “Look these are Naples; everybody there wants to come to New York.... That’s an Arab dancing girl. Nom d’une vache they got slippery bellybuttons....”

“Say, I know what I’ll do,” cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards on the bed. “I’ll make her jealous....”

“Who?”

“Ernestine ... Madame Rigaud....”

“Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times an I bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.”

The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile jumped up to stop it and began splashing water on his face in the washbasin.

“Merde I got to go to work.”

“I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.”

“Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,” said Emile who stood at the cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons in the front of a clean boiled shirt.

* * * * *

“It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,” said the man again and again, bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk with his flat hand.

“Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I dont see how I can risk it.”

“Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring an the baby’s mug.... It’s a sure sure thing.... I wouldn’t let you in on it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an everythin.... You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon.... Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re safe as ... as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

“I know Viler, it certainly sounds good....”

“Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.”

“I am, that’s the trouble.”

“But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at three cents when the market closed this evening.... Klein got wise an’ll be right there with bells on first thing in the morning. The market’ll go crazy on it....”

“Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know that stuff through and through, Viler.... Sounds like a topnotch proposition.... But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.”

Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. “Well do as you like, damn it all.... I guess you must like commuting from Hackensack an working twelve hours a day....”

“I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.”

“What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old and cant get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.”

“Go to it Viler.... You tellem,” muttered Thatcher as the other man stamped out slamming the office door.

The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying memoranda on a long sheet of legal cap.

FanTan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities up to and including February 29) ... Branches New York, Shanghai, Hongkong and Straights Settlements....

Balance carried over $345,789.84
Real Estate 500,087.12
Profit and Loss 399,765.90

“A bunch of goddam crooks,” growled Thatcher out loud. “Not an item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any branches in Hongkong or anywhere....”

He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park.... And downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President.... Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge ... they’re all crooks and gamblers anyway ... take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the FanTan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.

Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses ... $325,666.00

Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at the dark-jutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden, Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids, breathed in his ear.

Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.

V. Steamroller

_Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses
tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of
windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and
ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and
corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue
chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling
heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes
bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks
until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding
with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from
lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains
rolling tons of sky._

A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:

I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.

There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.... He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.

I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.

He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG.... And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.... He walked on.

“Hullo Emile!” Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. “That’s the way you treat your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that delicatessen queen ...”

Emile yanked his hand away. “I am in a ’urree zat’s all.”

“How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to make her fall for yez.”

“Zat was Congo’s idea.”

“Well didn’t it woik?”

“Sure.”

“Well aint there sumpen due me?”

“May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is Wednesday.... I’ll come by an take you to a show.... ’Ow’s ’ustlin?”

“Worse’n hell.... I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus.... That’s where you meet guys wid jack.... No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs.... I’m gettin respectable.”

“May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?”

“Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name of.... Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git ’s a postal ca-ard.... That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night.... An he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?”

“Goodby May.” He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.

“Hey quit dat Frogslegs ... Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a girl,” she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. “I could git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.”

Emile walked off.

A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then on the other with his billy.

“It’s a shine ’at set the fire.”

“They caught the firebug.”

“’At’s ’e incendiary.”

“God he’s a meanlookin smoke.”

The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front of the door of her store.

“Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong.... J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.”

Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, “Everyting awright. Look no more fire, only smoke.... But you are insured, aint you?”

“Oh yes for fifteen tousand.” He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. “Viens ma petite on va rentrer.”

Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. “Ernestine when we get married?”

“Next month.”

“I no wait zat long, imposseeble.... Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock.... I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.”