Chapter IX: Part 9

“I’m with a crazy man you’ve got to help me get away.”

“Look this is Congo Jake.... You ought to know him Ellie, he’s a fine man.... This is une tres grande artiste, Congo.”

“Wont the lady have a leetle anizette?”

“Have a little drink with us.... It’s awfully cozy in here now that everybody’s gone.”

“No thanks I’m going home.”

“But it’s just the neck of the evening.”

“Well you’ll have to take the consequences of my crazy man.... Look Herf, have you seen Stan today?”

“No I haven’t.”

“He didn’t turn up when I expected him.”

“I wish you’d keep him from drinking so much, Ellie. I’m getting worried about him.”

“I’m not his keeper.”

“I know, but you know what I mean.”

“What does our friend here think about all this wartalk?”

“I wont go.... A workingman has no country. I’m going to be American citizen.... I was in the marine once but....” He slapped his jerking bent forearm with one hand, and a deep laugh rattled in his throat.... “Twentee tree. Moi je suis anarchiste vous comprennez monsieur.”

“But then you cant be an American citizen.”

Congo shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh I love him, he’s wonderful,” whispered Ellen in Jimmy’s ear.

“You know why they have this here war.... So that workingmen all over wont make big revolution.... Too busy fighting. So Guillaume and Viviani and l’Empereur d’Autriche and Krupp and Rothschild and Morgan they say let’s have a war.... You know the first thing they do? They shoot Jaures, because he socialiste. The socialists are traitors to the International but all de samee....”

“But how can they make people fight if they dont want to?”

“In Europe people are slaves for thousands of years. Not like ’ere.... But I’ve seen war. Very funny. I tended bar in Port Arthur, nutten but a kid den. It was very funny.”

“Gee I wish I could get a job as warcorrespondent.”

“I might go as a Red Cross nurse.”

“Correspondent very good ting.... Always drunk in American bar very far from battlefield.”

They laughed.

“But arent we rather far from the battlefield, Herf?”

“All right let’s dance. You must forgive me if I dance very badly.”

“I’ll kick you if you do anything wrong.”

His arm was like plaster when he put it round her to dance with her. High ashy walls broke and crackled within him. He was soaring like a fireballoon on the smell of her hair.

“Get up on your toes and walk in time to the music.... Move in straight lines that’s the whole trick.” Her voice cut the quick coldly like a tiny flexible sharp metalsaw. Elbows joggling, faces set, gollywog eyes, fat men and thin women, thin women and fat men rotated densely about them. He was crumbling plaster with something that rattled achingly in his chest, she was an intricate machine of sawtooth steel whitebright bluebright copperbright in his arms. When they stopped her breast and the side of her body and her thigh came against him. He was suddenly full of blood steaming with sweat like a runaway horse. A breeze through an open door hustled the tobaccosmoke and the clotted pink air of the restaurant.

“Herf I want to go down to see the murder cottage; please take me.”

“As if I hadn’t seen enough of X’s marking the spot where the crime was committed.”

In the hall George Baldwin stepped in front of them. He was pale as chalk, his black tie was crooked, the nostrils of his thin nose were dilated and marked with little veins of red.

“Hello George.”

His voice croaked tartly like a klaxon. “Elaine I’ve been looking for you. I must speak to you.... Maybe you think I’m joking. I never joke.”

“Herf excuse me a minute.... Now what is the matter George? Come back to the table.”

“George I was not joking either.... Herf do you mind ordering me a taxi?”

Baldwin grabbed hold of her wrist. “You’ve been playing with me long enough, do you hear me? Some day some man’s going to take a gun and shoot you. You think you can play me like all the other little sniveling fools.... You’re no better than a common prostitute.”

“Herf I told you to go get me a taxi.”

Jimmy bit his lip and went out the front door.

“Elaine what are you going to do?”

“George I will not be bullied.”

Something nickel flashed in Baldwin’s hand. Gus McNiel stepped forward and gripped his wrist with a big red hand.

“Gimme that George.... For God’s sake man pull yourself together.” He shoved the revolver into his pocket. Baldwin tottered to the wall in front of him. The trigger finger of his right hand was bleeding.

“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 wouldnt 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 encyclopædia.... 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.

VI. 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 ole 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 cant 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 goin 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.”

“I was jus tellin him that,” said Joey.

She turned on Harland, her voice like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. “An you git along outa here. I dont allow no drunken bums in my house. Git along outa here. I dont care who brought you.”

Harland looked at Joey with a little sour smile, shrugged his shoulders and went out. “Charwoman,” he muttered as he stumbled with stiff aching legs along the dusty street of darkfaced brick houses.

The sultry afternoon sun was like a blow on his back. Voices in his ears of maids, charwomen, cooks, stenographers, secretaries: Yes sir, Mr. Harland, Thank you sir Mr. Harland. Oh sir thank you sir so much sir Mr. Harland sir....

* * * * *

Red buzzing in her eyelids the sunlight wakes her, she sinks back into purpling cottonwool corridors of sleep, wakes again, turns over yawning, pulls her knees up to her chin to pull the drowsysweet cocoon tighter about her. A truck jangles shatteringly along the street, the sun lays hot stripes on her back. She yawns desperately and twists herself over and lies wide awake with her hands under her head staring at the ceiling. From far away through streets and housewalls the long moan of a steamboat whistle penetrates to her like a blunt sprout of crabgrass nudging through gravel. Ellen sits up shaking her head to get rid of a fly blundering about her face. The fly flashes and vanishes in the sunlight, but somewhere in her there lingers a droning pang, unaccountable, something left over from last night’s bitter thoughts. But she is happy and wide awake and it’s early. She gets up and wanders round the room in her nightgown.

Where the sun hits it the hardwood floor is warm to the soles of her feet. Sparrows chirp on the windowledge. From upstairs comes the sound of a sewingmachine. When she gets out of the bath her body feels smoothwhittled and tense; she rubs herself with a towel, telling off the hours of the long day ahead; take a walk through junky littered downtown streets to that pier on the East River where they pile the great beams of mahogany, breakfast all alone at the Lafayette, coffee and crescent rolls and sweet butter, go shopping at Lord & Taylor’s early before everything is stuffy and the salesgirls wilted, have lunch with ... Then the pain that has been teasing all night wells up and bursts. “Stan, Stan for God’s sake,” she says aloud. She sits before her mirror staring in the black of her own dilating pupils.

She dresses in a hurry and goes out, walks down Fifth Avenue and east along Eighth Street without looking to the right or left. The sun already hot simmers slatily on the pavements, on plateglass, on dustmarbled enameled signs. Men’s and women’s faces as they pass her are rumpled and gray like pillows that have been too much slept on. After crossing Lafayette Street roaring with trucks and delivery wagons there is a taste of dust in her mouth, particles of grit crunch between her teeth. Further east she passes pushcarts; men are wiping off the marble counters of softdrink stands, a grindorgan fills the street with shiny jostling coils of the _Blue Danube_, acrid pungence spreads from a picklestand. In Tompkins Square yelling children mill about the soggy asphalt. At her feet a squirming heap of small boys, dirty torn shirts, slobbering mouths, punching, biting, scratching; a squalid smell like moldy bread comes from them. Ellen all of a sudden feels her knees weak under her. She turns and walks back the way she came.

The sun is heavy like his arm across her back, strokes her bare forearm the way his fingers stroke her, it’s his breath against her cheek.

* * * * *

“Nothing but the five statutory questions,” said Ellen to the rawboned man with big sagging eyes like oysters into whose long shirtfront she was talking.

“And so the decree is granted?” he asked solemnly.

“Surely in an uncontested ...”

“Well I’m very sorry to hear it as an old family friend of both parties.”

“Look here Dick, honestly I’m very fond of Jojo. I owe him a great deal.... He’s a very fine person in many ways, but it absolutely had to be.”

“You mean there is somebody else?”

She looked up at him with bright eyes and half nodded.

“Oh but divorce is a very serious step my dear young lady.”

“Oh not so serious as all that.”

They saw Harry Goldweiser coming towards them across the big walnut paneled room. She suddenly raised her voice. “They say that this battle of the Marne is going to end the war.”

Harry Goldweiser took her hand between his two pudgy-palmed hands and bowed over it. “It’s very charming of you Elaine to come and keep a lot of old midsummer bachelors from boring each other to death. Hello Snow old man, how’s things?”

“Yes how is it we have the pleasure of still finding you here?”

“Oh various things have held me.... Anyway I hate summer resorts.” “Nowhere prettier than Long Beach anyway.... Why Bar Harbor, I wouldnt go to Bar Harbor if you gave me a million ... a cool million.”

Mr. Snow let out a gruff sniff. “Seems to me I’ve heard you been going into the realestate game down there, Goldweiser.”

“I bought myself a cottage that’s all. It’s amazing you cant even buy yourself a cottage without every newsboy on Times Square knowing about it. Let’s go in and eat; my sister’ll be right here.” A dumpy woman in a spangled dress came in after they had sat down to table in the big antlerhung diningroom; she was pigeonbreasted and had a sallow skin.

“Oh Miss Oglethorpe I’m so glad to see you,” she twittered in a little voice like a parrakeet’s. “I’ve often seen you and thought you were the loveliest thing.... I did my best to get Harry to bring you up to see me.”

“This is my sister Rachel,” said Goldweiser to Ellen without getting up. “She keeps house for me.”

“I wish you’d help me, Snow, to induce Miss Oglethorpe to take that part in The Zinnia Girl.... Honest it was just written for you.”

“But it’s such a small part ...”

“It’s not a lead exactly, but from the point of view of your reputation as a versatile and exquisite artist, it’s the best thing in the show.”

“Will you have a little more fish, Miss Oglethorpe?” piped Miss Goldweiser.

Mr. Snow sniffed. “There’s no great acting any more: Booth, Jefferson, Mansfield ... all gone. Nowadays it’s all advertising; actors and actresses are put on the market like patent medicines. Isn’t it the truth Elaine?... Advertising, advertising.”

“But that isn’t what makes success.... If you could do it with advertising every producer in New York’d be a millionaire,” burst in Goldweiser. “It’s the mysterious occult force that grips the crowds on the street and makes them turn in at a particular theater that makes the receipts go up at a particular boxoffice, do you understand me? Advertising wont do it, good criticism wont do it, maybe it’s genius maybe it’s luck but if you can give the public what it wants at that time and at that place you have a hit. Now that’s what Elaine gave us in this last show.... She established contact with the audience. It might have been the greatest play in the world acted by the greatest actors in the world and fallen a flat failure.... And I dont know how you do it, nobody dont know how you do it.... You go to bed one night with your house full of paper and you wake up the next morning with a howling success. The producer cant control it any more than the weather man can control the weather. Aint I tellin the truth?”

“Ah the taste of the New York public has sadly degenerated since the old days of Wallack’s.”

“But there have been some beautiful plays,” chirped Miss Goldweiser.

The long day love was crisp in the curls ... the dark curls ... broken in the dark steel light ... hurls ... high O God high into the bright ... She was cutting with her fork in the crisp white heart of a lettuce. She was saying words while quite other words spilled confusedly inside her like a broken package of beads. She sat looking at a picture of two women and two men eating at a table in a high paneled room under a shivering crystal chandelier. She looked up from her plate to find Miss Goldweiser’s little birdeyes kindly querulous fixed hard on her face.

“Oh yes New York is really pleasanter in midsummer than any other time; there’s less hurry and bustle.”

“Oh yes that’s quite true Miss Goldweiser.” Ellen flashed a sudden smile round the table.... All the long day love Was crisp in the curls of his high thin brow, Flashed in his eyes in dark steel light....

In the taxi Goldweiser’s broad short knees pressed against hers; his eyes were full of furtive spiderlike industry weaving a warm sweet choking net about her face and neck. Miss Goldweiser had relapsed pudgily into the seat beside her. Dick Snow was holding an unlighted cigar in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. Ellen tried to remember exactly how Stan looked, his polevaulter’s tight slenderness; she couldn’t remember his face entire, she saw his eyes, lips, an ear.

Times Square was full of juggled colored lights, crisscrossed corrugations of glare. They went up in the elevator at the Astor. Ellen followed Miss Goldweiser across the roofgarden among the tables. Men and women in evening dress, in summer muslins and light suits turned and looked after her, like sticky tendrils of vines glances caught at her as she passed. The orchestra was playing _In My Harem_. They arranged themselves at a table.

“Shall we dance?” asked Goldweiser.

She smiled a wry broken smile in his face as she let him put his arm round her back. His big ear with solemn lonely hairs on it was on the level of her eyes.

“Elaine,” he was breathing into her ear, “honest I thought I was a wise guy.” He caught his breath ... “but I aint.... You’ve got me goin little girl and I hate to admit it.... Why cant you like me a little bit? I’d like ... us to get married as soon as you get your decree.... Wouldn’t you be kinder nice to me once in a while...? I’d do anything for you, you know that.... There are lots of things in New York I could do for you ...” The music stopped. They stood apart under a palm. “Elaine come over to my office and sign that contract. I had Ferrari wait.... We can be back in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve got to think it over ... I never do anything without sleeping on it.”

“Gosh you drive a feller wild.”

Suddenly she remembered Stan’s face altogether, he was standing in front of her with a bow tie crooked in his soft shirt, his hair rumpled, drinking again.

“Oh Ellie I’m so glad to see you....”

“This is Mr. Emery, Mr. Goldweiser....”

“I’ve been on the most exordinately spectacular trip, honestly you should have come.... We went to Montreal and Quebec and came back through Niagara Falls and we never drew a sober breath from the time we left little old New York till they arrested us for speeding on the Boston Post Road, did we Pearline?” Ellen was staring at a girl who stood groggily behind Stan with a small flowered straw hat pulled down over a pair of eyes the blue of watered milk. “Ellie this is Pearline.... Isn’t it a fine name? I almost split when she told me what it was.... But you dont know the joke.... We got so tight in Niagara Falls that when we came to we found we were married.... And we have pansies on our marriage license....”

Ellen couldnt see his face. The orchestra, the jangle of voices, the clatter of plates spouted spiraling louder and louder about her ...

And the ladies of the harem
Knew exactly how to wear ’em
In O-riental Bagdad long ago....

“Good night Stan.” Her voice was gritty in her mouth, she heard the words very clearly when she spoke them.

“Oh Ellie I wish you’d come partying with us....”

“Thanks ... thanks.”

She started to dance again with Harry Goldweiser. The roofgarden was spinning fast, then less fast. The noise ebbed sickeningly. “Excuse me a minute Harry,” she said. “I’ll come back to the table.” In the ladies’ room she let herself down carefully on the plush sofa. She looked at her face in the round mirror of her vanitycase. From black pinholes her pupils spread blurring till everything was black.

* * * * *

Jimmy Herf’s legs were tired; he had been walking all afternoon. He sat down on a bench beside the Aquarium and looked out over the water. The fresh September wind gave a glint of steel to the little crisp waves of the harbor and to the slateblue smutted sky. A big white steamer with a yellow funnel was passing in front of the statue of Liberty. The smoke from the tug at the bow came out sharply scalloped like paper. In spite of the encumbering wharfhouses the end of Manhattan seemed to him like the prow of a barge pushing slowly and evenly down the harbor. Gulls wheeled and cried. He got to his feet with a jerk. “Oh hell I’ve got to do something.”

He stood a second with tense muscles balanced on the balls of his feet. The ragged man looking at the photogravures of a Sunday paper had a face he had seen before. “Hello,” he said vaguely. “I knew who you were all along,” said the man without holding out his hand. “You’re Lily Herf’s boy.... I thought you werent going to speak to me.... No reason why you should.”

“Oh of course you must be Cousin Joe Harland.... I’m awfully glad to see you.... I’ve often wondered about you.”

“Wondered what?”

“Oh I dunno ... funny you never think of your relatives as being people like yourself, do you?” Herf sat down in the seat again. “Will you have a cigarette.... It’s only a Camel.”

“Well I dont mind if I do.... What’s your business Jimmy? You dont mind if I call you that do you?” Jimmy Herf lit a match; it went out, lit another and held it for Harland. “That’s the first tobacco I’ve had in a week ... Thank you.”

Jimmy glanced at the man beside him. The long hollow of his gray cheek made a caret with the deep crease that came from the end of his mouth. “You think I’m pretty much of a wreck dont you?” spat Harland. “You’re sorry you sat down aint you? You’re sorry you had a mother who brought you up a gentleman instead of a cad like the rest of ’em....”

“Why I’ve got a job as a reporter on the _Times_ ... a hellish rotten job and I’m sick of it,” said Jimmy, drawling out his words.

“Dont talk like that Jimmy, you’re too young.... You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude.”

“Well suppose I dont want to get anywhere.”

“Poor dear Lily was so proud of you.... She wanted you to be a great man, she was so ambitious for you.... You dont want to forget your mother Jimmy. She was the only friend I had in the whole damn family.”

Jimmy laughed. “I didnt say I wasnt ambitious.”

“For God’s sake, for your dear mother’s sake be careful what you do. You’re just starting out in life ... everything’ll depend on the next couple of years. Look at me.”

“Well the Wizard of Wall Street made a pretty good thing of it I’ll say.... No it’s just that I dont like to take all the stuff you have to take from people in this goddam town. I’m sick of playing up to a lot of desk men I dont respect.... What are you doing Cousin Joe?”

“Don’t ask me....”

“Look, do you see that boat with the red funnels? She’s French. Look, they are pulling the canvas off the gun on her stern.... I want to go to the war.... The only trouble is I’m very poor at wrangling things.”

Harland was gnawing his upper lip; after a silence he burst out in a hoarse broken voice. “Jimmy I’m going to ask you to do something for Lily’s sake.... Er ... have you any ... er ... any change with you? By a rather unfortunate ... coincidence I have not eaten very well for the last two or three days.... I’m a little weak, do you understand?”

“Why yes I was just going to suggest that we go have a cup of coffee or tea or something.... I know a fine Syrian restaurant on Washington street.”

“Come along then,” said Harland, getting up stiffly. “You’re sure you don’t mind being seen with a scarecrow like this?”

The newspaper fell out of his hand. Jimmy stooped to pick it up. A face made out of modulated brown blurs gave him a twinge as if something had touched a nerve in a tooth. No it wasnt, she doesnt look like that, yes TALENTED YOUNG ACTRESS SCORES HIT IN THE ZINNIA GIRL....

“Thanks, dont bother, I found it there,” said Harland. Jimmy dropped the paper; she fell face down.

“Pretty rotten photographs they have dont they?”

“It passes the time to look at them, I like to keep up with what’s going on in New York a little bit.... A cat may look at a king you know, a cat may look at a king.”

“Oh I just meant that they were badly taken.”

VII. Rollercoaster

_The leaden twilight weighs on the dry limbs of an old
man walking towards Broadway. Round the Nedick’s stand at
the corner something clicks in his eyes. Broken doll in
the ranks of varnished articulated dolls he plods up with
drooping head into the seethe and throb into the furnace
of beaded lettercut light. “I remember when it was all
meadows,” he grumbles to the little boy._

Louis Expresso Association, the red letters on the placard jig before Stan’s eyes. ANNUAL DANCE. Young men and girls going in. _Two by two the elephant And the kangaroo._ The boom and jangle of an orchestra seeping out through the swinging doors of the hall. Outside it is raining. _One more river, O there’s one more river to cross._ He straightens the lapels of his coat, arranges his mouth soberly, pays two dollars and goes into a big resounding hall hung with red white and blue bunting. Reeling, so he leans for a while against the wall. _One more river_ ... The dancefloor full of jogging couples rolls like the deck of a ship. The bar is more stable. “Gus McNiel’s here,” everybody’s saying “Good old Gus.” Big hands slap broad backs, mouths roar black in red faces. Glasses rise and tip glinting, rise and tip in a dance. A husky beetfaced man with deepset eyes and curly hair limps through the bar leaning on a stick. “How’s a boy Gus?”

“Yay dere’s de chief.”

“Good for old man McNiel come at last.”

“Howde do Mr. McNiel?” The bar quiets down.

Gus McNiel waves his stick in the air. “Attaboy fellers, have a good time.... Burke ole man set the company up to a drink on me.” “Dere’s Father Mulvaney wid him too. Good for Father Mulvaney.... He’s a prince that feller is.”

For he’s a jolly good fellow
That nobody can deny ...

Broad backs deferentially hunched follow the slowly pacing group out among the dancers. _O the big baboon by the light of the moon is combing his auburn hair._ “Wont you dance, please?” The girl turns a white shoulder and walks off.

I am a bachelor and I live all alone
And I work at the weaver’s trade....

Stan finds himself singing at his own face in a mirror. One of his eyebrows is joining his hair, the other’s an eyelash.... “No I’m not bejases I’m a married man.... Fight any man who says I’m not a married man and a citizen of City of New York, County of New York, State of New York....” He’s standing on a chair making a speech, banging his fist into his hand. “Friends Roooomans and countrymen, lend me five bucks.... We come to muzzle Cæsar not to shaaaave him.... According to the Constitution of the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York and duly attested and subscribed before a district attorney according to the provisions of the act of July 13th 1888.... To hell with the Pope.”

“Hey quit dat.” “Fellers lets trow dis guy out.... He aint one o de boys.... Dunno how he got in here. He’s drunk as a pissant.” Stan jumps with his eyes closed into a thicket of fists. He’s slammed in the eye, in the jaw, shoots like out of a gun out into the drizzling cool silent street. Ha ha ha.

For I am a bachelor and I live all alone
And there’s one more river to cross
One more river to Jordan
One more river to cross ...

It was blowing cold in his face and he was sitting on the front of a ferryboat when he came to. His teeth were chattering, he was shivering ... “I’m having DT’s. Who am I? Where am I? City of New York, State of New York.... Stanwood Emery age twentytwo occupation student.... Pearline Anderson twentyone occupation actress. To hell with her. Gosh I’ve got fortynine dollars and eight cents and where the hell have I been? And nobody rolled me. Why I havent got the DT’s at all. I feel fine, only a little delicate. All I need’s a little drink, dont you? Hello, I thought there was somebody here. I guess I’d better shut up.”

Fortynine dollars ahanging on the wall
Fortynine dollars ahanging on the wall

Across the zinc water the tall walls, the birchlike cluster of downtown buildings shimmered up the rosy morning like a sound of horns through a chocolatebrown haze. As the boat drew near the buildings densened to a granite mountain split with knifecut canyons. The ferry passed close to a tubby steamer that rode at anchor listing towards Stan so that he could see all the decks. An Ellis Island tug was alongside. A stale smell came from the decks packed with upturned faces like a load of melons. Three gulls wheeled complaining. A gull soared in a spiral, white wings caught the sun, the gull skimmed motionless in whitegold light. The rim of the sun had risen above the plumcolored band of clouds behind East New York. A million windows flashed with light. A rasp and a humming came from the city.

The animals went in two by two
The elephant and the kangaroo
There’s one more river to Jordan
One more river to cross

In the whitening light tinfoil gulls wheeled above broken boxes, spoiled cabbageheads, orangerinds heaving slowly between the splintered plank walls, the green spumed under the round bow as the ferry skidding on the tide, gulped the broken water, crashed, slid, settled slowly into the slip. Handwinches whirled with jingle of chains, gates folded upward. Stan stepped across the crack, staggered up the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse out into the sunny glass and benches of the Battery. He sat down on a bench, clasped his hands round his knees to keep them from shaking so. His mind went on jingling like a mechanical piano.

With bells on her fingers and rings on her toes
Shall ride a white lady upon a great horse
And she shall make mischief wherever she goes ...

There was Babylon and Nineveh, they were built of brick. Athens was goldmarble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn.... O there’s one more river to cross. 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, white cloudsheads piled above a thunderstorm ...

And it rained forty days and it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man who survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus....

Kerist I wish I was a skyscraper.

* * * * *

The lock spun round in a circle to keep out the key. Dexterously Stan bided his time and caught it. He shot headlong through the open door and down the long hall shouting Pearline into the livingroom. It smelled funny, Pearline’s smell, to hell with it. He picked up a chair; the chair wanted to fly, it swung round his head and crashed into the window, the glass shivered and tinkled. He looked out through the window. The street stood up on end. A hookandladder and a fire engine were climbing it licketysplit trailing a droning sirenshriek. _Fire fire, pour on water, Scotland’s burning._ A thousand dollar fire, a hundredthousand dollar fire, a million dollar fire. Skyscrapers go up like flames, in flames, flames. He spun back into the room. The table turned a somersault. The chinacloset jumped on the table. Oak chairs climbed on top to the gas jet. _Pour on water, Scotland’s burning._ Don’t like the smell in this place in the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York. He lay on his back on the floor of the revolving kitchen and laughed and laughed. The only man who survived the flood rode a great lady on a white horse. Up in flames, up, up. Kerosene whispered a greasyfaced can in the corner of the kitchen. _Pour on water._ He stood swaying on the crackling upside down chairs on the upside down table. The kerosene licked him with a white cold tongue. He pitched, grabbed the gasjet, the gasjet gave way, he lay in a puddle on his back striking matches, wet wouldn’t light. A match spluttered, lit; he held the flame carefully between his hands.

* * * * *

“Oh yes but my husband’s awfully ambitious.” Pearline was telling the blue gingham lady in the grocery-store. “Likes to have a good time an all that but he’s much more ambitious than anybody I every knew. He’s goin to get his old man to send us abroad so he can study architecture. He wants to be an architect.”

“My that’ll be nice for you wont it? A trip like that ... Anything else miss?” “No I guess I didn’t forget anythin.... If it was anybody else I’d be worryin about him. I haven’t seen him for two days. Had to go and see his dad I guess.”

“And you just newly wed too.”

“I wouldnt be tellin ye if I thought there was anythin wrong, would I? No he’s playin straight all right.... Well goodby Mrs. Robinson.” She tucked her packages under one arm and swinging her bead bag in the free hand walked down the street. The sun was still warm although there was a tang of fall in the wind. She gave a penny to a blind man cranking the Merry Widow waltz out of a grindorgan. Still she’d better bawl him out a little when he came home, might get to doing it often. She turned into 200th Street. People were looking out of windows, there was a crowd gathering. It was a fire. She sniffed the singed air. It gave her gooseflesh; she loved seeing fires. She hurried. Why it’s outside our building. Outside our apartmenthouse. Smoke dense as gunnysacks rolled out of the fifthstory window. She suddenly found herself all atremble. The colored elevatorboy ran up to her. His face was green. “Oh it’s in our apartment” she shrieked, “and the furniture just came a week ago. Let me get by.” The packages fell from her, a bottle of cream broke on the sidewalk. A policeman stood in her way, she threw herself at him and pounded on the broad blue chest. She couldnt stop shrieking. “That’s all right little lady, that’s all right,” he kept booming in a deep voice. As she beat her head against it she could feel his voice rumbling in his chest. “They’re bringing him down, just overcome by smoke that’s all, just overcome by smoke.”

“O Stanwood my husband,” she shrieked. Everything was blacking out. She grabbed at two bright buttons on the policeman’s coat and fainted.

VIII. One More River to Jordan