leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in
the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked
slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.
“This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth.... D’ye
know young leddy, I dont come to this town often....” He gulped
down the rest of his glass. “An when I do I usually go away kinder
disgusted....” His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored
the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. “But
this time I kinder think....”
“It must be a great life prospecting,” she interrupted flushing.
“It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life....
I’m glad I made my pile in the old days.... Wouldnt have the same luck
now.”
She looked up at him. “How modest you are to call it luck.”
Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was
nothing more to serve. The redhaired girl from the cloakroom walked by
with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye.
She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Wont look at me because I’m
a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.
“Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and Chandon, Gout Americain,”
came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.
The moonfaced man was on his feet. “Ladies and Gentlemen....”
“Silence in the pigsty ...” piped up a voice.
“The big sow wants to talk,” said Olga under her breath.
“Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of
Bethlehem and fulltime act....”
“Gilly dont blaspheme,” said the lady with the tiara.
“Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am....”
“Gilly you’re drunk.”
“... Whether the tide ... I mean whether the waters be with us or
against us...”
Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moonfaced man sat down
suddenly in his chair.
“It’s terrible,” said the lady in the tiara addressing herself to a
man with a long face the color of tobacco who sat at the end of the
table ... “It’s terrible, Colonel, the way Gilly gets blasphemous when
he’s been drinking...”
The Colonel was meticulously rolling the tinfoil off a cigar. “Dear me,
you dont say?” he drawled. Above the bristly gray mustache his face was
expressionless. “There’s a most dreadful story about poor old Atkins,
Elliott Atkins who used to be with Mansfield...”
“Indeed?” said the Colonel icily as he slit the end of the cigar with a
small pearlhandled penknife.
“Say Chester did you hear that Mabie Evans was making a hit?”
“Honestly Olga I dont see how she does it. She has no figure...”
“Well he made a speech, drunk as a lord you understand, one night when
they were barnstorming in Kansas...”
“She cant sing...”
“The poor fellow never did go very strong in the bright lights...”
“She hasnt the slightest particle of figure...”
“And made a sort of Bob Ingersoll speech...”
“The dear old feller.... Ah I knew him well out in Chicago in the old
days...”
“You dont say.” The Colonel held a lighted match carefully to the end
of his cigar...
“And there was a terrible flash of lightning and a ball of fire came in
one window and went out the other.”
“Was he ... er ... killed?” The Colonel sent a blue puff of smoke
towards the ceiling.
“What, did you say Bob Ingersoll had been struck by lightning?” cried
Olga shrilly. “Serve him right the horrid atheist.”
“No not exactly, but it scared him into a realization of the important
things of life and now he’s joined the Methodist church.”
“Funny how many actors get to be ministers.”
“Cant get an audience any other way,” creaked the man with the diamond
stud.
The two waiters hovered outside the door listening to the racket
inside. “Tas de sacrés cochons ... sporca madonna!” hissed the old
waiter. Emile shrugged his shoulders. “That brunette girl make eyes at
you all night...” He brought his face near Emile’s and winked. “Sure,
maybe you pick up somethin good.”
“I dont want any of them or their dirty diseases either.”
The old waiter slapped his thigh. “No young men nowadays.... When I was
young man I take heap o chances.”
“They dont even look at you ...” said Emile through clenched teeth. “An
animated dress suit that’s all.”
“Wait a minute, you learn by and by.”
The door opened. They bowed respectfully towards the diamond stud.
Somebody had drawn a pair of woman’s legs on his shirtfront. There was
a bright flush on each of his cheeks. The lower lid of one eye sagged,
giving his weasle face a quizzical lobsided look.
“Wazzahell, Marco wazzahell?” he was muttering. “We aint got a thing to
drink.... Bring the Atlantic Ozz-shen and two quarts.”
“De suite monsieur....” The old waiter bowed. “Emile tell Auguste,
immediatement et bien frappé.”
As Emile went down the corridor he could hear singing.
O would the Atlantic were all champagne
Bright bi-i-i....
The moonface and the bottlenose were coming back from the lavatory
reeling arm in arm among the palms in the hall.
“These damn fools make me sick.”
“Yessir these aint the champagne suppers we used to have in Frisco in
the ole days.”
“Ah those were great days those.”
“By the way,” the moonfaced man steadied himself against the wall,
“Holyoke ole fella, did you shee that very nobby little article on
the rubber trade I got into the morning papers.... That’ll make the
investors nibble ... like lil mishe.”
“Whash you know about rubber?... The stuff aint no good.”
“You wait an shee, Holyoke ole fella or you looshing opportunity of
your life.... Drunk or sober I can smell money ... on the wind.”
“Why aint you got any then?” The bottlenosed man’s beefred face went
purple; he doubled up letting out great hoots of laughter.
“Because I always let my friends in on my tips,” said the other man
soberly. “Hay boy where’s zis here private dinin room?”
“Par ici monsieur.”
A red accordionpleated dress swirled past them, a little oval face
framed by brown flat curls, pearly teeth in an open-mouthed laugh.
“Fifi Waters,” everyone shouted. “Why my darlin lil Fifi, come to my
arms.”
She was lifted onto a chair where she stood jiggling from one foot to
the other, champagne dripping out of a tipped glass.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Happy New Year.”
“Many returns of the day....”
A fair young man who had followed her in was reeling intricately round
the table singing:
O we went to the animals’ fair
And the birds and the beasts were there
And the big baboon
By the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.
“Hoopla,” cried Fifi Waters and mussed the gray hair of the man with
the diamond stud. “Hoopla.” She jumped down with a kick, pranced round
the room, kicking high with her skirts fluffed up round her knees.
“Oh la la ze French high kicker!”
“Look out for the Pony Ballet.”
Her slender legs, shiny black silk stockings tapering to red rosetted
slippers flashed in the men’s faces.
“She’s a mad thing,” cried the lady in the tiara.
Hoopla. Holyoke was swaying in the doorway with his top hat tilted over
the glowing bulb of his nose. She let out a whoop and kicked it off.
“It’s a goal,” everyone cried.
“For crissake you kicked me in the eye.”
She stared at him a second with round eyes and then burst into tears
on the broad shirtfront of the diamond stud. “I wont be insulted like
that,” she sobbed.
“Rub the other eye.”
“Get a bandage someone.”
“Goddam it she may have put his eye out.”
“Call a cab there waiter.”
“Where’s a doctor?”
“That’s hell to pay ole fella.”
A handkerchief full of tears and blood pressed to his eye the
bottlenosed man stumbled out. The men and women crowded through the
door after him; last went the blond young man, reeling and singing:
An the big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.
Fifi Waters was sobbing with her head on the table.
“Dont cry Fifi,” said the Colonel who was still sitting where he had
sat all the evening. “Here’s something I rather fancy might do you
good.” He pushed a glass of champagne towards her down the table.
She sniffled and began drinking it in little sips. “Hullo Roger, how’s
the boy?”
“The boy’s quite well thank you.... Rather bored, dont you know? An
evening with such infernal bounders....”
“I’m hungry.”
“There doesnt seem to be anything left to eat.”
“I didnt know you’d be here or I’d have come earlier, honest.”
“Would you indeed?... Now that’s very nice.”
The long ash dropped from the Colonel’s cigar; he got to his feet. “Now
Fifi, I’ll call a cab and we’ll go for a ride in the Park....”
She drank down her champagne and nodded brightly. “Dear me it’s four
o’clock....” “You have the proper wraps haven’t you?”
She nodded again.
“Splendid Fifi ... I say you are in form.” The Colonel’s cigarcolored
face was unraveling in smiles. “Well, come along.”
She looked about her in a dazed way. “Didnt I come with somebody?”
“Quite unnecessary!”
In the hall they came upon the fair young man quietly vomiting into a
firebucket under an artificial palm.
“Oh let’s leave him,” she said wrinkling up her nose.
“Quite unnecessary,” said the Colonel.
Emile brought their wraps. The redhaired girl had gone home.
“Look here, boy.” The Colonel waved his cane. “Call me a cab please....
Be sure the horse is decent and the driver is sober.”
“De suite monsieur.”
The sky beyond roofs and chimneys was the blue of a sapphire. The
Colonel took three or four deep sniffs of the dawnsmelling air and
threw his cigar into the gutter. “Suppose we have a bit of breakfast at
Cleremont. I haven’t had anything fit to eat all night. That beastly
sweet champagne, ugh!”
Fifi giggled. After the Colonel had examined the horse’s fetlocks and
patted his head, they climbed into the cab. The Colonel fitted in Fifi
carefully under his arm and they drove off. Emile stood a second in the
door of the restaurant uncrumpling a five dollar bill. He was tired and
his insteps ached.
When Emile came out of the back door of the restaurant he found Congo
waiting for him sitting on the doorstep. Congo’s skin had a green
chilly look under the frayed turned up coatcollar.
“This is my friend,” Emile said to Marco. “Came over on the same boat.”
“You havent a bottle of fine under your coat have you? Sapristi I’ve
seen some chickens not half bad come out of this place.”
“But what’s the matter?”
“Lost my job that’s all.... I wont have to take any more off that guy.
Come over and drink a coffee.”
They ordered coffee and doughnuts in a lunchwagon on a vacant lot.
“Eh bien you like it this sacred pig of a country?” asked Marco.
“Why not? I like it anywhere. It’s all the same, in France you are paid
badly and live well; here you are paid well and live badly.”
“Questo paese e completamente soto sopra.”
“I think I’ll go to sea again....”
“Say why de hell doan yous guys loin English?” said the man with a
cauliflower face who slapped the three mugs of coffee down on the
counter.
“If we talk Engleesh,” snapped Marco “maybe you no lika what we say.”
“Why did they fire you?”
“Merde. I dont know. I had an argument with the old camel who runs
the place.... He lived next door to the stables; as well as washing
the carriages he made me scrub the floors in his house.... His wife,
she had a face like this.” Congo sucked in his lips and tried to look
crosseyed.
Marco laughed. “Santissima Maria putana!”
“How did you talk to them?”
“They pointed to things; then I nodded my head and said Awright. I went
there at eight and worked till six and they gave me every day more
filthy things to do.... Last night they tell me to clean out the toilet
in the bathroom. I shook my head.... That’s woman’s work.... She got
very angry and started screeching. Then I began to learn Angleesh....
Go awright to ’ell, I says to her.... Then the old man comes and chases
me out into a street with a carriage whip and says he wont pay me my
week.... While we were arguing he got a policeman, and when I try to
explain to the policeman that the old man owed me ten dollars for the
week, he says Beat it you lousy wop, and cracks me on the coco with his
nightstick.... Merde alors...”
Marco was red in the face. “He call you lousy wop?”
Congo nodded his mouth full of doughnut.
“Notten but shanty Irish himself,” muttered Marco in English. “I’m fed
up with this rotten town....
“It’s the same all over the world, the police beating us up, rich
people cheating us out of their starvation wages, and who’s fault?...
Dio cane! Your fault, my fault, Emile’s fault....”
“We didn’t make the world.... They did or maybe God did.”
“God’s on their side, like a policeman.... When the day comes we’ll
kill God.... I am an anarchist.”
Congo hummed “les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu.”
“Are you one of us?”
Congo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not a catholic or a protestant;
I haven’t any money and I haven’t any work. Look at that.” Congo
pointed with a dirty finger to a long rip on his trouserknee. “That’s
anarchist.... Hell I’m going out to Senegal and get to be a nigger.”
“You look like one already,” laughed Emile.
“That’s why they call me Congo.”
“But that’s all silly,” went on Emile. “People are all the same. It’s
only that some people get ahead and others dont.... That’s why I came
to New York.”
“Dio cane I think that too twentyfive years ago.... When you’re old
like me you know better. Doesnt the shame of it get you sometimes?
Here” ... he tapped with his knuckles on his stiff shirtfront.... “I
feel it hot and like choking me here.... Then I say to myself Courage
our day is coming, our day of blood.”
“I say to myself,” said Emile “When you have some money old kid.”
“Listen, before I leave Torino when I go last time to see the mama I go
to a meetin of comrades.... A fellow from Capua got up to speak ... a
very handsome man, tall and very thin.... He said that there would be
no more force when after the revolution nobody lived off another man’s
work.... Police, governments, armies, presidents, kings ... all that
is force. Force is not real; it is illusion. The working man makes all
that himself because he believes it. The day that we stop believing in
money and property it will be like a dream when we wake up. We will not
need bombs or barricades.... Religion, politics, democracy all that is
to keep us asleep.... Everybody must go round telling people: Wake up!”
“When you go down into the street I’ll be with you,” said Congo.
“You know that man I tell about?... That man Errico Malatesta, in Italy
greatest man after Garibaldi.... He give his whole life in jail and
exile, in Egypt, in England, in South America, everywhere.... If I
could be a man like that, I dont care what they do; they can string me
up, shoot me ... I dont care ... I am very happy.”
“But he must be crazy a feller like that,” said Emile slowly. “He must
be crazy.”
Marco gulped down the last of his coffee. “Wait a minute. You are too
young. You will understand.... One by one they make us understand....
And remember what I say.... Maybe I’m too old, maybe I’m dead, but it
will come when the working people awake from slavery.... You will walk
out in the street and the police will run away, you will go into a bank
and there will be money poured out on the floor and you wont stoop
to pick it up, no more good.... All over the world we are preparing.
There are comrades even in China.... Your Commune in France was the
beginning ... socialism failed. It’s for the anarchists to strike the
next blow.... If we fail there will be others....”
Congo yawned, “I am sleepy as a dog.”
Outside the lemoncolored dawn was drenching the empty streets,
dripping from cornices, from the rails of fire escapes, from the rims
of ashcans, shattering the blocks of shadow between buildings. The
streetlights were out. At a corner they looked up Broadway that was
narrow and scorched as if a fire had gutted it.
“I never see the dawn,” said Marco, his voice rattling in his throat,
“that I dont say to myself perhaps ... perhaps today.” He cleared his
throat and spat against the base of a lamppost; then he moved away from
them with his waddling step, taking hard short sniffs of the cool air.
“Is that true, Congo, about shipping again?”
“Why not? Got to see the world a bit...”
“I’ll miss you.... I’ll have to find another room.”
“You’ll find another friend to bunk with.”
“But if you do that you’ll stay a sailor all your life.”
“What does it matter? When you are rich and married I’ll come and visit
you.”
They were walking down Sixth Avenue. An L train roared above their
heads leaving a humming rattle to fade among the girders after it had
passed.
“Why dont you get another job and stay on a while?”
Congo produced two bent cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his
coat, handed one to Emile, struck a match on the seat of his trousers,
and let the smoke out slowly through his nose. “I’m fed up with it
here I tell you....” He brought his flat hand up across his Adam’s
apple, “up to here.... Maybe I’ll go home an visit the little girls
of Bordeaux.... At least they are not all made of whalebone.... I’ll
engage myself as a volunteer in the navy and wear a red pompom.... The
girls like that. That’s the only life.... Get drunk and raise cain
payday and see the extreme orient.”
“And die of the syph in a hospital at thirty....”
“What’s it matter?... Your body renews itself every seven years.”
The steps of their rooming house smelled of cabbage and stale beer.
They stumbled up yawning.
“Waiting’s a rotton tiring job.... Makes the soles of your feet
ache.... Look it’s going to be a fine day; I can see the sun on the
watertank opposite.”
Congo pulled off his shoes and socks and trousers and curled up in bed
like a cat.
“Those dirty shades let in all the light,” muttered Emile as he
stretched himself on the outer edge of the bed. He lay tossing uneasily
on the rumpled sheets. Congo’s breathing beside him was low and
regular. If I was only like that, thought Emile, never worrying about a
thing.... But it’s not that way you get along in the world. My God it’s
stupid.... Marco’s gaga the old fool.
And he lay on his back looking up at the rusty stains on the ceiling,
shuddering every time an elevated train shook the room. Sacred name
of God I must save up my money. When he turned over the knob on the
bedstead rattled and he remembered Marco’s hissing husky voice: I never
see the dawn that I dont say to myself perhaps.
* * * * *
“If you’ll excuse me just a moment Mr. Olafson,” said the houseagent.
“While you and the madam are deciding about the apartment...” They
stood side by side in the empty room, looking out the window at the
slatecolored Hudson and the warships at anchor and a schooner tacking
upstream.
Suddenly she turned to him with glistening eyes; “O Billy, just think
of it.”
He took hold of her shoulders and drew her to him slowly. “You can
smell the sea, almost.”
“Just think Billy that we are going to live here, on Riverside Drive.
I’ll have to have a day at home ... Mrs. William C. Olafson, 218
Riverside Drive.... I wonder if it is all right to put the address on
our visiting cards.” She took his hand and led him through the empty
cleanswept rooms that no one had ever lived in. He was a big shambling
man with eyes of a washed out blue deepset in a white infantile head.
“It’s a lot of money Bertha.”
“We can afford it now, of course we can. We must live up to our
income.... Your position demands it.... And think how happy we’ll be.”
The house agent came back down the hall rubbing his hands. “Well, well,
well ... Ah I see that we’ve come to a favorable decision.... You are
very wise too, not a finer location in the city of New York and in a
few months you wont be able to get anything out this way for love or
money....”
“Yes we’ll take it from the first of the month.”
“Very good.... You wont regret your decision, Mr. Olafson.”
“I’ll send you a check for the amount in the morning.”
“At your own convenience.... And what is your present address
please....” The houseagent took out a notebook and moistened a stub of
pencil with his tongue.
“You had better put Hotel Astor.” She stepped in front of her husband.
“Our things are stored just at the moment.”
Mr. Olafson turned red.
“And ... er ... we’d like the names of two references please in the
city of New York.”
“I’m with Keating and Bradley, Sanitary Engineers, 43 Park Avenue...”
“He’s just been made assistant general manager,” added Mrs. Olafson.
When they got out on the Drive walking downtown against a tussling wind
she cried out: “Darling I’m so happy.... It’s really going to be worth
living now.”
“But why did you tell him we lived at the Astor?”
“I couldnt tell him we lived in the Bronx could I? He’d have thought we
were Jews and wouldnt have rented us the apartment.”
“But you know I dont like that sort of thing.”
“Well we’ll just move down to the Astor for the rest of the week, if
you’re feeling so truthful.... I’ve never in my life stopped in a big
downtown hotel.”
“Oh Bertha it’s the principle of the thing.... I don’t like you to be
like that.”
She turned and looked at him with twitching nostrils. “You’re so
nambypamby, Billy.... I wish to heavens I’d married a man for a
husband.”
He took her by the arm. “Let’s go up here,” he said gruffly with his
face turned away.
They walked up a cross street between buildinglots. At a corner the
rickety half of a weatherboarded farmhouse was still standing. There
was half a room with blueflowered paper eaten by brown stains on the
walls, a smoked fireplace, a shattered builtin cupboard, and an iron
bedstead bent double.
* * * * *
Plates slip endlessly through Bud’s greasy fingers. Smell of swill
and hot soapsuds. Twice round with the little mop, dip, rinse and
pile in the rack for the longnosed Jewish boy to wipe. Knees wet from
spillings, grease creeping up his forearms, elbows cramped.
“Hell this aint no job for a white man.”
“I dont care so long as I eat,” said the Jewish boy above the rattle of
dishes and the clatter and seething of the range where three sweating
cooks fried eggs and ham and hamburger steak and browned potatoes and
cornedbeef hash.
“Sure I et all right,” said Bud and ran his tongue round his teeth
dislodging a sliver of salt meat that he mashed against his palate with
his tongue. Twice round with the little mop, dip, rinse and pile in
the rack for the longnosed Jewish boy to wipe. There was a lull. The
Jewish boy handed Bud a cigarette. They stood leaning against the sink.
“Aint no way to make money dishwashing.” The cigarette wabbled on the
Jewish boy’s heavy lip as he spoke.
“Aint no job for a white man nohow,” said Bud. “Waitin’s better, they’s
the tips.”
A man in a brown derby came in through the swinging door from the
lunchroom. He was a bigjawed man with pigeyes and a long cigar sticking
straight out of the middle of his mouth. Bud caught his eye and felt
the cold glint twisting his bowels.
“Whosat?” he whispered.
“Dunno.... Customer I guess.”
“Dont he look to you like one o them detectives?”
“How de hell should I know? I aint never been in jail.” The Jewish boy
turned red and stuck out his jaw.
The busboy set down a new pile of dirty dishes. Twice round with the
little mop, dip, rinse and pile in the rack. When the man in the brown
derby passed back through the kitchen, Bud kept his eyes on his red
greasy hands. What the hell even if he is a detective.... When Bud had
finished the batch, he strolled to the door wiping his hands, took
his coat and hat from the hook and slipped out the side door past the
garbage cans out into the street. Fool to jump two hours pay. In an
optician’s window the clock was at twentyfive past two. He walked down
Broadway, past Lincoln Square, across Columbus Circle, further downtown
towards the center of things where it’d be more crowded.
* * * * *
She lay with her knees doubled up to her chin, the nightgown pulled
tight under her toes.
“Now straighten out and go to sleep dear.... Promise mother you’ll go
to sleep.”
“Wont daddy come and kiss me good night?”
“He will when he comes in; he’s gone back down to the office and
mother’s going to Mrs. Spingarn’s to play euchre.”
“When’ll daddy be home?”
“Ellie I said go to sleep.... I’ll leave the light.”
“Dont mummy, it makes shadows.... When’ll daddy be home?”
“When he gets good and ready.” She was turning down the gaslight.
Shadows out of the corners joined wings and rushed together. “Good
night Ellen.” The streak of light of the door narrowed behind mummy,
slowly narrowed to a thread up and along the top. The knob clicked; the
steps went away down the hall; the front door slammed. A clock ticked
somewhere in the silent room; outside the apartment, outside the house,
wheels and gallumping of hoofs, trailing voices; the roar grew. It was
black except for the two strings of light that made an upside down L in
the corner of the door.