“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
_A man is shouting from a soapbox at Second Avenue and
Houston in front of the Cosmopolitan Cafè: “... these
fellers, men ... wageslaves like I was ... are sittin on
your chest ... they’re takin the food outen your mouths.
Where’s all the pretty girls I used to see walkin up and
down the bullevard? Look for em in the uptown cabarets....
They squeeze us dry friends ... feller workers, slaves
I’d oughter say ... they take our work and our ideers and
our women.... They build their Plaza Hotels and their
millionaire’s clubs and their million dollar theayters and
their battleships and what do they leave us?... They leave
us shopsickness an the rickets and a lot of dirty streets
full of garbage cans.... You look pale you fellers....
You need blood.... Why dont you get some blood in your
veins?... Back in Russia the poor people ... not so much
poorer’n we are ... believe in wampires, things come suck
your blood at night.... That’s what Capitalism is, a
wampire that sucks your blood ... day ... and ... night.”_
_It is beginning to snow. The flakes are giltedged where
they pass the streetlamp. Through the plate glass the
Cosmopolitan Cafè full of blue and green opal rifts of
smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces blob whitely round
the tables like illassorted fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob
in clusters up the snowmottled street. The orator turns up
his collar and walks briskly east along Houston, holding
the muddy soapbox away from his trousers._
Faces, hats, hands, newspapers jiggled in the fetid roaring subway car
like corn in a popper. The downtown express passed clattering in yellow
light, window telescoping window till they overlapped like scales.
“Look George,” said Sandbourne to George Baldwin who hung on a strap
beside him, “you can see Fitzgerald’s contraction.”
“I’ll be seeing the inside of an undertaking parlor if I dont get out
of this subway soon.”