After the meeting Joe O’Keefe walked whistling down Atlantic Avenue. It
was a crisp night; he was walking on springs. There was a light in Dr.
Gordon’s office. He rang. A whitefaced man in a white jacket opened the
door.
“Hello Doc.”
“Is that you O’Keefe? Come on in my boy.” Something in the doctor’s
voice clutched like a cold hand at his spine.
“Well did your test come out all right doc?”
“All right ... positive all right.”
“Christ.”
“Dont worry too much about it, my boy, we’ll fix you up in a few
months.”
“Months.”
“Why at a conservative estimate fiftyfive percent of the people you
meet on the street have a syphilitic taint.”
“It’s not as if I’d been a damn fool. I was careful over there.”
“Inevitable in wartime....”
“Now I wish I’d let loose.... Oh the chances I passed up.”
The doctor laughed. “You probably wont even have any symptoms.... It’s
just a question of injections. I’ll have you sound as a dollar in no
time.... Do you want to take a shot now? I’ve got it all ready.”
O’Keefe’s hands went cold. “Well I guess so,” he forced a laugh. “I
guess I’ll be a goddam thermometer by the time you’re through with me.”
The doctor laughed creakily. “Full up of arsenic and mercury eh....
That’s it.”
The wind was blowing up colder. His teeth were chattering. Through the
rasping castiron night he walked home. Fool to pass out that way when
he stuck me. He could still feel the sickening lunge of the needle. He
gritted his teeth. After this I got to have some luck.... I got to have
some luck.
* * * * *
Two stout men and a lean man sit at a table by a window. The light
of a zinc sky catches brightedged glints off glasses, silverware,
oystershells, eyes. George Baldwin has his back to the window. Gus
McNiel sits on his right, and Densch on his left. When the waiter leans
over to take away the empty oystershells he can see through the window,
beyond the graystone parapet, the tops of a few buildings jutting like
the last trees at the edge of a cliff and the tinfoil reaches of the
harbor littered with ships. “I’m lecturin you this time, George....
Lord knows you used to lecture me enough in the old days. Honest it’s
rank foolishness,” Gus McNiel is saying. “... It’s rank foolishness
to pass up the chance of a political career at your time of life....
There’s no man in New York better fitted to hold office ...”
“Looks to me as if it were your duty, Baldwin,” says Densch in a deep
voice, taking his tortoiseshell glasses out of a case and applying them
hurriedly to his nose.
The waiter has brought a large planked steak surrounded by bulwarks
of mushrooms and chopped carrots and peas and frilled browned mashed
potatoes. Densch straightens his glasses and stares attentively at the
planked steak.
“A very handsome dish Ben, a very handsome dish I must say.... It’s
just this Baldwin ... as I look at it ... the country is going through
a dangerous period of reconstruction ... the confusion attendant on
the winding up of a great conflict ... the bankruptcy of a continent
... bolshevism and subversive doctrines rife ... America ...” he says,
cutting with the sharp polished steel knife into the thick steak,
rare and well peppered. He chews a mouthful slowly. “America,” he
begins again, “is in the position of taking over the receivership
of the world. The great principles of democracy, of that commercial
freedom upon which our whole civilization depends are more than ever
at stake. Now as at no other time we need men of established ability
and unblemished integrity in public office, particularly in the offices
requiring expert judicial and legal knowledge.”
“That’s what I was tryin to tell ye the other day George.”
“But that’s all very well Gus, but how do you know I’d be elected....
After all it would mean giving up my law practice for a number of
years, it would mean ...”
“You just leave that to me.... George you’re elected already.”
“An extraordinarily good steak,” says Densch, “I must say.... No but
newspaper talk aside ... I happen to know from a secret and reliable
source that there is a subversive plot among undesirable elements in
this country.... Good God think of the Wall Street bomb outrage....
I must say that the attitude of the press has been gratifying in one
respect ... in fact we’re approaching a national unity undreamed of
before the war.”
“No but George,” breaks in Gus, “put it this way.... The publicity
value of a political career’d kinder bolster up your law practice.”
“It would and it wouldn’t Gus.”
Densch is unrolling the tinfoil off a cigar. “At any rate it’s a grand
sight.” He takes off his glasses and cranes his thick neck to look out
into the bright expanse of harbor that stretches full of masts, smoke,
blobs of steam, dark oblongs of barges, to the hazeblurred hills of
Staten Island.
Bright flakes of cloud were scaling off a sky of crushing indigo over
the Battery where groups of dingy darkdressed people stood round the
Ellis Island landing station and the small boat dock waiting silently
for something. Frayed smoke of tugs and steamers hung low and trailed
along the opaque glassgreen water. A threemasted schooner was being
towed down the North River. A newhoisted jib flopped awkwardly in
the wind. Down the harbor loomed taller, taller a steamer head on,
four red stacks packed into one, creamy superstructure gleaming.
“_Mauretania_ just acomin in twentyfour hours lyte,” yelled the
man with the telescope and fieldglasses.... “Tyke a look at the
_Mauretania_, farstest ocean greyhound, twentyfour hours lyte.” The
_Mauretania_ stalked like a skyscraper through the harbor shipping. A
rift of sunlight sharpened the shadow under the broad bridge, along the
white stripes of upper decks, glinted in the rows of portholes. The
smokestacks stood apart, the hull lengthened. The black relentless hull
of the _Mauretania_ pushing puffing tugs ahead of it cut like a long
knife into the North River.
A ferry was leaving the immigrant station, a murmur rustled through
the crowd that packed the edges of the wharf. “Deportees.... It’s the
communists the Department of Justice is having deported ... deportees
... Reds.... It’s the Reds they are deporting.” The ferry was out
of the slip. In the stern a group of men stood still tiny like tin
soldiers. “They are sending the Reds back to Russia.” A handkerchief
waved on the ferry, a red handkerchief. People tiptoed gently to the
edge of the walk, tiptoeing, quiet like in a sickroom.
Behind the backs of the men and women crowding to the edge of the
water, gorillafaced chipontheshoulder policemen walked back and forth
nervously swinging their billies.
“They are sending the Reds back to Russia.... Deportees....
Agitators.... Undesirables.” ... Gulls wheeled crying. A catsupbottle
bobbed gravely in the little ground-glass waves. A sound of singing
came from the ferryboat getting small, slipping away across the water.
C’est la lutte finale, groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale sera le genre humain.
“Take a look at the deportees.... Take a look at the undesirable
aliens,” shouted the man with the telescopes and fieldglasses. A girl’s
voice burst out suddenly, “_Arise prisoners of starvation_,” “Sh....
They could pull you for that.”
The singing trailed away across the water. At the end of a marbled wake
the ferryboat was shrinking into haze. _International ... shall be the
human race._ The singing died. From up the river came the longdrawn
rattling throb of a steamer leaving dock. Gulls wheeled above the dark
dingydressed crowd that stood silently looking down the bay.
II. Nickelodeon
_A nickel before midnight buys tomorrow ... holdup
headlines, a cup of coffee in the automat, a ride to
Woodlawn, Fort Lee, Flatbush.... A nickel in the slot
buys chewing gum. Somebody Loves Me, Baby Divine, You’re
in Kentucky Juss Shu’ As You’re Born ... bruised notes of
foxtrots go limping out of doors, blues, waltzes (We’d
Danced the Whole Night Through) trail gyrating tinsel
memories.... On Sixth Avenue on Fourteenth there are still
flyspecked stereopticons where for a nickel you can peep at
yellowed yesterdays. Beside the peppering shooting gallery
you stoop into the flicker_ A HOT TIME, THE BACHELOR’S
SURPRISE, THE STOLEN GARTER ... _wastebasket of tornup
daydreams.... A nickel before midnight buys our yesterdays._
Ruth Prynne came out of the doctor’s office pulled the fur tight round
her throat. She felt faint. Taxi. As she stepped in she remembered
the smell of cosmetics and toast and the littered hallway at Mrs.
Sunderlands. Oh I cant go home just yet. “Driver go to the Old English
Tea Room on Fortieth Street please.” She opened her long green leather
purse and looked in. My God, only a dollar a quarter a nickel and two
pennies. She kept her eyes on the figures flickering on the taximeter.
She wanted to break down and cry.... The way money goes. The gritty
cold wind rasped at her throat when she got out. “Eighty cents miss....
I haven’t any change miss.” “All right keep the change.” Heavens only
thirtytwo cents.... Inside it was warm and smelled cozily of tea and
cookies.
“Why Ruth, if it isn’t Ruth.... Dearest come to my arms after all these
years.” It was Billy Waldron. He was fatter and whiter than he used to
be. He gave her a stagy hug and kissed her on the forehead. “How are
you? Do tell me.... How distinguée you look in that hat.”
“I’ve just been having my throat X-rayed,” she said with a giggle. “I
feel like the wrath of God.”
“What are you doing Ruth? I havent heard of you for ages.”
“Put me down as a back number, hadn’t you?” She caught his words up
fiercely.
“After that beautiful performance you gave in The Orchard Queen....”
“To tell the truth Billy I’ve had a terrible run of bad luck.”
“Oh I know everything is dead.”
“I have an appointment to see Belasco next week.... Something may come
of that.”
“Why I should say it might Ruth.... Are you expecting someone?”
“No.... Oh Billy you’re still the same old tease.... Dont tease me this
afternoon. I dont feel up to it.”
“You poor dear sit down and have a cup of tea with me.
“I tell you Ruth it’s a terrible year. Many a good trouper will pawn
the last link of his watch chain this year.... I suppose you’re going
the rounds.”
“Dont talk about it.... If I could only get my throat all right.... A
thing like that wears you down.”
“Remember the old days at the Somerville Stock?”
“Billy could I ever forget them?... Wasnt it a scream?”
“The last time I saw you Ruth was in The Butterfly on the Wheel in
Seattle. I was out front....”
“Why didn’t you come back and see me?”
“I was still angry at you I suppose.... It was my lowest moment. In
the valley of shadow ... melancholia ... neurasthenia. I was stranded
penniless.... That night I was a little under the influence, you
understand. I didn’t want you to see the beast in me.”
Ruth poured herself a fresh cup of tea. She suddenly felt feverishly
gay. “Oh but Billy havent you forgotten all that?... I was a foolish
little girl then.... I was afraid that love or marriage or anything
like that would interfere with my art, you understand.... I was so
crazy to succeed.”
“Would you do the same thing again?”
“I wonder....”
“How does it go?... _The moving finger writes and having writ moves
on ..._”
“Something about _Nor all your tears wash out a word of it_ ... But
Billy,” she threw back her head and laughed, “I thought you were
getting ready to propose to me all over again.... Ou my throat.”
“Ruth I wish you werent taking that X-ray treatment.... I’ve heard it’s
very dangerous. Dont let me alarm you about it my dear ... but I have
heard of cases of cancer contracted that way.”
“That’s nonsense Billy.... That’s only when X-rays are improperly used,
and it takes years of exposure.... No I think this Dr. Warner’s a
remarkable man.”
Later, sitting in the uptown express in the subway, she still could
feel his soft hand patting her gloved hand. “Goodby little girl, God
bless you,” he’d said huskily. He’s gotten to be a ham actor if there
ever was one, something was jeering inside her all the while. “Thank
heavens you will never know.” ... Then with a sweep of his broadbrimmed
hat and a toss of his silky white hair, as if he were playing in
Monsieur Beaucaire, he had turned and walked off among the crowd up
Broadway. I may be down on my luck, but I’m not all ham inside the
way he is.... Cancer he said. She looked up and down the car at the
joggling faces opposite her. Of all those people one of them must have
it. FOUR OUT OF EVERY FIVE GET ... Silly, that’s not cancer. EX-LAX,
NUJOL, O’SULLIVAN’S.... She put her hand to her throat. Her throat was
terribly swollen, her throat throbbed feverishly. Maybe it was worse.
It is something alive that grows in flesh, eats all your life, leaves
you horrible, rotten.... The people opposite stared straight ahead of
them, young men and young women, middleaged people, green faces in the
dingy light, under the sourcolored advertisements. FOUR OUT OF EVERY
FIVE ... A trainload of jiggling corpses, nodding and swaying as the
express roared shrilly towards Ninetysixth Street. At Ninetysixth she
had to change for the local.
* * * * *
Dutch Robertson sat on a bench on Brooklyn Bridge with the
collar of his army overcoat turned up, running his eye down
Business Opportunities. It was a muggy fog-choked afternoon; the
bridge was dripping and aloof like an arbor in a dense garden of
steamboatwhistles. Two sailors passed. “Ze best joint I’ve been in
since B. A.”
Partner movie theater, busy neighborhood ... stand investigation ...
$3,000.... Jez I haven’t got three thousand mills.... Cigar stand, busy
building, compelled sacrifice.... Attractive and completely outfitted
radio and music shop ... busy.... Modern mediumsized printingplant
consisting of cylinders, Kelleys, Miller feeders, job presses,
linotype machines and a complete bindery.... Kosher restaurant and
delicatessen.... Bowling alley ... busy.... Live spot large dancehall
and other concessions. WE BUY FALSE TEETH, old gold, platinum, old
jewelry. The hell they do. HELP WANTED MALE. That’s more your speed
you rummy. Addressers, first class penmen.... Lets me out.... Artist,
Attendant, Auto, Bicycle and Motorcycle repair shop.... He took out the
back of an envelope and marked down the address. Bootblacks.... Not
yet. Boy; no I guess I aint a boy any more, Candystore, Canvassers,
Carwashers, Dishwasher. EARN WHILE YOU LEARN. Mechanical dentistry is
your shortest way to success.... No dull seasons....
“Hello Dutch.... I thought I’d never get here.” A grayfaced girl in a
red hat and gray rabbit coat sat down beside him.
“Jez I’m sick o readin want ads.” He stretched out his arms and yawned
letting the paper slip down his legs.
“Aint you chilly, sittin out here on the bridge?”
“Maybe I am.... Let’s go and eat.” He jumped to his feet and put his
red face with its thin broken nose close to hers and looked in her
black eyes with his pale gray eyes. He tapped her arm sharply. “Hello
Francie.... How’s my lil girl?”
They walked back towards Manhattan, the way she had come. Under them
the river glinted through the mist. A big steamer drifted by slowly,
lights already lit; over the edge of the walk they looked down the
black smokestacks.
“Was it a boat as big as that you went overseas on Dutch?”
“Bigger ’n that.”
“Gee I’d like to go.”
“I’ll take you over some time and show you all them places over
there ... I went to a lot of places that time I went A.W.O.L.”
In the L station they hesitated. “Francie got any jack on you?”
“Sure I got a dollar.... I ought to keep that for tomorrer though.”
“All I got’s my last quarter. Let’s go eat two fiftyfive cent dinners
at that chink place ... That’ll be a dollar ten.”
“I got to have a nickel to get down to the office in the mornin.”
“Oh Hell! Goddam it I wish we could have some money.”
“Got anything lined up yet?”
“Wouldn’t I have told ye if I had?”
“Come ahead I’ve got a half a dollar saved up in my room. I can take
carfare outa that.” She changed the dollar and put two nickels into the
turnstile. They sat down in a Third Avenue train.
“Say Francie will they let us dance in a khaki shirt?”
“Why not Dutch it looks all right.”
“I feel kinder fussed about it.”
The jazzband in the restaurant was playing Hindustan. It smelled of
chop suey and Chinese sauce. They slipped into a booth. Slickhaired
young men and little bobhaired girls were dancing hugged close. As
they sat down they smiled into each other’s eyes.
“Jez I’m hungry.”
“Are you Dutch?”
He pushed forward his knees until they locked with hers. “Gee you’re
a good kid,” he said when he had finished his soup. “Honest I’ll get
a job this week. And then we’ll get a nice room an get married an
everything.”
When they got up to dance they were trembling so they could barely keep
time to the music.
“Mister ... no dance without ploper dless ...” said a dapper Chinaman
putting his hand on Dutch’s arm.
“Waz he want?” he growled dancing on.
“I guess it’s the shirt, Dutch.”
“The hell it is.”
“I’m tired. I’d rather talk than dance anyway ...” They went back to
their booth and their sliced pineapple for dessert.
Afterwards they walked east along Fourteenth. “Dutch cant we go to your
room?”
“I ain’t got no room. The old stiff wont let me stay and she’s got all
my stuff. Honest if I dont get a job this week I’m goin to a recruiting
sergeant an re-enlist.”
“Oh dont do that; we wouldn’t ever get married then Dutch.... Gee
though why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you Francie.... Six months out of work ... Jez
it’s enough to drive a guy cookoo.”
“But Dutch where can we go?”
“We might go out that wharf.... I know a wharf.”
“It’s so cold.”
“I couldn’t get cold when you were with me kid.”
“Dont talk like that.... I dont like it.”
They walked leaning together in the darkness up the muddy rutted
riverside streets, between huge swelling gastanks, brokendown fences,
long manywindowed warehouses. At a corner under a streetlamp a boy
catcalled as they passed.
“I’ll poke your face in you little bastard,” Dutch let fly out of the
corner of his mouth.
“Dont answer him,” Francie whispered, “or we’ll have the whole gang
down on us.”
They slipped through a little door in a tall fence above which crazy
lumberpiles towered. They could smell the river and cedarwood and
sawdust. They could hear the river lapping at the piles under their
feet. Dutch drew her to him and pressed his mouth down on hers.
“Hay dere dont you know you cant come out here at night disaway?” a
voice yapped at them. The watchman flashed a lantern in their eyes.
“All right keep your shirt on, we were just taking a little walk.”
“Some walk.”
They were dragging themselves down the street again with the black
riverwind in their teeth.
“Look out.” A policeman passed whistling softly to himself. They drew
apart. “Oh Francie they’ll be takin us to the nuthouse if we keep this
up. Let’s go to your room.”
“Landlady’ll throw me out, that’s all.”
“I wont make any noise.... You got your key aint ye? I’ll sneak out
before light. Goddam it they make you feel like a skunk.”
“All right Dutch let’s go home.... I dont care no more what happens.”
They walked up mudtracked stairs to the top floor of the tenement.
“Take off your shoes,” she hissed in his ear as she slipped the key in
the lock.
“I got holes in my stockings.”
“That dont matter, silly. I’ll see if it’s all right. My room’s way
back past the kitchen so if they’re all in bed they cant hear us.”
When she left him he could hear his heart beating. In a second she came
back. He tiptoed after her down a creaky hall. A sound of snoring came
through a door. There was a smell of cabbage and sleep in the hall.
Once in her room she locked the door and put a chair against it under
the knob. A triangle of ashen light came in from the street. “Now for
crissake keep still Dutch.” One shoe still in each hand he reached for
her and hugged her.
He lay beside her whispering on and on with his lips against her ear.
“And Francie I’ll make good, honest I will; I got to be a sergeant
overseas till they busted me for goin A.W.O.L. That shows I got it in
me. Once I get a chance I’ll make a whole lot of jack and you an me’ll
go back an see Château Teery an Paree an all that stuff; honest you’d
like it Francie ... Jez the towns are old and funny and quiet and
cozy-like an they have the swellest ginmills where you sit outside at
little tables in the sun an watch the people pass an the food’s swell
too once you get to like it an they have hotels all over where we could
have gone like tonight an they dont care if your married or nutten. An
they have big beds all cozy made of wood and they bring ye up breakfast
in bed. Jez Francie you’d like it.”
* * * * *
They were walking to dinner through the snow. Big snowfeathers spun and
spiraled about them mottling the glare of the streets with blue and
pink and yellow, blotting perspectives.
“Ellie I hate to have you take that job.... You ought to keep on with
your acting.”
“But Jimps, we’ve got to live.”
“I know ... I know. You’d certainly didn’t have your wits about you
Ellie when you married me.”
“Oh let’s not talk about it any more.”
“Do let’s have a good time tonight.... It’s the first snow.”
“Is this the place?” They stood before an unlighted basement door
covered by a closemeshed grating. “Let’s try.”
“Did the bell ring?”
“I think so.”
The inner door opened and a girl in a pink apron peered out at them.
“Bon soir mademoiselle.”
“Ah ... bon soir monsieur ’dame.” She ushered them into a foodsmelling
gaslit hall hung with overcoats and hats and mufflers. Through a
curtained door the restaurant blew in their faces a hot breath of bread
and cocktails and frying butter and perfumes and lipsticks and clatter
and jingling talk.
“I can smell absinthe,” said Ellen. “Let’s get terribly tight.”
“Good Lord, there’s Congo.... Dont you remember Congo Jake at the
Seaside Inn?”
He stood bulky at the end of the corridor beckoning to them. His face
was very tanned and he had a glossy black mustache. “Hello Meester
’Erf.... Ow are you?”
“Fine as silk. Congo I want you to meet my wife.”
“If you dont mind the keetchen we will ’ave a drink.”
“Of course we dont.... It’s the best place in the house. Why you’re
limping.... What did you do to your leg?”
“Foutu ... I left it en Italie.... I couldnt breeng it along once
they’d cut it off.”
“How was that?”
“Damn fool thing on Mont Tomba.... My bruderinlaw e gave me a very
beautiful artificial leemb.... Sit ’ere. Look madame now can you tell
which is which?”
“No I cant,” said Ellie laughing. They were at a little marble table
in the corner of the crowded kitchen. A girl was dishing out at a deal
table in the center. Two cooks worked over the stove. The air was rich
with sizzling fatty foodsmells. Congo hobbled back to them with three
glasses on a small tray. He stood over them while they drank.
“Salut,” he said, raising his glass. “Absinthe cocktail, like they make
it in New Orleans.”
“It’s a knockout.” Congo took a card out of his vest pocket:
MARQUIS DES COULOMMIERS
IMPORTS
Riverside 11121
“Maybe some day you need some little ting ... I deal in nutting but
prewar imported. I am the best bootleggair in New York.”
“If I ever get any money I certainly will spend it on you Congo.... How
do you find business?”
“Veree good.... I tell you about it. Tonight I’m too busee.... Now I
find you a table in the restaurant.”
“Do you run this place too?”
“No this my bruderinlaw’s place.”
“I didnt know you had a sister.”
“Neither did I.”
When Congo limped away from their table silence came down between them
like an asbestos curtain in a theater.
“He’s a funny duck,” said Jimmy forcing a laugh.
“He certainly is.”
“Look Ellie let’s have another cocktail.”
“Allright.”
“I must get hold of him and get some stories about bootleggers out of
him.”
When he stretched his legs out under the table he touched her feet. She
drew them away. Jimmy could feel his jaws chewing, they clanked so loud
under his cheeks he thought Ellie must hear them. She sat opposite him
in a gray tailoredsuit, her neck curving up heartbreakingly from the
ivory V left by the crisp frilled collar of her blouse, her head tilted
under her tight gray hat, her lips made up; cutting up little pieces of
meat and not eating them, not saying a word.