attend to your work and keep your mouth shut, and draw your pay
quietly? You used to make good money and could have got married decent
before you took to running wild in dance halls with a goy. Oy oy that
I’ve raised daughters in my old age no decent man’d want to take to his
house and marry....”
Anna got to her feet shrieking “It’s no business of yours.... I’ve
always paid my part of the rent regular. You think a girl’s worth
nothin but for a slave and to grind her fingers off workin all her
life.... I think different, do you hear? Dont you dare scold at me....”
“Oy you will talk back to your old mother. If Solomon was alive he’d
take a stick to you. Better to have been born dead than talk back to
your mother like a goy. Get out of the house and quick before I blast
you.”
“All right I will.” Anna ran through the narrow trunk-obstructed
hallway to the bedroom and threw herself on her bed. Her cheeks were
burning. She lay quiet trying to think. From the kitchen came the old
woman’s fierce monotonous sobbing.
Anna raised herself to a sitting posture on the bed. She caught sight
in the mirror opposite of a strained teardabbled face and rumpled
stringy hair. “My Gawd I’m a sight,” she sighed. As she got to her feet
her heel caught on the braid of her dress. The dress tore sharply. Anna
sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. Then she sewed the
rent in the dress up carefully with tiny meticulous stitches. Sewing
made her feel calmer. She put on her hat, powdered her nose copiously,
put a little rouge on her lips, got into her coat and went out. April
was coaxing unexpected colors out of the East Side streets. Sweet
voluptuous freshness came from a pushcart full of pineapples. At the
corner she found Rose Segal and Lillian Diamond drinking coca-cola at
the softdrink stand.
“Anna have a coke with us,” they chimed.
“I will if you’ll blow me.... I’m broke.”
“Vy, didnt you get your strike pay?”
“I gave it all to the old woman.... Dont do no good though. She goes on
scoldin all day long. She’s too old.”
“Did you hear how gunmen broke in and busted up Ike Goldstein’s shop?
Busted up everythin wid hammers an left him unconscious on top of a lot
of dressgoods.”
“Oh that’s terrible.”
“Soive him right I say.”
“But they oughtnt to destroy property like that. We make our livin by
it as much as he does.”
“A pretty fine livin.... I’m near dead wid it,” said Anna banging her
empty glass down on the counter.
“Easy easy,” said the man in the stand. “Look out for the crockery.”
“But the worst thing was,” went on Rose Segal, “that while they was
fightin up in Goldstein’s a rivet flew out the winder an fell nine
stories an killed a fireman passin on a truck so’s he dropped dead in
the street.”
“What for did they do that?”
“Some guy must have slung it at some other guy and it pitched out of
the winder.”
“And killed a fireman.”
Anna saw Elmer coming towards them down the avenue, his thin face
stuck forward, his hands hidden in the pockets of his frayed overcoat.
She left the two girls and walked towards him. “Was you goin down
to the house? Dont lets go, cause the old woman’s scoldin somethin
terrible.... I wish I could get her into the Daughters of Israel. I
cant stand her no more.”
“Then let’s walk over and sit in the square,” said Elmer. “Dont you
feel the spring?”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Dont I? Oh Elmer I
wish this strike was over.... It gets me crazy doin nothin all day.”
“But Anna the strike is the worker’s great opportunity, the worker’s
university. It gives you a chance to study and read and go to the
Public Library.”
“But you always think it’ll be over in a day or two, an what’s the use
anyway?”
“The more educated a feller is the more use he is to his class.”
They sat down on a bench with their backs to the playground. The sky
overhead was glittering with motherofpearl flakes of sunset. Dirty
children yelled and racketed about the asphalt paths.
“Oh,” said Anna looking up at the sky, “I’d like to have a Paris
evening dress an you have a dress suit and go out to dinner at a swell
restaurant an go to the theater an everything.”
“If we lived in a decent society we might be able to.... There’d be
gayety for the workers then, after the revolution.”
“But Elmer what’s the use if we’re old and scoldin like the old woman?”
“Our children will have those things.”
Anna sat bolt upright on the seat. “I aint never goin to have any
children,” she said between her teeth, “never, never, never.”
Alice touched his arm as they turned to look in the window of an
Italian pastryshop. On each cake ornamented with bright analin flowers
and flutings stood a sugar lamb for Easter and the resurrection banner.
“Jimmy,” she said turning up to him her little oval face with her lips
too red like the roses on the cakes, “you’ve got to do something about
Roy.... He’s got to get to work. I’ll go crazy if I have him sitting
round the house any more reading the papers wearing that dreadful
adenoid expression.... You know what I mean.... He respects you.”
“But he’s trying to get a job.”
“He doesnt really try, you know it.”
“He thinks he does. I guess he’s got a funny idea about himself.... But
I’m a fine person to talk about jobs ...”
“Oh I know, I think it’s wonderful. Everybody says you’ve given up
newspaper work and are going to write.”
Jimmy found himself looking down into her widening brown eyes, that had
a glimmer at the bottom like the glimmer of water in a well. He turned
his head away; there was a catch in his throat; he coughed. They walked
on along the lilting brightcolored street.
At the door of the restaurant they found Roy and Martin Schiff waiting
for them. They went through an outer room into a long hall crowded
with tables packed between two greenish bluish paintings of the Bay
of Naples. The air was heavy with a smell of parmesan cheese and
cigarettesmoke and tomato sauce. Alice made a little face as she
settled herself in a chair.
“Ou I want a cocktail right away quick.”
“I must be kinder simpleminded,” said Herf, “but these boats coquetting
in front of Vesuvius always make me feel like getting a move on
somewhere.... I think I’ll be getting along out of here in a couple of
weeks.”
“But Jimmy where are you going?” asked Roy. “Isnt this something new?”
“Hasnt Helena got something to say about that?” put in Alice.
Herf turned red. “Why should she?” he said sharply.
“I just found there was nothing in it for me,” he found himself saying
a little later.
“Oh we none of us know what we want,” burst out Martin. “That’s why
we’re such a peewee generation.”
“I’m beginning to learn a few of the things I dont want,” said Herf
quietly. “At least I’m beginning to have the nerve to admit to myself
how much I dislike all the things I dont want.”
“But it’s wonderful,” cried Alice, “throwing away a career for an
ideal.”
“Excuse me,” said Herf pushing back his chair. In the toilet he looked
himself in the eye in the wavy lookingglass.
“Dont talk,” he whispered. “What you talk about you never do....” His
face had a drunken look. He filled the hollow of his two hands with
water and washed it. At the table they cheered when he sat down.
“Yea for the wanderer,” said Roy.
Alice was eating cheese on long slices of pear. “I think it’s
thrilling,” she said.
“Roy is bored,” shouted Martin Schiff after a silence. His face with
its big eyes and bone glasses swam through the smoke of the restaurant
like a fish in a murky aquarium.
“I was just thinking of all the places I had to go to look for a job
tomorrow.”
“You want a job?” Martin went on melodramatically. “You want to sell
your soul to the highest bidder?”
“Jez if that’s all you had to sell....” moaned Roy.
“It’s my morning sleep that worries me.... Still it is lousy putting
over your personality and all that stuff. It’s not your ability to do
the work it’s your personality.”
“Prostitutes are the only honest ...”
“But good Lord a prostitute sells her personality.”
“She only rents it.”
“But Roy is bored.... You are all bored.... I’m boring you all.”
“We’re having the time of our lives,” insisted Alice. “Now Martin we
wouldn’t be sitting here if we were bored, would we?... I wish Jimmy
would tell us where he expected to go on his mysterious travels.”
“No, you are saying to yourselves what a bore he is, what use is he to
society? He has no money, he has no pretty wife, no good conversation,
no tips on the stockmarket. He’s a useless fardel on society.... The
artist is a fardel.”
“That’s not so Martin.... You’re talking through your hat.”
Martin waved an arm across the table. Two wineglasses upset. A
scaredlooking waiter laid a napkin over the red streams. Without
noticing, Martin went on, “It’s all pretense.... When you talk you talk
with the little lying tips of your tongues. You dont dare lay bare your
real souls.... But now you must listen to me for the last time.... For
the last time I say.... Come here waiter you too, lean over and look
into the black pit of the soul of man. And Herf is bored. You are all
bored, bored flies buzzing on the windowpane. You think the windowpane
is the room. You dont know what there is deep black inside.... I am
very drunk. Waiter another bottle.”
“Say hold your horses Martin.... I dont know if we can pay the bill as
it is.... We dont need any more.”
“Waiter another bottle of wine and four grappas.”
“Well it looks as if we were in for a rough night,” groaned Roy.
“If there is need my body can pay.... Alice take off your mask....
You are a beautiful little child behind your mask.... Come with me to
the edge of the pit.... O I am too drunk to tell you what I feel.” He
brushed off his tortoiseshell glasses and crumpled them in his hand,
the lenses shot glittering across the floor. The gaping waiter ducked
among the tables after them.
For a moment Martin sat blinking. The rest of them looked at each
other. Then he shot to his feet. “I see your little smirking
supercil-superciliosity. No wonder we can no longer have decent
dinners, decent conversations.... I must prove my atavistic sincerity,
prove....” He started pulling at his necktie.
“Say Martin old man, pipe down,” Roy was reiterating.
“Nobody shall stop me.... I must run into the sincerity of black....
I must run to the end of the black wharf on the East River and throw
myself off.”
Herf ran after him through the restaurant to the street. At the door he
threw off his coat, at the corner his vest.
“Gosh he runs like a deer,” panted Roy staggering against Herf’s
shoulder. Herf picked up the coat and vest, folded them under his arm
and went back to the restaurant. They were pale when they sat down on
either side of Alice.
“Will he really do it? Will he really do it?” she kept asking.
“No of course not,” said Roy. “He’ll go home; he was making fools of us
because we played up to him.”
“Suppose he really did it?”
“I’d hate to see him.... I like him very much. We named our kid after
him,” said Jimmy gloomily. “But if he really feels so terribly unhappy
what right have we to stop him?”
“Oh Jimmy,” sighed Alice, “do order some coffee.”
Outside a fire engine moaned throbbed roared down the street. Their
hands were cold. They sipped the coffee without speaking.
* * * * *
Francie came out of the side door of the Five and Ten into the six
o’clock goinghome end of the day crowd. Dutch Robertson was waiting for
her. He was smiling; there was color in his face.
“Why Dutch what’s ...” The words stuck in her throat.
“Dont you like it...?” They walked on down Fourteenth, a blur of faces
streamed by on either side of them. “Everything’s jake Francie,” he was
saying quietly. He wore a light gray spring overcoat and a light felt
hat to match. New red pointed Oxfords glowed on his feet. “How do you
like the outfit? I said to myself it wasnt no use tryin to do anythin
without a tony outside.”
“But Dutch how did you get it?”
“Stuck up a guy in a cigar store. Jez it was a cinch.”
“Ssh dont talk so loud; somebody might hear ye.”
“They wouldnt know what I was talkin about.”
* * * * *
Mr. Densch sat in the corner of Mrs. Densch’s Louis XIV boudoir. He
sat all hunched up on a little gilt pinkbacked chair with his potbelly
resting on his knees. In his green sagging face the pudgy nose and the
folds that led from the flanges of the nostrils to the corners of the
wide mouth made two triangles. He had a pile of telegrams in his hand,
on top a decoded message on a blue slip that read: Deficit Hamburg
branch approximately $500,000; signed Heintz. Everywhere he looked
about the little room crowded with fluffy glittery objects he saw the
purple letters of _approximately_ jiggling in the air. Then he noticed
that the maid, a pale mulatto in a ruffled cap, had come into the room
and was staring at him. His eye lit on a large flat cardboard box she
held in her hand.
“What’s that?”
“Somethin for the misses sir.”
“Bring it here.... Hickson’s ... and what does she want to be buying
more dresses for will you tell me that.... Hickson’s.... Open it up. If
it looks expensive I’ll send it back.”
The maid gingerly pulled off a layer of tissuepaper, uncovering a peach
and peagreen evening dress.
Mr. Densch got to his feet spluttering, “She must think the war’s still
on.... Tell em we will not receive it. Tell em there’s no such party
livin here.”
The maid picked up the box with a toss of the head and went out with
her nose in the air. Mr. Densch sat down in the little chair and began
looking over the telegrams again.
“Ann-ee, Ann-ee,” came a shrill voice from the inner room; this was
followed by a head in a lace cap shaped like a libertycap and a big
body in a shapeless ruffled negligée. “Why J. D. what are you doing
here at this time of the morning? I’m waiting for my hairdresser.”
“It’s very important.... I just had a cable from Heintz. Serena my
dear, Blackhead and Densch is in a very bad way on both sides of the
water.”
“Yes ma’am,” came the maid’s voice from behind him.
He gave his shoulders a shrug and walked to the window. He felt tired
and sick and heavy with flesh. An errand boy on a bicycle passed along
the street; he was laughing and his cheeks were pink. Densch saw
himself, felt himself for a second hot and slender running bareheaded
down Pine Street years ago catching the girls’ ankles in the corner of
his eye. He turned back into the room. The maid had gone.
“Serena,” he began, “cant you understand the seriousness...? It’s this
slump. And on top of it all the bean market has gone to hell. It’s ruin
I tell you....”
“Well my dear I dont see what you expect me to do about it.”
“Economize ... economize. Look where the price of rubber’s gone to....
That dress from Hickson’s....”
“Well you wouldnt have me going to the Blackhead’s party looking like a
country schoolteacher, would you?”
Mr. Densch groaned and shook his head. “O you wont understand; probably
there wont be any party.... Look Serena there’s no nonsense about
this.... I want you to have a trunk packed so that we can sail any
day.... I need a rest. I’m thinking of going to Marienbad for the
cure.... It’ll do you good too.”
Her eye suddenly caught his. All the little wrinkles on her face
deepened; the skin under her eyes was like the skin of a shrunken toy
balloon. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder and was
puckering his lips to kiss her when suddenly she flared up.
“I wont have you meddling between me and my dressmakers.... I wont have
it ... I wont have it....”
“Oh have it your own way.” He left the room with his head hunched
between his thick sloping shoulders.
“Ann-ee!”
“Yes ma’am.” The maid came back into the room.
Mrs. Densch had sunk down in the middle of a little spindlelegged sofa.
Her face was green. “Annie please get me that bottle of sweet spirits
of ammonia and a little water.... And Annie you can call up Hickson’s
and tell them that that dress was sent back through a mistake of ... of
the butler’s and please to send it right back as I’ve got to wear it
tonight.”
* * * * *
Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit ... right to life liberty
and.... A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South
Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against
the night. “By Jesus I admit that I’m stumped,” he says aloud. All
these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed
him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows
falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual
nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified
by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold
dress, Ellie made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from
every window. And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the
door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks
and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold
of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous
reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your
sanity you’ve got to do one of two things.... Please mister where’s the
door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block ... one of
two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in
a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life
fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right,
Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly.
There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith
in words.
* * * * *
“How do you do Mr. Goldstein?” the reporter breezily chanted as he
squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the
cigar store. “My name’s Brewster.... I’m writing up the crime wave for
the _News_.”
Mr. Goldstein was a larvashaped man with a hooked nose a little
crooked in a gray face, behind which pink attentive ears stood out
unexpectedly. He looked at the reporter out of suspicious screwedup
eyes.
“If you’d be so good I’d like to have your story of last night’s little
... misadventure ...”
“Vont get no story from me young man. Vat vill you do but print it so
that other boys and goils vill get the same idear.”
“It’s too bad you feel that way Mr. Goldstein ... Will you give me a
Robert Burns please...? Publicity it seems to me is as necessary as
ventilation.... It lets in fresh air.” The reporter bit off the end
of the cigar, lit it, and stood looking thoughtfully at Mr. Goldstein
through a swirling ring of blue smoke. “You see Mr. Goldstein it’s
this way,” he began impressively. “We are handling this matter from
the human interest angle ... pity and tears ... you understand. A
photographer was on his way out here to get your photograph.... I bet
you it would increase your volume of business for the next couple of
weeks.... I suppose I’ll have to phone him not to come now.”
“Well this guy,” began Mr. Goldstein abruptly, “he’s a welldressed
lookin feller, new spring overcoat an all that and he comes in to buy
a package o Camels.... ‘A nice night,’ he says openin the package an
takin out a cigarette to smoke it. Then I notices the goil with him had
a veil on.”
“Then she didnt have bobbed hair?”
“All I seen was a kind o mournin veil. The foist thing I knew she was
behind the counter an had a gun stuck in my ribs an began talkin ...
you know kinder kiddin like ... and afore I knew what to think the
guy’d cleaned out the cashregister an says to me, ‘Got any cash in your
jeans Buddy?’ I’ll tell ye I was sweatin some ...”
“And that’s all?”
“Sure by the time I’d got hold of a cop they vere off to hell an gone.”
“How much did they get?”
“Oh about fifty berries an six dollars off me.”
“Was the girl pretty?”
“I dunno, maybe she was. I’d like to smashed her face in. They ought
to make it the electric chair for those babies.... Aint no security
nowhere. Vy should anybody voirk if all you’ve got to do is get a gun
an stick up your neighbors?”
“You say they were welldressed ... like welltodo people?”
“Yare.”
“I’m working on the theory that he’s a college boy and that she’s a
society girl and that they do it for sport.”
“The feller vas a hardlookin bastard.”
“Well there are hardlooking college men.... You wait for the story
called ‘The Gilded Bandits’ in next Sunday’s paper Mr. Goldstein....
You take the _News_ dont you?”
Mr. Goldstein shook his head.
“I’ll send you a copy anyway.”
“I want to see those babies convicted, do you understand? If there’s
anythin I can do I sure vill do it ... Aint no security no more.... I
dont care about no Sunday supplement publicity.”
“Well the photographer’ll be right along. I’m sure you’ll consent
to pose Mr. Goldstein.... Well thank you very much.... Good day Mr.
Goldstein.”
Mr. Goldstein suddenly produced a shiny new revolver from under the
counter and pointed it at the reporter.
“Hay go easy with that.”
Mr. Goldstein laughed a sardonic laugh. “I’m ready for em next time
they come,” he shouted after the reporter who was already making for
the Subway.
* * * * *
“Our business, my dear Mrs. Herf,” declaimed Mr. Harpsicourt, looking
sweetly in her eyes and smiling his gray Cheshire cat smile, “is to
roll ashore on the wave of fashion the second before it breaks, like
riding a surfboard.”
Ellen was delicately digging with her spoon into half an alligator
pear; she kept her eyes on her plate, her lips a little parted; she
felt cool and slender in the tightfitting darkblue dress, shyly alert
in the middle of the tangle of sideways glances and the singsong modish
talk of the restaurant.
“It’s a knack that I can prophesy in you more than in any girl, and
more charmingly than any girl I’ve ever known.”
“Prophesy?” asked Ellen, looking up at him laughing.
“You shouldnt pick up an old man’s word.... I’m expressing myself
badly.... That’s always a dangerous sign. No, you understand so
perfectly, though you disdain it a little ... admit that.... What we
need on such a periodical, that I’m sure you could explain it to me far
better.”
“Of course what you want to do is make every reader feel Johnny on the
spot in the center of things.”
“As if she were having lunch right here at the Algonquin.”
“Not today but tomorrow,” added Ellen.
Mr. Harpsicourt laughed his creaky little laugh and tried to look deep
among the laughing gold specs in her gray eyes. Blushing she looked
down into the gutted half of an alligator pear in her plate. Like the
sense of a mirror behind her she felt the smart probing glances of men
and women at the tables round about.
The pancakes were comfortably furry against his gin-bitten tongue.
Jimmy Herf sat in Child’s in the middle of a noisy drunken company.
Eyes, lips, evening dresses, the smell of bacon and coffee blurred and
throbbed about him. He ate the pancakes painstakingly, called for more
coffee. He felt better. He had been afraid he was going to feel sick.
He began reading the paper. The print swam and spread like Japanese
flowers. Then it was sharp again, orderly, running in a smooth black
and white paste over his orderly black and white brain:
Misguided youth again took its toll of tragedy amid the
tinsel gayeties of Coney Island fresh painted for the
season when plainclothes men arrested “Dutch” Robinson and
a girl companion alleged to be the Flapper Bandit. The pair
are accused of committing more than a score of holdups
in Brooklyn and Queens. The police had been watching the
couple for some days. They had rented a small kitchenette
apartment at 7356 Seacroft Avenue. Suspicion was first
aroused when the girl, about to become a mother, was taken
in an ambulance to the Canarsie Presbyterian Hospital.
Hospital attendants were surprised by Robinson’s seemingly
endless supply of money. The girl had a private room,
expensive flowers and fruit were sent in to her daily, and
a well-known physician was called into consultation at the
man’s request. When it came to the point of registering
the name of the baby girl the young man admitted to the
physician that they were not married. One of the hospital
attendants, noticing that the woman answered to the
description published in the _Evening Times_ of the flapper
bandit and her pal, telephoned the police. Plainclothes men
sleuthed the couple for some days after they had returned
to the apartment on Seacroft Avenue and this afternoon made
the arrests.
The arrest of the flapper bandit ...