darkeyed Jewish girl at the next table was making a face at him. He
nodded and took off an imaginary hat. “I thank thee lovely nymph,” he
said thickly and began eating the biscuit.
“Quit dat djer hear?” the young man who sat beside her, who looked like
a prizefighter’s trainer, bellowed in her ear.
The people at Herf’s table all had their mouths open laughing. He
picked up his check, vaguely said good night and walked out. The clock
over the cashier’s desk said three o’clock. Outside a rowdy scattering
of people still milled about Columbus Circle. A smell of rainy
pavements mingled with the exhausts of cars and occasionally there was
a whiff of wet earth and sprouting grass from the Park. He stood a long
time on the corner not knowing which way to go. These nights he hated
to go home. He felt vaguely sorry that the Flapper Bandit and her pal
had been arrested. He wished they could have escaped. He had looked
forward to reading their exploits every day in the papers. Poor devils,
he thought. And with a newborn baby too.
Meanwhile a rumpus had started behind him in Child’s. He went back
and looked through the window across the griddle where sizzled three
abandoned buttercakes. The waiters were struggling to eject a tall
man in a dress suit. The thickjawed friend of the Jewish girl who had
thrown the biscuit was being held back by his friends. Then the bouncer
elbowed his way through the crowd. He was a small broadshouldered man
with deepset tired monkey eyes. Calmly and without enthusiasm he took
hold of the tall man. In a flash he had him shooting through the door.
Out on the pavement the tall man looked about him dazedly and tried to
straighten his collar. At that moment a police-wagon drove up jingling.
Two policemen jumped out and quickly arrested three Italians who stood
chatting quietly on the corner. Herf and the tall man in the dress suit
looked at each other, almost spoke and walked off greatly sobered in
opposite directions.
V. The Burthen of Nineveh
_Seeping in red twilight out of the Gulf Stream fog,
throbbing brassthroat that howls through the stiff-fingered
streets, prying open glazed eyes of skyscrapers, splashing
red lead on the girdered thighs of the five bridges,
teasing caterwauling tugboats into heat under the toppling
smoketrees of the harbor._
_Spring puckering our mouths, spring giving us gooseflesh
grows gigantic out of the droning of sirens, crashes with
enormous scaring din through the halted traffic, between
attentive frozen tiptoe blocks._
Mr. Densch with the collar of his woolly ulster up round his ears and
a big English cap pulled down far over his eyes, walked nervously back
and forth on the damp boat deck of the Volendam. He looked out through
a drizzly rain at the gray wharf houses and the waterfront buildings
etched against a sky of inconceivable bitterness. A ruined man, a
ruined man, he kept whispering to himself. At last the ship’s whistle
boomed out for the third time. Mr. Densch, his fingers in his ears,
stood screened by a lifeboat watching the rift of dirty water between
the ship’s side and the wharf widen, widen. The deck trembled under
his feet as the screws bit into the current. Gray like a photograph
the buildings of Manhattan began sliding by. Below decks the band
was playing _O Titin-e Titin-e_. Red ferryboats, carferries, tugs,
sandscows, lumberschooners, tramp steamers drifted between him and the
steaming towering city that gathered itself into a pyramid and began to
sink mistily into the browngreen water of the bay.
Mr. Densch went below to his stateroom. Mrs. Densch in a cloche hat
hung with a yellow veil was crying quietly with her head on a basket of
fruit. “Dont Serena,” he said huskily. “Dont.... We like Marienbad....
We need a rest. Our position isnt so hopeless. I’ll go and send
Blackhead a radio.... After all it’s his stubbornness and rashness
that brought the firm to ... to this. That man thinks he’s a king on
earth.... This’ll ... this’ll get under his skin. If curses can kill
I’ll be a dead man tomorrow.” To his surprise he found the gray drawn
lines of his face cracking into a smile. Mrs. Densch lifted her head
and opened her mouth to speak to him, but the tears got the better
of her. He looked at himself in the glass, squared his shoulders and
adjusted his cap. “Well Serena,” he said with a trace of jauntiness in
his voice, “this is the end of my business career.... I’ll go send that
radio.”
* * * * *
Mother’s face swoops down and kisses him; his hands clutch her dress,
and she has gone leaving him in the dark, leaving a frail lingering
fragrance in the dark that makes him cry. Little Martin lies tossing
within the iron bars of his crib. Outside dark, and beyond walls and
outside again the horrible great dark of grownup people, rumbling,
jiggling, creeping in chunks through the windows, putting fingers
through the crack in the door. From outside above the roar of wheels
comes a strangling wail clutching his throat. Pyramids of dark piled
above him fall crumpling on top of him. He yells, gagging between
yells. Nounou walks towards the crib along a saving gangplank of light
“Dont you be scared ... that aint nothin.” Her black face grins at him,
her black hand straightens the covers. “Just a fire engine passin....
You wouldn’t be sceered of a fire engine.”
* * * * *
Ellen leaned back in the taxi and closed her eyes for a second. Not
even the bath and the halfhour’s nap had washed out the fagging memory
of the office, the smell of it, the chirruping of typewriters, the
endlessly repeated phrases, faces, typewritten sheets. She felt very
tired; she must have rings under her eyes. The taxi had stopped. There
was a red light in the traffic tower ahead. Fifth Avenue was jammed
to the curbs with taxis, limousines, motorbusses. She was late; she
had left her watch at home. The minutes hung about her neck leaden
as hours. She sat up on the edge of the seat, her fists so tightly
clenched that she could feel through her gloves her sharp nails digging
into the palms of her hands. At last the taxi jerked forward, there was
a gust of exhausts and whir of motors, the clot of traffic began moving
up Murray Hill. At a corner she caught sight of a clock. Quarter of
eight. The traffic stopped again, the brakes of the taxi shrieked, she
was thrown forward on the seat. She leaned back with her eyes closed,
the blood throbbing in her temples. All her nerves were sharp steel
jangled wires cutting into her. “What does it matter?” she kept asking
herself. “He’ll wait. I’m in no hurry to see him. Let’s see, how many
blocks?... Less than twenty, eighteen.” It must have been to keep from
going crazy people invented numbers. The multiplication table better
than Coué as a cure for jangled nerves. Probably that’s what old Peter
Stuyvesant thought, or whoever laid the city out in numbers. She was
smiling to herself. The taxi had started moving again.
George Baldwin was walking back and forth in the lobby of the hotel,
taking short puffs of a cigarette. Now and then he glanced at the
clock. His whole body was screwed up taut like a high violinstring. He
was hungry and full up with things he wanted to say; he hated waiting
for people. When she walked in, cool and silky and smiling, he wanted
to go up to her and hit her in the face.
“George do you realize that it’s only because numbers are so cold and
emotionless that we’re not all crazy?” she said giving him a little pat
on the arm.
“Fortyfive minutes waiting is enough to drive anybody crazy, that’s all
I know.”
“I must explain it. It’s a system. I thought it all up coming up in
the taxi.... You go in and order anything you like. I’m going to
the ladies’ room a minute.... And please have me a Martini. I’m dead
tonight, just dead.”
“You poor little thing, of course I will.... And dont be long please.”
His knees were weak under him, he felt like melting ice as he went into
the gilt ponderously ornamented diningroom. Good lord Baldwin you’re
acting like a hobbledehoy of seventeen ... after all these years too.
Never get anywhere that way.... “Well Joseph what are you going to give
us to eat tonight? I’m hungry.... But first you can get Fred to make
the best Martini cocktail he ever made in his life.”
“Tres bien monsieur,” said the longnosed Roumanian waiter and handed
him the menu with a flourish.
Ellen stayed a long time looking in the mirror, dabbing a little
superfluous powder off her face, trying to make up her mind. She kept
winding up a hypothetical dollself and setting it in various positions.
Tiny gestures ensued, acted out on various model stages. Suddenly she
turned away from the mirror with a shrug of her toowhite shoulders and
hurried to the diningroom.
“Oh George I’m starved, simply starved.”
“So am I” he said in a crackling voice. “And Elaine I’ve got news for
you,” he went on hurriedly as if he were afraid she’d interrupt him.
“Cecily has consented to a divorce. We’re going to rush it through
quietly in Paris this summer. Now what I want to know is, will you...?”
She leaned over and patted his hand that grasped the edge of the table.
“George lets eat our dinner first.... We’ve got to be sensible. God
knows we’ve messed things up enough in the past both of us.... Let’s
drink to the crime wave.” The smooth infinitesimal foam of the cocktail
was soothing in her tongue and throat, glowed gradually warmly through
her. She looked at him laughing with sparkling eyes. He drank his at a
gulp.
“By gad Elaine,” he said flaming up helplessly, “you’re the most
wonderful thing in the world.”
Through dinner she felt a gradual icy coldness stealing through her
like novocaine. She had made up her mind. It seemed as if she had set
the photograph of herself in her own place, forever frozen into a
single gesture. An invisible silk band of bitterness was tightening
round her throat, strangling. Beyond the plates, the ivory pink lamp,
the broken pieces of bread, his face above the blank shirtfront jerked
and nodded; the flush grew on his cheeks; his nose caught the light
now on one side, now on the other, his taut lips moved eloquently over
his yellow teeth. Ellen felt herself sitting with her ankles crossed,
rigid as a porcelain figure under her clothes, everything about her
seemed to be growing hard and enameled, the air bluestreaked with
cigarettesmoke, was turning to glass. His wooden face of a marionette
waggled senselessly in front of her. She shuddered and hunched up her
shoulders.
“What’s the matter, Elaine?” he burst out. She lied:
“Nothing George.... Somebody walked over my grave I guess.”
“Couldnt I get you a wrap or something?”
She shook her head.
“Well what about it?” he said as they got up from the table.
“What?” she asked smiling. “After Paris?”
“I guess I can stand it if you can George,” she said quietly.
He was waiting for her, standing at the open door of a taxi. She saw
him poised spry against the darkness in a tan felt hat and a light tan
overcoat, smiling like some celebrity in the rotogravure section of a
Sunday paper. Mechanically she squeezed the hand that helped her into
the cab.
“Elaine,” he said shakily, “life’s going to mean something to me
now.... God if you knew how empty life had been for so many years. I’ve
been like a tin mechanical toy, all hollow inside.”
“Let’s not talk about mechanical toys,” she said in a strangled voice.
“No let’s talk about our happiness,” he shouted.
Inexorably his lips closed on to hers. Beyond the shaking glass window
of the taxi, like someone drowning, she saw out of a corner of an eye
whirling faces, streetlights, zooming nickleglinting wheels.
* * * * *
The old man in the checked cap sits on the brownstone stoop with his
face in his hands. With the glare of Broadway in their backs there is
a continual flickering of people past him towards the theaters down
the street. The old man is sobbing through his fingers in a sour reek
of gin. Once in a while he raises his head and shouts hoarsely, “I
cant, dont you see I cant?” The voice is inhuman like the splitting of
a plank. Footsteps quicken. Middleaged people look the other way. Two
girls giggle shrilly as they look at him. Streeturchins nudging each
other peer in and out through the dark crowd. “Bum Hootch.” “He’ll get
his when the cop on the block comes by.” “Prohibition liquor.” The
old man lifts his wet face out of his hands, staring out of sightless
bloodyrimmed eyes. People back off, step on the feet of the people
behind them. Like splintering wood the voice comes out of him. “Don’t
you see I cant...? I cant ... I cant.”
* * * * *
When Alice Sheffield dropped into the stream of women going through
the doors of Lord & Taylor’s and felt the close smell of stuffs in
her nostrils something went click in her head. First she went to the
glovecounter. The girl was very young and had long curved black lashes
and a pretty smile; they talked of permanent waves while Alice tried on
gray kids, white kids with a little fringe like a gauntlet. Before she
tried it on, the girl deftly powdered the inside of each glove out of a
longnecked wooden shaker. Alice ordered six pairs.
“Yes, Mrs. Roy Sheffield.... Yes I have a charge account, here’s my
card.... I’ll be having quite a lot of things sent.” And to herself
she said all the while: “Ridiculous how I’ve been going round in rags
all winter.... When the bill comes Roy’ll have to find some way of
paying it that’s all. Time he stopped mooning round anyway. I’ve paid
enough bills for him in my time, God knows.” Then she started looking
at fleshcolored silk stockings. She left the store her head still in a
whirl of long vistas of counters in a violet electric haze, of braided
embroidery and tassles and nasturtiumtinted silks; she had ordered two
summer dresses and an evening wrap.
At Maillard’s she met a tall blond Englishman with a coneshaped head
and pointed wisps of towcolored mustaches under his long nose.
“Oh Buck I’m having the grandest time. I’ve been going berserk in Lord
& Taylor’s. Do you know that it must be a year and a half since I’ve
bought any clothes?”
“Poor old thing,” he said as he motioned her to a table. “Tell me about
it.”
She let herself flop into a chair suddenly whimpering, “Oh Buck I’m so
tired of it all.... I dont know how much longer I can stand it.”
“Well you cant blame me.... You know what I want you to do....”
“Well suppose I did?”
“It’d be topping, we’d hit it off like anything.... But you must have a
bit of beef tea or something. You need picking up.” She giggled. “You
old dear that’s just what I do need.”
“Well how about making tracks for Calgary? I know a fellow there who’ll
give me a job I think.”
“Oh let’s go right away. I dont care about clothes or anything.... Roy
can send those things back to Lord & Taylor’s.... Got any money Buck?”
A flush started on his cheekbones and spread over his temples to his
flat irregular ears. “I confess, Al darling, that I havent a penny. I
can pay for lunch.”
“Oh hell I’ll cash a check; the account’s in both our names.”
“They’ll cash it for me at the Biltmore, they know me there. When we
get to Canada everything will be quite all right I can assure you. In
His Majesty’s Dominion, the name of Buckminster has rather more weight
than in the U.S.”
“Oh I know darling, it’s nothing but money in New York.”
When they were walking up Fifth Avenue she hooked her arm in his
suddenly. “O Buck I have the most horrible thing to tell you. It made
me deathly ill.... You know what I told you about the awful smell we
had in the apartment we thought was rats? This morning I met the woman
who lives on the ground floor.... O it makes me sick to think of it.
Her face was green as that bus.... It seems they’ve been having the
plumbing examined by an inspector.... They arrested the woman upstairs.
O it’s too disgusting. I cant tell you about it.... I’ll never go back
there. I’d die if I did.... There wasnt a drop of water in the house
all day yesterday.”
“What was the matter?”
“It’s too horrible.”
“Tell it to popper.”
“Buck they wont know you when you get back home to Orpen Manor.”
“But what was it?”
“There was a woman upstairs who did illegal operations, abortions....
That was what stopped up the plumbing.”
“Good God.”
“Somehow that’s the last straw.... And Roy sitting limp over his
damn paper in the middle of that stench with that horrible adenoid
expression on his face.”
“Poor little girl.”
“But Buck I couldn’t cash a check for more than two hundred.... It’ll
be an overdraft as it is. Will that get us to Calgary?”
“Not very comfortably.... There’s a man I know in Montreal who’ll give
me a job writing society notes.... Beastly thing to do, but I can use
an assumed name. Then we can trot along from there when we get a little
more spondulix as you call it.... How about cashing that check now?”
She stood waiting for him beside the information desk while he went to
get the tickets. She felt alone and tiny in the middle of the great
white vault of the station. All her life with Roy was going by her like
a movie reeled off backwards, faster and faster. Buck came back looking
happy and masterful, his hands full of greenbacks and railway tickets.
“No train till seven ten Al,” he said. “Suppose you go to the Palace
and leave me a seat at the boxoffice.... I’ll run up and fetch my kit.
Wont take a sec.... Here’s a fiver.” And he had gone, and she was
walking alone across Fortythird Street on a hot May afternoon. For some
reason she began to cry. People stared at her; she couldnt help it. She
walked on doggedly with the tears streaming down her face.
* * * * *
“Earthquake insurance, that’s what they calls it! A whole lot of good
it’ll do ’em when the anger of the Lord smokes out the city like you
would a hornet’s nest and he picks it up and shakes it like a cat
shakes a rat.... Earthquake insurance!”
Joe and Skinny wished that the man with whiskers like a bottlecleaner
who stood over their campfire mumbling and shouting would go away.
They didn’t know whether he was talking to them or to himself. They
pretended he wasnt there and went on nervously preparing to grill a
piece of ham on a gridiron made of an old umbrellaframe. Below them
beyond a sulphurgreen lace of budding trees was the Hudson going silver
with evening and the white palisade of apartment-houses of upper
Manhattan.
“Dont say nutten,” whispered Joe, making a swift cranking motion in the
region of his ear. “He’s nuts.”
Skinny had gooseflesh down the back, he felt his lips getting cold, he
wanted to run.
“That ham?” Suddenly the man addressed them in a purring benevolent
voice.
“Yessir,” said Joe shakily after a pause.
“Dont you know that the Lord God forbad his chillun to eat the flesh of
swine?” His voice went to its singsong mumbling and shouting. “Gabriel,
Brother Gabriel ... is it all right for these kids to eat ham?... Sure.
The angel Gabriel, he’s a good frien o mine see, he said it’s all right
this once if you dont do it no more.... Look out brother you’ll burn
it.” Skinny had got to his feet. “Sit down brother. I wont hurt you. I
understand kids. We like kids me an the Lord God.... Scared of me cause
I’m a tramp aint you? Well lemme tell you somethin, dont you never be
afraid of a tramp. Tramps wont hurt ye, they’re good people. The Lord
God was a tramp when he lived on earth. My buddy the angel Gabriel says
he’s been a tramp many a time.... Look I got some fried chicken an old
colored woman gave me.... O Lordy me!” groaning he sat down on a rock
beside the two boys.
“We was goin to play injuns, but now I guess we’ll play tramps,” said
Joe warming up a little. The tramp brought a newspaper package out of
the formless pocket of his weathergreened coat and began unwrapping it
carefully. A good smell began to come from the sizzling ham. Skinny
sat down again, still keeping as far away as he could without missing
anything. The tramp divided up his chicken and they began to eat
together.
“Gabriel old scout will you just look at that?” The tramp started
his singsong shouting that made the boys feel scared again. It was
beginning to get dark. The tramp was shouting with his mouth full
pointing with a drumstick towards the flickering checkerboard of lights
going on up Riverside Drive. “Juss set here a minute an look at her
Gabriel.... Look at the old bitch if you’ll pardon the expression.
Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long
God took to destroy the tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you
know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven
minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than
there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the
Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City an Brooklyn
an the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven seconds.... Say kiddo what’s your
name?” He dropped into his low purring voice and made a pass at Joe
with his drumstick.
“Joseph Cameron Parker.... We live in Union.”
“An what’s yours?”
“Antonio Camerone ... de guys call me Skinny. Dis guy’s my cousin. His
folks dey changed deir name to Parker, see?”
“Changing your name wont do no good ... they got all the aliases down
in the judgment book.... And verily I say unto you the Lord’s day is
at hand.... It was only yesterday that Gabriel says to me ‘Well Jonah,
shall we let her rip?’ an I says to him, ‘Gabriel ole scout think of
the women and children an the little babies that dont know no better.
If you shake it down with an earthquake an fire an brimstone from
heaven they’ll all be killed same as the rich people an sinners,’ and
he says to me, ‘All right Jonah old horse, have it your own way.... We
wont foreclose on em for a week or two.’ ... But it’s terrible to think
of, folks, the fire an brimstone an the earthquake an the tidal wave an
the tall buildins crashing together.”
Joe suddenly slapped Skinny on the back. “You’re it,” he said and ran
off. Skinny followed him stumbling along the narrow path among the
bushes. He caught up to him on the asphalt. “Jez, that guy’s nuts,” he
called.
“Shut up cant ye?” snapped Joe. He was peering back through the
bushes. They could still see the thin smoke of their little fire
against the sky. The tramp was out of sight. They could just hear his
voice calling, “Gabriel, Gabriel.” They ran on breathless towards the
regularly spaced safe arclights and the street.
Jimmy Herf stepped out from in front of the truck; the mudguard
just grazed the skirt of his raincoat. He stood a moment behind an
L stanchion while the icicle thawed out of his spine. The door of a
limousine suddenly opened in front of him and he heard a familiar voice
that he couldnt place.
“Jump in Meester ’Erf.... Can I take you somewhere?” As he stepped in
mechanically he noticed that he was stepping into a Rolls-Royce.
The stout redfaced man in a derby hat was Congo. “Sit down Meester
’Erf.... Very pleas’ to see you. Where were you going?”
“I wasnt going anywhere in particular.” “Come up to the house, I want
to show you someting. Ow are you today?”
“Oh fine; no I mean I’m in a rotten mess, but it’s all the same.”
“Tomorrow maybe I go to jail ... six mont’ ... but maybe not.” Congo
laughed in his throat and straightened carefully his artificial leg.
“So they’ve nailed you at last, Congo?”
“Conspiracy.... But no more Congo Jake, Meester ’Erf. Call me Armand.
I’m married now; Armand Duval, Park Avenue.”
“How about the Marquis des Coulommiers?”
“That’s just for the trade.”
“So things look pretty good do they?”
Congo nodded. “If I go to Atlanta which I ’ope not, in six mont’ I come
out of jail a millionaire.... Meester ’Erf if you need money, juss say
the word.... I lend you tousand dollars. In five years even you pay it
back. I know you.”
“Thanks, it’s not exactly money I need, that’s the hell of it.”
“How’s your wife?... She’s so beautiful.”
“We’re getting a divorce.... She served the papers on me this
morning.... That’s all I was waiting in this goddam town for.”
Congo bit his lips. Then he tapped Jimmy gently on the knee with his
forefinger. “In a minute we’ll get to the ’ouse.... I give you one very
good drink.” ... “Yes wait”, Congo shouted to the chauffeur as he walked
with a stately limp, leaning on a goldknobbed cane, into the streaky
marble hallway of the apartmenthouse. As they went up in the elevator
he said, “Maybe you stay to dinner.” “I’m afraid I cant tonight, Con
... Armand.”