Part 19

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.”

“It does you plutocrats good now and then to see how the other half travels.... Maybe it’ll make you induce some of your little playmates down at Tammany Hall to stop squabbling and give us wageslaves a little transportation.... cristamighty I could tell em a thing or two.... My idea’s for a series of endless moving platforms under Fifth Avenue.”

“Did you cook that up when you were in hospital Phil?”

“I cooked a whole lot of things up while I was in hospital.”

“Look here lets get out at Grand Central and walk. I cant stand this.... I’m not used to it.”

“Sure ... I’ll phone Elsie I’ll be a little late to dinner.... Not often I get to see you nowadays George ... Gee it’s like the old days.”

In a tangled clot of men and women, arms, legs, hats aslant on perspiring necks, they were pushed out on the platform. They walked up Lexington Avenue quiet in the claretmisted afterglow.

“But Phil how did you come to step out in front of a truck that way?”

“Honestly George I dunno.... The last I remember is craning my neck to look at a terribly pretty girl went by in a taxicab and there I was drinking icewater out of a teapot in the hospital.”

“Shame on you Phil at your age.”

“Cristamighty dont I know it? But I’m not the only one.”