Second Section (continued 3)

VI. Five Statutory Questions

They pair off hurriedly. Standing Up in Cars Strictly Forbidden. The climbing chain grates, grips the cogs; jerkily the car climbs the incline out of the whirring lights, out of the smell of crowds and steamed corn and peanuts, up jerkily grating up through the tall night of September meteors.

Sea, marshsmell, the lights of an Iron Steamboat leaving the dock. Across wide violet indigo a lighthouse blinks. Then the swoop. The sea does a flipflop, the lights soar. Her hair in his mouth, his hand in her ribs, thighs grind together.

The wind of their falling has snatched their yells, they jerk rattling upwards through the tangled girderstructure. Swoop. Soar. Bubbling lights in a sandwich of darkness and sea. Swoop. Keep Your Seats for the Next Ride.

“Come on in Joe, I’ll see if the ole lady kin git us some grub.”

“Very kind of you ... er ... I’m not ... er ... exactly dressed to meet a lady you see.”

“Oh she wont care. She’s just my mother; sit down, I’ll git her.”

Harland sat down on a chair beside the door in the dark kitchen and put his hands on his knees. He sat staring at his hands; they were red and dirtgrained and trembling, his tongue was like a nutmeg grater from the cheap whiskey he had been drinking the last week, his whole body felt numb and sodden and sour. He stared at his hands.

Joe O’Keefe came back into the kitchen. “She’s loin down. She says there’s some soup on the back of the stove.... Here ye are. That’ll make a man of ye.... Joe you ought to been where I was last night. Went out to this here Seaside Inn to take a message to the chief about somebody tippin him off that they was going to close the market....

“I tell you kid,” said Joe Harland, “it gets em all sooner or later....”

“Hay there eat up strong. You aint eaten enough.”

“I cant eat very well.”

“Sure you can.... Say Joe what’s the dope about this war business?”

“I guess they are in for it this time.... I’ve known it was coming ever since the Agadir incident.”

“Jez I like to see somebody wallop the pants off England after the way they wont give home rule to Ireland.”

“We’d have to help em.... Anyway I dont see how this can last long. The men who control international finance wont allow it. After all it’s the banker who holds the purse strings.”

“We wouldn’t come to the help of England, no sir, not after the way they acted in Ireland and in the Revolution and in the Civil War....”

“Joey you’re getting all choked up with that history you’re reading up in the public library every night.... You follow the stock quotations and keep on your toes and dont let em fool you with all this newspaper talk about strikes and upheavals and socialism.... I’d like to see you make good Joey.... Well I guess I’d better be going.”

“Naw stick around awhile, we’ll open a bottle of glue.” They heard a heavy stumbling in the passage outside the kitchen.

“Whossat?”

“Zat you Joe?” A big towheaded boy with lumpy shoulders

“What the hell do you think this is?... This is my kid brother Mike.”

“Well what about it?” Mike stood swaying with his chin on his chest. His shoulders bulged against the low ceiling of the kitchen.

“Aint he a whale? But for crissake Mike aint I told you not to come home when you was drinkin?... He’s loible to tear the house down.”

“I got to come home sometime aint I? Since you got to be a wardheeler Joey you been pickin on me worsen the old man. I’m glad I aint goin to stay round this goddam town long. It’s enough to drive a feller cookoo. If I can get on some kind of a tub that puts to sea before the Golden Gate by God I’m going to do it.”

“Hell I dont mind you stayin here. It’s just that I dont like you raisin hell all the time, see?”

“I’m goin to do what I please, git me?”

“You get outa here, Mike.... Come back home when you’re sober.”

“I’d like to see you put me outa here, git me? I’d like to see you put me outa here.”

Harland got to his feet. “Well I’m going,” he said. “Got to see if I can get that job.”

Mike was advancing across the kitchen with his fists clenched. Joey’s jaw set; he picked up a chair.

“I’ll crown you with it.”

“O saints and martyrs cant a woman have no peace in her own house?” A small grayhaired woman ran screaming between them; she had lustrous black eyes set far apart in a face shrunken like a last year’s apple; she beat the air with worktwisted hands. “Shut yer traps both of ye, always cursing an fightin round the house like there warnt no God.... Mike you go upstairs an lay down on your bed till yer sober.”

“I was jus tellin him that,” said Joey.

She turned on Harland, her voice like the screech of chalk

Harland looked at Joey with a little sour smile, shrugged his shoulders and went out. “Charwoman,” he muttered as he stumbled with stiff aching legs along the dusty street of darkfaced brick houses.

The sultry afternoon sun was like a blow on his back. Voices in his ears of maids, charwomen, cooks, stenographers, secretaries: Yes sir, Mr. Harland, Thank you sir Mr. Harland. Oh sir thank you sir so much sir Mr. Harland sir....

Red buzzing in her eyelids the sunlight wakes her, she sinks back into purpling cottonwool corridors of sleep, wakes again, turns over yawning, pulls her knees up to her chin to pull the drowsysweet cocoon tighter about her. A truck jangles shatteringly along the street, the sun lays hot stripes on her back. She yawns desperately and twists herself over and lies wide awake with her hands under her head staring at the ceiling. From far away through streets and housewalls the long moan of a steamboat whistle penetrates to her like a blunt sprout of crabgrass nudging through gravel. Ellen sits up shaking her head to get rid of a fly blundering about her face. The fly flashes and vanishes in the sunlight, but somewhere in her there lingers a droning pang, unaccountable, something left over from last night’s bitter thoughts. But she is happy and wide awake and it’s early. She gets up and wanders round the room in her nightgown.

Where the sun hits it the hardwood floor is warm to the soles of her feet. Sparrows chirp on the windowledge. From upstairs comes the sound of a sewingmachine. When she gets out of the bath her body feels smoothwhittled and tense; she rubs herself with a towel, telling off the hours of the long day ahead; take a walk through junky littered downtown streets to that pier on the East River where they pile

She dresses in a hurry and goes out, walks down Fifth Avenue and east along Eighth Street without looking to the right or left. The sun already hot simmers slatily on the pavements, on plateglass, on dustmarbled enameled signs. Men’s and women’s faces as they pass her are rumpled and gray like pillows that have been too much slept on. After crossing Lafayette Street roaring with trucks and delivery wagons there is a taste of dust in her mouth, particles of grit crunch between her teeth. Further east she passes pushcarts; men are wiping off the marble counters of softdrink stands, a grindorgan fills the street with shiny jostling coils of the Blue Danube, acrid pungence spreads from a picklestand. In Tompkins Square yelling children mill about the soggy asphalt. At her feet a squirming heap of small boys, dirty torn shirts, slobbering mouths, punching, biting, scratching; a squalid smell like moldy bread comes from them. Ellen all of a sudden feels her knees weak under her. She turns and walks back the way she came.

The sun is heavy like his arm across her back, strokes her bare forearm the way his fingers stroke her, it’s his breath against her cheek.

“Nothing but the five statutory questions,” said Ellen to the rawboned man with big sagging eyes like oysters into whose long shirtfront she was talking.

“And so the decree is granted?” he asked solemnly.

“Surely in an uncontested ...”

“Well I’m very sorry to hear it as an old family friend of both parties.”

“Look here Dick, honestly I’m very fond of Jojo. I owe him a great deal.... He’s a very fine person in many ways, but it absolutely had to be.”

“You mean there is somebody else?”

She looked up at him with bright eyes and half nodded.

“Oh but divorce is a very serious step my dear young lady.”

“Oh not so serious as all that.”

They saw Harry Goldweiser coming towards them across the big walnut paneled room. She suddenly raised her voice. “They say that this battle of the Marne is going to end the war.”

Harry Goldweiser took her hand between his two pudgy-palmed hands and bowed over it. “It’s very charming of you Elaine to come and keep a lot of old midsummer bachelors from boring each other to death. Hello Snow old man, how’s things?”

“Yes how is it we have the pleasure of still finding you here?”

“Oh various things have held me.... Anyway I hate summer resorts.” “Nowhere prettier than Long Beach anyway.... Why Bar Harbor, I wouldnt go to Bar Harbor if you gave me a million ... a cool million.”

Mr. Snow let out a gruff sniff. “Seems to me I’ve heard you been going into the realestate game down there, Goldweiser.”

“I bought myself a cottage that’s all. It’s amazing you cant even buy yourself a cottage without every newsboy on Times Square knowing about it. Let’s go in and eat; my sister’ll be right here.” A dumpy woman in a spangled dress came in after they had sat down to table in the big antlerhung diningroom; she was pigeonbreasted and had a sallow skin.

“Oh Miss Oglethorpe I’m so glad to see you,” she twittered in a little voice like a parrakeet’s. “I’ve often seen you and thought you were the loveliest thing.... I did my best to get Harry to bring you up to see me.”

“This is my sister Rachel,” said Goldweiser to Ellen without getting up. “She keeps house for me.”

“I wish you’d help me, Snow, to induce Miss Oglethorpe to take that part in The Zinnia Girl.... Honest it was just written for you.”

“But it’s such a small part ...”

“It’s not a lead exactly, but from the point of view of your reputation as a versatile and exquisite artist, it’s the best thing in the show.”

“Will you have a little more fish, Miss Oglethorpe?” piped Miss Goldweiser.

Mr. Snow sniffed. “There’s no great acting any more: Booth, Jefferson, Mansfield ... all gone. Nowadays it’s all advertising; actors and actresses are put on the market like patent medicines. Isn’t it the truth Elaine?... Advertising, advertising.”

“But that isn’t what makes success.... If you could do it with advertising every producer in New York’d be a millionaire,” burst in Goldweiser. “It’s the mysterious occult force that grips the crowds on the street and makes them turn in at a particular theater that makes the receipts go up at a particular boxoffice, do you understand me? Advertising wont do it, good criticism wont do it, maybe it’s genius maybe it’s luck but if you can give the public what it wants at that time and at that place you have a hit. Now that’s what Elaine gave us in this last show.... She established contact with the audience. It might have been the greatest play in the world acted by the greatest actors in the world and fallen a flat failure.... And I dont know how you do it, nobody dont know how you do it.... You go to bed one night with your house full of paper and you wake up the next morning with a howling success. The producer cant control it any more than the weather man can control the weather. Aint I tellin the truth?”

“Ah the taste of the New York public has sadly degenerated since the old days of Wallack’s.”

“But there have been some beautiful plays,” chirped Miss Goldweiser.

The long day love was crisp in the curls ... the dark curls ... broken in the dark steel light ... hurls ... high O God high into the bright ... She was cutting with her fork in the crisp white heart of a lettuce. She was saying words while quite other words spilled confusedly inside her like a broken package of beads. She sat looking at a picture of two women and two men eating at a table in a high paneled room under a shivering crystal chandelier. She looked up from her plate to find Miss Goldweiser’s little birdeyes kindly querulous fixed hard on her face.

“Oh yes New York is really pleasanter in midsummer than any other time; there’s less hurry and bustle.”

“Oh yes that’s quite true Miss Goldweiser.” Ellen flashed a sudden smile round the table.... All the long day love Was crisp in the curls of his high thin brow, Flashed in his eyes in dark steel light....

In the taxi Goldweiser’s broad short knees pressed against hers; his eyes were full of furtive spiderlike industry weaving a warm sweet choking net about her face and neck. Miss Goldweiser had relapsed pudgily into the seat beside her. Dick Snow was holding an unlighted cigar in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. Ellen tried to remember exactly how Stan looked, his polevaulter’s tight slenderness; she couldn’t remember his face entire, she saw his eyes, lips, an ear.

Times Square was full of juggled colored lights, crisscrossed corrugations of glare. They went up in the elevator at the Astor. Ellen followed Miss Goldweiser across the roofgarden among the tables. Men and women in evening dress, in summer muslins and light suits turned and looked after her, like sticky tendrils of vines glances caught at her as she passed. The orchestra was playing In My Harem. They arranged themselves at a table.

“Shall we dance?” asked Goldweiser.

She smiled a wry broken smile in his face as she let him put his arm round her back. His big ear with solemn lonely hairs on it was on the level of her eyes.

“Elaine,” he was breathing into her ear, “honest I thought

“I’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 ...

“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

“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

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ...

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 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

“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.”

“It is funny the way a thing like that comes over you.... Why what have you heard about me?”

“Gosh George dont get nervous, it’s all right.... I’ve seen her in The Zinnia Girl.... She walks away with it. That other girl who’s the star dont have a show.”

“Look here Phil if you hear any rumors about Miss Oglethorpe for Heaven’s sake shut them up. It’s so damn silly you cant go out to tea with a woman without everybody starting their dirty gabble all over town.... By God I will not have a scandal, I dont care what happens.”

“Say hold your horses George.”

“I’m in a very delicate position downtown just at the moment that’s all.... And then Cecily and I have at last reached a modus vivendi.... I wont have it disturbed.”

They walked along in silence.

Sandbourne walked with his hat in his hand. His hair was almost white but his eyebrows were still dark and bushy. Every few steps he changed the length of his stride as if it hurt him to walk. He cleared his throat. “George you were asking me if I’d cooked up any schemes when I was in hospital.... Do you remember years ago old man Specker used to talk about vitreous and superenameled tile? Well I’ve been workin on his formula out at Hollis.... A friend of mine there has a two thousand degree oven he bakes pottery in. I think it can be put on a commercial basis.... Man it would revolutionize the whole industry. Combined with concrete it would enormously increase the flexibility of the materials at the architects’ disposal. We could make tile any color, size or finish.... Imagine this city when all the buildins instead of bein dirty gray were ornamented with vivid colors. Imagine bands of scarlet round the entablatures of skyscrapers. Colored tile would revolutionize the whole life of the city.... Instead of fallin back on the orders or on gothic or romanesque decorations we could evolve new designs, new colors, new forms. If there was a little color in the town all this hardshell inhibited life’d break down.... There’d be more love an less divorce....”

Baldwin burst out laughing. “You tell em Phil.... I’ll talk to you about that sometime. You must come up to dinner when Cecily’s there and tell us about it.... Why wont Parkhurst do anything?”

“I wouldnt let him in on it. He’d cotton on to the proposition and leave me out in the cold once he had the formula. I wouldn’t trust him with a rubber nickel.”

“Why doesnt he take you into partnership Phil?”

“He’s got me where he wants me anyway.... He knows I do all the work in his goddamned office. He knows too that I’m too cranky to make out with most people. He’s a slick article.”

“Still I should think you could put it up to him.”

“He’s got me where he wants me and he knows it, so I continue doin the work while he amasses the coin.... I guess it’s logical. If I had more money I’d just spend it. I’m just shiftless.”

“But look here man you’re not so much older than I am.... You’ve still got a career ahead of you.”

“Sure nine hours a day draftin.... Gosh I wish you’d go into this tile business with me.”

Baldwin stopped at a corner and slapped his hand on the briefcase he was carrying. “Now Phil you know I’d be very glad to give you a hand in any way I could.... But just at the moment my financial situation is terribly involved. I’ve gotten into some rather rash entanglements and Heaven knows how I’m going to get out of them.... That’s why I cant have a scandal or a divorce or anything. You dont understand how complicatedly things interact.... I couldnt take up anything new, not for a year at least. This war in Europe has made things very unsettled downtown. Anything’s liable to happen.”

“All right. Good night George.”

Sandbourne turned abruptly on his heel and walked down the avenue again. He was tired and his legs ached. It was almost dark. On the way back to the station the grimy brick and brownstone blocks dragged past monotonously like the days of his life.

Under the skin of her temples iron clamps tighten till her head will mash like an egg; she begins to walk with long strides up and down the room that bristles with itching stuffiness; spotty colors of pictures, carpets, chairs wrap about her like a choking hot blanket. Outside the window the backyards are striped with blue and lilac and topaz of a rainy twilight. She opens the window. No time to get tight like the twilight, Stan said. The telephone reached out shivering beady tentacles of sound. She slams the window down. O hell cant they give you any peace?

“Why Harry I didnt know you were back.... Oh I wonder if I can.... Oh yes I guess I can. Come along by after the theater.... Isnt that wonderful? You must tell me all about it.” She no sooner puts the receiver down than the bell clutches at her again. “Hello.... No I dont.... Oh yes maybe I do.... When did you get back?” She laughed a tinkling telephone laugh. “But Howard I’m terribly busy.... Yes I am honestly.... Have you been to the show? Well sometime come round after a performance.... I’m so anxious to hear about your trip ... you know ... Goodby Howard.”

A walk’ll make me feel better. She sits at her dressingtable and shakes her hair down about her shoulders. “It’s such a hellish nuisance, I’d like to cut it all off ... spreads apace. The shadow of white Death.... Oughtnt to stay up so late, those dark circles under my eyes.... And at the door, Invisible Corruption.... If I could only cry; there are people who can cry their eyes out, really cry themselves blind ... Anyway the divorce’ll go through....”

Gosh it’s six o’clock already. She starts walking up and down the room again. I am borne darkly fearfully afar.... The phone rings. “Hello.... Yes this is Miss Oglethorpe.... Why hello Ruth, why I haven’t seen you for ages, since Mrs. Sunderland’s.... Oh, do I’d love to see

She rings off and gets a raincape out of a closet. The smell of furs and mothballs and dresses clings in her nostrils. She throws up the window again and breathes deep of the wet air full of the cold rot of autumn. She hears the burring boom of a big steamer from the river. Darkly, fearfully afar from this nonsensical life, from this fuzzy idiocy and strife; a man can take a ship for his wife, but a girl. The telephone is shiveringly beadily ringing, ringing.

The buzzer burrs at the same time. Ellen presses the button to click the latch. “Hello.... No, I’m very sorry I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me who it is. Why Larry Hopkins I thought you were in Tokyo.... They havent moved you again have they? Why of course we must see each other.... My dear it’s simply horrible but I’m all dated up for two weeks.... Look I’m sort of crazy tonight. You call up tomorrow at twelve and I’ll try to shift things around.... Why of course I’ve got to see you immediately you funny old thing.” ... Ruth Prynne and Cassandra Wilkins come in shaking the water off their umbrellas. “Well goodby Larry.... Why it’s so so sweet of both of you.... Do take your things off for a second.... Cassie wont you have dinner with us?”

“I felt I just had to see you.... It’s so wonderful about your wonderful success,” says Cassie in a shaky voice. “And my dear I felt so terribly when I heard about Mr. Emery. I cried and cried, didnt I Ruth?”

“Oh what a beautiful apartment you have,” Ruth is exclaiming at the same moment. Ellen’s ears ring sickeningly. “We all have to die sometime,” gruffly she blurts out.

Ruth’s rubberclad foot is tapping the floor; she catches Cassie’s eye and makes her stammer into silence. “Hadnt we better go along? It’s getting rather late,” she says.

“Excuse me a minute Ruth.” Ellen runs into the bathroom and slams the door. She sits on the edge of the bathtub pounding on her knees with her clenched fists. Those women’ll drive me mad. Then the tension in her

When she goes back she says in her usual voice: “Well let’s get along.... Got a part yet Ruth?”

“I had a chance to go out to Detroit with a stock company. I turned it down.... I wont go out of New York whatever happens.”

“What wouldnt I give for a chance to get away from New York.... Honestly if I was offered a job singing in a movie in Medicine Hat I think I’d take it.”

Ellen picks up her umbrella and the three women file down the stairs and out into the street. “Taxi,” calls Ellen.

The passing car grinds to a stop. The red hawk face of the taxidriver craning into the light of the street lamp. “Go to Eugenie’s on Fortyeighth Street,” says Ellen as the others climb in. Greenish lights and darks flicker past the lightbeaded windows.

She stood with her arm in the arm of Harry Goldweiser’s dinner jacket looking out over the parapet of the roofgarden. Below them the Park lay twinkling with occasional lights, streaked with nebular blur like a fallen sky. From behind them came gusts of a tango, inklings of voices, shuffle of feet on a dancefloor. Ellen felt a stiff castiron figure in her metalgreen evening dress.

“Ah but Boirnhardt, Rachel, Duse, Mrs. Siddons.... No Elaine I’m tellin you, d’you understand? There’s no art like the stage that soars so high moldin the passions of men.... If I could only do what I wanted we’d be the greatest people in the world. You’d be the greatest actress.... I’d be the great producer, the unseen builder, d’you understand? But the public dont want art, the people of this country wont let you do anythin for em. All they want’s a detective melodrama or a rotten French farce with

“I think that this city is full of people wanting inconceivable things.... Look at it.”

“It’s all right at night when you cant see it. There’s no artistic sense, no beautiful buildins, no old-time air, that’s what’s the matter with it.”

They stood a while without speaking. The orchestra began playing the waltz from The Lilac Domino. Suddenly Ellen turned to Goldweiser and said in a curt tone. “Can you understand a woman who wants to be a harlot, a common tart, sometimes?”

“My dear young lady what a strange thing for a sweet lovely girl to suddenly come out and say.”

“I suppose you’re shocked.” She didnt hear his answer. She felt she was going to cry. She pressed her sharp nails into the palms of her hands, she held her breath until she had counted twenty. Then she said in a choking little girl’s voice, “Harry let’s go and dance a little.”

The sky above the cardboard buildings is a vault of beaten lead. It would be less raw if it would snow. Ellen finds a taxi on the corner of Seventh Avenue and lets herself sink back in the seat rubbing the numb gloved fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. “West Fiftyseventh, please.” Out of a sick mask of fatigue she watches fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys policemen through the jolting window. If I have my child, Stan’s child, it will grow up to jolt up Seventh Avenue under a sky of beaten lead that never snows watching fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys, policemen.... She presses her knees together sits up straight on the edge of the seat with her hands clasped over her slender belly. O God the rotten joke they’ve played on me, taking Stan away, burning him up, leaving me nothing but this growing in me that’s going to kill me. She’s whimpering into her numb hands. O God why wont it snow?

As she stands on the gray pavement fumbling in her

The elevator hums as it soars. She stands looking at herself in the narrow mirror. Suddenly something recklessly gay goes through her. She rubs the dust off her face with a screwedup handkerchief, smiles at the elevatorman’s smile that’s wide as the full keyboard of a piano, and briskly rustles to the door of the apartment that a frilled maid opens. Inside it smells of tea and furs and flowers, women’s voices chirp to the clinking of cups like birds in an aviary. Glances flicker about her head as she goes into the room.

There was wine spilled on the tablecloth and bits of tomatosauce from the spaghetti. The restaurant was a steamy place with views of the Bay of Naples painted in soupy blues and greens on the walls. Ellen sat back in her chair from the round tableful of young men, watching the smoke from her cigarette crinkle spirally round the fat Chiantibottle in front of her. In her plate a slab of tricolor icecream melted forlornly. “But good God hasnt a man some rights? No, this industrial civilization forces us to seek a complete readjustment of government and social life ...”

“Doesnt he use long words?” Ellen whispered to Herf who sat beside her.

“He’s right all the same,” he growled back at her.... “The result has been to put more power in the hands of a few men than there has been in the history of the world since the horrible slave civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia....”

“Hear hear.”

“No but I’m serious.... The only way of bucking the interests is for working people, the proletariat, producers

“I think you’re entirely wrong, Martin, it’s the interests as you call em, these horrible capitalists, that have built up this country as we have it today.”

“Well look at it for God’s sake.... That’s what I’m saying. I wouldnt kennel a dog in it.”

“I dont think so. I admire this country.... It’s the only fatherland I’ve got.... And I think that all these downtrodden masses really want to be downtrodden, they’re not fit for anything else.... If they werent they’d be flourishing businessmen ... Those that are any good are getting to be.”

“But I don’t think a flourishing businessman is the highest ideal of human endeavor.”

“A whole lot higher than a rotten fiddleheaded anarchist agitator.... Those that arent crooks are crazy.”

“Look here Mead, you’ve just insulted something that you dont understand, that you know nothing about.... I cant allow you to do that.... You should try to understand things before you go round insulting them.”

“An insult to the intelligence that’s what it is all this socialistic drivel.”

Ellen tapped Herf on the sleeve. “Jimmy I’ve got to go home. Do you want to walk a little way with me?”

“Martin, will you settle for us? We’ve got to go.... Ellie you look terribly pale.”

“It’s just a little hot in here.... Whee, what a relief.... I hate arguments anyway. I never can think of anything to say.”

“That bunch does nothing but chew the rag night after night.”

Eighth Avenue was full of fog that caught at their throats. Lights bloomed dimly through it, faces loomed, glinted in silhouette and faded like a fish in a muddy aquarium.

“Feel better Ellie?”

“Lots.”

“I’m awfully glad.”

“Do you know you’re the only person around here who calls me Ellie. I like it.... Everybody tries to make me seem so grown up since I’ve been on the stage.”

“Stan used to.”

“Maybe that’s why I like it,” she said in a little trailing voice like a cry heard at night from far away along a beach.

Jimmy felt something clamping his throat. “Oh gosh things are rotten,” he said. “God I wish I could blame it all on capitalism the way Martin does.”

“It’s pleasant walking like this ... I love a fog.”

They walked on without speaking. Wheels rumbled through the muffling fog underlaid with the groping distant lowing of sirens and steamboat whistles on the river.

“But at least you have a career.... You like your work, you’re enormously successful,” said Herf at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and caught her arm as they crossed.

“Dont say that.... You really dont believe it. I dont kid myself as much as you think I do.”

“No but it’s so.”

“It used to be before I met Stan, before I loved him.... You see I was a crazy little stagestruck kid who got launched out in a lot of things I didnt understand before I had time to learn anything about life.... Married at eighteen and divorced at twentytwo’s a pretty good record.... But Stan was so wonderful....”

“I know.”

“Without ever saying anything he made me feel there were other things ... unbelievable things....”

“God I resent his craziness though.... It’s such a waste.”

“I cant talk about it.”

“Let’s not.”

“Jimmy you’re the only person left I can really talk to.”

“Dont want to trust me. I might go berserk on you too some day.”

They laughed.

“God I’m glad I’m not dead, arent you Ellie?”

“I dont know. Look here’s my place. I dont want you to come up.... I’m going right to bed. I feel miserably....” Jimmy stood with his hat off looking at her. She was fumbling in her purse for her key. “Look Jimmy I might as well tell you....” She went up to him and spoke fast with her face turned away pointing at him with the latchkey that caught the light of the streetlamp. The fog was like a tent round about them. “I’m going to have a baby.... Stan’s baby. I’m going to give up all this silly life and raise it. I dont care what happens.”

“O God that’s the bravest thing I ever heard of a woman doing.... Oh Ellie you’re so wonderful. God if I could only tell you what I....”

“Oh no.” Her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m a silly fool, that’s all.” She screwed up her face like a little child and ran up the steps with the tears streaming down her face.

“Oh Ellie I want to say something to you ...”

The door closed behind her.

Jimmy Herf stood stockstill at the foot of the brownstone steps. His temples throbbed. He wanted to break the door down after her. He dropped on his knees and kissed the step where she had stood. The fog swirled and flickered with colors in confetti about him. Then the trumpet feeling ebbed and he was falling through a black manhole. He stood stockstill. A policeman’s ballbearing eyes searched his face as he passed, a stout blue column waving a nightstick. Then suddenly he clenched his fists and walked off. “O God everything is hellish,” he said aloud. He wiped the grit off his lips with his coatsleeve.

She puts her hand in his to jump out of the roadster as the ferry starts, “Thanks Larry,” and follows his tall ambling body out on the bow. A faint riverwind blows the

“Nothing succeeds like success,” Larry is saying in a deep droning voice.

“Oh if you knew how little I cared about anything just now you wouldnt go on teasing me with all these words.... You know, marriage, success, love, they’re just words.”

“But they mean everything in the world to me.... I think you’d like it in Lima Elaine.... I waited until you were free, didnt I? And now here I am.”

“We’re none of us that ever.... But I’m just numb.” The riverwind is brackish. Along the viaduct above 125th Street cars crawl like beetles. As the ferry enters the slip they hear the squudge and rumble of wheels on asphalt.

“Well we’d better get back into the car, you wonderful creature Elaine.”

“After all day it’s exciting isnt it Larry, getting back into the center of things.”

Beside the smudged white door are two pushbuttons marked Night Bell and Day Bell. She rings with a shaky finger. A short broad man with a face like a rat and sleek black hair brushed straight back opens. Short dollhands the color of the flesh of a mushroom hang at his sides. He hunches his shoulders in a bow.

“Are you the lady? Come in.”

“Is this Dr. Abrahms?”

“Yes.... You are the lady my friend phoned me about. Sit down my dear lady.” The office smells of something like arnica. Her heart joggles desperately between her ribs.

“You understand ...” She hates the quaver in her voice; she’s going to faint. “You understand, Dr. Abrahms

“Very young, unhappily married ... I am sorry.” The doctor purrs softly as if to himself. He heaves a hissing sigh and suddenly looks in her eyes with black steel eyes like gimlets. “Do not be afraid, dear lady, it is a very simple operation.... Are you ready now?”

“Yes. It wont take very long will it? If I can pull myself together I have an engagement for tea at five.”

“You are a brave young lady. In an hour it will be forgotten.... I am sorry.... It is very sad such a thing is necessary.... Dear lady you should have a home and many children and a loving husband ... Will you go in the operating room and prepare yourself.... I work without an assistant.”

The bright searing bud of light swells in the center of the ceiling, sprays razorsharp nickel, enamel, a dazzling sharp glass case of sharp instruments. She takes off her hat and lets herself sink shuddering sick on a little enamel chair. Then she gets stiffly to her feet and undoes the band of her skirt.

The roar of the streets breaks like surf about a shell of throbbing agony. She watches the tilt of her leather hat, the powder, the rosed cheeks, the crimson lips that are a mask on her face. All the buttons of her gloves are buttoned. She raises her hand. “Taxi!” A fire engine roars past, a hosewagon with sweatyfaced men pulling on rubber coats, a clanging hookandladder. All the feeling in her fades with the dizzy fade of the siren. A wooden Indian, painted, with a hand raised at the streetcorner.

“Taxi!”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Drive to the Ritz.”