‘It would and it wouldn’t Gus.’
Densch is unrolling the tinfoil off a cigar. ‘At any rate it’s a grand sight.’ He takes off his glasses and cranes his thick neck to look out into the bright expanse of harbor that stretches full of masts, smoke, blobs of steam, dark oblongs of barges, to the hazeblurred hills of Staten Island.
Bright flakes of cloud were scaling off a sky of crushing indigo over the Battery where groups of dingy darkdressed people stood round the Ellis Island landing station and the small boat dock waiting silently for something. Frayed smoke of tugs and steamers hung low and trailed along the opaque glassgreen water. A threemasted schooner was being towed down the North River. A newhoisted jib flopped awkwardly in the wind. Down the harbor loomed taller, taller a steamer head on, four red stacks packed into one, creamy superstructure gleaming. ‘Mauretania just acomin in twentyfour hours lyte,’ yelled the man with the telescope and fieldglasses… ‘Tyke a look at the Mauretania, farstest ocean greyhound, twentyfour hours lyte.’ The Mauretania stalked like a skyscraper through the harbor shipping. A rift of sunlight sharpened the shadow under the broad bridge, along the white stripes of upper decks, glinted in the rows of portholes. The smokestacks stood apart, the hull lengthened. The black relentless hull of the Mauretania pushing puffing tugs ahead of it cut like a long knife into the North River.
A ferry was leaving the immigrant station, a murmur rustled through the crowd that packed the edges of the wharf. ‘Deportees… It’s the communists the Department of Justice is having deported… deportees… Reds… It’s the Reds they are deporting.’ The ferry was out of the slip. In the stern a group of men stood still tiny like tin soldiers. ‘They are sending the Reds back to Russia.’ A handkerchief waved on the ferry, a red handkerchief. People tiptoed gently to the edge of the walk, tiptoeing, quiet like in a sickroom.
Behind the backs of the men and women crowding to the edge of the water, gorillafaced chipontheshoulder policemen walked back and forth nervously swinging their billies.
‘They are sending the Reds back to Russia… Deportees… Agitators… Undesirables.’… Gulls wheeled crying. A catsup-bottle bobbed gravely in the little ground-glass waves. A sound of singing came from the ferryboat getting small, slipping away across the water.
‘Take a look at the deportees… Take a look at the undesirable aliens,’ shouted the man with the telescopes and fieldglasses. A girl’s voice burst out suddenly, ‘Arise prisoners of starvation,’ ‘Sh… They could pull you for that.’
The singing trailed away across the water. At the end of a marbled wake the ferryboat was shrinking into haze. International… shall be the human race. The singing died. From up the river came the longdrawn rattling throb of a steamer leaving dock. Gulls wheeled above the dark dingydressed crowd that stood silently looking down the bay.
2 Nickelodeon
A nickel before midnight buys tomorrow… holdup headlines, a cup of coffee in the automat, a ride to Woodlawn, Fort Lee, Flatbush… A nickel in the slot buys chewing gum. Somebody Loves Me, Baby Divine, You’re in Kentucky Juss Shu’ As You’re Born… bruised notes of foxtrots go limping out of doors, blues, waltzes (We’d Danced the Whole Night Through) trail gyrating tinsel memories… On Sixth Avenue on Fourteenth there are still flyspecked stereopticons where for a nickel you can peep at yellowed yesterdays. Beside the peppering shooting gallery you stoop into the flicker A HOT TIME, THE BACHELOR’S SURPRISE, THE STOLEN GARTER… wastebasket of tornup daydreams… A nickel before midnight buys our yesterdays.
Ruth Prynne came out of the doctor’s office pulling the fur tight round her throat. She felt faint. Taxi. As she stepped in she remembered the smell of cosmetics and toast and the littered hallway at Mrs Sunderlands. Oh I cant go home just yet. ‘Driver go to the Old English Tea Room on Fortieth Street please.’ She opened her long green leather purse and looked in. My God, only a dollar a quarter a nickel and two pennies. She kept her eyes on the figures flickering on the taximeter. She wanted to break down and cry… The way money goes. The gritty cold wind rasped at her throat when she got out. ‘Eighty cents miss… I haven’t any change miss.’ ‘All right keep the change.’ Heavens only thirtytwo cents… Inside it was warm and smelled cozily of tea and cookies.
‘Why Ruth, if it isn’t Ruth… Dearest come to my arms after all these years.’ It was Billy Waldron. He was fatter and whiter than he used to be. He gave her a stagy hug and kissed her on the forehead. ‘How are you? Do tell me… How distinguée you look in that hat.’
‘I’ve just been having my throat X-rayed,’ she said with a giggle. ‘I feel like the wrath of God.’
‘What are you doing Ruth? I havent heard of you for ages.’
‘Put me down as a back number, hadn’t you?’ She caught his words up fiercely.
‘After that beautiful performance you gave in The Orchard Queen…’
‘To tell the truth Billy I’ve had a terrible run of bad luck.’
‘Oh I know everything is dead.’
‘I have an appointment to see Belasco next week… Something may come of that.’
‘Why I should say it might Ruth… Are you expecting someone?’
‘No… Oh Billy you’re still the same old tease… Dont tease me this afternoon. I dont feel up to it.’
‘You poor dear sit down and have a cup of tea with me.’
‘I tell you Ruth it’s a terrible year. Many a good trouper will pawn the last link of his watch chain this year… I suppose you’re going the rounds.’
‘Dont talk about it… If I could only get my throat all right… A thing like that wears you down.’
‘Remember the old days at the Somerville Stock?’
‘Billy could I ever forget them?… Wasnt it a scream?’
‘The last time I saw you Ruth was in The Butterfly on the Wheel in Seattle. I was out front…’
‘Why didn’t you come back and see me?’
‘I was still angry at you I suppose… It was my lowest moment. In the valley of shadow… melancholia… neurasthenia. I was stranded penniless… That night I was a little under the influence, you understand. I didn’t want you to see the beast in me.’
Ruth poured herself a fresh cup of tea. She suddenly felt feverishly gay. ‘Oh but Billy havent you forgotten all that?… I was a foolish little girl then… I was afraid that love or marriage or anything like that would interfere with my art, you understand… I was so crazy to succeed.’
‘Would you do the same thing again?’
‘I wonder…’
‘How does it go?… The moving finger writes and having writ moves on…’
‘Something about Nor all your tears wash out a word of it… But Billy,’ she threw back her head and laughed, ‘I thought you were getting ready to propose to me all over again… Ou my throat.’
‘Ruth I wish you werent taking that X-ray treatment… I’ve heard it’s very dangerous. Dont let me alarm you about it my dear… but I have heard of cases of cancer contracted that way.’
‘That’s nonsense Billy… That’s only when X-rays are improperly used, and it takes years of exposure… No I think this Dr Warner’s a remarkable man.’
Later, sitting in the uptown express in the subway, she still could feel his soft hand patting her gloved hand. ‘Goodby little girl, God bless you,’ he’d said huskily. He’s gotten to be a ham actor if there ever was one, something was jeering inside her all the while. ‘Thank heavens you will never know.’… Then with a sweep of his broadbrimmed hat and a toss of his silky white hair, as if he were playing in Monsieur Beaucaire, he had turned and walked off among the crowd up Broadway. I may be down on my luck, but I’m not all ham inside the way he is… Cancer he said. She looked up and down the car at the joggling faces opposite her. Of all those people one of them must have it. FOUR OUT OF EVERY FIVE GET… Silly, that’s not cancer. EX-LAX, NUJOL, O’SULLIVAN’S… She put her hand to her throat. Her throat was terribly swollen, her throat throbbed feverishly. Maybe it was worse. It is something alive that grows in flesh, eats all your life, leaves you horrible, rotten… The people opposite stared straight ahead of them, young men and young women, middleaged people, green faces in the dingy light, under the sourcolored advertisements. FOUR OUT OF EVERY FIVE… A trainload of jiggling corpses, nodding and swaying as the express roared shrilly towards Ninetysixth Street. At Ninetysixth she had to change for the local.