‘Yassir maybe you’re right sir… but there cant nobody get in unless I sees em first.’
‘You might be overpowered by a gang Wilmer.’
‘I’d like to see em try it.’
‘I guess you are right… mere question of nerve.’
Cynthia is sitting in the Packard reading a book. ‘Well dear did you think I was never coming.’
‘I almost finished my book, dad.’
‘All right Butler… up town as fast as you can. We’re late for dinner.’
As the limousine whirs up Lafayette Street, Blackhead turns to his daughter. ‘If you ever hear a man talking about his duty as a citizen, by the Living Jingo dont trust him… He’s up to some kind of monkey business nine times out of ten. You dont know what a relief it is to me that you and Joe are comfortably settled in life.’
‘What’s the matter dad? Did you have a hard day at the office?’ ‘There are no markets, there isnt a market in the goddam world that isnt shot to blazes… I tell you Cynthia it’s nip and tuck. There’s no telling what might happen… Look, before I forget it could you be at the bank uptown at twelve tomorrow?… I’m sending Hudgins up with certain securities, personal you understand, I want to put in your safe deposit box.’
‘But it’s jammed full already dad.’
‘That box at the Astor Trust is in your name isnt it?’
‘Jointly in mine and Joe’s.’
‘Well you take a new box at the Fifth Avenue Bank in your own name… I’ll have the stuff get there at noon sharp… And remember what I tell you Cynthia, if you ever hear a business associate talking about civic virtue, look lively.’
They are crossing Fourteenth. Father and daughter look out through the glass at the windbitten faces of people waiting to cross the street.
Jimmy Herf yawned and scraped back his chair. The nickel glints of the typewriter hurt his eyes. The tips of his fingers were sore. He pushed open the sliding doors a little and peeped into the cold bedroom. He could barely make out Ellie asleep in the bed in the alcove. At the far end of the room was the baby’s crib. There was a faint milkish sour smell of babyclothes. He pushed the doors to again and began to undress. If we only had more space, he was muttering; we live cramped in our squirrelcage… He pulled the dusty cashmere off the couch and yanked his pyjamas out from under the pillow. Space space cleanness quiet; the words were gesticulating in his mind as if he were addressing a vast auditorium.
He turned out the light, opened a crack of the window and dropped wooden with sleep into bed. Immediately he was writing a letter on a linotype. Now I lay me down to sleep… mother of the great white twilight. The arm of the linotype was a woman’s hand in a long white glove. Through the clanking from behind amber foots Ellie’s voice Dont, dont, dont, you’re hurting me so… Mr Herf, says a man in overalls, you’re hurting the machine and we wont be able to get out the bullgod edition thank dog. The linotype was a gulping mouth with nickelbright rows of teeth, gulped, crunched. He woke up sitting up in bed. He was cold, his teeth were chattering. He pulled the covers about him and settled to sleep again. The next time he woke up it was daylight. He was warm and happy. Snowflakes were dancing, hesitating, spinning, outside the tall window.
‘Hello Jimps,’ said Ellie coming towards him with a tray.
‘Why have I died and gone to heaven or something?’
‘No it’s Sunday morning… I thought you needed a little luxury… I made some corn muffins.’
‘Oh you’re marvelous Ellie… Wait a minute I must jump up and wash my teeth.’ He came back with his face washed, wearing his bathrobe. Her mouth winced under his kiss. ‘And it’s only eleven o’clock. I’ve gained an hour on my day off… Wont you have some coffee too?’
‘In a minute… Look here Jimps I’ve got something I want to talk about. Look dont you think we ought to get another place now that you’re working nights again all the time?’
‘You mean move?’
‘No. I was thinking if you could get another room to sleep in somewhere round, then nobody’d ever disturb you in the morning.’
‘But Ellie we’d never see each other… We hardly ever see each other as it is.’
‘It’s terrible… but what can we do when our officehours are so different?’
Martin’s crying came in a gust from the other room. Jimmy sat on the edge of the bed with the empty coffeecup on his knees looking at his bare feet. ‘Just as you like,’ he said dully. An impulse to grab her hands to crush her to him until he hurt her went up through him like a rocket and died. She picked up the coffeethings and swished away. His lips knew her lips, his arms knew the twining of her arms, he knew the deep woods of her hair, he loved her. He sat for a long time looking at his feet, lanky reddish feet with swollen blue veins, shoebound toes twisted by stairs and pavements. On each little toe there was a corn. He found his eyes filling with pitying tears. The baby had stopped crying. Jimmy went into the bathroom and started the water running in the tub.
‘It was that other feller you had Anna. He got you to thinkin you didnt give a damn… He made you a fatalist.’
‘What’s at?’
‘Somebody who thinks there’s no use strugglin, somebody who dont believe in human progress.’
‘Do you think Bouy was like that?’
‘He was a scab anyway… None o these Southerners are class-conscious… Didn’t he make you stop payin your union dues?’
‘I was sick o workin a sewin machine.’
‘But you could be a handworker, do fancy work and make good money. You’re not one o that kind, you’re one of us… I’ll get you back in good standin an you kin get a good job again… God I’d never have let you work in a dancehall the way he did. Anna it hurt me terrible to see a Jewish girl goin round with a feller like that.’
‘Well he’s gone an I aint got no job.’
‘Fellers like that are the greatest enemies of the workers… They dont think of nobody but themselves.’
They are walking slowly up Second Avenue through a foggy evening. He is a rustyhaired thinfaced young Jew with sunken cheeks and livid pale skin. He has the bandy legs of a garment worker. Anna’s shoes are too small for her. She has deep rings under her eyes. The fog is full of strolling groups talking Yiddish, overaccented East Side English, Russian. Warm rifts of light from delicatessen stores and softdrink stands mark off the glistening pavement.
‘If I didn’t feel so tired all the time,’ mutters Anna.
‘Let’s stop here an have a drink… You take a glass o buttermilk Anna, make ye feel good.’
‘I aint got the taste for it Elmer. I’ll take a chocolate soda.’
‘That’ll juss make ye feel sick, but go ahead if you wanter.’ She sat on the slender nickelbound stool. He stood beside her. She let herself lean back a little against him. ‘The trouble with the workers is’… He was talking in a low impersonal voice. ‘The trouble with the workers is we dont know nothin, we dont know how to eat, we dont know how to live, we dont know how to protect our rights… Jez Anna I want to make you think of things like that. Cant you see we’re in the middle of a battle just like in the war?’ With the long sticky spoon Anna was fishing bits of icecream out of the thick foamy liquid in her glass.
George Baldwin looked at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands in the little washroom behind his office. His hair that still grew densely down to a point on his forehead was almost white. There was a deep line at each corner of his mouth and across his chin. Under his bright gimleteyes the skin was sagging and granulated. When he had wiped his hands slowly and meticulously he took a little box of strychnine pills from the upper pocket of his vest, swallowed one, and feeling the anticipated stimulus tingle through him went back into his office. A longnecked officeboy was fidgeting beside his desk with a card in his hand.