‘My dear Mrs Herf, where have you been? We’ve had your dress for a week,’ she exclaimed in too perfect English. ‘Ah my dear, you wait… it’s magnificent… And how is Mr Harrpsi-court?’
‘I’ve been very busy… You see I’m giving up my job.’
Madame Soubrine nodded and blinked knowingly and led the way through the tapestry curtains into the back of the shop.
‘Ah ça se voit… Il ne faut pas trravailler, on peut voir déjà des toutes petites rrides. Mais ils dispareaitront. Forgive me, dear.’ The thick arm round her waist squeezed her. Ellen edged off a little… ‘Vous la femme la plus belle de New Yorrk… Angelica Mrs Herf’s evening dress,’ she shouted in a shrill grating voice like a guineahen’s.
A hollowcheeked washedout blond girl came in with the dress on a hanger. Ellen slipped off her gray tailored walkingsuit. Madame Soubrine circled round her, purring. ‘Angelica look at those shoulders, the color of the hair… Ah c’est le rêve,’ edging a little too near like a cat that wants its back rubbed. The dress was pale green with a slash of scarlet and dark blue.
‘This is the last time I have a dress like this, I’m sick of always wearing blue and green…’ Madame Soubrine, her mouth full of pins, was at her feet, fussing with the hem.
‘Perfect Greek simplicity, wellgirdled like Diana… Spiritual with Spring… the ultimate restraint of an Annette Kellermann, holding up the lamp of liberty, the wise virgin,’ she was muttering through her lips.
She’s right, Ellen was thinking, I am getting a hard look. She was looking at herself in the tall pierglass. Then my figure’ll go, the menopause haunting beauty parlors, packed in boncilla, having your face raised.
‘Regardez-moi ça, cherrie;’ said the dressmaker getting to her feet and taking the pins out of her mouth ‘C’est le chef-d’œuvre de la maison Soubrine.’
Ellen suddenly felt hot, tangled in some prickly web, a horrible stuffiness of dyed silks and crêpes and muslins was making her head ache; she was anxious to be out on the street again.
‘I smell smoke, there’s something the matter,’ the blond girl suddenly cried out. ‘Sh-sh-sh,’ hissed Madame Soubrine. They both disappeared through a mirrorcovered door.
Under a skylight in the back room of Soubrine’s Anna Cohen sits sewing the trimming on a dress with swift tiny stitches. On the table in front of her a great pile of tulle rises full of light like beaten white of egg. Charley my boy, Oh Charley my boy, she hums, stitching the future with swift tiny stitches. If Elmer wants to marry me we might as well; poor Elmer, he’s a nice boy but so dreamy. Funny he’d fall for a girl like me. He’ll grow out of it, or maybe in the Revolution, he’ll be a great man… Have to cut out parties when I’m Elmer’s wife. But maybe we can save up money and open a little store on Avenue A in a good location, make better money there than uptown. La Parisienne, Modes.
I bet I could do as good as that old bitch. If you was your own boss there wouldn’t be this fightin about strikers and scabs… Equal Opportunity for All. Elmer says that’s all applesauce. No hope for the workers but in the Revolution. Oh I’m juss wild about Harree, And Harry’s juss wild about me… Elmer in a telephone central in a dinnercoat, with eartabs, tall as Valentino, strong as Doug. The Revolution is declared. The Red Guard is marching up Fifth Avenue. Anna in golden curls with a little kitten under her arm leans with him out of the tallest window. White tumbler pigeons flutter against the city below them. Fifth Avenue bleeding red flags, glittering with marching bands, hoarse voices singing Die Rote Fahne in Yiddish; far away, from the Woolworth a banner shakes into the wind. ‘Look Elmer darling’ ELMER DUSKIN FOR MAYOR. And they’re dancing the Charleston in all the officebuildings… Thump. Thump. That Charleston dance… Thump. Thump… Perhaps I do love him. Elmer take me. Elmer, loving as Valentino, crushing me to him with Dougstrong arms, hot as flame, Elmer.
Through the dream she is stitching white fingers beckon. The white tulle shines too bright. Red hands clutch suddenly out of the tulle, she cant fight off the red tulle all round her biting into her, coiled about her head. The skylight’s blackened with swirling smoke. The room’s full of smoke and screaming. Anna is on her feet whirling round fighting with her hands the burning tulle all round her.
Ellen stands looking at herself in the pierglass in the fitting room. The smell of singed fabrics gets stronger. After walking to and fro nervously a little while she goes through the glass door, down a passage hung with dresses, ducks under a cloud of smoke, and sees through streaming eyes the big workroom, screaming girls huddling behind Madame Soubrine, who is pointing a chemical extinguisher at charred piles of goods about a table. They are picking something moaning out of the charred goods. Out of the corner of her eye she sees an arm in shreds, a seared black red face, a horrible naked head.
‘Oh Mrs Herf, please tell them in front it’s nothing, absolutely nothing… I’ll be there at once,’ Madame Soubrine shrieks breathlessly at her. Ellen runs with closed eyes through the smoke-filled corridor into the clean air of the fitting room, then, when her eyes have stopped running, she goes through the curtains to the agitated women in the waiting room.
‘Madame Soubrine asked me to tell everybody it was nothing, absolutely nothing. Just a little blaze in a pile of rubbish… She put it out herself with an extinguisher.’
‘Nothing, absolutely nothing,’ the women say one to another settling back onto the Empress Josephine sofas.
Ellen goes out to the street. The fireengines are arriving. Policemen are beating back the crowds. She wants to go away but she cant, she’s waiting for something. At last she hears it tinkling down the street. As the fireengines go clanging away, the ambulance drives up. Attendants carry in the folded stretcher. Ellen can hardly breathe. She stands beside the ambulance behind a broad blue policeman. She tries to puzzle out why she is so moved; it is as if some part of her were going to be wrapped in bandages, carried away on a stretcher. Too soon it comes out, between the routine faces, the dark uniforms of the attendants.
‘Was she terribly burned?’ somehow she manages to ask under the policeman’s arm.
‘She wont die… but it’s tough on a girl.’ Ellen elbows her way through the crowd and hurries towards Fifth Avenue. It’s almost dark. Lights swim brightly in night clear blue like the deep sea.
Why should I be so excited? she keeps asking herself. Just somebody’s bad luck, the sort of thing that happens every day. The moaning turmoil and the clanging of the fireengines wont seem to fade away inside her. She stands irresolutely on a corner while cars, faces, flicker clatteringly past her. A young man in a new straw hat is looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, trying to pick her up. She stares him blankly in the face. He has on a red, green, and blue striped necktie. She walks past him fast, crosses to the other side of the avenue, and turns uptown. Seven thirty. She’s got to meet some one somewhere, she cant think where. There’s a horrible tired blankness inside her. O dear what shall I do? she whimpers to herself. At the next corner she hails a taxi. ‘Go to the Algonquin please.’
She remembers it all now, at eight o’clock she’s going to have dinner with Judge Shammeyer and his wife. Ought to have gone home to dress. George’ll be mad when he sees me come breezing in like this. Likes to show me off all dressed up like a Christmas tree, like an Effenbee walking talking doll, damn him.
She sits back in the corner of the taxi with her eyes closed. Relax, she must let herself relax more. Ridiculous to go round always keyed up so that everything is like chalk shrieking on a blackboard. Suppose I’d been horribly burned, like that girl, disfigured for life. Probably she can get a lot of money out of old Soubrine, the beginning of a career. Suppose I’d gone with that young man with the ugly necktie who tried to pick me up… Kidding over a banana split in a soda fountain, riding uptown and then down again on the bus, with his knee pressing my knee and his arm round my waist, a little heavy petting in a doorway… There are lives to be lived if only you didn’t care. Care for what, for what; the opinion of mankind, money, success, hotel lobbies, health, umbrellas, Uneeda biscuits… ? It’s like a busted mechanical toy the way my mind goes brrr all the time. I hope they havent ordered dinner. I’ll make them go somewhere else if they havent. She opens her vanity case and begins to powder her nose.