The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying memoranda on a long sheet of legal cap.
FanTan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities up to and including February 29) … Branches New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Straits Settlements. …
| Balance carried over | $345,789.84 |
| Real Estate | 500,087.12 |
| Profit and Loss | 399,765.90 |
“A bunch of goddam crooks,” growled Thatcher out loud. “Not an item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any branches in Hong Kong or anywhere. …”
He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park. … And downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President. … Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge … they’re all crooks and gamblers anyway … take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the FanTan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.
Goods on hand in U.S. bonded warehouses … $325,666.00
Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at the dark-jutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden, Hong Kong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids, breathed in his ear.
Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.
V
Steamroller
Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling tons of sky.
A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:
I’m so tired of vi‑olets
Take them all away.
There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. … He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.
I’m so tired of vi‑olets
Take them all away.
He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, Budweiser, Red Hen, Barking Dog. … And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and
