And she shall make mischief wherever she goes …
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 …
And it rained forty days and it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man who survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus. …
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 a droning sirenshriek. 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 goodbye Mrs. Robinson.” She tucked her packages under one arm and swinging her bead bag in the free hand walked down the street. The sun was still warm although there was a tang of fall in the wind. She gave a penny to a blind man cranking the “Merry Widow” waltz out of a grindorgan. Still she’d better bawl him out a little when he came home, might get to doing it often. She turned into 200th Street. People were looking out of windows, there was a crowd gathering. It was a fire. She sniffed the singed air. It gave her gooseflesh; she loved seeing fires. She hurried. Why it’s outside our building. Outside our apartmenthouse. Smoke dense as gunnysacks rolled out of the fifthstory window. She suddenly found herself all atremble. The colored elevatorboy ran up to her. His face was green. “Oh it’s in our apartment” she shrieked, “and the furniture just came a week ago. Let me get by.” The packages fell from her, a bottle of cream broke on the sidewalk. A policeman stood in her way, she threw herself at him and pounded on the broad blue chest. She couldnt stop shrieking. “That’s all right little lady, that’s all right,” he kept booming in a deep voice. As she beat her head against it she could feel his voice rumbling in his chest. “They’re bringing him down, just overcome by smoke that’s all, just overcome by smoke.”
“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 Café: “… 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 Café full of blue and green opal rifts of
