“Looks to me as if it were your duty, Baldwin,” says Densch in a deep voice, taking his tortoiseshell glasses out of a case and applying them hurriedly to his nose.
The waiter has brought a large planked steak surrounded by bulwarks of mushrooms and chopped carrots and peas and frilled browned mashed potatoes. Densch straightens his glasses and stares attentively at the planked steak.
“A very handsome dish Ben, a very handsome dish I must say. … It’s just this Baldwin … as I look at it … the country is going through a dangerous period of reconstruction … the confusion attendant on the winding up of a great conflict … the bankruptcy of a continent … bolshevism and subversive doctrines rife … America …” he says, cutting with the sharp polished steel knife into the thick steak, rare and well peppered. He chews a mouthful slowly. “America,” he begins again, “is in the position of taking over the receivership of the world. The great principles of democracy, of that commercial freedom upon which our whole civilization depends are more than ever at stake. Now as at no other time we need men of established ability and unblemished integrity in public office, particularly in the offices requiring expert judicial and legal knowledge.”
“That’s what I was tryin to tell ye the other day George.”
“But that’s all very well Gus, but how do you know I’d be elected. … After all it would mean giving up my law practice for a number of years, it would mean …”
“You just leave that to me. … George you’re elected already.”
“An extraordinarily good steak,” says Densch, “I must say. … No but newspaper talk aside … I happen to know from a secret and reliable source that there is a subversive plot among undesirable elements in this country. … Good God think of the Wall Street bomb outrage. … I must say that the attitude of the press has been gratifying in one respect … in fact we’re approaching a national unity undreamed of before the war.”
“No but George,” breaks in Gus, “put it this way. … The publicity value of a political career’d kinder bolster up your law practice.”
“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 catsupbottle bobbed gravely in the little ground-glass waves. A sound of singing came from the ferryboat getting small, slipping away across the water.
C’est la lutte finale, groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale sera le genre humain.
“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.
II
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
