“Ellie, Ellie there are nightingales singing along the track.”
“Oh I was asleep darling.” She gropes to him stumbling across the legs of sleepers. Side by side in the window in the lurching jiggling corridor.
Deedledeump, going south. Gasp of nightingales along the track among the silverdripping poplars. The insane cloudy night of moonlight smells of gardens garlic rivers freshdunged field roses. Gasp of nightingales.
Opposite him the Elliedoll was speaking. “He says the lobstersalad’s all out. … Isnt that discouraging?”
Suddenly he had his tongue. “Gosh if that were the only thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did we come back to this rotten town anyway?”
“You’ve been burbling about how wonderful it was ever since we came back.”
“I know. I guess it’s sour grapes. … I’m going to have another cocktail. … Ellie for heaven’s sake what’s the matter with us?”
“We’re going to be sick if we keep this up I tell you.”
“Well let’s be sick. … Let’s be good and sick.”
When they sit up in the great bed they can see across the harbor, can see the yards of a windjammer and a white sloop and a red and green toy tug and plainfaced houses opposite beyond a peacock stripe of water; when they lie down they can see gulls in the sky. At dusk dressing rockily, shakily stumbling through the mildewed corridors of the hotel out into streets noisy as a brass band, full of tambourine rattle, brassy shine, crystal glitter, honk and whir of motors. … Alone together in the dusk drinking sherry under a broad-leaved plane, alone together in the juggled parti-colored crowds like people invisible. And the spring night comes up over the sea terrible out of Africa and settles about them.
They had finished their coffee. Jimmy had drunk his very slowly as if some agony waited for him when he finished it.
“Well I was afraid we’d find the Barneys here,” said Ellen.
“Do they know about this place?”
“You brought them here yourself Jimps. … And that dreadful woman insisted on talking babies with me all the evening. I hate talking babies.”
“Gosh I wish we could go to a show.”
“It would be too late anyway.”
“And just spending money I havent got. … Lets have a cognac to top off with. I don’t care if it ruins us.”
“It probably will in more ways than one.”
“Well Ellie, here’s to the breadwinner who’s taken up the white man’s burden.”
“Why Jimmy I think it’ll be rather fun to have an editorial job for a while.”
“I’d find it fun to have any kind of job. … Well I can always stay home and mind the baby.”
“Dont be so bitter Jimmy, it’s just temporary.”
“Life’s just temporary for that matter.”
The taxi drew up. Jimmy paid him with his last dollar. Ellie had her key in the outside door. The street was a confusion of driving absintheblurred snow. The door of their apartment closed behind them. Chairs, tables, books, windowcurtains crowded about them bitter with the dust of yesterday, the day before, the day before that. Smells of diapers and coffeepots and typewriter oil and Dutch Cleanser oppressed them. Ellen put out the empty milkbottle and went to bed. Jimmy kept walking nervously about the front room. His drunkenness ebbed away leaving him icily sober. In the empty chamber of his brain a doublefaced word clinked like a coin: Success Failure, Success Failure.
I’m just wild about Harree
And Harry’s just wild about me
she hums under her breath as she dances. It’s a long hall with a band at one end, lit greenishly by two clusters of electric lights hanging among paper festoons in the center. At the end where the door is, a varnished rail holds back the line of men. This one Anna’s dancing with is a tall square built Swede, his big feet trail clumsily after her tiny lightly tripping feet. The music stops. Now it’s a little blackhaired slender Jew. He tries to snuggle close.
“Quit that.” She holds him away from her.
“Aw have a heart.”
She doesn’t answer, dances with cold precision; she’s sickeningly tired.
Me and my boyfriend
My boyfriend and I
An Italian breathes garlic in her face, a marine sergeant, a Greek, a blond young kid with pink cheeks, she gives him a smile; a drunken elderly man who tries to kiss her … Charley my boy O Charley my boy … slickhaired, freckled rumplehaired, pimplefaced, snubnosed, straightnosed, quick dancers, heavy dancers. … Goin souf. … Wid de taste o de sugarcane right in my mouf … against her back big hands, hot hands, sweaty hands, cold hands, while her dancechecks mount up, get to be a wad in her fist. This one’s a good waltzer, genteel-like in a black suit.
“Gee I’m tired,” she whispers.
“Dancing never tires me.”
“Oh it’s dancin with everybody like this.”
“Dont you want to come an dance with me all alone somewhere?”
“Boyfrien’s waitin for me after.”
With nothing but a photograph
To tell my troubles to …
What’ll I do … ?
“What time’s it?” she asks a broadchested wise guy. “Time you an me was akwainted, sister. …” She shakes her head. Suddenly the music bursts into “Auld Lang Syne.” She breaks away from him and runs to the desk in a crowd of girls elbowing to turn in their dancechecks. “Say Anna,” says a broadhipped blond girl … “did ye see that sap was dancin wid me? … He says to me the sap he says See you later an I says to him the sap I says see yez in hell foist … an then he says, Goily he says …”
III
Revolving Doors
Glowworm trains shuttle in the gloaming through the foggy looms of spiderweb bridges, elevators soar and drop in their shafts, harbor lights wink.
Like sap at the first frost at five o’clock men and women begin to drain gradually out of the tall buildings downtown, grayfaced throngs flood subways and tubes, vanish underground.
All night the great buildings stand quiet and empty, their million windows dark. Drooling light the ferries chew tracks across the lacquered harbor. At midnight the fourfunneled express steamers slide
