Manhattan Transfer

Manhattan Transfer

John Dos Passos

I. Ferryslip

_Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds,

spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered

plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as

the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken

water, slides, settles slowly into the slip. Handwinches

whirl with jingle of chains. Gates fold upwards, feet step

out across the crack, men and women press through the

manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse, crushed and

jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press._

The nurse, holding the basket at arm’s length as if it were a bedpan, opened the door to a big dry hot room with greenish distempered walls where in the air tinctured with smells of alcohol and iodoform hung writhing a faint sourish squalling from other baskets along the wall. As she set her basket down she glanced into it with pursed-up lips. The newborn baby squirmed in the cottonwool feebly like a knot of

earthworms.

On the ferry there was an old man playing the violin. He had a monkey’s face puckered up in one corner and kept time with the toe of a cracked patent-leather shoe. Bud Korpenning sat on the rail watching him, his back to the river. The breeze made the hair stir round the tight line of his cap and dried the sweat on his temples. His feet were blistered, he was leadentired, but when the ferry moved out of the slip, bucking the little slapping scalloped waves of the river he felt something warm and tingling shoot suddenly through all his veins. “Say, friend, how fur is it into the city from where this ferry lands?” he asked a young man in a straw hat wearing a blue and white striped necktie who stood

beside him.

The young man’s glance moved up from Bud’s road-swelled shoes to the red wrist that stuck out from the frayed sleeves of his coat, past the skinny turkey’s throat and slid up cockily into the intent eyes under

the broken-visored cap.

“That depends where you want to get to.”

“How do I get to Broadway?... I want to get to the center of things.”

“Walk east a block and turn down Broadway and you’ll find the center of

things if you walk far enough.”

“Thank you sir. I’ll do that.”

The violinist was going through the crowd with his hat held out, the wind ruffling the wisps of gray hair on his shabby bald head. Bud found the face tilted up at him, the crushed eyes like two black pins looking into his. “Nothin,” he said gruffly and turned away to look at the expanse of river bright as knifeblades. The plank walls of the slip closed in, cracked as the ferry lurched against them; there was rattling of chains, and Bud was pushed forward among the crowd through the ferryhouse. He walked between two coal wagons and out over a dusty expanse of street towards yellow streetcars. A trembling took hold of

his knees. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

EAT on a lunchwagon halfway down the block. He slid stiffly onto a revolving stool and looked for a long while at the pricelist.

“Fried eggs and a cup o coffee.”

“Want ’em turned over?” asked the redhaired man behind the counter who was wiping off his beefy freckled forearms with his apron. Bud

Korpenning sat up with a start.

“What?”

“The eggs? Want em turned over or sunny side up?”

“Oh sure, turn ’em over.” Bud slouched over the counter again with his

head between his hands.

“You look all in, feller,” the man said as he broke the eggs into the

sizzling grease of the frying pan.

“Came down from upstate. I walked fifteen miles this mornin.”

The man made a whistling sound through his eyeteeth. “Comin to the big

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