Manhattan Transfer Read Online Free PDF Page A

that?’
    ‘But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.’
    She tilted her chin first to oneside and then to the other.
    ‘I dont give a rap.’
    ‘You know what you said if I got a raise.’ She looked in his eyes giggling.
    ‘An this is just the beginnin…’
    ‘But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?’
    ‘Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import business.’
    ‘Silly boy you’ll be late.’ She suddenly turned and ran up the littered stairs, her pleated bellshaped skirt swishing from side to side.
    ‘God! I hate her. I hate her.’ Sniffing up the tears that were hot inhis eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle & Gulick, West India Importers.
    The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells of the Gulf Stream.
    ‘J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp à New York… The minute we tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.’ The cabinboy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. ‘Merde!’ He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and bounced into the scuppers.
    ‘Let it go. I’ve got plenty,’ said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. ‘The consul will just have you shipped back.’
    ‘He wont catch me.’
    ‘And your military service?’
    ‘To hell with it. And with France for that matter.’
    ‘You want to make yourself an American citizen?’
    ‘Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.’
    The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a long whistle. ‘Emile you’re a wise guy,’ he said.
    ‘But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.’
    Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his head that was thick with kinky black hair.
    ‘Say how much does a woman cost in New York?’
    ‘I dunno, expensive I guess… I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?’
    ‘What’s the use? Why not?’ said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again, burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed arms.
    ‘I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth dont matter, education dont matter. It’s all getting ahead.’
    ‘And if there was a nice passionate little woman right herenow where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?’
    ‘After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.’
    ‘And they dont have any military service?’
    ‘Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to fight people; they want to do business with them.’
    Congo did not answer.
    The cabinboy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.
    ‘Merde v’là l’heure.’ The paired strokes of the bell in the crowsnest came faintly to their ears. ‘But dont forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore…’ He made a popping noise with his lips. ‘We’re gone.’
    ‘I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadnt waked me.’ The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky