Ninth Avenue by Maxwell Bodenheim - HTML preview

PART TWO

THE night became thickly intense, and all the angular details and flat expanses of each street—neither hideous nor beautiful but vapidly and rigidly perched in between—took on the least touch of glamor. Some semblance of a darkly plaintive heart began to sway and quiver within the scene, as though the essence of all these human beings pacing down the sidewalks and sitting or standing in shops, cars, and restaurants, had joined the night and formed another quality—expectations, illusions, and promises, all electric in the air. The harshly dreamless industries and shallow loiterings of the day were replaced by an effort at romance, soiled but persistent, and a sensual pride preening itself with gallantries, and a confusion of cruel or softly dozing confidences.

The moving-picture theaters, in dots of red, yellow, blue, and green light, made proclamations of spurious, quickly attained love, adventure, and suspense; the United Cigar Stores, framed by red and gold, displayed their mild, brown opiates, while within them deferential clerks catered to jovial or importantly sullen men and women; the restaurants, with food heaped in their windows, and glistening fronts, were filled with people intent upon turning a prosy stuffing into an elaborate, laughing ritual; and even the Greek lunch-rooms, with their stools beside half-dirty glass counters, and nickel coffee-urns, assumed a hang-dog grin.

Taxicabs in all the cardinal colors darted about, like feverish insects serving human masters, and the people in them—lazy, or impatient, or bored, or out for a lark—made a blur of faces sometimes glimpsed more distinctly as the cabs stopped or slowed down. Policemen in dark blue uniforms stood at street-crossings, with tired aggressiveness, looking for a chance to invest their flunky-rôles with a rasping authority. Motor-trucks lurched along like drab monsters barely held in leash. Lights were everywhere—in shops, on iron poles in the streets, mellowly staring from upper windows—desperately seeking to dismiss the darkly fearful mystery of the surrounding night, but never quite overcoming it.

Street-cars and “L” trains crawled on, soddenly packed with under-dogs going to their dab of rest or crude pleasure. A roar was in the air, with immediate, sharp sounds trailing out into it—a complaining, shackled savage floating up from the scene. The large buildings were without individuality, except that some of them rose vertically above the others, and in their dull shades of red, brown, and gray, they would all have presented a yawning, meanly barrack-like effect but for the relieving fancy of their lights. Even the perpendicular strength of the skyscrapers was marred by filigreed and overcorniced lines.

To Blanche, the scene was a mêlée of delightful possibilities always just eluding her, and obnoxious intrusions only too ready to seek her arm. She realized the transforming effect of the night and said to herself: “Say, I’d never do all this walking if it was daytime—funny, how everything gets more attractive when the night trots along. Guess you can’t see things so clear then.... Better chance to kid yourself along.”

As she strolled through the outskirts of Greenwich Village her legs began to feel heavy, and the past hour seemed to be nothing more than a long, senseless walk taken within the confines of a large trap. The light, hazy sensation of searching oozed slowly out of her body and was replaced by the old hopelessness.

She stopped in front of a batik-shop window and looked at the soft, intricately veined gaudiness of the smocks, blouses, and scarves. “Sorta crazy, yes, but she’d like to wear them—they suited her mood.” Another girl was standing beside Blanche, and the other turned her head and said: “Aren’t they beauties, though. I’d just love to buy that purple and green smock there in the corner.”

“I like the blue one better—the one right next to yours,” Blanche answered naturally, but she looked closely at the other girl.

It was not unusual for strange girls to speak to you when they were either lonely or just brightly interested in some little thing, but still you had to be careful—sometimes they were “fast” players with men, in need of a feminine accomplice, or grafters intent on securing some favor or loan. The other girl had a slender torso and almost slender legs, with all of her plumpness crowded in the buttocks and upper thighs. She had singed butterflies on her face and they gave a light, fluttering pain to her smiles. She had the rarity of large blue eyes on a duskily pale brown face, and small, loosely parted lips, and a slight hook on the upper part of her nose, and curly bobbed brown hair. In her tan coat trimmed with dark fur, scarlet turban, and multicolored silk scarf, she seemed to be a dilettantish, chippy girl, just graduated from the flapper class.

Blanche noticed something “different” in the other girl and answered her more readily as they continued their talk.

“D’you live in the Village?” the other girl asked.

“No, I’m from uptown,” Blanche answered. “I’ve heard lots about it, though. I’d like to meet some of the int’resting artists and writers down here. There must be all kinds of them in the tearooms and places like that.”

The other girl gave her a pitying look.

“All kinds of fakers, you mean,” she replied. “They know how to brag about themselves, but that’s where it ends.”

“But I thought this was the part of town where real artists ’n’ writers came together,” Blanche persisted. “Of course, I didn’t believe they were all great ones, but I did believe they were all trying to do something, well, different, you know.”

“Oh, there are some down here, but you don’t usually find them in the showplaces or tearooms,” the other girl answered, as she and Blanche walked down the street. “Those places are for the mediocrities, and the pretenders, and the students ... and, oh, yes, the slummers. People from uptown hunting for something gayly wicked.”

“I suppose you think I’m a foolish slummer, too,” Blanche said, “but I’m not. I’ve just been walking along and thinking things over. I didn’t realize where I was.”

“I wasn’t being personal,” the other girl replied. “I sort of like the way you talk. Suppose we introduce ourselves to each other?”

They traded names and the other girl, Margaret Wheeler, went on: “You know, strangers are always supposed to distrust each other, but I can’t be annoyed. Every once in a while I talk to some girl on the street, and I’ve started a couple of interesting friendships that way. I’m not a Lesbian and I haven’t any other designs upon you.”

“Why, I don’t distrust you at all,” Blanche answered. “I can take care of myself and I suppose you can, too. You talk like you were intelligent, and I’d like to know you better, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” said Margaret. “I would be fairly intelligent, if I didn’t let some male make an idiot out of me every few months. I’m in love with some one now, but it’ll wind up like all the others.”

“You make me feel envious,” Blanche replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever really loved any fellow.”

“Are you joking?” Margaret asked.

“No, that’s straight.”

“Well, I’m going on twenty-five now, and I couldn’t count the infatuations I’ve had. I’m not as easy as I used to be, though. Once upon a time, if a man had a straight nose, and blond hair, and could recite poetry and make me believe it was his, that was all I needed. But no-ow, a man must have some real subtlety, and ability, and wittiness, before I pay any attention to him.”

“That’s just the kind I’ve been looking for,” Blanche answered. “Where on earth do you find them?”

“Nowhere in particular—it’s a matter of luck. And don’t forget that a girl must be unusual herself before she can attract unusual men, unless they’re just anxious to have a party with her.”

“Yes, that’s where I’d lose out,” Blanche said, heavily. “I’m just a ha-air dresser in a beauty parlor, that’s all.”

“You certainly don’t talk like one. Maybe you’ve never had much of a chance to be anything different.”

“You said it”—Blanche’s voice was low and depressed.

“Well, I’m only a steno myself,” Margaret answered, “but I’m taking a course in short-story writing at Herbert College—three nights a week. I want to tear off the old veils and tell what people do to each other.”

“Say, maybe I could join it, too,” Blanche replied, eagerly. “I’m not so strong on grammar, though—stopped in my first year at high and went to work.”

“Oh, you can pound that part of it into you. The main thing’s whether you have something to say—something that’s not just ordinary and hackneyed.”

“I think I have, but ... how do I know,” Blanche asked, uncertainly.

They had stopped in front of a tearoom with a multicolored wooden sign under an electric light.

“Here’s Clara’s—one of my hangouts,” Margaret said. “I’m going in to meet my blond-haired devastator. Won’t you come along?”

“Perhaps I’ll be in the way.”

“Nothing of the kind—I’ll introduce you to some of the people I know.”

They entered the place, which occupied the first floor of a two-storey, attic-topped, brick house. Kitchen tables and chairs painted pale green and vermilion lined the walls. Paintings and drawings were hung everywhere—cubistic plagiarisms, slovenly sketches, and illustrations meant for the average magazine’s check book but not quite reaching it—and a semidim light came from stained-glass bowls hung from the low ceiling. Some fifteen men and women were scattered around the two rooms, and a portable phonograph in the corner was whining one of the latest fox-trot insinuations—“He Never Gets Tired of Me, No, Boy, Just Never Gets Tired of Me-ee.”

Three men and a woman at a table effusively greeted Margaret, and after she had introduced Blanche, the two girls sat down with the others. The third girl, Dora Ruvinsky, was an unsymmetrically fat Jewess, with a thin-lipped but salacious face and a shorn disorder of black hair. Her sex had yielded to a cunning nightmare of masculinity, and she wore a stiff white collar, a red cravat, and a man’s vest and coat. She spoke in a husky drawl and perpetually slapped the shoulders of the men beside her. They regarded her with tolerance contending against a slight aversion.

One of them, Max Oppendorf, a blond-haired man of thirty, plied her with whisky from a hip-bottle and strove to trap her into feminine reactions and remarks, as though he were coldly and listlessly playing with a desperately hypocritical insect. His narrow, pale, blue-eyed face glanced around the tables with pity and repugnance somehow fused into its expression. A recognized poet and novelist, he was nevertheless known as a distinguished outcast, ostracized, attacked, and hated by literary and dilettantish groups of every variety because of his skillful-tongued independence, his careless violations of etiquettes and conventions, and the ravages of his unorthodox intellect. His clothes were shabby but not quite untidy, and as he frequently closed his eyes while speaking, he displayed the contradictory guise of an aristocratic vagabond.

Men almost invariably detested him, while the reactions of the women who met him were evenly divided into a distrustful resentment in one camp and a loyal adoration in the other. His armor was invulnerable, save when he became hopelessly drunk, in which condition he either savagely denounced and affronted the people around him or became unwontedly indulgent and gave them simulations of sentimentality and affectionate attention. These abdications sprang from his innate indifference to life and most of its people. Sincerely believing that most men and women were beclouded, unsearching, and cruelly gauche children, alcohol made his indifference to them more indulgently intent upon distracting itself, and, when drunk, he stooped to them with loud, mock-arguments, and exuberant caresses. He felt a moderate degree of tenderness toward Margaret Wheeler, who appealed to him as an honest grappler, more unreserved and mentally edged than most other girls of her age and occupation. She was violently in love with him, and they spoke together in tones that were almost whispers, and stroked each other’s hands.

The second man, Bob Trussel—a gorgeously effeminate youth who was known in Village circles for his not-quite-Beardsleyesque black and whites—conversed with Dora, while the third, Ben Helgin, talked to Blanche.

Ben was a robustly tall man in his early thirties, with a huge, half-bald head, and dark-brown hair inclined to be frizzly. His long, pointed nose, severely arched eyebrows, and widely thin lips gave him the look of a complacent, pettily cruel Devil—a street urchin who had donned the mask of Mephistopheles but could not quite conceal the leer of a boy intent upon practical jokes and small tormentings. He was a master in the arts of dramatic exaggeration and belittling, never quite telling the truth and never quite lying, and his immeasurable vanity made him always determined to dominate any conversation. He had an Oriental volubility, and people would often sit beside him for an hour or more and vainly seek to insert a beginning remark or express an uninterrupted opinion.

One of his favorite devices was to tell anecdotes about men of his acquaintance, in which the men were invariably depicted in a childish, ridiculous, or inferior posture, while he gloated over and embellished the details of their fancied discomfiture, with a great assumption of sympathy for the victims. Living in a dream-world entirely of his own making, he loved to flirt with visions, conquests, world-shaking concepts, and child-like boasts. On one morning he would appear among his friends, describing some plan or idea with a cyclonic enthusiasm, and on the very next afternoon no trace of it would remain within his mind. Again, he would loll in an armchair and announce that a famous actress of forty had implored him to reside with her and to become the leading man in her next play, but he would neglect to mention that the lady in question was renowned for her generous impulses and included truck-drivers and cigar-clerks in her overtures. These impositions caused most people to regard him as an eel-like poseur, when they were removed from the persuasive sorceries of his words, and they failed to see that his gigantic egotism had sincerely hoaxed itself into the rôle of a flitting and quickly ennuied conqueror.

For years he had followed the luring dream of amassing a large fortune through the creation of dexterously dishonest stories, plays, and press-agent campaigns, and while he had accumulated thousands of dollars in these ways, the dream of wealth persistently refused to be captured. He lacked the grimly plodding, blind instinct necessary for such a goal, and his financial harvests were always quickly gathered and dissipated. This babbling immersion in the garnering of money, however, gave him the paradoxical air of an esthetic Babbitt.

His serious literary creations were original and sardonic at their best, but frequently marred by a journalistic glibness which led him into shallow and redundant acrobatics, or facetious saunterings.

He had known Max Oppendorf for nine years, and they had passed through a comical fanfare of recriminations, friendly invitations, sneers, and respects. Oppendorf secretly disliked him but was at times fascinated by his charming pretenses of camaraderie, and the quickness of his mind. At one time, the poet had broken off with Helgin for three years—a withdrawal caused by his discovery of the other man’s peculiar and somewhat incredible sense of humor. Penniless, and afflicted with incipient tuberculosis, Oppendorf had written to his friend and asked for the loan of two hundred dollars. A special-delivery letter had flown back to him, containing an unctuously sympathetic note and announcing the enclosure of a two-hundred-dollar check. The rest of the envelope had been empty, however, and believing that the absence of the check was merely an absent-minded error, he dispatched another letter which apprised his friend of the oversight. In response, Helgin had sent him the following telegram: “It was a nice joke—hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.”

Helgin had a sincere admiration for the other man’s work and a veiled, malicious aversion to the poet’s personal side. To him, Oppendorf’s life held a supreme taunt which had to be demolished with falsehoods and ridicule. The poet’s unbroken flaunting of moralities, conventions, and compromises, reminded Helgin that his own life had not been equally courageous and defiant, in spite of his endless written shots at average people and their fears, and that, in his personal existence, he had frequently prostrated himself before the very observances which he pilloried, or laughed at, in his books and conversation. This specter could only be slain by the effort to jeer at the opposite man’s episodes with men and women, and to hold them forth as clownish and unrewarded capers.

As Helgin sat now, in the boisterous and tawdrily glassy tearoom, he spoke to Blanche with the gracious casualness which he always publicly affected with women. It was a part of his jovially invincible pose to insinuate that he could have been a perfect libertine had he chosen to follow that denounced profession, and that his enormous sexual attractiveness was held in bondage only by his lack of desire and his ability to peer through the entire, violent fraud of sex itself. In the dream-world of his own making, through which he moved, loftily but genially immune to all criticisms, adulations, and importunities, women were the potential vassals whom he disdained to hire.

On the night previous to the present one, his second wife had departed on a visit to her family in a distant city, and he had telephoned Oppendorf and arranged a meeting, prodded by one of the irregular impulses in which his respect for the other man overcame his opposite feelings of envy and aversion. Now, he sat and chatted with Blanche while she listened with an almost abject attention. This great writer, whose pictures she had run across on the literary pages of newspapers, and in magazines, was actually seated beside her and speaking to her—it could scarcely be true! She recalled that Rosenberg had often lauded Helgin, and that a year previous she had read one of the latter man’s novels and had liked its “difficult,” thumb-twiddling style and disliked its patronizing, pitying attitude toward the feminine characters. Well, when men wrote about women, or women about men, they never seemed able to become quite fair to each other. They were always mushy and lenient, on one side, or sneering and unsympathetic on the other. She voiced this thought to Helgin, who advised her to cease searching for an unhappy medium. To him, she presented the figure of a worried, heavily questioning peasant girl, dressed and manicured for a more polite rôle, and he had a whim to lure her into expectant admirations and play with her stumbling hungers and wonderings. Usually, he did not waste his time on such girls—they were more to Oppendorf’s liking—but for the space of one night he could afford to risk the impending boredom in a more unassuming manner.

“You must get Oppie to compliment you,” he said, glancing in the poet’s direction. “He does it perfectly. Women cry for it, babies smile, old ladies jump out of their chairs. Come on, Oppie, say something about Miss Palmer’s hair. What does it remind you of? A startled ghost of dawn, the visible breath of afternoon?”

Oppendorf turned from his whisperings with Margaret, and smiled—a patient but slightly threatening smile.

“Are you ordering a tailormade suit or buying a box of cigars?” he asked, sweetly.

“The comparison isn’t quite fair to your poetry, Oppie,” Helgin answered, in the same sweet voice.

“Monseigneur Helgin, apostle of fairness, sympathy, and tolerance—know any other good ones, Ben?”—the poet’s smile shone like a sleeping laugh.

“Your hair is like a tortured midnight—that was a nice line, Oppie,” Helgin answered pensively, as he ignored the other man’s thrust.

“The actual phrase happens to be ‘transfigured midnight,’” Oppendorf said, in an ominously subdued voice. “You substituted the word tortured to make the line meaningless, of course.”

“Sa-ay, wasn’t that tormented night stuff in The Duke of Hoboken, Ben’s last novel?” Dora Ruvinsky asked, poking Oppendorf in the side.

“Yes, among other frantic mendacities,” Oppendorf answered, as he looked compassionately at Helgin. “The ancient Chinese had an excellent proverb: ‘When your stilettos have failed to penetrate the actual figure, erect a ludicrous dummy and belabor it with an ax.’”

“The Chinese usually come to your rescue,” Helgin retorted, “but you don’t seem to realize that The Duke of Hoboken is simply a gorgeous and delirious fantasy. It wasn’t meant to be an actual portrait of you.”

“Yes, you were more innocent than you imagined,” Oppendorf answered, still smiling.

“Oh, stop all of this polite quarreling, Maxie,” Margaret interposed, as she looked at Helgin with an open dislike. “Helgin sits in his little phantom palace, bo-ored and genial, and when you cave in the walls he scarcely hears you.”

“Your own hearing is just a trifle more adoring, isn’t it?” Helgin asked, as he looked at Margaret with an expression of complacent malice.

“Yes, it needs to be, if only to counteract yours,” Margaret replied, tartly.

“Call it a draw, and let’s talk about purple chrysanthemums,” Oppendorf interjected.

When people persisted in clinging to one subject he was always reminded of scrubwomen endlessly scouring a pane of glass, unless the theme was exceptionally complex.

“Dear me, can’t I say something else about the sweet Duke?” Trussel asked, as he stroked his hair with the fingers of one hand. “It’s screamingly amusing, really. Lots of the critics have always attacked Mr. Helgin’s books, you know—called them stilted and, well, overcynical. That sort of thing. But no-ow, dear me, what a change! Why, they’re all simply showering praise on the dear Duke of Hobok’. Of course, there isn’t any connection between this change and the fact that little Dukie is supposed to be a biting caricature of Mr. Oppendorf.”

“No, of course not,” Oppendorf replied, thoroughly amused now. “In the same way, three thoughtful chorus girls were observed last night, floating in a huge balloon as they crossed the peninsula of Kamchatka.”

“People are always talking about the dead,” Helgin said, in a bored voice. “The indecent vagaries of critics are not interesting to me. They might be vastly engrossing to some entomologist, though.”

“Oh, you’re all a lot of bugs,” Dora said, as she caressed Margaret’s arm while Margaret regarded her with a resigned look that said: “Well, I suppose you must do this.”

“You’re crazy, and you take yourselves so darn seriously it gives me a pain!” Dora continued. “Come on, let’s have another drink and act like human beings.”

The conversation changed to a game in which the others bantered with Dora and laughed at her amiable but scoffing retorts. Blanche, who had been bewildered and almost awe-stricken ever since her introduction to these people, began to listen and observe with a clearer, though still strongly respectful, attitude. They were the people whom she had always longed to meet, and they knew much more than she did, and they were bold creators while she was only despairing and partly tongue-tied, ye-es, but still, they were by no means perfect. They wasted so much time in slamming each other as cleverly as they could, and while they were always good-natured about it, you couldn’t fail to spy the malice beneath at least half of their smiles and remarks. They never expressed any whole-hearted liking, or sympathy, or placid interest in their reactions toward each other, and their talk reminded her of a game in which each one strove to make his “comeback” a little “smarter” and quicker than that of the others. Yet Oppendorf alone seemed to be different. The others, with the exception of Margaret, were always trying to twit or arouse him—something about him seemed to plague them almost against their will—and never quite succeeding. His eyes were sleepy and retiring, and he closed them half of the time during his conversation. When he laughed or raised his voice now and then, it was in a jerky way, “like some one else” was pulling some strings tied to him. Funny man ... what had given him this air of tired sadness? Well, at any rate, she could never fall in love with him—he was too much like a careful ghost!

The man whom she loved would have to be robust, and natural, and, well ... sort of eager to be alive, in spite of the fact that he knew all about the shams and meannesses which life held. Yes, that was it ... he’d be glad, and a little hopeful, in spite of all the rotten things he saw and heard.

She began to talk more frankly, her tongue loosened a bit by the two drinks of whisky that Oppendorf had given her.

“Say, why don’t all of you just call each other liars and boobs, and have it over with?” she asked, with a smile.

“At an early age, I was confronted by the choice of using the other side’s tactics now and then or becoming a hermit,” Oppendorf replied, in his deliberate way. “I am still direct enough, however, to be ostracized by practically every literary party or group in New York.”

“I admire your indignation,” Helgin said to Blanche. “Ride us all on a rail and tell us what vicious double-dealers we are.”

He had decided to egg her on for purposes of entertainment. “It wouldn’t have the least effect on any of you,” Blanche answered, composedly. “Besides, I’m only a stranger and I really haven’t any right to criticize. You’re all doing things—real things that amount to something—and I’m just a hair-curler in a Beauty Shop.”

“Listen, here’s a tip—never be modest when men are around,” Margaret said, gayly. “They think little enough of women as it is, and they’re always looking for a chance to walk over us.”

“Oh, it’s too much trouble not to be honest,” Blanche retorted, lightly. “Let them try to wa-alk, for all I care.”

“Have you ever written, or painted?” Oppendorf asked, liking the contradiction of her humble brassiness.

“I have fooled around with ideas of being a writer, but I’m afraid I don’t know English well enough for that,” said Blanche, uncertainly.

“Don’t take up writing, Miss Palmer—it’s only an excuse for laziness,” Helgin said. “That’s probably why so many young people try to toss off stories and verses. They have just a bit of imagination and they don’t like the prospect of slaving in father’s shoe store or helping mother bake the evening pies.”

“There must be a more important reason than that,” Blanche replied, soberly.

“Yes, it’s barely possible,” Oppendorf interjected. “It’s a habit with us to take our profession somewhat flippantly. That’s to avoid giving the impression that we’re too much in love with ourselves.”

“Funny, you do manage to give the impression, anyway,” Blanche answered, as she made a grimace.

Oppendorf and the others laughed, and Helgin said: “So, you’ve been carrying that little dagger all the time. Bright gal.”

“Not at all—just trying to imitate your style,” Blanche retorted, merrily.

The others had been regarding her as a meek and abashed apprentice in their realms, but now they began to pelt her with more respectful badinage, with the exception of Oppendorf, who watched her with a sleepy stare of approval and remained silent. This girl wasn’t half stupid at bottom, but just ignorant of many things.

The group repaired to Margaret’s nearby studio and danced to a phonograph and slipped into varying stages of tipsiness. Helgin did not dance, but sat in a corner and talked to Blanche. He became mellowly garrulous and somewhat less malicious, and he regarded Blanche as a fumbling but slightly diverting barbarian—diverting for a night or two at least. They were mildly interesting as long as they clung to their ferocious sassiness, but they always wound up by becoming girlishly wistful, and pleading, and more disrobed. He began to tell her anecdotes of his past, in which he was always laughing, penetrating, and triumphant at somebody else’s expense, and she listened eagerly. My, but this man certainly knew how to talk! He was always getting the best of people—you had to take at least forty per cent off from any fellow’s claims in that direction—but he really was a great writer, and he knew so many words and handled them so gracefully.

Urged by a perverse whim, he invited Blanche to come with him to a party which he had promised to attend on the following night. The affair was to be a gathering of literary and theatrical celebrities and near celebrities, together with their latest fads and fancies in human form, and it might be amusing to bring this blunt, would-be highbrowish, young hair-dresser and see whether the assembled pedestals would overwhelm her.

While Blanche suspected that he was playing with her and had only the impulse to grasp a flitting distraction, she felt delighted at this second opportunity to meet “famous” writers, and artists, and actors, and as she accepted the invitation she said to herself: “He thinks I’m just a snippy nobody, and he wants to show me off and then see what happens—like letting the puppy run loose in the parlor. Oh, I know. But what do I care? I might make friends at this party with two or three people just as intelligent as he is, and maybe more honest.”

While Helgin left her emotionally unaroused, she was nevertheless dazed by his vocabulary and his mental swiftness, which she frequently had to stumble after, and a little flattered by his talkative attention, in spite of herself. The genially wise-cracking, quizzically aloof, and patronizing air, which he never deserted, irritated her but did not