Read Online The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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mailbox—and dropped in my last delivery, whose inscription read: “For a couch.”
On the way to the viaduct, I looked back at what was already yesterday. Yesterday is a village now, already a place so little on the move that I shall always be able to look back to see how all the life-stories have worked out, including mine. I moved on.
The viaduct is a particularly coveted one, having at its opposite arch a public convenience, far enough away so that there is no smell, even downwind. Fires are not allowed by the city, of course, nor sleeping, but several niches in its fin-de-siècle architecture are excellent for either. The neighborhood, too, still a family one though on the fringe of the peculiarly livid hells of the Bowery, attracts a remarkably high class of loiterer, few winos, no hopheads, no feelies. Old men with Joaquin Miller beards still abound in the world; young ones “on the beat bit,” as they like to say, are setting up their new generation of the same (though I sometimes think it a shame to waste all that sincerity on such little experience); then there’s usually a scattering of Puerto Ricans who haven’t made it to Harlem yet or are making away from there, also now and then a crone or two (princesses-royal of the paper bag and always the least chummy), and here and there a tart. The Seamen’s Institute is nearby; though we see none of them here, it lends a churchly presence. Down the alley is the all-night Chinese restaurant. Altogether, in the gradation, not a bad setup for a novice.
As far as I could see, no one was installed there yet, certainly no fire, though that might be due to time of year. Down here, the obscurities of night become doubly soft as one approaches the river, doubly tender, as if hiding only babes in cabbages. The cop’s last round was at four, but some of the nicer ones rarely made it—what they don’t see don’t hurtem. Doesn’t. (Hmm—why not?—don’t.) Out in front of the arch, some yards distant, there is a public bench, under a lamppost.
I sat down on it, weary, not gay any more, but not sad either, perhaps in just that state of mind when the noumenon stops nagging and not-so-blind young phenomenon gets its chance. Or perhaps it was just that in the bad sections of New York the old lampposts are so beautiful. This one hung its long, graceful urn against a sky dark as the inside of a much larger urn that enclosed both of us. It swung itself a creaking inch or two; get born, sister; get born. The wind that blows my shore is a small one. I wished for the society of my kind—those under many hats in many places, or at home in their most private wigs a-sleeping. I wished for my brother. But my crusade is the smallest also, running to a company of one. So it was just here, that it began.
Without scarf, I could feel how the light shone gladly on the forehead that keeps us from the apes they say—with the help of that even whiter, high naked oval above it—below which my eyes, without their false shadow, must be gleaming beyond their fair green share. I didn’t need a mirror to unveil in, or swear a resolve to, but arched my neck like a swan’s, shifted my scalp, reserved ear-wiggling for a less sacred moment, but let the breeze play like a sixth sense around them. When the time comes, it’s like grace or death, perhaps. When the time comes, it’s nothing much. Except that you don’t always hear the cop behind you.
It was my first formal confrontation. I spoke first, as one always should to the establishment, and very distinctly. “Good evening, officer.”
He gasped; he must have thought me a boy. It was rather a comfort that he didn’t gasp more than he did. The New York police have of course seen everything and twice around, including the man who regularly walks lower Fifth Avenue in tam, perfect Glenurquhart kilt—and lace panties—or the beggar who stands in full beard, a costume out of Parsifal and a smile like a sneer from a pulpit, in the West
On the way to the viaduct, I looked back at what was already yesterday. Yesterday is a village now, already a place so little on the move that I shall always be able to look back to see how all the life-stories have worked out, including mine. I moved on.
The viaduct is a particularly coveted one, having at its opposite arch a public convenience, far enough away so that there is no smell, even downwind. Fires are not allowed by the city, of course, nor sleeping, but several niches in its fin-de-siècle architecture are excellent for either. The neighborhood, too, still a family one though on the fringe of the peculiarly livid hells of the Bowery, attracts a remarkably high class of loiterer, few winos, no hopheads, no feelies. Old men with Joaquin Miller beards still abound in the world; young ones “on the beat bit,” as they like to say, are setting up their new generation of the same (though I sometimes think it a shame to waste all that sincerity on such little experience); then there’s usually a scattering of Puerto Ricans who haven’t made it to Harlem yet or are making away from there, also now and then a crone or two (princesses-royal of the paper bag and always the least chummy), and here and there a tart. The Seamen’s Institute is nearby; though we see none of them here, it lends a churchly presence. Down the alley is the all-night Chinese restaurant. Altogether, in the gradation, not a bad setup for a novice.
As far as I could see, no one was installed there yet, certainly no fire, though that might be due to time of year. Down here, the obscurities of night become doubly soft as one approaches the river, doubly tender, as if hiding only babes in cabbages. The cop’s last round was at four, but some of the nicer ones rarely made it—what they don’t see don’t hurtem. Doesn’t. (Hmm—why not?—don’t.) Out in front of the arch, some yards distant, there is a public bench, under a lamppost.
I sat down on it, weary, not gay any more, but not sad either, perhaps in just that state of mind when the noumenon stops nagging and not-so-blind young phenomenon gets its chance. Or perhaps it was just that in the bad sections of New York the old lampposts are so beautiful. This one hung its long, graceful urn against a sky dark as the inside of a much larger urn that enclosed both of us. It swung itself a creaking inch or two; get born, sister; get born. The wind that blows my shore is a small one. I wished for the society of my kind—those under many hats in many places, or at home in their most private wigs a-sleeping. I wished for my brother. But my crusade is the smallest also, running to a company of one. So it was just here, that it began.
Without scarf, I could feel how the light shone gladly on the forehead that keeps us from the apes they say—with the help of that even whiter, high naked oval above it—below which my eyes, without their false shadow, must be gleaming beyond their fair green share. I didn’t need a mirror to unveil in, or swear a resolve to, but arched my neck like a swan’s, shifted my scalp, reserved ear-wiggling for a less sacred moment, but let the breeze play like a sixth sense around them. When the time comes, it’s like grace or death, perhaps. When the time comes, it’s nothing much. Except that you don’t always hear the cop behind you.
It was my first formal confrontation. I spoke first, as one always should to the establishment, and very distinctly. “Good evening, officer.”
He gasped; he must have thought me a boy. It was rather a comfort that he didn’t gasp more than he did. The New York police have of course seen everything and twice around, including the man who regularly walks lower Fifth Avenue in tam, perfect Glenurquhart kilt—and lace panties—or the beggar who stands in full beard, a costume out of Parsifal and a smile like a sneer from a pulpit, in the West
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