Читать книгу Tawny - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 5

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Birdy led Tawny through the lobby of the Hotel Fenton, and Tawny wished her friends could see the way everyone, especially the men, looked at her mother. They soared twelve stories in an elevator, walked along a corridor to a white door with gold numbers and entered a sitting room.

A man with smoothly brushed iron-gray hair, gray eyes, smooth-shaven pink cheeks, a gray and red bow tie, a gray suit and shining brown shoes arose from a stuffed green armchair and looked inquiringly at them. Birdy said:

“Hello, Tom. This is my daughter Tawny. Tawny, I’d like to have you meet my friend, Mr. Barty.”

Mr. Barty held out a white hand with pink, carefully manicured finger nails and said in a pleasant voice:

“Hello, Tawny. What a pretty little girl you turned out to be.”

“I’m glad to meetcha,” Tawny said, wriggling a little.

“Hey!” Birdy laughed. “It isn’t classy to say, ‘I’m glad to meetcha.’ You must just say, ‘How do you do?’ ”

Birdy assumed a mock stately manner and an exaggerated accent for the illustration and Tawny promptly copied it and echoed:

“How do you do?”

“Mr. Barty,” Birdy coached.

“Mr. Barty,” Tawny repeated.

“After all that, just call me Tom,” Mr. Barty said.

Tawny smiled up at Tom and he smiled down at her. He not only looked as if he had lots of money, but he smelled as if he had lots of money. He smelled of soap and water and Turkish tobacco and fresh wool—a clean, man smell. Somehow, without being told, Tawny knew where the yellow touring car had come from.

Tom helped Birdy off with the mink coat. Birdy tossed her turban on the green couch with the red and yellow pillows. Vases of flowers stood around on two tables and on the mantel. There were snapdragons, and chrysanthemums, white and yellow, and roses, red and white. Tawny never had seen so many flowers except at a funeral or a wedding or in a florist’s. She drank in the beauty and the aroma as a thirsty man absorbs water. Her yellow eyes were bright with excitement. Birdy said:

“Tawny’s going to stay with me over the week-end, Tom.”

“That’s nice,” Tom said, “but there’s no reason, is there, why she can’t run downstairs for an hour or two?”

He handed Tawny a crisp new five-dollar bill. It was the first brand-new bill Tawny ever had seen—and five dollars! She stared at it. Birdy laughed again and said:

“The poor kid’s never seen so much money all at once before in her life, I guess. Give her a little silver, Tom. And don’t go far from the hotel, Tawny, and be back by six o’clock.”

A half hour later, Tawny was singing in McCarthy’s Dance Hall, in Sixth Avenue. She sang first the one Gramma called the Englishman’s Song:

Up in a balloon, boys.

Up in a balloon.

Sailing around the little stars,

Cruising around the moon.

Up in a balloon, boys.

Up in a balloon.

Oh, what a very jolly way

To spend a honeymoon.

Tawny had a sweet voice and no nerves at all, and she sang just as Gramma did, with all the quavers and long drawn-out effects. The dancers cheered and clapped and tossed dimes and nickels at her. They called for an encore. Much pleased with herself, Tawny sang:

When leaving dear old Ireland

In the merry month of June

The birds were sweetly singing

And all nature seemed in tune.

An Irish girl accosted me,

And as she spoke the words to me,

How bitterly she cried.

Take these to my brother,

For I have no other.

They are the shamrocks

From his dear old mother’s grave.

Three leaves of shamrock,

The Irishman’s shamrock,

From his own darling sister

Her blessings to him she gave.

Take these to my brother

Who is far across the sea

And don’t forget to tell him, sir,

That they were sent by me.

Tell him since he went away,

How bitter was our lot,

The landlord came one wintry day

And turned us from our cot.

Our troubles they were many,

Our friends were ever few,

And all I’ve left in life to love

I’m sending now with you.

Of course, Tawny sang the chorus between each stanza. When she finished, there was more applause and more dimes and nickels tinkled at her feet. The boys said:

“She’s a cute kid.”

“Wait till she gets a little older.”

“She’ll make ’em sit up.”

“What’s your name, Kid?”

The girls said:

“Poor little thing.”

“She ought to be home with her mother.”

“It’s a shame.”

“Bold as brass.”

“A nice voice.”

“She’ll be an actress, all right.”

“Talent.”

“But at her age.”

Tawny was happy as an angel in heaven. The music was a waltz. The boys and girls were dancing, and Mr. McCarthy himself gave Tawny sarsaparilla and pretzels and showed her how to take the wax from the dance floor, and make a wax doll with a toothpick for a backbone. And he wrapped up the dimes and nickels in one of his own handkerchiefs. Heigho! That was the life.

Birdy looked at the silver in the handkerchief, heard the story, and laughed and laughed until she cried. She was wearing a lovely green kimono over a yellow silk nightdress, and her white feet, generously proportioned but shapely, were poked into golden boudoir slippers with green pompons. She poured herself a drink of Old Taylor Bourbon from a bottle on the table by the couch and lighted a gold-tipped Egyptian cigarette. She kissed Tawny, a caress bringing with it the mixed aromas of Bourbon, Turkish tobacco and gardenias. Birdy always smelled like gardenias. She said:

“You’ll get along, Tawny. When a kid, nine years old, can go out on Broadway with fifty cents and come back with a profit of two-seventy, you don’t have to worry about her.”

Birdy got dressed and they ate in the Hotel Knickerbocker dining room. Tom, wearing a tuxedo, came over to their table and bought champagne, and there were other men, and a deal of laughter, and talk about show business and horse racing and London and Paris.

One of the men poured a little champagne in a glass and offered it to Tawny. Birdy snatched it away and cried:

“Don’t give my baby anything to drink.”

To Tawny she said, her voice harsh:

“If I ever catch you drinking or going with men I’ll kill you, so help me God.”

“She doesn’t want me to have a good time like she has,” Tawny thought. “I’ll just never let her know.”

The man was protesting.

“A little champagne wouldn’t hurt the kid,” he asserted. “It would be better to let her taste it and find out what it is when you’re along than have her find out when you’re away.”

“You shut up, Ed,” Birdy snapped, “and mind your own business. I’m the kid’s mother, not you.”

Before she went to bed, Birdy got out a hypodermic needle, an alcohol lamp, cotton, a spoon, and some little pills. Tawny asked:

“What’s that, mother?”

“Don’t call me mother. Call me Birdy.”

Birdy was holding the spoon over the alcohol flame.

“What’s that, Birdy?”

“Heroin. And if I ever catch you drinking alcohol or taking drugs or going with men, I’ll kill you.”

Birdy filled the barrel of the syringe and pulled up her nightdress, baring her shapely white thigh. She scrubbed an area near the knee with alcohol, thrust the needle to the hilt, and pressed the plunger. Tawny asked:

“What does that do, Birdy?”

“Makes me feel good for a little while, but makes me feel terrible if I don’t take it. You mustn’t ever tell anyone anything about me, Tawny.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t, for anything.”

“Do you love me?”

“More than anybody or anything in the world.”

“I love you, sweetheart. And when you’re through school you’ll come and live with me forever.”

“I’d love to,” Tawny said.

“Do you love me more than your father?”

“Yes, I do.”

Tawny thought living with her mother would make the world all roses and perfume. No one was so lovely and charming and beautifully dressed as her mother. Men didn’t hang around other women the way they did around her mother. She began right there to look ahead to living with her mother after she got through school in the same way that a good Mohometan looks forward to entering Paradise. She made up her mind right there to get through with school just as soon as possible in order to hasten the happy day.

The bathroom was shining and beautiful, with a thick, white porcelain tub, and a thick blue and white bath mat, and great, thick towels. It was all blue and white tiles, and there was a shower, the first Tawny had seen. It all certainly was grand.

She and her mother lay on the softest and springiest mattress Tawny ever had known, and Birdy smoked cigarettes and sipped Bourbon and water and talked drowsily, in a voice which was a trifle dry. That was from the drug, although Tawny didn’t know it.

“If I didn’t have a car, I’d get one quick enough,” Birdy said. “If I didn’t have pretty clothes, I’d get pretty clothes. Whatever I am, Tawny, no man gets me cheap. Even your father had to marry me.”

Nothing could be nicer than lying there listening to Birdy talk, just as if Tawny were a pal of the same age. Tawny asked:

“Who was that funny man that kissed me on the cheek at the hotel?”

“That was Teddie Later—Theodore Roscoe Later. He’s a fairy, darling.”

“What’s a fairy?”

“He’s a man that loves men and doesn’t love girls, darling. A girl always is safe with a fairy. You can tell them when you get to know them. They think they’re girls.”

Birdy laughed and Tawny laughed with her. It did seem funny.

“They think they’re girls, but they’ve got men’s bodies. And they walk like girls and talk like girls and there’s never any harm in them for girls. I love fairies.”

“What does Mr. Later do?”

“He’s an actor, Tawny—a swell actor and a swell girl. There’s some who look down on fairies, but I’ve known a lot of ’em, and they can’t help the way they are any more than a humpback, like Petie Paul down in Twenty-third Street, could help being born a humpback. Some are born to be rich, and some are born to be poor, and some are born to be queens, and some are born to be hustlers.”

“What’s a hustler?”

“A hustler is a streetwalker, Tawny. And there’s many a person that sticks up his nose at a poor streetwalker that hasn’t half as good a heart.”

Tawny knew, as a child does, vague half-truths about streetwalkers, and much worse names for them which would never pass her lips.

“If I didn’t have the looks and the class I might be a hustler myself,” Birdy said benignantly. “But most people don’t realize how much luck has to do with their conditions in life.”

Tawny got out of the yellow touring car in front of her apartment house at ten o’clock Sunday night. She had all she could do to carry three packages into the house—silk bloomers with elastic bottoms, pink and white; silk undershirts, pink and white; silk stockings, black and tan; and two frocks, red and tan.

“A girl must always be bathed, and dressed in the best,” Birdy said.

Grades 5, 6, 7 and 8 were called the Grammar Department, and were in Public School No. 90, in One Hundred and Forty-seventh Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It was a much better and more modern building than No. 5, and had a big courtyard.

These schools are attended by Negroes now, but in those days they were all white. The Negroes still were confined to the general neighborhood of One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street and Lenox Avenue, but Tawny and her friends had begun to hear it said that they were spreading. Minnie Dorfer said:

“A Nigger has bought a house in a Hundred and Thirty-sixth and Pa says that block’ll go black now. He says the Niggers’ll run us out of Harlem before long, and out of New York, if we ain’t careful.”

No boys attended Public School No. 90, but there was a deal of obscene writing and printing in chalk and lead pencil on the walls in the toilets and in the hallways and on the stairs. Miss Nash, the principal, sent for Tawny one morning and said:

“Please take a pail and some soap and a cloth, and remove the terrible writing on the stairs, and in the wash rooms. I don’t like to ask Mr. Hanly to do it.”

Mr. Hanly was the janitor, and a man; and Tawny, with her aversion to obscenity and profanity, could understand just why Miss Nash wouldn’t care to speak to a man about such a delicate matter. She wouldn’t herself. She expunged the objectionable words and sentences with a crusader’s zeal. And after that this was one of her duties.

In this school building, fireproof glass over wire-enclosed staircases leading to five landings. Monitors were selected from among the brightest and most trustworthy pupils to stand on the landings and see to it that the other pupils marched out in orderly fashion, two by two. Tawny always was a monitor.

She was in Six B when, one Easter Sunday, she went to St. Thomas’s Church with her father and then joined the Easter Parade in Fifth Avenue. It was a beautiful April day, and Tawny knew there wasn’t any man on the avenue that was better dressed or any man who was as handsome and debonair as her father.

She loved to see the ladies’ eyes widen when they saw his long, handsome, daring face bearing the eternal tan of years in India, and the fresher tan of hours at race tracks in South America during the Winter. The streaks of white beside his temples added to rather than detracted from his charm. Then, no one could wear a hat at just the jaunty angle that Dave Bohun could, and no one could boast a more military figure.

But there was an aura about him that told his story. There were lines in his face which spoke of recklessness and waste. Voices whispered:

“Isn’t he handsome?”

“Looks like a gentleman gone to hell.”

“I could go for him in a big way.”

“There’s the picture of a sporting man.”

“Wager that lad’s seen service.”

“Good blood lines.”

“There’s the picture of a rake for you.”

“Gambler!”

That was it. Dave Bohun was a gambler at cards and life, and to hell with everything. He was the kind to take a machine-gun nest single-handed and think nothing of it, to have the world in his hand and toss it away, and think nothing of it. Excitement was life, and without excitement, Dave would much rather be dead, dead, dead.

They walked through Central Park to the Zoo. Tawny fed peanuts to the elephants and squirrels, admired the lions, and thought of herself with a pretty pride. She guessed she was not so bad-looking herself. She certainly could have all the boys she wanted—and older men. You’d be surprised.

They were strolling up Central Park West when Tawny stopped and cried out:

“Oh, the darling little puppies.”

An old Negro, with white hair, faded dim brown eyes, and skin as black almost as coal, bent shoulders and a shuffling walk, had two fluffy, light brown puppies on a string. They were yapping and dancing. Tawny rushed over and gathered one in her arms and hugged it to her breast. It ran out a long pink tongue and licked her lips. She started and scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, but clung to the puppy.

“Oh, I love him, Dad. Can I have him? Please? Look, he likes me already.”

“He’s sure a sweet puppy,” the Negro said softly. “A sweet puppy. Two dollahs an’ a ha’f for him, and fouah dollahs an’ a ha’f for him and his little sisteh.”

“Please, dad.”

“What kind of dog is he?” Dave asked.

The Negro’s old face wrinkled in a grin.

“Ah don’ rightly know, sah. Ah reckon he’s jus’ a dawg. But his momma’s a right sweet dawg, sah, an’ that knowin’.”

Dave regarded the puppy speculatively.

“Looks something like a Maltese terrier.”

“Please get him, dad. Please.”

“Take ’em both, sah. They plays so pretty togetheh.”

“I’ll take the male.”

“Oh, dad! Oh! I always wanted a dog. Oh, dad!”

“What’s his name?” Dave asked, as he held out the money.

“He ain’t got no name, sah—jus’ Puppy.”

“What’s your name?”

“Benjamin Gay, sah. Ole Benjamin Gay.”

“A good name, and not common. We’ll call the puppy Benjamin Gay.”

“But, dad! That’s not a dog’s name.”

“All the more reason for calling him Benjamin Gay, Tawny. You call him Ben, and I don’t think there’ll be any other dogs who’ll be confused by the name.”

“But, dad.”

“Benjamin Gay is his name, Tawny. You trust me.”

Tawny went to dancing school, first to Mr. Hendon, then to Mrs. Baum, and finally to other schools, including ballet schools. The lessons were five dollars each, but Dave thought it was a good idea. In the early days she went only once a week.

She didn’t forget her lucrative and exciting experience at McCarthy’s Dancing Academy on Sixth Avenue, and repeated the performance at the first opportunity at the old Harlem Casino, One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street and Harlem River. She opened with a popular song of the period, “Take Me up to the Ball Game.”

She was a big hit, just as she had been on Sixth Avenue, and the rain of tinkling nickels and dimes counted up to three dollars and twenty cents.

She sang at Laughlin’s Dance Hall, One Hundred and Forty-fifth Street and Broadway, and made wax-toothpick dolls, and drank free sarsaparilla and free pretzels, and wondered if there could be as talented and charming and happy a girl anywhere as she. She sang the rest of the song about the poor sailor boy:

Flying with feathery prow,

Bounding with slanting bow,

Swift on the summer sea,

Homeward bound was she.

Flying with feathery prow,

Bounding with slanting keel.

And glad—and glad

Was the sailor lad

As he steered and sang at his wheel.

Only another night to roam,

Only another day to stray.

Then, safe at last, the danger past,

Safe in his father’s home.

(fortissimo)

Sudden the thunder crashed.

Bright lightnings split the sky.

Sudden, the waters lashed.

Alas for the boy and gal!

And when the storm had passed,

A dreary wreck lay she.

But bright was the starry light

That shone on the summer sea

(pianissimo)

And a soft Voice came from the clouds,

And a voice from the whispering main,

Saying, Safe—safe, at last

The danger past—safe in his Father’s Home.

Tawny had heard Gramma and Aunt Mary sing that one in bed ever since she could remember, and she put it over with a sob in her voice and tears, purely histrionic, in her eyes, and brought down the house. Oh, you couldn’t keep a smart girl down.

Miss O’Brien was Tawny’s teacher in Grade 6B. Miss O’Brien had rare black hair, brown eyes, a ready smile, a soft voice and a vibrant personality, and Tawny loved her. Miss O’Brien, despite the blackness of her hair, was forty-five and a militant Suffragette. And so was Tawny. Tawny said:

“I hate men. They beat their wives.”

“Wait till you get older, Louise. You’ll like men and they’ll like you.”

“I’ll never like men.”

“Oh, yes, you will. There are nice men and bad men, just as there are nice girls and bad girls. You’ll like men very much.”

“But the world is a terrible mess, and men run it. It’s all men’s fault. That’s why they buy votes on election day. I hate men.”

The school doors were opened at eight o’clock in the morning. Teachers were due at eight-thirty, pupils at nine. But it was not unusual for Tawny to arrive as early at seven-thirty, such was her love for Miss O’Brien. She loved to clean the blackboards and put out fresh erasers and chalk and dust the desks.

Miss O’Brien sponsored a competitive system by which the girls in her class received imaginary money as rewards for work well done. The girl who had earned the most money at the end of a month was president. Tawny was president, and it was her job to keep books.

Tawny stood, as monitor, on the cold stone landing in January. It was a cold day and a bitter wind blew through the great windows and the opened doors and turned the staircases into Arctic crevasses. Tawny stood there shivering and suffering the agonies of hell.

She suffered for three days without telling anyone—suffering as she never knew anyone could suffer, and then she went to Dave and said:

“Poppa, I think I’m going to die.”

“That’s nothing,” Dave said awkwardly.

He left the living room, and spoke to Gramma in the kitchen. Gramma said:

“Come with me.”

They went into the bathroom and Gramma gave Tawny a cloth. She said:

“Don’t worry; all girls have that. It happens every month.”

And that is all that Tawny ever was told about her body, or about sex, in her family. It was not a subject nice people discussed. And Dave and Gramma and Birdy each had a sense of nicety.