Manhattan Transfer [antikvár]

MANHATTAN TRANSFER FIRST SECTION I. FERRYSLIP Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, sfoiled cabbage heads that heave between the sflintered flank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the jerry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gidfs the broken water, slides, settles sloivly into the slip. Handwinches whirl with jingle oj chains. Gates jold upwards, jeet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manuresmelling wooden tunnel oj the jerryhouse, crushed and jostling like apples jed 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 comer and kept time with the toe of a cracked patent-leather shoe. Bud Korpenning sat on the rail watching him, his ba^ to the river. The breeze made the hair stir round the tight line of his cap and dried the sweat on Ms temples. His feet were blistered, he was leadentired, but when the feriy moved out of the slip, bucking the little slapping scallopeci