« p. 43-50: Heat Wave
New Yorkers
p. 50-57
After seven days in New York with an average temperature that could make a saint irritable, I’ve found nothing to fill me with hate or contempt against the oft-slandered New Yorker. They chew, however, God let them chew! Their climate absorbs most of the moisture, so they have to pump in a lot of water, which must play games with their stomachs, so I guess all the saliva produced from chewing helps. Also, their teeth are terrible and need proper care. They need to chew. So long as they don’t stick their spat-out hunks of rubber on the backs of their chairs, it’s all the same to me.
As far as shirtsleeves are concerned: I myself, two days after my arrival, laid my jacket courageously over my shoulder and untucked all my inner shirts.
In my first fleeting days, as I roamed around, this was what I noticed most about New York: you don’t see any uniforms on the streets!
I come from Berlin and know enough to value this act of kindness. From Berlin, where even the nightwatchman walks around like an imitation lieutenant, and where any bitter official is allowed to yell at me from on top of his noble steed, just because he’s wearing a publicly sanctioned uniform on his body. The uniform is as much a status symbol as having a crowd of lackeys at your coattails, not that these people know how to order others about, it’s just that they have so many medals hanging off their uniform. The idea that someone with numbers on his buttons is allowed to give orders to someone like me, with plain old buttons, is entirely a European idea. In America, at whose entrance the flame of liberty is held high, the uniform is reduced to a minimum. The man I give my nickel to on the tram wears a cap that lets me know this is the guy I have to give my nickel, but other than that his garments are his own. A Prussian would find this so unusual he might leap up in indignation at the next stop and raise an objection: an old man in his shirt sleeves has leaped onto the tram with a cigar in his mouth and is operating the controls without even removing the cigar. But even though this man has no badge demonstrating the dignity of his person, he is still officially sanctioned and tested. So calm down, you Central European! He will yell out without standing up, “Hello, my boy,” if on the next street corner Mr. Taft signals that he wants to get on. This is how he earns his keep, he is in his job and Taft is in his, just as much one as the other.
I sit downstairs in my hotel lobby, and suddenly I hear military music. Everyone rushes out to see the military and I rush with them. A regiment marches by in comfortable, regulation khakis. It’s hot, jackets are open, belts are loose, shirts are open at the throat, rifles are displayed again and again. This group of gentlemen, the officers and the crew, wear their garments in the awareness that this is the most appropriate way they can dress for the situation -- in my entire life I have yet to see soldiers and officers looking so intelligent. There is hardly one of them that I wouldn’t expect to see at Harvard, Yale or Cornell. The crowd from the hotel is full of affection, but the gentlemen couldn’t care less. They walk, smoke, chew, talk to the people in front or behind them, blow their noses, polish their glasses. There is no draft, they earn their bread, they are in their job. -- In other countries, you might take one of their young citizens on your knee after lunch at his parents’ house, and you’d ask him what he might like to be, and he will always answer, after aviator or chauffeur, that he wants to be a lieutenant, because lieutenants are always beautifully dressed. This does not happen in America.
The single (inconspicuous) costumed person I’ve seen so far in New York is the policeman, the bobby. In Prussia he’s well-known, so that no civilized person would forget for even a moment that someone is always watching him. Here, I believe, because of the unseemly faces of the Irish and all those people of ill-repute, the uniform is a reminder to passersby: Improve yourself.
After devoting the expertise of my feet and my eyes to the people around me these couple of days, I believe that this absence of uniforms is related to why my New York companions complain about the lack of imagination and the homogeneity of Americans. I hear many complaints about how the smallest conspicuousness in dress and in private life are punished and condemned, and I’m really beginning to notice it in the smallest places. More on this later, in the autumn.
In the evenings, when the tall buildings of the business quarter spit on the doors of the little people, the mammon-food, and these little people rush home to their destinations and to home, to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Hoboken, I stand there on a corner and watch these well-mannered, pale, exhausted people run by me. At night I wander through the disreputable section of the Bowery in Chinatown, and during the day to all four corners of the city, to the Jews, the Armenians, Italians, French, to the docks and the slums.
I remember a small Polish tailor next to me at the library last Sunday afternoon, who asked for Mickiewicz in his mother tongue. Before he took the leather binding, he wiped his sweaty finger for a few minutes with his handkerchief, wiped and wiped and dried and cleaned. I watched him, this was what he did on his afternoon off. --
In the Bowery, a drunken Croat stumbles around at night, holds half of a ten dollar note in his hand, sweats and swears. (“Porco Dio, I am an Italian!” swears this Hungarian Croat -- in German! That’s Austria for you!) He is just arriving, a crowd of people is around him in a moment and I am with him. You can hear all the languages of the world -- dollar is the only word that everyone says in the same language. Everyone wants to know what’s going on with the torn note. The Croat still holds it, waves with his hand, swears and yells. The scum of the foreign city gather around him. But everyone helps; everyone looks to see where the lost half of the note is lying; everyone wants to pry out of the poor dog where he came from; they run into all the boutiques and the bars, helping, looking, asking -- and then begin to laugh when the Porco Dio Man kneels down on the streets and begins with feverish kisses on his dirty rosary to beg his Madonna to stand with him against this swine! --
I dine in one of the small quick-lunch restaurants on a side street of Broadway at midday. At the long dining table, one place is open next to mine. A person walks in the door, I see him coming, he sits right next to me. He is repulsively ugly and looks mean and greedy. This is the man of Broadway, I say to myself, one of the evilest streets on this continent. If he sits down next to you and ruins your appetite, console yourself with the idea that you’re only observing him from the side; take a look at his example.
He orders a bowl of rice and a small bottle of milk, takes his bread, mashes it all together, and begins to devour it greedily. He’s poor, the dish there is the cheapest on the menu, he slings it all down, you can hear the entire procedure, I sit there and wait. With the last mouthful, he scrapes together the money out of his pocket. He doesn’t have much time, thank God, I’ve seen him, he can go now. He puts the money together -- what’s this? He pushes only five cents to the woman, so he’s not entirely committed! But, five cents here, five cents there, now he can go, thank God. At the window, I’ve ordered for myself peach slices with milk, and I wait for him to stand up, so that my meal won’t be ruined by his unshaven, sticky presence.
He stands up, pulls up his pants with a jerk, and as if on command I lower my spoon to the pears on my plate.
After five steps the man comes back, pushes his half-full bottle of milk towards me and says: This milk tastes better for peaches than the one you have. It’s a different sort of milk -- “use!” Then he toddles off without waiting for thanks.
I never eat pears with milk, but this time I pour the half-bottle of milk from the man from Broadway over my pears and scoop up the whole thing slowly.
The man from Broadway. An ugly, shabby, evil example of man. But why shouldn’t I see in him the typical person on this street and in this city? And then, when he came in, greedy and mean-looking, then he was the typical man from the Broad Way -- and now that he’s done me a favor, does he belong there anymore?
Poe saw the man of the street as an eerie stalker in the city night, and ever since then that has been the man of the street.
But today he came in and sat by a stranger who only felt evil-will in his heart. But the man who lived in an expensive city hotel knew nothing of this struggling man who had scratched together a few cents out of his pocket. The poor man retaliated against the rich man and his evil will with a good deed. Even in poverty, he thought about his neighbor, this man from Broadway. And from now on, whenever I'm approached on the corner of a side street of Broadway, the evilest street on the continent, I will feel the taste of milk on my lips, mild and better than any milk that man can buy with money.