Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly (11 page)

“They catch us, sure. They kill us.”

“You willing to take a chance?”

It was a long time before she said anything, and before she did she took my hand and pressed it. Then she looked up, and
I knew that whatever it was going to be, there was no fooling around about it. It was the works.… “Yes.”

A little tingle went over me, but what I said was dumb enough. “Yes, what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think it’s about time for us to pick out something for you to call me? I can’t very well keep on being
Señor.”

“I call you Hoaney.”

I half wished she had picked out something different than what she had called every Weehawken slob that had showed up at her crib, but I didn’t say anything. Then something caught my throat. It came to me that she wasn’t calling me “Honey.” She was calling me Johnny—her way. “Kiss me, Juana. That’s exactly what I want you to call me.”

The town was dark now, and quiet. I started, pulled out of the grove, and got over the road. As soon as I could I went into high, not for speed, but for quiet. With all that stuff out of the car we didn’t make much noise, but I cut her back to the slowest roll that was in her, and we crept along until we got to the main street. I stopped, and listened. I didn’t hear anything, so I started up again, and turned the corner, to the left. I hadn’t put the lights on, and the moon was hanging low over the ocean, so the right side of the main street was in shadow. I had gone half a block when she touched my arm. I rolled in to the curb and stopped. She pointed. About three blocks down the street, on the left, where the moonlight lit him up, was a cop. He was walking away from us. He was the only one in sight. She leaned to me and whispered: “He go, so.”

She motioned with her hand, meaning around the corner. That’s how I went. I gave him about five seconds, then reached for the started. The car tilted. Somebody was beside me, on the running board. I still had the gun beside me. I snatched it and turned. A brown face was there, not six inches from mine. Then I saw it was Conners.

“Is that you, lad?”

“Yes. God, you gave me a start.”

“Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking all over for you! I’ve broken out my hook, I’m ready to go, I’m out of humor with you.”

“I got in some trouble.”

“… Don’t tell me it was you that hit the general?”

“I did.”

His eyes popped open and he began to talk in a whisper. “The penalty is death, lad, the penalty is death.”

“Irregardless of that—”

“Not so loud. It’s all over town. One of them could be sleeping, and if they hear the English, they’ll yell and it’ll be the end of you.… Did you mind what I said? The penalty is death. He’ll take you to the jail and they’ll spend an hour booking you, filling out every paper they’ve got. Then he’ll take you out and have them shoot you—for trying to escape.”

“If they catch me.”

“They’ll catch you. For God’s sake, come on.”

“I’m not coming.”

“Did you hear me? The penalty—”

“Since I saw you, there are two of us. Miss Montes, Capitán Conners.”

“I’m happy to know you, Miss Montes.”

“Gracias
, Capitán Conners.”

He treated her like a princess, and she acted like one. But then he leaned close and put it in my ear. “You can’t do it, man. You can’t take up with some girl you met tonight, and you’ll be putting her in terrible danger, too. She’s a pretty little thing, but hark what I’m telling you. You must come on.”

“I didn’t just meet her tonight, and she’s with me.”

He looked up and down the street, and then at his watch. Then looked at me hard. “Lad—do you know the Leporello song?”

“I do.”

“Then come on, the pair of you.”

He slipped around the car and helped her out. She had the hatbox in her lap. He took it. She carried the other stuff. I grabbed the door, for fear he would slam it mechanically. He
didn’t. I slipped out on the right side, after her. He pulled us back of the car. “We’ll keep the automobile between us and that policeman, down the street.”

We tiptoed back to the corner I had just turned, and instead of going the way I had, he pulled us the other way, toward the beach. We came to a crooked alley, and turned into that.

Two minutes after that we trotted out on a dock, and dropped into a launch. Two minutes after that, we were on the deck of the
Port of Cobh
, with beer and sandwiches coming up. Two minutes after that we were slipping past the headland, and I was cocked back with a guitar on my knee, rolling the Leporello song out for him, and she was pouring beer.

C H A P T E R

6

It was a happy week, all right. I didn’t sing much, except a little at night if he wanted it. Most of the time we sat around and fanned about music. She would be with us and then she wouldn’t be. He gave us the royal suite, and the main feature was a shower bath, with sea water coming out of it. It was the first time she had been under one. Maybe it was the first time she ever had a bath, I don’t know. Mexicans are the cleanest people on earth. Their face is clean, their feet are clean, their clothes are clean, and they don’t stink. But when they bathe, or whether they bathe, I can’t tell you. To her it was a new toy and every time I’d go looking for her I’d find her in there, stripped clean, under the water. I guess I generally hung around. She was something for a sculptor to hire, and she had just enough of the copper in her to make her look like something poured from metal, especially with the water shining on her shoulders. I didn’t let her see me look, at first, but then I found out she liked it. She’d stand on her toes, and stretch her arms, and let her muscles ripple, and then laugh. So of course that led to this and that.

The second night out, he got off on a harangue against Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Bellini, Donizetti, and “that most unspeakable
wop of all, Rossini.” That was where I stopped him. “Hold on, hold on, hold on. On those others, I haven’t got much to say. I sing them, but I don’t talk about them, though Donizetti is a lot better than most people think. But on Rossini, you’re crazy.”

“The William Tell Overture is the worst piece of music ever written.”

“There’s music in it, but it’s not his best.”

“There’s no music in it of any kind.”

“Well, how’s this?”

I picked up the guitar and gave him a little of Semiramide. You can’t play a Rossini crescendo on a guitar, but I did what I could. He listened, his face set like flint. I finished and was going to start something else, when he touched my arm. “Play a little of that again.”

I played it again, then gave him some Italians in Algiers, and then some Barber. It took quite a while. I know a lot of Rossini. I didn’t sing, just played. On the woodwind strain in the Barber overture, I just brushed the strings with my fingers, then for the climax came in big over the hole, and it really sounded like something. I stopped, and he smoked his pipe a long time. “ ’Tis fine, musicianly music, isn’t it?”

“It’s all of that. And it’s no worse for being gay, and not taking itself too seriously.”

“Aye, it has a twinkle in its eye, and a sparkle in its beat.”

“Your friend Beethoven patronized him, the son-of-a-bitch. Told him to keep on writing tunes, that was what he was good for. All Rossini was doing at the time was trying to give him a lift, so he wouldn’t have to live like a hog in the dump he found him in.”

“If he patronized him it was his right.”

“The hell it was. When a Beethoven overture is as good as a Rossini overture, then it’ll be his right. Until then, let him keep his goddam mouth shut.”

“Lad, lad, you’re profaning a temple.”

“No, I’m not. You say he’s the greatest composer that ever lived, and so do I. He wrote the nine greatest symphonies ever
put on paper, and that makes him the greatest composer. But listen, symphonies are not all of music. When you get to the overtures, Beethoven’s name is not at the top, and Rossini’s is. The idea of a man that could write a thing like the Leonora No. 3 high-hatting Rossini. Why, when those horns sound off, off-stage, it’s a cheap vaudeville effect that makes the William Tell Overture sound like a Meistersinger’s Prelude, by comparison.”

“I confess I don’t like it.”

“Oh yeah, he would show the boys how to write an overture, wouldn’t he? He didn’t have overtures in him. You know why? To write an overture, you’ve got to love the theatre, and he didn’t. Did you ever hear Fidelio?”

“I have, and it shames me—”

“But Rossini loved the theatre, and that’s why he could write an overture. He takes you into the theatre—hell, you can even feel them getting into their seats, and smell the theatre smell, and see the lights go up on the curtain. Who the hell told Beethoven he could treat that guy as somebody with an amusing talent that he ought to cultivate?”

“Just the same he was a great man.”

I played the minuet from the Eighth Symphony. You can get most of that on the guitar. “… That was something to hear. By the way you play him, lad, you think he’s a great man yourself, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“The other too. From now on I shall listen to him.” We were several days out before he got around to McCormack, and he kind of brought it up offhand, as we were sitting on deck at sundown, like it was just something he happened to think of. But when he found out I thought McCormack was one of the greatest singers that ever lived, he began to talk. “So you say the singers admire the fellow?”

“Admire him? Does a ballplayer admire Ty Cobb?”

“Between ourselves, I’m no enthusiast for the art. As you’ve observed, I’m a symphony man myself, and I believe the great music of the world has been written for fiddlers, not singers.
But with McCormack I make an exception. Not because he’s an Irishman, I give you my word on that. You were right about Herbert. If there’s one thing an Irishman hates more than a landlord it’s another Irishman. ’Tis because he makes me feel music I had previously been indifferent to. I don’t speak of the ballads he sings, mush a man wouldn’t spit into. But I have heard him sing Händel. I heard him sing a whole program of Händel at a private engagement in Boston.”

“He can sing it, all right.”

“Until then, I had not cared for Händel, but he revealed it to me. ’Tis something to be grateful for, the awakening to Händel. What is the reason for that? I’ve heard a million of your Wops, Frogs and Yankees sing Händel, aye and plenty of Englishmen, but not one of them can sing it the way that fellow can.”

“Well, in the first place, he’s good. That’s something you can’t quite cut up into pieces and measure off. And when a man’s good, he’s generally good all the way down the line. McCormack has music in him, so he no sooner opens his trap than there’s a tingle to it, no matter what he sings. He has an instinct for style that never lets him down. He never drags an andante too slow, or hustles an allegro too fast. He never turns a dumb phrase, or forces, or misgauges a climax. When he does it, it’s always right, with a big R. What he did for Händel was to bring it to life for you. Up to then, you probably thought it was pale, thin, tinkle-tankle stuff—”

“To my shame I did.”

“And then he stepped into it, like a bugler at dawn—”

“That’s it, that’s it, like a bugler at dawn. You can’t imagine what it was like, lad. He stood there, the most arrogant figure of a man I ever saw, with his chest thrown out and his head thrown back, and his thumbs in his little black book of words, like a cardinal starting the mass. And without a word, he began to sing. And the sun came up, and the sun came up.”

“And in the second place—”

“Yes, lad, in the second place?”

“He had a great voice.”

“He could have the Magic Flute in his throat and I’d never know it.”

“Well, he goddam near
had
the Magic Flute in his throat, if somebody happened to ask you. And your ears knew it, even if your head didn’t. He had a
great
voice, not just a good voice. I don’t mean big. It was never big, though it was big enough. But what makes a great voice is beauty, not size, and beauty will get you, I don’t care if it’s in a man’s throat or a woman’s leg.”