Serenade (8 page)

"I like, very much."

"Why didn't you say so sooner?"

So I got out the bottle, and we began to swig it out of the neck. Pretty soon we were smearing her nipples with soup, to see if they would stick. Then after a while we just lay there, and laughed.

"You like the dinner?"

"It was lovely dinner,
gracias."

"You like the cook?"

"Yes...Yes...Yes. Very fonny cook."

God knows what time it was when we got up from there and went out front to wash up. She helped me this time, and when we opened the door it had stopped raining and the moon was shining. That set us off again. After we got the stuff clean we started to laugh and dance out there in the mud, barefooted. I started to hum some music for it, and then I stopped. She was standing out there in the glare of the moon with that same look on her face she had the first night I met her. But she didn't turn away from me this time. She came closer and looked at me hard. "Sing."

"Oh, the hell with it."

"No, please, sing."

I started over again, what I had been humming, but this time I sang it instead of humming it, and then I stopped again. It didn't sound like a priest any more. I walked over to the edge of the rocks and threw one down the arroyo, with a wide-open throttle. I don't know what it was. It came full and round, the way it once had, and felt free and good. I cut, and had just taken breath for another one when the echo of the first one came back to me. I caught my breath. That echo had something in it my voice had never had before, some touch of sweetness, or excitement, or whatever it was, that I had always lacked. I cut the second one loose, and she came over and stood looking at me. I kept throwing them, each one tone higher than the last. I must have got up to F above the staff. Then I did a turn in the middle of my voice and shot one as high as I dared. When the echo came it had a ring to it almost like a tenor. I turned and ran into the church and up to the organ, to check pitch. It was A flat, and church organs are always high. At orchestra pitch, it was at least an A natural.

I was trembling so bad my fingers shook on the keys. Listen, I was never a great baritone. I guess you begin to place me by now, and after the Don Giovanni revival, and especially after the Hudson-to-Horn hookup, you heard I was the greatest since Bispham, and some more stuff like that. That was all hooey. I was no Battistini, no Amato, no John Charles Thomas. On voice, I was somewhere between Bonelli and Tibbett. On acting, I was pretty good. On music, I was still better. On singing, I was as good as they come. I ought to be, seeing it was all I ever did, my whole life. But never mind all that. I had a hell of a good voice, that's all I'm trying to say, and I had worked on it, lived for it, and let it be a part of me until it was a lot more than just something to make a living with. And I want you to get it straight why it was when this thing happened in Europe, and it cracked up on me for no reason that I could see, and then when I got sold down to Mexico as a broken-down hack that couldn't be sent any place better, and then when I wasn't even good enough for that,--it wasn't only that I was a bum, and down and out. Something in me had died. And now that it had come back, just as sudden as it went, I was a lot more excited than you would be if you found a hundred-dollar bill somewhere. I was more like a man that had gone blind, and then woke up one morning to find out that he could see.

I played an introduction, and started to sing. It was
Eri Tu,
from Ballo in Maschera. But I couldn't be bothered with pedaling that old wreck. I walked out in the aisle, and walked around with it, singing without accompaniment. I finished it, sang it again, and checked pitch. It had pulled a little sharp. That was right, after that long lay-off, it ought to do that. I played a chord for pitch, and started another. I sang for an hour, and hated to quit, but at that high pitch an hour was the limit.

She sat in a pew, staring at me as I walked around. The
sacrilegio
didn't seem to bother her much any more. When I stopped, she came in the vestry room with me, and we dropped off what we had on, and lay down. There were six or seven cigarettes left. I kept smoking them. She lay beside me, up on one elbow, still staring at me. When the cigarettes were gone I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. She opened one eye, with her finger, and then the other eye. "That was very beautiful,
gracias."

"I used to be a singer."

"Yes. Maybe I made a mistake."

"I think you did."

"...Maybe not."

She kissed me then, and went to sleep. But the fire was dead, the moon had gone down, and the window was gray before
I
went to sleep.

We pulled into Acapulco the next afternoon around five thirty. We couldn't start before four, on account of that busted top, that I had to stow away in the boot. I didn't mean to get sunstroke, so I let her sleep and tried to clean up a little, so I would leave the church about the way I found it, except for a few busted locks and this and that. Getting the car out was a little harder than getting it in. I had to make little dirt run-ways up the steps, soak them with water, and let them bake in the sun, so I could get a little traction for the wheels in reverse. Then I had to tote all the stuff out and load it again, but I had more time, and made a better job of it. When she came out of her siesta, we started off. The arroyo was still a stream, but it was clear water now, and not running deep, so we got across all right.

When we got to Acapulco she steered me around to the hotel where we were going to stop. I don't know if you ever saw a hotel for Mexicans. It was a honey. It was just off the road that skirts the harbor, on the edge of the town, and it was just an adobe barracks, one story high, built around a dirt patio, or court, or whatever you'd call it, and that was all. In each room was a square oil can, what they use to carry water in all over Mexico, and that was the furnishings. You used that to carry your water in, from the well outside, and there wasn't anything else in there at all. Your mat, that you slept on, you were supposed to have with you, and unroll it on the dirt floor yourself. That was why she had been packing all those mats around. Your bedclothes you were supposed to have with you too, except that a Mexican doesn't need bedclothes. He flops as is. The plumbing was al fresco exterior, just over from the well. In the patio was a flock of burros, tied, that the guests had come on, and we parked our car there, and she took her hatbox, the cape, the
espada,
and the ear, and the
hostelero
showed us our room. It was No. 16, and had a fine view of a Mexican with his pants down, relieving his bowels.

"Well, how do you feel?"

"Very nice,
gracias."

"The heat hasn't got you?"

"No, no. Nicer than Mexico."

"Well, I tell you what. It's too early to eat yet. I think I'll have my suit pressed, then take a walk around and kind of get the lay of the land. Then after sundown, when it's cooler, we'll find a nice place and eat. Yes?"

"Very nice. I look at house."

"All right, but I got ideas on the location."

"Oh, the
político
already have house."

"I see. I didn't know that. All right, then, you see the
político,
have a look at the house, and then we'll eat."

"Yes."

I found a
sastrería,
and sat there while they pressed my suit, but I didn't waste any time on the lay of the land after that. You think I was going to bookkeep for a whorehouse now? A fat chance. Those high notes down the arroyo made everything different. There was a freighter laying out there in the harbor, and I meant to dig out of there, if there was any way in God's world I could promote passage on her.

It was nearly dark before I found the captain. He was having dinner at the Hotel de Mexico, out under the canopy. He was a black Irishman, named Conners, about fifty, with brows that met over his nose, a face the color of a meerschaum pipe, and blistered sunburned hands that were thin and long like a blackjack dealer's. He gave me a fine welcome when I sat down at his table. "My friend, I don't know your uncle in New York, your brother in Sydney, or your sister-in-law back in Dublin, God bless her, nevertheless. I'm not a member of the Ancient, Free, and Accepted Order of Masons, and I don't care if you ever get the twenty pesos to take you to Mexico City. I'll not buy you a drink. Here's a peso to be off, and if you don't mind I'll be having my dinner."

I let the peso lay and didn't move. When he had to look at me again I recited it back to him just like he had handed it to me. "I have no uncle in New York, no brother in Sydney, no sister-in-law in Dublin, thanks for the benediction, nevertheless. I'm not a member of the Ancient, Free, and Accepted Order of Masons, and I'm not on my way to Mexico City. I don't want your drink, and I don't want your peso."

"By your looks, you want something. What is it?"

"I want passage north, if that's where you're headed."

"I'm headed for San Pedro, and the passage will be two hundred and fifteen pesos, cash of the Republic, payable in advance, and entitling you to a fine deck stateroom, three meals a day, and the courtesies of the ship."

"I offer five."

"Declined."

I picked up his peso. "Six."

"Declined."

"I offer sweat. I'll do any reasonable thing to work this passage out, from swabbing decks to cleaning brass. I'm a pretty fair cook."

"Declined."

"I offer a recipe for Iguana John Howard Sharp that I have just perfected, a dish that would be an experience for you, and probably improve your disposition."

"'Tis the first sensible thing you have said, but there would be a difficulty getting the iguana. At this season they move up to the hills. Declined."

"I offer six pesos and a promissory note for two hundred and nine. The note I guarantee to redeem."

"Declined."

I watched him eating his fish, and by that time I was beginning to be annoyed. "Listen, maybe you don't get this straight. I intend to haul out of here, and I intend to haul out on your boat. Write up your contracts any way you want. The thing to get through your head is: I'm going."

"You're not. You've taken my peso, so be off."

I lit a cigarette and still sat there. "All right, I'll level it out, and quit the feinting and jabbing. I was a singer, and my voice cracked up. Now it's coming back, see? That means if I ever get out of this hellhole of a country, and get back where the money is, I can cash in. I'm all right. I'm as good as I ever was, maybe better. To hell with the promissory note. I guess that was a little tiresome. I ask you as a favor to haul me up to San Pedro, so I can get on my feet again."

When he looked up, his eyes were smoky with hate. "So you're a singer, then. An American singer. My answer is: It wouldn't be safe for me to take you aboard. Before I was out of the harbor with you I'd drop you into the water to rid the world of you. No! And don't take up any more of my time with it."

"What's the matter with an American singer?"

"I even hate the Pacific Ocean. On the Atlantic side, I can get London, Berlin, and Rome on my wireless. But here what is it? Los Angeles, San Francisco, the blue network, the red network, a castrated eunuch urging me to buy soap--and Victor Herbert!"

"He was an Irishman."

"He was a German."

"You're wrong. He was an Irishman."

"I met him in London when I was a young man, and I talked German with him myself."

"He talked German, through choice, especially when he was with other Irishmen. You see, he wasn't proud of it. He didn't want them to know it. All right, look him up."

"Then he was an Irishman, though I hate to say it.--And George Gershwin! There was an Irishman for you."

"He wrote some music."

"He didn't write one bar of music. Victor Herbert, and George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern, and buy the soap for me schoolboy complexion, and Lawrence Tibbett, singing mush. At Tampico, I got Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, that I suppose you never heard of, coming from Rome. Off Panama, I picked up the Beethoven Seventh, with Beecham conducting it, in London--"

"Listen, never mind Beethoven--"

"Oh, it's never mind Beethoven, is it? You would say that, you soap-agent. He was the greatest composer that ever lived!"

"The hell he was."

"And
who
was? Walter Donaldson, I suppose."

"Well, we'll see."

There were two or three
mariachis
around, but the place wasn't full yet, so there was a lull in the screeching. I called a man over, and took his guitar. It was tuned right, for a change. My fingers still had calluses on them, from the job in Mexico City, so I could slide up to the high positions without cutting them. I went into the introduction to the serenade from Don Giovanni, and then I sang it. I didn't do any number, didn't try to get any hand, and the rest of them in there hardly noticed me. I just sang it, half-voice, rattled off the finish on the guitar, and put my hand over the strings.

He was to his tamales by now, and he kept putting them down. Then he called the guitar player over, had a long powwow in Spanish, and laid down some paper money. The guitar player touched his hat and went off. The waiter took his plate and he stared hard at the table. "...It's a delicate point. I've been a Beethoven enthusiast ever since I was a young man, but I've often wondered to myself if Mozart wasn't the greatest musical genius that ever lived. You might be right, you might be right. I bought his guitar, and I'll take it aboard with me. I'm in with a cargo of blasting powder, and I can't clear till I've signed a million of their damned papers. Be at the dock at midnight sharp. I'll lift my hook shortly after."

I left him, my heels lifting like they had grown wings. Everything said lay low until midnight, and never go back to the hotel. But I hadn't eaten yet, and I couldn't make myself go in a café and sit down alone. Along about nine o'clock I walked on up there.

I no sooner turned in the patio before I could see there was something going on. Two or three oil lamps were stuck around, on stools, and some candles. Our car was still where I had left it, but a big limousine was parked across from it, and the place was full of people. By the limousine was a stocky guy, dark taffy-colored, in an officer's uniform with a star on his shoulder and an automatic on his hip, smoking a cigarette. She was sitting on the running board of our car. In between, maybe a couple of dozen Mexicans were lined up. Some of them seemed to be guests of the hotel, some of them the hired help, and the last one was the
hostelero.
Two soldiers with rifles were searching them. When they got through with the
hostelero
they saw me, came over, they grabbed me, stood me up beside him, and searched me too. I never did like a bum's rush, especially by a couple of gorillas that didn't even have shoes.