The Saturdays (6 page)

“No, I don't care much about opry,” repeated Willy. “Hand me the wrench, Rush. No, not that one, the other one.”

Rush, crouching by the tool kit, looked doubtfully at Willy's faded trousers and warped old shoes.

“Have you ever been to an opera, Willy? A first-class one, I mean.”

“Eyetalian opry,” replied Willy with dignity. “That fella Caruso I heard. Paid my money and got me a seat right up under the ceiling. From where I was settin' Caruso looked about's big as a minna, awful little fella he was, but he sure had a big voice! Whole place vibrated with it, even up where I was. And could he hold a note! Had me breathing for him double strength, he did. I thought sure he'd burst his bronickal tubes. Hand me the pliers, please.”

“Gee, you were lucky,” said Rush enviously. “Caruso, gee, that must have been neat.”

“Well, I never forgot it,” agreed Willy, sitting up red-faced and with grease on his chin. “But the resta the show was pretty trashy stuff. I'd heard mosta the tunes on the hurdy-gurdy, and the heroine, the girl he was meant to be in love with—why, for a long time I thought she was supposed to be his mother; woulda made two of him and awful homely.”

Carrying the tool kit, Rush followed Willy downstairs to the next job: putty for the cracks around the pantry baseboard.

“The opera I'm going to is German,” he told Willy. “
Siegfried,
the name of it is.”

“I ain't no authority on German opry,” Willy said. “The language don't appeal to me. What's this
Seegfreed
about?”

“Well, it's about a guy in a forest who lives in a cave with another guy who's a gnome.”

“A what?” said Willy.

“A gnome. Kind of a dwarf like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Kind of a little magic guy. You know.”

“Okay. Skip it,” said Willy. “So what happens? Or wait a minute, Rush. You might just take a look around and see if there's any cookies first.”

“That's what I like about pantry jobs,” Rush said, obeying with alacrity, and being rewarded by finding the cookie jar half-full of brownies.

“Well,” continued Rush between bites. “So this Siegfried makes a sword out of his father's old busted one and then he goes and kills this dragon, Fafner, and takes a magic helmet and the ring everyone's fighting for.”

“Who's fighting for it?”

“Everybody. Gods and goddesses and this dwarf of Siegfried's and another one named Alberich, and giants and everybody.”

“Oh,” said Willy, still bewildered.

“Then he tastes some of the dragon's blood he has on his finger, and all of a sudden he can understand everything the animals and birds in the forest are saying.”

“Sounds kind of loony to me,” remarked Willy. “But go on.”

“So this one bird tells him a lot of things, and it says that there's a goddess named Brünnhilde sleeping on top of a mountain. There's a big ring of fire all around her, and only a hero can get through it and wake her up. So Siegfried knows he's pretty good and he climbs the mountain and gets through the fire and wakes up Brünnhilde. And then they sing back and forth about love for a little while and then it's the end.”

Willy shook his head and opened the tool kit.

“What you see in stuff like that is more than I can understand.”

“Well, the music's swell.”

“Give me a good picture show every time,” Willy said. “And there's always plenty music on the radio. Get to work, Rush. Over there in the corner.”

When Cuffy came down to the kitchen to get lunch she was outraged to find Willy and Rush conversing pleasantly over cold boiled potatoes. Willy also had a banana in one hand, and the icebox door was wide open.

“Shame on you!” cried Cuffy indignantly. “Both of you! Spoiling your lunches, and stealing the cold boiled potatoes I was saving to make hash with! Out of my kitchen!” And she brandished a ladle like a sword.

“Okay, Brünnhilde!” said Rush over his shoulder and beat it upstairs like anything. Willy was rapidly beating it downstairs at the same time.

After lunch Rush had to hurry. Randy came in as he was furiously combing his hair and trying to make it lie flat.

“What have you put on it
now?
” asked Randy, sniffing curiously.

“On what? My hair? Oh, some of Mona's face cream,” grinned Rush. “I thought maybe it would make it straight. But I guess it won't.”

“Mona will kill you if she finds out. You'd better go before she gets a chance to smell you.”

“All right. So long, Ran.”

“So long, Rush. Have a good time.”

It was beginning to snow but Rush got out before Cuffy could catch him and make him wear galoshes. He had to run most of the way for fear of being late, and arrived at the opera house red in the face and out of breath. He bought a ticket in the family circle for a dollar and a half and then climbed flight after flight of stairs. They were covered with soft red carpet, but still they were stairs. Whew, I'm kind of bushed, Rush thought to himself when he had finally stepped over feet and knees to the seat that was his: number A64—way over on the side. But he didn't care; he was lucky to have that.

After he had folded his coat and stuffed it under the seat with his cap he had time to look around. His seat was high up near the ceiling (like Willy's), so he had a good view of everything, and it was all just as he had hoped it would be: plenty of gold, and red plush, and chandeliers, and splendor. The vast curtain was golden too, and shining with a costly luster. Little black-clad musicians were beginning to creep into the orchestra pit far below like ants into a sugar bowl. Rush leaned out over the sea in front of him, opened Father's field glasses to which he had helped himself, and took a good look at the musicians. The man with the kettle drums kept tapping them anxiously and bending down to listen like a doctor listening to a heart; the violinists were talking together and gesturing either with a violin or a bow or both; and Rush watched a solemn man behind a bull fiddle open a little box, take out a pill and eat it. Above the voices of all the people in the place one could hear squeaks and scrapings, soft thumps, a toot of brass, a ripple of harp strings. Rush counted thirty-nine bald heads among the downstairs' audience. He counted twenty-six brown fur coats on ladies in the boxes.

Suddenly the lights were dimmed, and a small man came into the orchestra pit. There was a deluge of applause, the little man turned and bowed impatiently, turned back to the musicians, raised his baton, and the music began. The world faded away and was replaced by a strange legendary land of gods and goddesses and heroic adventure. The curtains parted and revealed a huge cave where a small bearded dwarf was working at an anvil. He looked exactly right, all bent double with age, and full of sly wickedness. But Siegfried wasn't exactly the way Rush had expected him to be. He sang wonderfully, of course, but he was very fat, and when he was forging the sword he looked just like a good-natured cook making a cake. Rush sat back and listened; his mouth dropped open and his foot went to sleep without his ever noticing.

After the first act was over and the singers had taken their bows the lights bloomed up all over the house, and Rush, following the crowd, found himself in an open space full of tobacco smoke and gabble. He was terribly thirsty but didn't order anything to drink at the refreshment counter as he had only a dime left. So he contented himself with five paper cups of water.

The second act was even better than the first. The scene disclosed a deep, wild forest, and the yawning black cavern mouth where Fafner, the dragon, lived. Alberich, another wicked dwarf, and the Wanderer, a god in disguise, met and sang an argument, and after a long while when they had disappeared, Siegfried bounded onto the stage with Mime, the first dwarf, behind him.

Finally the dragon came clanking out of the grotto, eyes gleaming with electric light bulbs and smoke issuing hotly from its nostrils, singing all the while in a musical bass voice. Rush, who was interested in all mechanical devices, looked at Fafner through the field glasses. Each time it sang the dragon's jaws opened and shut like a crocodile snapping at flies, and during a quiet moment a businesslike voice deep inside its stomach was heard to say, “Okay, Bill. Hold it.”

The music was wonderful; swell, was how Rush thought of it. It was made up of so many different kinds of music. There was a music that was Siegfried's own, and another for his sword, and another for the Wanderer, and the Forest Bird, the dragon, Valhalla, the golden ring, and the fire. All of them were woven together mysterious and wide and deep; and each of them came flashing out from time to time like unexpected rays sparkling from a precious stone.

In the second scene of Act III Siegfried penetrated the fiery circle and wakened Brünnhilde, who was clad in glittering mail and proved to be the general shape and size of a caterpillar tractor. It was funny how you could forget it when she began to sing. The two great voices mingled joyously with the great music, and at last it was over. Thousands of hands were beaten together, and the man next to Rush shouted a “Bravo!” that smelled of garlic. Siegfried and Brünnhilde took repeated beaming bows, and Rush clapped till his palms burned, thought of yelling “Bravo!” himself, thought better of it, and disentangled his coat and cap from under the seat. Stuffing the program in his pocket he made his way down the many stairs, borne along in the slow, chattering tide of the crowd. Inside his head he kept listening to Siegfried's special music.
TA
tatatatatatatata
TA!
When I grow up I'm going to have an automobile with a horn that plays that, he decided. Wonder why nobody ever thought of it before?

When he came out of the opera house Rush was astonished. The world was completely transformed: snow had been falling furiously for more than three hours, and still was. Drifts were piled high along the sidewalk, the air was dense with flakes, and Rush felt happy: this was the best snowstorm of the winter. He pushed his way past the people who were waiting for cars and taxis, turned up his collar and went out into the blizzard. In no time at all his feet were soaking wet and he loved it. He took a long time going home and made a great many detours. In the side streets the air rang with a noise of scraping as men cleared the sidewalks. All other sounds were furred with quiet by the snow; the hoots of boats came muffled from the river, cars passed noiselessly, and people walked without a sound in the feathery dusk. Rush's footsteps had a sound, though; his shoes were so wet that they squelched juicily with every step.

On East Thirty-seventh Street there was a commotion. A huge long-necked machine on wheels was sucking up the piled snow along the curb. It was accompanied by a dump truck. The machine would move its long neck, turn its head, and blow the snow it had consumed into the truck, then both would move slowly along again. It's just like an animal, thought Rush, looking at the machine. Like Fafner, he thought, and began to laugh. For a long time, maybe all his life, snow machines, and threshers, and derricks, and steam shovels were going to remind him of Fafner.

Rush watched the machine for a long while, forgetting all about the time. He had companions as fascinated as himself: a man with a burnt cigar that smelled, two little kids in snowsuits, a grocery boy with a cartful of packages that people were waiting for, and an old man with earmuffs. Dreamily they all progressed along the block following the machine; stopping when it stopped and staring as if hypnotized.

“Used to take a team of hosses pullin' a snowplow to do a job like that,” said the old man. “And hundreds of fellas out shovelin' the way. Nowadays they do it all by machinery. Ain't no work for nobody. That's what's the trouble with this world. I coulda told 'em.”

The man with the cigar put it back in his mouth and chewed it. Rush wondered how he could.

“I suppose you prob'ly can remember the blizzard of 'eighty-eight?” he said sarcastically, around the cigar.

“Sure can,” replied the old man. “I weighed two hundred and eleven pounds them days, and the wind knocked me flat as a haddock at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third. Couldn't run the hoss cars it was so bad, and they was men diggin' all over the city. None of these here machines that only employs a couple fellas!”

The cigar man laughed a short unsympathetic laugh, more like a cough than a laugh, and departed. Rush didn't like him.

Out of the dark a woman's voice shouted: “Ernie and Walter! How many times I hafta tell you to come in?”

Ernie and Walter turned out to be the two little boys in snowsuits. They left reluctantly, walking backward most of the way and staring at the machine.

“Yessir,” said the old man. “You youngsters is brought up soft. Too much machinery. Too many motors, and engines, and eelectrical deevices.”

“Well, they ain't no motor on this here cart,” said the grocery boy gloomily, and off he went pushing it through the snow and whistling the piercing tuneful way that only grocery boys seem to know how to do.

“Look at that, now,” continued the old man grumpily, staring at the snow-removal machine. “You'd swear it was almost alive. Sometimes I think a day will come when these fellas build so much machinery that it will revolt; turn on 'em and swalla 'em up! It'll be like the days of the dinosaurs all over again: them snow machines grazin' on the snow, and Greyhound buses chargin' over the countryside with no one drivin'; and airplanes swarmin' like honeybees, and roostin' in the skyscrapers!”

“I kind of like machinery,” Rush admitted. “Someday I'm going to design and build it. Engines and things. Lots of stuff.”

The old man looked at him severely, and shook his ear-muffed head.

“They'll swalla you up,” he said. “They'll swalla you up along with the rest of civil-i-zation.”

Rush's feet were becoming cold as well as wet, and he thought maybe the old man was a little crazy, so he said good night and started off in the direction of home. The old man was still talking; to himself or to the machine, you couldn't tell which.