James Cain - Serenade

“Well, maybe they look fonny but I didn’t notice you doing much about them. Anyway, you can eat them.”

She picked up the tortilla, half wrapped it around the egg and bit into it. “Taste very fonny.”

“The hell it does.”

I had bit into my first one by then, and it hit the spot. We wolfed them down. She ate five and I ate seven. We were talking in a natural tone of voice for the first time since we got in out of the storm, and it came to me it was because that door that led to the altar was shut. I got up and closed the other door, the one leading into the church, and that made it still better. We got to the coffee and there was nothing we could drink it out of but one little bowl, so we took turns. She would take a guzzle and then I would. In a minute I reached for the cigarettes. They were dry, and so were the matches. We lit up and inhaled. They tasted good.

“You feel better now?”

“Yes, gracias . Was very cold, very hongry.”

“You still worried about the sacrilegio?”

“No, not now.”

“There wasn’t any sacrilegio , you know.”

“Yes, very bad.”

“No, not a bit. It’s the Casa de Dios , you know. Everybody’s welcome in here. You’ve seen the burros in here, haven’t you? And the goats? On the way to market? The car is just the same. If we had to break the door in, that was only because we didn’t have any key. I showed plenty of respect, didn’t I? You saw me genuflect every time I crossed, didn’t you?”

“Genu—”

“Bow — in front of the Host?”

“Yes, of course.”

“No sacrilegio there, was there? You’re all upset about nothing. Don’t worry, I know. I know as much about it as you do. More probably.”

“Very bad sacrilegio . But I pray. Soon, I confess. I confess to the padre . Then, absolución . No bad any more.”

By that time it must have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. The rain hadn’t let up, but sometimes it would be heavy, sometimes not so bad. The thunder and lightning would come up and go. There must have been three or four storms rolling up those canyons from the sea, and we’d get it, and it would die away and then we’d get it again. One was coming up now. She began to do what I’d noticed her doing once in the car, hold her breath and then speak, after a second or two when you could almost hear her heart beat. I tumbled that the sacrilegio was only part of what was eating on her. Most of it was the storm. “The lightning bother you?”

“No. The trueno , very bad.”

It didn’t look like it would pay to try to explain to her that the lightning was the works, the thunder nothing but noise, so I didn’t try. “Try to sing a little. That generally helps. You know La Sandunga?”

“Yes, very pretty.”

“You sing and I’ll be mariachi.”

I began to drum on the bench and do a double shuffle with my feet. She opened her mouth to sing, but there came a big clap of thunder just then, and she didn’t quite make it. “Outside, I no feel afraid. I like. Is very pretty.”

“A lot of people are like that.”

“Home, with Mamma, I no feel afraid.”

“Well — that’s practically outside, at that.”

“Here, afraid, very much. I think about the sacrilegio , think about many things. I feel very bad.”

You couldn’t blame her much because it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a gay place. I understood how she felt. I felt a little that way myself.

“Anyhow, it’s dry. In spots.”

The lightning came and I put my arm around her. The thunder broke and the candles guttered. She put her head on my shoulder and hid her face in my neck.

It died off after a while and she sat up. I opened the window a crack to get a little oxygen in the air, and put a couple more sticks of charcoal on the fire. “You had a good dinner?”

“Yes, gracias.”

“You feel like a little work?”

“... Work?”

“Suppose you be fixing us up a place to sleep while I wash up.”

“Oh yes — gladly.”

I went and brought the mats and then got out a pile of altar cloths. Then I took the pots, bowls, and water out back and washed them up. I couldn’t see very well, but I did the best I could. I had to duck out to the well once or twice, stripped down like I was before, and rub off with the same old cloth, so it took me about a half hour. When I got done I piled the things up inside the door and went in there. She was already in bed. She had taken three or four of the mats and some altar cloths, for herself, and bedded me down across the room.

I blew out the candles we had eaten by, and stepped out on the altar to blow out the ones I had lit there, and then I noticed the other one, the one I had stuck to the car fender, was still burning. I stepped over the rail, went back there and blew it out. Then I started up to the altar again. My legs felt queer and shaky. I slipped in a pew and sat down.

I knew what it was all right, and it came to me then why I had put her to fixing the mats and taken all that time to wash up. I had hoped she would just fix one bed, and then when she didn’t, it was like a wallop in the pit of the stomach to me. I had even quit wondering why I was the only man on the face of the earth she wouldn’t sleep with. What I hated was that it made any difference to me.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I wanted to smoke, and I had the cigarettes and matches with me, but I just held them in my hand. I was over by the choir loft, out of line with the Blessed Sacrament, but I was right in line with the crucifix, and I couldn’t make myself light up. Another storm began to come up. I enjoyed it that she was across there in the vestry room, all alone, and scared to death. It kept rolling up, the worst we had had yet. There came two flashes of lightning, and then one terrific shot of thunder right after them. The candles were just guttering up again when there came a blaze of lightning, and the thunder right with it, and every candle up there went out. For a second you couldn’t see a thing but the red spot of the sacristy lamp.

Then she began to scream. From where she was, with the door to the altar open like I had left it, maybe she caught it sooner than I did. Or maybe for a split second I had my eyes closed. I don’t know. Anyway, the church filled with green light, and then it seemed to settle over the crucifix, so the face looked alive, like it was going to cry out. Then you couldn’t see anything but the red spot.

She was screaming her head off now, and I had to have light.I dived for the choir loft, scratched a match, and lit the organ candles. I don’t know how many there were. I lit them all, so it was a blaze of candles. Then I turned to go and light the altar candles again, but I would have to cross in front of the crucifix and I couldn’t do it. All of a sudden I sat down to the organ. It was a small pedal organ, and I pumped with my bare feet and started to play. I kept jerking out stops, to make it louder. The thunder rolled, and the louder it rolled the louder I played. I didn’t know what I was playing, but after a while I knew it was an Agnus Dei I cut it off and started a Gloria . It was louder. The thunder died off and the rain came down like all Niagara was over us. I played the Gloria over again.

“Sing.”

I couldn’t see her. She was outside the circle of light, where I was sitting in the middle. But I could feel her, up at the altar rail again, and if singing was what she wanted, that suited me too. I skipped the Qui Tollis , the Quoniam , and the rest of it down to the Credo , and went on from there. Don’t ask me what it was. Some of it was Mozart, some of it was Bach, some of it was anybody you can think of. I must have sung a hundred masses in my time, and I didn’t care which one it was, so I could go on without a break. I went straight through to the Dona Nobis , and played off soft after I finished it, and then I stopped. The lightning and thunder had stopped again, and the rain was back to its regular drumming.