James Cain - Serenade

“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.

When the searching was over, the guy with the star started up the line, jabbering at each one in Spanish. That took quite a while. When he got to me he gave me the same mouthful, but she said something and he stopped. He looked at me sharp, and jerked his thumb for me to stand aside. I don’t like a thumb any better than I like a bum’s rush.

He fired an order at the soldiers then, and they began going in and out of the rooms. In a minute one of them gave a yell and came running out. The guy with the star went in with them, and they came out with our beans, our eggs, our ground corn, our pots, bowls, charcoal, machetes, everything that had been packed on the car. A woman began to wail and the hostelero began to beg. Nothing doing. The guy with the star and the soldiers grabbed them and hustled them out of the court and up the street. Then he barked something else and waved his hand. The whole mob slunk to their rooms, and you could hear them in there mumbling and some of them moaning. He walked over to her, put his arm around her, and she laughed and they talked in Spanish. Quick work, getting the stolen stuff back, and he wanted appreciation.

She went into No. 16 and came out with the hatbox and the other stuff. He opened the door of the limousine.

“Where you going with that guy?”

I didn’t know I was going to say it. My play was to stand there and let her go, but this growl came out of my mouth without my even intending it. She turned around, and her eyes opened wide like she couldn’t believe what she heard. “But please, he is politico.”

“I asked you where you’re going with him.”

“But yes. You stay here. I come mañana , very early. Then we looked at house, yes.”

She was talking in a phoney kind of way, but not to fool me. It was to fool him, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. She kept staring at me, trying to get me to shut up. I was standing by our car, and he came over and snapped something. She came over and spoke to him in Spanish, and he seemed satisfied. The idea seemed to be that I was an American, and was all mixed up on what it was about. I licked my lips, tried to make myself take it easy, play it safe till I got on that boat. I tried to tell myself she was nothing but an Indian girl, that she didn’t mean a thing with me, that if she was going off to spend the night with this cluck it was no more than she had done plenty of times before, that she didn’t know any different and it was none of my business anyway. No dice. Maybe if she hadn’t looked so pretty out there in the moonlight I might have shut up, but I don’t think so. Something had happened back in that church that made me feel she belonged to me. I heard my mouth growl again. “You’re not going.”

“But he is politico—”

“And because he’s politico , and he’s fixed you up with a lousy sailor’s whorehouse, he thinks he’s going to take part of his graft in trade. He made a mistake. You’re not going.”

“But—”

He stepped up, then, and shot a rattle at me in Spanish, so close I could feel the spit on my face. We hadn’t been talking loud. I was too sore to yell, and Mexicans say it soft. He finished, straightened up, and jerked his thumb at me again, toward the hotel. I let him have it. He went down. I stamped my foot on his hand, grabbed the pistol out of the holster. “Get up.”

He didn’t move. He was out cold. I looked at the hotel. All you could hear was this mumbling and moaning. They hadn’t heard anything at all. I jerked open the car door and shoved her in, hatboxes and all. Then I ran around, threw the pistol on the seat, jumped in and started. I went out of the court in second, and by the time I hit the road I was in high.

I snapped on the lights and gave her the gun. In a few seconds I was in the town, and then I knew what a mistake I had made when I came out of that court, and cut right instead of left. I had to get out of there, and get out of there quick before that guy came to, and I couldn’t turn around. I mean literally I couldn’t turn around. The street was so narrow, and so choked with burros, pigs, goats, mariachis , and people, that even when you met a car you had to saw by, and a turn was impossible. It was no through street. It went through the town, and then, at the hill, it led up to the big tourist hotel, and that was the end of it. I crawled along now, the sweat coming out on my brow, and got to the bottom of the hill. There was no traffic there, but it was still narrow. I turned right on a side road. I thought I might hit a way, after a block or two, that would lead back where I had come from. I didn’t. The street just tapered off into two tracks on an open field, that as far as I could see just wandered up in the hills. I pulled into the field, to turn around. I thought I still might have time to slip back through the town, though it didn’t look like even Jess Willard could stay out that long. Then back of me I heard shots, yells, and the screech of a motorcycle siren. It was too late. I was cut off. I doused the lights and bumped over to a grove of coconut palms, where anyway I would be shaded from the moonlight.