William Gass - Eyes - Novellas and Stories

I thought I should try sounding like my music was coming through clenched keys, maybe then I’d get somebody to sit at me who could actually play, because taking away my sound and leaving me only stencils like I’d been made by Grandma Moses, with only a set of casters to show for my sacrifice — my being there — that was humiliating, the memory makes my hammers hard; only refugees from Bulgaria would have put up with it — because you felt helpless — because, when you sounded a discordant note, the soundman would say that’s okay we’re dubbing the piano in anyway. Sam hits me but he can’t be sweet to me. The band plays while Sam sings “Knock on Wood” and he knocks me right enough, he can do that, though he always looks so concerned and friendly. Knock on wood. Konk konk konk. I must admit, though, I admire the choice of tunes in this movie. In my script it said that when the camera first comes through the door at Rick’s Cafe, I’m to be playing “It Had to Be You” to harmonize with Rick’s complaint later that of all the gin joints in the world, it had to be his saloon the beaming broad streamed into. Of course Steiner has to ham it up by wedging in “La Marseillaise” and der Führer’s “Über Alles” in the Paris scenes as if he were rewriting the 1812 Overture . He even called for a distant cannon to go off. I heard. Not the cannon. I heard he called. So she can ask, breaking up a kissy clinch: was that a cannon that I heard or my heart? Don’t that epitomize the Queen of Corny?

Musicians who were there say the Paris script was pretty sticky, all right. And I guess I had a friend in bereavement in those scenes because Dooley couldn’t play in Paris any better than he could in Casablanca, so another guy just out of sight of course played the theme while Dooley sat sideways so he could see what that other piano was doing, and pretend to ply—

Not that key either I guess.

The worst was — can I tell you now what the worst was? — the worst was when Curtiz in his costume of Boots and Britches staged the battle of the bands. The Germans come to town, okay? And act obnoxious. Of course. Then they start to sing, standing in a ring around me, what a nasty moment, but they start to sing “The Watch on the Rhine.” “The Watch on the Rhine”? No one in the world but these guys is apparently supposed to know German. It’s not a Nazi tune. They would never never sing such a thing. Niemals. Nimmer. Sooner they would warble “On, Wisconsin!” So they get the ubiquitous French anthem like pie in their ear. Why the smile? I know a few uppity words. You may have noticed. I got a range. And the French sing louder than the Germans only because they’ve got a band and all the Germans have is me. Okay, I say to myself, it’s probably not a German guy playing me, but a Jewish guy playing he’s a German. Geez. I finally get a chance to sound off and it’s “The Watch on the Rhine.” What a downarounder!

The best time? The best time was the nighttime when the set sat in the dark with only the watch lights lit, each one of us looming — just bulks and bits — but the tablecloths glowing even in the general dim, and the glasses winking like a collaborator, the bar mirror tossing darknesses to and fro, you’d think shadows were cloaks and hats, the floor swimming in ink, our legs wading in it, all of us singing to ourselves, that little hum that comes with peace, when we worry only about where we weigh, released from all our day work relations, free to make our own connections, me with my bench, now stored upsidedown on my head like a crown, yeah, regal in my silhouette, the tables set for tomorrow’s shot, the low light coasting through the Moorish arches, seeping between bottles, folds in the flats, and smoozing around my stiff keys like a healing lotion.

Bogie…I got his name defrenchified okay? sounds the same. Only looks different. I know pianos like that….Anyway Bogie plays himself. I mean at chess. Now is that really playing? I call it doing the Dooley. Meanwhile I am collecting information. I know the name of the glass pattern they picked for the tables. The café set was pretty corpulent. But they probably rented everything. Took it all out of another warehouse like they took me. I can’t eavesdrop as easy as Scheid — his name was — the sound mixer — you can imagine how Scheid was said — because he had every table every curtain every skirt and bra miked. He and Boots and Britches were pissed before they got to my point in the proceedings. Something about a buzzing sun lamp in a previous shoot. Pizzzzd. Don’t hurt me, honey.

So if that theme was the center of the movie as some have said they think it was, then I’m there at the meaningful heart of things even if I’m faking it, but that’s not my reason for claiming higher hierarchy here. I’m also the secret place where those travel docs get socked away for safekeeping, those papers the runt was going to chivy Laxlo to pony up for. You know, Stiff Knees. Follow him and walk the plank of patriotism. Anyway, Sam hides the visas under my lid. For most of the movie they would feel the vibrating strings of my heart. Me and Helmut Dantine were the quiet ones. He’s the roulette winner and I’m the cache for the cachets. But we both smolder. Oh…there was a packet of papers on my lid earlier. Did you notice that? They disappear. Who knows what they were. I’m going to guess it was a little pile of sheet music that Dooley could pretend to read while he pretended to play. I think he really did sing though — to make it look real — in A-flat, in D-flat — but they probably dubbed his voice from a studio tape for the final sound track. In fact, there was some hugger mugger going on upon my top board, rearrangements that didn’t make sense — sometimes a glass sits there, sometimes an ashtray, sometimes that stack.

And a mystery woman. There has to be a mystery woman, and it isn’t always Mary Astor. Remember when everybody is gathered around me — Rick and Captain Frog and Captain Frog’s three medals, with Dooley sitting at me with his seven grins — well, the papers are there then, on the near corner of my cover, and a half-filled wineglass and a half-filled stub tray too, but there is still room for the elbows and arms of a brunette in a white palm-treed blouse who’s wearing one of those Shriner-shaped head pots, only this one has a floppy big sun brim. At the bass end of me is a local in a fez sitting next to his girl, and at the treble a swarthy in a turban. Back of all of us in a dark tie and whites is another fez. That’s the scene. I remember the brunette’s begging-your-pardon breasts pushing against me and the weight of her warm arms, though she’s gazing at Dooley like she liked chocolate. Man, what a moment.

Right where that sheet music was, Rick hides the papers that the oily shmegegge has given him. An envelope is all it is. If somebody sneezed it would sail to Marseilles. In a manner ostentatiously casual, he slips it from a coat pocket to my purse…under my lid. The envelope is slim so Rick won’t fumble the handoff. But a prop that’s not a prop — is what it is. A fake prop. Letters of transit they’re called: travel docs signed by General de Gaulle the Sardine said. That’s going to cut a lake of ice in Vichy France. Come on. I don’t read history, but come on. A ticket to turmoil is what those passes would be. My friend and informant, the Vichy water, used to come in a respectable bottle under its own label. Anyway, papers like that might be persuasive in Portugal, but only Captain Frog’s oft-bought signature can get the Heroic Stick on the plane — a plane I heard they built out of balsa and cardboard. Then serviced with midgets to enhance perspective for the screen. Might as well made me of balsa. Well, I am wood. But like Pinocchio I’m real. If hit, don’t I cry? Am I not high-strung? Don’t I have toes, feet, legs, sides, bottom, belly, cheeks, spine? You know what I resemble? I resemble a German make; my family is a distinguished German line. I’m from nobility like some are from Chicago. A Sauter is my kind. Sauter is a name due awe. Well, I’m not made of maple, and I don’t have three pedals or the 2 Double Escapement Action of my model, no. 122, the Domino, and my compass is a bit constrained, not up to eighty-eight along the board there. I see you’ve counted. I’m a shorty, okay, but I can do ring-around-the-rosy with the best of them.