Джеймс Кейн - Career in C Major and Other Fiction

“Damn it, you’ve—”

But Wilkins grabbed her by the arm. “Do you want to lose them for good? Get out there, get out there, get out there!”

She stopped in the middle of a cussword and went on, smiling like nothing had happened at all.

I tried to explain to her in the intermission what had ailed me, but she kept walking away from me, there behind the drop. It wasn’t until I saw her blotting her eyes with a handkerchief, to keep the mascara from running down her cheeks, that I knew she was crying. “Well — I’m sorry I ruined your concert.”

“... Oh well. It’s a turkey anyhow.”

“I didn’t do it any good.”

“They’re as cold as dead fish. There’s nothing to do about it. You didn’t ruin it.”

“Was that the bird?”

“Oh no. You don’t know the half of it yet.”

“Oh.”

“Did you have to blast them out of their seats?”

“I’ve been telling you. I was nervous.”

“After all I’ve told you about not bellowing. And then you have to — what did you think you were doing, announcing trains?”

“Maybe I’d better go home.”

“Maybe you’d better.”

“Shall I do this other number?”

“As you like.”

She did the Mozart, and took an encore, and came off. Wilkins had heard us rowing, and looked at me, and motioned me on. She went off to her dressing room without looking at me. I went out there. There were one or two handclaps, and I made my bow, and then paid no more attention to them at all. I felt sick and disgusted. He struck the opening chord and I started the recitative. There’s a lot of it, and I sang it just mechanically. After two or three phrases I heard a murmur go over the house, and if that was the bird I didn’t care. I got to the end of the recitative, and then stepped back a little while he played the introduction to the aria. I heard him mumble, so I could just hear him above the triplets: “You got ’em. Just look noble now, and it’s in the bag.”

It hit me funny. It relaxed me, and it was just what I needed. I tried to look noble, and I don’t know if I did or not, but all the time my voice was coming nice and easy. We got to the end of the first strain, and he really began to go places with the lead into the next. It was the first time all night the piano had really had much to do, and it came over me all of a sudden that the guy was one hell of an accompanist, and that it was a pleasure to sing with him. I went into the next strain, and really made it drip. There was a little break, and I heard him say, “Swell, keep it up.” I was nearly to the high G. I took the little leading phrase nice and light, and hit it right on the nose. It felt good, and I began to let it swell. Then I remembered about not yelling, and throttled it back, and finished the phrase under nice control. There wasn’t much more, and when I hit the high F at the end, it was just right.

For a second or so after he struck the last chord it was as still as death. Then some guy in the balcony yelled. My heart skipped a beat, but then others began to yell, and what they were yelling was bravo. The applause broke out in a roar then, and I remembered to bow. I bowed center, right, and left, and then I walked off. She was there, and kissed me. Wilkins whipped out his handkerchief, wiped the lipstick off my mouth, and shoved me out there again. I bowed three times again, and hated to leave. When I came back she nodded, told Wilkins to go out with me this time for an encore. “Yeah, but what the hell is his encore?”

“Let him do Traviata.”

“O. K.”

I went out, and he started Traviata. Now Di Provenza Il Mar I guess is the worst sung aria you ever hear, because the boys always think about tone and forget about the music, and that ruins it. I mean they don’t sing it smooth, with all the notes even, and that makes it jerky, and takes all the sadness out of it. But it’s a cakewalk for me, because I think I told you about all that work I did on music, and it seemed to me that I kind of knew what old man Verdi was trying to do with it when he wrote it. Wilkins started it, and he played it slower than Cecil had been playing it, and I no sooner heard it than I knew that was right too. I took it just the way he had cued me. I just rocked it along, and kept every note even, and didn’t beef at all. When I got to the G flat, I held it, then let it swell a little, but only enough to come in right on the forte that follows it, and then on the finish I loaded it with all the tears of the world. You ought to have heard the bravos that time. I went out and took more bows, and it was no trouble to look them in the eye that time. They seemed like the nicest people in the world.

At the end, after she had finished a flock of encores, Cecil took me out for a bow with her, and then my flowers came up, and she pinned one on me, and they clapped some more, and she had me do a duet with her, “ Crudel, Perché, Finora, ” from the Marriage of Figaro. It went so well they wanted more, but she rang down and the three of us went out to eat. Wilkins and I were pretty excited, but she didn’t have much to say. When she went out to powder her nose, he started to laugh. “They’re all alike, aren’t they?”

“How do you mean, all alike?”

“I thought she was a little different, at first. Letting you take that encore, and singing a duet with you, that looked kind of decent. And then I got the idea, somehow, that she liked you. I mean for your sex appeal, or whatever it is that they go for. But you see how she’s acting, don’t you? They’re all alike. Opera singers are the dumbest, pettiest, vainest, cruelest, egotisticalest, jealousest breed of woman you can find on this man’s earth, or any man’s earth. You did too good, that’s all. Two bits that tomorrow morning you’re on your way back.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. First the tenor stinks and then the baritone don’t stink enough.”

“Not Cecil.”

“Just Cecil, the ravishing Cecil.”

“Something’s eating on her, but I don’t think it’s that.”

“You’ll see.”

“All right, I’ll match your two bits.”

We got back to the hotel, Wilkins went to his room, and I went up with her for a goodnight cigarette. She snapped on the lights, then went over to the mirror and stood looking at herself. “What’s the matter with the dress?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s something.”

“... It’s all wrong.”

“I paid enough for it. It came from one of the best shops in New York.”

“I guess one of the best shops in New York wouldn’t have some lousy Paris copy they would wish off on a singer that didn’t know any better... It makes you look like a gold plush sofa. It makes that bozoom look like some dairy, full of Grade A milk for the kiddies. It makes you look about ten years older. It makes you look like an opera singer, all dressed up to screech.”

“Isn’t the bozoom all right?”

“The bozoom, considered simply as a bozoom, is curviform, exciting, and even distinguished. But for God’s sake never dress for anything like that, even if you’re secretly stuck on it, which I think you are. That’s what a telephone operator does, when she puts on a yoo-hoo blouse. Or a chorus girl, wearing a short skirt to show her legs. Dress the woman, not the shape.”

“Did you learn that from her?”

“Anyway I learned it.”

She sat down, and kept on looking at the velvet, and fingering it. “All right, I’m a hick.”

I went over and sat down beside her and took her hand. “You’re not a hick, and you’re not to feel that way about it. You asked me, didn’t you? You wanted to know. Just to sit there, and keep on saying the dress was all right, when you knew I didn’t think so — that wouldn’t have been friendly, would it? And what is it? You haven’t been yourself tonight.”