Prima Donna at Large (30 page)

Toscanini must have lectured Caruso as well, for Act III was remarkably uneventful. Caruso and I both kept our distance, circling each other warily. At one point in the act he was to seize my wrist, and I noticed he was careful not to hurt me when he did. So I was careful not to scratch him when I pulled away.

When the curtain closed on the third act, Caruso turned to me in front of everybody backstage and spread his arms. “Can we not be friends, Gerry? Please?”

I wanted to tell him to go gargle with razor blades, but everybody was listening and it wouldn't do to appear ungracious. So I forced myself to walk into his embrace and said, “Of course we're friends, Rico.”

Caruso sighed as all the onlookers applauded. “
Bene, bene
. Only one more act, Gerry—we make it a good one, yes? I try.”

It was a nice gesture, I suppose, but I didn't trust him. He'd “try” as long as he remembered to.

“What
is
going on?” Emmy Destinn's voice said from behind me. “From out front you two look as if you want to throttle each other, yet here you are billing and cooing like a couple of lovebirds.
What
is going on?”

I turned—and was absolutely
appalled
. Emmy was wearing the gown my dressmaker had made for her … but she'd ruined it! She'd added spangles and flowers and
feathers
—she even had feathers sprouting out of the tiara she wore! Emmy looked like a vaudeville performer! “What have you done to that dress?” I cried, not even trying to hide my disapproval.

She glanced down at herself. “I have compensated for its notable lack of imagination. Why?”

“You've
ruined
it, Emmy—don't you see? You've taken a perfectly lovely gown and turned it into a clown costume!”

“Gerry!” Caruso said sharply. “Do not listen to her, Emmy, she is out of sorts tonight. You look beautiful.”

Emmy was standing there with her mouth open. I knew I was taking my anger at Caruso out on her, but I couldn't stop. “You've completely destroyed the gown's lines, Emmy! A simple, flattering, dignified dress—and look what you've done to it!”

She got a look in her eye I didn't much care for. “I will not say what I am thinking right now,” Emmy said. “I will wait until you have calmed down, and
then
I will say it.” She turned on her heel and charged off, scattering chorus singers right and left.

“That woman has no taste whatsoever,” I muttered.

“Why you do that to Emmy?” Caruso raged. “Always, you make fun of the way Emmy looks! She never makes fun of you! You are jealous of her!”

I? Jealous of
Emmy Destinn
? I threw back my head and laughed at the utter absurdity of it! “You're out of your mind, Rico!”
I
was the one who sold out the house every time I sang,
I
was the one who had more male attention than I knew what to do with,
I
was the one who had a hard core of fans who worshipped everything I did! And
I
was not afraid to look at myself in a mirror sideways! “Emmy is the
last
person I'd be jealous of!”

“You are jealous,” Caruso persisted stubbornly. “Ever since Puccini chooses Emmy to sing
La Fanciulla del West
instead of you—”

I flew at him. A pair of arms encircled my waist from behind and I felt myself lifted and carried toward the dressing-room stairs. “Gerry, Gerry, Gerry,” Scotti whispered in my ear. “That can wait. Amato is dressed and ready, but you—you have not even started to change! We must hurry, yes?” He urged me up the stairs.

“Did you hear what he said? He said I was jealous of Emmy!”

“I hear, I hear.”

“What's she doing here anyway? Why does she keep coming to
Carmen
?”

“She likes it.”

“Oh, and maybe she wants the role for herself? Ha! She'll never get it. She doesn't have the bottom notes!”

“Of course she doesn't,” Scotti murmured.

I sank down on the chair in front of my dressing table, suddenly depleted of energy, weary of the whole business. I looked at myself in the mirror: sad eyes, droopy mouth. “Rico is driving me crazy, Toto. He's deviling me to death.”

“I know. Something must be done. It is all this ‘detective' work—I think you both must stop. I and Amato, we talk to Caruso tomorrow.”

I nodded; it was probably best. “Thank you.”

Act IV, with its big final duet—that's all that was left. I put on my fancy Act IV costume; I'd always liked the fact that in the last act Carmen looks like a million dollars while Don José comes on dressed in rags. I repaired my make-up, fixed my hair, and picked up my fan. I was ready.

The last act of
Carmen
opens with a processional, a fast-moving spectacle in which the chorus does all the vocal work. Then I sang my brief duet with Amato, everyone else drifted off to attend the bullfight, and suddenly I was alone on the stage with Caruso.

Now I know this next part can't be true, and I'm not even going to try to explain it. But as Caruso advanced toward me, I could have sworn I saw horns pushing up through his thinning hair and a tail with a spatulate tip twitching behind him. I sang the opening words of the final duet—
C'est toi?
And instead of the answering
C'est moi
, it sounded to me as if what Caruso actually sang was
Report, Gerry!
Nobody else remembers hearing it, but that's what it sounded like to me.

Almost immediately he grabbed me by the arm—we hadn't rehearsed that!—and this time he wasn't careful not to hurt me. So I cracked him across the jaw with my fan and heard a surprised murmur from the audience. Caruso grabbed my other arm, and I stepped on his foot; he pushed me away. In the middle of all this I became aware we were singing the duet with more intensity than we'd ever managed before, but somehow that seemed of secondary importance right then.

We came to the part where David Belasco had directed Caruso to drag me across the stage by the hair and I was hoping the tenor wouldn't remember it. No such luck. He pushed me to the floor and grabbed my hair and started pulling—and I mean
really
pulling! It was the only time I've ever regretted not wearing a wig for
Carmen
. I dropped my fan and used both hands to hold on to his arm, but he still managed to
pull my hair
. When we got to the place where he was supposed to let go, he simply turned around and started dragging me back the other way!

I scrambled to my feet and knocked his arm away; then I started beating at his chest with both fists, not paying much attention to what I was singing. He twirled me around and pinned my arms to my side, with one arm around my waist and the other across my chest.

I bit his hand.

I caught one glimpse of Toscanini's horrified face from the podium; it was probably the first time in his life he didn't know what to do. But the audience was murmuring its approval of all this fiery “acting” they were watching. Caruso shoved me away so hard that I stumbled, while he sang of how we should go away together and be lovers again. I sang back I wasn't going anywhere with him and kicked him in the shins. He sang that if he couldn't have me, no one could—and made a grab at my arm. I twisted away and I heard this horrible
ripping
sound and felt cool air against my arm and realized I had just lost part of my costume.

It must have been the sight of Caruso standing there holding the sleeve of my dress in his hand that finally made the audience realize that what they were watching on the stage was
real
. In the quarrel between Carmen and Don José, the outcome is ordained: He kills her. Carmen's death marks the end of the opera. But when Caruso came at me with his stage knife, I was so furious with him that—incredible as it seems now—I
snatched
the knife out of his hand and thrust it
hard
against his stomach!
Take that, you devil!

A loud gasp went up from the audience. Caruso was so surprised he forgot to sing his line. “Fall down, you idiot!” I hissed. “You're dead!” I kicked out and tripped him; and when someone of Caruso's girth and weight hits the floor, everybody in the house feels it.

But a tenor who has been unexpectedly “killed” is in no condition to sing his final lines, the lines that close the opera. So I sang them.
“C'est moi qui lui ai tué!”
I sang, changing the French to fit the new circumstances.
“Ah! José, mon José, adoré!”
The curtain closed.

There was an absolutely stunned silence from out front.

But backstage was anything but quiet; what the audience didn't know was that behind the closed curtain Caruso and I were rolling around pummeling each other, wrestling on the floor like a couple of schoolboys. A hundred voices were screaming and a thousand hands were pulling at us, but that didn't stop us; we kept right on fighting.

Pasquale Amato finally put an end to it. I'd never realized how strong Amato was, but somehow he wedged his body in between Caruso and me and forcibly pushed the two of us apart. Then there were about a million people separating us, and the fight was over.

Scotti helped me up, looking endearingly worried. “Are you all right, Gerry? Shall I call Dr. Curtis?”

“Whatever for?” I smiled at him. “I don't need a doctor.” In fact, I felt
marvelous
.

“What have you done?” Gatti-Casazza screamed at me. “He is supposed to kill
you
, you are not supposed to kill
him
! What have you done?”

“I changed it,” I said mildly.

“This is terrible!” Gatti moaned. “How will we ever live it down?” Toscanini came running up and stopped at Gatti's elbow and stared at me, his eyes round and his mouth open, not saying a word. “How can you do such a thing?” Gatti went on. “Do you lose your mind?”

“Curtain call!” someone was crying. “Places for the curtain call!”

Toscanini kept staring at me, wordless.

The crowd had thinned out a little and I could see Caruso again, listening as Amato talked earnestly into his ear. The expression on Caruso's face told the whole story; he looked absolutely horrified. It had finally sunk in on him what he had done. He had been seen fighting, in public, with a
woman
! Horrors! Shame! Disgrace! He looked overwhelmed with embarrassment. “Oh, Gerry,” he managed to choke out, “Gerry, I am, oh, I do, you, oh …” He whirled and dashed out through the stage door, still in costume, with no overcoat.

Toscanini was now shaking his head while he stared at me. And stared.

“Curtain call! Please!” The voice was growing frantic.

Amato hurried out in front of the curtain, took a quick bow, and hurried back. Caruso was gone, and Toscanini refused to take a curtain call. So I went out by myself—rumpled, sleeveless, battered and bruised—but
the winner
! The people in the audience were actually stamping their feet while they cheered. Oh, it was a glorious moment! I took only one curtain call—but it lasted fifteen minutes. I looked out at those laughing faces and laughed with them; the gerryflappers weren't the only ones chanting “Ger
ee
” that night.

When the hubbub at last began to die down, I went backstage and immediately caught sight of David Belasco advancing toward me. Oh dear! I should have known he'd come to see how his new stage directions had worked out! What could I say to him? He was probably ready to kill me.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The man was
beaming;
I'd never seen such a big smile on his face before. “Gerry, that was magnificent!” he cried. “The most exciting theatre I've seen in ten years! I think I like your ending more than the regular one!” He turned to Gatti-Casazza. “I say, Mr. Gatti, I don't suppose you could—”

“No!”
Gatti roared. “Do not even think it! Disgraceful, perfectly disgraceful! Oh, what will the board say?”

“Nevertheless,” Belasco whispered in my ear, “you were
superb
.” He lifted my hand and kissed it.

Scotti whispered in my other ear. “I think this is good time to leave.”

He was right. I worked my way through the backstage visitors, more of them than usual tonight and all of them full of questions. I hurried upstairs to change and came down to find Scotti waiting for me by the stage door.

The last thing I saw before I left was Toscanini, standing by the door and watching me go, his mouth still open, still unable to say a word.

16

Morris Gest was the first to arrive the next morning, a stack of newspapers under each arm. “The Old Man called last night and told me what you'd done,” he grinned. “Ah, Gerry, Gerry! If only the rest of my clients had the nose for publicity that you have!”

“What do they say?” I asked, reaching for the newspapers.

“What don't they say? From one extreme to the other. One of them is running a polite announcement of what they call ‘an altercation arising from artistic differences' or some such fanciness. But another one is carrying a blow-by-blow description, right down to the knockout punch! Here, read them.”

I read them. I read them, and I relished every word. This was even better than not announcing my engagement! Every paper in New York had something about my fight with Caruso; and whether the tone was polite or scandalized or gleeful or simply puzzled, not one of the newspapers made Caruso out to be the hero. Tee-hee.

The telephone was ringing. I'd already warned Bella that this was going to be one of
those
days and simply to take messages unless it sounded important. One other thing I'd done before Morris got there; I'd sent one of the other maids with a note to Emmy Destinn.

Dearest Emmy
,

I'm certain you have understood by now that my unforgivably bad manners last night were not caused by any animosity toward you but were instead the result of a little war I was then waging with a certain tenor we both know. Dear Emmy, please come to lunch and allow me to apologize properly. I would come to you but I fear you might shut the door in my face
—
and with justification! Although my behavior was inexcusable, I hope you'll find it in your heart to excuse it anyway. Please come, around noon
.