Serenade (10 page)

We tiptoed back to the corner I had just turned, and instead of going the way I had, he pulled us the other way, toward the beach. We came to a crooked alley, and turned into that.

Two minutes after that we trotted out on a dock, and dropped into a launch. Two minutes after that, we were on the deck of the
Port of Cobh,
with beer and sandwiches coming up. Two minutes after that we were slipping past the headland, and I was cocked back with a guitar on my knee, rolling the Leporello song out for him, and she was pouring beer.

It was a happy week, all right. I didn't sing much, except a little at night if he wanted it. Most of the time we sat around and fanned about music. She would be with us and then she wouldn't be. He gave us the royal suite, and the main feature was a shower bath, with sea water coming out of it. It was the first time she had been under one. Maybe it was the first time she ever had a bath, I don't know. Mexicans are the cleanest people on earth. Their face is clean, their feet are clean, their clothes are clean, and they don't stink. But when they bathe, or whether they bathe, I can't tell you. To her it was a new toy and every time I'd go looking for her I'd find her in there, stripped clean, under the water. I guess I generally hung around. She was something for a sculptor to hire, and she had just enough of the copper in her to make her look like something poured from metal, especially with the water shining on her shoulders. I didn't let her see me look, at first, but then I found out she liked it. She'd stand on her toes, and stretch her arms, and let her muscles ripple, and then laugh. So of course that led to this and that.

The second night out, he got off on a harangue against Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Bellini, Donizetti, and "that most unspeakable wop of all, Rossini." That was where I stopped him. "Hold on, hold on, hold on. On those others, I haven't got much to say. I sing them, but I don't talk about them, though Donizetti is a lot better than most people think. But on Rossini, you're crazy."

"The William Tell Overture is the worst piece of music ever written."

"There's music in it, but it's not his best."

"There's no music in it of any kind."

"Well, how's this?"

I picked up the guitar and gave him a little of Semiramide. You can't play a Rossini crescendo on a guitar, but I did what I could. He listened, his face set like flint. I finished and was going to start something else, when he touched my arm. "Play a little of that again."

I played it again, then gave him some Italians in Algiers, and then some Barber. It took quite a while. I know a lot of Rossini. I didn't sing, just played. On the woodwind strain in the Barber overture, I just brushed the strings with my fingers, then for the climax came in big over the hole, and it really sounded like something. I stopped, and he smoked his pipe a long time.

"'Tis fine, musicianly music, isn't it?"

"It's all of that. And it's no worse for being gay, and not taking itself too seriously."

"Aye, it has a twinkle in its eye, and a sparkle in its beat."

"Your friend Beethoven patronized him, the son-of-a-bitch. Told him to keep on writing tunes, that was what he was good for. All Rossini was doing at the time was trying to give him a lift, so he wouldn't have to live like a hog in the dump he found him in."

"If he patronized him it was his right."

"The hell it was. When a Beethoven overture is as good as a Rossini overture, then it'll be his right. Until then, let him keep his goddam mouth shut."

"Lad, lad, you're profaning a temple."

"No, I'm not. You say he's the greatest composer that ever lived, and so do I. He wrote the nine greatest symphonies ever put on paper, and that makes him the greatest composer. But listen, symphonies are not all of music. When you get to the overtures, Beethoven's name is not at the top, and Rossini's is. The idea of a man that could write a thing like the Leonora No. 3 high-hatting Rossini. Why, when those horns sound off, off-stage, it's a cheap vaudeville effect that makes the William Tell Overture sound like a Meistersinger's Prelude, by comparison."

"I confess I don't like it."

"Oh yeah, he would show the boys how to write an overture, wouldn't he? He didn't have overtures in him. You know why? To write an overture, you've got to love the theatre, and he didn't. Did you ever hear Fidelio?"

"I have, and it shames me--"

"But Rossini loved the theatre, and that's why he could write an overture. He takes you into the theatre--hell, you can even feel them getting into their seats, and smell the theatre smell, and see the lights go up on the curtain. Who the hell told Beethoven he could treat that guy as somebody with an amusing talent that he ought to cultivate?"

"Just the same he was a great man."

I played the minuet from the Eighth Symphony. You can get most of that on the guitar. "...That was something to hear. By the way you play him, lad, you think he's a great man yourself, I take it?"

"Yes."

"The other too. From now on I shall listen to him." We were several days out before he got around to McCormack, and he kind of brought it up offhand, as we were sitting on deck at sundown, like it was just something he happened to think of. But when he found out I thought McCormack was one of the greatest singers that ever lived, he began to talk. "So you say the singers admire the fellow?"

"Admire him? Does a ballplayer admire Ty Cobb?"

"Between ourselves, I'm no enthusiast for the art. As you've observed, I'm a symphony man myself, and I believe the great music of the world has been written for fiddlers, not singers. But with McCormack I make an exception. Not because he's an Irishman, I give you my word on that. You were right about Herbert. If there's one thing an Irishman hates more than a landlord it's another Irishman. 'Tis because he makes me feel music I had previously been indifferent to. I don't speak of the ballads he sings, mush a man wouldn't spit into. But I have heard him sing Handel. I heard him sing a whole program of Handel at a private engagement in Boston."

"He can sing it, all right."

"Until then, I had not cared for Händel, but he revealed it to me. 'Tis something to be grateful for, the awakening to Handel. What is the reason for that? I've heard a million of your Wops, Frogs and Yankees sing Handel, aye and plenty of Englishmen, but not one of them can sing it the way that fellow can."

"Well, in the first place, he's good. That's something you can't quite cut up into pieces and measure off. And when a man's good, he's generally good all the way down the line. McCormack has music in him, so he no sooner opens his trap than there's a tingle to it, no matter what he sings. He has an instinct for style that never lets him down. He never drags an andante too slow, or hustles an allegro too fast. He never turns a dumb phrase, or forces, or misgauges a climax. When he does it, it's always right, with a big R. What he did for Handel was to bring it to life for you. Up to then, you probably thought it was pale, thin, tinkle-tankle stuff--"

"To my shame I did."

"And then he stepped into it, like a bugler at dawn--"

"That's it, that's it, like a bugler at dawn. You can't imagine what it was like, lad. He stood there, the most arrogant figure of a man I ever saw, with his chest thrown out and his head thrown back, and his thumbs in his little black book of words, like a cardinal starting the mass. And without a word, he began to sing. And the sun came up, and the sun came up."

"And in the second place--"

"Yes, lad, in the second place?"

"He had a great voice."

"He could have the Magic Flute in his throat and I'd never know it."

"Well, he goddam near
had
the Magic Flute in his throat, if somebody happened to ask you. And your ears knew it, even if your head didn't. He had a
great
voice, not just a good voice. I don't mean big. It was never big, though it was big enough. But what makes a great voice is beauty, not size, and beauty will get you, I don't care if it's in a man's throat or a woman's leg."

"You may be right. I hadn't thought of it."

"And in the third place--"

"Go on, 'tis instructive to me."

"--There's the language he was born to. John McCormack comes from Dublin."

"He does not. He comes from Athlone."

"Didn't he live in Dublin?"

"No matter. They speak a fine brogue in Athlone, almost as fine as in Belfast."

"It's a fine brogue, but it's not a brogue. It's the English language as it was spoken before all the other countries of the world forgot how to speak it. There's two things a singer can't buy, beg or steal, and that no teacher, coach or conductor can give him. One is his voice, the other is the language that was born in his mouth. When McCormack was singing Handel he was singing English, and he sings it as no American and no Englishman will ever sing English. But not like an Irishman. Not with all that warmth, color, and richness that McCormack puts into it."

"'Tis pleasant to hear you say that."

"You speak a fine brogue yourself."

"I try to say what I mean."

We were creeping past Ensenada, four or five miles out, and we smoked a while without saying anything. The sea was like glass, but you could see the hotel in the setting sun, and the white line of surf around the harbor. We smoked a while, but I'm a bit of a bug on that subject of language, and what a man brings on stage with him besides what he was taught. I started up again, and told him how all the great Italian singers have come from the city of Naples, and gave him a few examples of singers with fine voices that never made the grade because they were bums, and people won't listen to bums. About that, I knew plenty. Then I got off on Mexico, and about that, I guess you can realize I was pretty bitter. I began getting it off my chest. He listened, but pretty soon he stopped me. "Not so fast, lad, not so fast. 'Tis instructive that Caruso came from Naples, as McCormack came from Athlone, and that it was part of his gift, but when you speak so of Mexico, I take exception."

"I say they can't sing because they can't talk."

"They talk soft."

"They talk soft, but they talk on top of their throats--and
they've got nothing to say!
Listen, you can't spend a third of your life on the dirt floor of an adobe hut, and then expect people to listen to you when you stand up and try to sing Mozart. Why, sit down, you goddam Indian, and--"

"I'm losing patience with you."

"Did you ever hear them sing?"

"I don't know if they can sing, and I don't care. But they're a great people."

"At what? Is there one thing they do well?"

"Life is not all doing. It's part being. They're a great people. The little one in there--"

"She's an exception."

"She's not. She's a typical Mexican, and I should know one when I see her by now. I've been sailing these coasts for fifty years. She speaks soft, and holds herself like the little queen that she is. There's beauty in her."

"I told you, she's an exception."

"There's beauty in them."

"Sure, the whole goddam country is a musical comedy set, if that's what you mean. But when you get past the scenery and the costumes, what then? Under the surface what do you find? Nothing!"

"I don't know what I find. I'm no great hand at words, and it would be hard for me to say what I find. But I find
something.
And I know this much: If it's beauty I feel, then it must be under the surface, because beauty is
always
under the surface."

"Under the bedrock, in that hellhole."

"I think much about beauty, sitting alone at night, listening to my wireless, and trying to get the reason of it, and understand how a man like Strauss can put the worst sounds on the surface that ever profaned the night, and yet give me something I can sink my teeth into. This much I know: True beauty has
terror
in it. Now I shall reply to your contemptuous words about Beethoven. He has
terror
in him, and your overture writers have not. Fine music they wrote, and after your remarks I shall listen to them with respect. But you can drop a stone into Beethoven, and you will never hear it strike bottom. The eternities and the infinities are in it, and they strike at the soul, like death. You mind what I'm telling you, there is terror in the little one too, and I hope you never forget it in your relations with her."

There wasn't much I could say to that. I had felt the terror in her, God knows. We lit up again, and watched Ensenada turn gray, blue and violet. My cigarettes were all gone by then, and I was smoking his tobacco, and one of his pipes, that he had cleaned out for me on a steam jet in the boiler. Not a hundred feet from the ship a black fin lifted out of the water. It was an ugly thing to see. It was at least thirty inches high, and it didn't zigzag, or cut a V in the water, or any of the things it does in books. It just came up and stayed a few seconds. Then there was the swash of a big tail and it went down.

"Did you see it, lad?"

"God, it was an awful-looking thing, wasn't it?"

"It cleared up for me what I've been trying to say to you. Sit here, now, and look. The water, the surf, the colors on the shore. You think they make the beauty of the tropical sea, aye, lad? They do not. 'Tis the knowledge of what lurks below the surface of it, that awful-looking thing, as you call it, that carries death with every move that it makes. So it is, so it is with all beauty. So it is with Mexico. I hope you never forget it."

We docked at San Pedro around three in the afternoon, and all I had to do was walk ashore. He gave me dollars for our pesos, so I wouldn't have any trouble over that part, and came down the plank with me. It took about three seconds. I was an American citizen, I had my passport, they looked at it, and that was all. I had no baggage. But she was different, and how she was going to get ashore was making me pretty nervous. He had her below decks, under cover, and so far so good, but that didn't mean she was in, by a long way. He didn't seem much upset, though. He walked through the pier with me, waving at his friends, stopping to introduce me to his broker, taking it easy. When he got to the loading platform outside, he stood there and lit a cigar his broker had given him. "Across there is a little cove they call Fish Harbor. It is reached by a ferry, and you should find out how to get there this afternoon, but don't arrive before dark, as you should not be seen hanging around. By the wharves runs a street, and on the main thoroughfare leading down to it is a little Japanese restaurant, about a stone's throw from the water. Be there at nine o'clock, sharp. Order beer, and drink it slowly till I come."