Serenade

Chapter 10

Winston Hawes, the papers said, was one of the outstanding musicians of his time, the conductor that could really read a score, the man that had done more for modern music than anybody since Muck. He was all of that, but don’t get the idea he was ever one of the boys. There was something wrong about the way he thought about music, something unhealthy, like the crowds you always saw at his concerts, and what it was I can only half tell you. In the first place I don’t know enough about the kind of people he came from, and in the second place I don’t know enough about music. He was rich, and there’s something about rich people that’s different from the rest of us. They come into the world with an inflated idea of their relation to it, and everything they find in it. I got a little flash into that side of him once, in Paris, when I strolled into an art store to look at some pictures that caught my eye. A guy came in, an American, and began a palaver about prices. And the way that guy talked gave me a whole new slant at his kind. He didn’t care about art, the way you do or I do, as something to look at and feel. He wanted to own it. Winston was that way about music. He made a whore out of it. You went to his concerts, but you didn’t sit out there at his rehearsals, and see him hold men for an hour overtime, at full pay, just because there was some French horn passage that he liked, and wanted it played over and over again — not to rehearse it, but because of what it did to him. And you didn’t walk out with him afterwards, and see him all atremble, and hear him tell how he felt after playing it. He was like some woman that goes to concerts because they give her the right vibrations, or make her feel better, or have some other effect on her nitwit insides. All right, you may think it’s cock-eyed to compare him with somebody like that, but I’m telling you that in spite of all his technical skill, he was a hell of a sight nearer to that fat poop than he ever was to Muck. That woman was in him, poodle dog, diamonds, limousine, conceit, cruelty and all, and don’t let his public reputation fool you. She has a public reputation too, if she hands out enough money. The day the story broke, they compared him with Stanford White, but I’m telling you that to put Winston Hawes in the same class with Stanford White was a desecration.

You can’t own music, the way you can own a picture, but you can own a big hunk of it. You can own a composer, that you put on a subsidy while he’s writing a piece for you. You can own an audience that has to come to you to hear that piece if it’s going to hear it at all. You can own the orchestra that plays it, and you can own the singer that sings it. I first met him in Paris. I hadn’t known him in Chicago. He came from a packing family so rich I never even got within a mile of where they lived. And I didn’t look him up, even in Paris. He showed up at my apartment one day, sat down at the piano, played off a couple of songs that were there, and said they were lousy, which they were. Then he got up and asked me how I’d like to sing with his band. I was pretty excited. He had started his Petite Orchestra about a year before, and I had gone to plenty of the concerts, and don’t you think they weren’t good. He started with thirty men, but by now he was up to forty. He raided everywhere, from the opera orchestras, from the chamber music outfits, and he took anybody he wanted, because he paid about twice what any other band paid. He footed the deficit himself, and he didn’t have a man that couldn’t have played quartets with Heifetz. What they could do to music, especially modern music, was just make it sound about twice as good as even the composer thought it was. He had some stuff with him he wanted me to do, all of it in manuscript. Part of it was old Italian songs he had dug up, where I would have to do baritone coloratura that had been out of date for a hundred years, and how he knew I could do it I don’t know. Part of it was a suite by his first viola, that had never been performed yet. It was tough stuff, music that wouldn’t come to life at all without the most exact tone shading. But he gave me six rehearsals — count them, six, something you couldn’t believe. Cost didn’t mean anything to him. When we went on with it I was with those woodwinds like I was one of the bassoons, and the response was terrific. I took out Picquot, the viola, before I took a call myself, and the whole thing was like something you read about.

That part of it, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t admit it was an adventure in music I’ll never forget. I sang for him four times, and each time it was something new, something fresh, and a performance better than you even knew you could give. He had a live stick all right. From some of them you get a beat as dead as an undertaker’s handshake, but not from him. He threw it on you like a hypnotist, and you began to roll it out, and yet it was all under perfect control. That’s the word to remember, perfect. Perfection is something no singer ever got yet, but under him you came as near to it as you’re ever going to get.

That was the beginning of it, and it was quite a while before it dawned on me what he really wanted. As to what he wanted, and what he got, you’ll find out soon enough, and I’m not going to tell any more than I have to. But I’d like to make this much clear now: that wasn’t what I wanted. What I meant to him and what he meant to me were two different things, but once again, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t admit that what he meant to me was plenty. He took to dropping into my dressing room at the Comique while I was washing up, and he’d tell me some little thing I had done, something he had liked, or sometimes, something he hadn’t liked. If he had been giving a concert, maybe he had heard only part of the last act, but there would always be something. You think that didn’t mean anything to me? Singing is a funny job. You go out there and take those calls, and it’s so exciting that when you get back to your dressing room you want to sing, to cut it loose till the windows rattle, just to let off the steam that excitement makes. You go back there and you’ll hear them, especially the tenors, so you’d think they had gone crazy. But that excitement is all from out front, from a mob you only half see and never know, and you get so you’d give anything for somebody, for just one guy, that knew what you were trying to do, that spotted your idea without your telling him, that could appreciate you with his head and not with the palms of his hands. And mind you, it couldn’t be just anybody. It has to be somebody you respect, somebody that knows.

I began to wait for that visit. Then pretty soon I was singing to him and to nobody else. We’d walk out, go to a café while I ate, then drop over to his apartment off the Place Vendóme, and have a post-mortem on my performance. Then, little by little, he began making suggestions. Then I began dropping in on him in the morning, and he’d take me through some things I had been doing wrong. He was the best coach in the world, bar none. Then he began to take my acting apart, and put it together again. It was he that cured me of all those operatic gestures I got in Italy. He showed me that good operatic acting consists in as few motions as possible, every one of them calculated for an effect, and every one made to count. He told me about Scotti and how he used to sing the Pagliacci Prologue before he got so bad they couldn’t use him in Pagliacci. He made one gesture. At the end of the andante, he held out his hand, and then turned it over, palm up. That was all. It said it. He made me learn a whole new set of gestures, done naturally, and he made me practice for hours singing sotto voce without using any gestures at all. That’s a tough order, just to stand up there, on a cold stage, and shoot it. But I got so I could do it.And I got so I could take my time, give it to them when I was ready, not before. I began to do better in comedy roles, like Sharpless and Marcello. Taking out all that gingerbread, I could watch timing, and get laughs I never got before. I got so I was with him morning, noon and night, and depended on him like a hophead depends on dope.

Then came my crack-up, and when my money was all gone I had to leave Paris. He stormed about that, wanted to support me, showed me his books to prove that an allowance for me wouldn’t even make a dent in his income. But it was that storming that showed me where things had got between him and me, and that I had to break away from him. I went to New York. I tried to find something to do, but there was nothing I could do except sing, and I couldn’t sing. That was when this agent kidded me that no matter what shape I was in I was good enough for Mexico, and I went down there.

I had read in some paper that he had disbanded his orchestra in Paris, but I didn’t know he was starting his Little Orchestra in New York until I got there. It made me nervous. I dropped in, alone, at his first concert, just so I could say I had, in case I ran into him somewhere. It was the same mob he had had in Paris, clothes more expensive than you would see even at a Hollywood opening, gray-haired women with straight haircuts and men’s dinner jackets, young girls looking each other straight in the eye and not caring what you thought, boys following men around, loud, feverish talk out in the foyer, everybody coming out in the open with something they wouldn’t dare show anywhere else. His first number was something for strings by Lalo I had heard him play before, and I left right after it. Next day, when I saw the review in the paper I turned the page quick. I didn’t want to read it. I had a note from him after Don Giovanni, and shot it right back, and one word written on it, “Thanks,” with my initials. I didn’t want to write on my own stationery, or he’d know where I was living. I felt funny about asking for opera house stationery. I was afraid not to answer, for fear he’d be around to know why.

So that’s how things stood when I was sitting beside Juana and the phone rang. She motioned to let it ring, and I did for a while, but I still hadn’t called Panamier, and I knew I had them to talk to, even if I had nothing to say. I answered. But it wasn’t Panamier. It was Winston. “Jack! You old scalawag! Where have you been hiding?”

“Why — I’ve been busy.”

“So have I, so busy I’m ashamed of it. I hate to be busy. I like time for my friends. But at the moment I’m free as a bird, I’ve got a fine fire burning, and you can hop in a cab, wherever you are — all I’ve got is your phone number, and I had a frightful time even getting that — and come up here. I just can’t wait to see you.”

“Well — that sounds swell, but I’ve got to go back to Hollywood, right away, probably tomorrow, and that means I’ll be tied up every minute, trying to get out of town. I don’t see how I could fit it in.”

“What did you say? Hollywood!”

“Yeah, Hollywood.”

“Jack, you’re kidding.”

“No, I’m a picture star now.”

“I know you are. I saw your pictures, both of them. But you can’t go back to Hollywood now. Why you’re singing for me, one month from today. I’ve arranged your whole program. It’s out of the question.”

“No, I’ll have to go.”

“Jack, you don’t sound like yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve got so big you can’t spare one night for a poor dilettante and his band—”

“For Christ sake, don’t be silly.”

“That sounds more like you. Now what is it?”

“Nothing but what I’ve told you. I’ve got to go back there. I don’t want to. I hate to. I’ve tried to get out of it every way I knew, but I’m sewed and I’ve got no choice.”

“That sounds still more like you. In other words, you’re in trouble.”

“That’s it.”

“Into the cab and up here. Tell it to Papa.”

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t... Wait a minute.”

She was grabbing for the receiver. I put my hand over it. “Yes, you go.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You go.”

“He’s just a guy — I don’t want to see.”

“You go, you feel better, Juana’s nose, very snoddy.”

“I’ll wipe it, then it won’t be snoddy.”

“Hoaney, you go. Many people call today, all day long. You no here, you no have to talk, no feel bad. Now, you go. I say you gone out. I don’t know where. You go, then tonight we talk, you and I. We figure out.”

“... All right, where are you? I’ll be up.”

He was at a hotel off Central Park, on the twenty-second floor of the tower. The desk told me to go up. I did, found his suite, rang the bell and got no answer. The door was open and I walked in. There was a big living room, with windows on two sides, so you could see all the way downtown and out over the East River, a grand piano at one end, a big phonograph across from that, scores stacked everywhere, and a big fire burning under a mantelpiece. I opened the door that led into the rest of the suite and called, but there wasn’t any answer. And then in a second there he was, bouncing in from the hall, in the rough coat, flannel shirt, and battered trousers that he always wore. If you had met him in Central Park you would have given him a dime. “Jack! How are you! I went down to meet you, and they told me you had just gone up! Give me that coat! Give me a smile, for God’s sake! That Mexican sunburn makes you look like Othello!”

“Oh, you knew I was in Mexico?”

“Know it! I went down there to bring you back, but you had gone. What’s the idea, hiding out on me?”

“Oh, I’ve been working.”

One minute later I was in a big chair in front of the fire, with a bottle of the white port I had always liked beside me, a little pile of buttered English biscuits beside that, he was across from me with those long legs of his hooked over the chandelier or some place, and we were off. Or anyhow, he was. He always began in the middle, and he raced along about Don Giovanni, about an appoggiatura I was leaving out in Lucia, about the reason the old scores aren’t sung the way they’re written, about a new flutist he had pulled in from Detroit, about my cape routine in Carmen, all jumbled up together. But not for long. He got to the point pretty quick. “What’s this about Hollywood?”

“Just what I told you. I’m sewed on a goddam contract and I’ve got to go.”

I told him about it. I had told so many people about it by then I knew it by heart, and could get it over quick. “Then this man — Gold, did you say his name was? — is the key to the whole thing?”

“He’s the one.”

“All right then. You just sit here a while.”

“No, if you’re doing something I’ll go!”

“I said sit there. Papa’s going to get busy.”

“At what?”

“There’s your port, there’s your biscuits, there’s the fire, there’s the most beautiful snow I’ve seen this year, and I’ve got the six big Rossini overtures on the machine — Semiramide, Tancred, the Barber, Tell, the Ladra, and the Italians, just in from London, beautifully played — and by the time they’re finished I’ll be back.”

“I asked you, where are you going?”

“Goddam it, do you have to bust up my act? I’m being Papa. I’m going into action. And when Papa goes into action, it’s the British Fleet. Sip your port. Listen to Rossini. Think of the boys that were gelded to sing the old bastard’s masses. Be the Pope. I’m going to be Admiral Dewey.”

“Beatty.”

“No, I’m Gridley. I’m ready to fire.”

He switched on the Rossini, poured the wine, and went. I tried to listen, and couldn’t. I got up and switched it off. It was the first time I ever walked out on Rossini. I went over to the windows and watched the snow. Something told me to get out of there, to go back to Hollywood, to do anything except get mixed up with him again. It wasn’t over twenty minutes before he was back. I heard him coming, and ducked back to the chair. I didn’t want him to see me worrying. “... I was astonished that you missed that grace note in Lucia. Didn’t you feel it there? Didn’t you know it had to be there?”

“To hell with Lucia. What news?”

“Oh. I had forgotten all about it. Why, you stay, of course. You go on with the opera, you do this foolish broadcast you’ve let yourself in for, you sing for me, you make your picture in the summer. That’s all. It’s all fixed up. Once more, Jack, on all those old recitatives—”

“Listen, this is business. I want to know—”

“Jack, you are so crass. Can’t I wave my wand? Can’t I do my bit of magic? If you have to know, I happen to control a bank, or my somewhat boorish family happen to control it. They embarrass me greatly, but sometimes they have a kind of low, swinish usefulness. And the bank controls, through certain stocks impounded to secure moneys, credit, and so on — oh the hell with it.”

“Go on. The bank controls what?”

“The picture company, dolt.”

“And?”

“Listen, I’m talking about Donizetti.”

“And I’m talking about a son-of-a-bitch by the name of Rex Gold. What did you do?”

“I talked with him.”

“And what did he say?”

“Why — I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. I told him what he was to do, that’s all.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“Phone? What are you phoning about?”

“I’ve got to call the broadcasting company.”

“Will you sit down and listen to what I’m trying to tell you about appoggiaturas, so you won’t embarrass me every time you sing something written before 1905? Varlets in the bank are calling the broadcasting company. That’s what we have them for. They’re working overtime, calling other varlets in Radio City and making them work overtime, which I greatly enjoy, while you and I take our sinful ease here and watch the snow at twilight, and discuss the grace notes of Donizetti, which will be sung long after the picture company, the bank, and the varlets are dead in their graves and forgotten. Are you following me?”

His harangue on the appoggiaturas lasted fifteen minutes. It was something I was always forgetting about him, his connection with money. His family consisted of an old maid sister, a brother that was a colonel in the Illinois National Guard, another brother that lived in Italy, and some nephews and nieces, and they had about as much to do with that fortune as so many stuffed dummies. He ran it, he controlled the bank, he did plenty of other things that he pretended he was too artistic even to bother with. All of a sudden something shot through my mind. “Winston, I’ve been framed.”

“Framed? What are you talking about? By whom?”

“By you.”

“Jack, I give you my word, the way you sang that—”

“Cut out this goddam foolish act about Lucia, will you? Sure I sang it wrong. I learned that role before I knew anything about style, and I hadn’t sung it for five years until I went on with it last month, and I neglected to re-learn it, and that’s all that amounts to, and to hell with it. I’m talking about this other. You knew all about it when you called me.”

“... Why, of course I did.”

“And I think you put me in that spot.”

“I-? Don’t be a fool.”

“It always struck me pretty funny, that guy Gold’s ideas about grand opera, and me, and all the rest of it. Anybody else would want me in grand opera, to build me up. What do you know about that?”

“Jack, that’s Mexican melodrama.”

“What about this trip of yours? To Mexico?”

“I went there. A frightful place.”

“For me?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“To take you by the scuff of your thick neck and drag you out of there. I — ran into a ’cellist that had seen you. I heard you were looking seedy. I don’t like you seedy. Shaggy, but not with spots on your coat.”

“What about Gold?”

“... I put Gold in charge of that picture company because he was the worst ass I had ever met, and I thought he was the perfect man to make pictures. I was right. He’s turned the whole investment into a gold mine. Soon I can have seventy-five men, and ‘Little Orchestra’ will be one of those affectations I so greatly enjoy. Jack, do you have to expose all my little shams? You know them all. Can’t we just not look at them? After all they’re nice shams.”

“I want to know more about Gold.”

He came over and sat on the arm of my chair. “Jack, why should I frame you?”

I couldn’t answer him, and I couldn’t look at him.

“Yes, I knew all about it. I didn’t tell Gold to be an ass, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t have to. I knew about it, and I acted out one of my little shams. Can’t I want my Jack to be happy? Wipe that sulky look off your face. Wasn’t it good magic? Didn’t Gridley level the fort?”

“... Yes.”

I got home around eight o’clock. I rushed in with a grin on my face, said it was all right, that Gold had changed his mind, that we were going to stay, and let’s go out and celebrate. She got up, wiped her snoddy nose, dressed, and we went out, to a hot-spot uptown. It was murder to drag her out, on a night like that, the way she felt, but I was afraid if I didn’t get to some place where there was music, and I could get some liquor in me, she’d see I was putting on an act, that I was as jittery inside as a man with a hangover.

I didn’t see him for a week or ten days, and the first broadcast made me feel good. I said hello to Captain Conners, and there was a federal kick-back the next morning. Messages to private persons are strictly forbidden. I just laughed, and thought of Thomas. There was a federal kick-back on that “Good night, Mother,” too, and they told him he couldn’t do it. He just went ahead and did it. That afternoon there came a radiogram from the SS. Port of Cobh: TWAS A SOAP AGENTS PROGRAM BUT I ENJOYED IT HELLO YOURSELF AND HELLO TO THE LITTLE ONE CONNERS. So of course I had to come running home with that.

I made some records, went on three times a week at the opera, did another broadcast, and woke up to find I was a household institution, name, face, voice and all, from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn and back again. The spig papers, the Canadian papers, the Alaskan papers, and all the other papers began coming in by that time, and I was plastered all over them, with reviews of the broadcast, pictures of the car, and pictures of me. The plugs I wrote for the car worked, the horn worked, and all of it worked, so they had to put more ships under charter to make deliveries. Then I had to get Winston’s program ready, and began seeing him every day.

I didn’t have to see him every day to get the program up. But he dropped into my dressing room one night, the way he had done before, and it was just luck that it was raining, and she still had a hangover from the cold, and had decided to stay home. She was generally out there when I sang, and always came backstage to pick me up. There was a big mob of autograph hunters back there, and instead of locking them out while I dressed, the way I generally did, I let them in, and signed everything they shoved at me, and listened to women tell me how they had come all the way from Aurora to hear me, and let him wait. When we walked out I apologized for it and said there was nothing I could do. “Don’t ever come around again. This isn’t Paris. Let me drop up to your hotel the morning after, and we’ll have the post-mortem then.”

“I’d love it! It’s a standing date.”

From the quick way he said it, and the fact that he had never once asked me where I was living, or made any move to come and see me, it came to me that he knew all about Juana, just like he had known all about Gold. Then I began to have this nervous feeling, that never left me, wondering what he was going to pull next.

What I was going to do with her the night of his concert I didn’t know. She had got so she could read the papers now, and had spotted the announcement, and asked me about it. I acted like it was just another job of singing, and she didn’t pay much attention to it. Her cold was all right now, and there wasn’t a chance she would stay home on that account. I thought of telling her it was a private concert, and that I couldn’t get her in, but I knew that wouldn’t work. Going up in the cab, I told her that as I wouldn’t have to dress afterwards, it would be better if she didn’t come backstage. We’d meet in the Russian place next door. Then I could duck out quick and we’d miss the mob of handshakers. I showed it to her and she said all right, then she went in the front way and I ducked up the alley.

When I got backstage I almost fainted when I found out what he was up to. I was singing two numbers, one the aria from the Siege of Corinth for the first part of the program, the other Walter Damrosch’s Mandalay, for the second part. I had squawked on that Mandalay, because I thought it was all wrong for a symphony concert. But when he made me read it over I had to admit it was in a different class from the Speaks Mandalay, or the Prince Mandalay, or any of the other barroom Mandalays. It’s a little tone poem all by itself, a piece of real music, with all the verses in it except the bad one, about the housemaids, and each verse a little different from the others.One reason it’s never done is that it takes a whole male chorus, but of course cost never bothered him any. He got a chorus together, and rehearsed them until they spit blood, getting a Volga-Boat-Song-dying-away effect he wanted at the end, and by the time I had gone over it with them two or three times, we had a real number out of it.

But what he was getting ready to do was have them march on in a body, before I came on, and I had to throw a fit of temperament to stop it. I raved and cursed, said it would kill my entrance, and refused to go on if he did it that way. I said they had to drift in with the orchestra after the intermission, and take their places without any march-on. But I wasn’t thinking about my entrance. What I was afraid of was that those twenty-four chorus men, marching on at a Winston Hawes concert, would be such a murderous laugh that it would tip her off to what the whole thing was about.

I peeped out before we started, and spotted her. She was sitting between an old couple, on one side, and one of the critics, alone, on the other, so it didn’t look like she would hear anything. In the intermission I peeped out again. She was still sitting there, and so was the old couple. She had sneaked a piece of chewing gum into her mouth, and was munching on that, so everything seemed to be all right, so far.

The chorus were in white ties, and they went on the way I said, and nothing happened. The orchestra played a number and Winston came off. He kidded me about my fit of temperament, and I kidded back. So long as everything was under control, I didn’t care. Then I went on. Whether it was what Damrosch wrote, or the way Winston conducted, or the tone of those horns, I don’t know, but before the opening chords had even finished, you were in India. I started, and did a good job of it. I clowned the second verse a little, but not too much. The other verses I did straight, and the temple-bell atmosphere kept getting better. When we got to the end, with the chorus dying away behind me, and me hanging above them on the high F, it was something to hear, believe me it was. They broke out into a roar. It had been a program of modern music, most of it pretty scrappy and this was the first thing they had heard that really stuck to their ribs. I took two calls, had the chorus stand, came off, and they called me out again. Then Winston did something that’s not done, and that he wouldn’t have done for anybody on earth but me. He decided to repeat it.

A repeat is something you do mechanically, God knows why. You’ve done it once, you’ve scored with it, and the second time out you do it with your mouth, but your head has already gone home. I went through with it, got every laugh I had got before, coasted along without a hitch. I hit the E flat, the chorus was right with me. I hit the F, and my heart stopped. Hanging up there, over that chorus, was the priest of Acapulco, the guy in the church, singing down the storm, croaking high mass to make the face on the cross stop looking at him. “Who is these man?”

We were in the cab going down, and it was like the whisper you hear from a coiled rattlesnake.

“What man?”

“I think you know, yes.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“You have been with a man.”

“I’ve been with plenty of men. I see men all day long. Do I have to stay with you all the time? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I no speak of man you see all day long. I speak of man you love. Who is these man?”

“Oh, I’m a fairy, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thanks. I didn’t know that.”

It was a warm night, but on account of the white tie I had to wear a coat. I had been hot as hell going up, but I wasn’t hot now. I felt cold and shriveled inside. I watched the El posts going by on Third Avenue, and I could feel her there looking at me, looking at me with those hard black eyes that seemed to bore through me. We got out of the cab, and went on up to the apartment. I put the silk hat in a closet, put the coat in with it, lit a cigarette, tried to shake it off, how I felt. She just sat there on the edge of the table. She had on an evening dress we had got from one of the best shops in town, and the bullfighter’s cape. Except for the look on her face, she was something out of a book.

“Why you lie to me?”

“I’m not lying.”

“You lie. I look at you, I know you lie.”

“Did I ever lie to you?”

“Yes. Once at Acapulco. You know you run away, you tell me no. When you want, you lie.”

“We went over that. I meant to run away, and you knew what I meant. Lying, that was just how we got over it easy. Then when I found out what you meant to me, I didn’t lie. That’s all ... what the hell squwk have you got? You were all ready to sleep with that son-of-a-bitch—”

“I no lie.”

“What has this got to do with Acapulco?”

“Yes, it is the same. Now you love man, you lie.”

“I don’t — Christ, do I look like that?”

“No. You no look like that. We meet in Tupinamba, yes? And you no look like that I like, much, how you look. Then you make lotería for me, and lose lotería. And I think, how sweet. He have lose, but he like me so much he make lotería. Then I send muchacha with address, and we go home, go where I live. But then I know. You know how I know?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. It’s not true.”

“I know when you sing. Hoaney, I was street girl, love man, three pesos. Little dumb muchacha, no can read, no can write, understand nothing like that. But of man — all... Hoaney, these man who love other man, they can do much, very clever. But no can sing. Have no toro in high voice, no grrr that frighten little muchacha, make heart beat fast. Sound like old woman, like cow, like priest.”

She began to walk around. My hands were clammy and my lips felt numb. “... Then the politico, he say I should open house, and I think of you. I think maybe, with these man, no like muchacha, have no trouble. We got to Acapulco. Rain come, we go in church. You take me. I no want, I think of sacrilegio, but you take me. Oh, much toro. I like. I think maybe Juana make mistake. Then you sing, oh, my heart beat very fast.”

“Just a question of toro, hey?”

“No. You ask me to come with you. I come. I love you much. I no think of toro. Just a little bit. Then in New York I feel, I feel something fonny. I think you think about contrato, all these thing. But is not the same. Tonight I know. I make no mistake. When you love Juana, you sing nice, much toro. When you love man — why you lie to me? You think I no hear? You think I no know?”

If she had taken a whip to me I couldn’t have answered her. She began to cry, and fought it back. She went in the other room, and pretty soon she came out. She had changed her dress and put on a hat. She was carrying the valise in one hand and the fur coat in the other. “I no live with man who love other man. I no live with man who lie. I—”

The phone rang. “—Ah!”

She ran in and answered. “Yes, he is here.”

She came out, her eyes blazing and her white teeth showing behind something that was between a laugh and a snarl. “Mr. Hawes.”

I didn’t say anything and I didn’t move. “Yes, Mr. Hawes, the director.” She gave a rasping laugh and put on the god-damdest imitation of Winston you ever saw, the walk, the stick, and all the rest of it so you almost thought he was in front of you. “Yes, your sweetie, he wait at telephone, talk to him please.”

When I still sat there, she jumped at me like a tiger, shook me till I could feel my teeth rattling, and then ran in to the telephone. “What you want with Mr. Sharp, please? ... Yes, yes, he will come... Yes, thank you much. Goodbye.”

She came out again. “Now, please you go. He have party, want you very much. Now, go to your sweetie. Go! Go! Go!”

She shook me again, jerked me out of the chair, tried to push me out the door. She grabbed up the valise and the fur coat again. I ran in the bedroom, flopped on the bed, pulled the pillow over my head. I wanted to shut it out, the whole horrible thing she had showed me, where she had ripped the cover off my whole life, dragged out what was down there all the time. I screwed my eyes shut, kept pulling the pillow around my ears. But one thing kept slicing up at me, no matter what I did. It was the fin of that shark.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. I was on my back after a while, staring at nothing. It was dead quiet outside, and dead still, except for the searchlight from the building on Fourteenth Street, that kept going around and around. I kept telling myself she was crazy, that voice is a matter of palate, sinus, and throat, that Winston had no more to do with what happened to me in Paris than the scenery had. But here it was, starting on me again the same way it had before, and I knew she had called it on me the way it was written in the big score, and that no pillow or anything else could shut it out. I closed my eyes, and I was going down under the waves, with something coming up at me from below. Panic caught me then. I hadn’t heard her go out, and I called her. I waited, and called again. There wasn’t any answer. My head was under the pillow again pretty soon, and I must have slept because I woke up with the same horrible dream, that I was in the water, going down, and this thing was coming at me. I sat up, and there she was, on the edge of her bed, looking at me. It was gray outside. “Christ, you’re there.” But some kind of a sob jerked out as I said it, and I put out my hand and took hers.

“It’s all true.”

She came over, sat down beside me, stroked my hair, held my hand. “Tell me. You no lie, I no fight.”

“There’s nothing to tell... Every man has got five per cent of that in him, if he meets the one person that’ll bring it out, and I did, that’s all.”

“But you love other man. Before.”

“No, the same one, here, in Paris, all over, the one son-of-a-bitch that’s been the curse of my life.”

“Sleep now. Tomorrow, you give me little bit money, I go back to Mexico—”

“No! Don’t you know what I’m trying to tell you? That’s out! I hate it! I’ve been ashamed of it, I’ve tried to shake it off, I hoped you would never find out, and now it’s over!”

I was holding her to me. She began stroking my hair again, looking down in my eyes. “You love me, Hoaney?”

“Don’t you know it? Yes. If I never said so, it was just because — did we have to say it? If we felt it, wasn’t that a hell of a sight more?”

All of a sudden she broke from me, shoved the dress down from her shoulder, slipped the brassiere and shoved a nipple in my mouth. “Eat. Eat much. Make big toro!”

“I know now, my whole life comes from there.”

“Yes, eat.”