Serenade

  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 prett
y 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."

  He clapped me on the shoulder, and went back to the ship. I walked down and found how the ferry ran. Then I went in a lunchroom and had something to eat. Then I went in a moving picture, so I could sit down. I don't even know what the show was. Every fifteen or twenty minutes I would go out in the lobby to look at the clock. Whatever it was, I saw it twice. Around seven I left the theatre and walked down to the ferry. It was quite a while coming, but just about dark it showed up and I went across. It took about ten minutes. I walked down to Fish Harbor, found it without having to ask anybody about it, and then spotted the restaurant. I walked past it, then found a clock and checked on the time. It was half past eight. I walked on to where the street turned into a road, and kept on going until I figured I had covered three quarters of a mile. Then I turned around and came back. When I passed the clock it said five minutes to nine.

  ***

  I went in and ordered beer. There were five or six guys in there, fishermen by their looks, and I raised my glass at them, and they raised back. I didn't want to act like some mysterious stranger, looking neither right nor left. After that they paid no attention to me. At ten after he came in. He shook hands all around in a big way, then sat down with me, and ordered beer. They seemed to know him. When his beer came, he sent the Jap out for a cab, and then began telling me, and telling them, about this trouble he had on his ship. He had his things packed, and was all ready to come ashore, when a launch showed up out of the night, and began yelling up at the pier for somebody named Charlie. "They kept it up, until I got so sick of Charlie I could have thrown a pin at them."

  He was pretty funny, but I wasn't in the humor for it. They were, though. "Who was Charlie?"

  "I never did find out. But wait a minute. Of course my second officer had his face out the hatch, ogling the girls, and do you know what the young upstart did? He called out: 'Forget about Charlie! Come aboard, girls. I'll give you a hand through the hatch--and let a real man take care of you!' And before I knew it he had a line down, they had made the launch fast, and they were aboard my ship!"

  "What did you do?"

  "I was down there in a flash and I ordered them off! 'Off and begone!' I said to them. 'Out of the hatch where you came in, and let me see no more of you!' "

  "Did they go?"

  "They did not! They stood laughing at me, and invited me to go with them! Then the man that was with them seconded the invitation, and my second officer had the effrontery to second him. I was so furious I could not trust myself to speak. But then with an effort, I got myself under control, and I said to him: ' 'Tis an official matter,' I reminded him, 'to be entered on your papers and reported to your owners. Get these girls out of here, and at once.' Do you know what those girls said to me?"

  "What they say?"

  "'Nuts.'"

  That got a laugh. "I argued with them. I pleaded with them, as I didn't want any trouble. At last I had to appeal to the guard on the pier, who was standing there, looking down into the hatch, listening to it. 'Is that right, my man?' I said to him, 'that such entry into a ship is in violation of law? That they must enter by the plank, and pass the guard, otherwise be subject to arrest?"

  "'It is, captain,' he said, 'and they'll not pass the guard if I have anything to do with it.'"

  "Tha
t seemed to frighten them, and out they went, the girls, the man and my second officer. Him I will deal with in the morning. But what I cannot understand about these American girls is the boldness of them. Not one of them could have been more than nineteen, and where were their mothers all that time? What were they doing in that launch at all? Will you tell me that?"

  They all chimed in with what a tough bunch the young girls are nowadays, and then the Jap came in and said the cab was ready. He paid, and we took the valise he had brought with him, and went out and put it in the cab, and he told the driver to wait. Then he started to walk down toward the wharves. "Well, what about her?"

  He didn't seem to hear me. "'Twas a noisy ten minutes. Of course, if the guard on the pier had been observant, he would have noticed that the man in the launch was my first officer. He would also have noticed that whereas three young girls came into the hatch, four of them went out of it."

  "Oh."

  We got to the wharves, strolled out on one, then strolled back, and stood on the corner, smoking. Out in the basin somewhere a launch started up. In a minute or two it slipped in to the wharf, stopped a second, and she hopped ashore and came running to us. Then it shoved off and disappeared. I had wanted to go down and thank those guys for all they had done for us, but he wouldn't let me. "I'll tell them all you say. The three girls they found have no idea what they've been a party to, and the less they know, the less they have to tell. They will see a nice picture show, now, and that's enough."