“What a mess,” said Tucker Mouse, looking at the soggy, smoldering piles of papers and magazines.
No one knew what to say.
“What are you going to do, Chester?” said Harry Cat finally.
“I’m going back there,” said Chester. “If the Bellinis find me gone, they’ll think I set the fire and ran.”
“What makes you think they won’t think you set the fire and stayed?” said Tucker.
“I’ll have to take that chance,” said Chester. Before the cat or the mouse could say anything to stop him, he hopped over to the newsstand.
Paul had told the engineer that he would miss a few trips on the shuttle and was waiting for the Bellinis. He didn’t want anyone monkeying with the cash register while the cover was off. The conductor thought that the cups and bags from the animals’ party had been left by Mario or Papa. While he was taking them over to a trash barrel, Chester jumped up on the shelf. Nothing there had been burned, but there was a smoky smell to everything. The cricket took a downhearted leap into the cage and settled himself for whatever might come.
It didn’t take the Bellinis long to arrive. They had taken a taxi. And when the Bellinis took a taxi, you could be sure it was an emergency. Chester could hear them hurrying down the steps from the street. Papa was trying to soothe Mama, who was wheezing heavily from asthma and excitement. When she saw the heaps of scorched magazines and newspapers, she began to moan and shake her head. Papa eased her down onto the stool, but it was still covered with water and she stood up again with a wet spot on her skirt.
“Ruin—we’re ruined,” she sobbed. “Everything’s burned.”
Papa comforted her as best he could by saying that it was only a few stacks of the Ladies’ Home Journal that had been lost. But Mama wouldn’t believe that anything less than complete destruction had come to them all.
Mario, who brought up the rear of this sad parade, thought first for the safety of his cricket. He saw that Chester was in his cage, though, and decided that it would be best to keep quiet until Mama’s outburst of grief had subsided.
Paul told them what had happened: how he smelled smoke and heard the alarm clock ringing. Then he came to the part about the animals who had escaped from the burning newsstand.
“So—!” said Mama Bellini, all her despair changing into anger. “Animals in the newsstand again! Didn’t I tell you?” She lifted her forefinger at Mario. “Didn’t I say the cricketer would ask in his pals? He probably set the fire. He’s a firebug!”
Mario didn’t have a chance to speak. He would open his mouth to defend Chester, but before he could say a thing, the words were drowned in Mama’s flood of reproaches. She had found someone on whom she could blame her unhappiness and there was no stopping her.
When a pause came, Mario said meekly, “My cricket would never do anything like burn up our newsstand.”
“The fact remains,” said Mama, “we had a fire!”
“But crickets are good luck—” Mario began.
“Good luck!” said Mama indignantly. “He eats money—he commits arson! He’s a jinx, that’s what. He’s good luck going backwards. And he’s got to go.” She folded her arms across her chest. It was an attitude that Mario knew meant the absolute end of everything.
“I could keep him somewhere else,” the boy offered.
“No,” said Mama, shaking her head as firmly as a door being closed. “He’s a jinx. He goes.”
Papa put his finger to his lips as a signal that Mario shouldn’t say anything more and the two of them began to clean up. They carted away all the hopelessly burned magazines and tried to salvage some that had only been scorched. Mario mopped the floor of the newsstand while Mama spread out papers to dry. By the time they were finished, it was almost the hour for the first wave of commuters.
Chester was lying on the floor of the cricket cage. He felt guilty, because even if he hadn’t set it, in a way the fire was his fault. If he hadn’t invited everyone into the newsstand, it wouldn’t have happened. And it was his playing of the rumba that had made Tucker want to dance, and so tip over the matches. And he did eat the two-dollar bill. He began to believe that he really was a jinx.
During the early-morning rush hour Mario was especially eager in his shouts of “Paper, mister,” and “Time or Life, mister.” Papa was more active than usual too. But Mama sat glumly on the stool with a gray, determined look on her face. Despite the fact that the selling that morning went very well, she wouldn’t change her mind. After the rush was over, Papa went out to buy a new lock.
Chester heard a soft scratching from behind the Kleenex box. A familiar face peeked out. “What’s going on?” whispered Tucker Mouse.
“Are you crazy?” said Chester under his breath. “All they need is to catch you here.”
“I had to find out how you were doing,” said Tucker.
“They’re going to throw me out,” sighed Chester.
“Oh oh oh,” Tucker moaned. “And it was me that did it. Supposing I give you the rest of my life’s savings. Maybe we could buy them off.”
Chester leaned his black little head up against the bars of the cricket cage. “Not this time,” he said. “Mama’s got her mind made up. I don’t blame her either. I wish I’d never come to New York.”
“Oh, Chester,” wailed Tucker Mouse, “don’t say that! You’ll make me feel like a rat. And I’m only a mouse.”
“It’s not your fault, Tucker,” said Chester. “But I’ve been nothing but bad luck to them since I came.”
Without knowing what he was doing, the cricket began to chirp to ease his feelings. He found that it helped somehow if you sang your sadness. He wasn’t paying much attention and just by accident he played the first few notes of an Italian folksong he had heard the night before. It was so melancholy, and yet so sweet, that it fitted his mood exactly.
Mama Bellini was untying a bundle of Herald Tribunes when she heard the chirping. At first she didn’t know what it was. “Che cos’ e questa?” she said in Italian, which means, “What’s that?”
Chester stopped playing.
“Chi cantava?” said Mama. “Who was singing?”
Mario looked at his mother. Usually when she spoke in Italian it meant that she was in a good mood. But that couldn’t be true today.
Now Tucker Mouse was a very good judge of character—both animal and human. He thought he heard a kind of softness in Mama Bellini’s voice. “Play some more,” he whispered to Chester.
“She hates me,” said Chester. “It’ll only make her more angry.”
“Do as I tell you!” commanded the mouse urgently.
So Chester started to chirp again. He was in such disgrace anyway, what difference could it make? The piece he was playing was called “Come Back to Sorrento,” and by the greatest good luck, it happened to be Mama Bellini’s favorite song. Back in Naples, Italy, when Papa was courting her before they came to America, he used to come beneath her window on a moonlit night and sing this ballad to the plunking of an old guitar. As the cricket chirped, the whole scene came back to Mama: the still, warm night, the moon shining down on the velvety Bay of Naples, and Papa singing to her. Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought of the bygone times, and very softly she began to murmur the words to the song.
Chester Cricket had never played with so much skill before. When he heard Mama singing, he slowed his tempo so she could keep up without straining. When she was loud, he was too—and then softer when she got choked up with emotion and her voice dwindled. But always his chirping carried her along, keeping her on the right beat and the right tune. He was the perfect accompanist.
Mario was dumbfounded. He stared astonished at the cricket cage and then at his mother. It was just as marvelous for his mother to be singing as it was for a cricket to chirp familiar songs. Sometimes, when she was very happy, Mama Bellini whistled, and once or twice Mario had heard her hum. But now here she was crying and warbling like an Italian nightingale!
Chester finish
ed “Come Back to Sorrento.”
“Keep it up! Keep it up!” squeaked Tucker Mouse. “She’s a sucker for sad songs.”
Before Mama’s mood had a chance to wear off, Chester began chirping the selections from opera that he had played during the party. Mama didn’t know the words to the operas, but she hummed some of the tunes along with him. Mario was as still as stone.
Papa Bellini came back from the locksmith’s. Coming down the stairs he was surprised not to hear his wife and Mario calling out the newspapers. But when he got nearer the newsstand, he was even more surprised to hear the strains of the Grand March from Aida coming from the cricket cage.
“He chirps opera?!” exclaimed Papa. His eyes looked as big and startled as two hard-boiled eggs.
“Shhh,” said Mama with a wave of her hand.
Chester’s memory for music was perfect. He had to hear a piece only once to remember it forever. When he had finished all the operatic numbers, he stopped. “Should I go on with the pop tunes?” he whispered to Tucker Mouse, who was still hidden behind the Kleenex box.
“Wait a while,” said Tucker. “See what happens.”
Mama Bellini had a dreamy look in her eyes. She put her arm around her son and said, “Mario, no cricketer who sings ‘Torna a Surrento’ so beautifully could possibly start a fire. He can stay a while longer.”
Mario threw his arms around his mother’s neck.
“You hear? You hear?” squealed Tucker Mouse. “You can stay! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! And this is only the beginning. I’ll be your manager—okay?”
“Okay,” said Chester.
And so began the most remarkable week in Chester Cricket’s—or any cricket’s—life.
TWELVE
Mr. Smedley
It was two o’clock in the morning. Chester Cricket’s new manager, Tucker Mouse, was pacing up and down in front of the cricket cage. Harry Cat was lying on the shelf with his tail drooping over the edge, and Chester himself was relaxing in the matchbox.
“I have been giving the new situation my serious consideration,” said Tucker Mouse solemnly. “As a matter of fact, I couldn’t think of anything else all day. The first thing to understand is: Chester Cricket is a very talented person.”
“Hear! hear!” said Harry. Chester smiled at him. He was really an awfully nice person, Harry Cat was.
“The second thing is: talent is something rare and beautiful and precious, and it must not be allowed to go to waste.” Tucker cleared his throat. “And the third thing is: there might be—who could tell?—a little money in it, maybe.”
“I knew that was at the bottom of it,” said Harry.
“Now wait, please, Harry, please, just listen a minute before you begin calling me a greedy rodent,” said Tucker. He sat down beside Chester and Harry. “The newsstand is doing lousy business—right? Right! If the Bellinis were happy, Mama Bellini wouldn’t be always wanting to get rid of him—right? Right! She likes him today because he played her favorite songs, but who can tell how she might like him tomorrow?”
“And also I’d like to help them because they’ve been so good to me,” put in Chester Cricket.
“But naturally!” said Tucker. “And if a little bit of the rewards of success should find its way into a drain pipe where lives an old and trusted friend of Chester—well, who is the worse for that?”
“I still don’t see how we can make any money,” said Chester.
“I haven’t worked out the details,” said Tucker. “But this I can tell you: New York is a place where the people are willing to pay for talent. So what’s clear is, Chester has got to learn more music. I personally prefer his own compositions—no offense, Chester.”
“Oh no,” said the cricket. “I do myself.”
“But the human beings,” Tucker went on, “being what human beings are—and who can blame them?—would rather hear pieces written by themselves.”
“But how am I going to learn new songs?” asked Chester.
“Easy as pie,” said Tucker Mouse. He darted over to the radio, leaned all his weight on one of the dials, and snapped it on.
“Not too loud,” said Harry Cat. “The people outside will get suspicious.”
Tucker twisted the dial until a steady, soft stream of music was coming out. “Just play it by ear,” he said to Chester.
That was the beginning of Chester’s formal musical education. On the night of the party he had just been playing for fun, but now he seriously set out to learn some human music. Before the night was over he had memorized three movements from different symphonies, half a dozen songs from musical comedies, the solo part for a violin concerto, and four hymns—which he picked up from a late religious service.
* * *
The next morning, which was the last Sunday in August, all three Bellinis came to open the newsstand. They could hardly believe what had happened yesterday and were anxious to see if Chester would continue to sing familiar songs. Mario gave the cricket his usual breakfast of mulberry leaves and water, which Chester took his time eating. He could see that everyone was very nervous and he sort of enjoyed making them wait. When breakfast was over, he had a good stretch and limbered his wings.
Since it was Sunday, Chester thought it would be nice to start with a hymn, so he chose to open his concert with “Rock of Ages.” At the sound of the first notes, the faces of Mama and Papa and Mario broke into smiles. They looked at each other and their eyes told how happy they were, but they didn’t dare to speak a word.
During the pause after Chester had finished “Rock of Ages,” Mr. Smedley came up to the newsstand to buy his monthly copy of Musical America. His umbrella, neatly folded, was hanging over his arm as usual.
“Hey, Mr. Smedley—my cricket plays hymns!” Mario blurted out even before the music teacher had a chance to say good morning.
“And opera!” said Papa.
“And Italian songs!” said Mama.
“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Smedley, who didn’t believe a word, of course. “I see we’ve all become very fond of our cricket. But aren’t we letting our imagination run away with us a bit?”
“Oh no,” said Mario. “Just listen. He’ll do it again.”
Chester took a sip of water and was ready to play some more. This time, however, instead of “Rock of Ages,” he launched into a stirring performance of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
Mr. Smedley’s eyes popped. His mouth hung open and the color drained from his face.
“Do you want to sit down, Mr. Smedley?” asked Papa. “You look a little pale.”
“I think perhaps I’d better,” said Mr. Smedley, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “It’s rather a shock, you know.” He came inside the newsstand and sat on the stool so his face was just a few inches away from the cricket cage. Chester chirped the second verse of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and finished with a soaring “Amen.”
“Why, the organist played that in church this morning,” exclaimed the music teacher breathlessly, “and it didn’t sound half as good! Of course the cricket isn’t as loud as an organ—but what he lacks in volume, he makes up for in sweetness.”
“That was nothing,” said Papa Bellini proudly. “You should hear him play Aida.”
“May I try an experiment?” asked Mr. Smedley.
All the Bellinis said “yes” at once. The music teacher whistled the scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Chester flexed his legs, and as quickly as you could run your fingers up the strings of a harp, he had played the whole scale.
Mr. Smedley took off his glasses. His eyes were moist. “He has absolute pitch,” he said in a shaky voice. “I have met only one other person who did. She was a soprano named Arabella Hefflefinger.”
Chester started to play again. He went through the two other hymns he’d learned—“The Rosary” and “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—and then did the violin concerto. Naturally, he couldn’t play it just as it was written without a whole orchestra to back him up, but he was mag
nificent, all things considered.
Once Mr. Smedley got used to the idea that he was listening to a concert given by a cricket, he enjoyed the performance very much. He had special praise for Chester’s “phrasing,” by which he meant the neat way the cricket played all the notes of a passage without letting them slide together. And sometimes, when he had been deeply moved by a section, the music teacher would touch his chest over his heart and say, “That cricket has it here!”
As Chester chirped his way through the program, a crowd collected around the newsstand. After each new piece, the people applauded and congratulated the Bellinis on their remarkable cricket. Mama and Papa were fit to burst with pride. Mario was very happy too, but of course he had thought all summer that Chester was a very unusual person.
When the playing was over, Mr. Smedley stood up and shook hands with Papa, Mama, and Mario. “I want to thank you for the most delightful hour I have ever spent,” he said. “The whole world should know of this cricket.” A light suddenly spread over his face. “Why, I believe I shall write a letter to the music editor of The New York Times,” he said. “They’d certainly be interested.”
And this is the letter Mr. Smedley wrote:
To the Music Editor of The New York Times and to the People of New York—
Rejoice, Oh New Yorkers—for a musical miracle has come to pass in our city! This very day, Sunday, August 28th, surely a day which will go down in musical history, it was my pleasure and privilege to be present at the most beautiful recital ever heard in a lifetime devoted to the sublime art. (Music, that is.) Being a musicologist myself, and having graduated—with honors—from a well-known local school of music, I feel I am qualified to judge such matters, and I say, without hesitation, that never have such strains been heard in New York before!