The Complete Crime Stories (20 page)

“Nice guy, Rossi. Remember me to him if you see him.”

“I need a baritone.”

“Still not interested.”

“If you're as good as he says you are, I could make you a pretty nice proposition. You understand, a singer's no draw until he gets known, but I could offer you $125 a night, say, with three appearances a week guaranteed. That's a little more than Rossi was paying you, isn't it?”

“Yeah, quite a little.”

“Well—will you think it over?”

“No, I won't think it over.”

“Listen, I need a baritone.”

“So I judge.”

“I got a couple of good tenors, and another one coming. I got a couple of sopranos I think are comers. But in opera, you've got to have one good baritone before you've got a show.”

“You certainly have.”

“All right then, I'll come up a little. How about a hundred and fifty?”

“Maybe you didn't understand what I said when you came in here. I appreciate what you say, I'm grateful to Rossi,—but I'm just not interested.”

The idea of singing made me sick. He went and I put on my hat and engaged in my favorite outdoor sport, about that time. That was walking around the Metropolitan Opera House hoping I'd see Cecil. A couple of days after that I did see her. I raced back to the office as fast as I could get there, and put in a call for her at her hotel. They said she wasn't in. I knew she wouldn't be. That was why I had been watching. I left word that Mr. Borland called. Then for a week I stuck at my desk from nine to six, hoping she would call back. She never did.

All that, what I've just been telling you, was in the last part of November. When the first of December came, it crossed my mind it was funny no bills had been forwarded to me. On the third I found out why. When I came downstairs in the morning and crossed the lobby, the clerk called me and he had my check in his hand, the one I had given him for my next month's room rent. It had bounced. I blinked at it, and I knew then why there hadn't been any bills. Doris was paying her own bills. The money was in a joint account, in her name and mine, and she had drawn every cent of it out, started an account somewhere else, and there I was. I don't know why it never occurred to me that she would do it. It never entered my head.

I said there must be some mistake, and I would see him that afternoon. I went out, and hustled over to Newark, and borrowed $300 from a manufacturer of power shovels we had done some business with. I got back just in time to get in the bank, so I could cover that check before they closed, then went back and told the clerk it was all right, I had drawn on the wrong account, and he could put it through. I went up to my suite and counted my money. I had $75 over what I had deposited in the bank, and $7 over that. My expenses, over the $170 a month I was paying for the suite, were about $50 a week, not counting club dues and other things I couldn't stave off very long. I was just about a week and a half from the boneyard, and I began to feel it again, that thick rage against Doris and the way she treated me. It would suit her fine, I knew, to have me coming on my knees to her, begging for money, and then give me a song and dance about how she had the children to think of, and send me out with the $12 she could spare from the crumbs she was saving for the household. I didn't have to be told how that would go. I walked around the suite, and after a while something in me clicked. I knew I'd never go to her if I starved first. I began to think about Horn and his $150 a night.

Next day he called up. “Mr. Borland?”

“Yes?”

“This is Bert Horn again. Remember?”

“Oh yeah. How are you?”

“All right. Listen, my other tenor got to town last night. Fact of the matter, I stole him off Rossi and that was what I was doing in Pittsburgh. Guy by the name of Parma. You know him?”

“Yeah, I sang with him. Tell him I said hello.”

“I will, and he said to tell you hello. Listen, if you're as good as
he
says you are, I might raise that offer. I might up the ante to $200.”

“Well now you're talking. Come on over.”

He came, and looked me over again, and the place over again, and then he laughed and shook his head. “Well, if you're a singer you're the funniest-looking thing in the way of a singer that I ever saw. No offense, but I swear to God you don't look it.”.

“You play?”

“Some kind of way, yes.”

“Come on up.”

I took him up on the third floor, where the piano was, and opened the windows, and shoved the Traviata aria in front of him. He played it and I sang it. When I got through he nodded. “I guess they weren't kidding me.”

We went down again, and he got down to cases. “All right, how many roles do you know?”

“Three.”

“… Just three.”

“Marcel, Germont, and Rigoletto. I sang one other role, but it was a pinch-hitting job, and I wouldn't know it now if I heard it.”

“What role was it?”

“Wagner in Faust. I don't sing French, but they let me do it in Italian. They shoved it at me in the morning, I sang it that afternoon, and I had forgotten it by night.”

That made the same impression on him it had on the others. An opera impresario, he's a little like a baseball manager. He knows all about smoke. He gets that every day. But a guy that can come out of the bull-pen and finish a ball game, that's different. When he heard that, he quit worrying, and began to lay it out what I'd have to do. The hitch came over the guarantee. With just those three operas, he couldn't make it three times a week, because they weren't giving Traviata on a weekly schedule. He wanted me to get up Trovatore, Lucia, and Aida, and then later Don Giovanni, and they would revive it if they thought I was right for it. I said I couldn't get up that many roles by the end of the winter if I had to sing three times a week too. So then he had a different idea. “All right, we'll say Lucia and Trovatore, but get Pagliacci up by next week, and then we can put you on three times. You see, ham-and-eggs is once a week too, and—”

“… What is?”

“Ham and eggs. Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, the double bill. Pagliacci you can get up quick. After the prologue, which I suppose you know, you have almost nothing to do, just two real scenes, not over ten minutes of actual singing altogether. Then we can—”

“Oh. All right then.”

“You'll need a coach. I recommend Lorentz. Hugo Lorentz, I'll give you his address, a good man, works with us, and—”

“You know anybody else?”

“… Well, there's Siegal. He's more of a voice teacher, but he knows the routines, and—”

“Fine, I'll take him. When do we start?”

“Next week. Get Pagliacci up by then, and then later we can work you in on the others. But we want to bring you out in Rigoletto. That makes you important.”

“Nothing I like so well as to be important.”

So by that afternoon I had connected with Siegal, and was back in the same old groove. I found out then how much Cecil had been giving me for nothing. Do you know what that bird took? He charged me $25 an hour, and I had to have him every day. I had to borrow $200 more in Newark, and it was an awful crimp in my $600 a week. But at that, $450 was nothing to be sneezed at.

I asked for a rehearsal on Rigoletto, with three or four of the choristers. In the scene before the courtiers there was some stuff I wanted to do, and I had to make them slam me down so I really hit the deck, so when I came crawling back to them I would really be on my knees. They told me to come over to the theatre. I went up to the third floor and put on an old suit of corduroys I always wore around concrete work, and walked over. That was so I could practice the stage falls. I hadn't remembered about the Hippodrome, while Horn was talking. I mean, it just sounded like a theatre on Sixth Avenue, and nothing more. So when I went in the stage door and through, the stage caught me by surprise. I don't know if you were ever back there to see that stage. It would have done pretty good for a railroad station if they laid tracks and put train sheds in, except there would be an awful lot of waste space up top. But did it feaze me? It did not. I was a pro now. I walked to the middle of it, let out a couple of big ones, and it felt pretty good. I stuck out my chest. I thought how I was putting it over on Doris, and how like hell I would come begging her for anything.

The conductor, Gustav Schultz, was at the piano, and we went through it. I think he wanted to look me over. I showed them how I wanted them to heave me, and after a while they got it so it suited me. When we quit, I saw Parma in the wings, and went over and shook hands. “Hello boy, hello, how's a old kid?”

“Fine. How's yourself?”

“O. K. Say, is swell, how you do this scene. What da hell? A goddam baritones, run for a bedroom, make little try, audience all a time wonder why he don't get in. Look like he must be weak. Ought to fight like hell, just like you do'm now, and then
pow!
—down he go, just like this!”

He threw his shoulder under my belly, and I went head over heels on to the floor. It was one stage fall I didn't expect. Then he laughed like hell. Singers, they're a funny breed. They've got what you might call a rudimentary sense of humor, in the first place, and they're awful proud of their muscles, in the second place. They spend half their time telling the conductor they're going to knock him back into the customers' laps if he doesn't quit his cussedness, and I'll say for them they could do it if they tried. People think they're a flock of fairies. They're more like wrestlers. Well, singing doesn't come from the spirit. It comes from the belly, and it takes plenty of belly and chest to do it right.

I got up, and laughed, and he and Schultz and I went out and had a drink. He took red wine with seltzer. They don't drink much, but a wop tenor likes red ink.

The afternoon of the performance I put off lunch till three o'clock, then went out and had a good one. I came back to the office and vocalized my voice. It came up quick, and felt good. I was beginning to get nervous. They all get nervous, but this was different from what I had felt before. It had a little tingle to it. I felt I was good. I walked up to the hotel and it was about half past four. I lay down and got a little sleep.

It seemed funny to be putting the make-up on without Cecil bobbing in to give me the double O, but I got it in place, and put on the funny clothes, and tried my voice. It was still up, and was all right. Horn came in, looked me over, and nodded. “The contracts are ready.”

“You got them with you?”

“My secretary's bringing them over. I'll be in with them after the show. How do you feel?”

“I feel all right.”

There came a knock on the door, and a little wop in a derby hat came in and stood beside me where I was at the table and began to talk about how some of my admirers wanted to hear me sing, but their tickets would cost them a lot, and more stuff like that, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, except it seemed to be some kind of a touch. Horn was behind him. He nodded and held up ten fingers. I got my pocketbook, passed out $10 and the guy left. “What was that?”

“The claque.”

“What's the claque?”

“A bunch of self-elected noise-makers, that you pay to clap when you sing, and whether they do or not nobody knows. If you don't pay, they're supposed to take some terrible revenge, like blowing whistles at you or something like that. Whether they do or not, nobody knows. I generally go along with them, and so do the singers. They're harmless, just one of those things that opera has like a dog has fleas.”

“There was nothing like that in the American Scala.”

“Maybe they took care of it for you.”

He went, and I wished everything that came up didn't remind me of Cecil. I knew who had taken care of it all right, without being told. And I knew why. Knowing the applause was paid, or any part of it was paid, would have taken all the fun out of it for me. So it was taken care of. I tried my voice again, then remembered she had told me when it was right to leave it alone. There didn't seem to be any help for it. Everywhere I turned, she was standing there beside me.

I went down, then walked over and had a look at the calls. Then my heart skipped a beat. On the first two calls at the end of the second act, we were all in it, me, Parma, the Gilda, and the people in the small parts. Then on the next two it was just the Gilda and me. And then it said:

Mr. Borland (If)

I walked out on the stage to get the feel of the set, and the tingle was clear down to my feet. I made up my mind there wasn't going to be any
if
about it. I was going to get that call or split my throat.

Parma was right in the
Questa o Quella
, so Act I got off to a swell start, and they ripped right along with it. I got a hand when I came on, whether it was the claque or the publicity I don't know, but I don't think it could have all been claque. There had been a lot of stuff in the papers about me. I was singing under my own name now, and it seemed to strike them as a good story that a big contractor should turn into a singer, but anyway it made me feel good, and I hit it right in the scene with the second baritone, and we got a fine curtain. Hippodrome opera wasn't like Metropolitan opera. It was 99-cent opera, and that audience acted the way it felt. The second scene of the act went even better. The bass was a pretty good comic, and I fed to him all I could, so we got away with the duet in swell shape. The Gilda was all right in the
Caro Nome
, not like Cecil, but plenty good. The duets went well, and we got another good curtain, and were on our way.

When it came to the scene before the courtiers, the one I had rehearsed with the choristers, I did it a little different than I had been doing it. I got a break at the start. The Ceprano had one of these small, throaty baritones, and when it came to the place where I was to mock him on
Ch'hai di nuovo, buffon
, I shot it back to him just the way he had given it to me, and it got a big laugh. I had them then, and I chucked tone quality out the window. The first part of the scene I shouted, talked, and whispered, till I got to the place where they slammed me back on my hunkers. Then I remembered Bohème. I came crawling back, and plucked the hem of Marullo's doublet, and gave them tears. I sang it
dolce
, and then some. I opened every spigot there was, and at the end of it I was flat on the floor, hanging on to the high F like my heart would break, and finishing off like I could just barely make myself do it. There wasn't any pause then. The first “bravo” came like a pistol shot before I even got through, and then they came from all over the house, and the applause in a swelling roar. I lay there, the heart bowed down, for quite a time. There were thousands of them, and it took them longer to quiet down than in other places. The Gilda came running on, then, and we did the duet, and the curtain came down.