Three by Cain: Serenade/Love's Lovely Counterfeit/The Butterfly

by James M. Cain

  I looked on the program to see who was singing. I had heard of a couple of them. The José and the Micaela were second-line Metropolitan people. There was a program note on the Carmen. She was a local girl. I know the Escamillo. He was a wop named Sabini that sang Silvio in Palermo one night when I was singing Tonio. I hadn’t heard of him in five years. The rest of them I didn’t know.

  They played the introduction and the lights went up and we began to have a good time. I’m telling you, that was opera that you dream about. They didn’t have any curtain. They put the lights up, and there it was, and when they finished they blacked out and came up with a baby spot for the bows. The orchestra was down front. Beyond was a low flight of wide steps, and quite a way beyond that was the stage, without the shell they use for concerts. On that they built a whole town, the guardhouse on one side, cafés on the other, the cigarette factory in back. You had to rub your eyes to believe you weren’t in Spain. The way they lit it was great. They’ve got a light box in that Bowl that tops anything I ever saw. And that stage town was just filled with people. The performance seemed to be given with some kind of hook-up between a ballet school and some local chorus, and they must have had at least three hundred out there. When the bell rang and the girls began pouring out of the factory, they poured out. It was really lunch time. Between acts, they rolled that stuff off, and rolled on the café for the second act, and the rocks for the third act, and the bullring entrance for the fourth act. The place is so big that with the lights down nobody paid any attention to what they were doing out there. They didn’t use any amplifiers. Big as it was, the acoustics were so perfect you could hear every whisper. That was the thing I couldn’t get over.

  The principals were just fair, maybe not as good as that, except for the two from the Met, but I didn’t mind. They were giving a performance, and that’s enough. So when this little thing happened, I didn’t pay any attention to it. A singer can spot trouble a mile away, but I was there for a good time, so what the hell? But then I woke up.

  What happened was that in the middle of the scene in the first act, where the soldiers bring Carmen out from the factory after she’s cuffed another girl around, a chorister in a uniform stepped up to the Zuniga, jerked his thumb backstage, and began to sing the part. The Zuniga walked out. That was all. They did it so casually that it almost seemed like part of the opera, and I don’t think twenty people out there thought anything of it. You would have had to know the opera to have spotted it. I wondered about it, because the Zuniga had a pretty good bass voice, and he had been doing all right. But I was listening to the Carmen, and she started the Seguidilla before I tumbled to what was up.

  I jumped up, grabbed the bullfighter cape off her, whipped off my own coat and put it on her, and pointed down the hill. “Meet me after it’s over! You understand?”

  “Where you go?”

  “Never mind. Meet me there. You got it?”

  “Yes.”

  I skipped around the rim, took the ramp on the run, ducked back of the stage, and asked a stagehand for the manager. He pointed to some cars that were parked out back. I went back there, and sure enough, there was the Zuniga, still in his captain’s uniform, and a fat guy, standing by a car and arguing with somebody inside. I tapped the fat guy on the shoulder. He batted at me with his hand and didn’t even look. “I’m busy. See me later.”

  “Goddamn it, I’m singing your Escamillo for you!”

  “Get the hell away!”

  “What’s the matter with you—are you snowed in? You called this guy off to get dressed—and he can’t sing it!”

  The Zuniga turned around. “You heard him, Morris. I can’t sing F’s. I can’t do it.”

  “I’ve heard you do it.”

  “Transposed, yes.”

  “They’ll set it down for you!”

  “How? They can’t rescore a whole number between acts! They got no parts to set it down with!”

  “For Christ sake! They can read it down—”

  “They can like hell. It’s out!”

  About that time, the man in the car put his head out, and it was Sabini. When he saw me he grabbed me and began kissing me with one side of his mouth and selling me to the manager with the other. Then he began giving me an earful of Italian, a mile a minute, explaining to me he didn’t dare get out of his car, didn’t even dare to be seen, or his wife’s process servers would get him, and that was why he couldn’t sing. Then he did get out, on the far side, lifted a trunk out of the rumble, and called me around. He began stripping me, and as fast as he got one piece off me, he’d have a piece of the Toreador costume out of the trunk for me to put on. The manager lit a cigarette and stood there watching us. Then he went off. “It’s up to the conductor.”

  There was a big roar from the Bowl that meant the first act was over. Sabini jumped in the car and snapped on the lights. I sat down in front of them and the Zuniga took the make-up kit and began making me up. He stuck on the coleta and I tried the hat. It fit. When the manager came back he had a young guy with him in evening clothes, the conductor. I got up and spoke. He looked me over. “You’ve sung Escamilla?”

  “At least a hundred times.”

  “Where?”

  “Paris, among other places. And not at the Opera. At the Comique, if that means anything to you.”

  “What name did you sing under?”

  “In Italy, Giovanni Sciaparelli. In France and Germany my own, John Howard Sharp.”

  He gave me a look that would have curdled milk, turned his back, and beckoned to the Zuniga.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of you. And you’re washed up.”

  I cut one loose they must have heard in Glendale.

  “Does that sound like I’m washed up? Does it?”

  “You lost your voice.”

  “Yeah, and I got it back.”

  He kept looking at me, opened his mouth once or twice to say something, then shook his head and turned to the manager. “It’s no use, Morris. He can’t do it. I just happened to think of that last act.… Mr. Sharp, I wish I could use you. It would pull us out of a spot. But for the sake of the ballet school, we’ve interpolated Arlésienne music into Act IV, and I’ve scored the baritone into it, and—”

  “Oh, Arlésienne, hey? Listen: Cue me in. That’s all I ask. Just cue me in!”

  You think that’s impossible, that a man can go on and sing stuff he never even saw? All right, once there was an old Aborn baritone that’s dead now, by the name of Harry Luckstone, brother of Isidore Luckstone, the singing teacher. He had a cousin named Henry Myers, that writes a little music now and then. Myers had written a song, and he was telling Luckstone about it, and Luckstone said fine, he’d sing it.

  “I haven’t put it on paper yet—”

  “All right, I’ll sing it.”

  “Well, it goes like this—”

  “God Almighty, does a man have to know a song to sing it? Get going on your goddam piano, and I’ll sing it!”

  And he sang it. Nobody but another singer knows how good a singer really is. Sure, I sang his Arlésienne for him. I got a look at his score after Act III, and what he had done was put some words to the slow part, let the baritone sing them, then have baritone and chorus sing them under the fast part, in straight counterpoint. I didn’t even bother to look what the words were. I bellowed “Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon,” and let it go at that. One place I shot past a repeat. The dancers were all frozen on one foot, ready to do the routine again, and there was I, camped on an E that didn’t even belong there. He looked up, and I caught his eye, and hung on to it, and marched all around with it, while he spoke to his men and wigwagged to his ballerina. Then he looked up again, and I cut, and yelled, “Ha, ha, ha.” He brought his stick down, the show was together again, and I began flapping the cape at the dancers. In the Toreador Song, on the long “Ah” that leads into the chorus, I broke out the cape and made a couple of passes at the bull. No
t too much, you understand. A prop can kill a number. But enough that I got that swirl of crimson and yellow into it. It stopped the show, and he let me repeat the second verse.

  Some time during the night I had been given a dressing room, and after the last bow I went there. My clothes were there, piled on the table, and Sabini’s trunk. Instead of taking off the makeup first, I started with the costume, so he could get away, if he was still around. I had just stripped down to my underwear when the manager came in, to pay me off. He counted out fifty bucks, in fives. While he was doing it the process server came in. He had a summons to appear in court and a writ to attach costumes. It took all the manager and I could do to convince him I wasn’t Alessandro Sabini, but after a few minutes he went. I was scared to death he would see the “A. S.” on that trunk, and serve the writ anyhow, but he didn’t think of that. The conductor came in and thanked me. ‘You gave a fine performance, and I’d like you to know it was a pleasure to have somebody up there that could troupe a little.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry about that bobble.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. When you gave me the chance to pull it out of the soup, that was what I call trouping. Anybody can make a mistake, especially when they’re shoved out there the way you were, without even a rehearsal. But when you use your head—well, my hat’s off to you, that’s all.”

  “They be pleasant words. Thanks again.”

  “I don’t think they even noticed it. Did they, Morris?”

  “Notice it? Christ, they give it a hand.”

  I sat on the trunk, and we lit up, and they began telling me what the production cost, what the hook-up was, and some more things I wanted to know. Up to then I didn’t even know their names. The conductor was Albert Hudson, who you’ve probably heard of by now, and if you haven’t you soon will. The manager was Morris Lahr, who you’ve never heard of, and never will. He runs a concert series in the winter, and manages a couple of singers, and now and then he puts on an opera. There’s one like him in every city, and if you ask me they do more for music than the guys that get their name in the papers.

  We were fanning along, me in my underwear with my make-up still on, when the door opens and in pops Stoessel, the agent I had been talking to not a week before. He had a little guy with him, around fifty, and they stood looking at me like I was some ape in a cage, and then Stoessel nodded. “Mr. Ziskin, I believe you’re right. He’s the type. He’s the type you been looking for. And he sings good as Eddy.”

  “I need a big man, Herman. A real Beery type.”

  “He’s better looking than Beery. And younger. A hell of a sight younger.”

  “But he’s rugged. You know what I mean? Tough. But in the picture, he’s got a heart like all outdoors, and that’s where the singing comes in. A accent I don’t mind, because why? He’s got a heart like all outdoors, and a accent helps it.”

  “I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Ziskin.”

  “O.K., then, Herman. You handle it. Three fifty while he’s learning English, and then after the script is ready and we start to shoot, five. Six weeks’ guarantee, at five hundred.”

  Stoessel turned to Hudson and Lahr. “I guess Mr. Ziskin don’t need any introduction around here. He’s interested in this man for a picture. Tell him that much, will you? Then we give him the rest of it.”

  Lahr didn’t act like he was any too fond of Mr. Ziskin, or Stoessel either, for that matter. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  “He speak English?”

  “He did a minute ago.”

  “Sure, I speak English. Shoot.”

  “Well, say, that makes it easy. O.K., then, you heard what Mr. Ziskin said. Get your make-up off, put on your clothes, and we’ll go out and talk.”

  “We can talk right now.”

  I was afraid to take my make-up off, for fear he would know me. They still thought I was Sabini, I could see that, because there hadn’t been any announcement about me, and I was afraid if he placed me there wouldn’t be any three fifty or even one fifty. I was down, that day, and he knew it. “All right, then, we’ll talk right now. You heard Mr. Ziskin’s proposition. What do you say?”

  “I say go climb a tree.”

  “Say, that’s no way to talk to Mr. Ziskin.”

  “What the hell do you think a singer works for? Fun?”

  “I know what they work for. I handle singers.”

  “I don’t know whether you handle singers. Maybe you handle bums. If Mr. Ziskin has got something to say, let him say it. But don’t waste my time talking about three hundred and fifty dollars a week. If it was a day, that would be more like it.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not being silly. I’m booked straight through to the first of the year, and if I’m going to get out of those contracts it’s going to cost me dough. If you want to pay dough, talk. If not, just let’s stop where we are.”

  “What’s your idea of dough?”

  “I’ve told you. But I’ve been wanting to break into pictures, and to get the chance, I’ll split the difference with you. I’ll do a little better than that. A thousand a week, and it’s a deal. But that’s rock bottom. I can’t cut it, and I can’t shade it.”

  We had it hot for a half hour, but I stuck and they came around. I wanted it in writing, so Stoessel took out a notebook and pen and wrote a memo of agreement, about five lines. I got a buck out of my pants and made him a receipt for that, first of all. That bound them. But when we got that far I had to tell my name. I hated to say John Howard Sharp, but I had to. He didn’t say anything. He tore out the leaf, waved it in the air, handed it to Ziskin to sign. “John Howard Sharp—sure, I’ve heard of him. Somebody was telling about him just the other day.”

  They went, and a boy came in for Sabini’s trunk, and Lahr went out and came back with a bottle and glasses. “Guy has broke into pictures, we got to have a drink on that.… Where did you say you were booked?”

  “With the Santa Fe, mashing down ballast.”

  “Happy days.”

  “Happy days.”

  “Happy days.”

  The crowd was gone and she was all alone when I ran down the hill, waving the cape at her. She turned her back on me, started to walk to the bus stop. I pulled out the wad of five Lahr had given me. “Look, look, look!” She wouldn’t even turn her head. I took my coat off her, put it on, and dropped the cape over her shoulders. “… I wait very long time.”

  “Business! I been talking business.”

  “Yes. Smell very nice.”

  “Sure we had a drink. But listen: get what I’m telling you. I been talking business.”

  “I wait very long.”

  I let her get to the bus stop, but I didn’t mean to ride on a bus. I began yelling for a taxi. There weren’t any, but a car pulled up, a car from a limousine service. “Take you any place you want to go, sir. Rates exactly the same as the taxis—”

  Did I care what his rates were? I shoved her in, and that did it. She tried to stay sore, but she felt the cushions, and when I took her in my arms she didn’t pull away. There weren’t any kisses yet, but the worst was over. I halfway liked it. It was our first row over a little thing. It made me feel she belonged to me.

  We went to the Derby and had a real feed. It was the first time I had been in a decent place for a year. But I didn’t break the big news until we were back at the hotel, undressing. Then I kind of just slid into it. “Oh, by the way. I got a little surprise for you.”

  “Surprise?”

  “I got a job in pictures.”

  “Cinema?”

  “That’s right. A thousand a week.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hell, don’t you get it? We’re rich! A thousand a week—not pesos, dollars! Three thousand, six hundred pesos every week! Why don’t you say something?”

  “Yes, very nice.”

  I didn’t mean a thing to her! But when I took the cape, and stood up there in my drawers, and sang the Toreador song at her,
like I had at the Bowl, that talked. She clapped her hands, and sat on the bed, and I gave her the whole show. The phone rang. The desk calling, to ask me to shut up. I said O.K., but send up a boy. When he came I gave him a five and told him to get us some wine. He was back in a few minutes and we got a little tight, the way we had that night in the church. After a while we went to bed, and a long while after that she lay in my arms, running her fingers through my hair. “You like me?”

  “Yes, much.”

  “Did I sing all right?”

  “Very pretty.”

  “Were you proud of me?”

  “… You very fonny fallow, you, Hoaney. Why I be proud? I no sing.”

  “But I sang.”

  “Yes. I like. Very much.”

  C H A P T E R

  8

  I didn’t like Hollywood. I didn’t like it partly because of the way they treated a singer, and partly because of the way they treated her. To them, singing is just something you buy, for whatever you have to pay, and so is acting, and so is writing, and so is music, and anything else they use. That it might be good for its own sake is something that hasn’t occurred to them yet. The only thing they think is good for its own sake is a producer that couldn’t tell Brahms from Irving Berlin on a bet, that wouldn’t know a singer from a crooner until he heard twenty thousand people yelling for him one night, that can’t read a book until the scenario department has had a synopsis made, that can’t even speak English, but that is a self-elected expert on music, singing, literature, dialogue, and photography, and generally has a hit because somebody lent him Clark Gable to play in it. I did all right, you understand. After the first tangle with Ziskin I kind of got the hang of how you handle things out there to get along. But I never liked it, not even for a second.