“Is she pretty?” he asked, swinging his cane and smiling as if at some unspoken joke. His grey eyes were unusually lively behind his gold-rimmed pince-nez attached to an elegant black silk cord. He was certainly a figure of a man, thought Randall. He answered, “Why—yes, I suppose so.”
“Suppose? Don’t you know?”
“Yes. She is very pretty.”
“Aha. That’s better.” Seymour’s long legs in their smartly-cut trousers clipped off like sharp shears the distance to the corner. “Point two?”
“She has a charming voice.”
“Discussable. What else has she got?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you tell me she’s young and pretty and a bit-player modest enough so your church can hire her. But she lives at the Ansonia. Randall, dear.”
“Practically all the artists live at the Ansonia,” said Randall stiffly.
“Including the impecunious young beauties? How charitable of the management.”
“What are you getting at?” Randall knew irritably that he was not making a very good go of obtuseness.
“Just asking, to put it as delicately as possible, who is keeping the lady.”
“You always have such vulgar ideas!” Randall felt himself reddening and, had he possessed Seymour’s vocabulary, would have cursed.
“Vulgar?” Seymour raised his hat in a mock salutation. “Here is your corner. I may be vulgar, brother dear, but realism is not necessarily the same thing. Keep your eye peeled for a hot-tempered Latin in the panelling somewhere.”
Randall’s knock on Renata Tosi’s door was answered by an enthusiastic, soprano “Avanti!” and he stepped into the room.
“Già?” he heard her exclaim, but he did not see her. The room was a burgeoning confusion of imitation French furniture, mussed cushions, lacy curtains, fading roses, here a slipper, there a trailing mass which must be a ruffled gown. On a bamboo stand there was a small tray with a used coffee-cup. There was an upright piano in the corner, carelessly piled with scores, a feathered hat, a handkerchief, a scent-bottle, and an open gold mesh handbag. Randall stood looking dumbly at the scene.
“You wait a moment?” cried Signorina Tosi from beyond a door slightly ajar. “Take a chair, s’accomodi …”
While he hesitated, looking for any chair upon which something was not flung or strewn, the door in the corner opened wider, admitting a waft of scented steamy air which informed him that there was the bath of this bed-sitting-room apartment. Behind the gilded screen in the other corner, over which something embarrassingly sheer and lacy had been flung, must be a bed. He had not, he thought, successfully enough obliterated certain memories of Vienna. He was standing with his hat in one hand and Siegfried in the other, wishing he had not come, when he heard a ripple of laughter and turned to see Renata Tosi, wrapped in a mass of ruffles, with her dark hair piled on top of her head in no shape at all. She must just have stepped from her bath, he thought, anxiously hoping he was not showing his embarrassment.
“You are so early arrive’!” she cried. “Come mai? They are only the ten o’clocks.”
“But our appointment was for ten o’clock.”
“Pensa! I said the ten o’clocks?” she pointed a finger at herself with such comic astonishment that Randall burst into a laugh and she joined him delightedly. “That is better,” she said. “You must not give me the frighten, you make in first the face so serious.”
“You say such funny things,” said Randall. “I haven’t really heard you speak English before.”
“Yes, is no bad, eh? Only since few months, I must translate always from here.” She tapped her ear and then her forehead. “Here is italiano, but from the mouth must come inglese—Formidabile, why I consent to such a thing?”
“English is easy,” said Randall, knowing he sounded a fool. Seymour would have had something very different to say.
“For you! Be’, you teach me, you tell, I listen.”
“That’s not what I came for,” he said, laying down his hat and proffering Siegfried. “Do you know any German at all?”
“I? Per carità!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, as we said. It’s only a few lines. You can learn them phonetically.”
“Ecco—like I say. Is easy, no?”
“They used to say so in Vienna. But I shouldn’t think any Wagner would be easy.”
“For me is easy or I not sing.” She waved her hand carelessly and ran across the room to the bell. “First we drink un caffè, poi vediamo.”
“You mean that’s your way of deciding what you’ll sing? If it’s easy for you?” Randall stared.
“Cosa vuoi?” she shrugged. “You think it please me work hard?”
“The Stabat Mater is not easy music and you did that very well.”
“Ma che! One aria, one duettino, niente.”
“And five concerted numbers. I don’t call that nothing.”
“It was nothing,” she insisted. “Something you know is nothing. Non mi piace lavorare.” She made a face at the piano. “I don’t like learn new parts.”
“When did you learn the Stabat Mater?”
“In the Conservatorio. I was oblige’. Now I think I not be oblige’ any more, invece this cretino want Wagner! Is no good enough Verdi? Puccini? Ah, ecco il caffè!”
She piled two lumps of sugar into an after-dinner cup, filled it, and handed it to Randall who had not been given a chance to say he did not take sugar in coffee. He almost choked over his first taste.
“E’ buono, no?” she exclaimed, draining her cup at a gulp. Randall was still recovering from the hot, black, bitter-sweet, oily shock to his tongue. “You don’t like?” she asked anxiously. “Perchè?”
“I guess I’m not used to it.” He wondered how to force down the rest.
She stood laughing at him, her head thrown back a little, her young throat a swanlike arc. Her skin was white for an Italian, but not the blue-white of the dark-haired Irish type which she resembled. There was warmth in her robust pallor and in her richly colored lips, which Randall had been too innocent to suspect of paint when he had seen her before. Now, unconcernedly emerging from her bath, her face was bare of any artifice and she quite at ease about it.
Randall did not want the rest of his coffee and he wished he had the savoir-faire to dispense with it and get on with her lesson. She stood there smiling at his irresolution. He became increasingly uncomfortable. Up to now he had lacked the boldness of imagination to own that the very appetizing creature alone with him here was obviously naked except for a ruffled peignoir, and that she saw nothing bizarre about the position at all. He had an idea that it would be better not to look at her any more, since every line of her bantering face was inviting him to do so. So he turned a little away, saying, “Hadn’t you better—er—eh—just—I mean, wouldn’t you rather I stepped out to the hall while you, ah, finish dressing?”
“No, no,” she said, “stia commodo. Dress?” She looked down at herself as if in surprise at her own déshabillé. “Perhaps. Va bene, wait a minute.” She ran to the screen in the corner and disappeared behind it. “Maybe you play me this music while you wait. Is complicata, la melodia?”
“Not a bit,” he said, hugely relieved. “Just like this.” He played, she began to sing by ear, and presently she was standing near him, very proper in a starched white shirtwaist and a braided black skirt. Randall went on playing, pointing to her entrances, but she shook her head and motioned at him.
“You tell,” she said. “Give me a sign, basta. For what I read?”
“Is this the way you were taught?” he asked with asperity. “Just to sing by ear?”
“Ma no!” Her brown eyes rounded in astonishment. “In Milano? Al Conservatorio? You think we are ignoranti?”
“No,” he said, irritated. “Of course not. That’s why I expect you to read music.”
“I told you I don’t like to work,” she said. “Read is work. Vocalizzare is niente. Andiamo.”
<
br /> He sighed. She did not seem firm enough of purpose to account for this streak of obstinacy, but he knew that he was no judge of women. It struck him that her flippancy was assumed, that she was a good artist in spite of herself and her refusal to take her work seriously. Her voice was exquisitely fresh, more fragile than the lightest voices he had heard in Vienna, and she used it with grace and taste. She picked up The Bird’s music in a few effortless repetitions. While she sang, repeating several times each phrase as he played it, she wandered round the room making desultory sorties at the disorder she had strewn. Some of the mess had disappeared into cupboards and drawers by the time Randall rose from the piano.
“Now about the text,” he said. “Let’s—”
“Now? Today? Absolutely, no.”
“But—”
She came over to him and with the utmost delicacy she did a vulgar thing. She chucked him under the chin, faintly clicking the tips of her fingers and laughing up at him like a teasing child. He flushed and stood there fuming. “Really,” he said stiffly, wishing he knew how to make her ashamed of herself. Instead he succumbed to a wave of the familiar mortification which, he thought, it seemed the horrid part of singers to arouse. He turned aside, plainly annoyed, and picked up his hat.
“Very well,” he said, and walked towards the door. He heard her pattering after him; did this woman never walk? Whenever she had the least purpose in view, she ran.
“Domani?” she cried gaily. “Tomorrow?”
He turned and scowled at her. “I wasn’t even sure you meant to keep on,” he said. “And if you do—”
“Yes?”
“You haven’t done enough work today to make it worth my time to come all this way. You may not like to work, but some people are in earnest.”
“Oh.” She stood with her mouth a little open and her dark eyes wide with surprise. Having said it, he felt better, less a fool. He had turned the tables. He watched the faint blush of embarrassment which tinged her lively face with its delicate bones, its slanted nostrils, and its low forehead from which the brown hair sprang so prettily. She looked like a flower on a slender stalk, her long neck wrapped in its high boned collar.
“I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “I did not see from your view.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“You come again tomorrow, yes?”
“Yes, I’ll be here. Shall I leave the score in case you want to look at it?”
She bit her lip, still a little uncertain, then he saw her sense of mischief flash like a lighted match. She giggled. “You really think that?” she said. “You think I study?”
“It wouldn’t hurt you.”
She turned her head and tapped the lobe of her ear, a well-shaped ear but large in proportion to her small finely-modelled head.
“Così I learn,” she said. “Believe me. I don’t waste your time. I am, how is it, grateful. Poltrona, lazy, perhaps, but stupid, no.”
“That’s all right,” he said again awkwardly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She held out her hand and he took it and shook it and dropped it. Turning to leave the room he realized he should have kissed it. Oh God, he thought, am I always to be made a fool of by singers? He strode down the hotel corridor but not fast enough to escape hearing a laughing sotto-voce from her doorway.
“Bello!” she said.
That evening at dinner at the Marine Club Seymour asked Randall how his morning had gone. Randall ate several spoonfuls of mock turtle soup before answering.
“Well enough,” he said.
“Was it amusing?”
“I didn’t go to be amused, so naturally I wasn’t.”
“That is not corroborated by the gleam in your eye.”
“I? Gleam?”
Seymour swallowed the last of his Little Necks and laughed quietly. “You’ve been as pleased as punch about something ever since we met half an hour ago. I told you your Italian lark would turn out to be a jaybird.”
“She is not ‘my’ Italian lark, and I don’t follow you. What do you mean, jaybird?”
“A tease. A flirt. Something tells me.”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I never saw anything like the innocence of those blue eyes. Well, you and I are both odd ducks, but not that odd. Personally, I think you’ve probably stumbled onto something.”
Randall sighed. “Could it possibly occur to you that a woman could be a singer and not a toy?”
“It could. But in this case it wouldn’t. What did she have on?”
Randall could have dived under the table to hide the blush that swept across his face. “I’ve no idea,” he said, making a stab at aplomb.
“I see. Waiter, this steak is overdone. Take it away and send the steward here.”
“Oh, Brother, please don’t make a scene.” Randall was always embarrassed by Seymour’s gastronomical intolerances. “I’d rather have the chicken fricassee.”
“I know you would. But red meat is good for you and I ordered a very rare sirloin for two. We are going to have it.”
Randall never cared as much as that about food and he could not share Seymour’s enjoyment of roast beef and thick steaks oozing blood. But there was no point in arguing that subject now; he would rather hear Seymour do battle with the steward and the chef than continue to banter him about Renata Tosi. He sat crumbling bits of bread while Seymour laid down the law about beefsteak and the cooking in general. They had to settle down to a long wait while another steak was grilled. Anxious to keep Seymour’s attention diverted, Randall told him that the roof over the rear part of their house was in need of repair. The cleaning-woman had told Randall that considerable dampness had worked into the attic rooms during the winter. “I suppose we ought to fix it,” he said.
“I suppose. But it’s so futile to spend any money on that old tomb. If we start with the roof they’ll tell us something else is necessary and one thing will lead to another. You know.”
“Of course. But don’t you think we might as well make up our minds about the house altogether? The estate is supposed to pay for repairs, we don’t have to. Are we going to stay on living in it the way it is?”
“I don’t know.” Seymour spoke slowly, thinking. “I’ve been the one who wanted to get us out of there and I still am—in a way. But—”
Randall said nothing and waited for Seymour to explain. Seymour said, “It’s true, I’ve always wanted a nice small flat and we could afford one together. But I couldn’t manage my share of that and have something else that I believe I want even more.”
“What is that?”
“Don’t be too surprised, Ran. I really want it awfully.” Seymour smiled with the wistful expression of a small boy. He seldom had such moods and Randall said, “What is it you want, Brother? A boat?”
“No. A boat would cost more than I could possibly afford, at least any boat worth buying. No, I want an automobile.”
“An automobile!” Randall gaped with astonishment, absently watching the waiter carve the beefsteak and arrange portions on each plate, alongside a massive baked potato. Randall began immediately to push the mealy inside of his potato onto the pool of crimson beef juice, soaking it up so that he would not have to look at it. “Isn’t an automobile dreadfully dangerous, Brother?”
Seymour laughed. “Not so dangerous as expensive, I should say. They’re not a curiosity any more, Ran, lots of people have them. I want one while—” he interrupted himself and began to eat.
“While what?”
“While they’re still fairly experimental. You know I like to fuss with machinery.”
“Yes, of course. But what would an automobile cost?” Randall was awestruck at the daring of this idea.
“About twenty-five hundred dollars, the one I want, the Stevens-Duryea.”
Randall stared. “My word, that’s a lot of money. Aren’t there any cheaper automobiles?”
“Yes, quite a lot. But those wouldn’t be interesting. It’s the same as a boat, one
’s not worth having unless it’s big enough for deep-sea cruising, and that would be completely beyond my means. But I could buy a good automobile if—” he raised his eyebrows with another boyish smile.
“If we stayed in the house. Well, I’ve never been as anxious to get out of it as you were. I don’t particularly like it, but the way we’ve drifted into living, we’re really not there very much. I’d as soon sleep and practise there as somewhere else.” Randall knew that no matter where they lived he would always have the same problem, the dreary emptiness of the evenings and the meals when Seymour was engaged with his own concerns. The remedy for Randall was to find companionship of his own, but he shrank from that effort with the same timidity which caused him now to feel relieved that they need not make the break from the old house. He said, “Go ahead and buy your automobile, as far as I’m concerned. I see why you can’t afford anything else besides—it will take about a year’s income, won’t it?”
Seymour nodded, swallowing some ale and wiping the edges of his moustache. “That’s just it. If we stay in the house for about a year more, I can buy my motor car now and my salary will see me through the rest of things.” He gestured at the dining-room. “It will be a tight squeeze, but—”
“I’ll gladly give you some of my money,” said Randall eagerly. “I never use it all up.”
“I’d much rather you did use it,” said Seymour with a smile. “Maybe you’ll begin to one of these days. Anyway, after another year we can think about moving out of the house if we want to. And in four years more I’ll get twice the income I have now. In eight years you will. So who knows?” His expression became remote. “One can plan, anyway.” He shrugged.
My Brother's Keeper Page 18