Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  A few doors farther down was Paul’s Undertaking Parlor, with its heavy red curtains drawn so that nothing could be seen from the street. Mr. Paul took people under; although Herma didn’t know why he took them under, or what happened to them there. A little shiver passed through her at the sight of the red curtains, but Papa had explained that Mr. Paul only took very old people under, like Grandma Harris that Herma scarcely remembered, since she was still being carried in Mama’s arms then. On the corner of Sycamore was Proper Procter’s Dry Goods and Outfittery, with gentlemen’s clothing in one window and ladies’ in the other; then Gump & Blake’s Luxury Fruitery—Mr. Blake, who was a friend of Papa and Mama, would invariably offer Herma some delicacy, a fruit never seen at home, like a loquat, or an alligator pear, or a guava. Next came Shakespeare’s Cigar Store, which gave out a totally different smell from Fagel’s, dark and druglike, so heady that Herma felt it might make you dizzy if you inhaled too much of it. Conwell’s Bridlery next door to it sold harnesses, whips, and bridles for horses. One window was full of such things, and in the other was a tiny buggy pulled by a papier-maché horse. Before each of these things Herma was accustomed to pause for ten minutes or more, so that an exploration of Fourth Street might take a whole afternoon—but Mama, in bed with her book, hardly noticed or cared, and Papa came home from the Blade office only at seven.

  Finally, almost at the corner of Main, came the climax and best thing of all, Q. R. Smith’s Palace of Drugs—a real palace, exactly like those in picture books, with a high ceiling of embossed tin, gleaming and gilded, and the great hall underneath stretching away so long that the end could hardly be seen from the street. On one side were white shelves mounting high up the wall, filled with rows of green canisters, bottles of colored fluid, phials, decanters, and ewers with blue lettering. On the other side were the ten thousand mahogany drawers with brass fittings, redolent with the odor of herbs and homeopathic remedies; and the clerks, Papa said, knew what was in every one of the drawers. Along the aisle were cabinets displaying the chemical aids employed by ladies to enhance their beauty; but it was not very respectable, Herma knew, to make use of such things. Or, if one did, it was well to follow the example of Mama, who applied a tiny dot of Vermillion to her cheeks and rubbed it in so well that, in the end, nothing could be seen but the faintly flushed spot caused by the rubbing. It is not what one does that matters, Herma concluded, but what is seen by the eye. Because Mama was respectable; in fact, the very notion of the respectable was to be measured by Mama, and even to call this matter into question for purposes of information was enough to throw Papa into a frigid disapproval that might spoil an entire dinner. Once, also, Herma had seen Mama putting something dark on her eyelids. But by that time she was wiser and didn’t ask Papa about it.

  The most fabulous of all, in Smith’s Palace, was the ice-cream fountain with its wire stools and marble counter, where a boy in a white jacket and cap, privileged above all others of his kind, presided over an elaborate apparatus of taps, spouts, handles, silver piping and tubing, tubs white with frost, alembics of multicolored syrups, and crucibles exuding the delicious odor of chocolate, butterscotch, and caramel. The cold, Papa had explained, was produced not by ice but by a machine with black intestines that could be seen if, by chance, the boy took away a panel of the wall to twiddle and adjust it. For Herma the very peak of ecstasy was to imagine herself perched on the stool before the marble counter in her white frock with the strawberry ribbon in it and a ribbon of identical red in her hair, the same dress she wore to Meeting, and before her one of those delights in three or more colors of the rainbow which the boy prepared in a silver cup misted with frost.

  But only rarely did Papa and Mama (or more probably Mama alone, when Herma came to Fourth Street with her) allow Herma to mount onto the wire stool. The luxury of it, probably, was too sensual and oriental. More often, when they came to Smith’s Palace, it was for Mama’s bottle of Female Remedy. Gentlemen, it seemed, did not have a Remedy, and Herma pondered over this. Perhaps, she thought, it was because they went to work instead of languishing in a stuffy house all day like Mama. Yet some gentlemen, she had observed (although not Papa), possessed an amber potion in bottles which they sipped at when they thought no one was watching, and which made them almost as cheerful as the Female Remedy did Mama; and Mr. Farkuss, she now knew, was one of these.

  * * *

  At the corner of Fourth and Main was the Orange Empire Bank; grand, but not quite so grand as Q. R. Smith’s Palace of Drugs. On the other side of Main the pavement ended and the town began to peter out. On the corner across from the bank was Hite’s Feed and Grain, a large ugly building with the name painted on the side. After that there was not very much—some weedy vacant lots, then Polanski’s Livery Stables. This was not a very nice place—whinnies and coarse horsy smells came out of the long iron-roofed shed. Here Herma had to push her way through a crowd of men who were standing around blocking the sidewalk, wearing derbies and vests, some smoking cigars, and others spitting on the ground and rubbing it out with their foot. The passage of Herma through their midst invariably produced various comments and inquiries, on the order of “Hey, is you Alice Ben Bolt?” and “Whatcha got there in yer drawers, kid?” Turning, she gave them a significant sign with her finger, as she had seen them do to each other, and passed on. That is some little girl, was the opinion at the livery stable.

  Men were coarse beasts in many ways. Herma went on, walking in the soft dust of the street because the sidewalk was too hot for her feet. A block farther on, at the very end of town, was the Southern Pacific station, a small wooden shed with a ticket office in one end and a waiting room with benches and cuspidors in the other. It was here that you got on the train to go to Los Angeles—Papa had done that. In the ticket office there was nothing much to be seen but a man in shirt-sleeves with a green eyeshade. The waiting room was even worse—only an old man reading a newspaper, and a fat lady with a disagreeable child who stared at her. “Where is your Mama?” the child asked her pointedly. Ignoring him, she went outside and stood beside the two iron rails, supported by an endless number of tarry-smelling slabs of wood, and stretching far away into the distance down an open lane between the orange groves. If you listened carefully, you could sometimes hear a faint mumble and ringing from the rails, as though some genie or troll were crying weakly to get out—as in fact they were doing right now. The man in the ticket office didn’t seem to notice, but the fat lady did, and led her child out, followed after a while by the old man reluctantly rolling up his newspaper.

  The ringing and rumbling grew louder; the ground could be felt to shake a little under the feet. Then, down the tracks a mile or more away, the train burst into view. It came on with a certain magnificence, giving out a great throaty roar from its whistle and jetting white steam from its wheels. Growing larger and slowing down as it approached, it finally managed to bring itself to a stop in front of the station with a squeal of brakes. There it sat, black and panting, enormous, continuing to make a muffled bellowing sound and exuding waves of hot and oily-smelling vapor.

  Yet Herma was not impressed with this. It was only a machine, of the kind that men hit with hammers and swore at when they didn’t work right. What did provoke her awe and admiration was the long line of glass-windowed cars behind, into one of which clambered the fat lady and child, followed by the man with his newspaper. There was a magic here, some power that pulled deeply at a fundamental urge in the human soul—or at least in Herma’s. The cars were like houses, snug and self-contained, but they were houses that could go off down the tracks and take you anywhere in the wide world. You could go anywhere in the train, and see everything. And someday she would, she resolved. All these meditations occupied only a few seconds, for the 2:23 from San Diego didn’t linger very long in Santa Ana. The engine growled and hissed steam, and the great iron wheels clanked into motion. With dignity—with its own kind of dignity—it gathered speed and moved out of the station, drawing the line of
glass-windowed cars behind it.

  But at the very end was something that caught Herma’s heart—a car different from the others, painted in a rich dark-blue enamel instead of shabby black, and with decorations cut into its spotless crystal windows. There was only one person in it. In the salon at the rear, an elegant parlor upholstered in gold and burgundy, sat a lady all alone in a gilded chair. Her dress, Herma saw in the instant it took the car to pass, was a marvel—a sheath of cloth-of-gold with buttons down the back, curving in at the waist and culminating in a swelling monobust in front. Her hair was piled in a diademlike coil on her head, and she wore a pearl choker about her neck. On the table before her was a bottle and a long-stemmed glass. And she was smoking a cigar. The blue car went by and Herma watched the passing, one by one, of the gilded letters she could not understand, only grasp the shapes as potent and mysterious hieroglyphs. A … R … D … E … N. Then the train was gone, scattering papers and dead leaves along the tracks. Herma watched it until it had disappeared around the curve toward the distant city.

  3.

  According to Mrs. Opdike, something had to be done about Herma’s gift of music, before she became much older. For, she went on, as the Scripture warned, it was a sin to hide one’s Talent under a Bushel. Setting aside her deficiencies in Bible scholarship, Papa was ready to accept Mrs. Opdike’s authority as a musician, at least such as there was in a rather small town, and so he bent to her recommendations. Herma, still so small that a pillow was necessary on the stool, was set down before Mama’s square Chickering. Mrs. Opdike herself came every Wednesday afternoon to give her lessons, and Herma had to practice for a half an hour every day. Mama from upstairs could hear her practicing and didn’t have to get up from the bed where she lay reading. The initial repertory included Scales, The Happy Farmer, and even, suggested Mrs. Opdike bursting with confidence, an Etude for Little Fingers which she had copied years before out of a book.

  But even Mama from upstairs could tell that things were not going right. The small stubby fingers were flaccid and recalcitrant; they wandered like wax and would not press onto the right keys. They bent like rubber; they seemed to have joints that worked the wrong way. They were intractable and would obey neither Herma nor anybody else.

  And when matters improved, it was only to get worse. Herma, set to playing her Scales (“For,” as Mrs. Opdike said firmly, “discipline is the basis of all the arts.”), only pretended to touch the keys, and instead (as Mama ascertained by creeping stealthily downstairs to watch her) ran her fingers over them in the air while she sang the two octaves in an uncanny imitation of the piano: ping ping ping ping for the high notes, dong dong dong for the ones in the middle, and an unearthly kind of Chinese-gong effect for the low ones down at the left. It was amazing that a sound so deep could come from so tiny a chest. As if aware of Mama’s presence on the staircase behind her, Herma ran through her whole dumbfounding span. The little hand floated like a fairy over the keyboard, and the voice, beginning with the Chinese gong, ran all the way up to the tinkle at the top. Her fingers were not even touching the keyboard.

  This was too much for Mama. Before such phenomena, the authority and wisdom of Papa (even though he was not an expert on children) was called for. He was secretly made to come home from the Blade in the middle of the afternoon—an unheard-of event, almost a violation of nature—and hide behind the door to listen. It was time for Scales again.

  peep

  ping

  ping

  sang Herma, stretching out her tiny arm and not quite touching the high C with her finger.

  That night after Herma was put to bed they discussed it, shutting the doors carefully and speaking in lowered voices. “That child,” declared Papa distractedly fingering his mustache, “is deceitful, pretending to play the piano when she is not playing it at all.” (He didn’t ask himself whether it was deceitful as well to spy on a little girl from behind the door.) “She is also very strange, and in my opinion we ought to have Violet look at her to see if there is anything wrong.” “Oh, that’s nonsense,” said Mama. “What does Violet know about it? Nothing is wrong, she’s only very talented, as Mrs. Opdike said, except that perhaps we’re trying to train her in the wrong way.” “Indeed we are,” said Papa, embarking on another subject altogether, “she’s growing up far too queer, left unsupervised by herself in the house all day. She ought to get more fresh air.” “That’s nonsense too,” said Mama. “She goes for a walk every afternoon.” “Yes,” said Papa, “Mr. Peebles” (this was the Editor-in-Chief) “saw her down by the livery stables the other day.”

  Clearly this was leading nowhere. In the end Papa washed his hands of the matter, and it was left for Mama to decide what to do. Quite obviously a change in the program was called for; Herma’s dexterity was laryngeal and not digital. She wasn’t able to learn to sew, either, although she, Mama, had roll-hemmed a handkerchief when she was hardly old enough to walk. Herma only pricked herself with the needle and, instead of crying, regarded the red spot on her finger with a kind of scientific curiosity and then licked it off, evidently with savor. As Mrs. Opdike said, “Of course she can’t sew. It’s her little voice that is talented; it’s like a tiny perfect little flute.” And also, thought Papa to himself, like a tuba, and the C two octaves below the middle of the piano, and a Chinese vegetable peddler, and a pump-organ, and Brother Goff coughing. But he kept these reservations or anxieties to himself, and it was agreed that Mrs. Opdike if she wished could attempt to teach the child Voice.

  But, “For Heaven’s Sakes,” as Mrs. Opdike said, “I don’t have to teach her anything; it’s all I can do to keep up with her.” Herma already knew every song in the hymn book, as well as Mah Song’s chant and Old Dog Tray, which she had heard a man singing on Fourth Street. Nevertheless, Mrs. Opdike instructed her in two-part harmony, and they sang duets together, Herma soon demonstrating her ability to sing either the tenor part or country alto, as it was called, in which the harmony ran along above the melody. “She is a whole little choir in herself,” said Mrs. Opdike, who had an unbounded enthusiasm for the strange and prodigal and found it all a delight; unlike Papa, who had a tendency to be made anxious by anything that was slightly outside his ken. It was something like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; once you conceded that your grandfather might be an ape, or that a little girl might sing baritone, then there was no place to stop. Of course Herma did not really sing baritone; she simulated Brother Goff’s voice but in her own timbre, as though you might imitate a bass viol with a violin by slackening the G string until it wobbled. But this nuance escaped Papa, who was even less a musician than he was a specialist in infancy and only felt that a little girl who sang when she was supposed to be playing the piano was, in some way that he could not express, committing an untruth. Yet how could you tell a lie merely by playing the piano? Was it possible that music itself was mendacious? Here his thought took alarm, and stopped altogether.

  Mrs. Opdike was not so easily alarmed. “She is just doing grand,” was her opinion. “She is a dear little girl, and some day she will be a famous opera singer. For Herma,” she declared, “can do any thing that she wants. And she will.”

  For the moment, however, Mrs. Opdike’s ambitions did not extend so far, and she concentrated on preparing Herma for an eventual role in the choir of the First Baptist Church. She also taught her the only two songs she knew that were not hymns, The Last Rose of Summer and The Little Lost Child. Piping these to piano accompaniment, Herma was a charm, and almost ready to be presented to the public, Mrs. Opdike said; although Mama vetoed this. However, to give her due credit, Mrs. Opdike was honest about her limitations as a teacher and sincere in her concern for the full development of Herma’s talent. “I recommend,” she said, “the purchase of a phonograph. For only the greatest artists,” she said, “are fit to serve as models for this little voice.” By which she meant, no doubt, that she herself had reached the end of her string and that there was no one else in all of Santa Ana who knew en
ough about music to teach Herma anything, she had got so far by herself. And it was true that Herma sang not only the hymns but The Last Rose of Summer and The Little Lost Child all in the manner of Mrs. Opdike, which was a rococo sort of style, all trills and vibrato, with little philosophical depth to it or attention to expression.

  Such things were costly and it was a weighty decision. Papa pondered for several days, pulling at his mustache and figuring, now and then, on a piece of paper at the rolltop desk in his study. But in due course he bought an Edison phonograph, on special order from Feeley’s, and brought it home to be set up on the parlor table. And in truth it was a fine and impressive apparatus and an addition to any home. It was a varnished mahogany box with a crank on the side, and a horn like a large flower. The mechanism was mounted on top, and inside the box was a drawer for the six wax cylinders. On the front were the words “Edison New Duplex.”

  It worked—as he explained to Mama, conscious of the male obligation to understand all things mechanical, and first consulting the instruction brochure—through the rotation of the waxen cylinder at the top. In reproducing the sound, the point of the needle ran over the elevations and depressions in the bottom of the groove cut in the cylinder. Thus an increased pressure was transmitted upward to the diaphragm when the point ran over an elevation, and a diminished pressure when the point ran over a depression. The diaphragm was thus—as it were—pulled inward and thrust outward with each vibration, but these pushes and pulls followed each other so rapidly that the ear apprehended only a buzz, that is, the music or other sound that was to be reproduced. As for the horn part of it, he imagined that its purpose was to magnify the sound. For some reason Mama blushed at this lecture, and he felt it better to drop it. It might have been on account of the word reproduce, or something about the shape of the horn. He understood women only slightly better than he did phonographs, and perhaps she had detected some nuance that escaped him. In short, he left it to the women—to Mama and Herma and Mrs. Opdike—to concern themselves with the practical operation of the thing. He showed them how to clamp on the wax cylinder, and set the needle lightly and carefully into the groove, and then he washed his hands of it.