A Cadenza for Caruso

by Barbara Paul

  Amato was silent for so long that Caruso began to think he’d fallen asleep. Then the baritone sighed, musically. “I’d try to help.”

  Caruso leaned back in the tub and smiled. It was the answer he wanted.

  4

  The following day Caruso was excused from the Fanciulla rehearsal. He was singing Pagliacci that night, and Toscanini had agreed to rehearse around him, just this once. The conductor knew how much preparation a heavy tragic role like Pagliacci demanded of a singer.

  That was another mystery Caruso had to contend with. Why was Toscanini being so understanding? This was unnatural behavior, to say the least.

  It took some doing for Caruso to get himself into the proper frame of mind for the heavier operatic roles. His usual procedure was to spend most of the day lying down. He would vocalize very little, and then always in long, sustained phrases, building up gradually until it was time to go to the opera house. By then he would be in the initial stages of a first-class, grade-A panic.

  Enrico Caruso suffered from stage fright. Terrible stage fright; it had been with him all his life and showed no sign of going away. Over the years it had fallen to his accompanist Barthélemy to nurse the tenor through these pre-performance jitters, to supply him with headache medicine and throat spray and analgesic powders and generally soothe and encourage him any way he could. Once Caruso stepped out on the stage, he was all right; but that period right before a performance began was hell for everybody.

  So it was to everyone’s benefit if the day preceding an evening performance could be spent calmly. Caruso tried lying down and blanking his mind, but this time the trick didn’t work. Ugo had turned up an address for Luigi Davila, and facing the blackmailer was all Caruso could think of. He found, to his distress, that he didn’t want to do it.

  When Davila had been just an annoying little man trying to hitch a free ride on Caruso’s coattails, the tenor had known how to respond to him. But now that Caruso was aware Davila was a blackmailer, or a would-be blackmailer—well, that made a difference. One did not speak to blackmailers the same way one spoke to ordinary pests.

  To get his mind off the matter, Caruso went to his desk to read some of his mail. Everyone in the household took turns with the mail; and sometimes Caruso had to ask friends to come in and help, there was so much of it. Some of it came to the hotel, but most was sent to the Metropolitan Opera. A New York postal clerk had once told Caruso that he received as much mail as an entire small town.

  The first letter he picked up followed a common pattern.

  Dear Cousin Enrico,

  You may not remember me from our early days in Naples, as I was only a child when you left. I have been living in the United States of America for three years now and have fallen upon hard times.…

  The letter went on to ask for a small stake to start a coal-and-wood business in Ohio and was signed Federico Caruso.

  It was amazing the number of Carusos that had sprung up in the world over the past few years. True, “Caruso” was a very common name, but no man alive ever had as many relatives as the number that now claimed kinship to the Caruso. Federico Caruso, for instance—the tenor had never heard of him. For all he knew, Federico might be a cousin at that. The amount of money the man asked for was modest, so Caruso wrote him out a check.

  “Rico!” Ugo said reprovingly, looking over the tenor’s shoulder. “You must stop giving so much money away! Who is this ‘Federico Caruso’? Another long-lost relative, undoubtedly?”

  “Well, well, perhaps.”

  Ugo snorted. “Anybody can ask you for money and get it! What do you know of this Federico? He could be a liar and a thief! He could beat his wife and children!”

  Caruso waved his arm in the air, inadvertently sprinkling Ugo with ink. “How am I to know which ones are deserving? They cannot all be liars!”

  Ugo threw up his arms in disgust and stormed away. Caruso returned to his mail; they had had this argument before. Ugo was downright stingy with Caruso’s money; keeping the accounts had given him a proprietary interest in it, Caruso supposed.

  But even as he went on reading the mail, his thoughts kept returning to Puccini and Luigi Davila. Finally he pushed the mail away in irritation; concentration was impossible. He took out his sketch pad and tried a few drawings but couldn’t get the lines to go right. He slammed the pad shut and was annoyed that it didn’t make more noise.

  Caruso sat and twiddled his thumbs for a few moments. Then he thought of his watches—ah yes, he would play with his watches! He hurried into another room and started taking small black boxes out of a bureau drawer. Caruso had only recently begun collecting the eighteenth-century enameled gold timepieces, but already he had enough of them to make an impressive display. The tenor loved their look and their touch; he loved the heavy feel of them in his hand. But today the watches failed to work their usual magic; Caruso was just handling them without seeing their beauty. He put the boxes back in the drawer.

  The Hotel Knickerbocker apartment had eight rooms; the times Caruso had stayed there before, the place had been ample enough. But today the rooms seemed to be shrinking in on him. He prowled all eight of them, looking for something, anything to distract him. Barthélemy was out, running some personal errand. Ugo was seated at a table working on the accounts, still grumbling over what he considered Caruso’s excessive open-handedness. Mario had turned invisible, as he always did when he was not needed. Martino was sewing a button on a coat.

  Caruso sat down and watched Ugo and Martino work. He didn’t feel like reading or playing cards. A trace of morning hoarseness still remained in his throat, so it was too early to start vocalizing. He should lie down and rest. He jumped up and sprayed the room with perfume.

  “Is something wrong, Rico?” Martino asked. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  Suddenly Caruso felt that if he didn’t get out of that apartment he would suffocate. “Martino! Bring me my coat and hat. I am going out!”

  “To distribute alms among the poor, no doubt,” Ugo muttered from his table.

  Martino brought Caruso his hat and fur-collared coat, his gloves and cane. “Where are you going, Rico?” The same question he asked every time Caruso left the apartment. Like a mother hen checking up on one of her chicks.

  “I am going to see my tailor,” Caruso lied.

  “You do not wish him to come here? Shall I call him on the telephone?”

  “No, no, this time I go to him. I am going to buy a new suit and a new pair of shoes,” he improvised.

  “Rico,” Martino laughed, “you already have eighty pairs of shoes!”

  “Eighty?”

  “And fifty suits.”

  “Fifty!”

  Ugo, low: “All two sizes too small.”

  “And,” Martino finished with a flourish, “a dozen hats!”

  Caruso’s eyes grew large. “Per dio! It is a new hat that I need!”

  Out he marched.

  Caruso stepped off the streetcar at the corner of Third Avenue and Fourteenth Street and took a few moments to get his bearings. East Fourteenth Street—once the center of New York’s entertainment world until the theatres had started moving uptown, first to Herald Square and then to Times Square. Now the street had a rundown, faded-glory look to it, a roosting place for also-rans and left-behinds, people like Luigi Davila who’d never really been part of the mainstream at all.

  The tenor headed west on Fourteenth. He passed imposing Tammany Hall, the west wing of which was given over to Tony Pastor’s variety theatre. American vaudeville had been born in that little theatre; but by this time next year both the vaudeville house and the rest of Tammany would be gone. A demolition notice posted on the wall told Caruso the new Consolidated Gas Company Building would be going up in their place.

  Next door to doomed Tammany Hall stood the still-struggling Academy of Music. Once Manhattan’s leading opera house, the Academy had switched to straight drama some twenty years back when the newer, more splendiferous Metropoli
tan had stolen its audience—deliberately. Caruso didn’t know it, but David Belasco’s first New York hit had been staged at the Academy, a melodrama called The Girl I Left Behind Me. Now a billboard heralded the virtues of the theatre’s current production, the American Civil War drama Shenandoah.

  Caruso could glimpse the façade of Steinway Hall a little farther along East Fourteenth, just past Irving Place. A handsome building with pillars in front, Steinway Hall used to be the classical music center of the country. Used to be. Everything about this neighborhood was used-to-be. Feeling depressed, the tenor turned into Irving Place.

  And was not encouraged by what he saw. Two German-language theatres had managed to hang on, and a second-story window sign in a grubby-looking building proclaimed the existence of a school of elocution and dramatic art. But Irving Place had been invaded by a rash of small stores, most with living quarters over them and all of them run-down and neglected. George Wlasenko, Banner Painter. O’Reilly’s Straw Goods and Giambelli’s Music Publishing, sharing the same building. Dr. Cohen, Painless Dentistry. Certainly a mixed neighborhood, in more ways than one.

  Caruso passed a Finnish cabinetmaker’s shop and came to the number he was looking for. It was a three-story brown building, every bit as shabby as its neighbors. Not a brownstone, just … brown. He didn’t want to go in. But he’d never be able to concentrate on that night’s performance if he failed to confront Davila. A woman in the street recognized the tenor and tried to tell him about her out-of-work husband and her sick mother and the overdue rent and this nagging pain she had in her back; Caruso was so absorbed he didn’t even hear her. He climbed the brown building’s six steps without answering, thus losing a fan forever.

  The door of the brown building had a cracked glass panel; inside, the place even smelled brown. The tiny entryway was dingy and contained no directory that Caruso could see. He opened a door marked JOS. PEARS, WATCHMAKER and asked the man inside where Luigi Davila’s office was. Second floor.

  Caruso carefully picked his way up the dark, narrow stairs, as leery of dirt as of tripping and falling. The first door he came to on the second floor bore the legend DAVILA CONCERT BUREAU. Caruso stood for a moment or two in front of the door rehearsing what he was going to say. When he was ready, he tried the door; it opened to his touch.

  The “concert bureau” consisted of one scantily furnished office room—a battered desk, a couple of chairs, a lamp, and three wooden apple crates stacked on top of one another in lieu of a filing cabinet. Another room was curtained off at the back. The office was cold; the small gas heater was not turned on. “Davila!” Caruso called out. “Are you here?”

  There was no answer. But the door had been unlocked; surely no one would go away and leave a door unlocked in a neighborhood like this one. Perhaps in the back room?

  He pushed aside the separating curtain—and hastily withdrew when he saw the back room was Davila’s private living quarters, and Davila himself was lying on the floor. He was torn between calling out again and leaving when it occurred to him to wonder why Davila was on the floor. And he’d only assumed it was the man he’d come to see; he hadn’t really looked at the face. Cautiously he opened the curtain again.

  It was Luigi Davila. And he was lying on the floor. With a long-handled knife protruding from his side, a pool of blood discoloring the linoleum on the floor.

  Caruso had never moved so fast in his life. He stumbled down the dark stairway without thought of danger or dirt. He burst into the room of Jos. Pears, Watchmaker, his eyes popping and his arms waving. “Gack gack gack gack gack gack!” he croaked, making stabbing motions toward the ceiling with both forefingers. Alarmed, the watchmaker snatched up a tiny tool to defend himself.

  No help there. Caruso rushed out into the street and grabbed the lapels of the first man he saw. “Gack gack gack gack!” he informed the man earnestly. He was sweating now, fear pouring out of every pore.

  “Take yer hands off me, yuh looney!” the man snarled unsympathetically. Caruso let go of him and started croaking at two passing women. They screamed and ran away.

  “Polizia!” Caruso was finally able to shout. “Commissariato! Uno poliziotto!” He seemed to have forgotten all his English.

  A small crowd was beginning to gather, attracted by the sight of a well-dressed stranger going noisily bonkers in their midst. Try as he might, the tenor could not make a single one of them understand. “Luigi Davila!” Caruso cried, frantically pointing to the second floor of the building. “È morto!” Wouldn’t you know, he thought in despair, never an Italian anywhere when you needed one!

  A small boy tugged at his sleeve. “Ain’t you feeling right, Mister? I’ll fetch a doctor fer a nickel.”

  Tears running down his cheeks, Caruso lowered himself shakily to the steps of the building. The watchmaker was in the doorway, cautiously peeking out. Caruso made his hands into fists and beat his knees in frustration. The crowd energetically discussed Caruso’s condition among themselves.

  “Here, now, what’s all this?” At the sound of the commanding voice Caruso looked up to see an enormous policeman astride a massive horse. “What’s going on here?”

  “It’s Enrico Caruso,” someone said. “I think he’s having a fit.”

  The policeman dismounted and tied his horse to a lamppost. “Enrico Caruso, is it?” He came over to the steps and bent down until his face was level with the tenor’s. “What’s the trouble, Mr. Caruso?”

  Caruso swallowed, took a deep breath, and said in perfectly clear English: “A man named Luigi Davila has been murdered. He is in his rooms on the second floor.”

  A gasp ran through the crowd. “Poor man,” a woman’s voice murmured, and Caruso wondered whether she meant Davila or himself; they all thought he was crazy.

  “Murdered, you say?” The policeman stood up straight. “Well, now, let’s go up and have a look, shall we?”

  Caruso shuddered. “No, thank you, I have already had a look. You go. Second floor.” Weakly he pointed upward, to show the policeman what direction the second floor was in.

  The policeman considered a moment and then said, “All right, you stay here. I’ll go see. What was that name again?”

  Caruso told him and the policeman went into the building. The tenor lowered his head into his hands, letting the tension start to drain out now that Authority had arrived.

  The policeman’s thundering footsteps sounded on the stairs behind him; then the piercing shriek of a police whistle hurt his ears. Soon other policemen were there, the crowd of gawkers grew larger, and Enrico Caruso found himself being marched off to a police station.

  “Now tell me why you went to see this Luigi Davila, Mr. Caruso.”

  “I have already told you why,” Caruso said in exasperation. “Fourteen times I have told you! Maybe fifteen!”

  “So tell me again. Why did you go see him?”

  “I want to talk to him about arranging a concert tour for me.”

  When Caruso had first arrived at the station house, he’d been kept waiting for over an hour before anyone got around to questioning him. He’d sat there looking at the high ceilings and the oversized dirty windows and he’d had time to think. It had gradually dawned on him that whoever killed Luigi Davila had done Giacomo Puccini an enormous favor. Puccini was free now; his life was no longer in the hands of an unscrupulous blackmailer. No one need ever know—so long as Caruso didn’t make a mistake and let it slip out why he had really gone to see Davila.

  “A concert tour. Mr. Caruso, do you expect me to believe that? You are a big star. Luigi Davila was a penny-ante operator. Why would you switch from your regular agents to the likes of him?”

  “No, no, you misunderstand! I am not changing agents. Davila was going to arrange additional engagements for me. Little extras, you see.”

  Caruso knew his interrogator; the man’s name was O’Halloran and he was a New York Detective Bureau lieutenant. He had been one of the men responsible for capturing two of the Black Hand me
mbers who had threatened the tenor’s life earlier in the year. O’Halloran was a lanky, second-generation Irishman who thought John McCormack was the greatest tenor who ever lived. Caruso had never seen the police detective without a derby perched on his head, not even indoors.

  “Lieutenant O’Halloran, how much longer do you keep me here?” Caruso asked. “I sing Pagliacci tonight. I must prepare.” He was getting worried; he’d been at the station house all afternoon. He’d done no vocalizing, he wanted a bath, his stomach was growling, and he was out of cigarettes. And it was almost time to go to the opera house.

  “Just a little longer,” the police detective said. “Now tell me—”

  “At least let Mr. Gatti know where I am.”

  “Who?”

  “Giulio Gatti-Casazza. The general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.”

  “That’s right, I met him—that last time. Well, I suppose we can do that.” There was no telephone in the office they were using, so O’Halloran left the room to make the call. He came back immediately and the questioning resumed.

  Not more than twenty minutes later Gatti-Casazza rushed in—followed, Caruso was happy to see, by Barthélemy. “Lieutenant O’Halloran!” Gatti-Casazza roared. “What are you doing? Why are you keeping Mr. Caruso here? I demand you release him immediately!”

  “Mr. Gatti,” Caruso sighed in relief.

  “Release him?” O’Halloran said. “He’s not under arrest, sir. He is helping us with our inquiries.”

  “Oh, is that what you call it? Helping you with your inquiries?”

  Caruso’s accompanist was obviously awed at finding himself inside a bastion of law enforcement. “We were so worried about you, Rico,” Barthélemy said. “Martino said you went out to buy a hat.”

  “Mr. Gatti-Casazza,” O’Halloran said, mangling the pronunciation, “it was Mr. Caruso here who discovered the body. We have to ask him questions.”

  “But surely this can wait until tomorrow,” Gatti-Casazza said in a frantic tone of voice. “Mr. Caruso has a performance tonight. The house is sold out. He must sing. You have got to let him go!”