A Cadenza for Caruso

by Barbara Paul

  The stage set of the girl’s cabin was in place for Act II. Except for the brief appearance of a few of the minor characters, this middle section of Fanciulla was carried entirely by the three principals. And of those three, only Emmy Destinn was onstage during the entire act, a total of forty-five minutes. A good time for Ugo to deliver the letter to Sigrid.

  Only one small mishap marred the act: The cabin door stuck. Toscanini halted the rehearsal while the stagehands got the door open, and then the act proceeded smoothly to its conclusion. Caruso rushed off, needing to apply make-up for the third time that day.

  At the bottom of the stairs to the dressing rooms stood Ugo, smiling broadly and nodding. Sigrid had the letter.

  Up the stairs, into the dressing room. Gatti-Casazza visited him briefly, full of effusive compliments. Even David Belasco stopped by with a kind word, no longer miffed by Caruso’s invasion of his private rooms. Like most people, Belasco quickly forgot past offenses when he heard Caruso sing.

  The last act was the shortest of the three, less than half an hour. Caruso considered the entire opera to be a much more sensible length than those ten-hour marathons Richard Wagner used to churn out, not that any good Italian ever listened to them anyway. Act III of Fanciulla opened on a somber picture of dawn breaking over a mountainous forest; and not too long after that, the lynch-minded mob picked out a tree and threw a rope over one limb.

  Something was wrong. It wasn’t the chorus; they were behaving themselves nicely. The horses weren’t doing anything they weren’t supposed to be doing. No, the problem was Pasquale Amato. He was angry; he was acting angry and he was singing angry. What was the matter? Caruso finished Ch’ ella mi creda, and Amato marched over to deliver the make-believe slap they’d rehearsed so carefully. Only Amato didn’t make believe. He belted Caruso a good one.

  The tenor stood there in a state of absolute shock. His nonviolent friend had struck him!

  Just in time, Emmy came riding to the rescue, fighting her cranky black mare all the way. The lynch mob went back to being just a bunch of miners again and set Caruso free; and a little fancy footwork on the part of the tenor enabled him to keep Emmy between himself and Amato. Then hero and heroine went off together arm-in-arm, singing “Addio, mia California!” all the way.

  It was over.

  Caruso hugged Emmy in relief; she was laughing, pleased with her performance. Ugo was there, eyes shining in excitement. David Belasco was offering congratulations all around.

  But their moment of triumph was shattered by a woman’s voice, screaming abuse—at Caruso! Sigrid came charging toward him, waving a piece of paper over her head. Quickly he hid behind Emmy. Sigrid was shaking his note at him—how had she found out he’d written it? Ugo was looking as startled as Caruso felt. The tenor couldn’t understand what Sigrid was saying, but he was pretty sure he was hearing some choice Swedish swearing.

  Then a new stream of abuse started from behind him—and this time it was in Italian and Caruso could understand it. He turned to see Pasquale Amato advancing toward him, and he was waving a piece of paper over his head! Per dio! What had gone wrong?

  “I told you to hold Pasquale’s until after the rehearsal!” Caruso yelled at Ugo.

  “I was afraid I would miss him!” Ugo yelled back.

  Caruso was trying to use Emmy to fend off both Sigrid and Amato, but the soprano had had enough and broke away. “What is all this?” she demanded. Suddenly Barthélemy and Martino and Mario were there, and Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza, and Puccini and Lieutenant O’Halloran. Caruso felt himself being backed out onto the stage.

  “This time you go too far, Rico!” Amato shouted angrily. “What a vulgar, stupid joke!” He read from the note: “‘Luigi Davila made copies of all his important papers and left them with me for safekeeping …’”

  “What’s this? What’s this?” Lieutenant O’Halloran pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

  “That’s the same thing mine says!” Sigrid exclaimed. She and Amato compared letters.

  They were all out on the stage, including the chorus and the rest of the cast, who had come back to see what was going on. Caruso couldn’t stand it any longer. “How did you know?” he wailed. “How did both of you know I wrote those letters?”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Amato growled. “I’d know that scrawl of yours anywhere—it’s unmistakable. Nobody else writes quite like that. I could tell just from reading my name on the envelope that the note was from you.”

  “Chicken scratches,” Sigrid snorted.

  Caruso shot a quick glance at Ugo’s startled face looking over David Belasco’s shoulder. They’d neither of them thought of that! Caruso’s talent for subterfuge did not extend to disguising his handwriting.

  “Let me see those letters,” Lieutenant O’Halloran commanded. Sigrid and Amato handed them over. Toscanini edged up to the policeman and read them with him. He threw a reproving look at Caruso and made a clucking sound with his tongue.

  “Will someone please explain to me what is happening here?” Gatti-Casazza cried plaintively.

  O’Halloran scratched his neck uneasily. “Well, on the face of it, it would appear that your star tenor is trying to blackmail your star baritone and this lady here.” The police detective was clearly puzzled. “Now why would you do a thing like that, Mr. Caruso?”

  “There is some mistake!” Gatti-Casazza gasped. “Someone else wrote those letters!”

  Caruso smiled sadly. “No, Mr. Gatti, there is no mistake. I wrote the letters—both of them.”

  Amato was shaking his finger under Caruso’s nose. “What a tasteless thing to do, Rico! Using a dead man to pay me back for one little trick I play on you! You should be whipped!”

  “Do not speak to Rico like that!” the loyal Martino called out. Mario looked as if he wanted to cry.

  “What are you talking about, a trick?” Sigrid asked Amato. “I play no tricks on anyone!”

  “I am sorry, Pasquale,” Caruso said, honestly contrite. “It was wrong of me to do what I did. I beg your forgiveness.”

  He looked so miserable that Amato didn’t have the heart to stay mad at him. “Eh, well, no harm done, I suppose. But never do a thing like that again!”

  “Never,” Caruso promised solemnly.

  “You see what comes of playing tricks?” Toscanini announced to the world at large. “Nothing but trouble!”

  “Tricks, tricks, tricks!” Sigrid cried in exasperation. “What have tricks to do with me?”

  “Mr. Caruso,” Lieutenant O’Halloran said, “don’t you think it’s time you explained?”

  Almost eighty faces were staring at him, waiting for a little speech that would magically make everything clear. Caruso swallowed hard and plunged in. “I investigate the murder of Luigi Davila. The police seem content to think our friend Puccini is the guilty party—but I am not content, no! I know Puccini has killed no one. I know he did not put that knife in Davila’s side. So I decide I will find out who did!”

  “Oh, Caruso!” Puccini said so softly that only Barthélemy heard him.

  “Just exactly how did you go about your investigating?” O’Halloran asked, half-irritated, half-amused.

  “I listen, I ask questions, I read things.” Caruso shrugged. “I … investigate.”

  “That is why you were going through the papers in my desk,” Belasco said suddenly.

  “And that is why you were hiding in my wardrobe cabinet!” Emmy exclaimed.

  “Is that why you followed me everywhere?” Gatti-Casazza wanted to know. “To find out if I was a murderer?”

  Caruso started to sweat. “Well, uh, a detective must be impartial …”

  “Rico!” Emmy cried. “Do you really think I could be a murderer?”

  “No, Emmy, no!” he hastened to assure her. “I investigate you to prove you are not a murderer! I eliminate suspects, one by one!” Emmy didn’t really believe that, but she decided to let him get away with it. For the time being.

  “So
you eliminated everybody until you got down to Mr. Amato and the lady—Sigrid, is it?” O’Halloran said. “Then you wrote letters to these two. Mr. Caruso, exactly what did you expect these letters to accomplish?”

  How to word it without implicating Puccini before all these nosy people? “You know Luigi Davila was a blackmailer,” Caruso said carefully. “He could have had many victims the police do not know about—and it is likely that one of them killed him, yes? I think if I pretend to take over where Davila left off, the killer will reveal herself … or himself.”

  “I see.” O’Halloran studied Caruso. “Now suppose you tell me why you think these two people here were Luigi Davila’s blackmail victims?”

  Amato was staring at the tenor in horror. “You think that Davila was blackmailing me? You think I am the one who killed him?”

  “No, no, Pasquale! I never think that! Not even for one little moment!” He had determined never to give his friend away; this was the test. “It is only that I see a chance to get even with you—for the Bible trick. That is all, I assure you!”

  Belasco gaped at Amato. “The Bible trick? You glued the pages of the Bible together?”

  “What are you talking about?” O’Halloran wanted to know.

  Toscanini looked hurt. “Not you too, Amato! Always tricks!”

  Amato shrugged, started to explain, but then decided not to bother.

  Gatti-Casazza told Lieutenant O’Halloran about the Bible. “So this letter you wrote to Mr. Amato,” the police detective said to Caruso, “was by way of being retaliation for a practical joke he played on you? Is that it?”

  “Yes,” Caruso said miserably, “and I am filled with shame at what I do! I am through playing tricks—forever!”

  Toscanini brightened. “Swear!”

  Right then and there Caruso took a solemn oath to abstain from playing practical jokes for the rest of his life, and a few people even believed him. “So you see, Lieutenant O’Halloran, it is all a stupid mistake. I have no reason to suspect Pasquale—he has done nothing he could be blackmailed for!” He would take his friend’s guilty secret with him to the grave.

  “Which leaves Sigrid,” O’Halloran said pointedly.

  The already pale Swedish woman turned even whiter, her mouth working noiselessly. She swallowed and said, “I? You think I killed a man?”

  “I do not know,” Caruso said in anguish. Now that it had come to the point of actually accusing the woman outright, he was having all sorts of doubts.

  “But you thought she might be vulnerable to blackmail,” O’Halloran cut in sharply. “Why, Mr. Caruso? What did you find out that made you write her that letter?”

  Caruso wished he were any place in the world other than where he was at the moment. He didn’t like Sigrid any more now than he’d ever liked her, but when it came down to calling her a murderer—Caruso decided right then he just wasn’t hard-hearted enough to make a good detective.

  But Lieutenant O’Halloran was insisting upon an answer.

  Caruso directed his reply to Sigrid. “I find out about your illegitimate child,” he said in a tone of apology. “The little girl in Sweden you are supporting.”

  “Oh no!” Emmy Destinn shrieked before Sigrid could say a word. “Not that ugly story again! Rico, you should know better than to listen to backstage gossip! Shame on you!”

  Caruso looked at her in bewilderment. “You know about it?”

  “I know about the child,” Emmy snapped, “and I also know she is neither illegitimate nor Sigrid’s. Sigrid is supporting her widowed sister’s child—her niece, you fool, not her daughter!”

  Caruso groaned as a murmur ran through the crowd. Sigrid pressed her lips together and lifted her chin defiantly.

  “Rico, why didn’t you ask me?” Emmy went on. “I could have told you. Sigrid was with me in London when the girl was born—in Stockholm. This story about the ‘illegitimate’ daughter has appeared before—spread by idle, no-good servants who have nothing better to do than make up malicious lies about a good woman! And you listened! Rico, I could kill you!”

  Caruso wanted nothing more than for the stage floor to open up and swallow him whole. What an injustice he had done the woman! How quick he had been to suspect her—just because they had never gotten along well together! He rushed over to Sigrid and started pouring out his apologies.

  Sigrid listened to his final appeal for forgiveness and then rewarded him with an icy smile. “I will think about it.” Caruso envisioned long years of doing penance to Emmy Destinn’s maid.

  “That’s what comes of meddling,” Amato whispered. The crowd divided as Emmy and Sigrid made a regal exit from the stage.

  Puccini stepped up and placed a hand on Caruso’s shoulders. “You are in this predicament because of me,” he said. “I want you to know that whatever happens, I will always be grateful to you, Caruso.”

  O’Halloran took off his derby, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, replaced the derby. “From now on I think you’d better stick to singing, Mr. Caruso. Leave the detective work to the police. Don’t meddle.”

  Caruso nodded emphatic agreement. “My career as a detective is finished.” The crowd of people on the stage was beginning to thin out; the show was over. Toscanini left, followed by a shaky Gatti-Casazza leaning on David Belasco’s arm.

  Martino came up to Caruso. “Are you all right, Rico?” Ugo and Barthélemy and Mario crowded around them; everybody wanted to go home.

  “As a point of curiosity, Rico,” Amato said, “what would you have done if I had brought the money?”

  “Eh? What money?”

  “The money you ask for in the letter.”

  “I do not ask for money in the letter.”

  “Of course you do. Look here.” Amato took one of the letters from Lieutenant O’Halloran. “See—right there.”

  Caruso looked at the letter. The part arranging for a meeting in the art museum had been crossed out. At the bottom of the page one sentence had been printed in block letters:

  Leave $10,000 wrapped in newspaper in the properties room of the opera house Saturday night and you will never hear from me again.

  “But I do not write this!” Caruso cried. “What I write is up here—with the line drawn through it! I ask for a meeting, that is all! I know nothing about this demand for ten thousand dollars!”

  “I was wondering why part of the letter was written and part printed,” Amato scowled.

  “Both letters are like that,” Lieutenant O’Halloran pointed out. “Except that this other one asks for only a thousand—that must be Sigrid’s. Mr. Caruso, are you saying somebody else added this sentence about the money?”

  “Yes! I do not even know about it until right now!”

  “But who?”

  “Who indeed? I write the letters last night and then …” And then? Caruso’s eyes automatically turned to Ugo—the only other person who knew about the letters.

  Ugo bolted.

  “Stop him!” O’Halloran shouted. “Stop that man!”

  A few lingering chorus members turned to see what this new fuss was about and unwittingly blocked the exit. Ugo skittered to a stop and turned to dash back across the stage. He ducked away from Amato, pushed Puccini aside, and tried to jump into the orchestra pit—but Lieutenant O’Halloran got a hand on him. Ugo pulled away and next tried to dart past Caruso. The tenor deliberately stepped into his path, and the resulting collision took both men to the floor.

  Caruso prevented Ugo’s escape by the simple expedient of sitting on him.

  “Oof! Dio, you are crushing me! Get up, Rico!”

  “Ugo,” Caruso said sadly, “you have been very naughty. Trying to extort money from my friend! For shame.”

  “I think maybe he’s been more than naughty,” Lieutenant O’Halloran said, hunkering down by the fallen valet. “All right, you—what’s your name? Ugo? What do you know about all this?”

  “Rico, I am dying! Let me up!”

  “I let you up when y
ou tell the truth. Answer Lieutenant O’Halloran.”

  “Did you add that sentence to the letters, Ugo?” O’Halloran asked. “The one asking for money?”

  “Yes! Yes! Now let me up!”

  “Do you go in for blackmail a lot, Ugo?”

  “This is the first time! My bones are breaking!”

  “But you don’t mind helping yourself to other people’s money? Maybe you even steal a little?”

  Ugo sobbed. Caruso gave a little bounce. “Yes, yes—I steal!”

  “From Mr. Caruso here?”

  “For six years I steal from him! And he never suspects a thing!”

  Caruso’s mouth dropped open. “You steal from me?”

  “Ugo,” O’Halloran said in an ominously quiet voice, “did you kill Luigi Davila?”

  Ugo didn’t answer. O’Halloran and Caruso exchanged a look, and the police detective nodded. Caruso shifted his weight.

  Ugo cried out. “Yes, yes, I kill him! Why do you torture me! I kill him! I say so!”

  “Cielo!” Amato whispered.

  Caruso was so stunned that O’Halloran had to tell him twice to let Ugo go. The tenor moved his buttocks to the stage floor; Ugo rolled over on his back, gasping for air. Puccini walked over to stand by Ugo’s head, looking down at him but saying nothing.

  Martino didn’t understand what had just happened. “What is it? What does he say?” Barthélemy patted him on the shoulder and spoke low into his ear. When Martino understood, he began to cry.

  Caruso felt like crying himself. “Ugo, how could you? How could you kill a man?”

  Ugo struggled up to a sitting position. “I do not intend to kill him—it was an accident!”

  O’Halloran used one thumb to push his derby to the back of his head. “An accident. The knife just accidentally went off in your hand?”

  “He attacked me,” Ugo said sullenly. “I must defend myself, yes?”

  “So now it’s self-defense. Let’s back up a little. Davila was trying to blackmail you—is that the way it was?”

  “Something like that,” Ugo mumbled. “He wanted half of everything I got.”

  “But I do not understand,” Caruso protested. “How were you able to steal from me? I write down everything I spend!”