Prima Donna at Large

by Barbara Paul

  Emmy had found a chair behind one of the potted ferns. She parted the fronds and peered out at the four of us. “I did not know it was to be a luncheon party.”

  “It’s not,” I told her. “The men are just leaving.”

  “But Gerry,” Caruso protested, “I plan to take you to nice restaurant for big fancy lunch!”

  “I had the same idea myself,” Scotti said wryly, “but you may come too, Rico.”

  “You have made up your differences?” Emmy asked Caruso. He nodded happily.

  “Why do we not all go out to eat?” Amato asked. “The five of us?”

  “Thank you, but Emmy and I are staying in for lunch,” I said politely but firmly. “We have things to talk about.”

  “Well, now, a moment please, let us not be hasty,” Emmy said. “Gerry, what are you planning to serve?”

  I gaped at her. “You want to know the menu? To decide whether we stay here or go out?”

  “That is correct,” she said imperturbably. “What do you have planned? Some sort of salad, I suppose.”

  I did have a salad planned, as a matter of fact, but obviously this was not the time to persuade Emmy to start on a diet. I floundered for something to say while the three men argued amiably over where we were all going for lunch.

  Emmy picked up one of the newspapers Morris Gest had brought and started leafing through it. “Still no news of Prague!” she complained. “I begin to think I must go there myself, to find out what transpires!”

  “You do not mean that,” Amato said uneasily. “Go to Prague? Now?”

  “She is not serious, Pasquale,” Scotti said.

  “Yes, she is,” Emmy said. “I am seriously thinking about going, as soon as the season is over.”

  “Do not think about it,” Amato ordered. “Emmy, you could be killed. You do not go visiting in war countries! Ridicolo.” The rest of us chimed agreement.

  Emmy sighed. “I know. If the newspapers would just print something once in a while—”

  She was interrupted by an urgent hammering at the door. The maid admitted Mildredandphoebe, who came rushing in wide-eyed and breathless. “Miss Farrar,” they gasped together.

  They looked so distraught I was alarmed. “Here, sit down—oh, where are the chairs? My goodness, what’s the matter?”

  “We found him,” Mildred panted. “Uncle Hummy—we know where he is.”

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Caruso asked dubiously.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I answered impatiently. “I always drive myself on the chauffeur’s day off. Get in—we’re wasting time.” In the last four years Caruso had owned five motor cars and never learned to drive any of them; so naturally he had trouble believing I could operate such a mysterious machine.

  “You promised me lunch,” Emmy complained.

  “Emmy, I’ll buy you ten lunches—but not now! Please get in.”

  Everyone piled in. Scotti sat up front with me, while Amato, Emmy and Caruso squeezed into the back seat. That meant Mildredandphoebe had to sit on the men’s laps. Amato and Mildred adjusted easily to their enforced intimacy, but Phoebe looked scared to death perched there on Caruso’s knee.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Mulberry Street,” Mildred said. “Just head downtown—I’ll give you directions.”

  The last time I’d driven down Broadway, the street had been icy and treacherous. But today was clear, and New York had the look of a city that was just remembering there was a season called spring. There was an unusually high number of motor cars in the streets, and I’m afraid I gave one of them a little scratch. At least that’s what that yelling mob in my back seat said, only they called it a gash. Some people always exaggerate.

  “Mildred, how did you find Uncle Hummy?” I asked. “I mean, is he trying to hide?”

  “We weren’t the ones who found him, Miss Farrar. It was Mary Perkins—short girl, curly red hair? She told Phoebe and Phoebe told me and I told you. All we know is an address.”

  “Bless Mary Perkins,” I said, trying to remember her. “Mildred, I want you to spread the word. I’m giving a party for everyone who helped.”

  Squeals of pleasure from the back seat.

  “Do I imagine it?” Amato asked. “I think I remember Geraldine Farrar makes a solemn promise to end her investigation, to do no more detective work.”

  “Really?” Emmy said. “How sensible.”

  “Yes, but no one seems to remember that except me. You do promise, Gerry, no?”

  “Eh, but that is before,” Caruso answered for me. “Before these fine American girls come in with answer we are waiting for.” Phoebe suddenly whooped and then giggled nervously.

  “Rico, leave Phoebe alone,” I said. “As for my promise, Pasquale, are you seriously suggesting we just drop everything now—now when we have an address for Uncle Hummy?”

  “We can tell Lieutenant O’Halloran,” Amato said. “Let him go to Mulberry Street, yes?”

  “But what if it turns out that Uncle Hummy saw nothing, knows nothing? Then it will look as if we’re trying to put the blame on a poor helpless old man. No, we have to go ourselves.”

  “It is chasing the wild goose,” Amato objected.

  “If you think that, then why did you come along?”

  Scotti turned around and smiled toward the back seat. “Give up, Pasquale.”

  Mulberry Street was in a part of town where I’d never been, that teeming section of the Lower East Side known as Little Italy. I turned on to Canal Street; but when we reached Mulberry, the street was so crowded I didn’t even try to go in. I found a place on Mott Street to leave the limousine, and we walked back, only a block.

  It was like entering a city within a city. The street was full of people yelling good-naturedly to one another and to other people leaning out of the windows of the ugly tenement buildings that made up the neighborhood. The fire escapes were mostly covered with drying laundry; some were being used to store what looked like chests and crates and even pieces of furniture.

  Both sides of the street were lined with pushcarts filled with fruits, vegetables, fish, olives, old clothing, firewood; and horse-drawn wagons were used as movable stores, from the backs of which their owners sold chairs, flour, blankets, baskets, heaven knows what else. One man sat on a barrel underneath a pipe frame from which pair after pair of men’s shoes were hanging, all exactly alike. The people themselves were poorly dressed, some even in rags; but they were colorful, lively, and noisy.

  A tear appeared in Caruso’s eye. “Just like home.”

  The sudden appearance of seven well-dressed strangers did not go unnoticed on Mulberry Street; we were the immediate object of curious stares and that kind of under-the-voice mumbling that makes you start to feel just a little bit uneasy. One young man with a huge mustache shouted something at us but I couldn’t make out what he said; I think he was speaking Sicilian. A sudden odor of cooking onions and garlic assaulted us and my stomach contracted in protest. I think I heard Emmy murmur Lunch.

  “Do you notice?” Amato said. “These buildings, they have no numbers!”

  It was true. We passed a narrow doorway that proudly proclaimed itself the entrance to the Banca Italiana, but there wasn’t a number to be seen. We were looking for number eighty-four Mulberry Street, but it was clear we’d never find it just by looking. Amato went up to a man sitting in a chair on the sidewalk before a store that displayed religious icons in the window and asked where number eighty-four was.

  “Who is it you look for?” the man asked.

  “We do not know the name,” Amato said, “only the number. Eighty-four.”

  “I know nothing of numbers. If you tell me the name, I tell you where he lives.”

  “Uncle Hummy?” Caruso said hopefully.

  “I do not know your uncle, signore.”

  Amato threw up his hands and walked on, the rest of us trailing after him. Finally we found a woman selling bread out of a basket almost as big as she was w
ho told us she thought number eighty-four was “down there” somewhere, pointing in the direction opposite to the way we’d been heading. So we turned back and tried the other way.

  “Look,” said Scotti. “Look how they watch Rico.”

  I’d already noticed. We were still drawing stares, but most of them were directed at Caruso. Caruso and Scotti and Amato were all from Naples, but only Caruso looked Italian. Amato had the appearance of one from a more northern country, while Scotti looked as if he could have come from any country in continental Europe—as did Emmy too, in a way. Mildredandphoebe and I probably looked every bit as American as we were. But the people of Mulberry Street recognized Caruso as one of their own.

  Moreover, they recognized him as a celebrity. The jaunty way he wore his hat, the spring in his step—his whole demeanor bespoke a man sure of his welcome wherever he went. It was only a matter of time until someone realized it was the great Caruso who was walking through their neighborhood, and if we didn’t find number eighty-four soon we might never get there. Why had that girl given Phoebe a house number? Why didn’t she just say next door to Dino’s barbershop or upstairs over the meat-seller?

  “There!” Emmy cried. “On that canopy!”

  Sure enough, there it was—an eight and a four, prominently displayed on a storefront canopy. The store was a tobacconist’s, and a quick look inside told us Uncle Hummy wasn’t there. In one of the rooms over the shop, then.

  “There’s another door right next to the entrance,” Mildred said. “It must lead upstairs.”

  Unfortunately, at the doorstep we encountered an obstacle in the form of three boys about seventeen or eighteen who were lounging there and showing no inclination to move. When Scotti asked them please to let us through, one of them casually took out a wicked-looking knife and began cleaning his fingernails while another asked us insolently why we wanted to go in.

  “We wish to visit someone who lives here,” Scotti said pleasantly, trying not to look at the knife.

  “What if we say we don’t want you to go in?” The boy took a step toward Scotti. It was a challenge of some sort. I never dreamed seventeen-year-old boys could be so menacing! These three were obviously bored and looking for trouble. I could have screamed in frustration; to get this close and—

  And then it happened. “Caruso!” a male voice boomed. “È Caruso! Enrico Caruso!”

  There was a heartbeat of stunned silence, and then something like an electric shock ran through the crowd in the street. Soon every one of those opera-loving Italians was shouting Caruso! Caruso! as the mob surged toward our frightened tenor. Before we knew what was happening they swooped down on him and swirled around him and swept him up and away. A couple of dozen pairs of hands half-helped, half-forced Caruso up on to one of the wagons in the street, as everyone screamed for him to sing, sing, sing!

  Caruso looked helplessly toward us. Both Scotti and Amato pantomined extravagantly that he should sing for them—it was the distraction we needed. Caruso gulped, took a deep breath, and launched into Questa o quella from Rigoletto.

  The three young toughs who’d been barring our way forgot all about us and pushed their way into the mob surrounding Caruso’s wagon. Scotti opened the door and we crowded inside together at the foot of a rickety-looking stairway.

  “Ascoltatemi,” Amato said. “I just think of something. If Uncle Hummy is not home but he hears Caruso sing, he will come to listen, no?”

  “He might be out there in that crowd right now,” Emmy said. “That is where we should look.”

  “We’d better split up,” I said. “The girls and I will go upstairs and—”

  “Right,” Emmy interrupted, already on her way back out. Scotti and Amato followed her.

  Mildredandphoebe and I picked our way carefully up the stairs. I was thinking we’d just have to knock on every door we saw, but the building was so small it wasn’t necessary. There were only two doors on the second floor, and one of them bore a sign that indicated the inhabitant was someone named Falgione who would write your letters for you for a fee. I knocked on the other door. There was no answer; I tried the knob, but the door was locked. Outside, Caruso had switched to La Bohème and was starting on Che gelida manina.

  “Let me try,” Phoebe offered. She reached to her hair and pulled out a hairpin and bent over the lock. I didn’t hear a click but the door suddenly swung open an inch or two.

  Mildred and I stared at her. “Phoebe!” her friend exclaimed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  Phoebe blushed. “Well, uh, I’m always forgetting my key and, uh, you know.”

  What unexpected talents these girls had. I felt a brief pang about entering a man’s home like that, but this was no time to grow fainthearted. I pushed the door open.

  The first thing I saw inside was myself—that is, a picture of myself in my Carmen costume; it was a newspaper photo that Uncle Hummy had cut out and fastened to the wall. For this was Uncle Hummy’s room, there could be no doubt about that. Every inch of wall space was covered with pictures cut from newspapers, and every one of them had something to do with opera.

  “Did you ever see anything like this?” Mildred gasped.

  I counted about two dozen pictures of me, and a couple of dozen more of Caruso. There were photos of Scotti and Amato and Emmy, and a few pictures that showed stage settings. I think the faces of just about all the Met’s singers adorned Uncle Hummy’s walls—Bori, Martinelli, Botta, de Luca, Alda, Hempel, everybody. There were five or six pictures of Toscanini, a few of Puccini, and I even spotted one of Gatti-Casazza.

  “And I thought I was a fan!” Mildred exclaimed. “Look at all this stuff on the floor! There’s barely room to walk.”

  The “stuff” was piles of opera programs, posters, newspaper clippings—Uncle Hummy probably couldn’t afford to buy scrap-books, but he kept everything he cut out anyway. In one corner was a stack of opera scores, a few of which I had given him. There was so much paper in that room there was barely space left for the necessities of life: a narrow cot, a battered chest of drawers with a washbasin on it, and a wobbly wooden table pulled up next to the cot; there wasn’t even a chair to sit on. On the table were a pair of scissors and a pot of glue, and Uncle Hummy’s few clothes were hanging from nails on the back of the door. That was the way he lived.

  “Look,” said Phoebe. “Here’s a program from 1891—Die Meistersinger.”

  “I’ll bet he has a program for every production the Metropolitan has ever put on,” Mildred said. “Is that possible, Miss Farrar?”

  “I suppose it is,” I said. “The Met opened in the early 1880s—yes, Uncle Hummy would have been about forty then, or a little older. It’s quite possible.”

  “So what do we do now? Wait for him here?”

  Outside, Caruso was singing Di quella pira from Il Trovatore; someone was accompanying him on an accordion. “I don’t know about you, but I feel uncomfortable here,” I said, “invading his privacy like this. I tell you what—you two wait for him downstairs by the door. I’ll go help the others search the crowd. If Uncle Hummy comes, each of you just grab an arm and hold on. He’s a frail old man, he won’t resist you. Phoebe, do you think you could lock that door with your hairpin?”

  She could. We went back downstairs and outside, and my two favorite gerryflappers took up positions like sentries on either side of the door. I caught sight of Amato, who looked a question at me. No, I shook my head. Not here.

  Caruso had just finished his aria and the crowd was applauding wildly and yelling Bravo! Bravo! I waited until the noise died down a little and then called out, “Pagliacci!” The cry was immediately taken up by the crowd—Pagliacci, Pagliacci! Caruso didn’t know he was the bait, but we had to keep him singing until we’d had time to make a good search.

  He sang. The crowd had more than doubled from the time I went into Uncle Hummy’s building, and it wasn’t easy moving around. And I couldn’t see very far, because no matter where I went somebody taller always
seemed to be standing directly in front of me. But I was used to crowds; hordes of strangers were always pressing up against me after a performance—sometimes cutting off a lock of my hair, sometimes tearing away a piece of my clothing (I wasn’t too fond of that part of it!). So there I was, pushing my way through a mob of people I didn’t know, looking everywhere for Uncle Hummy.

  Caruso finished his Pagliacci aria and I heard Scotti’s voice cry out Aïda!—and the tenor started again. Thank God Caruso had a lot of staying power. I bumped into Emmy once; she was looking rumpled and cross. But I was learning how to use my elbows to make myself a passageway, and plowed on.

  Surely he was here somewhere! I couldn’t believe that Uncle Hummy would run away and abandon his fantastic collection of opera memorabilia—which was all he had to show for his life, when you came down to it. And if he was anywhere in the neighborhood, he’d have to come to this particular block of Mulberry Street once the word about Caruso spread. Uncle Hummy could no more resist Caruso’s singing than Caruso could resist Italian cooking.

  Then I saw him. Standing out at the edge of the crowd, wearing the coat Caruso had bought him, a peddler’s tray suspended from a strap around his neck. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed, a look of sheer ecstasy on his face, oblivious to everything else in the world except the sound of Caruso’s voice.

  “Uncle Hummy?” I said. “Uncle Hummy, I want you to come with me.”

  It took him a moment to realize he was being spoken to, but then he looked at me and his face registered surprise, pleasure, and puzzlement—in that order. He glanced at Caruso and then back at me. “Miz Zherry? Is trouble?”

  “No trouble,” I smiled. “Not now, now that we’ve found you. Come with me, Uncle Hummy—I want to talk to you.”

  Just by talking while Caruso sang we were attracting disapproving stares and angry mutters. Fortunately we also attracted the attention of both Scotti and Emmy, who came shouldering through the crowd from opposite directions. “Uncle Hummy!” Scotti cried. “We look everywhere for you!” Which did nothing at all to reassure the uneasy old man. “Do you—”