by John Gardner
Louis was totally unprepared for this tall, slender girl with an oval face and eyes the like of which he never before had seen.
“My cousin, Sophia Giarre.” Carlo made it an almost formal introduction. “My friend, Louis. Usually called the Pianist.”
She was dressed both fashionably and at no mean cost, from the smart little cloche hat to her dainty black shoes, matching a long fur coat, the collar turned up so that her face seemed to be framed against the black fur. Her eyes looked steadily into Louis’ face with a kind of amused expression. She extended a gloved hand, without saying anything. When she did speak, it was in the tone of one dealing with an inferior.
“My luggage,” she said, indicating the two leather suitcases which the train conductor had deposited on the platform.
Carlo quickly saved the situation and waved in a porter, telling him where they had parked the car. Then he turned to his cousin, “So, ya finally made it to Chicago.”
“What the hell’s it look like, Carlo? It was either marry the imbecille Mama and Papa had picked out for me, or come to Chicago. As soon as I’m famous, I’ll change my name.”
“Ya think that would be good?” Carlo’s manner had become indulgent. “The Giarres are gonna be very well known in a few years.”
“Yes. Well, so am I.”
At that moment, on the platform of La Salle Street station, Louis’ breath was taken away by this girl. He realized that he was standing there like a clod, his mouth and eyes wide with wonder.
She had long dark hair, fastened up under the cloche, but drifting down, very thick, over her ears. The olive complexion, generous mouth, small nose with perfectly circular nostrils were things he took in, as one would examine a famous painting. Never before had he even looked twice at a girl’s nostrils and marveled at God’s handiwork; but the eyes knocked him out—black as night and, as he was later to learn, usually smiling as though from some hidden, plumbless depths. When those eyes were not smiling, you could almost touch the danger signals that sparked from them.
When they got back to The Barn, and Sophie had freshened up, Louis saw that the fur coat had simply hidden more perfection: a slender figure, tiny waist and breasts which showed small and beautiful under the blouse she wore. Her skin and figure appeared to have been untouched by the pasta and fatty foods which must have been the staple family fare of her New York Italian household.
For the first time in his life, Louis was looking at a woman with more than simple lust in his heart. This was an experience he could hardly understand. Certainly he wanted her; what man would not? But there was more than mere desire of the flesh. Something else had taken light in his mind and heart.
“What ya think, Lou?” Carlo had asked, while Sophie was in her room.
He stood, stumbling with words, for once lost and unable to express himself. What is wrong with me? he thought, then pulled himself together. “Carlo, as for looks and presence, no problem. But we have to see if there’s any possibility that she has a singing voice.”
“I tol’ ya, Pianist. She been singing since she was a kid.”
Louis had half admitted to himself there was a chance she could sing. In the car coming from the train station, his hopes had risen as he talked to the girl.
Somewhere along the line, he thought, Sophia Giarre had extracted herself from her roots. Her voice had no trace of that harsh and nasal New York Italian twang, usually so easily detectable. Instead, there was a well-modulated musical pitch: a correctness which probably meant at some point she had gone to a voice coach. It looked and sounded good.
They walked over to Carlo’s favorite delicatessen and, when they finished eating and Carlo had explained the situation, Louis suggested they should try out some numbers at the piano, back at The Barn.
It was early afternoon, the girls were still sleeping, and there would be very few people on duty.
Sitting at the piano, Louis ran his fingers over the keys. “Carlo tells me you’ve a good voice, so let’s try something. What’s your favorite?”
The eyes smiled and she leaned across the piano so that her breasts strained against the thin material of her blouse. “My favorite what, Pianist?” She gave a little pout. “I shall call you Pianist, like Carlo does.”
This was teasing, he knew it and had seen it in other girls. She was being blatantly sexy with him. He had not bargained for the possibility that she was a little teasing sex bomb. Bomb would be the right word. A bomb ready to explode in his face, bringing Carlo’s wrath down on him like a thunderclap.
He spoke sharply, “Quit playing dumb, Sophie. You’re here to work, and the sooner we know what you can do, the better it’ll be for all of us. Now, your favorite song?”
She flushed. “Can you play ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’?”
“Why not. What key d’you want?”
“Oh, just follow me. On three. One … two …” and, without pausing for a breath, she launched into a sparkling, loud and upbeat version of the popular song. All doubts flew out of the window. She had an extraordinarily true voice. It was so clear, almost innocent, but with such a potential range that Louis immediately felt he would be prostituting this girl by even attempting to turn her into a saloon singer.
As she belted through “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” you could hear humor in her voice—humor, dash, verve, even sexual candor. But hearing it for the first time made Louis pause and think about what he was doing to his own talent.
Before Sophie’s arrival, he had often spent whole afternoons in The Barn, with a pile of music, to work alone and uninterrupted, at the piano. From his first month in Chicago, he had regularly bought piano scores of the great classical repertoire. It was not the relatively easy swinging jazz, stride, or Chicago style that really mattered to him. He could sit down and play that kind of music for hours on end without repeating a single number. Deep inside, he knew his only real fulfillment lay in the great classical works. So he was aware that playing the music forced on him by circumstances was merely a phase: a way, he constantly told himself, would be found.
Eventually he would break out from the brothel-speakeasy existence, just as he would escape from the mob. If he taught this girl the tricks of saloon singing, the techniques of the blues, and the raucous songs the patrons wanted to hear, she would never really know the great, inspiring joy of what he thought of as “real music.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Herbie. I was not a musical snob. I saw that a lot of the popular music had a place in the scheme of things. I knew the two had to coexist and, in the near future, some of the good popular music would become part of the serious music of the day. It was already happening. But, with Sophie, well, I felt maybe I was depriving her of a greatness. In the end, I just let it ride.”
In the couple of weeks that followed, Louis felt distinct, though diminishing, guilt about spoiling a potential opera star. Sophie, he knew, would have made a great soprano.
But there was money involved. On the day of Sophie’s arrival, Carlo had promised that he would negotiate a raise, with either Torrio or Capone, of thirty dollars a week, going up to fifty once Sophie began to work properly.
So, with the conviction that, soon, he would find a way out of Chicago, Louis set to work. He knew that to make things happen for him he had to generate a great effort now, for his own survival. Pride and guilt were easily swallowed and he began the long daily workouts with Sophie.
She was not the easiest person to train but, after a few days, she appeared to find the motivation and enthusiasm. Sparks flew between them; there were violent rows, shouting matches, as Louis pushed her harder and harder, teaching her how to change key in midline, giving her exercises that would improve the strength of her voice: working and working until she caught on to a style of her own. It finally came out halfway between the great blues and jazz singers and the melodic popular songbirds of the time: the female balladeers.
She complained bitterly to Carlo. “Says yer working the shit outta her, Pianist.�
� He gave his old cheeky grin that so charmed women. “Tells me I gotta warn ya off. Tells me ya gotta let up on her.”
“What you tell her?” Louis played three descending chords.
“Told her she had one chance and one fucking choice. If she don’t like hard work, then she should go back to New York and marry this guy her mama and papa picked out for her.”
Louis told Carlo that neither Torrio nor Capone knew what kind of investment they had. “Italian, she certainly is, but with style, great personality and, probably, originality. She could bring in more clients here, Carlo. I’m talking hundreds of clients. Also you got to make sure she doesn’t just appear in the cathouse waiting room with me. You have to get her out in the main lounge.”
Carlo cocked his head and grinned again. “You with her, I suppose. Star billing out front to draw the crowds.”
“You should think about that, Carlo. I can’t run your business for you. I can’t tell you what you should do. But I can tell you to think about it.”
“When do I get to hear her? Properly, I mean, like an audition.”
Originally Carlo had given them two weeks to work things out. The two weeks were now almost over. “Give me one more week, Carlo, and I’ll show you something that’ll knock you sideways.” Louis did not plead. He had learned that was not the way. To plead was to operate from a position of weakness. He was in a position of strength now, and Carlo easily granted the extra week.
“But the end product gotta be worth it, Pianist. If it ain’t, then I got my ass in a sling from Johnny and Al both.”
Now, Louis thought, was the time to bet, to go heavily out on a limb. “Then put Sophie on, with me, in the lounge, one week from tonight. Invite our bosses over to see the show. They won’t be disappointed, I promise you that, Carlo.”
When Sophie arrived for their next lesson, Louis bluntly told her they were on—“One week from tonight. Half an hour minimum, and that means more like an hour what with the encores you’re gonna get. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Torrio and Mr. Capone’ll be there, so we’d better get a real good program mapped out.”
She became almost hysterical at the thought, convinced she was going to be a failure, blaming Louis for not having taught her enough or prepared her properly for a debut like this. “I thought it would only be for the jerks who come in to drink the booze, or the animals who go upstairs to fuck.”
It was the first time Louis had heard her using language like this, and, oddly, it shocked him. He thought of her all the time, awake and drifting off to sleep. She was his first thought in the morning. She haunted his mind, troubled him and, whenever he saw her, his heart leaped at the sight. This was something he still could not understand, for it had never happened to him before. He could not get a handle on what it was: obsession, fascination, or what?
“The word ‘love’ wasn’t in my vocabulary, Herbie. Never realized that it had me on the ropes. It hurt, but the pain was exquisite.”
They worked hard during that last week. Louis even turned down an offer from Tony Genna to attend a prestigious production of Tosca that was passing through Chicago on its way to New York.
In the end, they put together what he thought was a well-balanced spot: “Melancholy Baby,” sung in a sexy, come-on manner, with some really fancy high notes and descending, sliding scales, which Louis built into his version. She was to follow this with the old standard jazz favorite, “Careless Love,” then straight into a highly provocative, blatantly sexual number which began—
I got an all-night trick again,
So keep a-knocking but you can’t come in.
Louis accompanied this with a broken-octave walking bass, which would set people in the right mood for the next number, which he had composed himself, and titled “The Barn Door.” Like so many off-the-cuff jazz pieces written in Chicago—such as “Sunset Café Stomp,” and “The Royal Garden Blues”—“The Barn Door” was a celebration of the speakeasy-brothel in which they worked. Louis had written the whole thing in an hour.
“And I tell you, Herb, that’s what it must’ve sounded like. Like it was written in half an hour. If we had a piano, I could still play the thing, but the words, oh my God! So bloody banal, I can never remember them now. I know it ended, very fast, in an almost Mozartian patter-song style. A popular aria for The Barn, and how many words can you rhyme barn with, huh? Harm, qualm, darn, arm, farm, and so on. I used them all and it worked. God, they were terrible, the lyrics.”
The show would end on a similar belting note with Fred Fisher’s popular hit, “Chicago.”
It would be the big finish. “You’ll leave them breathless if you work it properly,” Louis told her. Sophie was not convinced, but after they had run through the whole thing about fifty times, she seemed moderately happy. He gave her hell during those last rehearsals: shouting at her, bawling her out, cursing at her, making her go back and do it from the top, pointing out her weak moments, so that she would be aware of them, and not fall into old bad habits.
When Louis was completely satisfied, he sent her off, with Carlo, to buy a dress for the big night. “Nothing vulgar, Carlo,” he counseled. “I want her looking real classy. Take advice from the best people only.”
“I know a woman in the trade. She’ll see Sophie okay. She brings in dresses for all the real smart celebrities: the cultured crowd. Don’ worry.”
Sophie returned, bubbling over with excitement. Carlo had been wonderful; she had tried on thirty gowns, real evening gowns that cost a fortune. The lady who had helped was wonderful, again and again, Carlo was wonderful, Louis was wonderful, the dress was wonderful. She insisted Louis should see it right away—“Oh, my God, Lou. Carlo was so generous. I can’t believe my cousin can be so generous.”
Louis did not say that Carlo could afford to be generous, he was using Torrio’s and Capone’s money. Carlo shrugged it off, “If the dress is wrong, blame her. She finally chose the damned thing. Women! I tell ya, Pianist, I pity the man who marries her.”
“Herbie, that was like a key in a lock. ‘Marries her.’ That was it. Like a damned great bolt of lightning, I knew. I loved her. I was in love, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, I tell you.”
Sophia Giarre proved she had style and dress sense. The gown was just right. A very simple black sheath. With her jet hair piled up, Sophie would look older than her twenty years. Older and more sophisticated. The moment she appeared wearing the gown, modeling it for him, Louis also saw, and felt, that it did a great deal for her sexuality. Sensual at the best of times, this black gown gave her an almost tangible eroticism. It was enough to make Louis feel embarrassed and squirm in his chair. He kept his eyes firmly on the girl, and did not even dare look at Carlo, for it was Carlo who had unlocked the door to his emotions.
The long hours spent working with Sophie, being very close to her, were suddenly crystallized when he saw her appear in the new gown—a ripe and fully grown woman. He wanted her at that moment, wanted her physically, and also wanted to tell her he loved her, to talk with her, learn about her past and share his own ambitions with her. He thought he detected a glint in her eyes, also, as she looked at him, and he wondered, with a sinking heart, if Carlo had noticed.
There was one last run-through; then, before they knew it, the evening was upon them. The evening of Sophie’s triumph, or failure. It would be his triumph or failure also.
They had decided she would go on at midnight. Until then, Louis went about his normal duties. He thought, maybe, it was his imagination, but it seemed as though more people than usual were in The Barn that night.
Torrio and Capone, with their women and bodyguards, came in around eleven thirty. While Carlo was getting them settled at a good table, Louis went to Sophie’s room, where he found her ready, but in a state of agitation and nerves.
Carlo had given Louis a bottle of real French champagne a week or so before. “I picked up a couple of bottles from the boss,” he said. “Ya might as well have one of them. I prefer straight whisky any
time of day.” Now, Louis thought, this was as good a time as any to open the bottle. At least it would be put to good use: calming Sophie’s nerves.
She paced the room, her hands clenching and unclenching, and her dark eyes showing recognizably genuine fear. “I’m going to be terrible,” she kept repeating. “You’ve done all you can, Louis. But I know, I just know, those bums out there’re going to tear me apart.”
“They’ll do nothing of the kind.” He poured each of them a glass of champagne. “Drink it quickly.” She obeyed, and he poured another glass. Then a little more. Sophie was not used to alcohol and he wanted to avoid getting her anywhere near drunk. If he could just bring her to a relaxed high, give her initial confidence, then, he was sure, the first song, and the audience reaction, would do the rest.
She giggled on the second glass, saying the usual thing about the bubbles tickling her nose. He told her just to sip the last half glass. She began to relax, but the deep fear showed, vital, in her eyes. In the most natural of actions, Louis put an arm around her waist. Then all the feeling between them exploded. Her arms slid around his neck, and she pressed herself close to him so that he could feel her body through the thin material of her dress. She kissed his ear, then bit into it with her teeth, muttering, “Caro mia! Oh, Lou, coro mia!”
Then, she whispered, “I want to kiss you, but we’re on in a minute. Louis, why didn’t you hold me like this before? I’ve so wanted you to.” She pushed her thighs close to his, wriggled, and pressed the whole of her body against him as though, by some magic, she could pass flesh and bones through their garments and get her whole self inside him.
He pulled away, gently. He did not say what he knew he should—that she was forbidden fruit; that Carlo would kill him if he ever caught them, even like this. He had known fear before, but this apprehension spread through him like a delicious scent of danger. When he spoke, his voice seemed to be jammed into the back of his throat and he hardly recognized himself—