Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  And so Herma had an artificial singing master, one with a long neck and a mouth like an Easter lily, one that scratchily grated out the most celebrated voices of the age from its six cylinders: Patti in her famous “Lassù in cielo” from Rigoletto, Madame Schumann-Heink intoning some songs of Schubert, Melba’s “Mi chiamano Mimì,” Tetrazzini trilling away at the Bell Song from Lakmé, the great Jean de Reszke crooning Don Giovanni’s Serenade to mandolin accompaniment (the only record he ever made), and Chaliapin booming away at the aria from the second act of Boris Godunov—this last came through the machine something like a large grasshopper grating its wings. Herma had no difficulty with any of these. Italian and Russian were equal to English, and she simply transposed De Reszke up an octave, and Chaliapin two—he sounded more like a cricket on the hearth, up there, than a grasshopper. At first she even included, in her laryngeal acrobatics, the hissing of the needle on the wax, although Mrs. Opdike was able to cure her of this. Madame Schumann-Heink’s Germanic profundities, even the little catches in her voice, were easy for her. One might have said “child’s play,” except that Herma was not playing, although neither was she working; she was simply opening her lungs like a tiny bird. Mrs. Opdike, in spite of her optimism, did not entirely approve of her mimicry of Madame Schumann-Heink. “A very great voice, my dear,” she told her, “but one that you can hardly learn from now. You ought to wait until you are more buxom.” But it was Papa who had chosen the cylinders, or rather the man at Feeley’s—they came with the apparatus. And so Herma learned Schumann-Heink, and Chaliapin too. She was the only singer Mrs. Opdike had ever encountered who could master that Russian sound with four consonants in it. Herma had no difficulty with it. It was like a rag with three raw eggs in it being dropped on the floor: shtch.

  Papa, one Sunday afternoon, found that peculiar and slightly uncanny transformations had been going on in the sanctity of his home, or what he had imagined as such, while he was away working every day in the Blade office. He stopped reading, lowered the newspaper into his lap, and began listening more carefully.

  “How heavy is the Hand of God in his wrath,” Herma was intoning in perfect pitch although two octaves high. Finding no answer to the Tsar in Russian, she could only reply with:

  “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì,

  ma il mio nome è Lucia.”

  The high F made the glass of the parlor windows ring. Papa stood up holding his newspaper, then he set the newspaper down and went into the kitchen to talk to Mama.

  “Now it seems she’s learned Italian.”

  “Russian too,” said Mama with a little smile. “She learns it from the phonograph.”

  “I am not speaking about the phonograph. I am speaking about this child who is very odd and getting odder all the time.” He twitched with his fingers at his mustache, as he always did when he was uncertain about something. “She leads an unhealthy life. She is in the house all the time. She should be outdoors playing like other children. She needs more fresh air.”

  “She’s always outdoors when she isn’t singing,” said Mama. “She roams around like a little savage. You yourself told me that Mr. Peebles saw her down by Polanski’s. There are lots of worse places for her to be than right here at home, listening to her phonograph and singing. Besides, she may be a famous singer some day.” At this Mama smiled and became a little excited, and a flush came into her cheeks. “Mrs. Opdike says it would be a sin to hide her talent in a basket.”

  “Under a bushel,” Papa corrected her. “I’m not sure it would be a good idea for her to be a singer. These people travel all over the world with dubious companions. Down at the Blade we’ve got a syndicated article about this Melba. It seems she has very free ways. Of course Mr. Peebles is not going to run it. If I were to show you the article,” he said, “you’d see what I mean. Although of course,” he added quickly, twitching at his mustache again, “there’s no need for you to read it. It isn’t suitable. But if you read it …”

  But how had he got started on this blessed article? It was not what he had meant to talk about at all. “My point is,” he went on, attempting to recapture the thread of his argument, “that we are not dealing merely with talent in this case. I am familiar with what talent is. My point is that we are dealing with a very odd child. She does not have normal interests. Little girls are supposed to play with dolls, help their mothers in the kitchen, and prepare themselves in turn for a life of motherhood and devotion to their own future families. That is the mission of women,” he went on, speaking roundly in platitudes as he always did when he fell into the style of editorials for the Blade, “as it is portrayed for us in the Holy Scriptures and the precepts of established society. Woman is charged with preserving all that is pure, innocent, and uplifting in our imperfect mortal existence, and with providing in the home a haven of comfort and solace for her husband and children. Music is all very well; a young lady should be able to play the piano and also to sing, if her inclinations lie in that direction. But it is not proper for her to sing like a Russian basso, or to learn foreign languages without having studied them. In short, what we have to deal with here,” he concluded, pulling at the other side of his mustache, “is not a talent but an aberration. She is not normal. She does not get outdoors enough. She needs some tonic or other. Or perhaps sulphur and molasses would be the thing. I don’t know. Perhaps we should ask Violet.”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Mama. “What does Violet know about music?”

  4.

  So Dr. Violet was not called after all, and instead, the next Sunday, in the afternoon after Meeting, they went to the beach. To do this you walked down Ross to Fourth Street and along Fourth to Main, where the Yellow Dog was waiting in the middle of the street. There it sat, looking much like the horse-car that had previously trudged its way down the narrow tracks from Santa Ana through Angel Town to Balboa, except that the Yellow Dog went by electricity. For this strange substance Herma felt a fascination that had previously been evoked only by the forces of nature, like insects in the grass or Mr. Sampson’s Delilah. It was invisible, and ran without a sound through a slender metal thread, but was capable of bursting out all at once in orange sparks that flashed from the trolley overhead and fell in a shower through the air, and then to make the Yellow Dog hum into motion and start off down the tracks. Something tingled inside Herma when she thought about it. It had many of the qualities of genies in stories, except that, since it never assumed the guise of a barrel-chested and half-naked eunuch, it was not at all frightening. It was an obedient sort of magic, and one capable of myriad powers and effects. Somewhere under the car the engine waited tractably until the motorman pushed his knob, and then, with a thrumming noise, it drew along the car with the people inside as powerfully as a pair of horses. It was a magic and delight, and the Yellow Dog itself was a thing to charm any child. It was like a little house on wheels, with a slanted mast at the top that ran along the wire suspended over the street. It was painted a bright canary with red trim. All along the side, from one end to the other, were the stretched-out words “The Daniel O’Garritty Electric Traction Company,” and on the front and rear, simply “D. O’ G.” in elaborate red letters with square tops and bottoms.

  They climbed on, Mama helping Herma up. The rear half was open like a kind of veranda, but the front end, where the motorman sat holding the brass knob in his glove, was a little room with glass windows and fringed curtains. Papa gave a coin to the motorman and they took their seats in the front. The seats faced sideways, so that Herma was by herself and Papa and Mama were facing her on the other side. Papa, in the same blue suit and derby that he wore to Meeting, carried a large wicker hamper which he set on the seat beside him. Mama wore her white dress with the blue ribbon in the hem, and her white parasol, with the point resting on the floor, had a blue ribbon around the edge. Her hat, her blue Sunday boater, was tilted a little to one side, a raffish touch which contrasted oddly with her seriousness and her pale complexion. Mama was delicate; this was the w
ay people put it. She was not ill exactly, but she was not able to do very much and stayed indoors resting for the most part. As Papa said, the fresh air would do them all good; and Mama, while not putting much real faith in this, conceded to his opinion. A little smile played on her lips as she caught Herma’s eye. Herma was wearing her Sunday dress too, the one with the strawberry-colored ribbon in it, and a ribbon of the same color in her hair. It was her fourth or fifth Meeting dress; when she outgrew one and needed another she always wanted it just the same. Her legs, which did not quite reach the floor, terminated in black patent-leather shoes with white socks. She was excited and slightly feverish, thinking of the sea, the wicker hamper, and the nickel in her pocket for a cone from Haroun.

  Presently the motorman, who was believed by some people to be Mr. O’Garritty himself, settled on his stool and adjusted his greasy glove. He pushed the brass knob and the Yellow Dog hummed and started into motion, making a slow clacking sound as it went over the joints in the tracks. Herma looked out the window opposite at the houses slipping by. It was like the private car on the train; you were sitting in a little room with fringed curtains, yet the house carried you over the world while you sat and looked out the windows. The other passengers were a nervous-looking thin man in shabby clothing, and a brown woman holding a brown child in her lap. They were all minding their own business and paying no attention to her.

  Herma, turning over the rich storehouse of her imagination as Mama might ruffle through the things in her sewing box, conjured up an imaginary wineglass and bottle on an imaginary table in front of her. Holding her fingers gracefully, she raised the glass for a ladylike sip, then set it down on the table again. Next she puffed at her cigar, which she held between her first and second fingers. Replacing the cigar in the saucer (it was majolica, she decided, with blue flowers on white), she was about to reach for the wineglass again when she became aware that Papa was watching her steadily and with an intent expression. Dissolving the table, glass, bottle, and cigar back into the insubstantial phantasm from which they had come, she gazed placidly at the people sitting opposite.

  The brown woman, who was rather plump, wore a white dress like Mama’s, but she had a rainbow-colored shawl with a fringe around her shoulders. Herma had never seen a shawl like that, and she was fascinated with this flamboyance. Did this mean that the brown woman was not respectable? She studied her with more care. The child, who was solemn but energetic, kept twisting about on his mother’s lap to peer out the window, saying, “Mira, Mama!” and pointing at the most ordinary things, a schoolhouse with a flagpole or a dog passing in the street. It was true that everything looked different from the Yellow Dog, yet Herma, with her own self-contained aplomb whatever the excitement inside her, felt superior to this brown child who was constantly astounded. The mother, who seemed sad, said nothing.

  A little farther on, as the Yellow Dog turned onto Myrtle, they passed a motorcar, which was stopped dead by the side of the street while the driver lifted its lid to see what was wrong. It was the first one Herma had ever seen except in magazines. It looked like a black buggy that had lost its horse, with a coffin in front for the motor. She peered curiously at it.

  “I have written an editorial against those things,” said Papa. “But Mr. Peebles probably won’t run it, because he has one of the infernal things himself. They don’t work,” he added, “and they smell bad.”

  “And the noise,” Mama added.

  “They frighten the horses.”

  “And they might,” Mama prophesied, “run over some child.”

  The brown woman with the child on her lap seemed not to notice the motorcar. Beyond the windows the landscape moved by like a painted canvas unrolling in a theater. The orange groves were behind now and the tracks ran over a flat river-bottom land planted with sugar beets. The sugar factory was visible in the distance, an immense yellow barracks puffing smoke out of a chimney. The brown woman began gathering her possessions—a tattered paper bag, a cardboard suitcase, and the child which she sat upright on the floor in front of her. There were some houses ahead in a clump of trees, gradually drawing closer. The motorman applied the brakes and the Yellow Dog slowed down and came to a stop before a tiny ramshackle station with a tin roof. This was Angel Town, called Angelitos by the people that lived there. Here the brown woman got off with her paper bag, her cardboard suitcase, and her child.

  Herma had time only for a glimpse. The town was set in a shady grove of sycamores. It was like a miniature of Santa Ana, with the streets crossing neatly at right angles, and yet different—something about the smell or the colors. The houses were tiny, painted white with trim of emerald green, blue, orange, or sometimes purple. They were covered with flowers—twining myrtle, oleanders, roses, and geraniums. An odor of fried food and chili hung in the air, mingled with the scent of flowers.

  Then the motorman pressed his knob and the Yellow Dog hummed smoothly away, leaving Angel Town behind. The tracks ran along a kind of bluff parallel to the river bottom, then abruptly they came out onto a rise and the sea was visible ahead. The Yellow Dog curved jerkily to the left and continued on with some low bluffs on one side and the sea on the other: first the even parallel rows of breakers, then a vast plain of emerald green dotted with whitecaps. It seemed to go on forever. “What was on the other side? She wasn’t sure; China, perhaps, or Paris where Madame Melba sang in the Opera. She had seen the sea before but it still excited her. She stared gravely out the window at it with a little pull stirring in her heart, somewhere between curiosity and desire. Mama and Papa, on the seat across from her, hadn’t even turned their heads to look behind them.

  But now, coming up at the edge of the water a little distance away, was a curious building that Herma had never noticed before. It looked like a beached ship, or a warehouse that had half decided to go to sea: long and rambling, with a higher part at one end like the cabin of a steamer. Except for that it was only a kind of long, low shed built partly on stilts over the water. There were three bicycles in front of it, and a horse tied to a hitching-post. On the roof was a long, narrow sign, painted red with tin letters nailed to it. The R at the end had half fallen off, but it could still be read—and of course Herma, much bigger, had learned to read now.

  CANTAMAR

  She wondered why it was called that—whether the sea sang there, or whether people sang about the sea. But some instinct told her it was better not to ask. The Yellow Dog came to a stop. There was no station, only a kind of platform of boards in the sand by the tracks. The nervous-looking man got off here and set off over the dunes in a furtive-looking way, without looking behind him, toward the ramshackle building.

  Papa, who was sitting with his back to the beach, glanced around behind him. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “I understand the authorities are not prepared to do anything about the problem.” He said, “I have written an editorial on the subject, but I don’t know whether Mr. Peebles will print it.”

  Mama turned her head even more briefly. She said, “It is tatty.” Her glance, like a hummingbird moving to a flower, fell on Herma for an instant. She exchanged a significant look with Papa. Then they both fell silent and gazed out the window over Herma’s head, at the plain brown bluff on the other side of the tracks. The Yellow Dog started up again and went off along the beach. Herma caught a glimpse of the nervous man disappearing into the ramshackle building.

  They had the Yellow Dog to themselves now; everyone else had gotten off. For a while they continued on along the same landscape, with the sea on one side and the low bluff on the other. Then the bluff fell away and ahead was Balboa Bay, a thin sheet of water full of shoals, with the long sandbar of the Peninsula separating it from the sea. The Yellow Dog, jerking a little to the right, continued on down the Peninsula. A few houses were scattered along the tracks, clustered here and there into gap-toothed villages with many vacant lots. The Yellow Dog stopped at Newport, then at East Newport. Then, a mile or so farther on, it came to the end of t
he line. This was Balboa. The three of them got off, Mama helping Herma down after her and Papa carrying the hamper.

  Even here, at its broadest point, the sandbar of the Peninsula was only a few hundred yards wide. The road from Santa Ana ended here and there was only one cross street, running from the Bay to the trolley station. At the Bay end of the street, built out on pilings over the water, was the Pavilion, a large blue and white building with a gray roof and a kind of belfry on top. People went dancing there on the upstairs floor, and underneath was a restaurant. Since Papa didn’t approve of dancing, and they couldn’t afford to go to restaurants, Herma had never been there. Along the short street from the Pavilion to the beach were the three hotels, the Surfside Apartments, the Netherlands Apartments, and the Hotel Balboa. Here pale lizardlike people from Los Angeles came to stay in the summer. That was all there was, except for Haroun’s Mecca, a small kiosk on the beachfront where ice cream, salt-water taffy, and various polychrome forms of soda water could be bought.