Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  He got out in a muffled tone, “I respect you too much.”

  “Do you?” she said, seething inwardly.

  18.

  Fred stood naked before the mirror, examining himself intently, with particular attention to the chest to see if there were any signs of incipient hairs on it. It was a masculine form that he saw before him in the glass, but just barely. No hair on the chest; the body was slender and the hips almost straight. He was still pleased with himself. Herma, he thought, was more boyish than he was girlish. And besides, some intuition told him, there were women in the world who were attracted by this touch of grace, this slight suggestion of the androgynous.

  Then he noticed a scrap of paper stuck into the mirror frame. On it, in a spidery feminine hand, he read, “Fred, the door latch is loose again. The door comes open and Mama and Papa are going to see you.”

  He glanced at the door behind him; in fact it was an inch or two ajar. Crumpling the note and dropping it into the wastebasket, he went to the bottom drawer of the chiffonier and took out a screwdriver, a tack hammer, and a small rat-tailed file. Then he went over to look at the latch.

  It was a very simple mechanism. A square metal box fitted onto the door, with a fluted knob that you turned to set the latch. The steel tongue fitted into a slot in the door jamb, or more precisely into the striking plate with an oblong hole in it. But when the screws came loose the tongue wouldn’t stay in place and slid out sideways. The trouble was that the screw holes from long overuse had become enlarged.

  Still naked, he unscrewed the whole business and set the latch and the four screws on the chiffonier. Then he crossed the room to the nightstand and got a half-dozen burnt matches from the saucer under the oil lamp. He tapped these into the screw holes with the hammer, broke them off, and tapped in the broken ends as well. He chipped the ends smooth using the screwdriver as a chisel. Then he fitted the latch back into place and drove in the four screws, which now held tightly. The slot in one of the screws was badly chewed and he smoothed it off with the file. He also tightened the screws in the striking plate, which were only slightly loose. He closed the door and tried the latch. It worked perfectly.

  Putting the tools away and going back to the mirror, he dressed himself in a white bicycle jersey and knickers and put on his French racing cap. With a final glance at his reflection in the glass, he went out, closing the door softly behind him. There was no sound from the bedroom across the hall where Mama was lying down. Outside he went to the bottom of the yard where he kept his bicycle, threw it over the fence, climbed over after it, and rode off to the library. Miss Elmira Cliff was used to him now and didn’t even look up.

  In the new issue of The Scientific Gentleman there was an article by a British engineer named Frederick W. Lanchester giving more details on the Wright flying machine, including drawings and precise dimensions. There was also more information about the control mechanism. The matter of the exact function of wing warping, which had puzzled Fred before, was cleared up.

  Unlike previous machines such as the Voisin, which are designed to be automatically and inherently stable, in the Wright machine the lateral stability is under the direct control of the aeronaut. It is desirable to correct a false impression that is current on the action of the wing twist. It has been supposed by some that it is used to give the cant required by the machine when turning, but such is not the case. If the rudder is used, the machine almost immediately gets a cant owing to the greater pressure on the wing that in turning is moving faster through the air, and this cant becomes, if unchecked, far too severe. The twist is then used to check the cant, the wing on the outer circle—that is, farthest from the center of curvature—being ‘feathered,’ and the inner one having its angle of incidence increased. The wing twisting is effected by a system of cables, as illustrated.

  The drawings showed how the operator, lying prone on the lower wing, controlled the cables by shifting his body left or right against a harness. With one hand he held the rudder stick, with the other the lever that adjusted the forward elevator. Fred studied all this intently. He imagined the sensations of lying down on the wing, fitting one’s self into the harness, and gripping the two levers. Then, with the roar of the engine vibrating through it, the machine soared off into the wide and limitless sky. He slid his body back and forth on the library chair and imagined it pushing against the warping harness, left and right. On the table before him were the two levers, the rudder stick, and the elevator control. If you turned the rudder stick too sharply, the cant would be excessive and you had to correct by shifting the warping harness the other way. Miss Cliff stopped her work at the desk and looked at him sharply over the top of her Franklin glasses.

  He shut the magazine with a snap, flung it onto the table, and went outside. A hot silence hung over everything; the trees were dusty, a cat was asleep on the library steps. He paced up and down on the lawn for a while. The details of the Wright machine swarmed in his head like bees, each one distinct and buzzing. Every word of the magazine article, every detail of the drawings, was fixed lucidly in his mind. At the same time he felt himself filled with an odd and powerful desire. It was very strange. At first the notion struck him that this urge might be satisfied with a visit to Cantamar. But this wasn’t exactly it, and besides he remembered Dr. Violet’s treatment. He felt in his pocket; he had a couple of quarters and a few other coins. He got onto his bicycle and rode off furiously down Main Street in the direction of the beach.

  A half an hour later he parked the bike against the Kotton Kandy stand at the entrance to the Exposition. This time he knew his way through the maze of concessions and exhibits and made his way directly to the Flying Machine. But as he approached it he saw that something was changed. It was unusually quiet, and he had the impression that something that had been there before was missing. After a moment he realized it was the ticket booth.

  There was no sign of anyone around. He started to push his way through the canvas flap to the inside, and met Gambrinus coming out.

  “It’s closed.”

  “Closed?”

  “Yes. I have another business now.”

  Fred, still winded a little from the bicycle trip, felt a sense of cutting disappointment that surprised him in its intensity. He waited for Gambrinus to say something more, but the dwarf only stood there half in the canvas silo and half out, as though he were trying to block Fred’s view of what was inside. There was no sign of Marmora.

  “What is the other business?”

  “It’s an extension of my former enterprise,” said Gambrinus with a Machiavellian craft, “only somewhat more technically advanced.”

  With similar stealth, Fred attempted to draw him out. “Is it a flying machine?”

  The dwarf gazed at him narrowly.

  “Are you able to keep a secret?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I am not interested in your beliefs. You must swear.”

  “Very well. I swear,” said Fred, a little amused.

  “It is the first one of its sort,” said the dwarf, “in this part of the world.”

  Fred waited for him to go on and explain more. But Gambrinus still seemed suspicious of him—or not suspicious exactly but dubious—or not dubious exactly but reflective, as though he were sizing him up and deciding whether he would do for some purpose or other. Evidently he decided he would, for after another moment of staring at him in silence he turned on his heel and led the way outside the silo and around to the rear of the canvas structure. Whatever it was, thought Fred, it was very small, because there was nothing there but a shed about the size of a piano case. Fred began to feel disappointed again.

  The ticket booth was nearby, lying prone on the ground. Gambrinus opened the shed. After some fussing he led out a small dogcart; and in this case the appellation was no mere joke or metaphor, for in fact it was drawn by a sturdy and oversized Saint Bernard, who was called, with a singular lack of originality, Bernard. As for the cart, it was made out of wicke
r and resembled the gondola of a small balloon. It had brass fittings, ropes wound around the edges, and a polished wooden floor, but no place to sit. It was very old and worn; it gave the impression of an antique of some sort, or a ship in an old print.

  They got in, Fred sitting on the wooden floor of the basket and Gambrinus standing with the reins in one hand and a gnarled old black stick in the other. With this he beat the dog, who paid no attention. He was about the size of an ordinary Shetland pony, and he seemed to have no will of his own; he was eternally cheerful, he was strong and tireless, and although he did not subsist on hay, he seemed in every other way to be under the impression that he was a horse. When he dunged, he did so not in the undignified way of a dog, but quite calmly like a pony, standing there between the shafts of the cart. Whenever he did this Gambrinus beat him with the stick, but Bernard paid no attention to this either.

  They went off down the beach at a trot, Gambrinus steering the car out to the very edge of the surf where the sand was hard. It was only a little more than a mile to the end of the Peninsula. It was a lonely, deserted, and windswept beach. There were no houses this far down, although across the sea channel, on the bluff of Corona del Mar, someone had built a hotel which had finally collapsed and was abandoned.

  However, as they drew closer Fred saw that there was a structure of some sort on the beach almost at the end of the Peninsula, one that he had never noticed before. The dogcart approached it rapidly. It was a kind of low barn or shed, shaped like a T, with large sliding doors on the front. It faced toward the sea, into the wind. In front of it a long wooden plank with an iron rail on top of it ran down the sloping sand toward the water. Fred’s heart began to thump a little.

  Gambrinus dropped the reins, clambered out, and unlocked the doors of the shed and pushed them open, grunting and straining at the task. He would not let Fred do anything. In any case Fred was too fascinated to do more than stand and look. He had already guessed what was inside the shed from its shape. But the thing was larger than he expected. The great wings, made of varnished linen stretched over beautifully fashioned frames of spruce, were more than six feet wide and forty feet long. Between them was an intricate spiderweb of bracing wires. The canard elevator stuck out in front so that the doors of the shed would barely close over it. The four-cylinder gas engine was mounted neatly on the lower wing, a little to the right of center to allow a place for the operator. Behind, in the gloom, he made out the eight-foot airscrews, cocked at an angle to fit under the roof of the shed.

  He went inside and walked around it. Although Gambrinus would allow him to touch nothing, he was able to examine the controls at short range. The harness that enclosed the operator’s body was a kind of wooden belt, with cables leading away on either side toward the wings. In front, at the edge of the wing, were the rudder stick and elevator lever. The whole thing smelled of varnish, of fine wood, and of engine oil. Fred made an effort to suppress his excitement. He took a breath, put his hands in his pockets, and came out into the sunlight again. He began interrogating Gambrinus with a studied casualness.

  “What’s this?”

  “You can see what it is.”

  “Yes, but what’s it for?”

  “It’s for anyone to fly who wishes.”

  “Anyone who wishes?”

  “Yes. It’s fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty dollars?”

  The dwarf straightened his beaver hat and strutted around on the sand with an angry expression. “I’m a businessman, young man. I’m not a philanthropist, I earn my living by my enterprise. This machine is very expensive. And then I had to have it shipped out from Ohio, first by railroad to San Francisco and then by schooner to Newport. I am not an aeronaut. I have bought it on speculation, with the idea that the enterprising, courageous, adventurous youth of this part of the world will want to try their hand at it.” Here he stopped, his angry expression disappeared, and he fixed his glance steadily on Fred’s face.

  “I’m interested, of course.”

  Gambrinus waited for him to go on.

  “I think I could fly it. I’m familiar with the way the thing works. In theory at least.”

  “No doubt.”

  “For the steam machine you only charged fifty cents. For this you ask fifty dollars. That’s a hundred times as much.”

  “It’s very expensive, as I told you. I’m not a philanthropist.”

  He said nothing more, and there was a silence between them. While Fred stood watching with his hands in his pockets, Gambrinus pushed the big doors shut and fastened them with the padlock.

  They got back into the dogcart and Bernard drew them rapidly away across the sand.

  Gambrinus turned to him. “I don’t suppose you have fifty dollars?”

  Fred said nothing.

  19.

  Herma stood naked before the mirror, examining herself intently, with particular attention to the chest, to see if she could see any signs at all of swellings at the places where two small aureoles, the size of berries, were fixed on the flat and narrow surface. She thought she could make out a pair of slight convexities, if she stood at just the right angle, although perhaps they were only shadows. It was a boyish kind of figure. Still, she liked it.

  Then she noticed a scrap of paper stuck into the frame of the mirror. In square blocky letters it said, “Tough titty. Your dude can project everything except what you want.”

  Crude-minded brute! She tore the paper off and threw it into the wastebasket. She found another piece of paper and wrote on it in her spidery hand. “O, Bird-Man. There’s no money in the top drawer. So don’t get your hopes up.”

  Still stark naked, she stuck this into the mirror. Then she went to the chiffonier for her drawers, flung on her white dress with the strawberry-colored ribbons, tossed her hair to shake the tangles out of it, glanced one last time into the mirror, and went out.

  She went down Ross and turned left on Sixth, then right again on Sycamore. It was only five minutes to the tiny bungalow with the screened porch running across the front of it, shaded and cool under the trees. Mrs. Opdike’s cat Amadeus was sleeping on the glider in the screened porch. Herma pushed open the door and went in without knocking.

  Mrs. Opdike was at the piano, tinkling away at some Chopin or other. She was not an expert pianist, or musician of any sort, and didn’t claim to be. “For,” as she said, “all my heart and soul goes to my pupils, and it is through them that I give to the world my art.” Still there was nothing pretentious about her, and she spoke of her music as another woman might speak about her cooking. There was, in fact, a housewifely quality about her attitude to music. She produced music as other women produced apple pies. She did her best, dusted the flour off her fingers, so to speak, and set it on the table. If anyone liked it, so much the better. She concluded the Chopin with a single plump finger on the E flat and said, “Hello, dear.”

  There was a placid and capacious quality about Mrs. Opdike. She wore flowered dresses and her face was pink, her hair pink too, so that she gave the impression of a large floral cloud sitting at the piano—where she almost invariably sat, unless someone else was playing it. To imagine Mrs. Opdike in bed, or eating dinner, or doing anything else than music, was unthinkable. Mrs. Opdike was a floral cloud at the piano.

  “We must buckle down today,” she told Herma, “and work like a trooper.” (One of her favorite expressions.)

  “The Bell Song from Lakmé?”

  “No.”

  She was spreading another score out on the piano, a very large one. It was as thick as a book.

  “Today instead,” she said, “I want you to try something new. As you know,” she went on, “the new French’s Opera House is now being built, at Fourth and Bush. It will be a great contribution and it will enrich the cultural life of the community. And for the opening, which is only a few months away now, there will be a gala premiere, and do you know what the first performance will be?”

  Herma didn’t, so she told her, “The
Marriage of Figaro, by Mozart. And the news, dear, which is not announced officially yet, is that a great Diva from the Metropolitan Opera in New York will be engaged for the lead, and people are contributing to a fund for bringing her here. I can’t be sure yet, but it’s possible it will be Albertina Moellendorf. She’s the prima donna of the Metropolitan, and she receives two thousand dollars for a performance. Or so they say. Perhaps it will be somebody else, but it will certainly be a great soprano from the Metropolitan. Anyhow,” she said, realizing that she was getting distracted in these dreams about La Moellendorf, “the other parts will be sung by artists from San Francisco or Los Angeles, except that local singers may be used when others aren’t available, or if they cost too much. Do you know what that means, dear?”

  Herma didn’t know what it meant.

  “It means that you must begin working right away, and practice night and day, and work like a trooper. Because some of the parts,” she explained, “will be cast by audition.”

  She opened the score and flapped it out onto the music stand.

  “W. A. Mozart

  LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

  Opera Buffa in Quattro Atti”

  “And,” she went on, “do you know the part you are going to sing? The part of Cherubino.”

  She flipped the pages over to the second act. “Tra, la la la la. Voi che sapete, che cosa è amor. I can’t really do it because it’s a mezzo part. Cherubino, my dear,” she said, “is a boy. It’s called a breeches part. Mozart often composed male parts to be sung by women. He liked curiosities of all kinds. He once met a singer called Lucrezia Agujari who was called La Bastardella, She could sing coloratura up to C in alt. That’s a whole octave above high C, which is already a nightmare for most sopranos. He wrote the role of Queen of the Night for her and made her sing even higher, up to F in alt.”

  But she was getting distracted again, she realized. “Tamino in The Magic Flute is often sung by women. Now then, dear, this is the Canzonetta, which is the main aria for Cherubino in this particular opera. It isn’t really very difficult.” She struck a chord and, bending forward to peer at the score, embarked into the continuo accompaniment.