Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  It stopped jabbing its beak in the mud and stared at Fred. The tiny eyes were fixed on him. Then, evidently disapproving, it began sprinting away to windward across the shallow water. The motion was ludicrous, as though a person were trying to run on stilts and splashing in the water as he went. The big wings flapped: a-woo, a-woo. But then the heron managed at last to get clear of the water. He pulled up his legs and trailed them to the rear of his body. He assumed a soaring configuration, and became beautiful. No longer was he earthbound and limited. He turned into a flying machine, one perfectly designed, far finer than the Wright. He mounted effortlessly, turned away toward the cliff and into the shadow, and came out of it into the sunshine again. It was hardly necessary for him to move his wings. Taking advantage of every air current, he turned and banked, flexing the long feathers of his wing tips. He was nothing but two immense wings with a slim body between them, shaped to slip frictionless through the air, and a keen intelligence in the small tapered bulb on the front. Fred watched him for a long time. Not once did he move his wings till he was out of sight.

  24.

  Sometimes after they had dined at the Pavilion or simply gone for an evening spin in the Waverley, Herma and Earl drove back to the Electric Theater, and there he would put on a private showing for her. He ordered many different pictures from Los Angeles—comedies, melodramas, acrobats and circuses, fragments of opera, even newsreels of strutting Balkan soldiers or earthquakes in Armenia. The one she remembered most clearly, however, was the time she had quite unexpectedly seen Madame Modjeska appear on the wavering silver screen in front of her.

  They had come back from the beach on a warm night that seemed to hold the promise of something special in it, a particular sensualism that seemed to hang in the dark air with its faint scent of orange blossoms.

  Earl parked the Waverley behind the theater and helped her down from the machine. He was particularly courtly this evening. He opened the door of the theater also for her, and helped her off with the velvet cloak she sometimes wore over her gown in the evening. As he did this his hands touched the strawberry bouquet in her hair and disarranged it. She laughed. Reaching up, she pulled off the bouquet, took the strawberry out of the leaves, and offered it to him. At first he hesitated. Then he opened his mouth and she popped it in. After a moment he chewed it slowly and swallowed. Then he smiled, not quite understanding why she was behaving so oddly.

  Once he was behind his projector his assurance returned, and he busied himself with the reel and the arc lamp with the deft gestures of a professional. He seemed really at home only in the theater and at the tiller of the Waverley. As soon as he was away from his machines, a bumbling male shyness came over him, and he was tentative and unsure of himself. It was this quality of him, as much as his skill with things mechanical, that Herma liked. She took her seat, and the projector started with its clucking whir.

  This evening the program was chiefly dramatic. Bernhardt, propped on her cane, recited a scene from Racine’s Phèdre in French. The Victrola seemed a little flustered by the foreign language and sometimes missed a word. “Tout a changé de face,” the Divine Sarah intoned hoarsely,

  “Depuis que sur ces bords les Dieux ont envoyé

  La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé.”

  But this last word came out “possibly,” the best the Victrola could do. Herma was also a little mystified by the fact that this speech was supposed to belong to Hippolytus, and was a reference to Phèdre herself, that is, to Madame Bernhardt. But perhaps the Diva was able to do all parts, including the male ones, which she therefore spoke hoarsely. Her Comédie Française accent, with its elegant grasseyement, was a marvel, except of course for the last word.

  There followed several trifles, including a piece of East Lynne delivered by somebody or other and a rather confused scene from Belasco’s Girl of the Golden West, all blurry and covered with scratches. “The film is rather worn,” Earl apologized.

  Then he threaded another film, and unexpectedly there wavered onto the screen the familiar queenlike figure with the alert expression, the dark patches under the eyes, and the restrained smile. She was visible only in half figure, wearing an elegant gown sprinkled with sequins. She began speaking, although nothing could be heard at first, because Earl was intent on setting down the needle at exactly the right place on the record. Then, after a little grating scratch, Madame Modjeska launched into her most famous part, that of Rosalind in As You Like It. “Am I not your Rosalind?” she inquired archly; and, hardly waiting for an answer, she went on to explain the true nature of love. Following that—she had a whole twenty-minute reel to herself—she did the Epilogue, and then, backing up to the middle of the play again, she engaged in a dialogue with Orlando in which she was clad in boy’s garments and pretending to be Ganymede the amorous cupbearer.

  ORLANDO: Are you native of this place?

  ROSALIND: As the cony, that you see dwell where she is kindled.

  ORLANDO: Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

  Flickering slightly at the edges, he gazed in amorous surmise at the pretty youth, wondering perhaps whether the cony could be kindled. This ambiguity Herma found deeply exciting. She watched intently, a restrained little smile on her face.

  “Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do,” the youth on the screen concluded with a meaningful lowering of his eyes. Orlando and Rosalind disappeared, to the sound of flapping celluloid. The screen turned white. The sputtering arc lamp was removed from the machine and extinguished.

  Herma stood up. She and Earl were standing only an arm’s length apart in the darkened theater. Taking resolve, she flung herself into his arms, but did so—with her thorough understanding of male pride in such matters—in a way that gave him the impression it was he who had seized her. They stood for some time enfolded in love’s rapture, as in the wings of an enormous bird.

  “What was that play anyhow?” asked Earl, a little mystified by the course of events.

  “As You Like It.”

  He managed to mumble, “I like this fine.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “It’s too bad,” he said in a muffled tone, “that there isn’t. You know. Some place we could go.”

  A most interesting idea struck Herma.

  “Could we … do it … here?”

  “But there’s no place to … gee … it’s impossible.”

  Herma pulled away from his grasp and went to the front of the theater to get eight or ten chairs. Even though they were all different, she selected those that were upholstered in one way or another. She arranged them in the narrow space in front of the projecting machine, front to front, so that the backs formed a kind of rail to keep them from rolling out. “There,” she said. “You see, it’s almost like a bed.”

  He stared at her dubiously. Still, he allowed himself to be pulled down on the improvised couch next to her. It was quite comfortable, more than one might expect.

  Herma had another idea.

  “But you have to start the projector.”

  “The projector?”

  “Put in the film and start it. Put in the same film,” she told him, “that you showed me the first time. You know, the horses, and the lovers on the balcony, and the Götterdämmerung.”

  “But why?”

  “Because otherwise I’ll get up and go home.”

  He sat up, crawled out of the bed of chairs, and searched around feverishly among the cans of film under the table. Finding the right one, he threaded it hurriedly and started up the machine. Then, with a long sigh, he stretched himself out beside her again.

  Of course there were no sound effects. Earl couldn’t be expected to get up from this precarious bower and knock together coconut shells, start the Victrola, and kick over bowling pins at every other moment. All the sounds had to be imagined. But this was not very difficult for a person with the gift of absolute auditory recall. Herma heard every coconut shell and note
of music in her head, through a kind of willful and controlled hallucination. And even the odors were not too difficult to evoke, through this same sort of voluntary memory. The horses began galloping. Earl began—what? He was not quite sure what he was doing. He had the impression, somehow, that it was she who was showing him what to do, that it was she who knew better than he what it was that he wanted. He was also bewildered and pleased by the fact that most of their clothes seemed to have come off in some way without his noticing it.

  As for Herma, she was transported—and now she knew that this expression, so often used in describing the effects of love, was no mere metaphor. She was the horse galloping; although perhaps the sound she heard was only that of their two hearts, the beats slightly staggered, pounding in syncopation. The lovers appeared on the balcony, and Earl gathered his courage and kissed her full on the lips, to the strains of Träumerei. This scene went on for some time, although neither was impatient for it to end. Earl effected his penetration, not without a certain awkwardness, just at the point where the sad man put his foot into the bucket and fell down the flight of stairs. It was all a little frantic but still quite nice, and it didn’t hurt anybody, as things don’t in movies. Herma felt that she had fallen downstairs, in a floaty and dreamlike way, and it made her spine tingle with an electricity that trickled out to her very toes and fingers. Earl seemed to be catching on. He learned as he went, and he gave the impression that he was entering a new epoch for him, one in which he transferred his skill with things mechanical into a more spiritual and sentimental realm.

  The young woman in the floating dress ran through the field of flowers. The lover sprang from the horse and embraced her. They disappeared, and the peasants climbed into the tub and began treading on the grapes. Now the mood was not sentimental at all; it was earthy and Dionysiac. Herma was even more drunk than she had been after the bottle of wine at the Pavilion. Still, a part of her mind was clear, regarding everything with a piercing attentiveness. The celluloid whirled through the reels; one spool shrank and the other grew larger. Herma watched the ghostly schooner with silver sails creeping out to sea. It seemed to her that she too was embarking on a mysterious voyage, one that would take her to far lands, through perils, to joys and ecstasies that remained for the moment nebulous; although what she was feeling just now was perhaps a premonition. If this were true…. The screen fluttered white again, and then darkened into the Götterdämmerung scene.

  The portentous Wagnerian strains pulsed in Herma’s inner ear. Madame Schumann-Heink as Brünnhilde wearing gold snake bracelets around her ample arms and a helmet with wings, called upon Wotan in a heroic mezzo. Siegfried’s body was laid on the fire, and the large-bosomed heroine herself set the flame to it. Earl could hardly contain himself. The torch from the screen flared inside Herma and spread until her whole body felt feverish.

  Madame Schumann-Heink was inexhaustible. Raising one arm, then the other, she frowned out of the screen and opened and closed her mouth. Herma heard the great high C of her “Siegfried, Brünnhilde greets you in bliss!” This ringing note made the flames leap up around the pyre. And just then, inside Herma and simultaneously at the very prick of Earl’s desire, all pandemonium broke loose. The two of them became one, a one in which a great Lost Chord trembled and shook from the organ. The very central being of Herma, or of the one being they had both become, was lost in a vast fortissimo. A red glow spread on the horizon, to the accompaniment of the Valhalla theme. At last the flaming tremulo inside the two of them, where they were joined, died away. It was a good thing, because a mortal frame could only sustain so much.

  There actually was a smell of fire. Herma came to her senses and sat up. The last of the film had flapped through the projector, but the screen was not white as usual. Instead it was smoking and little tongues of flame had appeared at the edges. As she watched, a piece the size of a hand turned black and peeled from the middle.

  She hurriedly began putting her clothes on. There was a pounding of feet on the sidewalk outside, and a few seconds later the distant sound of a bell clanging. Where, oh where were her slippers? She found them, under the projector table. Earl was also having trouble finding his garments, some of which were under the bower of chairs. It was amazing how easily these things had come off, and how hard they were to find when you went to put them on again. Earl wore suspenders, which she hadn’t noticed before. She seized the light cloak, threw it around her shoulders, and fled. There was no one outside in the alley, except that it was full of smoke.

  The roof of the Electric Theater, which up to now had only been sizzling, burst into an orange-colored fountain. All the houses along Main Street, clear up to the corner of Fourth, were illuminated in the pinkish glow. A number of pigeons, awakened by all the tumult, flew in and out of the red smoky haze overhead.

  Some people ran one way on the sidewalk, some another. Through the smoke she discerned Earl, quite calm to all appearances except that he had not been able to find his necktie, backing the Waverley out of the alley and steering it away to safety. Herma hurried up toward Fourth Street. No one paid any attention to her. Just as she turned the corner a magnificent fire-engine—a brass boiler set upright on red and gilded wheels and drawn by four galloping white horses—came down the street and careened around the corner onto Main.

  25.

  After the great excitement of the burning down of the Electric Theater, the next chief event to attract public attention in Santa Ana was the première of the new French’s Opera House. It was a large and impressive edifice, built of solid brick with elaborate ornaments somewhat Moorish in effect, at the corner of Fourth and Bush. From the street entrance on Bush the doors led into the ticket office. At either side of this you went up a flight of stairs and came out, through a portal copied from the Alhambra in Granada, into the theater itself. A vast terrace of seats, five hundred and seventeen of them, sloped down to the stage, and there were boxes along the sides. For the artists there was also a stage entrance on the alley off Bush Street. The lighting was by Edison bulb but also by gas, in case there should be some difficulty with the newfangled electricity. On the front of the building, for two weeks in advance, the posters had been plastered.

  Grand Première

  THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO

  an Opera by Mozart

  starring the celebrated

  MADAME ALBERTINA MOELLENDORF

  of the Metropolitan Opera Company, N.Y., N.Y.

  Herma, arriving well ahead of time and with a keen sense of excitement at the stage entrance, went up the stairs and along the corridor to the door with her name on it. She had her own dressing room, since Cherubino was almost a lead part. In front of the small mirror—but a brand-new one—she donned her flamingo-colored breeches, her burnt-umber coat with gilded sleeves, her short wig, and her stockings. The breeches fitted like a glove. They were almost too tight; it was as though they were painted on her. Luckily the coat came well down over her fork, as some people called it. Pleased with herself, she went out and down the corridor to the stage, where she waited with the others in the wings.

  After the short overture, the curtain went up and Figaro and Susanna embarked into their recitative arguing whether the Count had the droit du seigneur over his wife’s maid. Figaro did his aria predicting that he would make the Count dance a tune, singing through his teeth, with expert sarcasm, “Se vuol ballare, signor Contino.” This was repeated several times with da capos.

  Herma could scarcely contain her impatience. She tugged at the scenery and breathed deeply. At last came the moment of her entrance as the amorous page. Running out confidently to center stage, she trilled, “Susanetta, sei tu?” wheeling so that the coat swung open to reveal the well-fitting breeches. She felt quite at home, basking in the flood of light from overhead and from the footlights at the edge of the stage. She felt no trace of stage fright, any more than she had at the church social, years before, when she was a little girl. It was here on the stage that she belonged! She felt as t
hough she had always known that. She was moving forward now into her real existence, the life for which the years in the house on Ross Street, and in the small provincial town sleeping in its orange groves, had been only a preparation.

  To tell the truth she didn’t have much to do in the first act. However there was her charming little song, her I’d-like-to-know-what-love-is aria. She (or rather he, Cherubino) introduced just the right note of the plaintive, with an underlying gaiety just below the surface.

  “Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio,

  or di foco, ora sono di ghiaccio …”

  This was easy; not only had Mrs. Opdike drilled her in it over and over again, but she had heard Melba do it on the flickering white screen. When she finished there was even a trickle of applause from the audience in the vast black space out in front of her.

  After that there was not very much for Herma in the first act, although there was a fine piece of stage business. Cherubino, dallying with Susanna, was surprised by the Count and took shelter behind a chair. The Count in his turn began courting the maid, but Basilio came in; so the Count sprang behind the chair, while Cherubino slipped adroitly under the cloth covering it. He sat there for some time with his head making a bump in the cloth. The Count emerged and began explaining how on a previous occasion he had discovered Cherubino hiding in just such a chair. “Like this!” he sang, whipping away the cloth. And there was the amorous page again. Coup de théâtre, leading to a four-part ensemble. Everyone sang away at exclamations of astonishment, dismay, and cynicism about the female sex. Cherubino didn’t bother to defend himself. He only smiled, turning again so that the coat swung open to reveal the flamingo-colored breeches. This gesture so charmed the audience that a little rattle of applause broke out, right in the middle of Basilio’s attempt to explain that all the trouble was due to this Cherub of Love. His black look told her: that, Mademoiselle Herma, is called stealing a scene. But Herma didn’t care. The tenor who sang Basilio was only from San Francisco and not from New York; besides, he forced some notes and sang high B in falsetto. She smiled winningly at him. The curtain came down for the act.