Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  “Her morality is sheerly economic. It’s a way of renting more rooms. Wait now while I think what to do.”

  She gazed speculatively at Fred, his torn clothes, and the bruise on his cheek.

  “Come on.”

  Fred, still limping, allowed himself to be led down the sidewalk and across the curb into the street. They were directly in front of the rooming house. The gang of idlers watched with interest.

  “Lie down.”

  “What?”

  “Just do as I tell you. Lie down on your back in the street.”

  He lay down on the filthy pavement. His joints were getting stiffer, and he had to lower himself gingerly, limb by limb.

  “No, wait. Sit up again.”

  He sat up. She pulled off the torn whipcord jacket and threw it a few feet away on the pavement. Then she ripped open his shirt, making the buttons fly away like bullets in the darkness. The bruises on his ribs were clearly visible in the glow from the gas lamp a few yards down the street. The idlers on the front stoop watched in a lackluster way, without changing their position on the steps.

  “Now don’t move. Shut your eyes. Fling out your arm in a deathlike way.”

  Each muscle in Fred ached more than the other. The uneven paving stones pressed into his back. He heard Ernestine’s footsteps withdrawing and mounting the sidewalk. “Evening, boys,” she said genially. “Mrs. Morbihan! Help! A man’s been run over by a carriage! He’s dying! Police! Help!”

  Fred opened one eye slightly to see a bull-shaped woman bolting out of the door in her black taffeta dress. “Begorra!” she cried fiercely. He closed his eye again while Mrs. Morbihan inspected him. Then she ran off toward the police post at the corner of Fourth.

  Fred heard wheels going by on the pavement in one direction and the other, some only a few feet away. If he lay there much longer a carriage was going to run over him. He opened his eyes.

  Ernestine had appeared at the second-story window. “Fred! Come on, now. Run! you precious idiot.”

  Ernestine soon had the clothes off him. The whipcord jacket still lay in the street below. It was torn anyhow and it smelled of gasoline. The others—the corduroy knickers, the boots, the shirt, and the silk underwear from the City of Paris—she removed with a combination of motherly care and undisguised concupiscence. When she was done she threw off her own clothes, sending the persimmon-colored gown sailing so that it caught on the chandelier overhead. They sank together into a large feather bed.

  Fred could hardly breathe. He ached in every bone. His knee bandages had come off and his raw knees scraped against the sheets. He allowed himself to be swept away into a Wagnerian sort of ecstasy in which pain mingled with the most intense of pleasures. Solicitous was the word for Ernestine. She was nurse, mother, and mistress all at once, the last of these in a nurturing sort of way in which he lay passively in the feather bed while she put this part of him here and that there, exactly as he would have done himself according to his most passionate desire.

  “My wounded aeronaut! Fred! My own, my treasure!”

  “Careful of my knee.”

  They rolled over, putting him on top. Up to now, he realized, it had been the other way. This was harder on his knee but it restored his sense of male dignity to a certain degree. Through the partly opened window they could hear voices from the street.

  “He wuz here just a minute ago. Here’s his coat.”

  “You sure you ain’t bin drinkin’, ma’am?”

  “Sure and I’ve bin drinkin’. What’s that got to do with it? I’m tellin’ yez he wuz here a minute ago.”

  “Well, he picked up his bed an’ walked.”

  “A Christian Scientist,” said the other cop.

  “Begorra, I never heard of sich a thing. His frinds must of carried him off. Look, here’s a blodestain on the pavement.”

  “Tell you what, Ma’am, you sleep it off tonight. In the morning, if they’s any more dyin’ men in the street we’ll come an’ take’em away.”

  “Fred,” said Ernestine.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Oh. Fred. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.”

  The feather bed went on tremoring for some time. When Ernestine finished, it was Fred’s turn. When they came to themselves the voices in the street were no longer audible.

  Getting out of bed stark naked, Fred prowled around inspecting his jail cell, as it effectively was. A cautious opening of the door proved that Mrs. Morbihan was back at her post by the stairway. He put on his clothes and assayed the situation more carefully. In addition to the front window there was another on the side, giving onto a tiny alley you could almost reach across with your hand. Leap across onto the roof of the other house? No, it was a good six feet higher and unattainable. Perhaps he could just dash down the stairs and into the street before Mrs. Morbihan had time to get out of her chair. But that wouldn’t be fair to Ernestine.

  “Ernestine?”

  “Mm.”

  “Ernestine. Wake up a minute.”

  “Um.”

  Not much help to be derived there. He went back to the window on the alley and inspected it again. Tentatively he stuck one leg out of it. When he straddled the sill and felt around in the darkness outside his hand encountered a tubular shape running vertically down the wall, probably a drainpipe. It didn’t offer much of a grip. He tried his weight on it, cautiously, and found a kind of bracket to dig his fingers into. No help for it. He launched out into the narrow space, dangling from the bracket.

  Climbing up a drainpipe is an athletic feat, but sliding down a drainpipe is not as difficult as it might seem. Fred felt with feet and hands, and here and there encountered another bracket or a slightly projecting grip. The drainpipe itself scratched upward along his bruised ribs. Six feet or so from the bottom there was a joint in the pipe. The thing was old and rusted and it was already coming apart. Sure enough, when he got past this joint the thing broke and drainpipe, Fred, and all the rest of it fell the last few feet to the bottom of the alley.

  Anxious not to make any noise, he turned like a cat in the air so that he hit the pavement on his back with the drainpipe on top of him. A whole network of pains shot through him, radiating from his back through all of his various bruises and wounds. He lay for a moment panting and trying not to yell. Then he got up, disengaged himself from the drainpipe, and stole cautiously out of the alley into the street.

  The light was still on behind the curtains in Mrs. Morbihan’s room. Fred straightened out his clothing and brushed the worst of the filth off him, then walked down the sidewalk past the idlers on the stoop, who followed him wordlessly with their eyes.

  In a half an hour he was back at the Larkin. The night clerk made no comment on the torn knees of his knickers, the missing shirt buttons, or the fact that he was coatless. He slid the key across the counter, with only a glance at the bruise on Fred’s cheek. Fred went upstairs, unlocked the door of his room, and let himself in. Without bothering to light the lamp he took off his clothes, dropped them on the floor, and flung himself into bed with a groan.

  He was so sleepy that he could barely keep his eyes open. But in no position could he manage to get comfortable. When he curled up under the covers, knees drawn up and the pillow over his head, his bruised ribs tweaked at every breath. He tried the other side: no better. Flailing and tossing under the bedclothes, he arranged himself half on his side and half face down, with his weight supported by one knee and his chest. This was even worse. The slightest movement made little pains shoot from his bent knee and from his ribs, whether he lay on his left side or sprang around to the right. By this time the bedclothes were a wreck anyhow. He flung them off and got up.

  In the bathroom he groped around for the small night-lamp and lighted it. Then, taking a breath, he stood with his feet together, quite motionless, and stared at himself in the mirror. It took about ten minutes, a little longer than usual. This was because he was tired. Still, Fred had found a good reverie to pull off the trick now. He imagined th
at he was going swimming naked and that a fish was about to bite him between the legs. This thought in itself produced a kind of retractive reflex that pulled the thing up a little. He imagined himself, through an act of will, pulling all his limbs into himself—arms and legs, too—and converting himself into a kind of fish. But if this really happened, he thought, he wouldn’t be able to stand in front of the mirror to convert himself back again. He was definitely in a strange mood. Such thoughts had never occurred to him before. Back inside, you little worm, he willed forcefully. I’m done with you for a while.

  As another device, he imagined himself sucking soda from a straw, but not with his mouth, instead with that part of his body. In, in. Finally the thing rose, contracted, and disappeared with its usual sucking plop.

  Herma sighed. It was an ugly sound. She blew out the lamp, then she went into her own bedroom, opened the dresser drawer in the darkness, and took out her nightgown. A faint starlight seeped into the room around the edges of the window curtain. She pulled the gown over her head and drew it down, shaking out the creases from the silk. Then she turned back the bedclothes neatly and crept in, drawing up her knees with another little sigh.

  She was lying on her left side. Something throbbed just at the point where her ribs ended. She rolled around gently, stretched out her legs, and tried lying on her stomach. This resulted in two sharp pains from her kneecaps. She drew the knees up again and tried the right side. This was a little better. But when she had almost fallen asleep she forgot and stretched out her legs again. The two sharp telegraph messages from her knees awoke her instantly.

  She flung the covers back and got out of bed. In the bathroom she lighted the lamp again. She took off the gown and hung it on a porcelain hook on the wall. Then she stood before the mirror and looked at herself.

  The bruise on her right cheekbone was the size of a plum and about the same color. On the left side, the three bottom ribs were outlined with delicate streaks of purple. The knees were really pretty. They were scraped like those of a small boy who has run too fast and fallen down on the pavement. There were reddish-purple circles on them, dotted with little spots of congealed blood, now almost black. Herma seethed. She controlled herself only with difficulty. She had an impulse to stand there before the mirror, gritting and willing until she pushed the obscene thing out again. It would serve him right to let him sleep with all these wounds. But he was such a rotten sleeper.

  Instead, she opened the small drawer under the washbasin, took out a round pink tin of face powder, and opened it. Holding the powder puff in her fingers, she dabbed it at the plum on her cheek. Then, carefully and skillfully, she blended around the edges, added a little more powder in the center, inspected her work, and gave a final delicate touch with the powder puff at one edge.

  Solemnly and without expression, she stared at the image in the mirror. The bruise was hardly visible. If you knew it was there you could see it. If you didn’t, you might take it for a slight and barely perceptible color in the cheek, a touch of rouge.

  She slipped the gown over her head again, with care not to smudge the powder on her cheek. Then she went into her room, lit the lamp, and rummaged around until she found a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil. Setting her teeth, she wrote on it, “If I could get my hands on you I’d scratch you like a mandolin.” She stuck this into the mirror. Then she blew out both lamps and got back into bed.

  But she was still seething. Thoughts raced through her head. From the street below came the sound of carriage wheels, footsteps, the murmur of voices, a distant police whistle, the vast breathing of a busy and vital city that never slept.

  She got out of bed again and lit the lamp in the bathroom. Taking the scrap of paper from the mirror, she scrawled at the bottom of it, “The Met is in town. Get out and hustle.” Then she got back into bed and fell asleep instantly.

  12.

  Fred stood before the grandiose façade with its Greek columns rising up three stories to end in massive Corinthian capitals. In the center of the building, between a pair of caryatids bearing lamps, was a marble stairway leading to the two broad doors of gold-plated iron and glass cut with decorations depicting the nine Muses. To one side of the entrance was the ticket office. On the other side was a glass frame with a large poster in it.

  COMING

  To the Grand Opera House

  April 16, 17, and 19

  The Great

  ENRICO CARUSO

  of the Metropolitan Opera Company

  in

  LA TRAVIATA

  By Giuseppe Verdi

  with

  ALBERTINA MOELLENDORF

  And Company and Chorus

  Fred studied this reflectively for a while. He chewed his lip. He took a leisurely turn up the sidewalk and then came back and looked at the poster again. He scratched his head, pushing his derby up in back and then carefully readjusting it. Finally, taking resolve, he went down Mission to the corner, up the side street, and around to the rear of the building on Jessie Street. As he expected, there was the usual door marked “Employees Only” and the usual watchman propped in the doorway on a rickety wooden chair.

  Fred went up to him briskly with his thumbs in his vest.

  “Vorrei parlare col Signor Caruso.”

  “Whatchasay?”

  “Scusi, non parlo l’inglese. Sono un grande amico del Signor Caruso. Un amico d’ltalia. Sono appena arrivato da Napoli.”

  Another man appeared in the doorway behind the watchman, younger and smoking a pipe. “What’s this?”

  “Some Dago. “Wants to talk to Caruso.”

  “They’re rehearsin’ now, Mister. Capeesh? Busy. Can’t see.”

  “Ma sono un grand amico. Enrico mi vedrà, me ne sono certo.”

  “Amico, eh?”

  “He looks like a Dago all right,” opined the watchman.

  “Scusate, signori. Vi prego …”

  “Go on in,” said the younger man, taking the pipe out of his mouth and waving with it. “They’re rehearsin’. Don’t bother’em. They’ll take a break after a minute.”

  When Fred didn’t seem to understand, he made an encouraging motion with his pipe toward the door. Fred, smiling profusely and throwing off grazies behind him, went off down the corridor. It led to a stairway and, mounting this and opening a door with quiet painted on it, he came out into the wings of the theater.

  The stage was almost dark except for a pair of small Edison bulbs hanging on long wires from the flies overhead. A pianist was invisible in the shadows. In the circle of light under the Edison bulbs a half-dozen people were sitting around on stools. Two others were standing: a middle-aged man with a mane of gray hair, and a youngish, rather pudgy man in a black suit, an immaculate white shirt, and polished black shoes. This last person paced back and forth restlessly.

  “It seems,” he said in a strong accent, “that our Albertina is not in possession of her low notes today.”

  “Rico, don’t be nasty. If the accompanist could do it a little higher …”

  “Try it in B,” the gray-haired man suggested.

  With one hand the pianist shifted up in sixth-chords from G to B. He played a chord or two and La Moellendorf tried it again.

  “Flora, amici, la notte che resta

  d’altre gioie qui fate brillar.”

  She broke off. “Oh, stop, stop. What an inferior pianist you are. You can’t even transpose, and you’re trying to play my accompaniment.”

  The pianist waited.

  “Would you like to try it in C, carissima?” suggested Caruso after a pause.

  “No, B is all right,” she sighed.

  She set off into it again, only a little husky on the bottom notes this time. Flora, friends. Make the night bright with more joys.

  “… qui fate brillar.”

  “Molto bene, but when we come to our duet, what then?” inquired Caruso, still pacing back and forth but in a composed way, as though he were breaking in a new pair of shoes. “Then I will ha
ve to sing two notes higher, and what about my high B?”

  “You do the duet in G and I’ll do it in B,” suggested La Moellendorf.

  “Ah bello. That will sound like a fine dog fight. And our friend the pianist will need three hands.”

  “I can do it with my teeth,” grated a voice from the darkness.

  “Rico,” suggested the gray-haired man, “everyone is out of sorts. Why don’t we take five minutes for a cup of coffee. Then perhaps Albertina might like to try the second act instead.”

  “Magnifico! We are only five lines into this great opera by Giuseppe Verdi which goes on for three acts, and we stop to drink coffee.”

  “These things always start slowly, Rico.”

  They broke up, La Moellendorf heading for her dressing room and the others gathering around a small buffet where a Chinese waiter was pouring coffee from a silver urn.

  Fred saw his moment. He sauntered forward out of the wings, came up to the buffet, said “May I?” in a polite tone, and held out a cup to the waiter.

  Caruso stared at him, said “Buongiorno,” and turned back to the gray-haired man.

  Fred touched his elbow. “Excuse me,” he said even more politely.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I have an important matter to communicate to you.”

  “Bene. Go ahead. Ma presto. We have only got five minutes.”

  “It’s extremely confidential.”

  “Who are you anyhow?” inquired Caruso.

  Nevertheless, he allowed himself to be led away by the elbow over into the shadows of the wings.

  “I understand the company is short of sopranos,” said Fred in a low voice. “I happen to know,” he went on rapidly before Caruso could contradict him on this point, “of a first-rate soprano who happens to be available through a chance set of circumstances. She—”

  “Who?”

  “Herma.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She would make a magnificent Violetta.”