Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  The clerk, a middle-aged man in a frock coat and white tie, looked up.

  “A suite for Miss Herma, please.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Herma, the opera star. She’s singing the lead in Traviata at the Grand Opera. She’s staying at the Larkin now, but she wishes to change immediately.”

  “What sort of accommodations does she require?”

  “Two rooms, with separate entrances but connecting bath.”

  “Two rooms?”

  “The other’s for me.” He slipped a card across the polished surface of the desk.

  The clerk glanced at it. He seemed less interested in the domestic arrangements of Fred and Herma than in the quality of the card, which was excellent. He checked through his reservation list. “I can give you five twenty and five twenty-two. They both have bay windows on Annie Street. I don’t have anything at the moment that faces on Montgomery or Market.”

  “That’s fine. I suppose the bath has a mirror?”

  “A mirror? Of course, sir. Will you sign here, please.”

  “The bags will be coming over from the Larkin.”

  “Very good.” The clerk was still examining the card. “Thank you, Mr. Hite.”

  Fred deposited the last of the Corona Corona in the cuspidor by the desk and left. Getting into the waiting cab, he drove to the Larkin. The usual clerk, who now seemed very grubby in comparison to his counterpart at the Palace, was behind the desk working away with a toothpick, apparently searching for a remainder of his lunch which he hoped to find there.

  “Key please.”

  The clerk slid the key across the desk. His expression was still stony. “Look here, you’ve got to clear out this afternoon. You know what the Sheeny said.”

  “Please don’t trouble yourself in the least about the matter. I’ll take care of everything. Boy!”

  The bellboy stepped forward.

  “Now listen carefully,” said Fred. “I’m only going to say this once. In exactly twenty minutes, come up to the rooms and get the bags. They will be packed and standing in the doorway. Bring them downstairs and put them in a cab. Send them to the Palace, and pay the fare in advance. Here’s twenty dollars. You can keep the change for yourself.”

  “Golly,” said the boy.

  “Movin’, eh?” said the clerk, taking the toothpick out of his mouth.

  “Please forward any correspondence to the Palace.”

  The clerk put the toothpick back in.

  Slipping the key into his pocket, Fred went upstairs. Once in the room, he first flopped open his old horsehide suitcase on top of the bed, took off all of his clothes, and packed them away in it. Shutting the suitcase and latching it, he set it by the door. He checked the ormolu clock on the mantlepiece. It was exactly eight minutes to two. Then he went into the bathroom.

  Time passed. The minutes slipped away one by one. The clock in the next room struck two. Herma took a deep breath. She slipped her fingers into the pectoral muscles on each side and lifted them, to see if they could be formed into any sort of protuberances at all. Then she noticed the piece of paper stuck into the frame of the mirror.

  Her face flamed. She tore it off, ripped it up, made a tiny ball of it, threw it to the floor, and stamped it underfoot. Thinking better of it, she picked it up from the floor, tore it into even tinier scraps, and flushed them down the toilet.

  She found another piece of paper and snatched up the pencil. “I’ve had enough of your stupid vulgarity,” she wrote in a sprawling and angry hand. “Please don’t address such things to me again. If you think of any more smut, tell it to your actress friend.”

  She stuck the note into the mirror. Then, perceiving the futility of this, she pulled it off, tore it into fragments, and flushed them away in the toilet too.

  Even if he had come back to read the note, she realized, she would not have wanted to reveal that she was jealous of Ernestine. She flounced into her own room, banged open the tapestry portmanteau, and began dressing.

  17.

  Herma lived the next two days at breakneck speed. It seemed that day and night she was always at the opera house rehearsing or in her room at the Palace studying the score. She slipped into a kind of trance: the score on the table in her room where she ate, or in her lap in the cabs she took to the opera house, even though it was a ride of only five minutes; fitting her costume; blocking the scenes. Fred was nowhere to be seen. And after the curtain rang down to thunderous applause, Herma in her dressing room looked at herself in the mirror and scarcely knew where she was or how she had got there.

  And the frantic pace didn’t stop even then. After the performance she went with Caruso and his friends for supper at Delmonico’s. The others of the party included Beckworth, the mezzo who had sung Flora, and Lucien Grasse, a veteran hack who could sing anything and in this case had done a creditable job on the baritone part of Germont. The mezzo, Lucì Bonnina, was a small and taciturn thing from Naples, a friend of Caruso’s, without particular talent.

  Even though it was after midnight the restaurant was crowded. With great ceremony, clearing the way through the waiters with motions of his hands as though he were shooing birds, the maître showed them to the table. The party attracted a good deal of attention. Many of the other diners had come from the performance at the Grand Opera House, and heads turned at the sight of the world-famous tenor. There were murmurs of “Caruso,” and a single voice could be heard pronouncing the word “Herma” in a low and explanatory tone. Herma was in an elated mood, still feverish from the role she had sung, but she successfully managed to retain her outward calm. She was wearing a Worth gown she had bought that afternoon at the City of Paris, after the final rehearsal. It was silk moiré, so pale a color that it seemed almost silver, and the skirt was pierced with a hundred eyelets so that the strawberry-colored petticoat could be seen under it. The silver brooch she wore at one side, on her shoulder, had a tiny enameled strawberry set into it, scarlet with emerald leaves.

  An intoxicated man in evening dress came over and tried to sell Caruso some real estate. The maître steered him away by the arm. A glossy bill of fare the size of a newspaper was handed round the table. Grasse ordered for all. He was not part of the Met troupe but had only been hired in San Francisco to fill out the cast. He knew the town thoroughly and was a famous bon vivant and a connoisseur of women, wine, and food. First came champagne and oysters. Grasse raised his glass. Herma held her breath, waiting to hear her name, but instead the toast was to Giuseppe Verdi. Never mind, that would be for another time. She took a long sip of champagne with the others and set her glass down. Although the reception of the audience had been tumultuous, with seven or eight curtain calls, no one in the cast had yet said anything about her performance. Beekworth seemed not to be aware she was present. He talked mostly to Caruso, and smiled, although he didn’t laugh, at a joke made by Grasse. For the rest he gazed into the middle distance and seemed thoughtful. Perhaps he was counting the evening’s house and multiplying it by the price of the tickets.

  Lucì Bonnina was seated directly across the table from Herma, next to Grasse. She was short and dark, shaped something like a chicken, although a plump and appetizing one. She said very little, only gazing around at the others out of her large and expressive Neapolitan eyes. She spoke almost no English. Clearly Grasse had designs on her for the evening. He rubbed his hands and signaled the waiter to pour her more champagne. He was full of energy; he bent over her and chinked his glass against hers. She smiled wanly.

  “Veuve Cliquot,” he said, rolling the champagne around on his tongue. “First rate.”

  A team of waiters began carrying in Grasse’s idea of a light supper. First came a clear turtle broth with saffron, then Sole Marguery—really a Bay halibut masquerading as its cousin from Dover, but excellently done. With the fish, a light Gewürztraminer. The plates were cleared away, and the waiter brought up an enormous joint of beef on a rolling table and sliced off pink slabs for each plate. The wine with th
is was a Bordeaux, which Grasse sent back because the first bottle was “légèrement pétillant.” The Médoc that replaced it was pronounced excellent.

  Caruso didn’t touch the fish, and he waved the waiter away when he offered the roast. He asked for a little white meat of chicken, which he cut up and ate neatly while sipping the white wine.

  “Are you off your appetite, my friend?” asked Grasse.

  “I always eat so. In the morning a cup of black coffee, at noon a little white meat of chicken, in the evening perhaps a cutlet. But when the newspapermen write a story about me in the paper, they always say that I eat a lot of spaghetti. What am I? An Italian, a Wop. So it is natural for the newspapermen to say that I eat a lot of spaghetti.”

  “I thought all Italians ate a lot of spaghetti,” said Herma.

  “They do, when they are poor,” said Caruso. “When they are rich like me they eat a little white meat of chicken.”

  “But Signor Caruso. How do you have the strength to sing, when you eat so little?”

  “In the first place, Alfredo is a light part. Alfredo does not have very much to sing. Violetta and Germont do all the work. In the second place, my strength is in my teeth, as I have told you.” He smiled to show them. “In the third place, do not call me Signor Caruso. You may call me Rico.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t call you that.”

  “You must call me Rico. I will not have you call me Caruso, because we are fellow artists. We are brother and sister. It is true that you have no importance to critics, while I have a great importance to critics. That does not matter. We are artists. You work to sing, and I work to sing. It is the same.”

  He reached for the bowl of green salad in the middle of the table, searched around in it, found a piece of raw fennel and set it on his plate, and began cutting it up as he had the chicken.

  “In Italian this is called finocchio, which means a man who likes the boys,” he said. He added after a moment, “That is not me.” His meal apparently finished, he screwed an Egyptian cigarette into a holder and held it for a waiter to light.

  “I also allow myself ten of these, do you say coffin nails, a day. The doctor says it is bad, but it does not prevent me from singing better than anybody in the world.” This he said in all modesty, as though there were no point in concealing a fact that was accepted by everyone.

  “Smoke eleven, you might sing even better,” suggested Grasse.

  “You, my friend, are a delightful old cynic, and any day now you are going to fall into decadence.”

  “Vive la décadence,” said Grasse. He reached for the Médoc, holding the bottle by the bottom so that he was able to fill everyone’s glasses around the table. As he filled Beckworth’s glass his arm brushed against Lucì’s breast, causing her eyes to become even more warm and expressive. Caruso held his hand over his glass, which still had a little white wine in it.

  “Would anyone like something else?” suggested Grasse. “A millefeuille? An éclair? A mousse au chocolat? A sherbet? The ice cream at Delmonico’s is fabulous. It is something from the Thousand and One Nights. I particularly recommend the parfait au rhum.”

  The waiter came and took the dessert orders: the parfait for Grasse and Lucì, sherbert for Beckworth, a bowl of fresh fruit for Caruso.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “I would like a Fraise Herma.”

  “A Fraise—”

  “Herma.”

  “I am sorry, but I don’t believe I have ever heard of that.”

  The maître came too and the matter was discussed. “Please have the chef come,” said Herma.

  Mérimée came out, in his immaculate white jacket and toque, wiping his hands on a towel which he handed to a waiter. He looked around the table. “Bonsoir, messieurs et mesdames,” he said.

  “Now,” said the maître, “if you will explain to Mérimée exactly what it is that you want, we will not only provide you with it, but we will add it to our bill of fare. At Delmonico’s, everything is available that is served in any restaurant in the world.”

  “It’s a scoop of lemon-vanilla ice cream, exactly hemispherical,” said Herma, “with a strawberry in the middle, and apricot glaze over it.”

  “Very good,” said Merimee.

  The maître provided a piece of paper and a pencil. “If you could write it down exactly,” he said, “so that we could print it correctly in our bill of fare.”

  Herma wrote it down.

  Mérimée looked at it. “The French is incorrect,” he said. “There should be an ‘s’ on Fraise.”

  “No, there is only one strawberry.”

  “Only one strawberry? But could there not be two strawberries, or three?”

  “Of course there couldn’t be two strawberries on it, or three. What a monstrosity.”

  “What a strange creature,” murmured Caruso, lifting his dark eyes questioningly at Beckworth. Beckworth shrugged.

  The desserts came. The Fraise Herma was exactly as ordered. Herma ate it with her usual technique, starting on the sides and working to the top, while the others watched her curiously. Caruso peeled an apple, inserting a fork into it and twirling it while an even and unbroken ribbon of peeling fell from the knife.

  Grasse’s hand was always in the air, and a troupe of waiters was always ready to spring to his command. Now he ordered brandy for everyone. Once again Caruso held his hand over the tiny glass as the waiter bent over it with the bottle.

  Grasse raised his glass and looked around the table. His eyes stopped on Herma.

  “Perhaps we should drink to our impromptu diva.”

  “Shall we or shall we not?” said Caruso, seeming to consider. He smiled, first at Herma and then at the others. “Perhaps we might inquire first whether the unfortunate Moellendorf’s affliction—”

  “The Chinese Plague,” put in Beckworth.

  “—was really impromptu. Then after that we come to the artistic question.”

  Lucì was not following. “Cosa dici?”

  “Parliamo,” explained Caruso, “della voce della nostra piccola Violetta.”

  “Ma era magnifica.”

  “Magnificent?” He considered. “In the first act, perhaps. You see, carina,” he told Herma, “I do not give other singers the compliments just to make them feel good. Otherwise how would they know when it is not so good, so they can make it better? If a newspaperman asks me how is the voice of Herma, I tell him magnificent. If you ask me, I tell you truthfully how it is.”

  “And how is it?” asked Herma, quite serious and staring at him directly.

  Beckworth lighted a cigarette and watched, saying nothing.

  “The first act was magnificent. You have an excellent coloratura. At the end of the opera, everybody clapped and gridavano come dannati—how do you say—they yelled like damned. But that is just because you are pretty, and sing all the music on the correct note. And then, this is San Francisco. It is not Milano or even New York. When you make them yell like damned at La Scala, that will be something.”

  “Will you please explain to me,” said Herma, “how I can make them yell like damned at La Scala?”

  He smiled again, and paused for a moment before he spoke. “First, I think, carina, you must live a lot more of life. You do well enough for the little trills in the drinking song. Libiamo, libiamo. That is nothing. But the lyric part, the tragedy, the sob in the voice, the deepness, the self-sacrifice are not quite right in the duet with Germont. Because you are only a child and have not yet lived.”

  “I started young.”

  “We all did. I was singing in the streets of Naples when I was ten. But the second act is about something else. It is not about being young and happy. Violetta is a beautiful person but she is not anymore quite so young. Now she has found her love in Alfredo. Now she is pure, she is innalzata, how do you say, uplifted from her former life, and she goes to live with him in the country. But then comes Alfredo’s father, Germont. And he says to Violetta, what are you doing to my son? He is in love with y
ou and thinks of nothing else. Yes, says Violetta, he loves me and I too love him. But, says Germont, pardon me, but you are only a courtesan even though reformed. And my daughter, what of her? What of Alfredo’s sister? What of this tender young child? Who will marry her if her brother is sunk in dissipation living with a former courtesan?”

  “Adesso cosa dici?” said Lucì.

  “Dico,” said Caruso, “che bisogna vivere molto per cantare Violetta.”

  “Ah,” said Lucì. “È vero.” She looked at her empty parfait glass, as though she would like another one.

  Caruso looked from Grasse to Herma.

  “And then the duet. Violetta renounces. She gives up her Alfredo, with her heart breaking, and she says, ‘Dite alla giovine.’ Tell the young girl, so lovely and pure, that I will sacrifice myself for her, so there will be no disgrace in the family and she can get married. And then I will die. Morrà, morrà. And Germont joins in with her and tells her to cry some more, she is not crying enough. Piangi, piangi. The ‘Dite alla giovine,’” he said, “is the greatest duet in all opera. It is on account of the sob in Violetta’s voice, but she must sob on a very high note. She mounts up, up, and then she comes to her A flat on sacrifica.”

  “That’s not a very high note.”

  “It is a high note to sob. Mostly sopranos like to sob on low notes. But this is difficult. This is no more coloratura. It is the highest peak of the lyric. A soprano mounting gradually to a high note and then holding it, especially with the little catch of the pathetic, is the most sexy sound it is possible to make by the human voice. And if it is a duet—twice as much.”

  “There is no such word as sexy,” said Beckworth.

  “Sensuale is sexy, no?”

  “No, sensuale is sensual.”

  “Very well, I am saying sensuale. Sensuale is sexy. The A flat of the ‘Dite alla giovine’—very sexy.”

  “But Germont isn’t Violetta’s lover. He is only her lover’s father.”

  “That’s because he’s a baritone,” said Beckworth. “It’s always the tenor that gets the girl. The baritone never gets the girl.”