Three by Cain

by James M. Cain

  That part of it, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t admit it was an adventure in music I’ll never forget. I sang for him four times, and each time it was something new, something fresh, and a performance better than you even knew you could give. He had a live stick all right. From some of them you get a beat as dead as an undertaker’s handshake, but not from him. He threw it on you like a hypnotist, and you began to roll it out, and yet it was all under perfect control. That’s the word to remember, perfect. Perfection is something no singer ever got yet, but under him you came as near to it as you’re ever going to get.

  That was the beginning of it, and it was quite a while before it dawned on me what he really wanted. As to what he wanted, and what he got, you’ll find out soon enough, and I’m not going to tell any more than I have to. But I’d like to make this much clear now: that wasn’t what I wanted. What I meant to him and what he meant to me were two different things, but once again, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t admit that what he meant to me was plenty. He took to dropping into my dressing room at the Comique while I was washing up, and he’d tell me some little thing I had done, something he had liked, or sometimes, something he hadn’t liked. If he had been giving a concert, maybe he had heard only part of the last act, but there would always be something. You think that didn’t mean anything to me? Singing is a funny job. You go out there and take those calls, and it’s so exciting that when you get back to your dressing room you want to sing, to cut it loose till the windows rattle, just to let off the steam that excitement makes. You go back there and you’ll hear them, especially the tenors, so you’d think they had gone crazy. But that excitement is all from out front, from a mob you only half see and never know, and you get so you’d give anything for somebody, for just one guy, that knew what you were trying to do, that spotted your idea without your telling him, that could appreciate you with his head and not with the palms of his hands. And mind you, it couldn’t be just anybody. It has to be somebody you respect, somebody that knows.

  I began to wait for that visit. Then pretty soon I was singing to him and to nobody eise. We’d walk out, go to a café while I ate, then drop over to his apartment off the Place Vendóme, and have a post-mortem on my performance. Then, little by little, he began making suggestions. Then I began dropping in on him in the morning, and he’d take me through some things I had been doing wrong. He was the best coach in the world, bar none. Then he began to take my acting apart, and put it together again. It was he that cured me of all those operatic gestures I got in Italy. He showed me that good operatic acting consists in as few motions as possible, every one of them calculated for an effect, and every one made to count. He told me about Scotti and how he used to sing the Pagliacci Prologue before he got so bad they couldn’t use him in Pagliacci. He made one gesture. At the end of the andante, he held out his hand, and then turned it over, palm up. That was all. It said it. He made me learn a whole new set of gestures, done naturally, and he made me practice for hours singing sotto voce without using any gestures at all. That’s a tough order, just to stand up there, on a cold stage, and shoot it. But I got so I could do it.And I got so I could take my time, give it to them when I was ready, not before. I began to do better in comedy roles, like Sharpless and Marcello. Taking out all that gingerbread, I could watch timing, and get laughs I never got before. I got so I was with him morning, noon and night, and depended on him like a hophead depends on dope.

  Then came my crack-up, and when my money was all gone I had to leave Paris. He stormed about that, wanted to support me, showed me his books to prove that an allowance for me wouldn’t even make a dent in his income. But it was that storming that showed me where things had got between him and me, and that I had to break away from him. I went to New York. I tried to find something to do, but there was nothing I could do except sing, and I couldn’t sing. That was when this agent kidded me that no matter what shape I was in I was good enough for Mexico, and I went down there.

  I had read in some paper that he had disbanded his orchestra in Paris, but I didn’t know he was starting his Little Orchestra in New York until I got there. It made me nervous. I dropped in, alone, at his first concert, just so I could say I had, in case I ran into him somewhere. It was the same mob he had had in Paris, clothes more expensive than you would see even at a Hollywood opening, gray-haired women with straight haircuts and men’s dinner jackets, young girls looking each other straight in the eye and not caring what you thought, boys following men around, loud, feverish talk out in the foyer, everybody coming out in the open with something they wouldn’t dare show anywhere else. His first number was something for strings by Lalo I had heard him play before, and I left right after it. Next day, when I saw the review in the paper I turned the page quick. I didn’t want to read it. I had a note from him after Don Giovanni, and shot it right back, and one word written on it, “Thanks,” with my initials. I didn’t want to write on my own stationery, or he’d know where I was living. I felt funny about asking for opera house stationery. I was afraid not to answer, for fear he’d be around to know why.

  So that’s how things stood when I was sitting beside Juana and the phone rang. She motioned to let it ring, and I did for a while, but I still hadn’t called Panamier, and I knew I had them to talk to, even if I had nothing to say. I answered. But it wasn’t Panamier. It was Winston. “Jack! You old scalawag! Where have you been hiding?”

  “Why—I’ve been busy.”

  “So have I, so busy I’m ashamed of it. I hate to be busy. I like time for my friends. But at the moment I’m free as a bird, I’ve got a fine fire burning, and you can hop in a cab, wherever you are—all I’ve got is your phone number, and I had a frightful time even getting that—and come up here. I just can’t wait to see you.”

  “Well—that sounds swell, but I’ve got to go back to Hollywood, right away, probably tomorrow, and that means I’ll be tied up every minute, trying to get out of town. I don’t see how I could fit it in.”

  “What did you say? Hollywood!”

  “Yeah, Hollywood.”

  “Jack, you’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m a picture star now.”

  “I know you are. I saw your pictures, both of them. But you can’t go back to Hollywood now. Why you’re singing for me, one month from today. I’ve arranged your whole program. It’s out of the question.”

  “No, I’ll have to go.”

  “Jack, you don’t sound like yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve got so big you can’t spare one night for a poor dilettante and his band—”

  “For Christ sake, don’t be silly.”

  “That sounds more like you. Now what is it?”

  “Nothing but what I’ve told you. I’ve got to go back there. I don’t want to. I hate to. I’ve tried to get out of it every way I knew, but I’m sewed and I’ve got no choice.”

  “That sounds still more like you. In other words, you’re in trouble.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Into the cab and up here. Tell it to Papa.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.… Wait a minute.”

  She was grabbing for the receiver. I put my hand over it. “Yes, you go.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “You go.”

  “He’s just a guy—I don’t want to see.”

  “You go, you feel better, Juana’s nose, very snoddy.”

  “I’ll wipe it, then it won’t be snoddy.”

  “Hoaney, you go. Many people call today, all day long. You no here, you no have to talk, no feel bad. Now, you go. I say you gone out. I don’t know where. You go, then tonight we talk, you and I. We figure out.”

  “… All right, where are you? I’ll be up.”

  He was at a hotel off Central Park, on the twenty-second floor of the tower. The desk told me to go up. I did, found his suite, rang the bell and got no answer. The door was open and I walked in. There was a big living room, with windows on two sides, so you could see all
the way downtown and out over the East River, a grand piano at one end, a big phonograph across from that, scores stacked everywhere, and a big fire burning under a mantelpiece. I opened the door that led into the rest of the suite and called, but there wasn’t any answer. And then in a second there he was, bouncing in from the hall, in the rough coat, flannel shirt, and battered trousers that he always wore. If you had met him in Central Park you would have given him a dime. “Jack! How are you! I went down to meet you, and they told me you had just gone up! Give me that coat! Give me a smile, for God’s sake! That Mexican sunburn makes you look like Othello!”

  “Oh, you knew I was in Mexico?”

  “Know it! I went down there to bring you back, but you had gone. What’s the idea, hiding out on me?”

  “Oh, I’ve been working.”

  One minute later I was in a big chair in front of the fire, with a bottle of the white port I had always liked beside me, a little pile of buttered English biscuits beside that, he was across from me with those long legs of his hooked over the chandelier or some place, and we were off. Or anyhow, he was. He always began in the middle, and he raced along about Don Giovanni, about an appoggiatura I was leaving out in Lucia, about the reason the old scores aren’t sung the way they’re written, about a new flutist he had pulled in from Detroit, about my cape routine in Carmen, all jumbled up together. But not for long. He got to the point pretty quick. “What’s this about Hollywood?”

  “Just what I told you. I’m sewed on a goddam contract and I’ve got to go.”

  I told him about it. I had told so many people about it by then I knew it by heart, and could get it over quick. “Then this man—Gold, did you say his name was?—is the key to the whole thing?”

  “He’s the one.”

  “All right then. You just sit here a while.”

  “No, if you’re doing something I’ll go!”

  “I said sit there. Papa’s going to get busy.”

  “At what?”

  “There’s your port, there’s your biscuits, there’s the fire, there’s the most beautiful snow I’ve seen this year, and I’ve got the six big Rossini overtures on the machine—Semiramide, Tancred, the Barber, Tell, the Ladra, and the Italians, just in from London, beautifully played—and by the time they’re finished I’ll be back.”

  “I asked you, where are you going?”

  “Goddam it, do you have to bust up my act? I’m being Papa. I’m going into action. And when Papa goes into action, it’s the British Fleet. Sip your port. Listen to Rossini. Think of the boys that were gelded to sing the old bastard’s masses. Be the Pope. I’m going to be Admiral Dewey.”

  “Beatty.”

  “No, I’m Gridley. I’m ready to fire.”

  He switched on the Rossini, poured the wine, and went. I tried to listen, and couldn’t. I got up and switched it off. It was the first time I ever walked out on Rossini. I went over to the windows and watched the snow. Something told me to get out of there, to go back to Hollywood, to do anything except get mixed up with him again. It wasn’t over twenty minutes before he was back. I heard him coming, and ducked back to the chair. I didn’t want him to see me worrying. “… I was astonished that you missed that grace note in Lucia. Didn’t you feel it there? Didn’t you know it had to be there?”

  “To hell with Lucia. What news?”

  “Oh. I had forgotten all about it. Why, you stay, of course. You go on with the opera, you do this foolish broadcast you’ve let yourself in for, you sing for me, you make your picture in the summer. That’s all. It’s all fixed up. Once more, Jack, on all those old recitatives—”

  “Listen, this is business. I want to know—”

  “Jack, you are so crass. Can’t I wave my wand? Can’t I do my bit of magic? If you have to know, I happen to control a bank, or my somewhat boorish family happen to control it. They embarrass me greatly, but sometimes they have a kind of low, swinish usefulness. And the bank controls, through certain stocks impounded to secure moneys, credit, and so on—oh the hell with it.”

  “Go on. The bank controls what?”

  “The picture company, dolt.”

  “And?”

  “Listen, I’m talking about Donizetti.”

  “And I’m talking about a son-of-a-bitch by the name of Rex Gold. What did you do?”

  “I talked with him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Why—I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. I told him what he was to do, that’s all.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “Phone? What are you phoning about?”

  “I’ve got to call the broadcasting company.”

  “Will you sit down and listen to what I’m trying to tell you about appoggiaturas, so you won’t embarrass me every time you sing something written before 1905? Varlets in the bank are calling the broadcasting company. That’s what we have them for. They’re working overtime, calling other varlets in Radio City and making them work overtime, which I greatly enjoy, while you and I take our sinful ease here and watch the snow at twilight, and discuss the grace notes of Donizetti, which will be sung long after the picture company, the bank, and the varlets are dead in their graves and forgotten. Are you following me?”

  His harangue on the appoggiaturas lasted fifteen minutes. It was something I was always forgetting about him, his connection with money. His family consisted of an old maid sister, a brother that was a colonel in the Illinois National Guard, another brother that lived in Italy, and some nephews and nieces, and they had about as much to do with that fortune as so many stuffed dummies. He ran it, he controlled the bank, he did plenty of other things that he pretended he was too artistic even to bother with. All of a sudden something shot through my mind. “Winston, I’ve been framed.”

  “Framed? What are you talking about? By whom?”

  “By you.”

  “Jack, I give you my word, the way you sang that—”

  “Cut out this goddam foolish act about Lucia, will you? Sure I sang it wrong. I learned that role before I knew anything about style, and I hadn’t sung it for five years until I went on with it last month, and I neglected to re-learn it, and that’s all that amounts to, and to hell with it. I’m talking about this other. You knew all about it when you called me.”

  “… Why, of course I did.”

  “And I think you put me in that spot.”

  “I-? Don’t be a fool.”

  “It always struck me pretty funny, that guy Gold’s ideas about grand opera, and me, and all the rest of it. Anybody else would want me in grand opera, to build me up. What do you know about that?”

  “Jack, that’s Mexican melodrama.”

  “What about this trip of yours? To Mexico?”

  “I went there. A frightful place.”

  “For me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “To take you by the scuff of your thick neck and drag you out of there. I—ran into a ’cellist that had seen you. I heard you were looking seedy. I don’t like you seedy. Shaggy, but not with spots on your coat.”

  “What about Gold?”

  “… I put Gold in charge of that picture company because he was the worst ass I had ever met, and I thought he was the perfect man to make pictures. I was right. He’s turned the whole investment into a gold mine. Soon I can have seventy-five men, and ‘Little Orchestra’ will be one of those affectations I so greatly enjoy. Jack, do you have to expose all my little shams? You know them all. Can’t we just not look at them? After all they’re nice shams.”

  “I want to know more about Gold.”

  He came over and sat on the arm of my chair. “Jack, why should I frame you?”

  I couldn’t answer him, and I couldn’t look at him.

  “Yes, I knew all about it. I didn’t tell Gold to be an ass, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t have to. I knew about it, and I acted out one of my little shams. Can’t I want my Jack to be happy? Wipe that
sulky look off your face. Wasn’t it good magic? Didn’t Gridley level the fort?”

  “… Yes.”

  I got home around eight o’clock. I rushed in with a grin on my face, said it was all right, that Gold had changed his mind, that we were going to stay, and let’s go out and celebrate. She got up, wiped her snoddy nose, dressed, and we went out, to a hot-spot uptown. It was murder to drag her out, on a night like that, the way she felt, but I was afraid if I didn’t get to some place where there was music, and I could get some liquor in me, she’d see I was putting on an act, that I was as jittery inside as a man with a hangover.

  I didn’t see him for a week or ten days, and the first broadcast made me feel good. I said hello to Captain Conners, and there was a federal kick-back the next morning. Messages to private persons are strictly forbidden. I just laughed, and thought of Thomas. There was a federal kick-back on that “Good night, Mother,” too, and they told him he couldn’t do it. He just went ahead and did it. That afternoon there came a radiogram from the SS. Port of Cobh: TWAS A SOAP AGENTS PROGRAM BUT I ENJOYED IT HELLO YOURSELF AND HELLO TO THE LITTLE ONE CONNERS. So of course I had to come running home with that.