Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

by John Franklin Bardin

  He lighted a cigarette and held the match, curling with flame, uncomfortably in his hand as he looked for an ashtray. Nancy, obsequious, ran across the room – the dog barking after her – found one, ran back. Miraculously, he was saying – ‘If you’ll let me off today, ma’am – ma throat is sore and ah have to do two shows tonight.’ He flicked the match into the ashtray, and Nancy, apologetically, snatched the cigarette from his mouth.

  ‘Of course you can’t sing! I won’t let you!’ she cried. ‘And I won’t let you ruin your throat with those things either. You’re just like any other artist – never thinking of the consequences!’ She paused and eyed him to see if her tirade had any effect.

  He stood up, drawled, ‘Ah can still plunk a guitar, ma’am.’ And, before Ellen realized what was happening, he had swung his yellowed instrument over his shoulder, let his large hand pass over its strings, while another depressed them at the fret. The melody began, gravely – a little self-consciously – but right, beautifully right, sounding just as it should, spacious, balanced, a form within a form, a line of thought…

  ‘Why!’ exclaimed Nancy, ‘that’s lovely! But it isn’t a folk-song, is it? I mean, really?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said, ducking his head – sometimes he carries the act a shade too far, she thought, but oh, does it get results! ‘That ain’t a folk-song. A feller told me Bach wrote that.’

  She stood up. Now was as good a time to make a break as any. ‘I’m sorry, Nancy, but I really have to go. My head, you know.’ And she regarded him, standing, slouching, looking at her coolly. ‘I’m glad to have met you, Mr – Mr?’

  ‘Shad, ma’am. Jim Shad. Just call me Jimmy.’

  She had to keep up the pretence. ‘You play beautifully, Mr Shad. Do you know all the Goldberg Variations?’

  ‘All thirty-two, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, really, I must be going. Perhaps I can come again.’

  Then Nancy: ‘I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Ellen, you can’t go alone! Why, you’ve already fainted twice this afternoon. Jimmy, you go along with her – take her to her door. I insist!’

  And Shad, grinning, his guitar hitched over his shoulder, said, ‘I been intendin’ to, ma’am.’

  She did not trust herself to speak to Jim going down in the elevator or standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, the sun glinting on the varnished yellow wood of the guitar which he had leaned against one of the canopy’s supports while he hailed a taxi. He said nothing, either, contenting himself with several ear-splitting whistles which brought a green-and-white cab from the rank on the other side of the Square. As soon as the taxi slowed to the kerb, she ran forward and jerked open the door, jumped in and tried to close it behind her before he could stop her.

  ‘Drive away as fast as you can!’ she cried to the driver.

  But Shad was too quick for her. Although surprised by her swift tactic, he managed to grab his guitar and clutch the door just as it was about to slam shut. He opened it wide and climbed in, holding his instrument in front of him carefully, fell back into the seat as the automobile began to move.

  The driver, grinding gears as he shifted, looked over his shoulder at her. ‘Is everything all right, lady?’ he asked.

  She hesitated, glancing at Shad, saw his large hand grip the fret of the guitar compulsively, saw that his long lips were tense, his dark eyes bright with temper. Did she dare tell the driver to stop? Could she chance leaving the cab? Wasn’t the sensible thing to do to talk to Shad first and find out what he wanted – how much he knew?

  ‘Go ahead, driver. Everything’s all right.’

  ‘But, lady, you have to tell me where you’re going.’

  I must not let him know my address, she thought, I can’t tell the driver to take me home – I must tell him to go some place else. But where? Where?

  ‘Hotel Plaza, please.’ Her voice sounded calm to her, but small and distant.

  ‘O.K., lady.’ The driver shrugged his shoulders and slumped down in his seat: he shifted gears again, and the taxi swerved around one of the curves of the Square.

  ‘Is that where you live?’ Shad asked. He did not drawl. His words were clipped, precisely spoken, lacked accent and twang. ‘You’ve come up in the world.’

  She did not answer him, did not look at him. She was afraid to look at him. But she heard him begin to whistle softly, brokenly, a few phrases at a time, the song she knew so well – that at one time she had wanted to forget but had not been able to – ‘The Blue-Tail Fly’. Then he stopped whistling and cleared his throat. ‘You thought I was dead,’ he said. It was not a question, but a simple statement of fact.

  She did not answer. Someone kept tightening and then loosening, tightening and then loosening, a velvet band around her head. All the many street noises, that were there all the time but which she had never listened to before, kept increasing in intensity – a policeman’s whistle, a truck’s backfire, the sound of a siren in the distance – rose to a tumultuous crescendo that threatened to deafen her. If I could only focus my eyes on some one thing, she thought, some fixed object – if I could only concentrate on that, ignore him, until this taxi-ride is over – everything will be really all right. But she could not look in Jim’s direction; even when she glanced out of the window she saw a faint, ghostly reflection of his saturnine face, his mocking eyes, in the glass. And if she looked straight ahead, all she could see was the back of the driver’s neck, his framed licence with its hoodlumish photograph, the ticking taximeter which already registered 00 DOLLARS and 40 CENTS.

  ‘You thought you had killed me,’ he said.

  There was a fly on the back of the cabby’s neck. It was crawling all over, now on his collar, now on the wrinkled flesh just below the hairline. Why didn’t he brush it off? Surely he must feel it! She could almost feel it herself, crawling on her neck, sending cold chills creeping down her back. No, now she saw, it was not on the cabby – but on the glass partition between him and her. That was it! – the fly was on the transparent partition and at first it had seemed to be actually on the driver’s neck. Just another example of how one’s eyes could mislead one…

  ‘Aren’t you interested in finding out what really happened?’ Jim Shad asked the question quietly, maliciously.

  She knew that if she looked at him now she would detect the traces of a smile at the edges of his mouth, would see a deceptive friendly twinkle in his eyes. He had always enjoyed prodding people; antagonism was for him the juice of life. But this time she could not allow herself to become angry – too much depended upon her retaining control of herself. She looked for the fly again, searched for the brief area of the glass partition that she could observe without turning her head, and was just in time to see it stop flexing its legs and fly away.

  ‘I have a big file of clippings at home,’ Jim was saying. ‘They’re some mighty interesting stories among ‘em’ – he was lapsing back into the drawl and, as he did, his words seemed to grow more sinister – ‘some mighty big, black, scarey headlines: headlines about you, ma’am, that ‘ud make somebody some mighty interesting reading—’

  The taxi had stopped for the light at Forty-second Street. A double-decker bus was on one side of the cab, a truck on the other – she could not tell for certain how thick the traffic was. If it were thick enough, but not too thick, she could risk throwing open the door, darting between the jammed cars, running down the street and away from Jim – losing him in the crowd. But she could not gauge the density of the traffic without looking around, without looking at him. And if she looked him in the face, she was afraid that it would be as it had been so many times in the past – that she would give in to him. She would let him do what he wanted. It would begin all over again. No, she dare not take that chance.

  He was going on in that half-joking, consciously-slurred, conversational tone, his warm, musical voice having, even when he talked like this, some of that bewitching quality that made his singing simple, good and
true – only what he was saying was not simple, was not good, was frighteningly true.

  ‘Ah can’t understand why you ain’t interested in what ah’m telling you. I know you would be if you could take a peek at some of the pictures the papers ran when they was lookin’ all over the country for you. I let them have some of your professional pictures – the ones you had took of you in that purty – a little scanty, but still mighty purty – blue constume you always wore…’

  The taxi started up, bolting across the street, the driver spinning his wheel to ease it through holes in the traffic, past Forty-third, Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth Streets. Keeping her eyes fixed on the taximeter, which now read 01 DOLLARS and 05 CENTS, she decided to call his bluff.

  ‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ she asked him.

  He did not speak for a moment, a moment during which they passed two more streets and stopped for another light just short of Radio City. The Plaza is at the Park – that’s Fifty-ninth Street; ten more blocks, two more traffic lights away, she thought. If I can only put him off until then – he thinks I live there, and he won’t be expecting anything – I might be able to escape…

  ‘You surprise me, Ellen,’ he said, dropping the drawl again. She had never realized before how effective it was to have two voices, two different voices which could be used both to threaten and cajole. ‘I thought you would treat your old friends better than this, Ellen. I wanted to see you again, nothing more – I wanted to talk over old times. Blackmail is a harsh word – a terrible word, Ellen. You should think carefully before you use it.’

  The taxi was waiting an interminable length of time for the light to change. The velvet band was growing tighter around her skull, the taximeter ticked louder and louder, the little black-and-white wheel that turned around to show that the mechanism was operating spun crazily, seeming to go backwards and forwards at the same time. She decided, thinking slowly, cautiously, that now was not the time to speak, that she would gain time, make him repeat himself, if she kept silent.

  ‘I can see where you might be worried about blackmail,’ he said, raising his voice slightly on the last word, lingering over it as if he enjoyed saying it. ‘Your husband is a very important man, the conductor of one of the oldest symphony orchestras in the world – a man with a reputation. Come to think of it, you have a reputation, too, Ellen, a good name you have to keep before your public. It’s been a long time since you gave a concert – a long time since the newspapers have mentioned your name. Yes, now that I think of it, I can see where you might be worried about blackmail.’ Again he seemed to pause, to weigh the word. ‘It wouldn’t be very nice, would it? – not nice at all – if the newspapers started printing those old stories again, I mean. I think they’d have a Roman holiday, Ellen. And there wouldn’t be a thing you could do – not a thing.’

  The motor of the taxi roared as the driver raced it impatiently. Then there was a harsh, rasping sound as he shifted gears ruthlessly. The cab jerked forward, subsided, the driver cursed. The automobile behind them sounded its horn, and a green-and-yellow monster of a bus nudged past them like the tortoise passing up the hare. She held her breath, the ticking of the meter clattering loudly in her ear, dug her fingers into the leather of the seat, hoping desperately that nothing had gone irrevocably wrong with the machine, that the cab would start up again. And it did, eventually, but only after another bus and several automobiles had honked their way derisively past. Unfortunately, now that they were moving again, they moved slowly, gradually rolling past Forty-sixth Street, hesitating, slipping forward, hesitating, stopping once more for a light at Forty-seventh Street.

  ‘Yes,’ Jimmy said, ‘I can certainly see why you might be worried. But what I don’t understand, ma’am, is why you think I would stoop to blackmail…’ He paused at the word, let it hang in the air.

  She did not speak. The taxi was in motion again, this time silently. An opening in the traffic loomed before them, and the driver, twisting his wheel compulsively, darted into it. The blocks sped past: Forty-eighth Street, Forty-ninth Street, Fiftieth, Fifty-first – they were going even farther this time! – they might even reach the Plaza! But no, they had to beat the light to cross Fifty-second Street, traffic thickened, and they halted in the middle of the block.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer me, Ellen?’

  How could she answer him? All she could think of was getting away, escaping from the cab, from the contrasting shades of his insolent voice, from the familiar Southern drawl and the clipped, brutal precision of his other way of speaking. Seven more blocks and they would be at the hotel, seven more blocks, one – or, if luck was against her, two – more traffic lights. That was all she could think of, and she dare not talk to him about that. As it was he probably knew just what she was planning to do and had already devised a way of preventing it.

  He commenced to whistle again, softly, but connectedly – he whistled ‘The Blue-Tail Fly’ through, and then he said, musically slurring his words so that they seemed to grow out of the old tune, ‘Ah allus liked you in that costume, Ellen. It was mighty purty.’

  A flush spread down her face, warming the surface of her skin even under her clothes. He was looking at her speculatively, sizing her up again, measuring the Ellen he saw now with the Ellen he had known years before, seeing her again in the brief, diaphanous costume. She wanted to look away, but for some reason she could not. Her eyes met his gaze, sparred with his, their tempers met and clashed. Then he moved closer and, before she sensed what he was about to do, caught and held her in his arms.

  It was a familiar place to be. His arms were as strong as she remembered them, his mouth as frank and probing. She uncurled inside – a cat, warm and fat, walked across a room, stretching itself proudly, lazily – and met his kiss. And, at the same moment, the blackness swam in, swooping and billowing, clinging to her, claiming her, friendly, not hostile. She gave herself to it. This return to darkness was a homecoming, a yielding to placid oblivion. There was no threat here; she felt none of the dire excitement of the other times that she had fallen back into this pit, let herself go upon the surface of this sea, clothed herself in the mists of this engulfing night. Before it had seemed incalculable, formless, unknowable – a catastrophe, and she had fought against it, struggled to drive it back where it impinged, endeavoured to stand aside from it, to remain separate and by this means prevail over it; but now the sable ocean seemed bounded, had shape and substance, was meaningful – a beatitude, and she submitted herself to it, as unequivocally as she gave her consciousness to sleep, became one with it as willingly as, when a child, she had crept into her father’s lap, rejoicing in her loss of identity.

  Her father had been a strong man, not kind, but passionate. He had enclosed his family, locked them within the bounds of his own personality, fed them the world as he had seen it. His world had not been wide: it had centred about his store with its shelves of books and piles of stationery, its meek, maidenly clerks, its scholarly façade with leaded-glass windows and a hanging sign that creaked when the day blew gusty; but his world had been experienced intensely, for his daughter and his patient wife, as much as for himself. They both had served his clients, his wife had kept the books and paid the bills in her painfully tidy script, Ellen had dusted and polished, creamed the leather bindings, taken down the orders and done up the packages, run the errands. The bookseller had seen the great events of his day through the burning glass of his trade, the War then just a few years past had been referred to as ‘the years when we stored the German stock in the cellar’. The decade of prosperity had been concentrated in his annual summer trips to Europe, which had meant long, confining hot days in the store for Ellen while she helped her mother wait on trade in her father’s absence, and had resulted in crates of musty volumes, French portfolios of plates, fine bindings to be cared for during the long winter evenings. Even the happenings of the city they lived in came to them filtered through their protector’s contacts with his customers: t
he warehouse fire, in which four workers lost their lives and which all the other inhabitants had gathered to see incarnadine the night, had been casually mentioned in conversation by Reverend Sawyer on the day he bought a set of Jonathan Edwards, and had been referred to with equal casualness by her father, that night at dinner, when he had told them how he had sold the set to the minister, how shamed he had been to find one of the deckled edges slightly dusty and how much he had got for it. All they heard of politics, of foreign doings, of local matters, one way or another seeped out of this steady flow of information on the selling of books – all they read, when they read at all, were the volumes that had been damaged that could not be sold, or those that for some reason or other incurred their master’s displeasure and were cast aside as unfit merchandise. For her father had been proud of his ability to deduce when a book had been read, and the act of perusing served to lower its value in his eyes. ‘Books are as perishable as butter or eggs,’ he had used to say, ‘and must be handled with consummate care.’

  The blackness, the swirling, once frightening – but now calming – mists were intimately engaged in all this, as well as other memories: the days at school when the children had laughed at her for her affected manner of speaking and excluded her from their games because of the queer way she dressed, the upright piano her mother had inherited from an uncle, and the marvellous spectrum of sound, the ever-varying colours of notes and chords, the hushed dim silences and the clamouring, bright splendour of mounting sonorities that it had allowed her to evoke. The piano had helped her gain her freedom from the store, too, although it had not let her fly from her father, since he, for reasons as inscrutable as those that underlay his other passions – the store, his family, his upright, manly person – shared her hunger for music, standing over her while she practised, hands clenched behind his back, ready to show her a scathing grimace of disgust for a wrong note, a torturous yank at her pigtails for any indication of sloth.