Career in C Major: And Other Fiction

by James M. Cain

  For a second or so after he struck the last chord it was as still as death. Then some guy in the balcony yelled. My heart skipped a beat, but then others began to yell, and what they were yelling was bravo. The applause broke out in a roar then, and I remembered to bow. I bowed center, right, and left, and then I walked off. She was there, and kissed me. Wilkins whipped out his handkerchief, wiped the lipstick off my mouth, and shoved me out there again. I bowed three times again, and hated to leave. When I came back she nodded, told Wilkins to go out with me this time for an encore. “Yeah, but what the hell is his encore?”

  “Let him do Traviata.”

  “O. K.”

  I went out, and he started Traviata. Now Di Provenza Il Mar I guess is the worst sung aria you ever hear, because the boys always think about tone and forget about the music, and that ruins it. I mean they don’t sing it smooth, with all the notes even, and that makes it jerky, and takes all the sadness out of it. But it’s a cakewalk for me, because I think I told you about all that work I did on music, and it seemed to me that I kind of knew what old man Verdi was trying to do with it when he wrote it. Wilkins started it, and he played it slower than Cecil had been playing it, and I no sooner heard it than I knew that was right too. I took it just the way he had cued me. I just rocked it along, and kept every note even, and didn’t beef at all. When I got to the G flat, I held it, then let it swell a little, but only enough to come in right on the forte that follows it, and then on the finish I loaded it with all the tears of the world. You ought to have heard the bravos that time. I went out and took more bows, and it was no trouble to look them in the eye that time. They seemed like the nicest people in the world.

  At the end, after she had finished a flock of encores, Cecil took me out for a bow with her, and then my flowers came up, and she pinned one on me, and they clapped some more, and she had me do a duet with her, “Crudel, Perché, Finora,” from the Marriage of Figaro. It went so well they wanted more, but she rang down and the three of us went out to eat. Wilkins and I were pretty excited, but she didn’t have much to say. When she went out to powder her nose, he started to laugh. “They’re all alike, aren’t they?”

  “How do you mean, all alike?”

  “I thought she was a little different, at first. Letting you take that encore, and singing a duet with you, that looked kind of decent. And then I got the idea, somehow, that she liked you. I mean for your sex appeal, or whatever it is that they go for. But you see how she’s acting, don’t you? They’re all alike. Opera singers are the dumbest, pettiest, vainest, cruelest, egotisticalest, jealousest breed of woman you can find on this man’s earth, or any man’s earth. You did too good, that’s all. Two bits that tomorrow morning you’re on your way back.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong. First the tenor stinks and then the baritone don’t stink enough.”

  “Not Cecil.”

  “Just Cecil, the ravishing Cecil.”

  “Something’s eating on her, but I don’t think it’s that.”

  “You’ll see.”

  “All right, I’ll match your two bits.”

  We got back to the hotel, Wilkins went to his room, and I went up with her for a goodnight cigarette. She snapped on the lights, then went over to the mirror and stood looking at herself. “What’s the matter with the dress?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s something.”

  “… It’s all wrong.”

  “I paid enough for it. It came from one of the best shops in New York.”

  “I guess one of the best shops in New York wouldn’t have some lousy Paris copy they would wish off on a singer that didn’t know any better…. It makes you look like a gold plush sofa. It makes that bozoom look like some dairy, full of Grade A milk for the kiddies. It makes you look about ten years older. It makes you look like an opera singer, all dressed up to screech.”

  “Isn’t the bozoom all right?”

  “The bozoom, considered simply as a bozoom, is curviform, exciting, and even distinguished. But for God’s sake never dress for anything like that, even if you’re secretly stuck on it, which I think you are. That’s what a telephone operator does, when she puts on a yoo-hoo blouse. Or a chorus girl, wearing a short skirt to show her legs. Dress the woman, not the shape.”

  “Did you learn that from her?”

  “Anyway I learned it.”

  She sat down, and kept on looking at the velvet, and fingering it. “All right, I’m a hick.”

  I went over and sat down beside her and took her hand. “You’re not a hick, and you’re not to feel that way about it. You asked me, didn’t you? You wanted to know. Just to sit there, and keep on saying the dress was all right, when you knew I didn’t think so—that wouldn’t have been friendly, would it? And what is it? You haven’t been yourself tonight.”

  “I’m a hick. I know I’m a hick, and I don’t try to make anybody think any different. You or anybody…. I haven’t had time to learn how to dress. I’ve spent my life in studios and hotels and theatres and concert halls and railroad trains, and I’ve spent most of it broke—until here recently—and all of it working. If you think that teaches you the fine points of dressing, you’re mistaken. It doesn’t teach you anything, except how tough everything is. And she, she’s done nothing all her life but look at herself in a mirror, and—”

  “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “—And study herself, and take all the time she needs to find the exact thing that goes with her, and make some man pay for it, and—all right, she can dress. I know she can dress. I don’t have to be told. No woman would have to be told. And—all right, you wanted to know what she’s got, I’ll tell you what she’s got. She’s got class, so when she says hop, you—jump! And I haven’t got it. All right, I know I haven’t got it. But was that any reason for you to look at me that way?”

  “Is that why you fought with me?”

  “Wasn’t it enough? As though I was some poor thing that you felt sorry for. That you felt—ashamed of! You’ve never felt ashamed of her, have you?”

  “Nor of you.”

  “Oh, yes. You were ashamed tonight. I could see it in your eye. Why did you have to look at me that way?”

  “I wasn’t ashamed of you, I was proud of you. Even when you were quarreling with me, back there during the intermission, the back of my head was proud of you. Because it was your work, and there was no fooling around about it, even with me. Because you were a pro at your trade, and were out there to win, no matter whose feelings got hurt. And now you try to tell me I was ashamed of you.”

  She dropped her head on my shoulder and started to cry. “Oh Leonard, I feel like hell.”

  “What about? All this is completely imaginary.”

  “Oh no it isn’t…. The tenor was all right. He wasn’t much good, but I could have done with him, once he got over his cold. I wanted you up here, don’t you see? I was so glad to see you, and then I didn’t want you to see it, for fear you wouldn’t want me to be that glad. And I tried to be businesslike, and I was doing fine—and then you looked at me that way. And then I swallowed that down, because I knew I didn’t care how you looked at me, so long as you were here. And then—you flopped. And I knew you weren’t just a tenor that would put up with anything for a job. I knew you’d go back, and I was terrified, and furious at you. And then you sang the way I wanted you to sing, and I loved you so much I wanted to go out there and hold on to you while you sang the other one. And now you know. Oh no, it’s not just imaginary. What have you got?”

  I held her tight, and patted her cheek, and tried to think of something to say. There wasn’t anything to say, not about what she was talking about. I had got so fond of her that I loved every minute I spent with her, and yet there was only one woman that meant to me what she wanted to mean to me, and that was Doris. She could torture me all she wanted to, she could be a phoney and make a fool of me all over town with other men, and yet Cecil had hit it:
when she said hop, I jumped.

  “I know what you’ve got. You’ve got big hard shoulders, and shaggy hair, and you’re a man, and you build bridges, and to you this is just some kind of foolish tiddle-de-winks game that you play until it’s time to go to work. And that’s just what it is to me! I don’t want to be a singer. I want to be a woman!”

  “If I’m a man, you made me one.”

  “Oh yes, that’s the hell of it. It’s mostly tiddle-de-winks, but it’s partly building yourself up to her level, so you’re not afraid of her any more. And that’s what I’m helping you at. Making a man out of you, so she can have you…. I feel like hell. I could go right out that window.”

  I held her a long time, then, and she stopped crying, and began to play with my hair. “All right, Leonard. I’ve been rotten, and a poor sport to say anything about it at all, because this isn’t how it was supposed to come out—and now I’ll stop. I’ll be good, and not talk any more about it, and try to give you a pleasant trip. It’s a little fun, isn’t it, out here playing tiddle-de-winks?”

  “It is with you.”

  “Wouldn’t they be surprised, all your friends at the Engineers’ Club, if they could see you?”

  I wanted to cry, but she wanted me to laugh, so I did, and held her close, and kissed her. “You sang like an angel, and I’m terribly proud of you, and—that’s right. Hold me close.”

  I held her close a long time, and then she started to laugh. It was a real cackle, over something that had struck her funny, I could see that. “… What is it?”

  “You.”

  “Tonight? At the hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “?”

  But she just kept right on laughing, and didn’t tell me what it was about. Later on, though, I found out.

  6

  We sang Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Columbus after that, the same program, and I did all right. She paid my hotel bills, and offered me $50 a night on top of that, but I wouldn’t take anything. I was surprised at the reviews I got. Most of them wrote her up, and let me out with a line, but a few of them called me “the surprise of the evening,” said I had a voice of “rare power and beauty,” and spoke of the “sweep and authority” of my singing. I didn’t exactly know what they meant, and it was the first time I knew there was anything like that about me, but I liked them all right and saved them all.

  The Columbus concert was on a Thursday, and after we closed with the duet again, and took our bows, and went off, a little wop in gray spats followed her into her dressing room and stayed there quite a while. Then he left and we went out to eat. I was pretty hungry, and I hadn’t liked waiting. “Who was your pretty boy friend?”

  “That was Mr. Rossi.”

  “And who is Mr. Rossi?”

  “General secretary, business agent, attorney, master of the hounds, bodyguard, scout, and chief cook-and-bottle-washer to Cesare Pagano.”

  “And who is Cesare Pagano?”

  “He’s the American Scala Opera Company, the only impresario in the whole history of opera that ever made money out of it.”

  “And?”

  “I’m under contract to them, you know. For four weeks, beginning Monday. After that I go back to New York to get ready for the Metropolitan.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Then after tonight I’m fired. Is that it?”

  “No. I didn’t say anything about it, because I thought I might have a surprise for you. I’ve been wiring Pagano about you, and wiring him and wiring him—and tonight he sent Rossi over. Rossi thinks you’ll do.”

  “What? Me sing in grand opera?”

  “Well what did you think you were learning those roles for?”

  “I don’t know. Just for something to do. Just so I could come down and see you. Just—to see if I could do it. Hell, I never been to a grand opera.”

  “Anyway, I closed with him.”

  It turned out I was to get $125 a week, which was upped $25 from what he had offered, and that was what they were arguing about. I was to get transportation, pay my own hotel bills, and have a four-week contract, provided I did all right on my first appearance. It sounded so crazy to me I didn’t know what to say, and then something else popped in my head. “What about this grand opera, anyway? Do they—dress up or something?”

  “Why of course. There’s costumes, and scenery—just like any other show.”

  “Me—put on funny clothes and get out there and—do I have to paint up my face?”

  “You use make-up, of course.”

  “It’s out.”

  But then when I asked her what she got, and she said $400 a night, and that she had taken a cut from $500, I knew perfectly well that that was part of what they had been arguing about too, that she had taken that cut to get me in, so I could be with her, and that kind of got me. I thought it was the screwiest thing I had ever heard of, but I finally said yes.

  If you think a concert is tough, don’t ever try grand opera. I hear it’s harder to go out there all alone, with only a piano to play your accompaniments and no scenery to help you out, and I guess it is, when you figure the fine points. But if you’ve never even heard of the fine points yet, and you’re not sure you can even do it at all, you stick to something simple. Remember what I’m telling you: lay off grand opera.

  We hit Chicago the next day, just the two of us, because Wilkins went back to New York after the Columbus concert. The first thing we did, after we got hotel rooms, was go around to the costumer’s. That’s a swell place. There’s every kind of costume you ever heard of, hanging on hooks, like people that have just been lynched, from white flannel tenor suits with brass buttons up the front, to suits of armor, to naval uniforms, to cowboy clothes, to evening clothes and silk hats. It’s all dark, and dusty, and shabby, and about as romantic as a waxworks.

  They were opening in Bohème Monday night, and we were both in it, and that meant the first thing we had to get was the Marcel stuff. She already had her costumes, you understand. This was all on account of me. Marcel was the character I was to sing in the opera, the baritone role. There wasn’t any trouble about him. I mean, they didn’t have to make any stuff to order, because a pair of plaid pants, a velvet smoking jacket of a coat, and a muffler and floppy hat for the outdoor stuff, were all I had to have. They had that stuff, and I tried it on, and it was all right, and they set it aside. But when it came to the Rigoletto stuff, and they opened a book and showed me a picture of what I would have to have, I almost broke for the station right there. I knew he was supposed to be some kind of a hump-backed jester, but that I would have to come out in a foolish-looking red suit, and actually wear cap and bells, that never once entered my mind.

  “I really got to wear that outfit?”

  “Why of course.”

  “My God.”

  She paid hardly any attention to me, and went on talking with the costumer. “He has to sing it Wednesday, and he’ll have no chance for a fitting Monday. Can you fit Tuesday and deliver Wednesday?”

  “Absolutely, Miss. We guarantee it.”

  “Remember to fit over the hump.”

  “We’ll even measure over the hump. I think he’d better put a hump on right now. By the way, has he got a hump?”

  “No, he’ll have to get one.”

  “We have two types of hump. One that goes on with straps, the other with elastic fabric fastenings, adjustable. I recommend the elastic fabric, myself. It’s more comfortable, stays in place better, doesn’t interfere with breathing—”

  “I think that’s better.”

  So I put on a hump, and got measured for the monkey suit. Then it turned out that for two of the acts I would have to have dark stuff, and a cape, and another floppy hat. They argued whether the Bohème hat wouldn’t do, and finally decided it would. Then we tried on capes. The one that seemed to be elected hiked up in back, on account of the hump, but the costumer thought I ought to take it, just the same. �
��We could make you a special one, to hang even all around, but if you take my advice, you’ll have this one. That little break in the line won’t make much difference, and then, if you have a cape that really fits you, without that hump I mean, you can use it in other operas—Lucia, Trovatore, Don Giovanni, you know what I mean? A nice operatic cape comes in handy any time, and—”

  “O. K. I’ll take that one.”

  Then it turned out I would have to have a red wig, and we tried wigs on. When we got around to the Traviata stuff I didn’t even have the heart to look, and ordered blind. Anything short of a hula skirt, I thought, would be swell. Then it seemed I had to have a trunk, a special kind, and we got that. I’d hate to tell you what all that stuff cost. We came out of there with the Marcel stuff, the wig, the hump, the cape, and a make-up kit done up in two big boxes, the other stuff to come. When we got back to the hotel we went up and I dumped the stuff down on the floor. “What’s the matter, Marcellino? Don’t you feel well?”

  “I feel lousy.”

  There’s no rehearsals for principals in the American Scala. You know your stuff or you don’t get hired. But I was a special case, and Pagano wasn’t taking any chances on me. He posted a call for the whole Boheme cast to take me through it Sunday afternoon, and maybe you think that wasn’t one sore bunch of singers that showed up at two o’clock. The men were all Italians, and they wanted to go to a pro football game that was being played that afternoon. The only other woman in the cast, the one that sang Musetta, was an American, and she was sore because she was supposed to give a lecture in a Christian Science temple, and had to cancel it. They couldn’t get the theatre, for some reason, so we did it downstairs in the new cocktail lounge of the hotel, that they didn’t use on Sundays. Rossi put chairs around to show doors, windows, and other stuff in the set, took the piano, and started off. The rest of them paid no attention to him at all, or to me. They knew Bohème frontwards, backwards, and sidewise, and they sat around with their hats on the back of their heads, working crossword puzzles in the Sunday paper. When it came time for them to come in they came in without even looking up. Cecil acted just like the others. She didn’t work puzzles, but she read a book. Every now and then a tall, disgusted-looking Italian would walk through and walk out again. I asked who he was, and they told me Mario, the conductor. He looked like if he had to listen to me much longer he would get an acute case of the colic. It was all as cheerful as cold gravy with grease caked on the top.