“Sure, I know.”
“You know, but be ready. One chord. One chord, and as soon as you have the pitch clear in your head, start. Don’t let it catch you by surprise.”
“I won’t.”
We had another cigarette, and didn’t say much. I looked at the palms of my hands. They were wet. Wilkins came in. “Taxi’s waiting.”
We put on our coats, went down, got in the cab. There was a little drizzle of rain. “The Eastman Theatre. Stage entrance.”
The stage was all set for the recital, with a big piano out there, and a drop back of it. There was a hole in the drop, so we could look out. First she would look, and then I would look. Wilkins found a chair, and read the afternoon paper. She kept looking up. “Balcony’s filling. It’s a sell-out.”
But I wasn’t looking at the balcony. All I could see was those white shirts, marching down into the orchestra. Rochester is a musical town, and formal, and a lot of those white shirts, they had those dreamy faces over top of them, with curly moustaches, that meant musician. They meant musician, and they meant tony musician, and they scared me to death. I don’t know what I expected. Anybody that lives in New York gets to thinking that any town north of the Harlem River is out in the sticks, and I must have been looking for a flock of country club boys and their wives, or something, but not this. My mouth began to feel dry. I went over to the cooler and had a drink, but I kept swallowing.
At 8:25 a stagehand went out and closed the top of the piano. He came back and another herd of white shirts came down the aisle. They were hurrying now. Wilkins took out his watch, held it up to Cecil. “Ready?”
“All right.”
We all three went to the wings, stage right. He raised his hand. “One — two” — then lifted his foot and gave her a little kick in the tail. She swept out there like she owned the place and the whole block it was built on. There was a big hand. She bowed once, the way she had told me to do, and then stood there, looking up, down, and around, a little friendly smile coming on her face every time she warmed up a new bunch, while he was playing the introduction to the Rossini. Then she started to sing. It was the first time I had heard her in public. Well, I didn’t need any critic to tell me she was good. She stood there, smiling around, and then, as the introduction stopped, she turned grave, and seemed to get taller, and the first of it came out, low and soft. It was Latin, and she made it sound dramatic. And she made every syllable so distinct that I could even understand what it meant, though it was all of fifteen years since I had had my college Plautus. Then she got to the part where there are a lot of sustained notes, and her voice began to swell and throb so it did things to you. Up to then I hadn’t thought she had any knockout of a voice, but I had never heard it when it was really working. Then she came to the fireworks at the end, and you knew there really was a big leaguer in town. She finished, and there was a big hand. Wilkins came off, wiped his hands on his handkerchief. She bowed center, left, and right, and came off. She listened. The applause kept up. She went out and bowed three times again. She came off, stood there and listened, then shook her head. The applause stopped, and she looked at me. “All right, baby. Here’s your kick for luck.”
She kicked me the way Wilkins had kicked her. He put the handkerchief in his pocket, raised his hand. “One — two—”
I aimed for the center of the stage, got there, and bowed, the way I had practiced. They gave me a hand. Then I looked up, and tried to do what she had told me to do, look them over, top, bottom, and around. But all I could see was faces, faces, faces, all staring at me, all trying to swim down my throat. Then I began to think about that first number, and the one chord I would get, and how I had to be ready. I stood there, and it seemed so long I got a panicky feeling he had forgotten to come out, and that there wouldn’t be any opening chord. Then I heard it, and right away started to sing:
My voice sounded so big it startled me, and I tried to throttle it down, and couldn’t. There’s no piano interludes in that song. It goes straight through, for three verses, at a hell of a clip, and the more I tried to pull in, and get myself under some kind of control, the louder it got, and the faster I kept going, until at the finish Wilkins had a hard time keeping up with me. They gave me a little bit of a hand, and I didn’t want to bow, I wanted to apologize, and explain that that wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. But I bowed, some kind of way.
Then came the O Cessate. It’s short, and ought to start soft, lead up to a crescendo in the middle, and die away at the end. I was so rung up by then I couldn’t sing soft if I tried. I started it, and my voice bellowed all over the place, and it was terrible. There was a bare ripple after that, and Wilkins went into the opening of the Come Raggio. That’s another that opens soft, and I sang it soft for about two measures, and then I exploded like some radio when you turn it up too quick. After that it was a hog-calling contest. Wilkins saw it was hopeless, and came down on the loud pedal so it would maybe sound as though that was the way it was supposed to go, and a fat chance we could fool that audience. I finished, and on the pianissimo at the end it sounded like a locomotive whistling for a curve. When it was over there was a little scattering of applause, and I bowed. I bowed center, and took the quarter turn to bow to the side. The applause stopped. I kept right on turning and walked off stage.
She was there in the wings, a murderous look on her face. “You’ve flopped!”
“All right, I’ve flopped.”
“Damn it, you’ve—”
But Wilkins grabbed her by the arm. “Do you want to lose them for good? Get out there, get out there, get out there!”
She stopped in the middle of a cussword and went on, smiling like nothing had happened at all.
I tried to explain to her in the intermission what had ailed me, but she kept walking away from me, there behind the drop. It wasn’t until I saw her blotting her eyes with a handkerchief, to keep the mascara from running down her cheeks, that I knew she was crying. “Well — I’m sorry I ruined your concert.”
“... Oh well. It’s a turkey anyhow.”
“I didn’t do it any good.”
“They’re as cold as dead fish. There’s nothing to do about it. You didn’t ruin it.”
“Was that the bird?”
“Oh no. You don’t know the half of it yet.”
“Oh.”
“Did you have to blast them out of their seats?”
“I’ve been telling you. I was nervous.”
“After all I’ve told you about not bellowing. And then you have to — what did you think you were doing, announcing trains?”
“Maybe I’d better go home.”
“Maybe you’d better.”
“Shall I do this other number?”
“As you like.”
She did the Mozart, and took an encore, and came off. Wilkins had heard us rowing, and looked at me, and motioned me on. She went off to her dressing room without looking at me. I went out there. There were one or two handclaps, and I made my bow, and then paid no more attention to them at all. I felt sick and disgusted. He struck the opening chord and I started the recitative. There’s a lot of it, and I sang it just mechanically. After two or three phrases I heard a murmur go over the house, and if that was the bird I didn’t care. I got to the end of the recitative, and then stepped back a little while he played the introduction to the aria. I heard him mumble, so I could just hear him above the triplets: “You got ’em. Just look noble now, and it’s in the bag.”