"Get up! Get up! Get to the piano! You big loafer!”
Delphine doesn’t give a damn that he’s sleeping! Everything for her boy!
"Get up! ”… He’s got to get up, the louse! and right away! "Go on! Go on! Merry Widow Waltz! pianist! damn it!”.. That’s the way they handle him!..
The piano’s upstairs… he’s got to climb up again! He yawns.. stretches.. All the same he goes.. Good God, get going!. He grabs hold. staggers to the rail. Delphine hustles him along.. She has authority over him… Old Potbelly’s still groaning… he wants his music, he’s wailing!.. He’s starting to choke again..
Finally, there it goes!. It starts!. There’s his waltz!.. the notes! at last! the runs!. prelude!. He’s made up his mind!. After all!. A shower!. two trills!. we’re off! pedal!. cascades! triple-time!. spinning round!. it’s delightful!.. the waltz whisks you up!.. the shading. the arpeggio!.. and then largo, rich chords!..
Once started… all you wanted.. never tired.. forward!
.. evenings. nights. if you wanted!. it sort of excited him too, in a way… his big can on the stool, he just kept bouncing around. jigging away in rhythm… it kept him pretty busy.
i have been telling it all like a stick… First I’ve got to organize myself. give you something of an idea, something of a picture of what it was like. the place, the setting.. It’s the excitement that throws me off, flusters me, spoils the effect. I’ve got to react!.. got to describe the whole setup to you.. the Van Claben warehouse, his pawnshop.
It had a wonderful location, just outside Greenwich, right on the park and overlooking the Thames a way off, the whole panorama of the river… a magical kind of spectacle.. From his first-story windows you could see the riggings, the whole India Dock, the first sails, the tackle, the April clippers, the Australian ocean liners.. Farther off, beyond Poplar, the ocher chimneys, the wharves of the Peninsulars, the steamboats from the Straits, dazzling white, with high decks..
Ah! it was an ideal spot, no denying it, for looking out, the view and everything, for anyone who’s got a turn for voyages, navigation, playing truant..
A wonderfully situated house, a whole theatre in front of his windows, an amazing setting of greenery on the greatest port in the world… In the good season it turned straight into a dreamland. Should’ve seen the display of flower beds!. all kinds, yellow, red, purple, dazzling, all varieties, enough to get you all worked up, restore all your confidence, pleasant giddiness..
Only a sullen mope would contradict me!. Especially after the winter of 1915-16, so harsh and merciless. It was a terrific springtime!.. Nature’s maddening sweetness, a blossoming of the grove, enough to bust open the cemeteries! to make the tapers dance a jig!.. I saw it! I can talk!..
When spring started cutting up that way it always had a bad effect on The Horror, whose story I’m telling. it made him jumpy! out of sorts. He didn’t want to hear about blithe blossoming.. He’d shrivel up in a bad temper at the back of his shop, closed in, shifty-looking, he was suspicious of the radiant season, he kept all his windows and blinds shut… He couldn’t tolerate the whiffs of spring. He’d lock up his shop at six in the evening. He was afraid of clematis, of daisy magic, he tolerated only the customers.. All he wanted to see was business, customers, not little birds, no, nor roses. He could take care of himself! He spat on crazy nature!. There was only one thing, for example, that made him woozy, moony, tender, soft, that was music.. Greedy enough to gobble up his hands, a disgusting pig, a damned first-class usurer, you could moisten him only with melody, and not a little either!. Totally!. Didn’t give a damn about tail, tobacco or pretty faces, dead set against whisky, not a homo either, nothing at all, he was really frigid, except to little piano tunes, to melodious fantasy. And he never went out. you had to go and get him. He didn't go out because of his asthma that the fogs from the river would bring on at the first whiff.. I’ve given you an idea of an attack. Boro knew his boss, he’d take advantage of the magic spell!. When he was down to nothing, beaten by the cops or the races, he’d come in from London unexpected, he’d fall on The Horror, attack him by the digestion, and put him to sleep melodiously… If you could have seen the job, the style!.. The old guy would never have admitted that it gave him such pleasure. It was almost his damnation, especially after lunch. Must have been something exceptional, all the circumstances of life, that they’d known each other formerly, in the past, a way off in their youth, for him to let himself be bewitched that way by such a crafty scoundrel, even worse perhaps than himself… I learned all about it little by little. in the course of things. piecemeal. Boro didn’t complicate things, he’d go straight through the shop, without shilly-shallying, not a word, he’d climb upstairs, impolite, attack the ivories. The old guy would curse and swear as he passed, he’d yell out insults, he’d go nuts for a while, he’d call him a hyena, a blackmailer, a stinking disgusting fat pimp.. Boro, who wasn’t tongue-tied, would let him have it right back, there’d be a nice show of fireworks!.. and then it would subside, pretty quickly. They were just being a little kittenish. They were quite pleased with one another..
On the first floor under the beams was the big stock of instruments, especially the strings, mandolins, pledged harps, and cellos, a closetful of violins, bits of guitars and zithers, an awful hodgepodge. a whole cartload of clarinets, oboes, cornets, flutes, piccolos, an entire trunk full of ocarinas, all kinds of trick gadgets for the wind.. and exotic instruments, two Madagascan drums, a tom-tom, three Japanese balalaikas, enough to make all London dance, to accompany a continent, to stock a couple of dozen orchestras in The Horror’s garret alone.. merely with the securities of musicians who’d evaporated… the unredeemed pledges, the junk hanging around. The old guy was supposed to clear it out, to get rid of it all in Petticoat, the headquarters for secondhand stuff, their flea market, so as to give himself room! But he kept putting it off from day to day. It was too painful, he couldn’t make up his mind… He was too fond of his instruments… He even bought up others… especially pianos. The latest one a
Pleyel, a perfect baby grand at retail price, a smart-looking model from Maxon’s, a dream.. Shows you how bad he was bitten!. How music got him.. Not that he played personally, he couldn’t have hit out a note, but his place was full of it and it gave him such a kick that he couldn’t find a reason for putting it on sale.. He accumulated piles of harps and trombones, it was such a jammed chaos under the rafters that it just wasn’t possible. you couldn’t push the door, it blocked all the skylights.. He could have made dough, he who was so damned tight, whence his nickname, old sordid, a monster who’d eat rat, a miser who’d skin a penny, he’d have sold fishbone if there’d been a taker anywhere, but when it came to music he took such a stand that he forgot all about his natural bent..
In order to make room Boro would knock everything right and left.. with big kicks.. he’d pick at something in the pile, a saxophone, a piccolo, a mandolin.. he’d fool around with the gadget for a while.. just so.. a bit of a prelude… a fantasy. nothing at all. he’d drop it. just a whim!. then he’d yank out his piano, ferociously. clear away all the junk. whatever was in his way. the whole museum!. Bara-boom!.. finally installed, stool, all ready!.. on with the waltz!. Arpeggios, trills, gingerbread. you know. plugging it, street stuff.. with the best possible variations for charm. plaintive, tinsel, sob-stuff, it could go on forever.. it was irresistible… It would make a crocodile start daydreaming.. But you’ve got to have the knack.. It’s the magic know-how… to turn on the charm anywhere, jolly place, dull occasion, smart salon, cuckold ball, gloomy lofts, sinister squares, hopeless streets, communions, country inns, All Saints’ Day, low dives, July l4ths!. a zim! bang! ding! and it starts. never meets resistance!. I know what I’m talking about.. Later on, after lots of ups and downs I sold some of that market-place stuff with Boro, that nice strummed jigging.. Should’ve heard our "three-handed” numbers. I did the "one-armed” bass, my octave run, I had time to think about how the charm works.. later on, as the days went by… it has to keep going! that’s the big secret. never slow up never stop! it’s got to keep popping away like seconds, each with its little tick, its little dancing hurrying soul, but, by God, kept on the move by the next one!.. perks you up with a trill.. nicks you!. tinkles right into your worries. plays tricks with time, tickles your trouble, teases, pleases and tinkles your worries, and turn! turn! whirls you round!. carries you off. constant gallop! notes and notes!.. and then the arpeggio!.. another trill! the English air sweeps along cool and saucy!.. a high jig!. pedal thunders! never backs out!. or sighs.. rests!.. that’s what’s sad when you think about it!.. all that wild sweetness, always shooting ahead, note after note. Should’ve seen Boro at it! some performer! when it came to the ivories. flashiness. but flighty rhythms!. and what a repertoire!. some memory!. variations ad infinitum. He, rather uncouth by nature and really just a brute and pretty impossible with his mania for explosives, would get all fluttery, all showery, all elfin!. His mind was in his fingers. Pixy hands!.. butterflies on the ivories.. He’d spin about the harmonies!. snatch them on the wing!. dreams and fancies!. garlands. twists and turns. nimble pranks. Possessed!