Dolly brought the mate in silence. I started to play a “sentimental waltz” and no one said another word. Miss Moppet sipped her mate, gazing out at the patio. Like the oval trays, she seemed to be there only to reflect the dying light. I didn’t ask to have the footlamp turned on. I played a few pieces from memory. During the intervals I let my thoughts wander. Miss Moppet not only seemed unaware of the music: she had left her mate on the table, her hand resting motionless by it.
The next sessions they had everything ready when I arrived, and after Miss Moppet had drunk her first mates and I had played my first tangos she sat motionless and I followed my thoughts.
I had been working there for over a month when it happened once again that Miss Moppet’s mate wasn’t ready. She came up to me a bit nervously and said she would be listening as usual, but from another room. Again, that afternoon, she ordered Dolly to prepare her mate, reminding her the pot was in the bathroom.
When Dolly returned and saw the lady wasn’t in the room she seized on her chance to tell me:
“Today it’s been exactly two years since we saw Miss Moppet’s boyfriend run up the gangway with the other woman on his arm, so you’d better watch it, pet.”
I didn’t appreciate being petted by her and was about to object when the lady came in. All afternoon, Miss Moppet kept appearing and disappearing, like a drizzle between sunny skies.
A few days later they sent for me from the Pianists’ Association and the director told me:
“Miss Moppet was here to ask for another pianist. She says you’re the gloomy type and your music doesn’t cheer her up. I said: ‘He’s the best we have, lady,’ and tried to convince her you’d change your repertory and liven things up a bit.”
I hated going to the next session, depressed at the thought of having to “liven things up” and also having to tell Dolly not to pet me. But a surprise awaited me in the dining room: Miss Moppet’s brother was visiting and he turned out to be someone I knew. He stood up at once to shake my hand and said:
“How are you, Maestro? Congratulations on your concert — I know it was a big success. I saw the articles and pictures in the papers.”
Miss Moppet’s eyes shot looks right and left, as if their defect made them naturally suspicious, and her voice burst on us:
“What? Why didn’t someone tell me you were in the papers?”
Her brother went on:
“That’s right! We were even in the same paper once, only two columns apart. It was when I was named secretary of the club.”
“And the president congratulated you,” Miss Moppet broke in. And then she said: “Come on, this way.”
I had kept my eyes lowered modestly, and first I saw her purple skirt go out the door, and, right behind it, her brother’s black trousers.
Then I started to remember the café where I had been playing when I met the young brother. They called him Spider in those days, I don’t know why, or why he put up with the name, considering his mean temper. And now I was intent on fitting Miss Moppet, with her purple dress, into the story of this young man. She was a latecomer to the idea I had of him, and, although it might not be the best moment for such an enterprise, I couldn’t help reviewing everything I knew about him in the light of this sister I had not imagined before. And it seemed she, too, was straining to enter the picture, as if pushing her way onto a crowded bus.
The café was hidden behind some trees, in a building with overhanging balconies. Anyone trying to go in had to contend with the door, which had a large black knob shaped like a tailor’s iron. The moment you put your hand on the knob it spun without catching in either direction. It seemed the door was laughing at you. If someone inside happened to be sitting close enough — which meant no more than a few feet away — to be seen through the dirty glass, he might signal you with a gesture that meant “Come on! Push!” Then, if you gave a shove, the door would complain but let you through — although as soon as you had your back to it, it got its revenge by bouncing on its spring and slamming on you.
The smoke in the room swallowed up most of the dim lamplight and the colors people wore. It also enveloped the thin columns holding up the balcony where we played. There were three of us: a violin, a flute, and I. It was the smoke, it seemed, that had raised us in our balcony, almost to the white ceiling, as if to a heaven from where we had been hired to send down — through the clouds of smoke — the music no one seemed to be listening to. As soon as we finished a piece we were invaded by the murmur of the crowd. It was a loud, steady murmur, and in winter we were in a sleepy haze. From our seats we would lean over the edge of the balcony and let our eyes roam over the vague shapes below. Occasionally we would focus on a group of heads gathered into the white circle of a marble table, with small dark spots that were cups of coffee held up to their noses. One of the waiters was nearsighted and followed behind his thick glasses, which slowly advised him of an object’s location and then guided him to it, his nose pointing right and left like a compass needle until it had found its target. On one hand he balanced a tray, and with the other he groped his way through the crowd. He had been divorced and remarried and had a house full of children. Seen from above, he was like a small boat making its way between islands, running aground half the time and unloading everything at the wrong ports.
All this happened at night. During the evening show, though, things were different, and not only because one knew it was evening instead of night or because there was a different audience that ordered different drinks. At that time of day the members of a political club with headquarters above the café came down and filled two tables in the rear. They were Spider’s friends and admirers, and had come to see him. Before engaging him in conversation they watched him for a long while from their far corner, waiting for him to finish mixing the cocktails behind the bar. By then a bright light had come on: it shone on his white vest, white shirt, and very white teeth. Opposed to all that whiteness was the black of his tie, brows, eyes, and decidedly black hair. In his face the opposites combined: it was olive-colored — or a shade darker in spots, especially above the brows, which would have seemed immense if he hadn’t shaved them down to two shoestring lines.
Nothing stirred in that face during the mixing ceremony, nor could you have told at what precise moment he picked up a bottle or put it down: the eye wasn’t quick enough to register the split second it took an object to respond to one of his movements. It seemed the bottles and glasses, as well as the ice and strainers, had a life of their own and had been given complete freedom of action. It didn’t matter if they did not obey him at once: they knew their responsibility and would act in good time. The only moment one could satisfy the base need to measure cause and effect was when he was tossing the mix vigorously in the cocktail shaker. At one such moment I happened to go by one of the tables in the rear and I heard someone say: “Shows he’s a man of character!”
Spider knew which cocktail would be most in demand at any given time, so he prepared enough for several glasses. After shaking a mix he distributed it in the glasses with quick flips of his wrist. It was a gesture of such precision it seemed to embody some secret of nature: each drop fell into its glass home as if by family instinct. After relieving the shaker of its first load — which might be of some dark race — he prepared another — of a white race this time — and distributed the new families of drops just as he had the previous ones. Then came the moment we had all been eagerly awaiting: he took a tall spoon, spun the families in each glass around with a few deft strokes until they blended, and, lo and behold, the glasses began to sing, each with its own sound, producing unexpected combinations. And that was the one surprise of the day: the unpredictable way in which apparently similar glasses combined the music of mysteriously different sounds.