Suddenly, Spider would slip into his trim black jacket, and, donning his flat-brimmed hat, which sat stiff and sharp as a razor, he would circle around to the front of the bar, where the owner himself — his friend and coreligionist — would serve him a brandy. By then the politicians at the table in the rear were leaving for the club, where they would be expecting him. On several occasions, as I watched them go, I remembered something I knew about him. He had once had a girlfriend who had asked his permission to go to a dance and insisted on going even when the permission was denied. He had soon found out and broken off with words that were like loud hard slaps. One afternoon the girl had come in looking for him, but he’d had the waiter throw her out, and shortly afterward she had poisoned herself.
At first he had been very friendly toward us, but then one day he had dropped us. There was a row of colored lights on the balcony railing and he was in charge of turning them on when the orchestra struck up. The violin had noticed Spider was in the habit of turning them on just as we sounded the first chord of our opening piece, and one night we decided to play a joke on him: we suddenly struck out a chord at random. The blast combined with the burst of light caught people’s attention and there was some applause, but Spider paced furiously back and forth behind the bar, as if about to spring on us. He stopped talking to us — but years later, when I was no longer playing in the café, he saw me in the street one day and came over with a big open smile to say hello, and we ended up friends again.
Now he was just as friendly when he came back through the dark dining room on his way out to say good-bye and assured me:
“You can relax. Your job is safe in this house.”
I was relieved — my concert had helped, after all. But I knew something was still bothering me, although I couldn’t think what it was. Soon I remembered: I had to tell Dolly not to pet me. And just then she ran in on tiptoes, holding out her hand: I couldn’t avoid shaking it. After a breathless moment she said:
“Good for you, pet,” and ran out.
During the next sessions Miss Moppet sat silently in the room again, sipping her mate, and I was able to let my thoughts roam at will.
Starting that day when my position in the house had been assured, it was a long time before Miss Moppet interrupted my thoughts. She sipped her mate until the water went cold and then her eyes stopped straying and she, too, settled in to gaze at her memories. But one evening near the end of the session, when the room was very dark, she spoke to me. At that moment she was the farthest thing from my mind, and when her words struck me and the silence collapsed I made an awkward move and kicked the piano. While the sound box was still reverberating she let out a coarse laugh. Then she asked, for the second time:
“What did you say was the name of that nice little tango you just played?”
My first impulse was to tell her, but then I decided the title — “Hello and Goodbye” — might sound like an allusion to the boyfriend who had shipped out with another woman, and instead I switched on the light, intending to hand her the score so she could see for herself. But she read my mind and stopped me before I could get up:
“No, just say it.”
I did, in a strangled voice.
She made me repeat it and then said:
“Heavens! And it isn’t even Carnival!”
I hadn’t wanted the title of the song to bring back her bad memories, but I was drawn to the tragedies in other lives and one of the purposes I had been hoping to achieve with my concert was to make new acquaintances who would help me find my way into unknown homes.
One afternoon when I was thinking about people’s tragedies I caught the pungent smell of roast suckling in the dark dining room and said to Dolly:
“What a stink! Can’t you get that thing out of here? It’s a shame, in such a nice dining room. .”
She was annoyed:
“Why, pet, don’t you think suckling is a dining room smell? Would you rather have it in the living room?”
There it was, on the sideboard, in a blue enameled serving dish, covered with a white cheesecloth. Dolly had left the room in a huff, but soon she came back in and said:
“I know what’s eating you, pet: you’d like a piece.”
I protested vigorously, but she kept shushing me, trying to stifle my voice and grab my hands. While I waved them around and she reached after them, we drew groping figures in the air and I felt the wind raised by the four hands blow on my hot face. Finally, I put my hands behind my back, resigned to hear her say:
“Listen, pet, come around the back way tonight at ten o’clock. There’s a tree in the street with thick branches reaching to the kitchen window. I can’t let you in the front door because there’d be gossip and I’m engaged to be married.”
I tried to interrupt but she had managed to trap one of my hands, and while I snatched it back and then wondered about my violent gesture, she was explaining:
“Just climb the tree and come in — at ten. I’ll have the suckling ready, with a bottle of wine, and we’ll have some fun.”
Finally I was able to say:
“What if Miss Moppet catches me? Do you think I want to lose my job over a piece of meat?”
She watched me for a moment in silent disbelief, then she said:
“By nine thirty I’ll have put her to bed sound asleep and I won’t even need to undress her until morning.”
“You mean she’s such a heavy sleeper?”
At that she laughed so hard she collapsed in a chair. She kicked off her red shoes, curled her bare feet around the legs of the chair, and said:
“The moment you leave, she starts drinking wine. She drinks some more with her dinner, goes on drinking after her dessert, and when she’s dead drunk I put her to bed.”
What she saw in my face emboldened her and she went on:
“There she is with her fancy ways, carrying on about what’s right and proper, forbidding me to talk to her visitors, even her brother, and then she goes and gets drunk as a pig.”
I hung my head and she asked:
“So, how about it, pet? You want suckling tonight or don’t you?”
I started to make up clumsy excuses, one of the lamest being that I was afraid of falling off the tree. She understood and stepped back into her shoes, curling her lip as she left, saying:
“Go on, poor baby — and remember to wipe your nose.”
*
One afternoon, a short time later, Dolly didn’t come out to receive me. Instead there was a bewhiskered footman in a vest and striped sleeves, who handed me an envelope with my wages and a letter from Miss Moppet informing me that my services were no longer needed.
After that I spent some time without work, and was even on the point of climbing the tree into Dolly’s room.
One summer morning I was very depressed, thinking about all my failures. My concert not only hadn’t brought me money, it had not fulfilled any of my expectations or even opened the doors of any unknown homes to me, except for the one with the dark dining room, where I had caught only the faintest whiff of tragedy in Miss Moppet’s drinking and none at all in Dolly.