Читать книгу The Wonder Singer - George Rabasa - Страница 13

The Señora was anxious about how she and Lockwood would work. She wanted to set rules, limits, options. There would be confidences he would have to respect, words and thoughts that must be left out of the published version.

“Fair enough,” Lockwood said amiably. “And you will tell me things you have never told another soul in your life.”

She sighed and shook her head almost imperceptibly. Clearly, this fellow would turn out to be more difficult than she had anticipated; she was not getting through to him, and they hadn’t even begun.

“Are you going to be stubborn?” she asked.

“You won’t know until we start.”

“Ask away. I’ll let you know if you wake up any rats.” She sighed again. “You can be the exterminator.”

He would have to probe gently, wary of what he might find behind the facade of the famous and spoiled diva. He would be a therapist, then.

“We’ll scare the rats away,” he allowed. “Then you’ll be free.”

He clicked on the small cassette recorder he had placed on the table between them. “We can start at the beginning and travel in time.” She would soon forget about the machine as their voices triggered it to start and stop automatically. “Were you happy as a child?”

“I don’t think I’ve been happy since age nine.” She paused as if waiting for Lockwood to cue her. Instead of saying anything, he pushed the cassette recorder closer to her.

She took a deep breath and continued, “My mother died at childbirth. I loved my father, even though he kept passing me off, first to one aunt, then to another, but having to take me back when times were lean for the relatives. By the time I was nine, in 1929, he pretty much took care of me by himself.

“We lived in a three-room apartment in the center of Sabadell in the northern Spanish province of Catalonia. The street below, Carrer Bru-tau, was a narrow, potholed route that echoed day and night with the crunch and clatter of delivery carts and sputtering trucks loaded with fabric bolts from the textile mills. During the time of the grape harvest in late summer and early fall, it was a treat to get away from the sooty little town and travel with my father throughout the festivals in the villages.

“He liked taking me on his sales calls, teaching me about business for when he would have enough capital to open a shop in the Passeig de Gràcia; father and daughter would proudly stand behind the counter and wait on customers. Meanwhile, I would learn all about the fine hand of quality woolens and the sheen of Egyptian cotton and the brilliance of silk from China.

“In the meantime, in one village after another, the tailors, seamstresses, and milliners who were my father’s customers doted on me. I was a serious, quiet girl, and I had proper manners in the company of adults. I sat with good posture and pulled the hem of my simple cotton dress down so that it covered my knees. When the summer heat was most intense, I gave up my knee-high socks and leather shoes and wore cool espadrilles.

“During the day, I sat beside Father and watched him take orders for his lines of fabrics, sewing threads, knitting yarns, and buttons. I would wait quite still, growing sleepy with boredom during one visit after another, happy eventually to perform a song for the customer. Then Father would celebrate the day’s business with a few brandies at the nearest café.

“One night I remember taking Father’s hand, or rather wrapping mine around two of his sausage-like fingers, and steering his drunken weaving away from the bumps and potholes that seemed to wait in ambush for him. I was relieved that the road led to the Hostal de l’Hort. It was a two-story white stuccoed farmhouse topped by pots of geraniums in a row along the roofline. A door of heavy bolted planks opened onto a main room with two long, rough-hewn tables lined by slat-backed chairs with seats of woven straw. The inn was packed with fairgoers. Like Father, they were mostly peddlers from Barcelona and Valencia, and even from as far as Marseilles, but also petty delinquents, engaging in gambling and thievery.

“We had stayed up late at the hostal, which offered the traveler cramped rooms but hearty boiled dinners, or thick omelets of potatoes and onion, and always large servings of blood sausage and cured ham. That night, a group of travelers had gathered at the inn to eat and drink and prey on one another over card games.

“Father was having a successful trip. Closing a sale made him feel loved and respected. Whenever Father gambled and won, he was certain it was the result of the secret pacts he made with higher powers: Let me win tonight, and I will feed three beggars tomorrow.

“That night, however, he was losing to a glum, dark man at the opposite end of the table. The gambler’s name was Pep Saval. He had arrived at the inn late and had taken a solitary seat in front of a reheated bowl of escudella, slurping spoonfuls of the oily broth brimming with potatoes and carrots and gristly chunks of beef.

“From the moment Pep Saval joined the game, he drew the best hands. But even while winning, his face, weathered to a dark shiny bronze and topped with slicked-back hair, was without expression. Poised massively between his shoulders, his head seemed out of proportion to his torso. His large pink ears wore, like some fleshy pendant, fat lobes tufted with spikes of black hair. He wrapped his hands around the cards and held them close to his mouth as if to conjure the winning suits with every moist breath.

“Father had ordered another pitcher of wine. Other players had dropped out but had kept their places to watch with ill-disguised fascination my father’s plunge into insolvency. It was past midnight and I had long since fallen asleep on a bench close to the kitchen. The innkeeper kept whispering in Father’s ear that he should settle the price of the room and the night’s refreshments.

“I was jarred by Father’s shouting. ‘Not yet, mesonero. We must give luck a chance to turn.’

“ ‘That is the truth,’ the other man agreed. ‘Here is a usually fortunate man going through a brief eclipse of his star. No matter how much he loses, my friend here has been blessed with enduring riches.’

“ ‘I have?’ Father lifted his bloodshot gaze.

“ ‘In the human realm, if not the material,’ the stranger clarified.

“ ‘Yes, yes, naturalmente, ’ he stammered.

“The stranger slapped his winning cards down on the table. Father looked wan with disbelief. He started to shove the pile of coins toward the winner when he felt the other’s hand pushing the money back.

“ ‘It’s over for me.’ Father forced a sickly smile.

“ ‘To leave while you’re behind seems an imprudent thing. In the course of a game one will both win and lose. You owe it to yourself to continue playing. Then, when you are in a winning position, leave the table and take your money to bed.’

“ ‘I have no money left.’

“ ‘Perhaps, my friend, there is a way to settle this wager with a currency sweeter than mere pesetas.’ Pep Saval nodded toward me. ‘It is said that your girl has an extraordinary voice.’

“‘ Ven aquí, nena,’ Father called me.

“I looked up from under a wool blanket. ‘Sí, papá?’

He pulled me to the table and laid the blanket over my shoulders.

“ ‘And what is your name?’ Pep Saval asked.

“ ‘Mercè Casals.’ I did the small curtsy that so charmed strangers.

“ ‘This gentleman would like to hear you sing,’ said Father.

“I was accustomed to performing on the spur of the moment. That night, I sang “El Noi de la Mare.” Pep Saval closed his eyes; the beginnings of a smile danced at the corners of his mouth. After the scattered applause had died down, he slapped several coins on the table. ‘There must be twenty pesetas there. I will gladly bet them against one more song from your girl.’ He scribbled some numbers on a scrap of paper and pushed it along with the pencil toward my father, who read it with series of unhappy nods, signed his name under the column of figures, and placed the paper over the coins at the center of the table.”

The Señora was quiet for several moments. After the initial rush of memories, she seemed to have grown suddenly shy. Lockwood broke the silence. “Ah! Your name on an IOU. Your first professional contract, Señora.”

“Poor Father. He was so drunk that night.” She shook her head sadly.

“You realized what was going on, of course.”

“Nothing was going on as far as I could see. Father often had me sing for people.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It scared me to go to bed alone in a strange room. I was jealous of missing out on the excitement.”

“Daddy’s little girl.”

“I was nine. Whose little girl was I supposed to be?”

“Certainly not Pep Saval’s.”

“Not yet, Scribbler.”

“Not that night? Not the next day?”

“I mean that I’m not talking about Pep Saval yet. Ask me about him some other time.”

In the afternoons the Señora tired. She would lean her head against the back of her chair and allow her eyelids to drop. She seemed to be gazing inward, as if a film were rolling past, bearing with it the images of those years. An occasional sigh signaled her gradual retreat from the moment. Her eyes closed at last, the lids quivering now and then as if in reaction to a voice or face that had triggered some memory, quick and sudden like the prick of a needle, over before she realized it.

Perla was left holding the plate of cottage cheese and apple slices that were her afternoon snack. “You’ve let her fall asleep,” she quietly accused Lockwood.

“I didn’t think it was up to me to stop her.”

“She’s supposed to eat first, nap second.”

“Who says?”

“Stick to the writing, will you?”

This was the first time Perla had been irritable with him. It was not what the Señora hoped for; she had ventured the theory that they would fall in love.

“She has lovely skin, Perla does,” the Señora had pointed out to Lockwood. “I think she is repressed. She used to have a boyfriend, a certain Haskell or something, a plumbing contractor. When they broke up eight months ago, she got his red pickup truck. There hasn’t been anyone since. Now she works for me all the time, six days a week, twelve hours a day. She must ache to be touched. We women crave another’s touch. Sometimes after she has given me my massage, I ask Perla to get under the sheet and lie with me. I don’t look at her or let her see me. It’s nothing sexual, you understand. We lie side by side, pressing against one another, the whole length of her slender legs touching mine. She does it for me. But I know she needs it, too.”

“We’re getting off the subject.”

“The hunger in my skin is the subject. You’ll find a way to put it all in my words when the time comes, won’t you?”