Serenade.

SERENADE.

by James M. Cain.

Chapter 1.

I was in the Tupinamba, having a bizcocho bizcocho and coffee, when this girl came in. Everything about her said Indian, from the maroon and coffee, when this girl came in. Everything about her said Indian, from the maroon rebozo rebozo to the black dress with purple flowers on it, to the swaying way she walked, that no woman ever got without carrying pots, bundles, and baskets on her head from the time she could crawl. But she wasn"t any of the colors that Indians come in. She was almost white, with just the least dip of to the black dress with purple flowers on it, to the swaying way she walked, that no woman ever got without carrying pots, bundles, and baskets on her head from the time she could crawl. But she wasn"t any of the colors that Indians come in. She was almost white, with just the least dip of cafe con leche. cafe con leche. Her shape was Indian, but not ugly. Most Indian women have a rope of muscle over their hips that give them a high-waisted, mis-shapen look, thin, bunchy legs, and too much breast-works. She had plenty in that line, but her hips were round, and her legs had a soft line to them. She was slim, but there was something voluptuous about her, like in three or four years she would get fat. All that, though, I only half saw. What I noticed was her face. It was flat, like an Indian"s but the nose broke high, so it kind of went with the way she held her head, and the eyes weren"t dumb, with that shiny, shoe-b.u.t.ton look. They were pretty big, and black, but they leveled out straight, and had kind of a sleepy, impudent look to them. Her lips were thick, but pretty, and of course had plenty of lipstick on them. Her shape was Indian, but not ugly. Most Indian women have a rope of muscle over their hips that give them a high-waisted, mis-shapen look, thin, bunchy legs, and too much breast-works. She had plenty in that line, but her hips were round, and her legs had a soft line to them. She was slim, but there was something voluptuous about her, like in three or four years she would get fat. All that, though, I only half saw. What I noticed was her face. It was flat, like an Indian"s but the nose broke high, so it kind of went with the way she held her head, and the eyes weren"t dumb, with that shiny, shoe-b.u.t.ton look. They were pretty big, and black, but they leveled out straight, and had kind of a sleepy, impudent look to them. Her lips were thick, but pretty, and of course had plenty of lipstick on them.

It was about nine o"clock at night, and the place was pretty full, with bullfight managers, agents, newspaper men, pimps, cops and almost everybody you can think of, except somebody you would trust with your watch. She went to the bar and ordered a drink, then went to a table and sat down, and I had a stifled feeling I had had before, from the thin air up there, but that wasn"t it this time. There hadn"t been any woman in my life for quite some while, and I knew what this meant. Her drink came, and it was Coca-Cola and Scotch, and I thought that over. It might mean that she was just starting the evening, and it might mean she was just working up an appet.i.te, and if it meant that I was sunk. The Tupinamba is more of a cafe than a restaurant, but plenty of people eat there, and if that was what she expected to do, my last three pesos wouldn"t go very far.

I had about decided to take a chance and go over there when she moved. She slipped over to a place about two tables away, and then she moved again, and I saw what she was up to. She was closing in on a bullfighter named Triesca, a kid I had seen a couple of times in the ring, once when he was on the card with Solorzano, that seemed to be their main ace at the time, and once after the main season was over, when he killed two bulls in a novillada they had one Sunday in the rain. He was a wow with the cape, and just moving up into the money. He had on the striped suit a Mexican thinks is pretty nifty, and a cream-colored hat. He was alone, but the managers, agents, and writers kept dropping by his table. She didn"t have much of a chance, but every time three or four or five of them would shove off she would slip nearer. Pretty soon she dropped down beside him. He didn"t take off his hat. That ought to have told me something, but it didn"t. All I saw was a cluck too stuck on himself to know how to act. She spoke, and he nodded, and they talked a little bit, and it didn"t look like she had ever seen him before. She drank out, and he let it ride for a minute, then he ordered another.

When I got it, what she was in there for, I tried to lose interest in her, but my eyes kept coming back to her. After a few minutes, I knew she felt me there, and I knew some of the other tables had tumbled to what was going on. She kept pulling her rebozo rebozo around her, like it was cold, and hunching one shoulder up, so she half had her back to me. All that did was throw her head up still higher, and I couldn"t take my eyes off her at all. So of course a bullfighter is like any other ham, he"s watching every table but his own, and he had no more sense than to see these looks that were going round. You understand, it"s a dead-pan place, a big cafe with a lot of mugs sitting around with their hats on the back of their heads, eating, drinking, smoking, reading, and jabbering Spanish, and there wasn"t any nudging, pointing, or hey-get-a-load-of-this. They strictly minded their business. Just the same, there would be a pair of eyes behind a newspaper that weren"t on the newspaper, or maybe a waitress would stop by somebody, and say something, and there"d be a laugh just a little louder than a waitress"s gag is generally worth. He sat there, with a kind of a foolish look on his face, snapping his fingernail against his gla.s.s, and then I felt a p.r.i.c.kle go up my spine. He was getting up, he was coming over. around her, like it was cold, and hunching one shoulder up, so she half had her back to me. All that did was throw her head up still higher, and I couldn"t take my eyes off her at all. So of course a bullfighter is like any other ham, he"s watching every table but his own, and he had no more sense than to see these looks that were going round. You understand, it"s a dead-pan place, a big cafe with a lot of mugs sitting around with their hats on the back of their heads, eating, drinking, smoking, reading, and jabbering Spanish, and there wasn"t any nudging, pointing, or hey-get-a-load-of-this. They strictly minded their business. Just the same, there would be a pair of eyes behind a newspaper that weren"t on the newspaper, or maybe a waitress would stop by somebody, and say something, and there"d be a laugh just a little louder than a waitress"s gag is generally worth. He sat there, with a kind of a foolish look on his face, snapping his fingernail against his gla.s.s, and then I felt a p.r.i.c.kle go up my spine. He was getting up, he was coming over.

A guy with three pesos in his pocket doesn"t want any trouble, and when the room froze like a stop-camera shot, I tried to tell myself to play it friendly, to get out of it without starting something I couldn"t stop. But when he stood there in front of me he still had on that hat.

"My table, he interest you, ha?"

"Your--what?"

"My table. You look, you seem interest, Senor."

"Oh, now I understand."

I wasn"t playing it friendly, I was playing it mean. I got up, with the best smile I could paste on my face, and waved at a chair. "Of course. I shall explain. I shall gladly explain." Down there you make it simple, because spig reception isn"t any too good. "Please sit down."

He looked at me and he looked at the chair, but it looked like he had me on the run, so he sat down. I sat down. Then I did something I wanted to do for fifteen minutes. I lifted that cream hat off his head, like it was the nicest thing I knew to do for him, slipped a menu card under it, and put it on a chair.

If he had moved I was going to let him have it, if they shot me for it. He didn"t. It caught him by surprise. A buzz went over the room. The first round was mine.

"May I order you something, Senor?"

He blinked, and I don"t think he even heard me. Then he began looking around for help. He was used to having a gallery yell Ole Ole every time he wiped his nose, but it had walked out on him this time. It was all deadpan, what he saw, and so far as they were concerned, we weren"t even there. There wasn"t anything he could do but face me, and try to remember what he had come for. every time he wiped his nose, but it had walked out on him this time. It was all deadpan, what he saw, and so far as they were concerned, we weren"t even there. There wasn"t anything he could do but face me, and try to remember what he had come for.

"The explain. Begin, please."

I had caught him with one he wasn"t looking for, and I decided to let him have another, right between the eyes. "Certainly. I did look, that is true. But not at you. Believe me, Senor, not at you. And not at the table. At the lady."

"...You--tell me this? You tell me this thing?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Well, what was he going to do? He could challenge me to a duel, but they never heard of a duel in Mexico. He could take a poke at me, but I outweighed him by about fifty pounds. He could shoot me, but he didn"t have any gun. I had broken all the rules. You"re not supposed to talk like that in Mexico, and once you hand a Mexican something he never heard of, it takes him about a year to figure out the answer. He sat there blinking at me, and the red kept creeping over his ears and cheeks, and I gave him plenty of time to think of something, if he could, before I went on. "I tell you what, Senor. I have examined this lady with care, and I find her very lovely. I admire your taste. I envy your fortune. So let us put her in a lottery, and the lucky man wins. We"ll each buy her a ticket, and the one holding the highest number buys her next drink. Yes?"

Another buzz went around, a long one this time. Not over half of them in there could speak any English, and it had to be translated around before they could get it. He took about four beats to think it through, and then he began to feel better.

"Why I do this, please? The lady, she is with me, no? I put lady in loteria, loteria, what you put in, Senor? You tell me that?" what you put in, Senor? You tell me that?"

"I hope you"re not afraid, Senor?"

He didn"t like that so well. The red began to creep up again, but then I felt something behind me, and I didn"t like that so well either. In the U.S., you feel something behind you, it"s probably a waiter with a plate of soup, but in Mexico it could be anything, and the last thing you want is exactly the best bet. About half the population of the country go around with pearl-handled automatics on their hips, and the bad part about those guns is that they shoot, and after they shoot nothing is ever done about it. This guy had a lot of friends. He was a popular idol, but I didn"t know of anybody that would miss me. I sat looking straight at him, afraid even to turn around.

He felt it too, and a funny look came over his face. I leaned over to brush cigarette ashes off my coat, and out of the tail of my eye I peeped. There had been a couple of lottery peddlers in there, and when he came over they must have stopped in their tracks like everybody else. They were back there now, wigwagging him to say yes, that it was in the bag. I didn"t let on. I acted impatient, and sharpened up a bit when I jogged him. "Well, Senor? Yes?"

"Si, si. We make We make loteria!" loteria!"

They broke pan then, and crowded around us, forty or fifty of them. So long as we meant business, it had to be hands off, but now that it was a kind of a game, anybody could get in it, and most of them did. But even before the crowd, the two lottery peddlers were in, one shoving pink tickets at me, the other green tickets at him. You understand; there"s hundreds of lotteries in Mexico, some pink, some green, some yellow, and some blue, and not many of them pay anything. Both of them went through a hocus-pocus of holding napkins over the sheets of tickets, so we couldn"t see the numbers, but my man kept whispering to me, and winking, meaning that his numbers were awful high. He was an Indian, with gray hair and a face like a chocolate saint, and you would have thought he couldn"t possibly tell a lie. I thought of Cortes, and how easy he had seen through their tricks, and how lousy the tricks probably were.

But I was different from Cortes, because I wanted to be taken. Through the crowd I could see the girl, sitting there as though she had no idea what was going on, and it was still her I was after, not getting the best of a dumb bullfighter. And something told me the last thing I ought to do was to win her in a lottery. So I made up my mind I was going to lose, and see what happened then.

I waved at him, meaning pick whatever one he wanted, and there wasn"t much he could do but wave back. I picked the pink, and it was a peso, and I laid it down. When they tore off the ticket, they went through some more hocus-pocus of laying it down on the table, and covering it with my hat. He took the green, and it was half a peso. That was a big laugh, for some reason. They put his hat over it, and then we lifted the hats. I had No. 7. He had No. 100,000 and something. That was an Ole. Ole. I still don"t get the chemistry of a Mexican. Out in the ring, when the bull comes in, they know that in exactly fifteen minutes that bull is going to be dead. Yet when the sword goes in, they yell like h.e.l.l. And mind you, there"s nothing as much like one dead bull as another dead bull. In that cafe that night there wasn"t one man there that didn"t know I was framed, and yet when the hats were lifted they gave him a hand, and clapped him on the shoulder, and laughed, just like Lady Luck had handed him a big victory. I still don"t get the chemistry of a Mexican. Out in the ring, when the bull comes in, they know that in exactly fifteen minutes that bull is going to be dead. Yet when the sword goes in, they yell like h.e.l.l. And mind you, there"s nothing as much like one dead bull as another dead bull. In that cafe that night there wasn"t one man there that didn"t know I was framed, and yet when the hats were lifted they gave him a hand, and clapped him on the shoulder, and laughed, just like Lady Luck had handed him a big victory.

"So. And now. You still look, ha?"

"Absolutely not. You"ve won, and I congratulate you, de todo corazon. de todo corazon. Please give the lady her ticket, with my compliments, and tell her I hope she wins the Bank of Mexico." Please give the lady her ticket, with my compliments, and tell her I hope she wins the Bank of Mexico."

"Si, si, si. And so, Senor, And so, Senor, adios." adios."

He went back with the tickets, and I put a little more hot leche leche into my coffee, and waited. I didn"t look. But there was a mirror back of the bar, so I could see if I wanted to, and just once, after he had handed her the tickets, and they had a long jibber-jabber, she looked. into my coffee, and waited. I didn"t look. But there was a mirror back of the bar, so I could see if I wanted to, and just once, after he had handed her the tickets, and they had a long jibber-jabber, she looked.

It was quite a while before they started out. I was between them and the door, but I never turned my head. Then I felt them stop, and she whispered to him, and he whispered back, and laughed. What the h.e.l.l? He had licked me, hadn"t he? He could afford to be generous. A whiff of her smell hit me in the face, and I knew she was standing right beside me, but I didn"t move till she spoke.

"Senor."

I got up and bowed. I was looking down at her, almost touching her. She was smaller than I had thought. The voluptuous lines, or maybe it was the way she held her head, fooled you.

"Senorita."

"Gracias, thanks, for the thanks, for the billete." billete."

"It was nothing, Senorita. I hope it wins for you as much as it lost for me. You"ll be rich--muy rico."

She liked that one. She laughed a little, and looked down, and looked up. "So. Muchas gracias." Muchas gracias."

"De nada."

But she laughed again before she turned away, and when I sat down my head was pounding, because that laugh, it sounded as though she had started to say something and then didn"t, and I had this feeling there would be more. When I could trust myself to look around, he was still standing there near the door, looking a little sore. From the way he kept looking at the damas, damas, I knew she must have gone in there, and he wasn"t any too pleased about it. I knew she must have gone in there, and he wasn"t any too pleased about it.

In a minute, my waitress came and laid down my check. It was for sixty centavos. She had waited on me before, and she was a pretty little mestizo, mestizo, about forty, with a wedding ring she kept flashing every time she got the chance. A wedding ring is big news in Mexico, but it still doesn"t mean there"s been a wedding. She pressed her belly against the table, and then I heard her voice, though her lips didn"t move and she was looking off to one side: "The lady, you like her about forty, with a wedding ring she kept flashing every time she got the chance. A wedding ring is big news in Mexico, but it still doesn"t mean there"s been a wedding. She pressed her belly against the table, and then I heard her voice, though her lips didn"t move and she was looking off to one side: "The lady, you like her direccion, direccion, yes? Where she live?" yes? Where she live?"

"You sure you know this direccion?" direccion?"

"A paraquito paraquito have told me--just now." have told me--just now."

"In that case, yes."

I laid a peso on the check. Her little black eyes crinkled up into a nice friendly smile, but she didn"t move. I put the other peso on top of it. She took out her pencil, pulled the menu over, and started to write. She hadn"t got three letters on paper before the pencil was jerked out of her hand, and he was standing there, purple with fury. He had tumbled, and all the things he had wanted to say to me, and never got the chance, he spit at her, and she spit back. I couldn"t get all of it, but you couldn"t miss the main points. He said she was delivering a message to me, she said she was only writing the address of a hotel I had asked for, a hotel for Americanos. Americanos. They must like to see a guy framed in Mexico. About six of them chimed in and swore they had heard me ask her the address of a hotel, and that that was all she was giving me. They didn"t fool him for a second. He was up his own alley now, and speaking his own language. He told them all where to get off, and in the middle of it, here she came, out of the They must like to see a guy framed in Mexico. About six of them chimed in and swore they had heard me ask her the address of a hotel, and that that was all she was giving me. They didn"t fool him for a second. He was up his own alley now, and speaking his own language. He told them all where to get off, and in the middle of it, here she came, out of the damas. damas. He let her have the last of it, and then he crumpled the menu card up and threw it in her face, and walked out. She hardly bothered to watch him go. She smiled at me, as though it was a pretty good joke, and I got up, "Senorita. Permit me to see you home." He let her have the last of it, and then he crumpled the menu card up and threw it in her face, and walked out. She hardly bothered to watch him go. She smiled at me, as though it was a pretty good joke, and I got up, "Senorita. Permit me to see you home."

That got a buzz, a laugh, and an Ole. Ole.

I don"t think there"s ever been a man so moony that a little bit of chill didn"t come over him as soon as a woman said yes, and plenty of things were going through my head when she took my arm and we headed for the door of that cafe. One thing that was going through was that my last peso was gone at last, that I was flat broke in Mexico City with no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to do it. Another thing was that I didn"t thank them for their Ole, Ole, that I hated Mexicans and their tricks, and hated them all the more because the tricks were all so bad you could always see through them. A Frenchman"s tricks cost you three francs, but a Mexican is just dumb. But the main thing was a queer echo in that that I hated Mexicans and their tricks, and hated them all the more because the tricks were all so bad you could always see through them. A Frenchman"s tricks cost you three francs, but a Mexican is just dumb. But the main thing was a queer echo in that Ole, Ole, like they were laughing at me all the time, and I wondered, all of a sudden, which way we were going to turn when we got out that door. A girl on the make for a bullfighter, you don"t exactly expect that she came out of a convent. Just the same, it hadn"t occurred to me up to that second that she could be a downright piece of trade goods. I was hoping, when we reached the main street, that we would turn right. To the right lay the main part of town, and if we headed that way, she could be taking me almost anywhere. But to our left lay the Guauhtemolzin, and that"s nothing but trade. We turned left. like they were laughing at me all the time, and I wondered, all of a sudden, which way we were going to turn when we got out that door. A girl on the make for a bullfighter, you don"t exactly expect that she came out of a convent. Just the same, it hadn"t occurred to me up to that second that she could be a downright piece of trade goods. I was hoping, when we reached the main street, that we would turn right. To the right lay the main part of town, and if we headed that way, she could be taking me almost anywhere. But to our left lay the Guauhtemolzin, and that"s nothing but trade. We turned left.

We turned left, but she walked so nice and talked so sweet I started hoping again. Nothing about an Indian makes any sense. He can live in a hut made of sticks and mud, and sticks and mud are sticks and mud, aren"t they? You can"t make anything else out of them. But he"ll take you in there with the nicest manners in the world, more dignity than you"d ever get from a dozen dentists in the U.S., with stucco bungalows that cost ten thousand dollars apiece, kids in a private school, and stock in the building and loan. She went along, her hand on my arm, and if she had been a d.u.c.h.ess she couldn"t have stepped cleaner. She made a little gag out of falling in step, looked up once or twice and smiled, and then asked me if I had been long in Mexico.

"Only three or four months."

"Oh. You like?"

"Very much." I didn"t, but I wanted anyway to be as polite as she was. "It"s very pretty."

"Yes." She had a funny way of saying yes, like the rest of them have. She drew it out, so it was "yayse." "Many flowers."

"And birds."

"And senoritas."

"I wouldn"t know about them."

"No? Just a little bit?"

"No."

An American girl would have mauled it to death, but when she saw I didn"t want to go on with it, she smiled and began talking about Xochimilco, where the best flowers grew. She asked me if I had been there. I said no, but maybe some day she would take me. She looked away at that, and I wondered why. I figured I had been a little previous. Tonight was tonight, and after that it would be time to talk about Xochimilco. We got to the Guauhtemolzin. I was hoping she would cross. She turned, and we hadn"t gone twenty yards before she stopped at a crib.

I don"t know if you know how it works in Mexico. There"s no houses, with a madame, a parlor, and an electric piano, anyway not in that part of town. There"s a row of adobe huts, one story high, and washed blue, or pink, or green, or whatever it happens to be. Each hut is one room deep, and jammed up against each other in the way they are, they look like a barracks. In each hut is a door, with a half window in it, like a hat-check booth. Under the law they"ve got to keep that door shut, and drum up trade by leaning out the window, but if they know the cop they can get away with an open door. This door was wide open, with three girls in there, two of them around fourteen, and looking like children, the other big and fat, maybe twenty-five. She brought me right in, but then I was alone, because she and the other three went out in the street to have a palaver, and I could partly catch what it was. They all four rented the room together, so three of them had to wait outside when one of them had a customer, but I seemed to be a special case, and if I was going to spend the night, her friends had to flop somewhere else. Most of the street got in it before long, the cop, the cafe woman on the corner, and a flock of girls from the other cribs. n.o.body sounded sore, or surprised, or made dirty cracks. A street like that is supposed to be tough, but from the way they talked, you would have thought it was the junior section of the Ladies" Aid figuring out where to bunk the minister"s brother-in-law that had blown in town kind of sudden. They acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.

After a while they got it straightened out to suit them, who was to go where, and she came back and closed the door and closed the window. There was a bed in there, and a chest of drawers in the early Grand Rapids style, and a washstand with a mirror over it, and some gra.s.s mats rolled up in a corner, for sleeping purposes. Then there were a couple of chairs. I was tilted back on one, and as soon as she had given me a cigarette, she took the other. There we were. There was no use kidding myself any longer why Triesca hadn"t taken off his hat. My lady love was a three-peso wh.o.r.e.

She lit my cigarette for me, and then her own, and inhaled, and let the smoke blow out the match. We smoked, and it was about as electric as a stalled car. Across the street in front of the cafe, a mariachi mariachi was playing, and she nodded her head once or twice, in time with the music. "Flowers, and birds--and was playing, and she nodded her head once or twice, in time with the music. "Flowers, and birds--and mariachis." mariachis."

"Yes, plenty of them."

"You like mariachi? mariachi? We have them. We have them here." We have them. We have them here."

"Senorita."

"Yes?"

"...I haven"t got the fifty centavos. To pay the mariachi mariachi I"m--" I"m--"

I pulled my pockets inside out, to show her. I thought I might as well get it over with. No use having her think she"d hooked a nice American sugar papa, and then letting her be disappointed. "Oh. How sweet."

"I"m trying to tell you I"m broke. Todo Todo flat. I haven"t got a centavo. I think I"d better be going." flat. I haven"t got a centavo. I think I"d better be going."

"No money, but buy me billete." billete."

"And that was the last of it."

"I have money. Little bit. Fifty centavos for have money. Little bit. Fifty centavos for mariachi. mariachi. Now--you look so." Now--you look so."

She turned around, lifted the black skirt, and fished in her stocking. Listen, I didn"t want any mariachi mariachi outside the window, serenading us. Of all things I hated in Mexico, I think I hated the outside the window, serenading us. Of all things I hated in Mexico, I think I hated the mariachis mariachis the worst, and they had come to make a kind of picture for me of the whole country and what was wrong with it. They"re a bunch of b.u.ms, generally five of them, that would be a lot better off if they went to work, but instead of that they don"t do a thing their whole life, from the time they"re kids to the time they"re old men, but go around plunking out music for anybody that"ll pay them. The rate is fifty centavos a selection, which breaks down to ten centavos, or about three cents a man. Three play the violin, one the guitar, and one a kind of ba.s.s guitar they"ve got down there. As if that wasn"t bad enough, they sing. Well, never mind how they sing. They gargle a ba.s.s falsetto that"s enough to set your teeth on edge, but all music gets sung the way it deserves, and it was what they sang that got me down. You hear Mexico is musical. It"s not. They do nothing but screech from morning till night, but their music is the dullest, feeblest stuff that ever went down on paper, and not one decent bar was ever written there. Yeah, I know all about Chavez. Their music is Spanish music that went through the head of an Indian and came out again, and if you think it sounds the same after that, you made a mistake. An Indian, he"s about eight thousand years behind the rest of us in the race towards whatever we"re headed for, and it turns out that primitive man is not any fine, n.o.ble brute at all. He"s just a poor fish. Modern man, in spite of all this talk about his being effete, can run faster, shoot straighter, eat more, live longer, and have a better time than all the primitive men that ever lived. And that difference, how it comes out in music. An Indian, even when he plays a regular tune, sounds like a seal playing My-Country-"Tis-of-Thee at a circus, but when he makes up a tune of his own, it just makes you sick. the worst, and they had come to make a kind of picture for me of the whole country and what was wrong with it. They"re a bunch of b.u.ms, generally five of them, that would be a lot better off if they went to work, but instead of that they don"t do a thing their whole life, from the time they"re kids to the time they"re old men, but go around plunking out music for anybody that"ll pay them. The rate is fifty centavos a selection, which breaks down to ten centavos, or about three cents a man. Three play the violin, one the guitar, and one a kind of ba.s.s guitar they"ve got down there. As if that wasn"t bad enough, they sing. Well, never mind how they sing. They gargle a ba.s.s falsetto that"s enough to set your teeth on edge, but all music gets sung the way it deserves, and it was what they sang that got me down. You hear Mexico is musical. It"s not. They do nothing but screech from morning till night, but their music is the dullest, feeblest stuff that ever went down on paper, and not one decent bar was ever written there. Yeah, I know all about Chavez. Their music is Spanish music that went through the head of an Indian and came out again, and if you think it sounds the same after that, you made a mistake. An Indian, he"s about eight thousand years behind the rest of us in the race towards whatever we"re headed for, and it turns out that primitive man is not any fine, n.o.ble brute at all. He"s just a poor fish. Modern man, in spite of all this talk about his being effete, can run faster, shoot straighter, eat more, live longer, and have a better time than all the primitive men that ever lived. And that difference, how it comes out in music. An Indian, even when he plays a regular tune, sounds like a seal playing My-Country-"Tis-of-Thee at a circus, but when he makes up a tune of his own, it just makes you sick.

Well, maybe you think I"m getting all steamed up over something that didn"t amount to anything, but Mexico had done plenty to me, and all I"m trying to say is that if I had to listen to those five simple-looking mopes outside the window, there was going to be trouble. But I wanted to please her. I don"t know if it was the way she took the news of my being broke, or the way her eyes lit up at the idea of hearing some music, or the flash I got of that pretty leg, when I was supposed to be looking the other way, or what. Whatever it was, her trade didn"t seem to make much difference any more. I felt about her the way I had in the cafe, and wanted her to smile at me some more and lean toward me when I spoke.

"Senorita."

"Yes?"

"I don"t like the mariachi. mariachi. They play very bad." They play very bad."

"Oh, yes. But they only poor boy. No estoddy, no take lessons. But play--very pretty."

"Well--never mind about that. You want some music that"s the main thing. Let me be your mariachi." mariachi."

"Oh--you sing?"

"Just a little bit."

"Yes, yes. I like--very much."

I went out, slipped across the street, and took the guitar from No. 4. He put up a squawk, but she was right after me, and he didn"t squawk long. Then we went back. There"s not many instruments I can"t play, some kind of way, but I can-really knock h.e.l.l out of a guitar. He had it tuned c.o.c.keyed, but I brought it to E, A, D, G, B, and E without snapping any of his strings, and then I began to go to town on it. The first thing I played her was the prelude to the last act of Carmen. For my money, it"s one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, and I had once made an arrangement of it. You may think that"s impossible, but if you play that woodwind stuff up near the bridge, and the rest over the hole, the guitar will give you almost as much of what the music is trying to say as the whole orchestra will.

She was like a child while I was tuning, leaning over and watching everything I did, but when I started to play, she sat up and began to study me. She knew she had never heard anything like that, and I thought I saw the least bit of suspicion of me, as to who I was and what the h.e.l.l I was doing there. So when I went down on the low E string, on the phrase the ba.s.soon has in the orchestra, I looked at her and smiled. "The voice of the bull."

"Yes, yes!"

"Am I a good mariachi?" mariachi?"

"Oh, fine mariachi mariachi What is the What is the musica?" musica?"

"Carmen."

"Oh. Oh yes, of course. The voice of the bull."

She laughed, and clapped her hands, and that seemed to do it. I went into the bullring music of the last act and kept stepping the key up, so I could make kind of a number out of it without slowing down for the vocal stuff. There came a knock on the door. She opened, and the mariachi mariachi was out there, and most of the ladies of the street. "They ask door open. So they hear too." was out there, and most of the ladies of the street. "They ask door open. So they hear too."

"All right, so they don"t sing."

So we left the door open, and I got a hand after the bullring selection, and played the intermezzo, then the prelude to the opera. My fingers were a little sore, as I had no calluses, but I went into the introduction to the Habanera, and started to sing. I don"t know how far I got. What stopped me was the look on her face. Everything I had seen there was gone, it was the face at the window of every wh.o.r.ehouse in the world, and it was looking right through me.

"...What"s the matter?"