Prima Donna at Large (32 page)

Squeals of pleasure from the back seat.

“Do I imagine it?” Amato asked. “I think I remember Geraldine Farrar makes a solemn promise to end her investigation, to do no more detective work.”

“Really?” Emmy said. “How sensible.”

“Yes, but no one seems to remember that except me. You
do
promise, Gerry, no?”

“Eh, but that is before,” Caruso answered for me. “Before these fine American girls come in with answer we are waiting for.” Phoebe suddenly whooped and then giggled nervously.

“Rico, leave Phoebe alone,” I said. “As for my promise, Pasquale, are you seriously suggesting we just drop everything now—now when we have an address for Uncle Hummy?”

“We can tell Lieutenant O'Halloran,” Amato said. “Let him go to Mulberry Street, yes?”

“But what if it turns out that Uncle Hummy saw nothing, knows nothing? Then it will look as if we're trying to put the blame on a poor helpless old man. No, we have to go ourselves.”

“It is chasing the wild goose,” Amato objected.

“If you think that, then why did you come along?”

Scotti turned around and smiled toward the back seat. “Give up, Pasquale.”

Mulberry Street was in a part of town where I'd never been, that teeming section of the Lower East Side known as Little Italy. I turned on to Canal Street; but when we reached Mulberry, the street was so crowded I didn't even try to go in. I found a place on Mott Street to leave the limousine, and we walked back, only a block.

It was like entering a city within a city. The street was full of people yelling good-naturedly to one another and to other people leaning out of the windows of the ugly tenement buildings that made up the neighborhood. The fire escapes were mostly covered with drying laundry; some were being used to store what looked like chests and crates and even pieces of furniture.

Both sides of the street were lined with pushcarts filled with fruits, vegetables, fish, olives, old clothing, firewood; and horse-drawn wagons were used as movable stores, from the backs of which their owners sold chairs, flour, blankets, baskets, heaven knows what else. One man sat on a barrel underneath a pipe frame from which pair after pair of men's shoes were hanging, all exactly alike. The people themselves were poorly dressed, some even in rags; but they were colorful, lively, and
noisy
.

A tear appeared in Caruso's eye. “Just like home.”

The sudden appearance of seven well-dressed strangers did not go unnoticed on Mulberry Street; we were the immediate object of curious stares and that kind of under-the-voice mumbling that makes you start to feel just a little bit uneasy. One young man with a huge mustache shouted something at us but I couldn't make out what he said; I think he was speaking Sicilian. A sudden odor of cooking onions and garlic assaulted us and my stomach contracted in protest. I think I heard Emmy murmur
Lunch
.

“Do you notice?” Amato said. “These buildings, they have no numbers!”

It was true. We passed a narrow doorway that proudly proclaimed itself the entrance to the
Banca Italiana
, but there wasn't a number to be seen. We were looking for number eighty-four Mulberry Street, but it was clear we'd never find it just by looking. Amato went up to a man sitting in a chair on the sidewalk before a store that displayed religious icons in the window and asked where number eighty-four was.

“Who is it you look for?” the man asked.

“We do not know the name,” Amato said, “only the number. Eighty-four.”

“I know nothing of numbers. If you tell me the name, I tell you where he lives.”

“Uncle Hummy?” Caruso said hopefully.

“I do not know your uncle, signore.”

Amato threw up his hands and walked on, the rest of us trailing after him. Finally we found a woman selling bread out of a basket almost as big as she was who told us she thought number eighty-four was “down there” somewhere, pointing in the direction opposite to the way we'd been heading. So we turned back and tried the other way.

“Look,” said Scotti. “Look how they watch Rico.”

I'd already noticed. We were still drawing stares, but most of them were directed at Caruso. Caruso and Scotti and Amato were all from Naples, but only Caruso
looked
Italian. Amato had the appearance of one from a more northern country, while Scotti looked as if he could have come from any country in continental Europe—as did Emmy too, in a way. Mildredandphoebe and I probably looked every bit as American as we were. But the people of Mulberry Street recognized Caruso as one of their own.

Moreover, they recognized him as a celebrity. The jaunty way he wore his hat, the spring in his step—his whole demeanor bespoke a man sure of his welcome wherever he went. It was only a matter of time until someone realized it was the great Caruso who was walking through their neighborhood, and if we didn't find number eighty-four soon we might never get there. Why had that girl given Phoebe a house number? Why didn't she just say next door to Dino's barbershop or upstairs over the meat-seller?

“There!” Emmy cried. “On that canopy!”

Sure enough, there it was—an eight and a four, prominently displayed on a storefront canopy. The store was a tobacconist's, and a quick look inside told us Uncle Hummy wasn't there. In one of the rooms over the shop, then.

“There's another door right next to the entrance,” Mildred said. “It must lead upstairs.”

Unfortunately, at the doorstep we encountered an obstacle in the form of three boys about seventeen or eighteen who were lounging there and showing no inclination to move. When Scotti asked them please to let us through, one of them casually took out a wicked-looking knife and began cleaning his fingernails while another asked us insolently why we wanted to go in.

“We wish to visit someone who lives here,” Scotti said pleasantly, trying not to look at the knife.

“What if we say we don't want you to go in?” The boy took a step toward Scotti. It was a challenge of some sort. I never dreamed seventeen-year-old boys could be so menacing! These three were obviously bored and looking for trouble. I could have screamed in frustration; to get this close and—

And then it happened. “Caruso!” a male voice boomed. “
È Caruso!
Enrico Caruso!”

There was a heartbeat of stunned silence, and then something like an electric shock ran through the crowd in the street. Soon every one of those opera-loving Italians was shouting
Caruso! Caruso!
as the mob surged toward our frightened tenor. Before we knew what was happening they swooped down on him and swirled around him and swept him up and away. A couple of dozen pairs of hands half-helped, half-forced Caruso up on to one of the wagons in the street, as everyone screamed for him to sing, sing, sing!

Caruso looked helplessly toward us. Both Scotti and Amato pantomined extravagantly that he should sing for them—it was the distraction we needed. Caruso gulped, took a deep breath, and launched into
Questa o quella
from
Rigoletto
.

The three young toughs who'd been barring our way forgot all about us and pushed their way into the mob surrounding Caruso's wagon. Scotti opened the door and we crowded inside together at the foot of a rickety-looking stairway.

“
Ascoltatemi
,” Amato said. “I just think of something. If Uncle Hummy is not home but he hears Caruso sing, he will come to listen, no?”

“He might be out there in that crowd right now,” Emmy said. “That is where we should look.”

“We'd better split up,” I said. “The girls and I will go upstairs and—”

“Right,” Emmy interrupted, already on her way back out. Scotti and Amato followed her.

Mildredandphoebe and I picked our way carefully up the stairs. I was thinking we'd just have to knock on every door we saw, but the building was so small it wasn't necessary. There were only two doors on the second floor, and one of them bore a sign that indicated the inhabitant was someone named Falgione who would write your letters for you for a fee. I knocked on the other door. There was no answer; I tried the knob, but the door was locked. Outside, Caruso had switched to
La Bohème
and was starting on
Che gelida manina
.

“Let me try,” Phoebe offered. She reached to her hair and pulled out a hairpin and bent over the lock. I didn't hear a click but the door suddenly swung open an inch or two.

Mildred and I stared at her. “Phoebe!” her friend exclaimed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Phoebe blushed. “Well, uh, I'm always forgetting my key and, uh, you know.”

What unexpected talents these girls had. I felt a brief pang about entering a man's home like that, but this was no time to grow fainthearted. I pushed the door open.

The first thing I saw inside was myself—that is, a picture of myself in my
Carmen
costume; it was a newspaper photo that Uncle Hummy had cut out and fastened to the wall. For this was Uncle Hummy's room, there could be no doubt about that. Every inch of wall space was covered with pictures cut from newspapers, and every one of them had something to do with opera.

“Did you ever see anything like this?” Mildred gasped.

I counted about two dozen pictures of me, and a couple of dozen more of Caruso. There were photos of Scotti and Amato and Emmy, and a few pictures that showed stage settings. I think the faces of just about all the Met's singers adorned Uncle Hummy's walls—Bori, Martinelli, Botta, de Luca, Alda, Hempel, everybody. There were five or six pictures of Toscanini, a few of Puccini, and I even spotted one of Gatti-Casazza.

“And I thought I was a fan!” Mildred exclaimed. “Look at all this stuff on the floor! There's barely room to walk.”

The “stuff” was piles of opera programs, posters, newspaper clippings—Uncle Hummy probably couldn't afford to buy scrap-books, but he kept everything he cut out anyway. In one corner was a stack of opera scores, a few of which I had given him. There was so much paper in that room there was barely space left for the necessities of life: a narrow cot, a battered chest of drawers with a washbasin on it, and a wobbly wooden table pulled up next to the cot; there wasn't even a chair to sit on. On the table were a pair of scissors and a pot of glue, and Uncle Hummy's few clothes were hanging from nails on the back of the door. That was the way he lived.

“Look,” said Phoebe. “Here's a program from 1891—
Die Meistersinger
.”

“I'll bet he has a program for every production the Metropolitan has ever put on,” Mildred said. “Is that possible, Miss Farrar?”

“I suppose it is,” I said. “The Met opened in the early 1880s—yes, Uncle Hummy would have been about forty then, or a little older. It's quite possible.”

“So what do we do now? Wait for him here?”

Outside, Caruso was singing
Di quella pira
from
Il Trovatore;
someone was accompanying him on an accordion. “I don't know about you, but I feel uncomfortable here,” I said, “invading his privacy like this. I tell you what—you two wait for him downstairs by the door. I'll go help the others search the crowd. If Uncle Hummy comes, each of you just grab an arm and hold on. He's a frail old man, he won't resist you. Phoebe, do you think you could lock that door with your hairpin?”

She could. We went back downstairs and outside, and my two favorite gerryflappers took up positions like sentries on either side of the door. I caught sight of Amato, who looked a question at me.
No
, I shook my head.
Not here
.

Caruso had just finished his aria and the crowd was applauding wildly and yelling
Bravo! Bravo!
I waited until the noise died down a little and then called out, “
Pagliacci!
” The cry was immediately taken up by the crowd—
Pagliacci, Pagliacci!
Caruso didn't know he was the bait, but we had to keep him singing until we'd had time to make a good search.

He sang. The crowd had more than doubled from the time I went into Uncle Hummy's building, and it wasn't easy moving around. And I couldn't see very far, because no matter where I went somebody taller always seemed to be standing directly in front of me. But I was used to crowds; hordes of strangers were always pressing up against me after a performance—sometimes cutting off a lock of my hair, sometimes tearing away a piece of my clothing (I wasn't too fond of
that
part of it!). So there I was, pushing my way through a mob of people I didn't know, looking everywhere for Uncle Hummy.

Caruso finished his
Pagliacci
aria and I heard Scotti's voice cry out
Aïda!
—and the tenor started again. Thank God Caruso had a lot of staying power. I bumped into Emmy once; she was looking rumpled and cross. But I was learning how to use my elbows to make myself a passageway, and plowed on.

Surely he was here somewhere! I couldn't believe that Uncle Hummy would run away and abandon his fantastic collection of opera memorabilia—which was all he had to show for his life, when you came down to it. And if he was anywhere in the neighborhood, he'd
have
to come to this particular block of Mulberry Street once the word about Caruso spread. Uncle Hummy could no more resist Caruso's singing than Caruso could resist Italian cooking.

Then I saw him. Standing out at the edge of the crowd, wearing the coat Caruso had bought him, a peddler's tray suspended from a strap around his neck. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed, a look of sheer ecstasy on his face, oblivious to everything else in the world except the sound of Caruso's voice.

“Uncle Hummy?” I said. “Uncle Hummy, I want you to come with me.”

It took him a moment to realize he was being spoken to, but then he looked at me and his face registered surprise, pleasure, and puzzlement—in that order. He glanced at Caruso and then back at me. “Miz Zherry? Is trouble?”