Serenade - James M. Cain [5]
"Yes, plenty of them."
"You like mariachi? We have them. We have them here."
"Seńorita."
"Yes?"
"...I haven't got the fifty centavos. To pay the mariachi 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 flat. I haven't got a centavo. I think I'd better be going."
"No money, but buy me billete."
"And that was the last of it."
"I have money. Little bit. Fifty centavos for mariachi. Now--you look so."
She turned around, lifted the black skirt, and fished in her stocking. Listen, I didn't want any mariachi outside the window, serenading us. Of all things I hated in Mexico, I think I hated the 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 bums, 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 bass guitar they've got down there. As if that wasn't bad enough, they sing. Well, never mind how they sing. They gargle a bass 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, noble 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 café, and wanted her to smile at me some more and lean toward me when I spoke.
"Seńorita."
"Yes?'
"I don't like the mariachi. 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."
"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