The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather & Sherrill Harbison

Author:Willa Cather & Sherrill Harbison [Cather, Willa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101662014
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 1999-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Johnny had almost every fault that a tenor can have. His voice was thin, unsteady, husky in the middle tones. But it was distinctly a voice, and sometimes he managed to get something very sweet out of it. Certainly it made him happy to sing. Thea kept glancing down at him as he lay there on his elbow. His eyes seemed twice as large as usual and had lights in them like those the moonlight makes on black, running water. Thea remembered the old stories about his “spells.” She had never seen him when his madness was on him, but she felt something tonight at her elbow that gave her an idea of what it might be like. For the first time she fully understood the cryptic explanation that Mrs. Tellamantez had made to Dr. Archie, long ago. There were the same shells along the walk; she believed she could pick out the very one. There was the same moon up yonder, and panting at her elbow was the same Johnny—fooled by the same old things!

When they had finished, Famos, the barytone, murmured something to Johnny; who replied, “Sure we can sing ‘Trovatore.’4 We have no alto, but all the girls can sing alto and make some noise.”

The women laughed. Mexican women of the poorer class do not sing like the men. Perhaps they are too indolent. In the evening, when the men are singing their throats dry on the doorstep, or around the camp-fire beside the work-train, the women usually sit and comb their hair.

While Johnny was gesticulating and telling everybody what to sing and how to sing it, Thea put out her foot and touched the corpse of Silvo with the toe of her slipper. “Aren’t you going to sing, Silvo?” she asked teasingly.

The boy turned on his side and raised himself on his elbow for a moment. “Not this night, señorita,” he pleaded softly, “not this night!” He dropped back again, and lay with his cheek on his right arm, the hand lying passive on the sand above his head.

“How does he flatten himself into the ground like that?” Thea asked herself. “I wish I knew. It’s very effective, somehow.”

Across the gulch the Kohlers’ little house slept among its trees, a dark spot on the white face of the desert. The windows of their upstairs bedroom were open, and Paulina had listened to the dance music for a long while before she drowsed off. She was a light sleeper, and when she woke again, after midnight, Johnny’s concert was at its height. She lay still until she could bear it no longer. Then she wakened Fritz and they went over to the window and leaned out. They could hear clearly there.

“Die Thea,” whispered Mrs. Kohler; “it must be. Ach, wunderschön!”5

Fritz was not so wide awake as his wife. He grunted and scratched on the floor with his bare foot. They were listening to a Mexican part-song; the tenor, then the soprano, then both together; the barytone joins them, rages, is extinguished; the tenor expires in sobs, and the soprano finishes alone.

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