PALM SUNDAY
63
from the fish-food we bought at the five-and-ten for our goldfish at
home? Very radically I argued all this, and my bewildered mother,
saddened and hurt, gave in.
A year or so later I discovered music-specifically, the voice
of Caruso on my mother's Red Seal records that she kept in a
special mahogany cabinet in the parlor and not all in a heap under
the Sonora the way my brother and I kept our own records, like
"A Hunt In The Black Forest" and "Cohen On The Telephone"
and "In A Clock Store" and all our yodeling and whistling and
Hawaiian records. I had found Caruso; and passionately, hours
together, I sat enthralled before the voice that issued from between
the slats of the sound box. And one day I went over to the house
of a neighbor lady to hear her records, as my mother had told me
that she owned a lot more Caruso records than we did. The lady
very kindly gave me the freedom of her parlor and phonograph
and left me to amuse myself for the afternoon. Almost the first rec–
ord I selected was one called "Les Rameaux."
It
sounded promis–
ing because unknown. I put it on, released the catch, and set the
needle in the groove--prepared in advance, in my idolatrous way,
to be shaken into new and irrational raptures. What I heard affected
me deeply, but I did not interrupt the hated song. On the contrary,
I allowed it to go on to the end, listening to the strange language of
the familiar tune; and before it was finished I achieved. an accept–
ance of the thing that was like a release. The song I had known
existed no longer. Henceforth I would call it, as it was here called,
"Les Rameaux."
If
I must go on having "The Palms" turn up in
my life every so often, as it was bound to do, I would defeat it by
recalling Caruso and thinking of it in the French.
"When we launch this thing, I'm going to get out a bottle of
my best t::hateau What-have-you, vintage 1066 and all that, and
Ted's mother is going to smash it over the prow with her own hands
and say, 'I christen thee "Snitch the First!" '-Look at him, fel–
lows. The old sourpuss, he thinks I'm making fun of him." My
brother laughed. Then, in the pause, he glanced at me, and again
his
smile was one of recognition, telling me plainer than any words
that he remembered the time I sang the solo in our church choir,
the song we heard coming down to us from above. I was touched
by
his remembering, not the less so because I expected him to and
