On Wings of Song

by Thomas M. Disch

  “You realize,” Daniel said in as neutral a tone as he could manage, “that Carl will lose his draft classification along with his job.”

  “That’s Carl’s lookout, isn’t it? By the same token, you stand to inherit his exemption. So I suggest that you do have that P-W housing removed from your stomach. Harvard’s security network is probably a few degrees tighter than mine. You wouldn’t want to be setting off alarms every time you went to class.”

  “I’ll be only too happy to be rid of it. As soon as I start the job. When would you like me to report?”

  “Tomorrow. Drama requires despatch. The more sudden your rise, the more complete your triumph.”

  “Mr. Whiting—”

  “Still not ‘Father’?”

  “Father.” But it did seem to stick in his mouth. He shook his head, and said it again. “Father, the one thing I still don’t understand is why. Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “I’ve never tried to resist what I regarded as inevitable. That is the secret of any very prolonged success. Then too, I like you, which sweetens the pill considerably. But it wasn’t my decision, ultimately. It was Bobo’s. And it was, I think, the right one.” He exchanged a nod of acknowledgement with his daughter. “Old families need an infusion of new blood from time to time. Any other questions?”

  “Mm. Yes, one.”

  “Which is?”

  “No, I realize now it’s something I shouldn’t ask. Sorry.”

  Grandison Whiting didn’t press the point, and the conversation moved back towards the laying of plans, which (since they were not to be carried out) need not be reported here.

  The question Daniel didn’t ask was why Whiting had never grown his own beard. It would have been so much easier in the long run, and he’d never have run the risk of being accidentally unmasked. But since the answer was probably that he’d tried to grow one and it hadn’t come in to his liking, it hadn’t seemed diplomatic to ask.

  Daniel decided (among the many other plans that were formed that night) to grow a beard himself. His own was naturally thick and wiry. But after the wedding, not before.

  He wondered if this were the fate he’d foreseen for himself so long ago, when he was pedalling along the road to Unity. Every time he’d gone to Worry, he’d had to pass the same spot on the road where he’d stopped and had his revelation. He could remember little of that vision now, only a general sense that something terrific was in store for him. This was certainly terrific. But it wasn’t (he finally decided) the particular benediction that his vision had foretold. That was still up ahead, lost in the glare of all his other glories.

  10

  It seemed ironic to Daniel, and a bit of a defeat, that he should be having his first flight in an airplane. He had sworn to himself, in the not-so-long-ago heyday of his idealistic youth, that he would never fly except on his own two transubstantial wings. Now look at him — strapped into his seat, his nose pressed against the postage-stamp of a window, with four hundred pounds of excess baggage, and a track record of absolute zero. For all his brave talk and big ambitions, he never tried — never tried trying — once Grandison Whiting had laid down the law. It was Daniel’s own fault for mentioning that he meant to smuggle in a flight apparatus from out-of-state, his fault for believing Whiting’s stories about friends of his right here in Iowa who flew. Pure bullshit, all of it. Not that it mattered, awfully. It only meant he’d had to postpone the big day for a while longer, but he knew that time would fly even if he didn’t.

  Now the waiting was behind him, all but a few hours. He and Boa were on their way. To New York first, where they would change for a jet to Rome. Then Athens, Cairo, Tehran, and the Seychelles for a winter tan. Economy was the official reason for changing at Kennedy rather than going direct from Des Moines, since everything, including travel bookings, was cheaper in New York. Daniel, despite his every extravagance, had established a reputation as a pennypincher. In Des Moines he’d wasted one whole day fleeing from one tailor to another, horrified by their prices. He understood, in theory, that he was supposed to be above such things now that he was nouveau riche, that the difference between the prices of two equivalent commodities was supposed to be invisible to him. He ought not to itemize bills, nor count his change, nor remember the amounts, or even the existence, of sums that old friends asked to borrow. But it was amazing, and dismaying, what the smell of money did to otherwise reasonable people, the way they came sniffing and snuffling around you, and he couldn’t stop resenting them for it. His character rejected the aristocratic attitude that money, at least on the level of “friendly” transactions, was no more to be taken account of than the water you showered with, much as his body would have rejected a transfusion of the wrong blood-type.

  But economy was only an excuse for booking the honeymoon through New York. The real reason was what they’d be able to do during the twelve hours between planes. That, however, was a secret. Not a very dark secret, since Boa had managed for a week now not to guess despite the broadest hints. Surely she knew and wasn’t letting on from sheer love of feigning surprise. (No one could equal Boa at the art of unwrapping presents.) What could it be, after all, but a visit to First National Flightpaths? At last, sweet Jesus: at long, sweet last!

  The plane took off, and the stewardesses performed a kind of pantomine with the oxygen masks, then brought round trays of drinks and generally made an agreeable fuss. Clouds rolled by, revealing checkerboards of farmland, squiggles of river, plumblines of highway. All very disappointing compared to the way he’d imagined it. But after all, this wasn’t the real thing.

  First National Flightpaths was the real thing. First National Flightpaths specialized in getting beginning flyers off the ground. “All you need,” the brochure had said, “is a sincere feeling for the song you sing. We just provide the atmosphere — and leave the flying to you.”

  He had been drinking steadily all day during the wedding and the reception, without (he was pretty certain) letting it show, even to Boa. He continued drinking on the plane. He lit a cigar, which the stewardess immediately made him put out. Left feeling abashed and cantankerous, he started — or rather, restarted — an argument he’d had earlier that day with Boa. About her Uncle Charles, the Representative. He had given them a sterling service for twelve as a wedding present, which Boa had insisted on cooing over privately, as they were driving to the airport. Finally he’d exploded and said what he thought about Charles Whiting — and his brother Grandison. What he thought was that Grandison had arranged their marriage for the benefit of Charles, and of the family name, knowing that Charles was shortly to be involved in something approaching a scandal. Or so it had been presented in some of the more outspoken newspapers on the East Coast. The scandal concerned a lawyer hired by a sub-committee of Ways and Means (the committee that Charles chaired), who had caused a stink, no one knew precisely what about, since the government had managed to clamp the lid on before the actual details became public. Somehow it concerned the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization concerning which Charles had made several intemperate and highly publicized remarks. Now the sub-committee lawyer had vanished, and Uncle Charles was spending all his time telling reporters he had no comment. From the first inklings in the Star-Tribune it was obvious to Daniel that the wedding had been arranged as a kind of media counterweight to the scandal — weddings being irreproachable P.R. It was not obvious to Boa. Neither of them knew more about it than could be gleaned from papers, since Grandison Whiting refused, categorically, to discuss it. When, only days before the wedding, he realized the depth of Daniel’s suspicions, he became quite incensed, though Boa had managed to smooth both their tempers. Daniel had apologized, but his doubts remained. From those entanglements had issued their quarrel in the Whiting limousine (a quarrel further complicated by Boa’s panicky concern that the chauffeur should not overhear them); this was again the subject of their quarrel en route to Kennedy; it promised to be their quarrel for ever, since Boa would no
t allow any doubts about her father to go unchallenged. She became Jesuitical in his defense, and then strident. Other passengers made reproving glances at them. Daniel wouldn’t give up. Soon he’d driven Boa to making excuses for Uncle Charles. Daniel reacted by upping the level of his sarcasm (a form of combat he’d learned from his mother, who could be scathing). Only after Boa had burst into tears, would he lay off.

  The plane landed in Cleveland, and took off again. The stewardess brought more drinks. Though he’d managed to stop arguing, he felt rotten. Balked. Resentful. His anger turned everything good that had happened into something equally bad. He felt cheated, corrupted, betrayed. All the glamor of the past nine weeks evaporated. All his posturings before his friends were wormwood now — for he knew they’d be making the same calculations and seeing his marriage in this new, less rosy light.

  And yet, wasn’t it possible that Boa was right in a way? If her father hadn’t dealt with him in a manner wholly truthful, he may at least have limited himself to half-truths. Then too, whatever motives Grandison Whiting may have concealed, the result was still this happy ending here and now. He should, as Boa suggested, put the rest out of mind, relax, lie back and enjoy the beginning of what looked to be the endless banquet ahead.

  Besides, it wouldn’t do to arrive at First National Flightpaths feeling any otherwise than mellow.

  So, by way of thinking of something else, he read, in the airline’s own magazine, an article about trout fishing written by one of the country’s top novelists. When he’d finished it, he was convinced that trout fishing would be a delightful pastime to take up. Would there be trout, he wondered, in the Seychelles? Probably not.

  The nicest thing about New York, Daniel decided, after being there five minutes, was that you were invisible. Nobody noticed anyone else. In fact, it was Daniel who wasn’t noticing, as he found out when someone almost got away with his carryon suitcase, which Boa rescued by a last-minute grab. So much for patriotic feelings about his old home town (For he was, as he’d many times pointed out to Boa, a New Yorker by birth).

  The taxi ride from the airport to First National Flightpaths took a maddening forty minutes (The brochure had promised: “Just ten, minutes from Kennedy”). It took another fifteen minutes to register as Ben and Beverley Bosola (The brochure had also pointed out that New York law did not hold it criminal to adopt or use an alias, so long as fraud was not involved). And to be shown to their suite on the twenty-fourth floor. There were three rooms: a regular hotel room (with double-bed, kitchenette, and a sound system to equal the best at Worry) and two small studios adjoining. When the attendant asked Daniel if he knew how to work the apparatus, he took a deep breath and admitted that he didn’t. The explanation, together with a demonstration, took another five minutes. You smeared a little stickum on your forehead and over that snugged on a headband to which the wires connected. Then you had to lay back in what Daniel would have sworn was a dentist’s chair. And sing. Daniel tipped the attendant ten dollars, and finally they were alone.

  “We’ve got eleven hours,” he said. “Ten, really, if we don’t want to miss the plane. Though it’s silly, isn’t it, talking about planes when here we are, ready to take off ourselves. Jesus, I’m so nervous.”

  Boa threw back her head and whirled one small whirl on the mustard yellow carpet, making the pumpkin-orange of her wedding dress billow out about her. “So am I,” she said quietly. “But in the nicest way.”

  “Do you want to make love first? They say that helps sometimes. To put you in the right frame of mind.”

  “I’d rather do that afterwards, I think. It may seem terribly presumptuous to say so, but I feel the most complete confidence. I don’t know why.”

  “I do too. But, you know, for all that, it might not work. You can never tell in advance. They say only about thirty percent make it the first time.”

  “Well, if not tonight, another time.”

  “But if tonight, oh boy!” He grinned.

  “Oh boy,” she agreed.

  They kissed and then each of them went into a separate sound studio. Daniel, following the attendant’s advice, sang through his song once before wiring himself in. He had chosen Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.” From the first moment he’d heard the song on a recording, a year ago, he’d known that that was the song for his first flight. It’s three short stanzas read like an instruction manual for takeoff, and the music… Nothing could be said about such music: it was perfection.

  He sang, wired in, to his own accompaniment, recorded on a cassette, and at the end of the second stanza — “For really, I am dead to the world” — he thought he had lifted off. But he hadn’t. A second time, as the song went on — “Lost in death to the world’s riot, I rest in a realm of perfect quiet” — he felt the music propelling his mind right out of his flesh.

  But at the end of the song he was still there, in that pink padded chair, in his starched shirt and black tux, in his own obdurate flesh.

  He sang the song again, but without the same conviction, and without results.

  Not to panic. The brochure said that very often the most effective song, in terms of reaching escape velocity, isn’t one for which we have the highest regard or greatest love. Probably his problem with the Mahler song was technical, despite the trouble he’d taken to transpose it down to his own range. All the authorities agreed that it was useless to tackle music beyond your capabilities.

  His next offering was “I Am the Captain of the Pinafore,” to which he gave all the extra faith and oomph he could muster. That was the way he still remembered it, almost like a hymn, from the dream he’d dreamt the night before he got out of Spirit Lake. But he couldn’t stop feeling silly about it and worrying what someone listening would have thought. Never mind that the studio was sound-proof. Naturally, with that kind of self-consciousness, his score was another big zero.

  He sang his two favorite songs from Die Winterreise, to which he could usually bring a sincere, droopy Weltschmerz. But in the middle of the second song he broke off. There was no use even trying, feeling the way he felt.

  It was less an emotion than a physical sensation. As though some huge black hand had gripped his chest and squeezed. A steady pressure on his heart and lungs, and a taste of metal on his tongue.

  He got down on the mustard carpet and did pushups rapidly, till he was out of breath. That helped some. Then he went out into the bedroom to pour himself a drink.

  At red light glowed above the door to Boa’s studio: she was flying.

  His instant reaction was to be happy for her. Then came the envy. He was glad, thinking about it, that it hadn’t happened the other way round. He wanted to go in and look at her, but that seemed somehow like admitting defeat: you look at people do the things you’d like to do yourself — and can’t.

  The only booze in the icebox was three bottles of champagne. He’d been drinking it all day long and was sick of it, but he didn’t want to phone room service for beer, so he guzzled a bottle of it as quickly as he could.

  He kept looking up at the light above the door, wondering if she’d taken off on her first try, and what song she’d used, and where she was now. She might have been anywhere in the city, since all the First National’s studios had direct access to the outside. Finally, unable to stand it any more, he went in and looked at her. Or rather, at the body she’d left behind.

  Her arm had fallen from the armrest and hung limply in a filmy envelope of orange crepe de chine. He lifted it, so limp, and placed it on the padded rest.

  Her eyes were open, but blank. A bead of saliva drooled down from her parted lips. He closed her eyes and wiped away the spittle. She seemed colder than a living body ought to be; she seemed dead.

  He went back to his own room and tried again. Doggedly, he went through everything twice. He sang songs by Elgar and Ives; they weren’t as great as Mahler’s but they were in Daniel’s own language, and that was a consideration. He sang arias from Bach cantatas, choruses fr
om Verdi operas. He sang songs he’d never heard before (the studio was well-equipped with both scores and accompaniment cassettes) and old love songs he remembered from the radio, years and years before. Three hours he sang, until there was nothing left of his voice but a rasp and an ache deep in his throat.

  When he returned to the outer room, the light was still on over Boa’s door.

  He went to bed and stared at that baleful red eye glowing in the darkness. For a while he cried, but he made himself stop. He couldn’t believe that she could just go off like this, knowing (as she surely must) that he’d been left behind. It was their wedding night, after all. Their honeymoon. Was she still angry with him for what he’d said about her father? Or didn’t anything else matter, once you could fly?

  But the worst of it wasn’t that she had gone; the worst of it was that he was here. And might be, forever.

  He started crying again, a slow steady drip of tears, and this time he let them come, for he remembered the brochure’s advice not to let your feelings get bottled up inside. Eventually, with a bottle of tears and of champagne both emptied, he managed to fall asleep.

  He woke an hour after the plane had departed for Rome. The light was still burning above the studio door.

  Once, when he was learning to drive, he’d backed Bob Lundgren’s pickup off the side of a dirt road and couldn’t get the back wheels up out of the ditch. The bed of the truck was full of bags of seed, so he couldn’t just go off to look for help, since Bob had few neighbors who would have been above helping themselves. He’d honked the horn and blinked the lights till the battery was dead — to no avail. Eventually he’d exhausted his impatience and started to see the situation as a joke. By the time Bob found him, at two a.m., he was completely unruffled and calm.