On Wings of Song

by Thomas M. Disch

  “I’m right. Say it — say that I’m right.”

  “Okay, you’re right.”

  “Not only am I right, Daniel, but what’s true of Schiller’s apprentice mafiosi is true of all the heroic criminals from that day to this, all the cowboys and gangsters and rebels without causes. They’re all businessmen in disguise. Indeed, the gangsters even dispensed with the disguise. I should know — my father was one.”

  “Your father was a gangster?”

  “He was one of the city’s leading labor racketeers in his day. I was an heiress in my gilded youth, no less.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “A bigger fish gobbled him up. He had a number of so-called residence hotels like this one. The government decided to eliminate the middleman. Just when he thought he’d become respectable.”

  She said it without rancor. Indeed, he’d never known her to be fazed at anything. She seemed content to understand the hell she lived in (for such she insisted it was) with her best clarity of apprehension, and then to pass on to the next apprensible horror, as though all existence were a museum of more or less malefic exhibits: instruments of torture and the bones of martyrs side by side with jeweled chalices and the portraits of merciless children in beautiful clothes.

  Not that she was callous herself, but rather that she had no hope. The world dismayed her, and she turned from it to her own snug burrow, which the wolves and foxes had somehow not yet discovered. There she lived in the inviolate privacy of her work and her contemplations, seldom venturing out except to the opera or to one or another of her favorite restaurants, where she would hold forth to other musician friends and dine on a succession of desserts. She had surrendered long since to the traditional vices of a recluse: she didn’t bathe, or cook meals, or wash dishes; she kept strange hours, preferring night to day; she never let sunlight or fresh air into her own rooms, which came to smell, most intensely, of Incubus. She talked to herself constantly, or rather to Incubus and the dolls, inventing long wandering whimsical tales for them about the Honeybunny twins, Bunny Honeybunny and his sister Honey Honeybunny, tales from which all possibility of pain or conflict was debarred. Daniel suspected that she slept with Incubus as well, but what of that? Was anyone harmed by her dirtiness or dottiness? If there was such a thing as the life of the mind then Mrs. Schiff was one of its champions, and Daniel’s hat was off to her.

  So, for that matter, was hers, for she was beset, like so many who live apart from the world, with a naive self-conceit that was at once ludicrous and deserved. Indeed, she was aware of this, and prone to discussing it with Daniel, who had rapidly been elevated to the status of confessor.

  “My problem has always been,” she confided one evening, a month after he’d moved in, “that I have a hyperkinetic intelligence. But it’s also been my salvation. When I was a girl, they wouldn’t keep me in any of the schools my father bundled me off to, as part of his program of redeeming the family name. My problem was I took my education seriously, which would have been forgiveable in itself, except that I tended to be evangelical in my enthusiasms. I was labeled a disruptive influence, and treated as such, which I resented. Soon I made it my business to be a disruptive influence, and found ways to make my teachers look like fools. Lord, how I hated school! My daydream has always been to go back, as a celebrity, and give a speech at the graduation exercises, a speech denouncing them all. Which is perfectly unfair of me, I know. Did you like school?”

  “Well enough, up to the point where I was sent off to prison. I did well enough, and kids seemed to like me. What are the alternatives at that age?”

  “You weren’t just deathly bored?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I still am. It’s the human condition.”

  “If I thought that were the case, I’d kill myself. Truly.”

  “You mean to say you’re never bored?”

  “Not since I’ve been able to help it. I don’t believe in boredom. It’s a euphemism for laziness. People do nothing, and then complain they’re bored. Harriet does, and it drives me up the wall. She actually supposes it would betray a lack of breeding to take an active interest in her own life. But, poor dear, it’s not her fault, is it?”

  This question seemed to be addressed less to Daniel than to Incubus, where he lay in his mistress’s rumpled sheets. The spaniel, sensing this, lifted his head from its dozing position to one of alert consideration.

  “No,” Mrs. Schiff went on, answering her own question, “it’s the way she was brought up. We none of us can help the way our twigs are bent.”

  The question having been answered, Incubus lowered his head back to the pillow.

  She knew the Metastasio’s operas by heart and would cross-examine him minutely about every performance he worked at: who had sung, how well or poorly, whether a tricky piece of stage business had come off. She knew them so well not from having seen them that often but because, in many cases, she’d written them herself. Officially she was no more than the Metastasio’s chief copyist, though sometimes, when a text was well-known to be so corrupt as scarcely to exist, the program would include a small credit: “Edited and arranged by A. Schiff.” Even then, she got no royalties. She worked, she declared, for love and the greater glory of Art, but that, Daniel decided, was only half the truth. She also worked, like other people, for money. If the fees she received were small, they were frequent, and enough, when you added them to the rents from the buildings, to keep her supplied with such essential luxuries as dogfood, books, rare records, and her monthly chits at Lieto Fino and La Didone, where, rather than at home, she chose to entertain.

  That side of her life Daniel was not privy to in these first months, and it was only gradually, from hints dropped by Mr. Ormund and yellowed clippings discovered among the debris of the apartment, that he learned that Mrs. Schiff had once been a celebrity of no small degree in the beau monde of bel canto, having fallen in love, eloped with, and married the greatest of modern-day castrati, Ernesto Rey. The marriage had subsequently been annulled, but Rey had continued to be faithful in his fashion. He was the only one of her friends she allowed to visit her at home, and so Daniel developed a nodding acquaintance with the man who was generally considered the greatest singer of his day (albeit that day was waning).

  Offstage the great Ernesto was the least likely candidate for prima donna that ever was — a thin, twitchy wisp of a man whose smooth pale face seemed frozen in an expression of wide-eyed alarm, the consequence (it was said) of too many face-lifts. He was untypical of other castrati in being white (he was born in Naples), diffident (he assumed, among strangers, a flat, nasal monotone an octave below his natural voice), and guilt-ridden (he attended Mass every Sunday), and untypical of anyone else in being a castrato. He had recorded Norma five times, and each recording was better than the last. Of the first recording, a critic old enough to have heard her in performance, said that Rey’s Norma was superior to Rosa Ponselle’s.

  Mrs. Schiff was as much in love with him now as on the day they’d eloped, and Rey (by her account, and everyone else’s) still took that love as painfully for granted. She flattered him; he drank it in. She worked like a troup of acrobats to keep him amused; he tolerated her efforts but made none himself, though he was not otherwise a witless lump. In all matters concerning interpretation and general esthetic strategy she acted as his coach, and served as spokesman with those conductors and recording engineers who would not at once bend to his will. She devised, and continually revised, all his supposedly ad libitum passages of fioratura, keeping them safely within his ever-diminishing range without apparent loss of brillance. She even vetted his contracts and wrote press releases — or rather, rewrote the tasteless tosh produced by his own salaried agent, Irwin Tauber. For all these services she received no fee and small thanks. She wasn’t insensible to such slights and seemed, indeed, to take a bittersweet satisfaction in complaining of them to Daniel, who could be counted on to respond with sympathetic indignation.

  “But why d
o you keep putting up with it?” he asked at last. “If you know he’s like that and he’s not going to change?”

  “The answer is obvious: I must.”

  “That’s not an answer. Why must you?”

  “Because Ernesto is a great artist.”

  “Great artist or not, no one’s got the right to shit on you.”

  “Ah, but there’s where you’re wrong, Daniel. In saying that, you show you don’t understand the nature of great artistry.”

  This was a direct assault on Daniel’s sore point, as Mrs. Schiff well knew. The matter was dropped.

  She soon knew everything about him, the whole story of his messed-up life. With Boa installed in Daniel’s room there was no point in reticence, and not much possibility of it. In any case, after twelve years of living under an alias the opportunity to tell all was too tempting to resist. There were times, as when she’d delivered the low blow just mentioned, that he thought she took unfair advantage of his revelations, but even then her home truths had no sting of malice. Her skin was just very thick, and she expected yours to be too. All in all, as a mother confessor she beat Renata Semple hollow. Renata, for all her Reichian jargon and weekly plumbing of the depths, had handled Daniel’s ego with too tender a regard. Small wonder if his therapy had never done him any good.

  In short, Daniel was once again a member of a family. Viewed from without they were a strange enough family: a rattling, hunchbacked old woman, a spoiled senile cocker spaniel, and a eunuch with a punctured career (for though Rey didn’t live with them, his off-stage presence was as abiding and palpable as that of any paterfamilias away every day at the office). And Daniel himself. But better to be strange together than strange apart. He was glad to have found such a haven at last, and he hoped that most familial and doomed of hopes, that nothing would change.

  But already there was news on the radio: a freak cold spell had done extensive damage to crops in Minnesota and the Dakotas, and a calamitous blight was attacking the roots of wheat plants throughout the Farm Belt. It was rumored that this blight had been laboratory-produced and was being propagated by terrorists, though none of the known organizations had come forward to claim credit. The commodities market was already in turmoil, and the new Secretary of Agriculture had made a public announcement that strict rationing might become necessary in the fall. For the present though, food prices were holding steady, for the good reason that they were already higher than most people could afford. All through that spring and summer there were food riots in such usual trouble spots as Detroit and Philadelphia. Mrs. Schiff, whose imagination was always excited by headlines, began stockpiling bags of dry dogfood. In the last such crisis, four years before, pet food had been the first thing to disappear from the shelves, and she had had to feed Incubus from her own limited ration. Soon an entire closet was packed solid with ten-pound bags of Pet Bricquettes, Incubus’s brand of choice. For themselves they did not worry: the Government would provide, somehow.

  13

  In September, when the Metastasio opened for the new season, Daniel reported back to work with a gratitude that verged on servility. It had been a lean summer, though better by far than previous summers, thanks to his having a roof over his head. He hadn’t been at the job long enough when the Teatro had closed early in June to have put aside more than a few dollars, and he was determined not to have recourse to Miss Marspan, who had already assumed the financial costs involved in keeping Boa functionally alive. Nor did he feel quite right, any longer, panhandling, for if he were to be seen, and word of it got back to Mr. Ormund, he was pretty sure it would have cost him his job. For lack of other resources he did what he’d vowed never to do: he dipped into the capital whose scant interest had paid Boa’s bills during her long sojourn at First National Flightpaths. That money had come from the sale of her jewelry, and till now he’d been able to avoid applying it to his own needs. Now, however, Boa was provided for by other and better means, and so Daniel could square it with his conscience by considering it a loan: once he was back at work, he’d return the money to the account.

  Back at work it didn’t work that way, for he rediscovered the joy of being flush. It was like having his paper route again. There was change in his pocket, bills in his wallet, and all New York to entice him. He got himself some decent clothes, which he’d have had to in any case, since Mr. Ormund had made it clear that he didn’t want his boys to come in looking like ragamuffins. He started going to a ten-dollar barber, which was likewise pretty comme il faut. And now that he wasn’t helping out at Adonis, Inc., he had to pay a regular membership fee, which took a $350 bite out of the bank account. But the dividends were out of all proportion to the investment, since once he was back at work Mr. Ormund had assigned him to the Dress Circle, where the tips were many times in excess of what he’d got, starting out, up in the balcony (though still not so considerable as the pickings in the Grand Tier).

  Tips were only, as Mr. Ormund had explained, the tip of the iceberg. The real payoff came in the form of courtship, with all its immemorial perks — dinners, parties, weekends on Long Island, and attentions even costlier and kinder, depending on one’s luck, ambition, and ability to hold out for more. At first Daniel had resisted such temptations from a sense, which twelve years in the big city had not yet wiped out, of what the world at large would have called him if he did not resist. Nor was Mr. Ormund in any haste to thrust him into the limelight. But increasingly he wondered whether his actions made any difference to the world at large. When, as the new season got under way, he continued, reluctantly, to decline any and all invitations, even one so little compromising as to accept a drink and stop to chat with a boxholder during one of the duller ensembles, when drinks and chat were the order of the day, Mr. Ormund decided that there must be a fuller understanding between them, and called Daniel to his office.

  “Now I don’t want you to think, mignon—” That, or migniard, was his pet name for his current favorites. “—that I am some vile procurer. No boy has ever been asked to leave the Teatro for failing to put out, and all our patrons understand that. But you shouldn’t be so entirely standoffish, so arctically cold.”

  “Did old Carshalton complain?” Daniel asked, in a grieved tone.

  “Mr. Carshalton is a very obliging, amiable gentleman, with no other wish, bless him, than to be talked to. He realizes that age and corpulence—” Mr. Ormund heaved a sympathizing sigh. “—make any larger expectation unlikely of fulfillment. And in point of fact he did not complain. It was one of your own colleagues — I shall not say who — called the matter to my notice.”

  “God damn.”

  Then, as an afterthought: “That was directed at the unnamed colleague, not at you, sir. And I say it again — God damn… him.”

  “I see your point, of course. But you must expect, at this stage, to attract a certain amount of jealous attention. In addition to your natural advantages, you’ve got, as they say, carriage. Then too, some of the boys may feel — though it’s perfectly unfair, I know — that your reserve and shyness reflects on their too easy acquiescence.”

  “Mr. Ormund, I need the job. I like the job. I don’t want to argue. What do I have to do?”

  “Just be friendly. When someone asks you into their box, comply. There’s no danger of rape: you’re a capable lad. When someone in the casino offers you a flutter on the wheel, flutter. That’s simply sound business practice. And who knows, your number might come up! If you’re asked to dinner after the show, and if you’re free, at least consider the possibility, and if it seems you might enjoy yourself, then do the world a favor and say yes. And, though it’s not for me to suggest such a thing — and, in fact, I don’t at all approve of it, though the world will keep turning for all I say — it is not unheard of for an arrangement to be worked out.”

  “An arrangement? I’m sorry, but you’ll have to spell that one out a little more.”

  “My dear, dear country mouse! An arrangement with the restaurant, of course. Good as
the fare is at L’Engouement Noir, for instance, you don’t suppose there isn’t a certain latitude in the prices on the menu?”

  “You mean they give rebates?”

  “More often they’ll let you take it out in custom. If you bring them someone for dinner, they’ll let you take someone to lunch.”

  “That’s news to me.”

  “I daresay the boys will all be friendlier when they see you’re not entirely above temptation. But don’t think, mignon, that I’m asking you to peddle your ass. Only your smile.”

  Daniel smiled.

  Mr. Ormund lifted his finger to pantomime that he had remembered something forgotten. He wrote down a name and address on a memo pad, tore the paper loose with a flourish, and handed it to Daniel.

  “Who is ‘Dr. Rivera’?” he asked.

  “A good and not overly expensive dentist. You simply must get those molars looked after. If you don’t have the money now, Dr. Rivera will work something out with you. He’s a great lover of all things connected with the arts. Take care now. It’s almost intermission.”

  The dental work ended up costing almost a thousand dollars. He had to withdraw a larger sum from the bank than the total of all his previous borrowings, but it seemed so wonderful to have his teeth restored to their primal innocence that he didn’t care. He would have spent the whole sum that remained in the account for the pleasure of chewing his food once again.