All around, odd sounds shaken loose from the stockades were beginning to reach them. Over the entire area, fed from the dumps below, hung an unbroken phonic high, invisible but nonetheless as tangible and menacing as an enormous black thundercloud. Occasionally, when super-saturation was reached after one of the summer holiday periods, the sonic pressure fields would split and discharge, venting back into the stockades a nightmarish cataract of noise, raining on to the sound-sweeps not only the howling of cats and dogs, but the multi-lunged tumult of cars, express trains, fairgrounds and aircraft, the cacophonic musique concrète of civilization.
To Mangon the sounds reaching them, though scaled higher in the register, were still distinct, but Madame Gioconda could hear nothing and felt only an overpowering sense of depression and irritation. The air seemed to grate and rasp. Mangon noticed her beginning to frown and hold her hand to her forehead. He wound up his window and indicated to her to do the same. He switched on the sonovac mounted under the dashboard and let it drain the discordancies out of the sealed cabin.
Madame Gioconda relaxed in the sudden blissful silence. A little further on, when they passed another stockade set closer to the road, she turned to Mangon and began to say something to him.
Suddenly she jerked violently in alarm, her hat toppling. Her voice had frozen! Her mouth and lips moved frantically, but no sounds emerged. For a moment she was paralysed. Clutching her throat desperately, she filled her lungs and screamed.
A faint squeak piped out of her cavernous throat, and Mangon swung round in alarm to see her gibbering apoplectically, pointing helplessly to her throat.
He stared at her bewildered, then doubled over the wheel in a convulsion of silent laughter, slapping his thigh and thumping the dashboard. He pointed to the sonovac, then reached down and turned up the volume.
‘. . . aaauuuoooh,’ Madame Gioconda heard herself groan. She grasped her hat and secured it. ‘Mangon, what a dirty trick, you should have warned me.’
Mangon grinned. The discordant sounds coming from the stockades began to fill the cabin again, and he turned down the volume. Gleefully, he scribbled on his wrist-pad:
Now you know what it is like!
Madame Gioconda opened her mouth to reply, then stopped in time, hiccuped and took his arm affectionately.
FOUR
Mangon slowed down as they approached a side road. Two hundred yards away on their left a small pink-washed cabin stood on a dune overlooking one of the stockades. They drove up to it, turned into a circular concrete apron below the cabin and backed up against one of the unloading bays, a battery of red-painted hydrants equipped with manifold gauges and release pipes running off into the stockade. This was only twenty feet away at its nearest point, a forest of door-shaped baffles facing each other in winding corridors, like a set from a surrealist film.
As she climbed down from the truck Madame Gioconda expected the same massive wave of depression and overload that she had felt from the stockade of aircraft noises, but instead the air seemed brittle and frenetic, darting with sudden flashes of tension and exhilaration.
As they walked up to the cabin Mangon explained:
Party noises – company for me.
The twenty or thirty baffles nearest the cabin he reserved for those screening him from the miscellaneous chatter that filled the rest of the stockade. When he woke in the mornings he would listen to the laughter and small talk, enjoy the gossip and wisecracks as much as if he had been at the parties himself.
The cabin was a single room with a large window overlooking the stockade, well insulated from the hubbub below. Madame Gioconda showed only a cursory interest in Mangon’s meagre belongings, and after a few general remarks came to the point and went over to the window. She opened it slightly, listened experimentally to the stream of atmospheric shifts that crowded past her.
She pointed to the cabin on the far side of the stockade. ‘Mangon, whose is that?’
Gallagher’s. My partner. He sweeps City Hall, University, V.C., big mansions on 5th and A. Working now.
Madame Gioconda nodded and surveyed the stockade with interest. ‘How fascinating. It’s like a zoo. All that talk, talk, talk. And you can hear it all.’ She snapped back her bracelets with swift decisive flicks of the wrist.
Mangon sat down on the bed. The cabin seemed small and dingy, and he was saddened by Madame Gioconda’s disinterest. Having brought her all the way out to the dumps he wondered how he was going to keep her amused. Fortunately the stockade intrigued her. When she suggested a stroll through it he was only too glad to oblige.
Down at the unloading bay he demonstrated how he emptied the tanker, clipping the exhaust leads to the hydrant, regulating the pressure through the manifold and then pumping the sound away into the stockade.
Most of the stockade was in a continuous state of uproar, sounding something like a crowd in a football stadium, and as he led her out among the baffles he picked their way carefully through the quieter aisles. Around them voices chattered and whined fretfully, fragments of conversation drifted aimlessly over the air. Somewhere a woman pleaded in thin nervous tones, a man grumbled to himself, another swore angrily, a baby bellowed. Behind it all was the steady background murmur of countless TV programmes, the easy patter of announcers, the endless monotones of race-track commentators, the shrieking audiences of quiz shows, all pitched an octave up the scale so that they sounded an eerie parody of themselves.
A shot rang out in the next aisle, followed by screams and shouting. Although she heard nothing, the pressure pulse made Madame Gioconda stop.
‘Mangon, wait. Don’t be in so much of a hurry. Tell me what they’re saying.’
Mangon selected a baffle and listened carefully. The sounds appeared to come from an apartment over a launderette. A battery of washing machines chuntered to themselves, a cash register slammed interminably, there was a dim almost sub-threshold echo of 60-cycle hum from an SP record-player.
He shook his head, waved Madame Gioconda on.
‘Mangon, what did they say ?’ she pestered him. He stopped again, sharpened his ears and waited. This time he was more lucky, an overemotional female voice was gasping ‘. . . but if he finds you here he’ll kill you, he’ll kill us both, what shall we do . . .’ He started to scribble down this outpouring, Madame Gioconda craning breathlessly over his shoulder, then recognized its source and screwed up the note.
‘Mangon, for heaven’s sake, what was it? Don’t throw it away! Tell me!’ She tried to climb under the wooden superstructure of the baffle to recover the note, but Mangon restrained her and quickly scribbled another message.
Adam and Eve. Sorry.
‘What, the film? Oh, how ridiculous! Well, come on, try again.’
Eager to make amends, Mangon picked the next baffle, one of a group serving the staff married quarters of the University. Always a difficult job to keep clean, he struck paydirt almost at once.
‘. . . my God, there’s Bartok all over the place, that damned Steiner woman, I’ll swear she’s sleeping with her . . .’
Mangon took it all down, passing the sheets to Madame Gioconda as soon as he covered them. Squinting hard at his crabbed handwriting, she gobbled them eagerly, disappointed when, after half a dozen, he lost the thread and stopped.
‘Go on, Mangon, what’s the matter?’ She let the notes fall to the ground. ‘Difficult, isn’t it. We’ll have to teach you shorthand.’
They reached the baffles Mangon had just filled from the previous day’s rounds. Listening carefully he heard Paul Merrill’s voice: ‘. . . month’s Transonics claims that . . . the entire city will come down like Jericho.’
He wondered if he could persuade Madame Gioconda to wait for fifteen minutes, when he would be able to repeat a few carefully edited fragments from Alto’s promise to arrange her guest appearance, but she seemed eager to move deeper into the stockade.
‘You said your friend Gallagher sweeps out Video City, Mangon. Where would that be?’
&
nbsp; Hector LeGrande. Of course, Mangon realized, why had he been so obtuse. This was the chance to pay the man back.
He pointed to an area a few aisles away. They climbed between the baffles, Mangon helping Madame Gioconda over the beams and props, steering her full skirt and wide hat brim away from splinters and rusted metalwork.
The task of finding LeGrande was simple. Even before the baffles were in sight Mangon could hear the hard, unyielding bite of the tycoon’s voice, dominating every other sound from the Video City area. Gallagher in fact swept only the senior dozen or so executive suites at V.C., chiefly to relieve their occupants of the distasteful echoes of LeGrande’s voice.
Mangon steered their way among these, searching for LeGrande’s master suite, where anything of a really confidential nature took place.
There were about twenty baffles, throwing off an unending chorus of ‘Yes, H.L.’, ‘Thanks, H.L.’, ‘Brilliant, H.L.’ Two or three seemed strangely quiet, and he drew Madame Gioconda over to them.
This was LeGrande with his personal secretary and PA. He took out his pencil and focused carefully.
‘. . . of Third National Bank, transfer two million to private holding and threaten claim for stock depreciation . . . redraft escape clauses, including non-liability purchase benefits . . .’
Madame Gioconda tapped his arm but he gestured her away. Most of the baffle appeared to be taken up by dubious financial dealings, but nothing that would really hurt LeGrande if revealed.
Then he heard –
‘. . . Bermuda Hilton. Private Island, with anchorage, have the beach cleaned up, last time the water was full of fish . . . I don’t care, poison them, hang some nets out . . . Imogene will fly in from Idlewild as Mrs Edna Burgess, warn Customs to stay away . . .’
‘. . . call Cartiers, something for the Contessa, 17 carats say, ceiling of ten thousand. No, make it eight thousand . . .’
‘. . . hat-check girl at the Tropicabana. Usual dossier . . .’
Mangon scribbled furiously, but LeGrande was speaking at rapid dictation speed and he could get down only a few fragments. Madame Gioconda barely deciphered his handwriting, and became more and more frustrated as her appetite was whetted. Finally she flung away the notes in a fury of exasperation.
‘This is absurd, you’re missing everything!’ she cried. She pounded on one of the baffles, then broke down and began to sob angrily. ‘Oh God, God, God, how ridiculous! Help me, I’m going insane . . .’
Mangon hurried across to her, put his arms round her shoulders to support her. She pushed him away irritably, railing at herself to discharge her impatience. ‘It’s useless, Mangon, it’s stupid of me, I was a fool –’
‘STOP!’
The cry split the air like the blade of a guillotine.
They both straightened, stared at each other blankly. Mangon put his fingers slowly to his lips, then reached out tremulously and put his hands in Madame Gioconda’s. Somewhere within him a tremendous tension had begun to dissolve.
‘Stop,’ he said again in a rough but quiet voice. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll help you.’
Madame Gioconda gaped at him with amazement. Then she let out a tremendous whoop of triumph.
‘Mangon, you can talk! You’ve got your voice back! It’s absolutely astounding! Say something, quickly, for heaven’s sake!’
Mangon felt his mouth again, ran his fingers rapidly over his throat. He began to tremble with excitement, his face brightened, he jumped up and down like a child.
‘I can talk,’ he repeated wonderingly. His voice was gruff, then seesawed into a treble. ‘I can talk,’ he said louder, controlling its pitch. ‘I can talk, I can talk, I can talk !’ He flung his head back, let out an ear-shattering shout. ‘I CAN TALK! HEAR ME!’ He ripped the wrist-pad off his sleeve, hurled it away over the baffles.
Madame Gioconda backed away, laughing agreeably. ‘We can hear you, Mangon. Dear me, how sweet.’ She watched Mangon thoughtfully as he cavorted happily in the narrow interval between the aisles. ‘Now don’t tire yourself out or you’ll lose it again.’
Mangon danced over to her, seized her shoulders and squeezed them tightly. He suddenly realized that he knew no diminutive or Christian name for her.
‘Madame Gioconda,’ he said earnestly, stumbling over the syllables, the words that were so simple yet so enormously complex to pronounce. ‘You gave me back my voice. Anything you want –’ He broke off, stuttering happily, laughing through his tears. Suddenly he buried his head in her shoulder, exhausted by his discovery, and cried gratefully, ‘It’s a wonderful voice.’
Madame Gioconda steadied him maternally. ‘Yes, Mangon,’ she said, her eyes on the discarded notes lying in the dust. ‘You’ve got a wonderful voice, all right.’ Sotto voce, she added: ‘But your hearing is even more wonderful.’
Paul Merrill switched off the SP player, sat down on the arm of the sofa and watched Mangon quizzically.
‘Strange. You know, my guess is that it was psychosomatic.’
Mangon grinned. ‘Psychosemantic,’ he repeated, garbling the word half-deliberately. ‘Clever. You can do amazing things with words. They help to crystallize the truth.’
Merrill groaned playfully. ‘God, you sit there, you drink your coke, you philosophize. Don’t you realize you’re supposed to stand quietly in a corner, positively dumb with gratitude? Now you’re even ramming your puns down my throat. Never mind, tell me again how it happened.’
‘Once a pun a time –’ Mangon ducked the magazine Merrill flung at him, let out a loud ‘Olé!’
For the last two weeks he had been en fête.
Every day he and Madame Gioconda followed the same routine; after breakfast at the studio they drove out to the stockade, spent two or three hours compiling their confidential file on LeGrande, lunched at the cabin and then drove back to the city, Mangon going off on his rounds while Madame Gioconda slept until he returned shortly before midnight. For Mangon their existence was idyllic; not only was he rediscovering himself in terms of the complex spectra and patterns of speech – a completely new category of existence – but at the same time his relationship with Madame Gioconda revealed areas of sympathy, affection and understanding that he had never previously seen. If he sometimes felt that he was too preoccupied with his side of their relationship and the extraordinary benefits it had brought him, at least Madame Gioconda had been equally well served. Her headaches and mysterious phantoms had gone, she had cleaned up the studio and begun to salvage a little dignity and self-confidence, which made her single-minded sense of ambition seem less obsessive. Psychologically, she needed Mangon less now than he needed her, and he was sensible to restrain his high spirits and give her plenty of attention. During the first week Mangon’s incessant chatter had been rather wearing, and once, on their way to the stockade, she had switched on the sonovac in the driving-cab and left Mangon mouthing silently at the air like a stranded fish. He had taken the hint.
‘What about the sound-sweeping?’ Merrill asked. ‘Will you give it up?’
Mangon shrugged. ‘It’s my talent, but living at the stockade, let in at back doors, cleaning up the verbal garbage – it’s a degraded job. I want to help Madame Gioconda. She will need a secretary when she starts to go on tour.’
Merrill shook his head warily. ‘You’re awfully sure there’s going to be a sonic revival, Mangon. Every sign is against it.’
‘They have not heard Madame Gioconda sing. Believe me, I know the power and wonder of the human voice. Ultrasonic music is great for atmosphere, but it has no content. It can’t express ideas, only emotions.’
‘What happened to that closed circuit programme you and Ray were going to put on for her?’
‘It – fell through,’ Mangon lied. The circuits Madame Gioconda would perform on would be open to the world. He had told them nothing of the visits to the stockade, of his power to read the baffles, of the accumulating file on LeGrande. Soon Madame Gioconda would strike.
Above them in the hallway a
door slammed, someone stormed through into the apartment in a tempest, kicking a chair against a wall. It was Alto. He raced down the staircase into the lounge, jaw tense, fingers flexing angrily.
‘Paul, don’t interrupt me until I’ve finished,’ he snapped, racing past without looking at them. ‘You’ll be out of a job but I warn you, if you don’t back me up one hundred per cent I’ll shoot you. That goes for you too, Mangon, I need you in on this.’ He whirled over to the window, bolted out the traffic noises below, then swung back and watched them steadily, feet planted firmly in the carpet. For the first time in the three years Mangon had known him he looked aggressive and confident.
‘Headline,’ he announced. ‘The Gioconda is to sing again! Incredible and terrifying though the prospect may seem, exactly two weeks from now the live, uncensored voice of the Gioconda will go out coast to coast on all three V.C. radio channels. Surprised, Mangon? It’s no secret, they’re printing the bills right now. Eight-thirty to nine-thirty, right up on the peak, even if they have to give the time away.’
Merrill sat forward. ‘Bully for her. If LeGrande wants to drive the whole ship into the ground, why worry?’
Alto punched the sofa viciously. ‘Because you and I are going to be on board! Didn’t you hear me? Eight-thirty, a fortnight today! We have a programme on then. Well, guess who our guest star is?’
Merrill struggled to make sense of this. ‘Wait a minute, Ray. You mean she’s actually going to appear – she’s going to sing – in the middle of Opus Zero?’ Alto nodded grimly. Merrill threw up his hands and slumped back. ‘It’s crazy, she can’t. Who says she will?’
‘Who do you think? The great LeGrande.’ Alto turned to Mangon. ‘She must have raked up some real dirt to frighten him into this. I can hardly believe it.’
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 19