On Wings of Song

by Thomas M. Disch

  Daniel nodded. In effect, Grandison Whiting was stating the Third Law of Develop-Mental Mechanics, which is: “Always pretend that you’re your favorite movie star — and you will be.”

  “Have I satisfied your curiosity?”

  Daniel was flustered. “I didn’t mean to give the impression that, uh—”

  “Please, Daniel.” Whiting held up his hand, which glowed with a pale roseate translucence in the beam of the lamp. “No false protests. Of course you’re curious. I should be dismayed if you were not. I’m curious about you, as well. In fact, the reason I called you from your bed — or rather, from Boa’s — was to say that I’ve taken the liberty of gratifying my curiosity. And also to ask you if your intentions are honest.”

  “My intentions?”

  “Concerning my daughter, with whom you were having, not half an hour ago, intimate relations. Of, if I may say so, the highest quality.”

  “You were watching us!”

  “I was returning a compliment, so to speak. Or has Bobo never mentioned the incident that sent her packing to Vilars?”

  “She did but… Jesus, Mr. Whiting.”

  “It isn’t like you to flounder, Daniel.”

  “It’s hard not to, Mr. Whiting. All I can think to say, once again, is why? We supposed you knew what was going on pretty much. Boa even got the impression that you approved. More or less.”

  “I suppose I do approve. Whether more or less is what I’m trying to determine now. As to why, it was not (I hope) merely the gratification of a father’s natural curiosity. It was so that I’d have the goods on you. It’s all down on videotape, you see.”

  “All?” He was aghast.

  “Not all, possibly, but enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “To prosecute you, if need be. Bobo is still a minor. You’re guilty of statutory rape.”

  “Oh Jesus Christ, Mr. Whiting, you wouldn’t!”

  “No, I don’t expect it will be necessary. For one thing, that might force Bobo to marry you against her own wishes, or against yours, for that matter. Since, my lawyer tells me, you could not, in that event, be prosecuted. No, my intention is much simpler, I want to force the issue before you’ve wasted each other’s time in hesitations. Time is too precious for that.”

  “You’re asking me if I’ll marry your daughter?”

  “Well, you didn’t seem about to ask me. And I can understand that. People generally wait for me to take the initiative. It’s the beard, I suppose.”

  “Have you asked Boa about this?”

  “As I see it, Daniel, my daughter’s made her choice, and declared it. Rather openly, I should say.”

  “Not to me.”

  “The surrender of virginity is unequivocal. It needs no codicil.”

  “I’m not sure Boa sees it that way.”

  “She would, I’ve no doubt, if you asked her to. No one with any sensitivity wants to appear to be haggling over matters of the heart. But in our civilization (as you may have read) certain things go without saying.”

  “That was my impression too, Mr. Whiting. Until tonight.”

  Whiting laughed. His new, beardless face modified the usual Falstaffian impression of his laughter.

  “If I have forced the issue, Daniel, it was in the hope of preventing your making a needless mistake. This plan of yours to precede Boa to Boston is almost certain to lead to unhappiness for both of you. Here the inequality in your circumstances only lends a piquancy to your relations. There it will become your nemesis. Believe me — I speak as one who has been through it, albeit on the other side of the fence. You may have your pastoral fantasies now, but the good life cannot be led for less than ten thousand a year, and that requires both the right connections and a monastic frugality. Boa, of course, has never known the pinch of poverty. But you have, briefly. But long enough to have learned, surely, that it is to be avoided at all costs.”

  “I’m not planning to go back to prison, Mr. Whiting, if that’s your meaning.”

  “God forbid you should, Daniel. And please, don’t we know each other well enough for you to dispense with ‘Mister Whiting’?”

  “Then how about ‘Your Lordship’? Or ‘Excellency’? That wouldn’t seem quite as formal as Grandison.”

  Whiting hesitated, then seemed to decide to be amused. His laugh, if abrupt, had the ring of sincerity.

  “Good for you. No one’s ever said that to my face. And of course it’s perfectly true. Would you like to call me ‘Father’ then? To return to the original question.”

  “I still don’t see what’s so terrible about our going to Boston. What simpler way of finding out if it works?”

  “Not terrible, only foolish. Because it won’t work. And Boa will have wasted a year of her life trying to make it work. Meanwhile she’ll have failed to meet the people she’s going to college to meet (for that’s the reason one goes to college; one can study far better in solitude). Worse than that, she may have done irreparable harm to her reputation. Sadly, not everyone shares our enlightened attitude toward these arrangements.”

  “You don’t think she’d be even more compromised by marrying me?”

  “If I did, I would scarcely go out of my way to suggest it, would I? You’re bright, resilient, ambitious, and — allowing for the fact that you’re a lovesick teenager — quite level-headed. From my point of view, an ideal son-in-law. Bobo doubtless sees you in a different light, but I think, all in all, that she’s made a wise, even a prudent, choice.”

  “What about the, quote, inequality of our circumstances, unquote? Isn’t that even more a consideration in the case of getting married?”

  “No, for you’d be equals. My son-in-law could never be other than well-to-do. The marriage might not work, of course, but that risk exists in all marriages. And the odds for its working are, I should think, much better than the odds for the Boston trial balloon. You can’t dip your toes into marriage; you must plunge. What do you say?”

  “What can I say? I’m flabbergasted.”

  Whiting opened a silver cigarette case standing on his desk and turned it round to Daniel with a gesture of invitation.

  “No thank you, I don’t smoke.”

  “Nor do I, but this is grass. I always find that a bit of a buzz makes the decision-making process more interesting. Almost any process, really.” By way of further endorsement he took one of the cigarettes from the case, lit it, inhaled, and, still holding his breath, offered it to Daniel.

  He shook his head, not believing it was marijuana.

  Whiting shrugged, let out his breath, and sagged back in his leather chair.

  “Let me tell you about pleasure, Daniel. It’s something young people have no understanding of.”

  He took another toke, held it in, and offered the cigarette (coming from Grandison Whiting, you could not think of it as a joint) again to Daniel. Who, this time, accepted it.

  Daniel had been stoned only three times in his life — once at Bob Lundgren’s farm with some of the work-crew from Spirit Lake, and twice with Boa. It wasn’t that he disapproved, or didn’t enjoy it, or that the stuff was so impossible to get hold of. He was afraid, simply that. Afraid he’d be busted and sent back to Spirit Lake.

  “Pleasure,” said Grandison Whiting, lighting another cigarette for himself, “is the great good. It requires no explanations, no apologies. It is what is — the reason for continuing. One must arrange one’s life so that all pleasures are available. Not that there’s time to have them all. Everyone’s budget is limited in the end. But at your age, Daniel, you should be sampling the major varieties. In moderation. Sex, above all. Sex (perhaps after mystic transports, which come without our choosing) is always the most considerable, and cloys the least. But there is also something to be said for drugs, so long as you can hold on to your sanity, your health, and your own considered purpose in life. I gather, from the efforts you’re making to learn to be a musician, despite an evident inaptitude, that you wish to fly.”

&
nbsp; “I… uh…”

  Whiting waved away Daniel’s stillborn denial with the hand that held the cigarette. Its smoke, in the beam of the lamp, formed a delta of delicate curves.

  “I do not fly myself. I’ve tried, but lack the gift, and have small patience with effort in that direction. But I have many good friends who do fly, even here in Iowa. One of them did not return, but every delight has its martyrs. I say this because it’s clear to me that you’ve made it your purpose in life to fly. I think, in your circumstances, that has been both ambitious and brave. But there are larger purposes, as I think you have begun to discover.”

  “What is your purpose, Mr. Whiting? If you care to say.”

  “I believe it is what you would call power. Not in the crude sense that one experiences power at Spirit Lake, not as brute coercion — but in a larger (and, I would hope, finer) sense. How to explain? Perhaps if I told you of my own mystical experience, the single such I’ve been gifted to have. If, that is, you can tolerate so long a detour from the business in hand?”

  “So long as it’s scenic,” said Daniel, in a burst of what seemed to him show-stopping repartee. It was very direct grass.

  “It happened when I was thirty-eight. I had just arrived in London. The euphoria of arrival was still in my blood. I had been meaning to go to an auction of carpets, but had spent the afternoon, instead, wandering eastward to the City, stopping in at various churches of Wren’s. But it was not in any of those that the lightning struck. It was as I was returning to my hotel room. I had placed the key in the lock, and turned it. I could feel, in the mechanical movement of the tumblers, the movements, it seemed, of the entire solar system: the earth turning on its axis, moving in its orbit, the forces exerted on its oceans, and on its body too, by the sun and moon. I’ve said ‘it seemed,’ but it was no seeming. I felt it, as God must feel it. I’d never believed in God before that moment, nor ever doubted Him since.”

  “Power is turning a key in a lock?” Daniel asked, fuddled and fascinated in equal measure.

  “It is to feel the consequences of one’s actions spread through the world. There is a picture downstairs — you may have noted it: Napoleon Musing at St. Helena, by Benjamin Haydon. He stands on a cliff, facing a garish sunset, and his shadow is thrown behind him, a huge shadow. Two seabirds circle in the void before him. And that is all. But it says everything, to me.” He fell into a considering silence, and then resumed: “It is an illusion, I suppose. All pleasures are, in the end, and all visions too. But it’s a powerful illusion, and it is what I offer you.”

  “Thank you,” said Daniel.

  Grandison Whiting lifted a questioning eyebrow.

  Daniel smiled, by way of explanation. “Thank you. I can’t see any reason to go on being coy. I’m grateful: I accept. That is, if Boa will have me.”

  “Done,” said Whiting, and held out his hand.

  “Assuming,” he was careful to add, even as they shook on it, “that there are no strings attached.”

  “I can’t promise that. But where there is agreement as to principle, a contract can always be negotiated. Shall we invite Bobo to join us now?”

  “Sure. Though she can be a bit grouchy when she just wakes up.”

  “Oh, I doubt she would have gone to sleep. After he’d accompanied you here, Roberts brought Bobo to my secretary’s office, where she has been able to observe our entire tête-a-tête over the closed circuit tv.” He looked over his shoulder and addressed the hidden camera (which must have been trained on Daniel all this while): “Your ordeal is over now, Bobo dear, so why don’t you join us?”

  Daniel thought back over what he’d said to Whiting and decided that none of it was incriminating.

  “I hope you don’t mind?” Whiting added, turning back to Daniel.

  “Mind? It’s Boa who’ll mind. Me, I’m past being shocked. After all I’ve lived at Spirit Lake. The walls have ears there too. You haven’t bugged my room at home, have you?”

  “No. Though my security officer advised me to.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you had.”

  “Of course not.” He smiled, and there were those bony teeth again. “But you can take my word for it.”

  When Boa arrived upon the scene, she was, as Daniel had predicted, in a temper over her father’s meddling (over, at least, the manner of it), but she was also pleased to be all at once engaged with a whole new set of destinies and decisions. Planning was Boa’s forte. Even as the champagne bubbled in her glass, she’d begun to consider the question of a date, and before the bottle was empty they’d settled on October 31. They both loved Halloween, and a Halloween wedding it was to be, with jack-o-lanterns everywhere, and the bride and groom in black and orange, and the wedding cake itself an orange cake, which was her favorite kind anyhow. Also (this was Grandison’s contribution) the wedding guests would be able to stay on for a fox hunt. It had been years since there had been a proper hunt at Worry, and nothing was so sure to bring Alethea round to a cheerful sense of the occasion.

  “And then, after the wedding?” Grandison Whiting asked, as he untwisted the wire fixed to the cork of the second bottle.

  “After the wedding Daniel shall carry me off whithersoever he will for our honeymoon. Isn’t that lovely: whithersoever?”

  “And then?” he insisted, thumbing the cork.

  “Then, after a suitable interval, we shall be fruitful and multiply. Starting off this early, we should be able to produce litters and litters of little Weinrebs. But you mean, don’t you, what will we do?”

  The cork popped, and Whiting refilled the three glasses.

  “It does occur to me that you’ll have rather a gap to fill before the next academic year begins.”

  “That assumes, Father, that our years will continue to be of the academic variety.”

  “Oh, you must both get your degrees. That goes without saying. You’ve already settled on Harvard — wisely — and I’m sure room can be found there for Daniel too. So you needn’t alter your plans in that respect. Only defer them.”

  “Have you asked Daniel if he wants to go to Harvard?”

  “Daniel, do you want to go to Harvard?”

  “I know I ought to. But where I really did want to go was the Boston Conservatory of Music. But they turned me down.”

  “Fairly, do you think?”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. I just wasn’t ‘accomplished’ enough.”

  “Yes, that was my sister-in-law’s opinion, too. She said you’d done wonders for the short time you’d studied, and in view of the fact that you evidenced no innate talent for music.”

  “Oof,” said Daniel.

  “Did you think we never spoke of you?”

  “No. But that’s a pretty deflating opinion. The more so because it’s very close to what someone else once said, someone who was also… knowledgeable.”

  “On the whole, Harriet thought very highly of you. But she didn’t think you were cut out for a career in music. Not a very satisfying career at any rate.”

  “She never said that to me,” Boa objected.

  “Surely because she knew you’d have passed it on to Daniel. She had no wish to wound his feelings gratuitously.”

  “Then why are you telling him, Father?”

  “To persuade him to make other plans. Don’t suppose, Daniel, that I’d have you give up music. You couldn’t, I’m sure. It is a passion, perhaps a ruling passion. But you needn’t become a professional musician to be serious about music. Witness Miss Marspan. Or if she seems too dessicated to serve as a model to you, consider Moussorgsky, who was a civil servant, or Charles Ives, an insurance executive. The music of the nineteenth century, which remains our greatest music, was written for the discerning delectation of a vast audience of musical amateurs.”

  “Mr. Whiting, you don’t need to go on. I’ve said the same thing to myself many times. I wasn’t suggesting that it’s the Boston Conservatory or nothing. Or that I have to go to a music
school at all. I would like to take some private lessons with someone good—”

  “Naturally,” said Whiting.

  “As for the rest of what I ought to do, you seem to have it all laid out. Why not just say what you have in mind, and I’ll tell you how it strikes me?”

  “Fair enough. To begin with the immediate future, I’d like you to go to work for me here at Worry. At a salary, shall we say, of forty thousand a year, paid quarterly, in advance. That should be enough to set you up. You’ll have to spend it, you know, as fast as it comes in. It will be expected that you flaunt your conquest. To do less would show a lack of appreciation. You’ll become, for a time, the hero of Amesville.”

  “Our picture will be in all the papers,” Boa put in. “And the wedding will probably be on the tv news.”

  “Necessarily,” Whiting agreed. “We can’t afford to neglect such an opportunity for public relations. Daniel will be another Horatio Alger.”

  “Tell me more.” Daniel was grinning. “What do I have to do to earn my preposterous salary.”

  “You’ll work for it, believe me. Essentially it will be the same job you did for Robert Lundgren. You’ll manage the crews of seasonal workers.”

  “That’s Carl Mueller’s job.”

  “Carl Mueller is getting the sack. That is another aspect of your triumph. I hope you have nothing against revenge?”

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  “Well, I have something against revenge, Father, though I won’t enter into an argument on theoretical grounds. But won’t other people whom Daniel has to work with resent him if he takes Carl’s job away?”

  “They’ll resent him in any case. But they’ll know (they already do know, I’m sure) that there are objective reasons for firing Carl. He’s rather systematically taken kickbacks from the hiring agencies he works through. His predecessor did as well, and it may almost be thought to be one of the fringe benefits of his job. But I hope that you, Daniel, will resist the temptation. For one thing, you’ll be earning something over double Carl’s salary.”