On Wings of Song

by Thomas M. Disch

  Daniel was furious, but also, secretly, delighted. Even so, he determined, for form’s sake, to be angry with Mrs. Schiff for having so profitably violated his confidences. Of course, it had only been a matter of time, once his phonecall to Worry had been traced, before Daniel was apotheosized; a matter of hours, probably, as Mrs. Schiff tried, through Irwin, to explain. And to do her credit, her version of the past three years was as skillful a whitewash as any press agent could have contrived. According to Mrs. Schiff Daniel’s relationship with Rey had been based on mutual esteem and a shared devotion to the glory of the human voice. Her story dwelt mainly on Daniel’s undying love for his wife, his struggles against manifold adversities (she included his recipe for bread pudding), the discovery of his buried talent and (this last being intended, surely, as a private poke in the ribs) his Christian faith. Nowhere did she state anything that wasn’t strictly true, but it was scarcely the whole truth; nor — such were her powers as a storyteller — did the whole truth ever make much headway, once it did begin to leak out, via Lee Rappacini and a few other old friends. The media doesn’t like to waste its heroes, and that’s what Daniel had become.

  Boa was preserved from most of this within the heavily guarded portals of the Betti Bailey Memorial Clinic, an upper-crust, Westchester version of First National Flightpaths. At her own orders no one but Daniel and the Clinic’s staff were to be allowed into her room. He came there once a day in a rented limousine. While the limousine waited for the gates to be opened, the press would gather round with their cameras and their questions. Daniel would smile at them through the bullet-proof glass, which served the camera’s needs. As to the questions — Where had Boa been these many years? Why had she returned? What were her plans? — Daniel was as much in the dark as anyone, for they had yet to speak to each other. Usally she was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, and he would sit by her bed, arranging hecatombs of cut flowers and waiting for her to make the first move. He wondered how much of all he’d said over the last three years she’d been at hand to take in. He didn’t want to go through it all again, and in any case little of that was any longer to the point. The Boa who’d come back bore no resemblance to the living Boa he remembered. She was the same gaunt, hollow-eyed object that had Iain all those years, inert, on the other side of his room, whom to love was as impossible as if she had been a bundle of sticks. She seemed infinitely old and wasted. Her dark hair was streaked with gray. She did not smile. Her hands lay at her sides as though she had no interest in them, as though they were not hers but only a more cumbersome piece of bed linen. Once in these two weeks of visits she had opened her eyes to look at him, and then had closed them again, when she saw that he’d become aware of her attention.

  Yet he knew she was capable of speech, for she’d given orders to the staff not to admit any visitors but Daniel. Even this small distinction was scarcely a balm to his heart when he knew, through Dr. Ricker, the director of the clinic, that no one, aside from the press had sought to be admitted. Once Boa’s miraculous return to life had become a matter of public interest, her father had made himself unavailable for comment. To the rest of the world Daniel and Boa may have been the love story of the century, but to Grandison Whiting they were gall and wormwood. He was not, Daniel supposed, a forgiving sort of person.

  Meanwhile, Daniel’s bandwagon rolled onwards and upwards, a triumphal chariot, a juggernaut of success. Five of his songs were at the top of the charts. The two most popular, “Flying” and “The Song Does Not End,” were songs he’d written in the sauna of Adonis, Inc., back before any of this had begun. Except, logically, it must have begun then, or even before. Perhaps it all went back to that spring day on County Road B, when he’d been stopped in his tracks by that devastating inkling of some unknown glory. Sometimes he’d look up at the issue of Time that he’d nailed to the wall of his room at the Plaza with four stout nails and wonder if that had been the actual, foredestined shape of the vision that had loomed behind the clouds that day — that dark face with its animal ears and the dumb question rainbowed over it. He would have preferred a more inward and transfiguring glory to have been intended, as who would not, but if this was what the moving finger had writ, it would be churlish not to be grateful for benefits received — and received, and received.

  The next rung of the ladder, the next plum to fall in his lap, was an hour-and-a-half special on ABC. A third of the program was to be numbers from Honeybunny Time; another third, a selection of bel canto arias and duets featuring the great Ernesto, with Daniel doing little more than waft, metaphorically, an ostrich-feather fan; then, after a medley of such personal favorites as “Old Black Joe” and “Santa Lucia,” learned in Mrs. Boismortier’s classroom, there was to be a recreation of “The March of the Businessmen” from Gold-Diggers of 1984 (with Jackson Florentine making a guest appearance), winding up with the inevitable “Flying,” in which an entire chorus was to be borne aloft on wires. Irwin Tauber, who had volunteered, with a shrewdness equal to his magnanimity, to reduce his commission to a standard ten percent, sold the package for three-and-a-half million dollars, of which Rey, in return for relinquishing his over-all slice of Daniel’s next seven years, was to receive a million and a half outright.

  Midas-like, Daniel’s success affected everyone within touching distance. Rey, besides his million and a half, booked a tour through the Midwest. Rather, he expanded the tour he’d already been planning, for the whole country was, quite independently of Daniel, in the throes of a passion for all things musical, but especially for bel canto. Rey, a legend in his own right, had become by his association with Daniel exponentially more legendary, and his fees reflected it. Mrs. Schiff, too, had her share of these repletions. Besides the royalties rolling in from Honeybunny Time, the Metastasio had agreed, against all precedent, to present Axur, re d’Ormus as her original work, dispensing with the fiction that it was from the hand of Jomelli. She brought out her own long-playing record of Stories for Good Dogs. She opened a pet show at Madison Square Garden. She appeared on a list of the Ten Best-Dressed Women.

  Perhaps the strangest consequence of Daniel’s celebrity was the cult that sprang up around not simply his myth but his image. His younger admirers, not content with mere passive adulation, determined to follow his darkling example and went out, in their thousands and soon their tens of thousands, and had themselves transformed into exact replicas of their idol — to the often considerable dismay of their thousands and tens of thousands of parents. Daniel became, by this means, a cause célèbre, a symbol of all that was most to be extolled or most to be abhorred in the new era, a real-life Honeybunny or the Anti-Christ, depending on whom you listened to. His face, on a million posters and record-sleeves, was the standard that the era lifted up in defiance of the age gone by. Daniel, at the center of all this commotion, felt as helpless as a statue borne aloft in a procession. His position gave him a wonderful view of the surrounding bedlam, but he had no idea at all where he was being carried. He loved every ridiculous minute, though, and hoped it would never stop. He started making notes for a new musical that he wanted to call Highlights of Eternity, or else Heads in the Clouds, but then one day he’d read through his notes and realized they didn’t make any sense. He had nothing to say. He only had to stand in the spotlight and smile. He had to pretend to be this fabulous creature, Daniel Weinreb. Nothing more was asked.

  On an afternoon in February, on a day of bright and numbing cold, Boadicea opened her eyes and drew a deep breath that was partly a sigh and partly a yawn. Daniel didn’t dare so much as look toward her for fear of startling her back into the glades of her long silence. He went on staring at the facets of the stone in his ring, waiting for her mind to materialize before him in the form of words. At last the words arrived, faint and colorless. “Dear Daniel.” She seemed to be dictating a letter. He looked at her, not knowing how to reply. She didn’t look away. Her eyes were like porcelain, shining but depthless. “I must thank you for… the many flowers.” Her lips
closed and tightened to signify a smile. The least movement, the blinking of her eyelids, seemed to require a conscious effort.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered carefully. What does one say to a bird that decides to light on one’s finger? Hesitantly, he spoke of crumbs: “If there’s anything else I can bring you, Boa, just say the word. Anything that might help to pass the time.”

  “Oh, it passes without help. But thank you. For so much. For keeping this body of mine alive. It still seems strange. Like—” She turned her head to one side, then the other. “—a pair of very stiff shoes. But they’re getting broken in. Day by day. I practise. I forge new habits. This morning, for the first time, I practised smiling. It suddenly seemed important. They didn’t want me to have a mirror, but I insisted.”

  “I saw your smile,” he noted weakly.

  “It’s not very authentic yet, is it? But I’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Speech is much more difficult, and I already speak very clearly, do I not?”

  “Like a native. But don’t feel you have to. I mean, if it doesn’t feel comfortable yet. There’s plenty of time, and I’m a basically very patient person.”

  “Indeed. The nurses say you have been a saint. They are, all three of them, in love with you.”

  “Tough luck. I’m already taken.” Then, abashed: “That’s not to say… I mean, I don’t expect, after all this time…”

  “Why not? Isn’t it the best thing to do with bodies when you have them? So I seem to recall.” She practised her smile, with no greater success than before. “But I agree, it would be premature. I have been amazed, though, how quickly it all does come back. The words, and the way they try to connect with more meanings than they ever possibly will. As a fairy, one learns to do without them, by and large. But that was the reason I came back.”

  “I’m afraid I lost track of that. What was the reason you came back?”

  “To talk to you. To tell you you must learn to fly. To carry you off, so to speak.”

  He winced, visibly.

  She went on in the same evangelical vein. “You can, Daniel. I know there was a long time when you couldn’t. But you can now.”

  “Boa, I’ve tried. Believe me. Too many times.”

  “Precisely: too many times. You’ve lost faith in yourself, and naturally that gets in the way. But before I returned to this body I watched you. For days, I don’t know how many, I watched you sing. And it was there, all that you need. It was there in the very words of one of the songs. Honey from the mouth of the lion. If you’d been using a machine, you would have taken off any number of times.”

  “It’s good of you to say so. But I’m sorry that was your reason for having come back. It’s a bit of a lost cause, I’m afraid.”

  Boa blinked. She lifted her right hand and, as she looked at it, the first flicker of distinct expression stirred the muscles of her face. It was an expression of distaste.

  “I didn’t come back for any other reason, Daniel. Though I have no wish to have to deal with my father, that was a secondary consideration. Your threat made me return a little sooner possibly. But I never thought, and surely had no desire, to begin this… circus.”

  “I’m sorry about the fuss. It hasn’t been my doing, though I guess I haven’t exactly resisted it either. I enjoy circuses.”

  “Enjoy what you can, by all means. I’ve enjoyed myself largely enough, these fifteen years and more. And I shall again.”

  “Ah! You mean, you already intend… When you’ve got back the strength… ?”

  “To take off again? Yes, of course — as soon as I can. What other choice can there be, after all? It is, as my father might say, a business proposition. Here one finds, at most, only a little pleasure; there, there is only pleasure. Here, if my body perishes, I must perish with it; when I am there, the body’s death will cease to concern me. My care, then, is for my safety. Why should I be trapped in the collapse of a burning building, when all that is required to escape it is that I walk out the door?”

  “Ma’am, you preach a powerful sermon.”

  “You’re laughing at me. Why?”

  He threw up his hands in a gesture of self-parody that had become as automatic as the inflections of his voice. “Am I? If I am, then it’s at myself that I laugh. All you say is true. So true it seems ridiculous that I’m still around, discussing the matter.”

  “It does seem so strange to me. It isn’t just you — it’s all these people. Most of them don’t even try. But maybe that will change. You must try, at least.” Her voice seemed oddly out of tune, when she spoke with any emphasis. “Perhaps our circus may do some good, after all. You are so much in the public eye. You can set an example.”

  He snorted in self-derision, then felt ashamed. She didn’t know his reasons; he hadn’t told her what he’d done just that afternoon.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, with grudging penitence. “I was laughing at myself again. I did something today I shouldn’t have done, that I’m already regretting.”

  “Was that a laugh, before? It didn’t seem so.” She didn’t ask what he’d done. Her eyes seemed incurious.

  But he didn’t let that stand in the way of his confession. “You see,” he explained, “I said, in an interview this afternoon, that I could fly. That I love to fly. That I’m always just zipping off into the ether, which I described in abundant detail.”

  “So? I see no harm in saying that. You can fly.”

  “But I never have, Boa. I never, never, never have, and despite your glad tidings I’ve got a feeling that I never will. But after what I said today, I’m going to have to go on pretending for the whole fucking world.”

  “Why did you say it then?”

  “Because my agent has been pressuring me to for weeks. For my image. Because it’s what people expect of me, and you’ve got to give them their money’s worth. But I’ll tell you where I draw the line. I’m not going to pretend to take off in the middle of a concert. That is just too gross. People wouldn’t believe it.”

  She looked at him as though from the depth of a cold, clear pond. She had not believed what he’d said.

  “And because, finally, I want people to think that I can. Because, if I can’t, then I’m no better than Rey.”

  “How strange. Your words make less and less sense. I think, perhaps, if you would leave now… ? I meant to answer all the questions you’ve been so kind as not to ask. I know I owe that to you, but it’s a long story, and I’m tired now. And confused. Could we put it off till tomorrow?”

  He shrugged, and smiled, and felt resentful. “Sure. Why not?” He stood up, and took a step toward her bed, and then thought better of it.

  She looked straight at him and asked, tonelessly, “What do you want, Daniel?”

  “I was wondering if I should kiss you. As a matter of courtesy.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, really. It’s my body, you see. I don’t like it. I’m not, in a sense, quite alive yet. Once I’ve begun to enjoy food again — perhaps then.”

  “Fair enough.” He lifted his coat from the hook on the back of the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” she agreed.

  When he was almost out the door she called him back, but in so weak a voice he wasn’t certain, till he’d looked around, that he’d heard her speak his name.

  “On second thought, Daniel, would you kiss me? I don’t like my body. Perhaps I’ll like yours.”

  He sat beside her on the bed. He picked up her limp hand from where it lay on the unruffled sheet and placed it on his neck. Her fingers held to his skin infirmly, with only enough strength to support the weight of her arm.

  “Does it turn you off,” he asked, “my being a phoney?”

  “Your skin? It seems an odd thing for you to have done, but it all seems odd, the way people act. Why did you do it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know very little about you, Daniel.”

  He put his hands about her head. It seemed insubsta
ntial, the wispy, graying hair like ashes. There was no tension, no resistance in her neck — nor, it would seem, anywhere in her body. He inclined his head till their lips were touching. Her eyes were open but unfocused. He moved his lips by fractions of inches, as though he were whispering into her mouth. Then he parted her lips with his tongue, pushed past her teeth. His tongue nudged hers. There was no reply. He continued to move his tongue over and around hers. There began to be a resisting tension in her neck. She closed her eyes. With a parting nip of her lower lip, he disengaged.

  “Well?” he asked. “What does it do for you?”

  “It was… I was going to say frightening. But interesting. It made you seem like an animal. Like something made of meat.”

  “That’s why they’re called carnal relations, I guess.” He lowered her head to the pillow and replaced her hand at her side. He forebore to say what she put him in mind of: a funeral urn.

  “Really? It’s not the way I remember it. But that is what ‘carnal’ means, isn’t it? Is that what it’s usually like? For you, I mean?”

  “There’s generally a little more response. There have to be two animals involved, if you want results.”

  Boa laughed. It was rusty, and she couldn’t sustain it, but it was a real laugh.