But then there were other things: the first rustle of chocolate papers, then a shuffle. He heard a whisper behind him. He seethed, tried to refocus his mind because there was the steep climb into Rodrigo’s sword pledge and listen to what he does here, Liam thought, listen—
“Who’s that?”
“I wonder if he’s the one, the one they all talk about.”
“Him? He’s so fat!”
“Opera singers are fat, didn’t you know? Tetrazzini is quite fat. I saw her once on the street years ago and thought, how could she be so wicked with the gentlemen with a figure like that?”
“Is she really?”
“She was three feet across the hips!”
The delicate edifice tumbled. He sat in the too-short theatre seat in the dusty back of things, and all around him rustled papers, shuffled feet, coughs. Down below him on a lighted platform, distant figures with painted faces made unusual gestures.
Someone behind him sucked like a nursing baby. There was a cough and a gust of peppermint on his neck. Sounds floated up from the tiny figurines on the stage, from their painted mouths. He heard nothing but the noise of the proles with their naive questions, their blank eyes and open mouths. He hated them, hated their scents of peppermint and Yardley Lily of the Valley toilette water and Quelques Fleurs. He hated the women with their lorgnettes. He hated the lolling girls in dance frocks littering the floor of the theatre, and he hated every last white-gloved swell sliding into a seat forty-five minutes late.
Far, far below him the curtains swept across the stage, and the house lights went up.
Around him the audience shuffled to its feet, relieved and exuberant, like children let out from church. Liam remained where he was. They excused themselves over his knees, and he would not move and thought let them climb over me, if they’d rather be in the lobby. For fifteen minutes he was left to himself, except for an old man down his row bent over at the waist and snoring into his knees.
There was of course Act Three to come, and “Ô Souverain, ô juge, ô père.” He remembered the moment when the noises around him fell away again, and he heard only Rodrigo’s submission to the Lord of Hosts. And Liam thought afterward that he had submitted, too, and made an incoherent pledge that matched not the words of Rodrigo’s song, but the shape of the thing itself, with all its constriction and release, its slow climb to the top of the tenor’s range and the final sustain that rippled outward from O’Mario’s breast.
It was a call, he thought. He was sure it was a call. He left the theatre half yanked from his own body, so he felt he was walking through the crowds, but also somewhere above with the voice. He had a fancy that he travelled with the leading edge of a great concentric wave, all O’Mario’s peaks and furrows carrying him forward irresistibly to the far reaches of the world. He stalked among the people as they scuttled after taxis, toward tea rooms. He heard them speak, and felt he did not understand them, so altered was he.
“Oh my dear, the beading on the Infanta’s gown, I can’t imagine what—”
“—can’t expect La Scala, but one does assume they’ll at least—”
“—evening entertainment should be more wholesome? I do think culture is as important as hygiene for—”
“Massenet, always so terribly lyrical when he—”
He thought, They must recognize it, somehow I must look different than they do.
“—could get us a taxi?”
Liam made his way through the crowd toward his boarding house. He passed young men in gangs. One dark blue evening coat among them—faceless beneath a silk top hat—shouldered him into the gutter. He walked faster, then, through the crowd, looking to see if any had noticed, but even the silk hat ignored him. One block, then two from the opera house, and behind him as he walked, he heard a warbling soprano with a voice like a wet-winged baby bird struggling from its shell. It might have been Chimène’s first love song.
That night Liam lay awake in his narrow nursery bed in his hall room. Yes, he said in response to the unspecified question put to him in Rodrigo’s sword aria. Yes.
It was a pity—no, a comedy, no a travesty—that he hadn’t known the thing to which he pledged. Because now he recognized that evening for what it was—the lurid creation of the overheated romantic imagination of an eighteen-year-old boy (and very boyish even for eighteen), already disoriented by the brilliance of the city around him, and the effect his rather remarkable face had on the people he met, not yet aware that it was not his voice that had one woman or another watching him with such rapt attention, her hands clasped at her breast. If he had been older, or wiser, or had better guidance, he would have returned then to Paris, taken a job as a dishwasher and thrown himself on the mercy of M. Girard, who had been his master. But instead, he had mistaken a commonplace performance for a call. Instead he smoked slim black cigarettes and had found a tailor and knew, now, to be ashamed of the ready-made suit that had so impressed him in Toronto. Having pledged himself to that call, he thought the rest must be automatic. Surely it was rare to feel this way. Surely he was original.
He had hated the audience on that particular June evening; such hatred was familiar to him, and he had hated many audiences since then, in detail, and with the educated loathing of the failed artist. But twenty years on, he found the object of hatred had shifted until he felt only a mild irritation at the peppermint and the girls in dancing frocks and the men in fine white gloves. Instead he hated the imposter—who had not been evening sunlight, or black water, or ice, but marsh fire in the unhappy darkness. From the perspective of a washed-up thirty-eight, Liam saw through the pink and gold bloom, and recognized the real devil in all that, and hated what he still remembered from that night. O’Mario was a charlatan, a song-and-dance man, a white-gloved magician, no better than two men clomping through a sand-dance in ugly black boots and kohled eyes.
He saved his bitterest hatred for the voice itself, for that outward-rippling force that lifted him and cut him loose again and again and again each time he remembered Le Cid. He remembered it in camps, in boarding-house beds, in hospitals, in the wings of theatres. Liam was a gifted hater, and knew the dimensions of his own disgust: the misdirecting right hand that had beckoned him, the left that had hooked him so he wriggled inescapably against each twitch on the thread snagged under his skin.
AWAKE
What he remembered of 1918 was awakening. Sometimes it was those past-midnights when everyone else slept, and the windows down at the end of the ward were pearled with steam and illuminated by streetlights. On those nights, he lay marooned in fever, trying to remember what it had been to stand under streetlights with civilian shoes on his feet, and a cigarette, and a beautiful woman. Sometimes during the interminable half-dreams he couldn’t tell the difference between waking and sleeping, and morphine turned the light through the long windows as thick as yellow mud. In those dreams he said, I will now sing the B natural, by way of demonstration.
They were nearby, waiting for him and the B natural.
The window at the end of the long corridor of beds filled half the wall. It was topped with a fanlight. Sometime, in a few days perhaps, he would walk the length of the room and stand at the window, and he would look down into the street where men in civilian shoes walked with beautiful women.
They sat close by his bed, or walked up and down the room. Some of them stopped when he spoke, but more often they ignored him.
He said, I will now sing the B natural, by way of demonstration. He had been trying to get through this note for such a long time. He rested his hands on his diaphragm as his lungs filled. The action was sticky, so he thought maybe the mechanism was clogged with oil or mud. Mud was a bastard to get at, you had to take the whole thing apart and ram a rod down the barrel. He would have to see about that. He allowed his throat to relax; he dropped his jaw.
I will now sing, he said.
The window at the end of the long ward rattled. Sometimes he thought that the note—this demonstrative B na
tural—would never come. Through the glass he saw a patch of sky darker than the inside of the ward. It was hard to see past the steam and the bit of reflected ceiling that obscured his view. It was twilight, perhaps. It was night.
The B natural, he said.
They rustled and settled again like crows. He saw them stand and fall again, passing close by him, pausing and going on as though on a mission of importance, though he could not see what or where. They were insubstantial, but careful listeners; they had been appointed to this duty a very long time ago, before he was born, or his father, or farther back than that. The B natural came first, but it was part of his progression to the C, which was his objective. They listened for it. They stood over him, and pressed his wrist with cool, thin fingers and then went on again. Sometimes he felt the air move across his face and that was them, too. Sometimes he heard singing; the melody was “Auld Lang Syne” and he thought of joining in with it, but when he listened he realized that the words were new, and he did not know them.
Someone sang we’re here because we’re here
I will now sing, Liam interrupted.
because we’re here we’re here because we’re here
The B natural
because we’re here because we’re here
“Auld Lang Syne” was important because it had accompanied a moment of almost-revelation regarding the real nature of his talents. Or, regarding what the world made of those talents, and the use to which it would put him. Liam met with an agent in July, not long before the declaration, to talk about possible engagements. Some lady’s musical evening, he thought, a party or picnic—just to feed him until more permanent work could be found. Liam walked into the Mercury Company’s office with a wonderful sense of acceleration, as though all the doors in the world had blown open simultaneously and he walked through them forever, and would never put a foot wrong again.
Then he had to wait in the outer office for twenty minutes before the gentleman from the Mercury Company called him in and introduced himself as Mr. Jack Strain. He’d stood, stared at the man and nodded, remembering the swagger of the La Scala tenors in Milan, how easy their manners were, and how debonair. Sitting down in the hard chair opposite Mr. Strain, Liam steepled his fingers, his elbows resting on the arms, and a good three inches of pale blue sock showing above his shoes. He had chosen those socks with care, to complement (but not match) his blue silk tie.
“I thought to start with the ‘Celeste Aida,’” he said, then nodded as though confirming his own choice. “I thought a little Puccini for the popular audience—possibly the ‘Nessun dorma.’ Something from La boheme if you must. I am at my strongest with Massenet or Verdi, of course, but I’d like to explore the German catalogue.”
For a moment Mr. Strain did not respond.
“Your name is Liam Manley, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“The Irishman.” Liam nodded. “Well then, I have a request for music at a young lady’s birthday.” Liam nodded again.
“But as to the program, I think the ‘Celeste—’”
“The young lady has already selected a number of songs. In particular she wishes to hear ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ at the end of the evening, so you must be prepared to stay late. She also wishes to hear ‘She Moved Through The Fair,’ ‘The Last Rose of Summer’—”
“You seem to have misunderstood. I’m not a music hall entertainer. I am not suited to such flimsy, sentimental…” He stopped and began again: “Mr. Strain, my voice is of a more…” Liam looked for a word, paused, then said it bluntly, “aristocratic quality. Hadn’t you better find an Irish tenor if you’re interested in disseminating songs such as the disgusting ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’? I was trained to Verdi! ”
“Sir, in your current situation—you are without a master, I believe? And lack the funds to return to Paris?—I would suggest you endeavour to be happy with the two pounds you will earn and sing the songs your employer selects.”
Liam looked at Mr. Strain’s boots. They were nicely blacked, but unfashionable.
“Mr. Strain—”
“If you do not wish to take the job, there is nothing I can do to stop you. If, however, you agree to the terms I have set—in spite of your aristocratic gifts—then sign the contract and go to this address next Wednesday at two o’clock in the afternoon. The accompanist will meet you there. The hostess has also allowed you dinner, as part of your fee.” Mr. Strain pushed a few sheets of paper toward Liam. “Not with the party, of course.” Liam felt for a pen in his pocket, but there were only pennies and a handkerchief; he looked at Mr. Strain, who took his own pen from his inside pocket and dropped it on top of the sheets.
His morphine dreams: sometime long ago he’s standing at a balcony. He’s pretty sure it’s before the war. There’s the low wall, fat marble columns squatting under a wide marble rail. It’s only knee height. For sitting, he guesses, but he has come to believe he’s too tall to lounge gracefully, and so he stands and does not know what to do with his hands, and keeps them behind his back, sweaty fingers knotted about one another. There’s the soft glitter of the sea below, light from a spotty yellow moon on the horizon.
There is a rose in the lapel of his cheap, cream-coloured suit. The suit bags badly at the pockets and has been imperfectly sponged. Sometimes he stands with his arms crossed to cover the marks, but he thinks that looks awkward. He suspects it is always less awkward to wear one’s marks unselfconsciously than it is to hide them, but he still finds himself trying.
He looks down toward the wrinkled grey sea. The roar of water on pea gravel—each wave falls; another builds, rises thoughtfully and falls. He listens particularly for the quiet between breakers, and each time it seems too long, and he thinks this wave will be the last, it will not fall, but rise forever. Each time it falls. Each time the glitter of pebbles striking pebbles.
He has in his pocket a letter from his mother. It told him about a fowl supper she had organized, about his father’s new thresher, and his younger sister’s confirmation and his older brother’s wedding. She signed it “With all my love for my own dear laddie,” and nothing but “Mother” in place of her name. She had been very careful and recopied the letter at least once. More than once, he guesses, as she’d had trouble with the capital in the “Dearest” of the salutation. He had always disliked her capital Ds, being tippy, and he had tried to teach her better (the elegant, copperplate D he copied out of The Books of Knowledge he found at school—the set missing volumes, so he never learned numbers properly, or the lowercase “f”). Though he was the one who insisted on showing her the correct construction of the capital D, he had still been embarrassed by the way she pressed her lips together and knit her brows, determined to be a model student. How she had dipped and wiped her pen so quickly—to impress him with her efficiency—that she scattered drops on the paper.
This D was done quite sharply angled and particular.
Beyond the news and the affected little phrases like “such fun” and “quite genteel” and “estimable party of young people,” there was the question of how much longer he would stay there, when he would come home and sing in Toronto, perhaps, or London, because it was close enough that Father could come and hear him. Or Montreal, or Salterton, or Elgin. She listed several towns and cities he might like for singing, as though he would not know their names, having been abroad nearly six months.
He’s at a young lady’s birthday party. The program of interminable Irish balladry approaches but never reaches its end. He has sung “The Bard of Armagh” (twice) and “She Moved Thro’ The Fair” (three times) and “The Rose of Tralee” (twice) and “The Last Rose of Summer” (five times), and he has sung “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls” so many times he cannot remember a moment when it seemed fresh or original. The young lady to whom he is addressing his song sits with rapt, glazed eyes and parted lips that shine where she has wet them. She rests her head on her hands, in an attitude he has seen in advertisements for Cashmere Bouq
uet and Peek Freans. She beats time with one finger and sighs and says “Again! Sing it again!” and he repeats “The Bard of Armagh.”
He has reached the last song on the list, the very very long list lengthened by every little gasp the young lady makes, and every soft glance she casts on him, and with every dreamy command “Again!” Finally he has arrived at “Auld Lang Syne.” He hopes there’ll be only one. From the back of the room, the hostess watches her guests with sharp, crow-black eyes, and—because it is a dream—Mrs. Kilgour is also there, humming, though he does not yet know that she waits for him.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind should auld acquaintance be, he begins, forgot in the days of auld lang syne
But the audience has begun to trail after him in the song, not large enough to sound grand, nor gifted enough to sound elegant, and above it all, Mrs. Kilgour’s croon, and the quivering little voice of the girl whose eyes are tear-swollen.
But as he continues, We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet in the days of auld lang syne, he realizes that they are not singing what he is singing. He listens carefully and hears from all their lips these other words. Ugly words.
For auld lang syne my dears we’re here because we’re here we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet we’re here because we’re here.
The Paradise Engine Page 23
