Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

“Yes.”

“That happened several years afterwards,” Gabriel said.

“After what?”

“Several years after the performance. That dreadful performance just before the boy was due to tour Scandinavia. It had never happened before, a boy leaving Iceland to sing solo with choirs in Scandinavia. His father sent his first record to Norway, a record company there became interested and organised a concert tour with the aim of releasing his records in Scandinavia. His father once told me that his dream, nota bene his dream, not necessarily Gudlaugur’s, was for the lad to sing with the Vienna Boys” Choir. And he could have, no question about it”

“So what happened?”

“What always happens sooner or later with boy sopranos; nature intervened,” Gabriel said. “At the worst imaginable time in the boy’s life. It could have happened at a rehearsal, could have happened while he was alone at home. But it happened there and the poor child …”

Gabriel looked at Erlendur.

“I was with him backstage. The children’s choir was supposed to sing some songs and a crowd of local children were there, leading musicians from Reykjavik, even a couple of critics from the papers. The concert was widely advertised and his father was sitting in the middle of the front row, of course. The boy came to see me later, much later, when he’d left home, and told me how he felt on that fateful night, and since then I’ve often thought how a single incident can mark a person for life.”

Every seat in Hafnarfjordur cinema was occupied and the audience was buzzing. He’d been to that charming building twice before to watch films and was enchanted by everything he saw: the beautiful lighting in the auditorium and the raised stage where plays were performed. His mother had taken him to Gone with the Wind and he had been with his father and sister to see a Walt Disney cartoon.

But these people had come not to watch the heroes of the silver screen, but to listen to him. Him singing with the voice that had already featured on two records. Instead of shyness, he was beset by uncertainty now. He had sung in public before, in the church in Hafnarfjordur and at school, in front of large audiences. Often he was shy and downright scared. Later he came to realise that he was sought-after by others, which helped him overcome his reticence. There was a reason that people came to hear him sing, a reason that people wanted to hear him, and it was nothing to be shy about. The reason was his voice and his singing. Nothing else. He was the star.

His father had shown him the advertisement in the newspaper: Iceland’s best boy soprano is performing tonight. There was no one better. His father was beside himself with joy and much more excited than the boy himself. Talked about it for days on end. If only your mother could have lived to see you singing at that place, he said. That would have pleased her so much. It would have pleased her indescribably.

People in other countries were impressed with his singing and wanted him to perform there too. They wanted to release his records there. I knew it, his father said over and again. I knew it. He had worked hard on preparing the trip. The concert in Hafnarfjordur was the finishing touch to that work.

The stage manager showed him how to peep through into the auditorium to watch the audience taking then-seats. He listened to the murmurings and saw people he knew he would never meet. He saw the choirmaster’s wife sit down with their three children at the end of the third row. He saw several of his classmates with their parents, even some who had teased him, and he saw his father take his place in the middle of the front row, with his big sister beside him, staring up at the ceiling. His mother’s family were there too, aunts he hardly knew, men holding their hats in their hands waiting for the curtain to open.

He wanted to make his father proud. He knew how much his father had sacrificed to make a successful singer of him, and now the fruits of that toil were going to be seen. It had cost relentless training. Complaining was futile. He had tried that and it made his father angry.

He trusted his father completely. That was the way it had always been. Even when he was singing in public against his own wishes. His father drove him on, encouraged him and had his own way in the end. It was torture for the boy the first time he sang for strangers: stage fright, bashful-ness in front of all those people. But his father would not yield an inch, not even when the boy was bullied over his singing. The more he performed in public, at school and in church, the worse the boys and some girls too treated him, calling him names, even mocking his voice. He could not understand what motivated them.

He did not want to provoke his father’s wrath. He was devastated after their mother died. She contracted leukaemia and it killed her within months. Their father was by her bedside day and night, accompanied her to the hospital and slept there while her life ebbed away. The last words he said before they left home for the concert were: Think about your mother. How proud she would have been of you.

The choir had taken up its position on the stage. All the girls in identical frocks paid for by the town council. The boys in white shirts and black trousers, just like he was wearing. They whispered together, excited at all the attention the choir was receiving, determined to do their best. Gabriel, the choirmaster, was talking to the stage manager. The compere stubbed out a cigarette on the floor. Everything was ready. Soon it would be curtain up.

Gabriel called him over.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s a packed house.”

“And they’ve all come to see you. Remember that. They’ve all come to see you and hear you sing and no one else, and you ought to be proud of that, pleased with yourself and not shy. Maybe you’re a bit nervous now, but that will wear off as soon as you start singing. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“Shall we start then?”

He nodded.

Gabriel put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s bound to be difficult for you to look all those people in the eye, but you only need to sing and everything will be all right.”

“Yes.”

“The compere doesn’t come on until after the first song. We’ve rehearsed all this. You start singing and everything will be fine.”

Gabriel gave a sign to the stage manager. He gestured to the choir who immediately fell silent and lined up. Everything was in place. They were all ready.

The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The murmuring stopped. The curtain went up.

Think of your mother.

The last thought that crossed his mind before the auditorium opened up in front of him was his mother on her deathbed the final time he saw her, and for a second he lost his concentration. He was with his father, they were sitting together on one side of the bed, and she was so weak she could hardly keep her eyes open. She closed them and seemed to have fallen asleep, then opened them slowly, looked at him and tried to smile. They could not speak to each other any longer. When it was time to say goodbye they stood up, and he always regretted not having given her a farewell kiss, because this was the last time they were together. He simply stood up and walked out of the ward with his father, and the door closed behind them.

The curtain rose and he met his father’s gaze. The auditorium vanished from his sight and all he could see was his father’s glaring eyes.

Someone in the auditorium began laughing.

He came back to his senses. The choir had begun to sing and the choirmaster had given a sign, but he had missed it. Trying to gloss over the incident, the choirmaster took the choir through another round of the verse, and now he came in at the right place and had just started the song when something happened.