Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

Poor Claude, he looked so woebegone.

“Cheer up,” Daniel urged, just before the doors chomped shut between them. “That was a happy dream.” And Claude, complying, bent his lips into the shape of a smile.

The waiting room to Mr. Ormund’s office, where Daniel waited half an hour, was decorated with so many chromolithoes of the Metastasio’s stars that you almost couldn’t see the raw silk wall-covering behind them. All the stars were represented bewigged and bedizened in the costumes of their most celebrated roles. All were inscribed, with heaps of love and barrels of kisses, to (variously): “Carissimo Johnny,” “Notre très cher maître,” “Darling Sambo,” “Sweetest Fatty,” and (by stars of a lesser magnitude) “Dear Mr. Ormund.”

Dear Mr. Ormund, in person, was a frightfully fat, professionally jolly, foppishly dressed businessman, a Falstaff and a phoney of the deepest dye, that darkest brown that hints of darker purples. Phoneys (from the French, faux noirs ) were almost exclusively an Eastern phenomenon. Indeed, in Iowa and throughout the Farm Belt whites who dyed their skin black or even used any of the more drastic tanning agents, such as Jamaica Lily, were liable to pay heavy fines, if discovered. It was not a law frequently enforced, and perhaps not frequently broken. Only in cities where blacks had begun to reap some of the political and social advantages of their majority status did phoneys at all abound. Most left some conspicuous part of their anatomy undyed (in Mr. Ormund’s case it was the little finger of his right hand), as a testimony that their negritude was a choice and not a fatality. Some went beyond dyes and frizzing, and opted for cosmetic surgery, but if Mr. Ormund’s slightly retroussé nose wasn’t naturally come by, then he had been discreet in selecting a model, for there were still centimeters to spare before it would be a full-fledged King Kong. If he were ever to let his skin slip back to its natural pallor, you’d never have known what he’d been. Which made him, of course, less than a hundred-percent, gung-ho, complete and irreversible phoney, but phoney enough, for all that, for Daniel, shaking hands with him and noticing the tell-tale pinky, to feel distinctly off balance psychologically. In some ways he was an Iowan still. He couldn’t help it: he disapproved of phoneys.

“So you’re Ben Bosola!”

“Mr. Ormund.”

Mr. Ormund, instead of releasing Daniel’s hand, kept it enclosed in both his own. “My informants did not exaggerate. You are a perfect Ganymede.” He spoke in a lavish, lilting contralto that might or might not have been real. Could he be a castrato as well as a phoney? Or did he only affect a falsetto, as did so many other partisans of bel canto, in emulation of the singers they idolized?

Let him be what he would, as odd or as odious, Daniel couldn’t afford to seem flummoxed. He rallied his wits, and replied, in a voice perhaps a little fuller and chestier than usual: “Not quite Ganymede, Mr. Ormund. If I remember the story, Ganymede was about half my age.”

“Are you twenty-five then? I’d never have thought so. But do sit down. Would you like a sweet?” He waved the hand with its one pink finger at a bowl of hard candies on his desk, then sank down into the sighing vinyl cushions of a low sofa. Reclining, propped on one elbow, he regarded Daniel with a fixity of interest that seemed at once shrewd and idle. “Tell me about yourself, my boy — your hopes, your dreams, your secret torments, your smoldering passions — everything! But no, those matters are always best left to the imagination. Let me read only the memoirs of those dark eyes.”

Daniel sat stiffly, his shoulders touching but not resting against the back of a spindly imitation antique chair, and offered his eyes up for inspection. He reflected that this was what other people must experience going to a dentist.

“You’ve known tragedy, I can see. And heartbreak. But you’ve come through it smiling. In fact, you always bounce back. Am I right?”

“Right as rain, Mr. Ormund,” said Daniel, smiling.

“I’ve known heartbreak, too, caro mio , and some day I will tell you of it, but we have a saying in the Theater — first things first. I mustn’t go on tormenting you with my inane chatter when, naturally, it is the position you wish to hear of.”

Daniel nodded.

“I’ll begin with the worst: it pays a mere pittance. You probably knew that.”

“I just want a chance to prove myself, Mr. Ormund.”

“But there are gratuities. For some of the boys here, I believe, they have been not inconsiderable, not inconsiderable at all. It depends, finally, on you. It’s possible just to coast along with the zephyrs, but it’s equally possible, with bit of spunk, to make yourself a bundle. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, Ben, but I began, thirty years ago, when this was still the Majestic, as you’re beginning now: an ordinary usher.”

“An usher?” Daniel repeated, in candid dismay.

“Why, what did you suppose?”

“You didn’t say what the position was. I guess I thought…”

“Oh, dear. Dear, dear, dear. I’m very sorry. Are you a singer, then?”

Daniel nodded.

“Our mutal friend has played a most unkind joke, I fear. On both of us. I have no connection with that side of the house — none at all. I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Ormund rose from the sofa, making the cushions sigh anew, and went to stand beside the door to the waiting room. Was his distress genuine or feigned? Had the misunderstanding been mutual, or had he been leading Daniel down the garden path for his own amusement? With the door being shown him so literally, Daniel didn’t have time to sort through such fine points. He had to make a decision. He’d made it.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for, Mr. Ormund. Or for me either. That is, if you’ll still let me have the job.”

“But if it would interfere with your career… ?”

Daniel gave a theatrical laugh. “Don’t worry about that. My career can’t be interfered with, because it doesn’t exist. I haven’t studied, in a serious way, for years. I should have known better than suppose the Metastasio would be calling me up for a place in the chorus. I’m not good enough, it’s simple as that.”

“My dear,” said Mr. Ormund, placing his hand gently on Daniel’s knee, “you’re superb . You’re ravishing. And if this were a rational world, which it is not, there’s not an opera house in this hemisphere that wouldn’t be delighted to have you. You mustn’t give up!”

“Mr. Ormund, I’m a punk singer.”

Mr. Ormund sighed, and removed his hand.

“But I think I’d be a terrific usher. What do you say?”

“You wouldn’t be… ashamed?”

“If I stood to earn money from it, I’d be delighted. Not to mention the chance I’d have to see your productions.”

“Yes, it does help if you like the stuff. So many of the boys don’t have an educated ear, I’m afraid. It is a special taste. Are you familiar, then, with the Metastasio?”

“I’ve heard recordings. But I’ve never been to a performance. Thirty bucks a ticket is a bit out of my class.”

“Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear.”

“Another difficulty?”

“Well, Ben. You see…” He raised his hand to his lips and coughed delicately. “There is a grooming code our ushers must observe. A rather strict code.”

“Oh.”

They both stood silent for a time. Mr. Ormund, standing behind his desk, struck a business-like attitude, clasping his hands behind his back and thrusting his wine-barrel belly forward aggressively.

“Do you mean,” Daniel asked cautiously, “that I’d have to… uh… darken my complection?”