Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

The articles of this contract were sworn to at a special dinner at Evviva il Coltello in the presence of Mrs. Schiff and Mr. Ormund, both of whom seemed to regard the occasion as auspicious. Mr. Ormund, indeed, was a proper mother of the bride, alternating between outbursts of ebullience and tears. He undertook to deliver Daniel that very evening into the hands of his own cosmetician and to supervise his entire transformation. This was, he declared, the very thing he’d hoped for when first he’d laid eyes on Ben and recognized him as a soul-brother. Mrs. Schiff was less effusive in her congratulations. She obviously regarded his physical remodeling as so much folderol, but she approved the relationship as being calculated to promote Ernesto’s peace of mind and thereby to enhance his art.

Daniel had never before known humiliation. He’d experienced fleeting embarrassments. He’d regretted ill-considered actions. But through all his tribulations, in Spirit Lake and during his long years as a temp in New York, he had never felt any deep or lasting shame. Now, though he tried as before to retreat to the sanctuary of an inner, uncoercible freedom, he knew humiliation. He did not believe, any longer, in his innocence or righteousness. He accepted the judgement of the world — the sneers, the smiles, the wisecracks, the averted eyes. All this was his due. He could wear the livery of the Metastasio without injury to his pride — even, at his better moments, with a kind of moral panache, like those pages in Renaissance paintings who seem, by virtue of youth and beauty, the rivals of the princes whom they serve. But he could not wear the livery of prostitution with so cavalier a grace: it pinched, it tickled, it itched, it burned, it abraded his soul.

He tried to tell himself that his condition had not been essentially altered, that, though he might give his neck to the yoke, his spirit remained free. He remembered Barbara Steiner, and the prostitute (her name forgotten) who’d inaugurated his own sexual career in Elmore, and the countless professionals here in New York with whom, in their free moments, he’d sported, both hustlers and whores. But there was no comfort in such comparisons. If he had not judged them so harshly as he judged himself, it was because just by being prostitutes they had placed themselves outside the pale. Whatever other qualities of worth they might boast — wit, imagination, generosity, exuberance — they remained, in Daniel’s eyes, honorless. As now he was himself. For didn’t they — didn’t he? — say, in effect, that love was a lie, or rather, a skill? Not, as he’d believed, the soul’s testing ground; not, somehow, a sacrament.

Sex, if it was not the soul’s avenue into this world, and the flesh’s out of it, was simply another means by which people gained advantage over each other. It was of the world, worldly. But what was left then that wasn’t worldly, that didn’t belong to Caesar? Flight, perhaps, though it seemed that dimension of grace would always be denied him. And (logic demanded) death. He doubted, from his earlier failure in this direction, back at Spirit Lake, whether he’d ever have the gumption to kill himself, but Mrs. Schiff knew nothing of that, and he found a definite relief in throwing out dark hints to her. Scarcely a night went by without Daniel indulging in a rumble of off-stage thunder, until at last Mrs. Schiff lost all patience and called him to task.

“So you wish you were dead — is that what you’re muttering?” she demanded one night during the second week of his captivity, when he’d come home half-drunk and bathetic. “Such stuff and nonsense, Daniel, such tiresome drivel! Really, you surprise me, carrying on in this catastrophic way. It isn’t like you. I hope you’re not like this in front of Ernesto. It wouldn’t be fair to him, you know.”

“All you ever fucking think of is Ernesto! What about me?”

“Oh, I think of you constantly. How should I not, with our being thrown together every day? But I do worry about Ernesto, that’s true. And I don’t worry about you. You’re much too capable and sturdy.”

“You can say that when I’m sitting here in this pelvic straightjacket so that I can’t even take a piss by myself?”

“You want the key? Is that all!”

“Oh fuck it, Mrs. Schiff, you’re trying to misunderstand.”

“Has he made you do something so awful, then, that it can’t be spoken of?”

“He hasn’t made me do fucking anything!”

“Ah ha!”

“Ah ha yourself.”

“It’s not humiliation that’s bothering you at all. It’s anxiety. Or are you, perhaps, a bit disappointed?”

“As far as I’m concerned he can keep me in wraps till I’m ninety-five: I won’t complain.”

“I must say, Daniel — you seem to be complaining. It’s quite possible, you know, that Ernesto will go on being satisfied with the status quo. Our marriage stopped, in effect, with the slicing of the cake.”

“So, why does he do it?”

“ Bella figura . It’s good form to have a glamorous young person in one’s private possession. Admittedly, I couldn’t have been called glamorous, even in my youth, but in those days my father was still a prominent racketeer, so there was a social cachet. In your case, I think he is determined to one-up Bladebridge. The man does worry him — quite needlessly, I think. But among the people whose good opinion he covets your conquest has been taken note of, at least as much as if you were a Rolls-Royce that he’d bought and then had customized.”

“Oh, I know all that. But he talks about how much he loves me. He’s always going on about his passion . It’s like living inside an opera libretto.”

“I could think of nowhere I’d rather live. And I do think it ungenerous of you not to lead him on somewhat.”

“You mean to say I’m not a good whore.”

“Let your conscience be your guide, Daniel.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Chiefly, take an interest. Ernesto is a singer, and singers want more than anything else to be listened to. Ask to be allowed to go to his rehearsals, to sit in on his master classes. Praise his singing. Effuse. Act as though you meant every word in the letter you wrote to him.”

“Damn it, Mrs. Schiff — I didn’t write that letter!”

“More’s the pity. If you had, then you might be ready to learn to sing yourself. As you are, you never shall.”

“No need to rub my nose in it. I guess I’ve learned that fact of life.”

“Ah, there’s that whine in your voice again. The bleat of the guiltless lamb. But it isn’t some implacable predestining Force that keeps you from being the singer you might be. It’s your choice .”

“Oh fuck off. I’m going to bed. Do you have the key? I need to take a piss.”

Mrs. Schiff examined the various pockets of the clothes she was wearing, and then of the clothes she’d discarded in the course of the day. Her rooms were gradually reacquiring their former clutter now that Incubus was gone. At last she found her key-ring on her worktable. She followed Daniel to the bathroom, and, after releasing him from the insanity belt, stood in the doorway while he went to the toilet. A precaution against his whacking off. She was a very conscientious jailer.

“Your problem, Daniel,” she continued, after his first sigh of relief, “is that you have spiritual ambition but no faith.” She considered that a while and changed her mind. “No, that sounds more like my problem. Your problem is that you have a Faustian soul. It is a larger soul, perhaps, than belongs to many who, for all that, can fly with the greatest of ease. Who ever supposed size was a mark of quality, eh?”