Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

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?”