Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

“Ma’am, you preach a powerful sermon.”

“You’re laughing at me. Why?”

He threw up his hands in a gesture of self-parody that had become as automatic as the inflections of his voice. “Am I? If I am, then it’s at myself that I laugh. All you say is true. So true it seems ridiculous that I’m still around, discussing the matter.”

“It does seem so strange to me. It isn’t just you — it’s all these people. Most of them don’t even try. But maybe that will change. You must try, at least.” Her voice seemed oddly out of tune, when she spoke with any emphasis. “Perhaps our circus may do some good, after all. You are so much in the public eye. You can set an example.”

He snorted in self-derision, then felt ashamed. She didn’t know his reasons; he hadn’t told her what he’d done just that afternoon.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with grudging penitence. “I was laughing at myself again. I did something today I shouldn’t have done, that I’m already regretting.”

“Was that a laugh, before? It didn’t seem so.” She didn’t ask what he’d done. Her eyes seemed incurious.

But he didn’t let that stand in the way of his confession. “You see,” he explained, “I said, in an interview this afternoon, that I could fly. That I love to fly. That I’m always just zipping off into the ether, which I described in abundant detail.”

“So? I see no harm in saying that. You can fly.”

“But I never have, Boa. I never, never, never have, and despite your glad tidings I’ve got a feeling that I never will. But after what I said today, I’m going to have to go on pretending for the whole fucking world.”

“Why did you say it then?”

“Because my agent has been pressuring me to for weeks. For my image. Because it’s what people expect of me, and you’ve got to give them their money’s worth. But I’ll tell you where I draw the line. I’m not going to pretend to take off in the middle of a concert. That is just too gross. People wouldn’t believe it.”

She looked at him as though from the depth of a cold, clear pond. She had not believed what he’d said.

“And because, finally, I want people to think that I can. Because, if I can’t, then I’m no better than Rey.”

“How strange. Your words make less and less sense. I think, perhaps, if you would leave now… ? I meant to answer all the questions you’ve been so kind as not to ask. I know I owe that to you, but it’s a long story, and I’m tired now. And confused. Could we put it off till tomorrow?”

He shrugged, and smiled, and felt resentful. “Sure. Why not?” He stood up, and took a step toward her bed, and then thought better of it.

She looked straight at him and asked, tonelessly, “What do you want, Daniel?”

“I was wondering if I should kiss you. As a matter of courtesy.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, really. It’s my body, you see. I don’t like it. I’m not, in a sense, quite alive yet. Once I’ve begun to enjoy food again — perhaps then.”

“Fair enough.” He lifted his coat from the hook on the back of the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

When he was almost out the door she called him back, but in so weak a voice he wasn’t certain, till he’d looked around, that he’d heard her speak his name.

“On second thought, Daniel, would you kiss me? I don’t like my body. Perhaps I’ll like yours.”

He sat beside her on the bed. He picked up her limp hand from where it lay on the unruffled sheet and placed it on his neck. Her fingers held to his skin infirmly, with only enough strength to support the weight of her arm.

“Does it turn you off,” he asked, “my being a phoney?”

“Your skin? It seems an odd thing for you to have done, but it all seems odd, the way people act. Why did you do it?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know very little about you, Daniel.”

He put his hands about her head. It seemed insubstantial, the wispy, graying hair like ashes. There was no tension, no resistance in her neck — nor, it would seem, anywhere in her body. He inclined his head till their lips were touching. Her eyes were open but unfocused. He moved his lips by fractions of inches, as though he were whispering into her mouth. Then he parted her lips with his tongue, pushed past her teeth. His tongue nudged hers. There was no reply. He continued to move his tongue over and around hers. There began to be a resisting tension in her neck. She closed her eyes. With a parting nip of her lower lip, he disengaged.

“Well?” he asked. “What does it do for you?”

“It was… I was going to say frightening. But interesting. It made you seem like an animal. Like something made of meat.”

“That’s why they’re called carnal relations, I guess.” He lowered her head to the pillow and replaced her hand at her side. He forebore to say what she put him in mind of: a funeral urn.

“Really? It’s not the way I remember it. But that is what ‘carnal’ means, isn’t it? Is that what it’s usually like? For you, I mean?”

“There’s generally a little more response. There have to be two animals involved, if you want results.”

Boa laughed. It was rusty, and she couldn’t sustain it, but it was a real laugh.

“I laughed,” she said, in her next breath. “And I’m so…” She raised both her hands and pressed the fingers together. “… inexpressibly relieved!”

“Well, that’s anatomy for you.”

“Oh, not just physically relieved. Though perhaps that is the more important aspect, at last. But I’d worried so. About having no feelings . No earthly feelings. I didn’t think I’d be able to sing again, without feelings. But if I can laugh… You see?”

“Good. I’m glad you can laugh. Maybe it was my kiss that did the trick. Just like the fairy tale. Almost like it, anyhow.”

She let her hands rest, one atop the other, on her stomach. “I don’t feel tired now. I’ll tell you about my life in the beyond, if you like.”

“So you won’t have to wait till tomorrow to leave?”

She smiled, and it was, though faint, a real smile, not the simulation she’d been practicing. “Oh, you’ll have months of me. How can I sing in this condition? And months are a long time here, aren’t they? They’re not, in the beyond. Time is quite beside the point.”

“Fifteen years just go by in a flash?”

“Thirteen did. That’s what I’m trying to explain.”

“I’m sorry. Tell your story. I won’t interrupt.” He put his coat on the hook, pulled the chair a bit closer to her bed, and sat down.

“I was caught in a trap, you see. The first night, after I left my body, I was so… delighted.” She spoke with a peculiar fervor, with the sudden, illumined lucidity of martyrdom. The present, flesh-encumbered moment vanished in the blaze of a remembered noon. “I flew out of the hotel, and up, and the city, beneath me, became a kind of slow, ponderous, magnificent firework display. It was a cloudy night, without stars, so that, very soon, the city became the stars, some still, some moving. The longer I looked, the clearer it became, and vaster too, and more orderly, as though each node of light were laboring to explain itself, to tear itself up out of the darkness and… and kiss me. Though not like your kiss, Daniel. Really, I don’t think it can be explained. It was such an immensity of beauty.” She smiled, and held up her hands to mark off some twelve inches. “Bigger than this.”

“And you didn’t want to leave it in order to come back to the hotel and nurse my wounded ego. That’s natural enough.”

“I did though, reluctantly. You were still singing, and I could tell you wouldn’t make it. You weren’t even near the edge. You are now. But you weren’t then.”