Norman Rush - Mortals

Ray was going to escalate into song. They would hate it. Some deep flow of pressure to really sing was rising, rising.

Ray said, “I am going to sing now.”

That confused them. They were listening, wondering if he was saying something in American they were not up on that meant he was going to cooperate. He liked that.

“Yes, meneers, is that correct, the plural, but yes. I have decided to sing. Sing for you.”

He cleared his throat. He had a faint hope they would offer him something to drink, as encouragement. He couldn’t wait for that. Nothing was offered. He cleared his throat again.

The flow swelling up through him was fine, it was driving him to sing, but the song was important. It should be apposite, if it could, otherwise it would be a waste, like his life. What we call songs were originally what, cries, roars, screams. An apposite song would be one with the line The guy behind you won’t leave you alone .

It was a good idea to make them wait for everything, as long as he could, because they were going to have to go and there would be less time for the next victim. Now he was making them wait because the song to rise up with was a problem. He would rise with the song, like a rocket ship, rise, slip upward. He had it. He had it.

Not only could he sing, he could be a singer, become one. There was the story about Chaplin launching into an aria for a lark at a party and doing it so excellently the crowd was stunned and Chaplin saying that he hadn’t been singing, he had just been impersonating Caruso or whoever it was. Be all that you can be, he thought. He had his song, or the main part of it.

That was another thing his brother had driven him crazy with, but that now he had to be grateful for. His brother had listened to crap teen music while he had been trying to get the basic classical music repertoire into his head via Doug Pledger on KFO, really trying. And there had been no way to control his brother and the noise coming from his room. And anything he had objected to had made Rex play it more. So he had stopped. But he remembered a perfect thing, “Town Without Pity,” a thing he had heard over and over and over and now it was perfect for his needs. God moves in mysterious ways, when he moves at all, Ray thought.

Like an egg opening in his mind and disclosing a jewel, he had the whole thing end to end. He loved his brother. Rex, I love you, he thought, commencing to sing, loud.

He threw himself into the whining, petulant, portentous tone the thing needed, needed to be real, be what it was, then. His brother was dead. His brother was dead.

The force to really sing was coming from somewhere, deep somewhere …

He sang,

“When you’re young and so in love as we

And bewildered by the world we see

Why do people hurt us so

Only those in love would know

What a town without pity can do …”

He hoped they wouldn’t hit him because the denouement was coming. He went into it.

“If we stop to gaze upon … a star

People talk about how baad we are

Ours is not an easy age

We’re like tigers in a cage

What a town without pity can do …”

He had sung it deeply whiningly, emphasizing but not mocking the stupidity. How stupid had his brother been to love this crap, except that of course, of course he understood why now, the gay implication, okay. He went on. To a really stupid bridge part.

“The young have problems, many problems

We need an understanding heart

Why don’t they help us, try and help us

Before this clay and granite planet falls apart …”

Poor bugger, he thought, Rex, poor bugger, I wish I had loved you.

There was a funny something going on. People, thugs, were being brought in to hear him sing. The room was fuller. He could feel that. He didn’t care. Rise into it, he thought.

“Take these eager lips and hold me fast

I’m afraid this kind of joy can’t last

How can anything survive

When these little minds tear you in two

What a town without pity can do …”

He was thinking that if you were able to add up the amount of fun anyone had had in their lives, fun had, a quotient, it would tell you something. This singing was fun. It was deep.

He sang hard,

“How can we keep love alive

How can anything survive

When these little minds tear you in two

What a town without pity can do …”

Then, really hard and wild,

“No it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity

Ca … aan do …”

He had inhabited a song that had been a curse to him. Now he would sing like someone else, because he was not through singing, no.

“Come in,” he said to no one.

Now he would sing as himself. He was lost in himself. He would sing “Carrickfergus” the way Joyce would have sung it, may have sung it, he had no idea. How he knew this song, he had no idea. He had heard it sung at a party and he had heard it on a record at another party and because of God he had it, most of it, the greatest song ever written expressing being totally drunk, it was being drunk at its best, stupid best, and he had remembered it and at another party he had volunteered to sing it and Iris had said No in the name of God, no, don’t. Because it would embarrass her because he had been at the time very drunk. But then that part of their life had come to a close long ago and he had been fine since.

And he was starting to sing before he even intended it, and not as himself, as a drunken soul, the inspiration of this expression … He was full of song.

He wanted to startle them with his loud sound.

He did.

“I wish I was … in Carrickfergus ,

Only for nights … in Ballygrant

I would swim over … the deepest ocean ,

Only for nights in Ballygrant .

But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over

Nor have I wings … so I could fly!

I wish I could find … a handsome boatman

To ferry me over … to my love and die …”

He was certain there was an assemblage in the room. Someone began to applaud but the act was quashed. Ray seemed to have nonplussed his tormentors, for the moment. He felt a little triumphant. He even felt a little drunk. They could applaud if they wanted. He had sung piercingly, Irishly.

Someone was softly laughing. Ray wanted water badly. He thought he could sing the part about the handsome rover singing no more till he got a drink. His throat was dry. It was stinging.

“Ah in Kilkenny … it is reported

There are marble stones there … as black as ink .

With gold and silver … I would support her

But I’ll sing no more ’til I get a drink .

For I’m drunk today, and I’m seldom sober ,

A handsome rover from town to town ,

Ah, but I’m sick now, my days are numbered ,

So come all you young men and lay me down.”

He relished the silence that his effort had produced.

“I’ll take a drink, now,” he said, retaining a touch of the character he had sung as.

There was laughter, and some murmuring, and then like a slash water was flung in his face. He caught some, enough to make a decent swallow. He had been ready. It was a triumph. He had bitten some water out of the air, was the way it felt.

“Tomorrow you’ll give us another show, meneer. Yah, man, but with less music.”

Ray was unstrapped from the chair without ceremony, roughly. His hood was jerked fully down and retied more tightly than was necessary. He was pulled to his feet and pushed forward. He almost fell, but saved himself by clutching onto Quartus’s table and leaning on it until the whiteness behind his eyes receded.