The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

confident male tones, the sharp wheedling of querulous wives, soft negatives of amatory blondes, punctuated by countless repetitions of ‘dahling’. Mangon ignored the echoes, which were almost inaudible, a dim insect hum. He grinned to himself as he rode up to the penthouse apartment; if Madame Gioconda had known his destination she would have strangled him on the spot.

      

      Ray Alto, doyen of the ultrasonic composers and the man more than any other responsible for Madame Gioconda’s decline, was one of Mangon’s regular calls. Usually Mangon swept his apartment once a week, calling at three in the afternoon. Today, however, he wanted to make sure of finding Alto before he left for Video City, where he was a director of programme music.

      The houseboy let him in. He crossed the hall and made his way down the black glass staircase into the sunken lounge. Wide studio windows revealed an elegant panorama of park and mid-town skyscrapers.

      A white-slacked young man sitting on one of the long slab sofas – Paul Merrill, Alto’s arranger – waved him back.

      ‘Mangon, hold on to your dive breaks. I’m really on reheat this morning.’ He twirled the ultrasonic trumpet he was playing, a tangle of stops and valves from which half a dozen leads trailed off across the cushions to a cathode tube and tone generator at the other end of the sofa.

      Mangon sat down quietly and Merrill clamped the mouthpiece to his lips. Watching the ray tube intently, where he could check the shape of the ultrasonic notes, he launched into a brisk allegretto sequence, then quickened and flicked out a series of brilliant arpeggios, stripping off high P and Q notes that danced across the cathode screen like frantic eels, fantastic glissandos that raced up twenty octaves in as many seconds, each note distinct and symmetrically exact, tripping off the tone generator in turn so that escalators of electronic chords interweaved the original scale, a multi-channel melodic stream that crowded the cathode screen with exquisite, flickering patterns. The whole thing was inaudible, but the air around Mangon felt vibrant and accelerated, charged with gaiety and sparkle, and he applauded generously when Merrill threw off a final dashing riff.

      ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee,’ Merrill told him. He tossed the trumpet aside and switched off the cathode tube. He lay back and savoured the glistening air for a moment. ‘Well, how are things?’

      Just then the door from one of the bedrooms opened and Ray Alto appeared, a tall, thoughtful man of about forty, with thinning blonde hair, wearing pale sunglasses over cool eyes.

      ‘Hello, Mangon,’ he said, running a hand over Mangon’s head. ‘You’re early today. Full programme?’ Mangon nodded. ‘Don’t let it get you down.’ Alto picked a dictaphone off one of the end tables, carried it over to an armchair. ‘Noise, noise, noise – the greatest single disease-vector of civilization. The whole world’s rotting with it, yet all they can afford is a few people like Mangon fooling around with sonovacs. It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago people completely failed to realize that sound left any residues.’

      ‘Are we any better?’ Merrill asked. ‘This month’s Transonics claims that eventually unswept sonic resonances will build up to a critical point where they’ll literally start shaking buildings apart. The entire city will come down like Jericho.’

      ‘Babel,’ Alto corrected. ‘Okay, now, let’s shut up. We’ll be gone soon, Mangon. Buy him a drink, would you, Paul.’

      Merrill brought Mangon a coke from the bar, then wandered off. Alto flipped on the dictaphone, began to speak steadily into it. ‘Memo 7: Betty, when does the copyright on Stravinsky lapse? Memo 8: Betty, file melody for projected nocturne: L, L sharp, BB, Y flat, Q, VT, L, L sharp. Memo 9: Paul, the bottom three octaves of the ultra-tuba are within the audible spectrum of the canine ear – congrats on that SP of the Anvil Chorus last night; about three million dogs thought the roof had fallen in on them. Memo 10: Betty –’ He broke off, put down the microphone. ‘Mangon, you look worried.’

      Mangon, who had been lost in reverie, pulled himself together and shook his head.

      ‘Working too hard?’ Alto pressed. He scrutinized Mangon suspiciously. ‘Are you still sitting up all night with that Gioconda woman?’

      Embarrassed, Mangon lowered his eyes. His relationship with Alto was, obliquely, almost as close as that with Madame Gioconda. Although Alto was brusque and often irritable with Mangon, he took a sincere interest in his welfare. Possibly Mangon’s muteness reminded him of the misanthropic motives behind his hatred of noise, made him feel indirectly responsible for the act of violence Mangon’s mother had committed. Also, one artist to another, he respected Mangon’s phenomenal auditory sensitivity.

      ‘She’ll exhaust you, Mangon, believe me.’ Alto knew how much the personal contact meant to Mangon and hesitated to be over-critical. ‘There’s nothing you can do for her. Offering her sympathy merely fans her hopes for a come-back. She hasn’t a chance.’

      Mangon frowned, wrote quickly on his wrist-pad:

       She WILL sing again!

      Alto read the note pensively. Then, in a harder voice, he said: ‘She’s using you for her own purposes, Mangon. At present you satisfy one whim of hers – the neurotic headaches and fantasy applause. God forbid what the next whim might be.’

       She is a great artist.

      ‘She was,’ Alto pointed out. ‘No more, though, sad as it is. I’m afraid that the times change.’

      Annoyed by this, Mangon gritted his teeth and tore off another sheet.

       Entertainment, perhaps. Art, No!

      Alto accepted the rebuke silently; he reproved himself as much as Mangon did for selling out to Video City. In his four years there his output of original ultrasonic music consisted of little more than one nearly finished symphony – aptly titled Opus Zero – shortly to receive its first performance, a few nocturnes and one quartet. Most of his energies went into programme music, prestige numbers for spectaculars and a mass of straight transcriptions of the classical repertoire. The last he particularly despised, fit work for Paul Merrill, but not for a responsible composer.

      He added the sheet to the two in his left hand and asked: ‘Have you ever heard Madame Gioconda sing?’

      Mangon’s answer came back scornfully:

       No! But you have. Please describe.

      Alto laughed shortly, tore up his sheets and walked across to the window.

      ‘All right, Mangon, you’ve made your point. You’re carrying a torch for art, doing your duty to one of the few perfect things the world has ever produced. I hope you’re equal to the responsibility. La Gioconda might be quite a handful. Do you know that at one time the doors of Covent Garden, La Scala and the Met were closed to her? They said Callas had temperament, but she was a girl guide compared with Gioconda. Tell me, how is she? Eating enough?’

      Mangon held up his coke bottle.

      ‘Snow? That’s tough. But how does she afford it?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Dammit, I’ve got to leave. Clean this place out thoroughly, will you. It gives me a headache just listening to myself think.’

      He started to pick up the dictaphone but Mangon was scribbling rapidly on his pad.

       Give Madame Gioconda a job.

      Alto read the note, then gave it back to Mangon, puzzled. ‘Where? In this apartment?’ Mangon shook his head. ‘Do you mean at V.C.? Singing?’ When Mangon began to nod vigorously he looked up at the ceiling with a despairing groan. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mangon, the last vocalist sang at Video City over ten years ago. No audience would stand for it. If I even suggested such an idea they’d tear my contract into a thousand pieces.’ He shuddered, only half-playfully. ‘I don’t know about you, Mangon, but I’ve got my ulcer to support.’

      He