The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

      Alto punched the sofa viciously. ‘Because you and I are going to be on board! Didn’t you hear me? Eight-thirty, a fortnight today! We have a programme on then. Well, guess who our guest star is?’

      Merrill struggled to make sense of this. ‘Wait a minute, Ray. You mean she’s actually going to appear – she’s going to sing – in the middle of Opus Zero?’ Alto nodded grimly. Merrill threw up his hands and slumped back. ‘It’s crazy, she can’t. Who says she will?’

      ‘Who do you think? The great LeGrande.’ Alto turned to Mangon. ‘She must have raked up some real dirt to frighten him into this. I can hardly believe it.’

      ‘But why on Opus Zero?’ Merrill pressed. ‘Let’s switch the première to the week after.’

      ‘Paul, you’re missing the point. Let me fill you in. Sometime yesterday Madame Gioconda paid a private call on LeGrande. Something she told him persuaded him that it would be absolutely wonderful for her to have a whole hour to herself on one of the feature music programmes, singing a few old-fashioned songs from the old-fashioned shows, with a full-scale ultrasonic backing. Eager to give her a completely free hand he even asked her which of the regular programmes she’d like. Well, as the last show she appeared on ten years ago was cancelled to make way for Ray Alto’s Total Symphony you can guess which one she picked.’

      Merrill nodded. ‘It all fits together. We’re broadcasting from the concert studio. A single ultrasonic symphony, no station breaks, not even a commentary. Your first world première in three years. There’ll be a big invited audience. White tie, something like the old days. Revenge is sweet.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Hell, all that work.’

      Alto snapped: ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be wasted. Why should we pay the bill for LeGrande? This symphony is the one piece of serious music I’ve written since I joined V.C. and it isn’t going to be ruined.’ He went over to Mangon, sat down next to him. ‘This afternoon I went down to the rehearsal studios. They’d found an ancient sonic grand somewhere and one of the old-timers was accompanying her. Mangon, it’s ten years since she sang last. If she’d practised for two or three hours a day she might have preserved her voice, but you sweep her radio station, you know she hasn’t sung a note. She’s an old woman now. What time alone hasn’t done to her, cocaine and self-pity have.’ He paused, watching Mangon searchingly. ‘I hate to say it, Mangon, but it sounded like a cat being strangled.’

      You lie, Mangon thought icily. You are simply so ignorant, your taste in music is so debased, that you are unable to recognize real genius when you see it. He looked at Alto with contempt, sorry for the man, with his absurd silent symphonies. He felt like shouting: I know what silence is! The voice of the Gioconda is a stream of gold, molten and pure, she will find it again as I found mine. However, something about Alto’s manner warned him to wait.

      He said: ‘I understand.’ Then: ‘What do you want me to do?’

      Alto patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good boy. Believe me, you’ll be helping her in the long run. What I propose will save all of us from looking foolish. We’ve got to stand up to LeGrande, even if it means a one-way ticket out of V.C. Okay, Paul?’ Merrill nodded firmly and he went on: ‘Orchestra will continue as scheduled. According to the programme Madame Gioconda will be singing to an accompaniment by Opus Zero, but that means nothing and there’ll be no connection at any point. In fact she won’t turn up until the night itself. She’ll stand well down-stage on a special platform, and the only microphone will be an aerial about twenty feet diagonally above her. It will be live – but her voice will never reach it. Because you, Mangon, will be in the cue-box directly in front of her, with the most powerful sonovac we can lay our hands on. As soon as she opens her mouth you’ll let her have it. She’ll be at least ten feet away from you so she’ll hear herself and won’t suspect what is happening.’

      ‘What about the audience?’ Merrill asked.

      ‘They’ll be listening to my symphony, enjoying a neurophonic experience of sufficient beauty and power, I hope, to distract them from the sight of a blowzy prima donna gesturing to herself in a cocaine fog. They’ll probably think she’s conducting. Remember, they may be expecting her to sing but how many people still know what the word really means? Most of them will assume it’s ultrasonic.’

      ‘And LeGrande?’

      ‘He’ll be in Bermuda. Business conference.’

      FIVE

      Madame Gioconda was sitting before her dressing-table mirror, painting on a face like a Hallowe’en mask. Beside her the gramophone played scratchy sonic selections from Traviata. The stage was still a disorganized jumble, but there was now an air of purpose about it.

      Making his way through the flats, Mangon walked up to her quietly and kissed her bare shoulder. She stood up with a flourish, an enormous monument of a woman in a magnificent black silk dress sparkling with thousands of sequins.

      ‘Thank you, Mangon,’ she sang out when he complimented her. She swirled off to a hat-box on the bed, pulled out a huge peacock feather and stabbed it into her hair.

      Mangon had come round at six, several hours before usual; over the past two days he had felt increasingly uneasy. He was convinced that Alto was in error, and yet logic was firmly on his side. Could Madame Gioconda’s voice have preserved itself? Her spoken voice, unless she was being particularly sweet, was harsh and uneven, recently even more so. He assumed that with only a week to her performance nervousness was making her irritable.

      Again she was going out, as she had done almost every night. With whom, she never explained; probably to the theatre restaurants, to renew contacts with agents and managers. He would have liked to go with her, but he felt out of place on this plane of Madame Gioconda’s existence.

      ‘Mangon, I won’t be back until very late,’ she warned him. ‘You look rather tired and pasty. You’d better go home and get some sleep.’

      Mangon noticed he was still wearing his yellow peaked cap. Unconsciously he must already have known he would not be spending the night there.

      ‘Do you want to go to the stockade tomorrow?’ he asked.

      ‘Hmmmh … I don’t think so. It gives me rather a headache. Let’s leave it for a day or two.’

      She turned on him with a tremendous smile, her eyes glittering with sudden affection.

      ‘Goodbye, Mangon, it’s been wonderful to see you.’ She bent down and pressed her cheek maternally to his, engulfing him in a heady wave of powder and perfume. In an instant all his doubts and worries evaporated, he looked forward to seeing her the next day, certain that they would spend the future together.

      For half an hour after she had gone he wandered around the deserted sound stage, going through his memories. Then he made his way out to the alley and drove back to the stockade.

      

      As the day of Madame Gioconda’s performance drew closer Mangon’s anxieties mounted. Twice he had been down to the concert studio at Video City, had rehearsed with Alto his entry beneath the stage to the cue-box, a small compartment off the corridor used by the electronics engineers. They had checked the power points, borrowed a sonovac from the services section – a heavy duty model used for shielding VIPs and commentators at airports – and mounted its nozzle in the cue-hood.

      Alto stood on the platform erected for Madame Gioconda, shouted at the top of his voice at Merrill sitting in the third row of the stalls.

      ‘Hear anything?’ he called afterwards.

      Merrill shook his head. ‘Nothing, no vibration at all.’

      Down below Mangon flicked the release toggle, vented a long-drawn-out ‘Fiivvveeee! … Foouuurrr! … Thrreeeee! … Twooooo! … Onnneeee …!’

      ‘Good enough,’