The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

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СКАЧАТЬ Mr LeGrande?

      Madame Gioconda read the note, let it fall to the floor.

      ‘Hector? Those lawyers poison him. He’s surrounded by them, I think they steal all my telegrams to him. Of course Hector had a complete breakdown on the spectaculars. Imagine, Mangon, what a scoop for him, a sensation! ‘The great Gioconda will appear on television!’ Not just some moronic bubblegum girl, but the Gioconda in person.’

      Exhausted by this vision Madame Gioconda sank back into her cushion, blowing smoke limply through the holder.

      Mangon wrote:

       Contract?

      Madame Gioconda frowned at the note, then pierced it with the glowing end of her cigarette.

      ‘I am having a new contract drawn up. Not for the mere 300,000 I was prepared to take at first, not even 500,000. For each show I shall now demand precisely one million dollars. Nothing less! Hector will have to pay for ignoring me. Anyway, think of the publicity value of such a figure. Only a star could think of such vulgar extravagance. If he’s short of cash he can sack all those lawyers. Or devalue the dollar, I don’t mind.’

      Madame Gioconda hooted with pleasure at the prospect. Mangon nodded, then scribbled another message.

       Be practical.

      Madame Gioconda ground out her cigarette. ‘You think I’m raving, don’t you, Mangon? “Fantastic dreams, million-dollar contracts, poor old fool.” But let me assure you that Hector will be only too eager to sign the contract. And I don’t intend to rely solely on his good judgement as an impresario.’ She smirked archly to herself.

       What else?

      Madame Gioconda peered round the darkened stage, then lowered her eyes.

      ‘You see, Mangon, Hector and I are very old friends. You know what I mean, of course?’ She waited for Mangon, who had swept out a thousand honeymoon hotel suites, to nod and then continued: ‘How well I remember that first season at Bayreuth, when Hector and I …’

      Mangon stared unhappily at his feet as Madame Gioconda outlined this latest venture into blackmail. Certainly she and LeGrande had been intimate friends – the cuttings scattered around the stage testified frankly to this. In fact, were it not for the small monthly cheque which LeGrande sent Madame Gioconda she would long previously have disintegrated. To turn on him and threaten ancient scandal (LeGrande was shortly to enter politics) was not only grotesque but extremely dangerous, for LeGrande was ruthless and unsentimental. Years earlier he had used Madame Gioconda as a stepping-stone, reaping all the publicity he could from their affair, then abruptly kicking her away.

      Mangon fretted. A solution to her predicament was hard to find. Brought about through no fault of her own, Madame Gioconda’s decline was all the harder to bear. Since the introduction a few years earlier of ultrasonic music, the human voice – indeed, audible music of any type – had gone completely out of fashion. Ultrasonic music, employing a vastly greater range of octaves, chords and chromatic scales than are audible by the human ear, provided a direct neural link between the sound stream and the auditory lobes, generating an apparently sourceless sensation of harmony, rhythm, cadence and melody uncontaminated by the noise and vibration of audible music. The re-scoring of the classical repertoire allowed the ultrasonic audience the best of both worlds. The majestic rhythms of Beethoven, the popular melodies of Tchaikovsky, the complex fugal elaborations of Bach, the abstract images of Schoenberg – all these were raised in frequency above the threshold of conscious audibility. Not only did they become inaudible, but the original works were re-scored for the much wider range of the ultrasonic orchestra, became richer in texture, more profound in theme, more sensitive, tender or lyrical as the ultrasonic arranger chose.

      The first casualty in this change-over was the human voice. This alone of all instruments could not be re-scored, because its sounds were produced by non-mechanical means which the neurophonic engineer could never hope, or bother, to duplicate.

      The earliest ultrasonic recordings had met with resistance, even ridicule. Radio programmes consisting of nothing but silence interrupted at half-hour intervals by commercial breaks seemed absurd. But gradually the public discovered that the silence was golden, that after leaving the radio switched to an ultrasonic channel for an hour or so a pleasant atmosphere of rhythm and melody seemed to generate itself spontaneously around them. When an announcer suddenly stated that an ultrasonic version of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony or Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique had just been played the listener identified the real source.

      A second advantage of ultrasonic music was that its frequencies were so high they left no resonating residues in solid structures, and consequently there was no need to call in the sound-sweep. After an audible performance of most symphonic music, walls and furniture throbbed for days with disintegrating residues that made the air seem leaden and tumid, an entire room virtually uninhabitable.

      An immediate result was the swift collapse of all but a few symphony orchestras and opera companies. Concert halls and opera houses closed overnight. In the age of noise the tranquillizing balms of silence began to be rediscovered.

      But the final triumph of ultrasonic music had come with a second development – the short-playing record, spinning at 900 r.p.m., which condensed the 45 minutes of a Beethoven symphony to 20 seconds of playing time, the three hours of a Wagner opera to little more than two minutes. Compact and cheap, SP records sacrificed nothing to brevity. One 30-second SP record delivered as much neurophonic pleasure as a natural length recording, but with deeper penetration, greater total impact.

      Ultrasonic SP records swept all others off the market. Sonic LP records became museum pieces – only a crank would choose to listen to an audible full-length version of Siegfried or the Barber of Seville when he could have both wrapped up inaudibly inside the same five-minute package and appreciate their full musical value.

      The heyday of Madame Gioconda was over. Unceremoniously left on the shelf, she had managed to survive for a few months vocalizing on radio commercials. Soon these too went ultrasonic. In a despairing act of revenge she bought out the radio station which fired her and made her home on one of the sound stages. Over the years the station became derelict and forgotten, its windows smashed, neon portico collapsing, aerials rusting. The huge eight-lane flyover built across it sealed it conclusively into the past.

      Now Madame Gioconda proposed to win her way back at stiletto-point.

      Mangon watched her impassively as she ranted on nastily in a cloud of purple cigarette smoke, a large seedy witch. The phenobarbitone was making her drowsy and her threats and ultimatums were becoming disjointed.

      ‘… memoirs too, don’t forget, Hector. Frank exposure, no holds barred. I mean … damn, have to get a ghost. Hotel de Paris at Monte, lots of pictures. Oh yes, I kept the photographs.’ She grubbed about on the couch, came up with a crumpled soap coupon and a supermarket pay slip. ‘Wait till those lawyers see them. Hector –’ Suddenly she broke off, stared glassily at Mangon and sagged back.

      Mangon waited until she was finally asleep, stood up and peered closely at her. She looked forlorn and desperate. He watched her reverently for a moment, then tiptoed to the rheostat mounted on the control panel behind the couch, damped down the lamp at Madame Gioconda’s feet and left the stage.

      He sealed the auditorium doors behind him, made his way down to the foyer and stepped out, sad but at the same time oddly exhilarated, into the cool midnight air. At last he accepted СКАЧАТЬ