Mortals

where the market for this was, would have, he meant. Of course he knew what Iris would say. She would say, Oh obituaries. But obituaries were the opposite of analytic and the opposite of what he had in mind. And he was not going to limit himself to the dead. He would do anyone he felt like, if he wanted to. Beware me, he thought. He would do the poor as well as the eminent. He would do it. He could. He would find Wemberg and make him a jewel. Aubrey was wonderful but naive, and he, when he did his Lives, would be the opposite of naive. He would do evil subjects, too, which Aubrey as a courtier couldn’t. Quartus would be a good subject. Of course he would need to support himself somehow while he wrote, but that could be arranged, he could always teach in Africa, in a second. He would be the freezing eye of the basilisk. He thought, My eye and hand will be sovereign, beware me.

“Thank you,” he said. He had reached a conclusion about his life, the life to come that he was grateful for. He was grateful to Quartus and his minions. He was reminded of Iris saying to him, When I want your opinion I’ll beat it out of you. It had nothing to do with his situation. But he was grateful to Quartus for the thoughts that had been what, knocked loose. I can be anything, he thought. James Joyce wanted to be a tenor. Joyce was a tenor, but he had wanted to be paid for it. He should have tried more. I might sing, he thought.

He was clutching the armrests and a hard hit came to his hands, one two left right, pretty hard. Up to that moment they hadn’t hit his hands. We need our hands, he thought. He also didn’t want to be hit on the head more than he had if he could help it. He was too dry to spit, spit at them. But also it was true he didn’t want the consequences of spitting at anyone. It was like joining the army and saying okay, if I die, then okay, if I die doing the job, the job of being all I can be, killing people. People joining the army were prepared to imagine themselves vaporized, made nothing, and to accept that. But they weren’t embracing the possibility of ending up permanently crippled in a ward someplace, which was of course likelier than getting blown to vapor. Someone should publicize the actual odds.

His thirst was getting dire. If they hurled water at him whatever little he might contrive to catch by having his mouth open would almost be worth it. They knew he was thirsty. There was more water-pouring and lip- smacking water-drinking going on.

He felt like singing something, but he was afraid to. But he might hum. He was achieving something, being obstreperous. He was using up their time. They couldn’t stay in place forever. He was getting across, he hoped, the idea that he was crazy or being made crazy.

He wanted to sing, but first he would hum. It was too bad he didn’t know how the Boer hymn went, “Die Stem.” That would have been good. What he was humming had started out indeterminately but was, he realized, turning into “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”

“He is a moffie.” That was the beast calling him a homosexual by another Boer term.

“Shut that,” Quartus said, but it wasn’t clear to Ray whether it was directed at him or at the beast. He continued to hum.

Quartus was very close to him again, close enough that with a sharp lunge Ray would be able to bang Quartus hard in the face. It would hurt too much because his head was already caged in pain.

Quartus said, very deliberately, “Meneer, this is what you must understand…

“You can stop this humming. Now.

“And you must understand that you will tell us what we need to have you tell us. Ah yes. And if you prefer to tell us tomorrow, in the afternoon tomorrow, that will be fine. Or in the evening, fine as well…”

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