all its holes.
Thank heaven, there are several bars of the introduction before the baritone has to come in. It gave me a chance to get my wits together, if not my voice. So when my cue came I was right there. There was a bad moment when I took a deep breath for the opening and almost strangled on that Parisian-pissoir stink that had hit me when I first entered the room, but I recovered and sang out:
Si puo! Si puo.
Signori! Signore!
Scusatemi, se solo mi presento …
And so on right to the end of the aria. It certainly wasn’t the best performance of my life. But for somebody who didn’t really have much of a voice left I belted it out pretty good, even hitting real close to that hard A-flat near the end that gives everybody trouble. I almost expected applause when I finished.
I didn’t get any. Barak was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Purry-go-now. Shipperton-wait-outside.”
Shipperton just got up and left. The little ocarina said politely, “Thank you, Barak. So long, Mr. Stennis; see you later. You were great!”
But I knew that wasn’t true, and I hadn’t heard from the impresario himself. I never waited for the next morning’s reviews with more impatience than I waited to hear what that shiny starfish thought of my singing.
I never did hear that. After a silent moment, his arms writhing and his eyes wandering all over the room, all he pumped out was, “I-want-to-give-you … fatherly-advice.”
That took me aback, because for a moment there I had almost forgotten about Marlene and Irene and Narabedla and the fact that the genius I was singing for was only a stinking starfish. I had almost felt like a real singer again.
Barak brought me down. I waited for the “fatherly advice” without joy. I’d never had much satisfaction out of it from my own father, and didn’t expect any from a starfish.
I was right. He flailed three or four arms in my general direction. “Knollwood-Stennis!” he blatted. “You-live-by-rules-here!”
I said, “I beg your pardon? What rules are you talking about?”
“Rules-of-behavior! You-talk-go-home … okay-no-crime. But-you-hurt-somebody … you-get-hurt-back! You-kill-you-die! Not-counting-servants-of-course. Now-you-go!”
CHAPTER
12
W hen I was twelve years old some foreign traveler landed at Kennedy Airport from Pakistan or Bolivia or somewhere, and changed my life. The man got as far as the Immigrations desk. Then he keeled over in a faint. He turned out to have smallpox, and the whole city panicked.
My mother was the most panicky of all. Not for herself. For me. She was not about to let these diseased foreigners kill her kid with their nasty epidemics, so she not only got me vaccinated that very day, she packed me off the next week, sore arm and all, to a place called Camp Fire Place Lodge for the rest of the summer. Remember, I was twelve. I’d never been away from home before. It was already August. I didn’t know a single boy in the camp, whereas all the boys there had already had a month and a half to get to know each other. So they weren’t just other kids to me. They were a single monolithic mass called The Campers, and for the first teary forty-eight hours of my stay at Camp Fire Place Lodge I saw them as only interchangeable units of Camperishness.
Narabedla was not much different.
Forget about the aliens. Of course, they were a whole separate problem, and completely indecipherable at first, but that wasn’t surprising. Unfortunately it wasn’t just the aliens. Even the human people all blurred into each other. I could identify a few individuals. Norah Platt was my first accompanist. Sam Shipperton was the guy who ordered me around. Malcolm Porchester was Tricia Madigan’s lover, and Tricia, of course, was Tricia. These four had traits I could hold on to and recognize; but all the rest were, basically, The Narabedlans. I did run into a few of them as I moved about. A few actually spoke to me in passing; but which
Thank heaven, there are several bars of the introduction before the baritone has to come in. It gave me a chance to get my wits together, if not my voice. So when my cue came I was right there. There was a bad moment when I took a deep breath for the opening and almost strangled on that Parisian-pissoir stink that had hit me when I first entered the room, but I recovered and sang out:
Si puo! Si puo.
Signori! Signore!
Scusatemi, se solo mi presento …
And so on right to the end of the aria. It certainly wasn’t the best performance of my life. But for somebody who didn’t really have much of a voice left I belted it out pretty good, even hitting real close to that hard A-flat near the end that gives everybody trouble. I almost expected applause when I finished.
I didn’t get any. Barak was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Purry-go-now. Shipperton-wait-outside.”
Shipperton just got up and left. The little ocarina said politely, “Thank you, Barak. So long, Mr. Stennis; see you later. You were great!”
But I knew that wasn’t true, and I hadn’t heard from the impresario himself. I never waited for the next morning’s reviews with more impatience than I waited to hear what that shiny starfish thought of my singing.
I never did hear that. After a silent moment, his arms writhing and his eyes wandering all over the room, all he pumped out was, “I-want-to-give-you … fatherly-advice.”
That took me aback, because for a moment there I had almost forgotten about Marlene and Irene and Narabedla and the fact that the genius I was singing for was only a stinking starfish. I had almost felt like a real singer again.
Barak brought me down. I waited for the “fatherly advice” without joy. I’d never had much satisfaction out of it from my own father, and didn’t expect any from a starfish.
I was right. He flailed three or four arms in my general direction. “Knollwood-Stennis!” he blatted. “You-live-by-rules-here!”
I said, “I beg your pardon? What rules are you talking about?”
“Rules-of-behavior! You-talk-go-home … okay-no-crime. But-you-hurt-somebody … you-get-hurt-back! You-kill-you-die! Not-counting-servants-of-course. Now-you-go!”
CHAPTER
12
W hen I was twelve years old some foreign traveler landed at Kennedy Airport from Pakistan or Bolivia or somewhere, and changed my life. The man got as far as the Immigrations desk. Then he keeled over in a faint. He turned out to have smallpox, and the whole city panicked.
My mother was the most panicky of all. Not for herself. For me. She was not about to let these diseased foreigners kill her kid with their nasty epidemics, so she not only got me vaccinated that very day, she packed me off the next week, sore arm and all, to a place called Camp Fire Place Lodge for the rest of the summer. Remember, I was twelve. I’d never been away from home before. It was already August. I didn’t know a single boy in the camp, whereas all the boys there had already had a month and a half to get to know each other. So they weren’t just other kids to me. They were a single monolithic mass called The Campers, and for the first teary forty-eight hours of my stay at Camp Fire Place Lodge I saw them as only interchangeable units of Camperishness.
Narabedla was not much different.
Forget about the aliens. Of course, they were a whole separate problem, and completely indecipherable at first, but that wasn’t surprising. Unfortunately it wasn’t just the aliens. Even the human people all blurred into each other. I could identify a few individuals. Norah Platt was my first accompanist. Sam Shipperton was the guy who ordered me around. Malcolm Porchester was Tricia Madigan’s lover, and Tricia, of course, was Tricia. These four had traits I could hold on to and recognize; but all the rest were, basically, The Narabedlans. I did run into a few of them as I moved about. A few actually spoke to me in passing; but which
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