The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

tragic that she’s unable to realize the truth herself,’ Alto commented. ‘Her mind must be fixed fifteen or twenty years in the past, when she sang her greatest roles at La Scala. That’s the voice she hears, the voice she’ll probably always hear.’

      Mangon pondered this. Once he tried to ask Madame Gioconda how her practice sessions were going, but she was moving into a different zone and answered with some grandiose remark. He was seeing less and less of her, whenever he visited the station she was either about to go out or else tired and eager to be rid of him. Their trips to the stockade had ceased. All this he accepted as inevitable; after the performance, he assured himself, after her triumph, she would come back to him.

      He noticed, however, that he was beginning to stutter.

      

      On the final afternoon, a few hours before the performance that evening, Mangon drove down to F Street for what was to be the last time. He had not seen Madame Gioconda the previous day and he wanted to be with her and give her any encouragement she needed.

      As he turned into the alley he was surprised to see two large removal vans parked outside the station entrance. Four or five men were carrying out pieces of furniture and the great scenic flats from the sound stage.

      Mangon ran over to them. One of the vans was full; he recognized all Madame Gioconda’s possessions – the rococo wardrobe and dressing table, the couch, the huge Desdemona bed, up-ended and wrapped in corrugated paper – as he looked at it he felt that a section of himself had been torn from him and rammed away callously. In the bright daylight the peeling threadbare flats had lost all illusion of reality; with them Mangon’s whole relationship with Madame Gioconda seemed to have been dismantled.

      The last of the workmen came out with a gold cushion under his arm, tossed it into the second van. The foreman sealed the doors and waved on the driver.

      ‘W … wh … where are you going?’ Mangon asked him urgently.

      The foreman looked him up and down. ‘You’re the sweeper, are you?’ He jerked a thumb towards the station. ‘The old girl said there was a message for you in there. Couldn’t see one myself.’

      Mangon left him and ran into the foyer and up the stairway towards Studio 2. The removers had torn down the blinds and a grey light was flooding into the dusty auditorium. Without the flats the stage looked exposed and derelict.

      He raced down the aisle, wondering why Madame Gioconda had decided to leave without telling him.

      The stage had been stripped. The music stands had been kicked over, the stove lay on its side with two or three old pans around it, underfoot there was a miscellaneous litter of paper, ash and empty vials.

      Mangon searched around for the message, probably pinned to one of the partitions.

      Then he heard it screaming at him from the walls, violent and concise.

       ‘GO AWAY YOU UGLY CHILD! NEVER TRY TO SEE ME AGAIN!’

      He shrank back, involuntarily tried to shout as the walls seemed to fall in on him, but his throat had frozen.

      

      As he entered the corridor below the stage shortly before eight-twenty, Mangon could hear the sounds of the audience arriving and making their way to their seats. The studio was almost full, a hubbub of well-heeled chatter. Lights flashed on and off in the corridor, and oblique atmospheric shifts cut through the air as the players on the stage tuned their instruments.

      Mangon slid past the technicians manning the neurophonic rigs which supplied the orchestra, trying to make the enormous triple-bass case as inconspicuous as possible. They were all busy checking the relays and circuits, and he reached the cue-box and slipped through the door unnoticed.