Once, when Mrs. Schiff had been dead-certain about a fact of music history (Had Schumann written a violin concerto?), he made a wager with her, the forfeit of which was that she must accompany him to Marble Collegiate on a Sunday of his choosing. She was wrong. He chose a Sunday when Van Dyke was to preach on the immortality of the soul, and Daniel would be singing in Bach’s Actus Tragicus. It was not, as it turned out, one of Van Dyke’s best efforts, and the choir as well (including, alas, Daniel) had bitten off rather more than it could chew. Mrs. Schiff was commiserating, but otherwise unmoved.
“Of course,” she conceded, “one must be grateful to churches for providing free concerts this way, but it does smack a little of the soup kitchen, doesn’t it? One has to sit there for the sermon and the rest of it for the sake of a very little music.”
“But that isn’t the point,” Daniel insisted, somewhat testily, for he was still smarting from the mess he’d made of “Bestellet dein Haus.” “People don’t go to church for the sake of the music. They go there to be with the other people who go there. Being physically present, that’s the crucial thing.”
“Do you mean that it’s a kind of proof that there is a community and they’re part of it? I should think a concert would do that just as well, or better, since one can talk in the intervals. And the music, if you’ll forgive my saying so, would probably be a touch more professional.”
“I stank, I know that, but my singing, good or bad, is irrelevant.”
“Oh, you weren’t the worst offender. Far from it. You’re learning to fake the notes you can’t reach very ably. But what is the point, Daniel? In a word.”
“In a word, hope.”
“Well then, in a few words.”
“What was the cantata about? Death. The fact that that is what’s in store for all of us, and that there’s no way round it, and we all know there’s no way round it.”
“Your Mr. Van Dyke maintains differently.”
“And so did you, just by being there. That’s the point. Everyone has doubts. Everyone despairs. But when you’re there in church, surrounded by all those other people, it’s hard not to believe that some of them don’t believe something. And by our being there we’re helping them believe it.”
“But what if all of them are thinking the same as us? What if none of them are bamboozled and are just offering their moral support to others, who similarly aren’t bamboozled?”
“It’s a matter of degree. Even I’m bamboozled, as you say, a little. Even you are, if not in church, then when you’re listening to music, and even more when you’re writing your own. What’s the difference, ultimately, between Bunny Honeybunny’s song and Bach’s saying, ‘Come, sweet hour of death, for my soul is fed with honey from the mouth of the lion’?”
“The chief difference is that Bach’s is immeasurably greater music. But I should say another difference is that my tongue is firmly in my cheek concerning the philosophic views of honeybunnies.”
“Your tongue isn’t entirely in your cheek, though, and perhaps Bach’s isn’t completely out of his. He has ambiguous moments.”
“But he knows, he says, that his Redeemer liveth. ‘Ich weiss,’ sagt Bach, ‘dass mein Erloser lebt.’ And I know that mine doesn’t.”
“So you say.”
“And what do you say, Daniel Weinreb?”
“More or less the same as you, I suppose. But I sing something else.”
It was the night before Christmas, and the night before the night before Daniel was to appear in the Off-Broadway première of Honeybunny Time. Dreams, it seems, really do come true. But he was not happy, and it was hard to explain to Boa, who was the underlying cause of this unhappiness, why this should be so. There she sat, propped up in her little cot, a Christmas angel complete with a halo and a pair of wings from Mrs. Galamian’s stock of costumes for the first-act dream-ballet that had been scrapped during the last week of rehearsals. Yet the problem was easily stated. He was broke, and while his prospects had never been brighter, his income had rarely been less. He’d had to leave the Metastasio two months ago, time enough to exhaust the little money he’d put away to tide him through an emergency. But this was the one emergency he hadn’t reckoned with — success. Rey and Tauber were both adament as to receiving their full cuts. Daniel had done the arithmetic, and even if Honeybunny Time didn’t just fizzle right out, Daniel’s net earnings from it would still fall short of what was required at the heady rate of some three hundred dollars a month. And if the show were a smash, he wouldn’t do any better, since he’d had to sign over his interest in the book for the chance to play Bunny. That, as Irwin Tauber had explained, was show business. But try and explain that to a corpse.
“Boa,” he said, touching one of the nylon wings. But he didn’t know where to go from there. To talk to her at all was an admission of faith, and he didn’t want to believe, anymore, that she might be alive, and listening, and biding her time. If she were, it was cruel of her not to return. If she weren’t, if she’d left this world forever, as she’d left this husk of herself, this disposable container, then there could be no harm in his ceasing to care for it as well. “Boa, I’m not giving up another fifteen years. And I’m not going to peddle my ass again. I suppose I could ask Freddie Carshalton to loan me something, but I’m not going to. Or Shelly Gaines, who probably doesn’t have it to spare. What I am going to do is I’m going to call your father. If that’s wrong, then I’ll just have to bear the guilt. Okay?”
The halo glinted.
“If you want to come back later, you’ll have to come back to him. Maybe that’s what you’ve been waiting for. Am I right?”
He leaned forward, careful not to touch the tube that snaked into her left nostril, and kissed the lips that were legally dead. Then he got up and went out into the hall and down the hall to Mrs. Schiff’s office, where the telephone was.
In all these years he’d never forgotten the phone number for Worry.
An operator answered at the third ring. He said he wanted to speak to Grandison Whiting. The operator asked his name. He said only that it was a personal call. The operator said she would give him Mr. Whiting’s secretary.
Then a new voice said, “Miss Weinreb speaking.”
Daniel was too taken aback to reply.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” he echoed, forgetting to use the deeper voice with which he’d addressed the operator. “Miss Weinreb?”
Which Miss Weinreb? he wondered. His secretary!
“I’m afraid Mr. Whiting isn’t available at the moment. I’m his secretary. Can I take a message?”
In the other room Daniel could hear the telephone ringing. But it couldn’t be the telephone. It must be the doorbell. In which case Mrs. Schiff would answer it.
“Which Miss Weinreb would that be?” he asked cautiously. “Cecelia Weinreb?”
“This is Aurelia.” She sounded miffed. “Who is this, please?”
“It’s a personal call. For Mr. Whiting. It concerns his daughter.”
There was a long silence. Then Aurelia said, “Which daughter?” Hearing her dawning surmise, he became uneasy.
At that moment Mrs. Schiff burst into the office. In one hand she held the halo from Boa’s head. He knew, just by looking, what she was going to tell him. He replaced the phone in its cradle.
It hadn’t been the doorbell.
“It’s Boa,” he said. “She’s come back.”
Mrs. Schiff nodded.
Boa was alive.
Mrs. Schiff put the halo down on top of the desk, where it rocked unsteadily. Her hands were shaking. “You’d better go see her, Daniel. And I’ll phone for a doctor.”