A Night at the Opera House (Part 7)

An' a canyon of light opened out among the black folds, dashing them
sapphire, garnet, amethyst and a four-score other bedazzlements. Gogo
blinked his own jades sleepily. Then up the chest was tipped and out he
fell, among the mountain of bright materials, into a musty
atmosphere.
The Impresario did not see him at first. Gogo was camouflaged -
another flowering mound in a miniature flowery landscape. Unseen, but
not unsmelt! For the Impresario's nostrils were riled by the pungent
aroma of sweat and dirt that rose from the spillage.
"Eugh! They're supposed to wash these things before they ship them
over," complained he.
Gogo stirred, disgruntled.
"Good God! The stench is potent enough to animate the mound!"
Gogo arose, squinting from behind his headdress.
"Alack! Tis' some kind of odour demon!"
Gogo shook his head so that the rest of the fancy dress fell from him.
The Impresario looked his figure up and down, and Gogo returned the
gesture. Impresario was about his height, and just as stout even
without the layers of garb. Artistically rendered facial hair decorated
the first of three chins, a fleshy upper lip and a great pair of jowls.
His head-hair, which emerged from the apogee of his dome and beyond,
was long and wavy and grey, shaped into ringlets and furrows by some
greasy substance. His protruding nose hair quivered, and the thick hair
of his trembling fat hands bristled in accompaniment.
"Who in hells' name are you, sir?!?"
The hairs danced to a concerto of blubberous outrage. Gogo thought the
part of a troublemaker appropriate, and so answered,
"Um&;#8230;Gogo, sir."
"What! Were! You doing! In my crate?!"
The hairs frenzily leapt and waved. Gogo shrunk, so as to give their
conductor the height advantage.
"S&;#8230;sleeping. Until you woke me, sir."
Through the must and his own male musk he detected the sting of fresh
paint. The room in which they stood was lit dimly by oil lamps,
illuminating the myriads of costumes and masks that hanged in lines and
cowered in bundles and gathered in corners. Bright stones in the gowns
and glass in the masks stabbed at that dim. He seemed surrounded by
cadavers, mortal shells of men, desolate reflections of his good
self.
A moment's absorption was all he were permitted:
"Take that off at once! That's opera house property, that is!" the
Impresario continued his tirade, but Gogo did not understand.
"I don't understand, sir. These are mine."
"Don't be ridiculous, boy," said the Impresario, fully adapting to the
roleplay Gogo had instigated. "No one goes round wearing this kind of
affair outside of the theatre. Tell me what use you could possibly have
for this?"
The back of his fat hand was slapped lightly across Gogo's headdress.
Gogo's loose fists rose in defence, and he gave his standard
answer.
"I don't wish people to judge me by my appearance&;#8230;sir," he
added.
"Oh yes? Very likely, I'm sure," raged the cynicism. "Take it off now
and get out of my opera house!"
But budge he did not, and Gogo began to find the situation stretching
the limitations of his chosen role. He tried, "Begging your pardon,
sir, but these are my clothes," whereupon the Impresario looked hard
through the narrow slit in his headdress.
"Southern, are you, eh? A gypsy! Well&;#8230;" he hesitated, "not
that I mean to imply anything by that, but I have caught you in the act
of thievery."
Too late! Gogo deduced - despite both their precautions the portly
gentleman had made a rash judgement. The troublemaker role would
certainly no longer suffice, now that predeterminations had set
in.
"You have not caught me in the act of thievery!" he declared in the
voice of the Impresario. "Rathermore, in the act of tresspassery. This,
sir, is your property," (he flung a terREMBERling finger at the chest
and its pukeage,) "and this," (fingering his own attire,) "is my
own!"
He was received with indignation.
"How dare you!" a splutter. "HOW! &;#8230;
Dare you!"
Gogo returned, "HOWOO! &;#8230;

DARE you!"
"This is my property, sir!" feeyoomed a very red Impresario. "And if
you do not leave at once I shall see your accoutrements splayed atop
the nearest battlement!"
"How dare you!" Gogo tried again. "Sir, I am outraged by your
impudence!"
At this, his opponent sunk into his own shudders, seeming to excise
Gogo from his very sights. Impresario confided in himself, "What
trickery and madness is this? The intruder acts as if it is he who has
been intruded upon, and nothing of my affrontment can influence him to
imagine otherwise!" then reawakening himself to Gogo's presence, "Who
are you, boy?"
The 'boy' was not intended to install discipline, Gogo gathered, but
to affirm his opponent's superiority. Since this was likely to be for
the stout man's benefit rather than his own, he saw little reason to
behave as if he'd been disciplined, and so adopted a knightly
air.
"I, boy, am Gogo, known to many as a freak of nature, to some as a man
born without sin, to others as a person incapable of sophistication. I
am on a quest to learn to be sinful and sophisticated, as I am curious
to know what it is to live such an existence. Who the devil are
you?"
Taken aback, the Impresario stalled for time by answering the
question, "I am the Impresario of this opera house," then realising
that answer could be turned to his advantage, "and I own the property,
as well as these costumes you have thieved!"
Gogo snapped back, "I tell you, boy, these are mine. If you wish me to
leave you will kindly direct me to the nearest exit."
Not normally a man to love a compromise, the Impresario nevertheless
found himself defeated. Vowing revenge with a final titanic quake and a
plunging brow, he took Gogo by the folds of scarf at his neck and
struck out toward the storeroom's small door. Gogo obliged him by not
resisting, and was consequently tugged through the swirls of dust that
spiralled in a long corridor, across a surface that croaked at every
step of his gypsy boots and past lengths of rope; coiled, loose or
taught. A mechanical perfume now flavoured the air, joining the chorus
of paint and body odour, accentuating the very soullessness of the
place. Gogo and the Impresario were all that moved among that space,
where nothingness filled every crack, both ends and a distant
ceiling.
"Come on!" the latter goaded, in order to emphasise just who was the
leader of their expedition. On came Gogo, and a moment later emerged
into a different, much vaster room. The croaking wood fell away behind
him and his feet fell on soft ruby carpet. Impresario continued to
guide him across a wide balcony, filled with rows of unoccupied,
amethyst chairs and overlooking a broad field of the same uniform. All
the chairs - both above and below - were bolted to the ground, and made
to face what seemed to be the absence of a monstrous head.
That is to say (Gogo reconsidered, as the Impresario urged him
onward,) he recognised a great pair of curtains flanking a naked, empty
space when he saw them, but for a moment those curtains had seemed to
be pigtails of red hair and that space had seemed to be missing a face.
He stopped trudging. The Impresario almost threw his feet from under
him as he was held back by his own tight grip, and consequently
thundered, "What do you think you're doing? Come with me!"
"What in blazes is all this ensemble?" Gogo asked, still using the
Impresario's own voice. "Why do the empty seats face an empty
space?"
"Because nothing is currently being performed!" growled the other,
hoping to have done with this scene and resume with throwing the wretch
out of his opera house. "And you wouldn't be permitted to see it if
there was! Opera is an occupation for the&;#8230;" he hesitated once
more in his efforts not to seem prejudgmental, "the more cultured
variety of person. It is not something you would enjoy. Now get a move
on!"
"Do you mean to say, boy," Gogo continued, undeterred, "that at a time
of your choosing, these seats and that space are filled?"
By which the Impresario found himself easily distracted, his voice
rising to a falsetto, "Stage! It's called a stage! The players fill the
stage and the audience fills the seats. The audience watches the
players until the end of another magnificent performance. Is that clear
to you now?"
"Clearer, sir, clearer. These players simply play until you tell them
to stop?"
"They act and they sing! Good Lord! Have you never even heard of
opera?"
Gogo confessed that he had, but was not privy to the finer details.
Impresario thus felt obliged to explain to the ignoramus what unearthly
delights he was to be deprived of, "The story is of an epic scale, a
terrible tragedy of love and despair," he sang, "the hero must overcome
a great obstacle, a war or an enemy, in order to win his love and his
peace of mind, but the rigours of the conflict prove too great for him.
Opera, my friend, is a testimony to the strife that afflicts man in
this dark age; it renders his inner turmoil as outward struggle, and
shows us what it is we keep even from our most loved companions. It is
the soul of man woven in the thread of music!"
Gogo considered this information, "So what you mean to say is that men
get up on this 'stage' and tell of their inner turmoils in song?" but
found his explanation misplaced, for the Impresario barked, "No! Men
who are actors take to the stage and play the role that they have been
assigned. That might be the hero, the villain, the hero's mistress, the
hero's wife, the villain's wife, the knave&;#8230;whatever role the
story demands."
Ah! Gogo understood what it was to adopt a role.
"They behave like other people?"
"Yes! Yes, they do. Fictional people. But," the Impresario hastened to
add, "fictional people who the audience can identify with. Do you
see?"
"I believe so. But then how are these actors different to other men
and women?"
"Wh&;#8230;they act!"
"That's only what ordinary people do, so far as I can see. They learn
to behave like each other. They play the roles they deem appropriate to
the occasion."
The Impresario fought away an expression of dumfoundedness, and
hastened to explain, "But they play tedious roles. They behave in an
unexciting manner. People come to see opera for entertainment, not to
witness the monotony of every day life. Out there is politics and
domestic disputes and business negotiations. That isn't
entertainment!"
"If it isn't," Gogo suggested, "then I know not what use it all
serves."
"And I care not!" The Impresario regained his bad temper, feeling
insulted by the gypsy's inability to appreciate his art. "Enough of
your stalling - I want you out of my opera house this instant!"
On this occasion he took Gogo by the sleeve, suspicious of the effects
of touching the tanned skin of his hand, and Gogo obliged him once
more, glancing back at the missing face as he did so. For it was indeed
a missing face, he concluded, and an empty mind behind it, waiting to
be filled with entertainment and a skewed interpretation of the lives
of men.