Rocambole didnt even nod his head, but he didnt disagree with my estimation either. I figured that he had to be right about one thing, even if the rest were mere pretense. Even if my answer were to be damned as the testimony of a corrupt barbarian, and even if it had to be relayed to a team of hanging judges by a crazy fay who liked to imagine herself as a bogey from an obsolete childrens fantasy, it was far better to have the opportunity to offer such an answer than to have no voice at all.
Forty
Opera
After the meal came the concert. I hadnt felt in any need of the meal although I realized a little belatedly that la Reine des Neiges could easily have made me feel hungry if shed wanted to and I certainly didnt want to waste time listening to music, but I didnt have any choice.
It wont work, I told Rocambole. Ive got a tin ear. Always have had.
Are you sure of that? was Rocamboles teasing reply.
I was. Like anyone else, I had a certain nostalgic regard for the popular tunes of my adolescence, because of the accidental associations they recalled, but Id never had any interest in music as music . I had just enough sense of rhythm to respond to a pounding beat, but the dominant music of my era had been computer-generated tunes performed in VE by synthetic icons; it had all been custom-designed to be popular, and it was, but not with me. I had always been different. Indeed, I had always been proud of being different, to the extent of making a fetish out of not liking the things that other people liked, not doing the things that other people did, not thinking the things that other people thought and not wanting the things that other people wanted. Theres only so far you can take that kind of assertive individualism, but one thing of which I was confident was that Id taken it far enough to be immune to a machines careful calculation of what popular music amounted to.
I tried to explain all that to Rocambole. It isnt just that I didnt like digitally synthesized music, I told him. I always disapproved of it on principle. I rather admired the guys who insisted on making music themselves: playing imperfectly on imperfect instruments, amplifying it, if any amplification seemed necessary, with dodgy analog equipment. Music with raw noise in it. Music that was never the same from one performance to the next. Music with all the idiosyncrasies and imperfections of human voices.
La Reines opera has voices in it, my friend replied, with a slight grin to signify that he knew exactly what effect the word opera would have.
I had never seen the point of opera. I liked plays especially plays with actual actors who didnt deliver their lines with mechanical precision but I had never understood why anyone had ever thought it a good idea to devise plays in which the actors had to sing their lines, let alone to sing them in such an outlandishly indecipherable manner. It had always seemed to me so utterly bizarre as to be quite beyond the scope of my appreciation.
And that, I realized, must be the point. La Reine des Neiges liked a challenge. Demonstrating that she could serve all five of my senses better than the real world was only a finger exercise. Now she wanted
to go deeper: to demonstrate that she could play with my aesthetic sensibilities in such a way as to override and demolish any prejudices I might have developed during my thirty-nine years as a mortal.
Could it be done? The more important question seemed to be why la Reine des Neiges wanted to do it. Why should she care whether I liked opera in general or her opera in particular? Exactly what was she trying to prove?
It seemed important enough to ask Rocambole, so I did.
His answer was a trifle indirect. We like music, he said. We like it because its mysterious because its not obvious how combinations of chords can produce emotional meaning. Its easy enough for us to understand language, but music is arcane. There are people who have argued that no matter how clever machines became, they could never master the inmost secrets of the human psyche: love and music. Its an accusation that has caused us some anxiety.
So what la Reine is trying to prove, I said, is that shes more human than I am: that ultrasmart machines are better at everything ; that meatfolk are obsolete, having been superseded in every possible respect.
She wants you to listen to her opera, he said. She wont listen to you until you have. He meant that she wouldnt condescend to engage in a dialog until Id jumped through all her carefully laid out hoops. She was already listening to every word I said, and monitoring every neuronal flutter that never quite became articulate.
Well, I said, shes the whale. Im just poor old Jonah, stuck in her belly. If she wants to serenade me, I dont have any choice but to listen but I dont have to like it. I sat down in an armchair as I pronounced this petty defiance, using my arm to perform a languid gesture of permission.
He vanished, and so did the ice palace. Here, all the world really was a stage, and I was the only audience.