Chorus and Marching Band

ALL OF NORWAY, with a few exceptions, was glued to a TV screen when Nømsk Ull, host of the NoroVision Choral Throwdown, yelled into the camera that it was time for the finale and that the first chorus to face the music would be . . .

Nømsk Ull went up into a falsetto as he flung out his arm toward the stage: “. . . Hallvard Tenorsen and his chorus, Fuhhhhhni Voisis!”

And there they stood in stylish tight black shirts: Funny Voices. And in front of them, in an even more stylish, tighter, and blacker shirt: Hallvard Tenorsen himself. He smiled broadly, raised both hands, pinched his thumb and index fingers together as if they were holding something dirty, and made a few weird jerks with his head, as if he were experiencing an electric shock. And then his chorus chimed in, singing a BABA song in the thickest Norwegian accents you can imagine:

Hunney, hunney, hunney

Yur so funney

Eets a crazy world!

On the third verse, Tenorsen turned around and smiled into the camera, as if the viewers out there, in those many thousands of Norwegian homes, were supposed to be singing the song as well.

And, sure enough, they were. Norwegians were sitting in their living rooms with their coffee cups or their soda bottles or their binkies, singing along about how boring it was to work and how much more fun it would be to be rich.

And once Tenorsen and his chorus were done, Nømsk Ull came back on-screen and yelled, “Wonderful! If you want to vote for Fuhni Voisis, just call the number you see on the screen!”

And in living rooms across Norway, from the north to the south, people lunged for their phones and voted. And while the other choruses sang and did their best, people munched on potato chips, popcorn, pretzels, pork rinds, and other things that start with P as they discussed the fabulous Hallvard Tenorsen.

In a hair salon, a stylist giggled and said, “I think I’d like to have myself a little chiropractic session with that Tenorsen.”

In a diner, a long-haul trucker grumbled, “I’ve heard he can beat three grown men at arm wrestling while simultaneously fixing a flat tire, playing the ukulele, and doing the dishes.”

And in an old folks’ home, the oldest man there said in a quavering voice: “It said in the paper that he’s kissed six hundred and sixty-two girls and women. Plus a few men who looked like women. And one woman he thought was a man who thought he was a woman.”

Once all the choruses were done, and it was one minute to seven, Nømsk Ull’s face once again filled the screen. “Just keep voting, people. All our lines will be open until eight o’clock Central European Time. That’s when this will all be decided and a winner will be announced for the NoroVision Choral . . .” He gestured to the audience so that everyone yelled in unison with him: “. . . Throwdown!”

*   *   *

AT EXACTLY SEVEN o’clock, Mr. Madsen adjusted his aviator glasses, cleared his throat, and raised his baton. In the gym in front of him sat the boys, girls, trumpets, clarinets, snare drums, French horns, saxophones, bass drum, and tuba, which, all together, comprised the Dølgen School Marching Band. That summer the band had received special recognition at the marching-band competition held in Lillehammer. The judges said it was absolutely the worst marching band they had ever heard and that—with the exception of a couple of talented members, most notably the itty-bitty little red-haired boy on the trumpet—it was a downright impressive assembly of musically ungifted kids that only a real enthusiast could manage to direct for very long. And then they had awarded Mr. Madsen his prize, a pair of real leather German earmuffs. Mr. Madsen had thrown the earmuffs away, added one extra practice session per week, and now here he stood, counting into the beginning of “Very Old Ranger’s March,” the one that was composed after the “Old Ranger’s March,” but before the “New Ranger’s March.” He wasn’t counting up, but down, as if he were standing in front of a bomb that was about to go off: “Four, three, two . . .”

He muttered one final, silent prayer and steeled himself before shouting “One!” and letting his baton fall.

Three minutes later he drew an X in the air with his baton. That meant that the “Very Old Ranger’s March” was over. And apart from a belated bleat from a saxophone, they all actually finished more or less at the same time.

“Hm,” Mr. Madsen said, once silence had settled over the room. He tried to come up with the analogy that would best describe what he had just heard. Because it wasn’t so awful. Of course there had been a few wayward noises: a nervous clarinet that squeaked, switching into a higher register; a couple of slightly off notes from the French horns; a bass drum beat that was a little off the mark; and something that might have just been a fart from one of the wind players who was straining a little too hard. But by and large, good. Very good, even.

Mr. Madsen cleared his throat while the band watched him with anxious eyes.

“Well, that wasn’t that bad.”

Because it was a fact that the Dølgen School Marching Band had made great progress since their disastrous showing at Lillehammer that summer. Mr. Madsen glimpsed—for the first time in his life as a band conductor—a bit of hope. Which caused him to feel something he had otherwise never felt before: He was touched. Yes, he was a little moist there behind his sunglasses. He adjusted the glasses to make sure that no one could tell.

“One more time,” he said, feeling like he should have cleared his throat first.

And the Dølgen School Marching Band played again. And again. And it just kept sounding better and better.

“We’ll just take it from the top one more time before we call it a night,” Mr. Madsen said.

He raised his baton but then lowered it again before he had started the countdown.

“Where are you going, Truls and Trym?”

Truls and Trym had put away their snare drums, zipped up the zippers of their identical thick down jackets, which made them both look like stacks of car tires, and were now on their way out the door.

“Home to vote for Tenorsen,” Truls said. “The voting ends in half an hour.”

“But rehearsal isn’t over yet,” Mr. Madsen said.

“We don’t care,” Truls said. “We quit.”

“Q-q-quit?” Mr. Madsen adjusted his glasses a couple of times, but there was nothing wrong with his vision and he had not misheard them. Those two bums were actually planning to quit his band!

“But you can’t quit now!” Lisa yelled. “Not now that we’re finally starting to sound like a proper band.”

“Oh, shut up, Flatu-Lisa,” said Truls. “This band sucks.”

“Sucks massively,” Trym said, opening the door.

“Wait!” Mr. Madsen yelled. “What are you boys going to do instead of band?”

“We’re going to join the chorus.”

“The chorus?” Mr. Madsen didn’t believe his own finely tuned ears. “Who wants to join a chorus when you can play in a band?”

“Us,” Truls said. “And them.”

He pointed at Beatrize and two of her friends, who were also putting away their instruments.

“And them,” Trym said, pointing at all three of the French-horn players, who were all clicking shut the latches on their French-horn cases.

“What’s going on here?” Mr. Madsen yelled, banging his baton against the edge of his music stand. But it didn’t do any good. Quite the contrary—more and more of the kids started putting away their instruments.

“This is mutiny!” screamed Nilly, jumping up onto his chair.

But no one seemed to hear him. They were marching out of the gym, and as Beatrize, the last of them, left, she turned and stuck her tongue out at Nilly and slammed the door behind her with a bang.

Once silence had again settled over the gym, Lisa looked around. Aside from herself, Nilly, and Mr. Madsen, the only one left was Janne, the tuba player, a girl who never talked to anyone and wore patches over both eyeglass lenses because she always went snow-blind in January. And this year was no exception.

Mr. Madsen stood there before them with his arms dangling and his bottom lip quivering. He stood there like that for a long time, totally motionless, until his lower lip had finally stopped trembling. Then he adjusted his glasses, raised his baton, and directed his gaze at the three remaining musicians.

“Ready for the ‘Very Old Ranger’s March’? Four, three, two, one . . .”

WHEN LISA GOT home, she untied her boots and put them in the coat closet.

She went into the living room. From behind her parents’ armchairs, she saw the TV, where Tenorsen was standing with his arms full of flowers, beaming and smiling at everyone.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Lisa asked.

“Tenorsen and Funny Voices just won!” her father laughed gleefully. “Aren’t you thrilled?”

“Hi, honey,” her mom said without turning around. “You’re dinner’s on a plate in the fridge.”

“Everyone in the band quit to go sing in a chorus, and . . . ,” Lisa began.

“Shh!” her mom hushed. “Tenorsen is going to conduct again.” She and Lisa’s father leaned forward in their chairs.

Lisa sighed and went to the kitchen, where she helped herself to the two bagels already spread with cream cheese. From the living room she heard her parents singing along to a pop song: “Love. The most beautiful word in the world . . .”

After Lisa drank her milk and brushed her teeth, she went back in to her parents. The NoroVision Choral Throwdown was over, and a newscaster on TV was reporting that Hallvard Tenorsen wanted to address the nation in a long victory speech following the news.

“Goodnight,” Lisa said, giving her mother and father a hug.

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” her mother said, “that at the parent-teasher meeting yesterday Mrs. Strobe said you would do well to raise your hand a little more in class, since it turns out you always know the right answer.”

“Great,” Lisa said, not up to explaining that Nilly had usually answered before she could get her hand up in the air. And that his answers generally had very little to do with the questions.

“Oh, and vee met your new arts and crafts teasher,” her father said. “Mr. Galvanius, isn’t it?”

“I thought he was almost a little creepy,” her mother said with a shudder. “You know, his hand felt all slimy when vee shook hands with him? Weird fingers, too, looked like they were webbed or something.”

Then Lisa’s commandant father laughed so his large commandant belly shook. “Ho, ho. Now you’re exaggerating, honey. Isn’t she, Lisa?”

“Hm,” said Lisa, who hadn’t heard the question because the newscaster on TV had just caught her attention with a little news item. The bulletin was so small you could easily have failed to notice it, squeezed in as it was between a big earthquake that was comfortably far away and the weather. The news item was just a single sentence, actually. Still, it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Just like when she had been standing in the gym looking at the band banner.

“Sleep well, darling,” her father said, kissing Lisa on the forehead.

But when Lisa was in bed trying to fall to sleep, that one sentence kept running through her head. The bit of news was so small that the newscaster had read it with a little smile: “The police are receiving a dramatic increase in reports of missing socks.”