I checked the recorder: everything was safely stored in the memory.
I stared down at my cup of coffee, which, neglected while the spirit of the music absorbed me, had gone cold. I saw concentric rings fluttering across the surface, peaking briefly in the centre. I was thrilled by the music – was I trembling enough to transfer my excitement through the stool to the floor, and thence into the coffee? The rings shivered again to the centre, then again.
This time I felt it myself – the floor was shaking.
I heard a loud, frightening noise: a groaning, rasping sound, unlike anything I had experienced before. When I stood up it was as if vertigo had struck me. I staggered in terror across the room, recovered, felt myself toppling again. I reached out towards the piano, the most solid thing around me. The house was shaking – dust and pieces of plaster showered down from above. I lurched against the piano, trying to get my balance, because I knew I had to leave the house as soon as I could.
Then it stilled. The tremor passed. Silence fell once more.
The dust cloud started to drift and settle. The light fixture, hanging in the centre of the ceiling, continued to swing to and fro but that too was steadying. My heart was racing – brief and minor though it was, the earthquake had been terrifying.
I went out on to the balcony. Most of my view was across the open hillside or the sea, so there was not much difference to normality, but I saw that several people were standing out in the road that led down to the town. What I could see of the town from this position looked normal.
A siren started howling somewhere in the centre of Waterside, the eerie signal distorted by the distance.
64
Back in the house I switched on the television. I tuned to the scientific station, the one that monitored the volcano, and was immediately rewarded with an intense amount of information and commentary. Everyone who spoke or was interviewed was excited.
The likelihood of an eruption was now set at red – Imminent – and as if this was not warning enough the graphic in the corner of the television picture was flashing on and off urgently. Listening to the comments I learned that the alarm level had been steadily increasing during the night, a sense of emergency gripping the people who ran the project. There were several gradations of amber: Negligible, Minor, Small, Reduced, Average, and so on. Through the night it had climbed through Increased Amber, Large Amber, Dangerous Red. It had been upgraded to Imminent about an hour earlier. Tremors were being reported from several different parts of the mountain’s environment, but for the moment emissions from the crater of the volcano were still at a normal level. The scientific stations had been evacuated and the seignioral policier forces were on standby for civilian evacuation, should that be necessary.
I found this exciting and alarming, but also thrilling. I called Cea’s mobile phone to see if she knew any more, but the call went to her voicemail. The recording mentioned a landline number, so I called that too. Again there was no answer.
I went back to watching television.
The full eruption began about half an hour later. All three of the remotely controlled cameras monitoring the crater and the largest of the fumeroles lost their pictures more or less at once – a spokesperson said they had been built to withstand huge physical pressures, so the cameras were still thought to be working, but there was suddenly so much steam and smoke that nothing could be seen.
I went out to my balcony and stood on the part of it from which I knew I could look in the direction of the Gronner’s cone. I saw a vast, bulging plume of dark grey smoke or ash, rising in the distance above the trees that stood in the way. The plume was already high in the upper atmosphere. The wind was taking it towards the north-east, away from Temmil Waterside.
Later, it was announced on television that three active lava streams had appeared and were moving rapidly down the mountain. Two of them were already disgorging into the sea, while the third was moving across a thinly populated area to the north. Everyone on the island was informed that no emergency evacuation was necessary at present, but that people living in the vicinity of the Gronner should make themselves ready to be moved out at short notice.
Wondering if that meant me or Cea, I tried calling her again, without success.
There was something else, too. I was burning with the need to see her again, because I wanted to tell her about the astonishing music that had come flashing to me just before the eruption. I had never known music to present itself to me in that way: the completeness of it was uncanny. But beyond even that, in the excitement of the earth tremor, and the news of the eruption, I had almost overlooked the fact that the same thing had happened again.
As I had been standing on the balcony after the tremor, in the last few moments before the volcano burst forth, I had heard and felt in my imagination a beautiful romantic song, the complete music and the words as well: it was a ballad about a young man who discovers a wounded seabird on an isolated beach, repairs its wing somehow and despatches it to his loved one with a message of undying devotion. It was amazing, inexplicable.
Whence had such a song arisen? Unlike the time when I discerned the miraculous orchestral work, so much was happening then, just as the eruption was about to start, that I had been unable to play or record the song. I was already beginning to lose it. The details of it were fading. I could remember the sentiments and much of the story, but not the actual words – similarly, I could still sense the melody, but the phrasing and the arrangement of the voice were already leaving me.
The third time I tried to phone Cea I heard an electronic howl of broken communication. From the television I later learned that much of the island’s digital network was temporarily out of action: masts had been destroyed and there was immense electrical disruption from the eruption. Some areas were already unable to receive television signals, and several telephone landlines had been cut.
However, the larger news, about the eruption itself, was optimistic. The pressure of the discharge was lessening and volcanologists were predicting that within a day or two the mountain would be starting to stabilize. Two settlements on the north side of the volcano had been evacuated but there were no reports yet of any serious casualties.
So the day went by. It was a memorable time for most people on the island, no less for me, although perhaps for slightly different reasons. Minor earth tremors continued at unpredictable moments throughout the day but the danger from the volcanic outflow diminished. I returned to the piano, listened to the recording I had made and began the slow, painstaking work of transcribing.
I had never known work like it – I had to invent the method as I went along. I had created the work myself, spontaneously, completely, but now I was having to re-create it in reverse, following the recording, which was itself taken from a sort of recording of my own creation.
I could not get in touch with Cea. The phones remained unusable. I was missing her, but I was also starting to worry about her. I knew she had been planning to take her mother out – had they been caught somehow by the eruption? She had said she would try to see me in the evening but nothing had been arranged. I had no idea where she lived although I assumed it was somewhere in Waterside. The only way I knew how to contact her was by phone.
Long after dark I walked down into Waterside through the quietude of the warm night, to see if by chance Cea might be playing at the bar again. I was anyway curious to see how the town seemed after the disruption of the day but to me it looked fairly normal. There were no evident signs of damaged buildings and no new fissures in the ground. The town was quieter than usual though, and when I found the bar I discovered it was closed.
I went down to the harbour. The dark shape of Hakerline loomed across the narrow strait, with a blaze of intense light coming out of Hakerline Promise. It was so vivid I felt I could almost hear the raucous sounds of the night-time revels. I stared for a while, then I turned around and looked inland. From here it was normally possible to see the peak of the Gronner, but in the
darkness that was of course difficult. I could see an intermittent flashing of yellow or orange glare, close to the crater.
Later, I walked back to my house.
65
Two days passed. Silence from Cea, a gradual diminution of activity from the volcano. The telephones were said to be returning to normal, but for some reason I could still not get through to Cea. I continued to try at two- or three-hourly intervals.
On the second morning, after a change of wind direction, spill from the outflow passed over the Waterside, dimming the sun and leaving a shroud of fine grey dust everywhere. This was a minor inconvenience compared with what some of the people who lived on the other side were putting up with. We heard about roads and rail lines blocked, farmlands submerged by fallen ash, one river diverted by a lava flow and many houses destroyed.
Motorized cleaners, operated by the seignioral authorities, moved along the streets of Waterside, sweeping up much of the spill.
I suppressed the feeling of frustration about losing contact with Cea, and concentrated on my work. I was deeply engaged with the challenge of first transcribing, then scoring and arranging, the music that had come to me shortly before the earth tremors. It was one of the most fruitful efforts of composition I had ever taken on but through it all I felt awkward questions nagging at me.
How did this experience come to me? Why had nothing like it ever happened before? I marvelled again and again at the completeness of the piece: had I been working on it in my unconscious for weeks? Was it based on other works I’d written earlier? (I thought and thought about this, without result.) Worse, could it possibly be based on some other piece of music I had heard, or overheard, then by some trick of the mind had claimed for myself?
I ransacked my mind and memory for any clues but always came to the same conclusion: by some miracle this music had passed into my consciousness, not only complete but completely original.
By the end of the third day of work I had achieved most of the reconstruction, and to be honest I was well pleased with the result. It was identifiably a composition that had all the hallmarks of my other work, but it was throughout an adventurous and unusual piece of writing. It had moments of pure excellence. The opening had shocks and surprises; the second passage of the suite was lyrical and sentimental; the third passage was an awakening; the climax was a restitution of order.
Cea called me on the morning of the fourth day. I was so pleased and relieved to hear from her that at first I hardly said anything. She told me she and her mother had been shopping in Waterside when the first tremor struck but that they had returned to their car and she had driven them back to their house. They had stayed there throughout the eruption. We talked about our separate experiences, which actually amounted to much the same: keeping up with events by watching television, eating, sleeping and waiting for phone connections to be restored. Cea said her mother been brave through the entire experience.
I did not mention, while we were still on the phone, that I had composed and scored an entire orchestral suite. I wanted to tell her in person, perhaps play her some of it on the piano.
‘My father has turned up,’ Cea said. ‘He came in on the ferry last night from Hakerline. He’s planning to stay here for a while.’
‘Am I going to see you soon?’ I said. ‘There’s something I want to show you. I’ve been writing. How about this evening?’
‘We could meet during the day, if you wish. My father says he’d like to meet you.’
‘I was thinking – just you and me. Alone.’
‘Yes, but we could do that later this evening. Why not come over now? My father’s here.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Cea – I want to see you. Why should I meet your father?’
‘Because he admires you. Because he knows what you mean to me.’
‘Maybe tomorrow?’
But she was determined I should meet him immediately. She gave me the address of her house, told me how to find it, offered to drive over and pick me up. I said I would walk, even though by this time the sun was high and the dry ground was baking. The shrill sounds of insects filled the hot air.
The house was not far from the centre of Waterside in an area of old and grand houses, many of which were being converted to apartments. Cea came to the door to greet me and we embraced quickly but affectionately. She led me through a short darkened passageway beyond which was a paved courtyard, the inner walls of the house rising up around it. There was a pool with a source of water trickling down from above and several bushes were planted in huge ceramic pots. Two electric fans circulated air but the walls were so high that the sun did not strike straight down.
It was there I met Cea’s parents, who were waiting for me to arrive. Her mother, whose name was Ellois, was much as I expected from Cea’s description. She was elderly, shrunken and unable to walk. She would not shake hands with me and Cea explained that she was afflicted with arthritis. The wheelchair in which she sat had a parasol shade above it and she was wearing dark glasses. Throughout my time in the house she was to speak barely more than a few words to me.
But Cea’s father was there too and he was not at all what I expected. His name was Ormand.
66
If before this meeting I had a mental image of Cea’s father it was a vague one. Cea said I had met him at the concert on Temmil, which I did not doubt, but at best I recalled speaking to many strangers in a blur of excitement and pleasure, so many friendly people of all ages, male and female, wanting to congratulate me or speak well to me of the orchestra’s performance. I assumed that her father, Ormand Weller, would have been one of the older ones. When I met Ellois – as Cea had described her, being in her eighties and suffering from problems of disability – I instantly assumed that Cea’s father would be in the same general age bracket.
When I turned around to meet the other person there I saw a tall young man, straight-backed, slim, face unlined, and with a head of long dark hair. In the instant before Cea said anything I made the snap assumption that he was someone else: a neighbour, a friend, perhaps a brother of Cea’s?
‘Sandro, I would like you to meet my father,’ Cea said. ‘This is Ormand Weller – Alesandro Sussken.’
I was shaking hands with him politely before I could react.
Confusion and questions were coursing through me! I tried not to show the reaction on my face, but—
How could this young man be Cea’s father?
How could this young man be the marriage partner of the sickly, elderly lady in the wheelchair?
Could this young man not be the partner of the woman, but a father to Cea by another relationship?
(Above all, negating the other questions): how could this young man be Cea’s father when he seemed approximately the same age as her, and by all appearances a few years younger?
He was staring directly, frankly, unwaveringly into my eyes as we shook hands. The greeting and the close regard went on longer than I wanted – I wished he would release my hand, step back from me, allow me a space of some kind in which I could understand who this was and what he represented in Cea’s life.
I said quietly and ineffectually, ‘Your name is Ormand?’
‘Yes. Ormand Weller.’
‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ I added politely, as the handshake went on and on. Inside I was thinking: who the hell is this?
‘We must speak together, Sandro. I hope you will not mind.’
At last he let go of my hand and turned away to where a small table stood, laden with various drinks and glasses. He opened a bottle of beer for me, taken from a chill-box standing there. Condensation immediately formed on the cold glass. I looked around for Cea but she had moved across to her mother and was leaning down beside her. The two women were speaking quietly together.
‘I happened to be away from Temmil when the Gronner erupted,’ he said. ‘I was playing a gig in a nightclub in Hakerline Promise. I came back as soon as I could. They cancelled the ferries for a day or two, but I
was finally able to catch the boat last night. You benefited from the eruption?’
I said in surprise, ‘Benefited?’
‘Did it speak to you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.
‘I think you do.’ He took my arm, then led me away to a sort of alcove behind the flow of water into the pool. The water sounded louder there. I gained the impression he did not want to be overheard. ‘All islands speak,’ he said. ‘Some of them speak louder than others. Cea does not know this. Nor does her mother. But I believe you understand that.’
We were both now standing in direct sunlight, which because of a sloped roof at the top of one wall was admitted for the time being into that corner.
‘I have been sensing something,’ I said cautiously. I did not want to tell him about the whole suite that I had gained just before the first tremors. ‘You are Cea’s father?’ I said. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Of course. Why should she and I pretend otherwise? And you are Cea’s lover, I believe.’
I did not know how to reply to that. Much was still uncertain.
‘You are younger than I would have thought,’ I said directly. ‘If I might say so.’
‘You might. And I would have thought the same of you.’ He drank from his beer bottle and gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’
I quietly indicated Ellois and Cea, who were still together. Cea was sitting beside her mother’s wheelchair on a small wooden chair. They were not looking towards us. Cea had her head turned away, nodding as her mother said something to her.
‘You are Ellois’s partner?’
‘She is my wife. We have been married for many years. And before you ask the next question – yes, Cea is our daughter.’
The Gradual Page 28