An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  As for the shop and the carpark, that was a bitter business. The council, planning to expand a main road, placed a compulsory purchase order on our butcher's shop, which was just off it, on a small side street. It was more than our shop; it was our home. A number of our neighbours' houses were taken over too. The compensation was derisory. My parents tried to fight it for years but got nowhere.

  During this period I myself was in Manchester, trying through a series of odd jobs both to earn a living and to save in order, later, to go to college. I could not help at all at first, and very little later on. Besides, relations were still strained between us. After two or three years, about the time I got into the Royal Northern College of Music, my father, his work and purpose gone, fell ill with a series of bronchial ailments. My mother exhausted herself trying to nurse him, to earn a living working as a dinner lady in a school, and to fight the case. Though it

  34 | VIKRAM SETH

  was he who was ill, it was she who died - quite suddenly, of a stroke.

  After a few further years of dithering, the council decided not to expand the road after all. The acquired land was sold to developers. The small shops and houses, now mainly derelict, were smashed. Where Stanley Holme, butcher, once practised his trade there is now only asphalt. It is a carpark.

  1.10 ......

  When I say I come from Rochdale, people in London smile, as if the name itself were amusing. I no longer feel resentful, let alone puzzled, by this. Indeed, if there is any object of resentment here, perhaps it should be the town itself. But what happened to us could have happened anywhere, I suppose.

  Besides, as a boy, I was quite happy in Rochdale. Our house was not too far from the edge of town, and once I got a bike I could cycle out towards the moors, sometimes with a schoolfriend, more often by myself. Within minutes I would be in the open countryside. Sometimes I would walk on the tops, sometimes just lie in the grassy hollows where I could no longer hear the sound of the wind. The first time I did this, I was held by surprise: I had never heard such silence before. And into that silence after a minute or two fell the rising song of a lark.

  I would lie there for hours sometimes, my bike parked quite safely at the isolated inn of Owd Betts below. Sometimes a single lark would sing; sometimes as the voice of one thinned higher and higher into the sky, another's would begin to rise. Sometimes, when the sun

  AN EQUAL MUSIC

  35

  came out after a drizzle, there would be a whole scrum of skylarks.

  In London, high up though I am, there is no natural silence. Even in the middle of the 600 acres of the park, I can hear the traffic all around, and often above. But some mornings I take a camp stool and walk over to the sunken garden near the Orangery. I sit down in one of the gaps in the tall lime hedge and look out across the sinking ledges of colour to the calm oblong pool. Among the water-lilies the fountains play, obscuring any noise that the hedges have not dampened. Squirrels run boldly about, small mice timidly. A pigeon coos fatly at my feet. And - in the right season, at the opposite month of the year to this - the blackbirds sing.

  Today, as I walk around the sunken garden, a conversation with Julia comes back to me. Our piano trio was playing in a concert somewhere near Linz, and afterwards the two of us went for a walk in the woods behind our host's house. It was a full moon night and a nightingale was singing frantically.

  "Very flash," I said. "The Donizetti of the bird world."

  "Shh, Michael," said Julia, leaning against me.

  The nightingale paused and Julia said: "Don't you like it?"

  "It's not my favourite bird. Is it yours?"

  "Yes." -

  "That must be your Austrian blood."

  "Oh, don't be silly. How about a kiss?"

  We kissed, and walked on.

  "If it really is your favourite bird, Julia, I take bacfc what I said."

  "Thank you. And what's yours?"

  "The lark, of course."

  "Oh, I see. 'The Lark Ascending'?"

  "Oh, no - it's nothing to do with that." ,

  36 | VIKRAM SETH

  "It's a drab-looking sort of bird isn t it? ^

  «Well, your nightingale's no bird-of-paradise «then «I suppose there aren't that many gpod-looking_ cornposers," said Julia after a while. "Schubert was a bit of a

  C "

  ^But a frog you would have kissed?" «Yes " said Julia without hesitation. ' «Even if it distracted him from his composing?" «No " said Julia. "Not then. But I don't believe it

  would have. It would have inspired him, and he would

  have finished his Unfinished."

  «I believe he would have, my darling. So it's a good

  thine you never kissed him."

  It began to drizzle slightly, and we turned back

  towards the house. , ,-, ;

  I.II

  , ... • ~k >: -•* "•"• ' -' •' • :

  When I was being considered for the Maggiore Quartet, Helen asked me how Julia was. They knew each other because our trio and their quartet - both recently formed

  - had met at the summer programme in Banff in the

  Canadian Rockies.

  I said that we'd lost touch.

  «Oh, what a pity," said Helen. "And how's Maria? Marvellous cellist! I thought the three of you played awfully well together. You belonged together.

  "Maria's fine, 1 think. She's still in Vienna.

  «I do feel it's a pity when one loses touch with friends " babbled Helen sympathetically. "1 had a schoolfriend once. He was in the class above me. I adored him. He wanted to be, of aH things, a dentist... Oh, it's not a sensitive subject, is it?"

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 37

  "No, not at all. But perhaps We should get on with the rehearsal. I've got to be soi^evvhere at five-thirty."

  "Of course. You told me that you were in a hurry, and here I am, nattering on. Silly me."

  To lose touch - and hearing and smell and taste and sight. Not a week passes when I don't think of her. This after ten years: too persistent a trace in the memory.

  After I left Vienna, I wrote to her, perhaps too late. She did not write back. I wrote again and again into a void.

  I wrote to Maria Novotny, who replied, saying that Julia was still very upset and that I should give her time. My letters were disturbing her studies in her final year. Perhaps I should ease off. Maria, though, was always Julia's friend more than mine. They knew each other before I came on the scene and after I so suddenly exited it. She told me no secrets and gave me no hope.

  When Julia's course was over, she disappeared off the face of the earth.

  I wrote to the Musikhochschule, asking them to redirect my letter. I never heard from her. I wrote to her at her parents' home near Oxford, to no effect. I wrote to her aunt in Klosterneuburg, and got no reply. I wrote to Maria again. Maria wrote back to say that she hadn't heard from Julia either. She was sure she wasn't in Vienna, though.

  Finally, more than a year after we parted, and overcome with loss, I phoned her parents. Her father had spent a day with us when he visited Vienna for a historical conference. He was an Auden fan, and had taken us on a little pilgrimage to Kirchstetten, the small village where Auden spent his last years. In the evening, back in Vienna, we'd gone for a meal and a concert. We had taken to each other immediately.

  A woman picked up the phone. "Hello," I said. "Is that Mrs McNicholl?"

  38 | VIKRAM SETH ,

  "Yes, it is. May I know who is speaking?" I could detect an Austrian accent buried there somewhere.

  "This is Michael Holme."

  "Oh, yes, yes, I see. Please hold on. I will call my husband." Something like panic had replaced selfassurance.

  In a few seconds Dr McNicholl came on the line. He was not unfriendly in tone, but gave the impression of someone who wanted very quickly to get out of a jammed lift.

  "Hello, Michael. I suppose it's about Julia. I have been sending your letters on, but, well, it's really up to her to reply." />
  "How did she do in her exams?" Maria had already told me she had done quite well, but I was now flailing around to keep the conversation going.

  "She passed."

  "She is all right, isn't she?" •••,.' i /

  "Yes, she is," he replied firmly. • . - ;'

  "Would you tell her I called? Please." s =

  A pause, and then, with reluctant mendacity: "Yes."

  "Where is she now? Is she there - I mean - is she with you in Oxford?"

  "For God's sake, Michael, haven't you hurt her enough?" Dr McNicholPs courtesy gave out, and he put down the receiver.

  I too put it down, trembling with sadness, knowing it

  was no use.

  1.12

  My first task today is a lesson of mutual drudgery with a twelve-year-old boy who would much rather be playing the guitar. When he leaves, I try to turn to quartet work.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 39

  I look over the music for our next rehearsal, but cannot concentrate on it. Instead I put on a CD of Beethoven's piano trio in C minor, the one that Carl Kail questioned me about so many years ago.

  What wonderful things are his first self-numbered works, a trio of trios that say to the world, yes, these I could bear to be known by. Of them, this is the gem: the opus i number 3. Carl, of course, disagreed with me; he thought it the weakest of the three.

  It was Julia's favourite among all Beethoven's trios. She particularly loved the minor variation in the second movement, though it was almost as if the cello and violin were, in that calm melancholy, robbing her of her own prominence. Whenever she would hear it or play it or even read it in the score, she would move her head slowly from side to side. And she loved the unflamboyant close of the entire work.

  Though I have often listened to it, I haven't once played it these last ten years. In the occasional ad hoc trios I participate in, whenever it is suggested as a possibility, I persuade the others out of it, sometimes by telling them I do not care for it. As for the recordings: none of them reminds me of how she played it, though some of them do ease my heart.

  But what has ever reminded me of the way she played? Sometimes a phrase or two at a concert, sometimes a bit more, but never anything that lasts very long. To say that there was a naturalness to her playing does not say very much: after all, everyone plays according to their nature. Rightful surprise, intensity, inwardness - it is pointless to try to convey what she conveyed. I could as little describe the beauty of her playing as explain what I felt when I first met her. Sometimes in the last few years when I have turned on the radio I have heard someone playing who I have felt convinced must be Julia. But some turn of

  40 | VIKRAM SETH

  v#

  phrase unconvinces me; and if I still have a hope or a doubt, the announcement at the end puts me right.

  Last year I heard a snatch of Bach, in a taxi of all places. I rarely take cabs, cabs rarely play music, any music they do play is rarely classical. I had almost arrived at the studio when the cab-driver suddenly decided to tune in to Radio 3. It was the end of a prelude and the start of a fugue: strangely enough, in C minor. This is Julia, I said to myself. This is Julia. Everything spoke of her. We arrived; he turned off the radio; I paid him and ran. I was late for a session, and anyway I knew that I must be wrong.

  I-I3

  Virginie calls me to cancel a lesson. When she fixed the date she hadn't looked at her diary. Now she realises that she is double-booked. A friend has just arrived from Paris. The friend will not understand, but I will, and anyway she made the other booking first, so would I mind very much?

  "Who is this friend?" I ask.

  "Chantai. I've told you about her, haven't I? She's Jean-Marie's sister." Jean-Marie is Virginie's last boyfriend but one.

  "OK, Virginie."

  "So what date should we make it?"

  "I can't discuss that now."

  "Why not?"

  "I'm busy." The fact is, I'm quite put out by Virginie's approach to things.

  "Eh-oh!" says Virginie reproachfully.

  "Eh-oh yourself." , , ••.-* •

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 41

  "You sound so grumpy, Michael. Have you opened at all your windows today?"

  "It's a cold day. I don't always want fresh air."

  "Oh, yes, the great Arctic swimmer is afraid of the cold."

  "Virginie, stop being tedious."

  "Why are you in a bad mood with me? Are you in the middle of something?"

  "No."

  "Have you just finished something?"

  "Yes."

  "What?"

  "I've been listening to some music."

  "What music?"

  "Virginie!"

  "Well, I'm interested."

  "What you mean is that you're curious - which is entirely different."

  "No, it's just a little different. So?"

  "So, what?"

  "So, what is this mysterious music?"

  "Beethoven's trio in C minor, sorry, in ut mineur, for pianoforte, violin and violoncello, opus i number 3."

  "Be just nice, Michael."

  "I'm trying."

  "Why did that music annoy you with me?" ''•"*'-

  "It did not annoy me with you, as you put it. I'm not annoyed with you. If I'm annoyed at anyone, it's myself."

  "I like that trio very much," says Virginie. "Did you know he arranged it himself into a string quintet?"

  "What nonsense, Virginie. Oh, all right, let's fix a date for the lesson and get it over with."

  "But he did, Michael. He did not transpose it or anything. "

  "Virginie, believe me, if there had been a string quintet

  42. | VIKRAM SETH

  in C minor by Beethoven, I would definitely have heard of it, I would almost certainly have listened to it, and I would very probably have played in it."

  "I read it in my Guide de la Musique de Chambre."

  "You couldn't have!"

  "Wait. Wait. Just wait." She is back at the phone in a few seconds. I can hear her turning the pages. "Here it is. ppus 104."

  "What did you say?"

  "Opus 104." •••' •••''-

  "But that's crazy. That's at the wrong end of his life. Are you sure?"

  "You're not too busy? You want to talk to me now?" asks Virginie, raised eyebrows audible in her voice.

  "Oh, yes. Yes. What does it say?"

  "Let's see," says Virginie, translating quite fluently from her book. "It says that in 1817 he rearranged the third piano trio in opus i as a string quintet . . . Some amateur did it first, and Beethoven writes down a, how do you say, a humoristical appreciation that the amateur's horrible arrangement was a quintet in three voices, and Beethoven has made it properly into five voices, and converted it from a big miserability to a presentable aspect. And the original three-voice arrangement by the amateur is now offered in a solemn holocaust to the infernal gods. Am I clear?"

  "Yes, yes. But how incredible! Anything else?"

  "No. For a commentary it refers you to the trio."

  "Do you always read your way through reference books, Virginie?"

  "No, I was just bruising through, as you English say."

  I laugh. "This Englishman doesn't."

  "Are you happy now?" asks Virginie.

  "I think so. Yes. Yes, I am happy. Thank you, Virginie.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 43

  Thank you. I'm sorry I wasn't very nice earlier on. When do you want to have your lesson?"

  "Thursday next week at three o'clock."

  "Isn't that rather a long time from now?"

  "Oh, no. Not very long."

  "Well, keep practising."

  "Oh, yes, of course," says Virginie brightly.

  "You're not inventing all this?" I ask. "It just seems so unbelievable." But she couldn't possibly have invented so many plausible details on the spot.

  "Don't be silly, Michael."

  "And it's two violins, two violas and a cello - no strange combinat
ions, right?"

  "No. That's what it says."

  "Opus 104?" cr

  "Opus 104."

  1.14

  "Opus 104?" "

  "Opus 104." ''- •"'""

  "That's very strange, sir. In C minor? Well, it's not in

  the CD catalogue. I can't see it under Beethoven's string

  quintets."

  "Perhaps it's listed under the piano trio for some

  reason."

  "I'll check ... no, I'm sorry, it's not there either. Let

  me try the computer. I'll key in 'String quintet in C

  minor' and see what it spits out. No, it's not being very

  helpful. It says, 'No records satisfy your enquiries' . . .

  Let's see what happens if I try opus 104 ... Sorry, I'm

  afraid all I'm coming up with is Dvorak . . . you don't

  mean Dvorak?"

  "No. I don't mean Dvorak."

  44 | VIKRAM SETH

  sir?

  v?)

  "Well, would you like me to order the trio instead,

  ?"

  "No, thank you."

  The voice of the girl at Chimes is somewhat incredulous. "A string quintet in C minor by Beethoven. Have you heard this piece yourself, sir?"

  "No, but a friend has told me about it. It's welldocumented."

  "Well, sir, I'm afraid we don't have any score of that description. Perhaps if you left us your phone number . . ."

  "Look, you must have a list of Beethoven's opus numbers somewhere. Could you please look up one-ohfour?"

  A half-sigh, half-snort. "I suppose so."

  When she returns, her tone is puzzled, apologetic. "Well, sir, you appear to be right."

  "I appear to be right?"

  "I mean, you are right. Well, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. We don't have it, and it's not in print."

  "But this is Beethoven, not Engelbert Humperdinck. Are you absolutely sure you can't order it from somewhere?"

  There is a second of silence. Then she says: "I've just thought of something. Would you hold on a minute?"

  "For a week if necessary."

  When she returns, she says, "I've been looking at the microfiche. I don't know what you're going to think of this. Emerson Editions does it in an arrangement for clarinet quintet. Score and parts. We could order that for you. It's thirty-two pounds altogether. It would only take a couple of weeks if they have it in stock. But that's all that exists."