An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "No, my father didn't talk much about my settling down this time. He usually does."

  "Well, what's up?" asks Piers.

  "You remember that Beethoven quintet we talked about once?"

  "Yes, C minor, wasn't it, based on the trio? You said you'd tracked down the music. Did you manage to get hold of a recording?"

  "Yes. And I've just borrowed the parts from the music library in Manchester."

  "Excellent! Well, let's get hold of a viola player and run through it. Who should we get? Emma?"

  "Sure - why not? You know her better than I do. Will you give her a call?"

  "Righty-ho."

  "There's one other thing, Piers. Would you mind terribly if I played first violin just this once?"

  There is a second's silence. "It's not just a question of my minding," says Piers.

  "Well, should we ask the others?"

  "No, Michael," says Piers with a touch of annoyance. "Whatever they may say, I don't think it's a good idea. When Alex and I kept alternating between first and second violin, it not only drove us mad but Helen as well. She kept saying she couldn't adjust to the other parts, particularly to the second violin. And Billy too said it was like playing with a different quartet each time."

  "But this is just a one-off thing. We're not playing it professionally."

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  "What if we like our playing of it? What if we do want to play it professionally? Then we'll be stuck with that configuration."

  "Piers, it's just that the piece means a lot to me."

  "Well, then, why not get a few colleagues from the Camerata Anglica together on an ad hoc basis and play it through?"

  "It wouldn't work for me without our quartet."

  "Well, it won't work for me with our quartet."

  "Just think it over, Piers."

  "Michael, I'm sorry, I have thought it over."

  "Of course you haven't," I exclaim, angry at what seems closer to selfishness than neutral rigidity.

  "I have. I've thought it over in advance. I've gone over it hundreds of times in my head. When Alex left," says Piers a bit shakily, "I asked myself endlessly where we had gone wrong. There were other things too, but I'm sure that this was at the heart of it."

  "Well, you know best," I say, too upset to be sympathetic. And indeed, I'm not delighted by the regretful mention of Alex: after all, if he and Piers hadn't broken up, I wouldn't have been in the quartet at all.

  "Michael," says Piers, "I went through hell when he left. I know I'm no good as a second violinist now, if I ever was." He pauses, then continues: "If I were ever to take that part with our quartet, it would remind me of those times, and affect my playing. It would be no good for any of us."

  I remain silent.

  "Well," he says, "we've got a rehearsal the day after tomorrow at five at Helen's. That's still OK with you?" Piers has raised his visor again.

  "Yes. Why shouldn't it be?"

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  "Well, see you then." : "Yes. See you."

  2-15

  I never knew Alex well, though we met off and on during those weeks we spent in Banff. Even Helen, who loves gossip, does not talk of him and of his effect on all of them; and I have always felt that it isn't for me to ask about what exactly happened before my time. At first it seemed to me that the other three deliberately avoided talking about their former partner, and later, when I felt at ease with them and they with me, it seemed beside the point.

  His name rarely came up. When it did, Piers would quite often simply disappear into thoughts of his own. Sometimes, if it was Helen who mentioned him, he would snap like a wounded lynx.

  If I had known that six years later I would fill the place he left, I would have been more curious about Alex when we first met. On the surface, he was a cheerful man, full of energy, easy-going, fond of attention, quick to make jokes or recite humorous verse, very gallant towards women, and quite possibly attracted to them too. Julia liked him a lot. From hearing him play sometimes first, sometimes second violin when they performed (both then in Canada and later at the odd concert in London that I went to), it was obvious to me not only what an excellent player he was but also what a flexible one - more flexible than Piers, who stuck out a bit when he played second violin. Perhaps, as Piers intimated, if Alex had been content to play only second violin they might have stayed together, and I would never have joined the Maggiore. But perhaps, being both lovers and fellow violinists, what they had was fated to fray. When tension entered either

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  relationship, it must have stressed and twisted the other. And Piers, at the best of times, is never an easy person to be with.

  Alex left Piers, the quartet and, indeed, London, and took up a position with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Piers was bereft. He was without a partner for more than a year after I joined the quartet. And then Tobias entered the picture - or, more exactly, crashed through the frame.

  Tobias Kahn was a very powerful, concentrated, serious violinist. Music was his life - he had no other interests - and he believed with complete conviction that there was a correct way to make music and a wrong way. He was a member of another string quartet. Piers came under his sway.

  Piers and Alex had been equals. But with Tobias it was almost as if Piers was taking orders from a superior, an invisible fifth person who was perpetually present among us. It was a strange and unsettling episode, and one of the things that brought home to me how precarious, for all their strength, the ties between us are.

  Piers is, was, has always been a natural musician: he is very focused, very disciplined, but not rigid in his musicianship. When he plays something, he lets the moment as well as the structure guide him. Under the influence of Tobias, he became obsessed with the holy writ of theory: what a piece is, what it should be, what it must be, what it couldn't not be. A bar or a phrase or a passage had a certain tempo; one had to stick to it, come what may. Our job was to realise a reproduction of the score. Anything else - an imaginative idea, a fluctuation in pace, a whim, anything that smudged the template was an abomination. There was no sense of "ah!" to our music at all. We attained a lifeless lucidity.

  Piers was playing entirely against his grain, and it was hell for the rest of us. The unconstrained things, the

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  things that make a movement work from minute to minute, disappeared - at first they were excised, then not even attempted. At times it was almost Tobias and not Piers who was playing and arguing. It is difficult to explain this fairly, even with the passage of time. It was a bit like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  Helen couldn't fathom what had got into her brother. Tobias was an odd fellow - he almost didn't have a personality, just a mind in the grip of powerful and serious ideas - and she couldn't see what Piers saw in him. He was, after all, almost the antithesis of Alex. Even Billy, who is interested enough in matters of theory, was deeply unhappy. He saw the Tobias line as a selfindulgent pandering to the will. Rehearsals were a torment. Sometimes we talked around things for three hours and didn't play a note. It ate into our lives. It nearly split us, and would have if it had gone on a little longer. Helen wanted to leave before she in effect lost a brother. Once, when we were in Japan, she said she was going to quit as soon as the tour was over. But, after more than a year, the fever abated. Piers somehow exorcised Tobias, and not just he but all of us gradually became ourselves again.

  We never mention Tobias if we can avoid it. We skirt around the subject but do not touch it. The experience of that year, the unprepared-for pain of it, is something none of us are likely to forget.

  Many musicians - whether players in orchestras or freelancers - consider quartet players to be an odd, obsessed, introspective, separatist breed, perpetually travelling to exotic destinations and garnering adulation as if by right. If they knew the costs of that too-uncertain adulation, they would not resent us quite so much. Quite apart from our shaky fina
nces and our continual anxiety about getting bookings, it is our proximity to each other

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  and only to each other which, more often than we recognise, constricts our spirits and makes us stranger than we are. Perhaps even our states of exaltation are akin to the dizziness that comes from lacking air.

  #&; , , 2.16 ' . . ,.

  (•*•• ,,•'' ' ---..

  On my answering machine are a number of messages from Virginie. I call her and get her answering machine. Late at night, when I have almost drifted off to sleep, the phone rings.

  "Why didn't you call me at Christmas?" demands Virginie.

  "Virginie, I told you I wouldn't. I was up north."

  "And I was down south. That's what phones are for."

  "I told you I wouldn't call you - that I wanted to be on my own."

  "But how could I believe you would be so horrible?"

  "Did you have a good time in - where exactly were i you at Christmas? Montpellier? Saint-Malo?"

  "Nyons, of course, with my family, as you perfectly well know, Michael. Yes, I had a good time. A very good time. I don't need you to have a good time."

  "Yes, I know, Virginie."

  "The more it goes, the less I understand you."

  "Virginie, I was half asleep."

  "Oh, Michael, you're such a bore," says Virginie. "You're always half asleep. Such a boring old git," she adds proudly.

  "Virginie, you're ODing on your English idioms. Yes, well, I've been thinking about that. I'm sixteen years older than you."

  "So what? So what? Why do you always tell me you aren't in love with me?"

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  "I didn't say that."

  "No, but that's what you meant. Do you like to teach me?"

  "Well, when you respond."

  "And do you like to talk to me?"

  "Well, yes, when it's not too late."

  "And do you like to make love to me?"

  "What? . . . Yes."

  "I am content with that. I practised two hours every day when I was in France."

  "Making love?"

  Virginie starts to giggle. "No, silly Michael, violin."

  "Good girl."

  "We have a lesson tomorrow, and you will see the progress I've made."

  "Tomorrow? Look, Virginie, about tomorrow - I wonder if we could postpone it by a couple of days."

  "Why?" An audible pout.

  "You know that Beethoven string quintet you told me about? I've got hold of the music, and we'll be playing it through the day after tomorrow. I want to have a good look at it first."

  "Oh, but that's wonderful, Michael. Why don't I join you to play it?"

  "Now, Virginie, wait a second -"

  "No, listen. You play the second viola since you always say you miss the chance to play the viola, and I will play the second violin."

  "No, no, no, no - " I cry, warding off the thought like a swarm of bees.

  "Why are you so violent, Michael?"

  "It's just that . . . Piers has already asked someone else."

  "But I only suggested it." Virginie sounds bewildered.

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  What a cruel fool I am. But I won't make it worse by elaborating.

  "Michael," says Virginie. "I love you. You don't deserve it, but I do. And I don't want to see you tomorrow. I don't want to see you or talk to you until after you have played that stupid music. / told you about it. You didn't even believe it existed."

  "I know. I know."

  Virginie puts down the phone without a goodnight or goodbye.

  2.17

  "We meet at Helen's to play the Beethoven quintet. I have spent the previous day studying my part and the score.

  Neither Piers nor I refers to our conversation. I have accepted the status quo as second violin, even for this. The parts of the quintet have been distributed to the other players and we have tuned up. Emma Marsh, whom Piers knows from his student days at the Royal College of Music, has joined us as second viola. She is a short, plump, pretty young woman who plays the viola in a quartet of her own, so she should blend in well with us. Billy and Helen look at each other and make operatic gestures of separation.

  "All repeats?" asks Helen.

  "Yes," I reply.

  Billy examines his part with intense interest, and asks to see the score. He will be playing almost without pause in the quintet, unlike in the trio that was its original avatar, but some of his higher lyrical lines have gone to Helen.

  Piers looks uncomfortable. Good.

  I have never before now felt unhappy with my position

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  as second violinist, though I agree with whoever said it should more properly be called "the other violinist". Its rôle is different, not lesser: more interesting, because more versatile. Sometimes, like the viola, it is at the textural heart of the quartet; at others it sings with a lyricism equal to that of the first violin, but in a darker and more difficult register.

  Today, though, I am unhappy and aggrieved. I have had to wean myself from the expectation of playing the part that I had come to see and hear as mine. Piers cannot imagine how qualmlessly I would stab him with the poisoned tip of my bow. I never expected him to be so ungiving.

  But now he breathes in a swift little crotchet-sniff of a cue, and we are off, allegro con a lot of brio.

  Within a minute I have forgotten all resentment, all rights and pleasures due to me. They are irrelevant within this lovely, vigorous music. We play the first movement without stopping, and do not get entangled once. It ends with Piers playing a tremendously zippy set of ascending and descending scales, followed by a huge resonant chord from all five of us, ebbing swiftly away in three softer chords.

  We look at each other, beaming.

  Helen shakes her head. "How come I've never heard this? How come no one knows about this?"

  "It's delicious," is all Emma can say.

  "Thank you, Michael," says Piers, his face radiant. "It's a real discovery. But it makes you sweat."

  "You'll thank me even more after the second movement," I say. "It's a beauty."

  "But it must have been written a good twenty years after the trio," says Billy. "What else was he composing at the time?"

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  "Not much," I say, having researched it. "Well, what do you think? Avanti?"

  "Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement.

  How good it is to play this quintet, to play it, not to work at it - to play for our own joy, with no need to convey anything to anyone outside our ring of recreation, with no expectation of a future stage, of the too-immediate sop of applause. The quintet exists without us yet cannot exist without us. It sings to us, we sing into it, and somehow, through these little black and white insects clustering along five thin lines, the man who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed speaks into us across land and water and ten generations, and fills us here with sadness, here with amazed delight.

  For me there is another presence in this music. As the sense of her might fall on my retina through two sheets of moving glass, so too through this maze of motes converted by our arms into vibration - sensory, sensuous

  - do I sense her being again. The labyrinth of my ear shocks the coils of my memory. Here is her force in my arm, here is her spirit in my pulse. But where she is I do not know, nor is there hope I will.

  2.18

  I met Julia two months after I arrived in Vienna, in early winter. It was at a student concert. She played a Mozart sonata. I told her afterwards how entranced I had been by her playing. We got talking about ourselves, and discovered we both came from England - different

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  Englands, though, since her father taught history at Oxford. Her parents had m
et after the war: like us, in Vienna. After weeks of struggling in German, it was such a pleasure, such a relief to speak English again that I babbled on much more than usual. She smiled when I said I came from Rochdale - but then somehow drew me into talking about my town in a way that I never had before. I asked her out to dinner. It was a cold night, with bits of snow and slush on the ground, and Vienna was at its greyest and grimmest. We walked to the restaurant. I slipped, and she stopped me from falling. I kissed her instinctively - amazed at myself even as I did it - and she was too surprised to object. She wore a grey silk scarf around her hair - she was always fond of scarves. I looked into, and away from, her eyes, and realised, as she must have, that I was far gone.

  From the moment of our first meeting I could think of nothing but her. I don't know what she saw in me other than my almost desperate longing for her, but within a week of our meeting we were lovers. One morning, after a night of making love, we tried making music together. It did not go well; we were both too nervous. Later in the week we gave it another try, and were taken aback by how naturally, how responsively - to each other, to the music - we were playing. Together with a cellist - Julia's friend and classmate Maria - we set up a trio, and started performing wherever we could, in and out of Vienna. At a friend's suggestion we sent off a tape and an application, and were accepted for the summer school in Banff. That winter, that spring, that summer, I lived in a waking dream.

  She was five years younger than I was - a regular student, not someone there as a sort of graduate appendage attached to a particular teacher. In many ways, though, she seemed older. She was at ease in our

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  shared city, where she had already lived for three years. Though she had spent all her life in England before coming to Vienna to study, she had grown up speaking both German and English. She had been brought up in a world unreachably different from mine, where art and literature and music are absorbed without effort or explanation - from speech and travel, from books and records, from the very walls and shelves. For all my studies at school and all my autodidact's reading, sometimes random, sometimes obsessive, during those years in Manchester, it was she who became my best teacher, and for this as for everything else I gave my heart into her hand.