by Vikram Seth
AN EQUAL MUSIC
II3
backstage. I now check it almost silently, and tell it not to let me down.
Normally Piers would announce the encore. Instead, he and the others look at me and nod almost imperceptibly. I begin to play. I take my first two notes on open strings, almost as if they were a transition from tuning into music.
As I play the first few slow notes I hear from different points of the dark hall the indrawn breath of startled recognition. After my four lonely bars, Piers joins me, then Billy and then Helen.
We are playing the first contrapunctus of Bach's "Art of Fugue".
We play almost without vibrato, keeping the bow on the string, taking open strings wherever they fall naturally, even if it means that our phrases do not exactly replicate one another's. We play with such intensity, such calm, as I never imagined we could either feel or create. The fugue flows on, and our travelling bows follow its course, guided and guiding.
As I move to the tiny quaver, the minuscule quibble of a note that was the source of all my anxiety, Helen, who has a rest here, turns her head slightly and looks at me. I can tell that she is smiling. It is the F below middle C. I have had to tune my lowest string down a tone in order to be able to play it.
We play in an energised trance. These four-and-a-half minutes could be as many hours or seconds. In my mind's eye I see the little-used clefs of the original score, and the sinking and rising, swift and slow, parallel and contrary, of all our several voices - and in my mind's ear I hear what has sounded and is sounding and is yet to sound. I only have to realise on the strings what is already real to me; and so have Billy, and Helen, and Piers. Our synchronous visions merge, and we are one: with each
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other, with the world, and with that long-dispersed being whose force we receive through the shape of his notated vision and the single swift-flowing syllable of his name.
> . ^ . 2.23
Piers and I have changed out of our dinner jackets into easier clothes. This is an operation that we have got down to ninety seconds flat. People are standing outside the green room and along the stairs.
We open the door and Erica Cowan marches in with her arms spread in welcoming rapture. She is followed by twenty or thirty people.
"Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous, mwah, mwah, mwah!" goes Erica, dispensing lateral kisses. "Where's Billy?"
"In the shower," says Piers.
Billy rushed off down the corridor before the arrival of the public. He will be back with us in a few minutes, unsweaty and presentable. Lydia, his wife, is talking to Virginie. Piers, his eyes half-closed, is leaning against the coat-stand. Appreciative members of the audience are milling around. "Thank you, yes, thank you, delighted, delighted you enjoyed it... Hey, Luis!" he says with sudden enthusiasm, seeing someone he recognises.
All of us would rather be by ourselves but the Maggiore must smile to live.
Piers, unable to disentangle himself, is being asked his least-favourite question - the reason for our name - by an earnest young woman. He sees his parents across the room, waves them over, and engages them immediately in domestic conversation.
The sticky fan is here, adhering to Helen, resplendent
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red. Luckily, however, he is soon diluted by a couple of
indents of hers from the Guildhall.
& vfgedless to say, Nicholas Spare is nowhere in sight,
flUgh after what Piers did, it would have taken
probable nobility of spirit for him to turn up. Nor has
honoured his promise to include us in his musical
vhlights of the week. In fact, according to a source we
ve in the management of the hall, there are no critics
fe at all. It is immensely frustrating - a wonderful
rforrnance, and not a scrap of newsprint to tell the
P orld it happened. Not, I suppose, that the world would
many column-inches in the newsprint of the universe.
"Oh, c'est la guerre," says Erica to Piers when he
jnplains. "Critics don't matter, really."
C "That's nonsense, Erica, and you know it," says Piers
j,ortly"It's too wonderful an evening for fretting," says Erica.
i*Ah, that's Ysobel Shingle there. Ysobel with a Y, would
u believe it! She's from Stratus Records . . . Ysobel, Lpbel," shouts Erica, waving wildly.
A. tall young woman, who looks as grey as if she'd ever seen the sun and with a forehead fraught with
orry approaches and, with tremulous eagerness, tells pfjca and Piers how much she enjoyed the concert.
"Offer us a contract," says Erica with abandon.
Ysobel Shingle smiles in a hunted way. "Well, I have a
rt of idea," she says. "But I don't, you know, think that 'LJS is quite the place to ..." She trails off.
"Ten thirty tomorrow morning, I'll be in your office," says Erica.
"Well, you know, Erica, I, er, let me call you to ... Let
e think things through. I just wanted to tell, all of you I tiw very much I..." She twists her palms outwards in a
Ortured gesture, then, almost in a panic, turns to leave.
"What a very odd woman," says Mrs Tavistock, who,
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judging from Piers and Helen's unfilial accounts, is quite an odd woman herself.
"She's the power behind the success of Stratus," says Erica.
"Really?" says Piers, unwillingly impressed.
"It's fantastic that she was in the audience tonight," says Erica. "I'll follow this up like a bloodhound."
Ten minutes later Helen and I are chatting with a young woman from the hall management when we overhear the tail-end of one of Piers's conversations. "I'm so sorry," Piers is saying. "It's a problem I've had since I was a child . . . I've never been able to deal with stupid questions."
"I'd better go and gag him," says Helen.
The initial hubbub has died down; the crowd has thinned a bit. Billy and Lydia have gone home to relieve Billy's parents, who are baby-sitting Jango, their threeyear-old son. The sticky fan has somehow dematerialised. But there are still quite a few people around.
Virginie too has gone. She offered me a lift, but I decided I'd go with Helen instead. I want to have a quick post-mortem with her and Piers in the car.
I look around the room, tired but in a way content, the Bach still sounding in my head.
"Michael," says Julia as my eyes fall on her.
_ • "• ' 2.24 • •• '•
"Julia." The name forms on my lips, but I speak no sound, no whisper.
She looks at me, I at her. Some sort of dark-leafed lily is on her right, and she is wearing green. It was her; it is her.
"Hello," she says. ;
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"Hello."
There is an intentness to her gaze. The green silk swims into the deep green leaves, the shot green of the tablecloth, the olive green of the chairs, the thick velvety green of the curtains, the grass-green of an inchoate painting. I look down. The carpet, a rich viridian, is patterned with little red measles.
"Have you been here long?" I ask.
"I was waiting outside. I couldn't decide what to do."
I examine the measles. They are irregular in shape, arranged in regular rows. "And so, you're here," I say.
"I didn't know you were in the Maggiore," says Julia. "I simply saw the monthly programme, and thought of Banff, and how we met them there."
"I joined some years ago." Is this what we are to talk about after all? I look at her. "You came to the concert not knowing that I was playing?"
"It was a wonderful concert," she says. Her eyes are moist.
My eyes move towards the window. Outside, in the back street, it is raining. A mound of black plastic rubbish bags stands at the entrance of a cul-de-sac. The street-lamp plays
on their slick skins.
"It was you on the bus. I knew I couldn't be wrong."
"Yes."
"Why did you wait so long to get in touch with me? Why didn't you look for me in the phone book?"
There is a pause. People are speaking all around us. I can hear Piers lay down the law on some point of theory. Julia takes a step towards me.
"I couldn't face seeing you again." ; •
"Then why are you here?"
"After the Bach I knew I would come backstage. I can't explain why. It probably wasn't a good idea. I've been
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standing in the corridor all this time. But it is good to see you again, not just to hear you play."
There is no ring on her hand, but on her wrist is a small gold watch with a braided golden strap. Around her neck hangs a small diamond pendant. Her eyes seem more green than blue. From her voice, from the way she clutches her handbag, I know she is about to go.
"Please don't go," I say, grasping her hand. "I have to see you again. Do you live in London now? Will you call me? I'm doing nothing much tomorrow." She looks at me, bewildered. "What are you doing just now, Julia? Have you eaten? Do you have a car? You can't go out in this rain. You really can't."
Julia begins to smile. "No, I won't call you. I've never been very good on the phone. But we'll meet somewhere."
"Where? And when?"
"Michael, let go of my hand," she whispers.
"Where?"
"Oh, anywhere," says Julia, looking around. "How about the Wallace Collection? At one?"
"Yes."
"I'll see you at the entrance."
"Julia, give me your phone number."
She shakes her head.
"What if you aren't there? What if you change your mind?"
But before she can reply, Helen has come up to us. "Julia!" says Helen. "Julia! It's been ages! Ages! Canada, wasn't it? Banff. What a marvellous time. How have you been? Are you just visiting from Vienna? Michael said you'd lost touch, but here you are!"
"Yes," says Julia, with her acute, gentle smile. "Here I am."
"Piers!" says Helen. "Look who's here. Julia."
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Piers, deep in conversation with a young man, shakes his head a bit distractedly. Julia makes for the door.
"Let me walk you to your car," I say.
She puts on her coat and opens the door to the corridor. "I'm fine, Michael. You should stay behind for your post-mortem. A concert without a postmortem ..." ,
"... is like bridge without the mayhem. Yes."
"But where's Billy?" asks Julia.
"He's gone home. Baby-sitter."
"Billy has children?" Julia says, almost in wonderment.
"A child. A son."
"When I saw the four of you take your bow, I thought of the first phrase of Beethoven's fifth," she says. She matches her gesture to the notes: three tall thin players, and one short robust one.
I can't help laughing at the image. How has she changed? Her hair is much longer, her face a bit more drawn - but this Seems the work not of ten years, but of two,,
"Do you have anything else to say about our performance?" I ask, trying to keep her talking.
"Well ... I wish I couldn't see the name 'Haydn' through your music-rack when you were playing the Mozart."
"And?"
"And - nothing. It was lovely. But I must go. I really must. . . How is your finger?"
"Well, it hasn't troubled me much lately. In fact, hardly at all these last five years - ever since I joined the quartet, actually . . . Strange, isn't it, when your own body rebels against you, and then suddenly decides it doesn't want to any more."
I get a felt pen out of my pocket and take her hand. I
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write my phone number on the edge of her palm. She looks at me, astonished, but doesn't object.
"That's a phone and answering machine and fax. Transcribe it before you go to bed," I say. I lean down to kiss her palm, its life-line, its love-line. My lips move to her fingers.
"Michael, no, no, please." There is a desperation in her words that stops me. "Let me be. Please let me be. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Goodnight, then, Julia, goodnight." I let go her hand.
"Goodnight," she says quietly, turning away.
I go to the window. In a few moments she emerges from the back door. She opens her umbrella, then appears for a second or two to be uncertain which direction to take. The rain falls on the back street, on the black rubbish bags. Why the "Wallace Collection of all places, I wonder - not that it matters much. How will I sleep tonight, or even believe all this when I am alone? For a few moments her face is lit, too dimly for me to read much on it. She may be older, but she is as beautiful as she was. How much have I changed? She turns to the right, and I watch her till she moves round the corner onto the main street, out of the reach of my eyes.
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Part Three
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She is there a little before one. A nervous glance at me, a quick, tentative smile. I don't take her hand nor she mine.
"I've never been here before," I tell her.
"Never?"
"No. Though I've often meant to."
"Well, should we wander around?" she asks.
"Yes. Or we could go somewhere else for a coffee instead, if you'd like. Or a bite."
"I've had lunch," she says. "But if you haven't-"
"I'm not hungry," I say.
"The first time you went to an art gallery in Vienna it was with me, wasn't it?"
"Yes," I reply.
"So it's only appropriate that I should be your guide here as well."
"Except that Vienna is your city, and London is mine."
"Since when has London been your city?" Julia smiles.
"No, it's not really," I say, then smile back at her. "But I'm getting naturalised. " >- -
"Against your will?"
"Not entirely."
"The others are Londoners, aren't they? In the Maggiore, I mean."
"Sort of. Billy's London born and bred, Piers and
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Helen are from the West Country originally, but they're basically Londoners now."
"I remember Alec most of all."
"Alex," I say.
Julia looks a bit puzzled, then nods. "It was a shock to see you there instead of him."
"Naturally."
"I remember him reciting some Canadian poet, to the astonishment of our hosts. Service?"
"Yes. Rollicking stuff."
"And I remember lying awake in Banff listening to the trains," says Julia.
"So do I."
"Why did he leave? Weren't Piers and he lovers?" Julia is looking at me with a very direct gaze, tender and attentive.
"I suppose so," I say. "But after a few years - well, anyway, Piers doesn't like to talk about it. Things just fell apart, I think, as.they sometimes do. Musically as much as anything else: You remember, they used to alternate first and second violin."
"Recipe for disaster."
"Yes. We don't do that since I joined five years ago . . . And you - are you naturalised in London? Oh, by the way, I'm so sorry about your father."
Julia looks startled.
"Julia, I'm sorry that sounded so casual," I say, suddenly feeling guilty and dismayed. "I didn't mean it in that sense. After I saw you that day, I tried to track you down again. But the trail petered out in Oxford. I am so sorry. I liked him. And I know you adored him."
Julia looks down at her gentle, tapering fingers, which she crosses, an
d then slowly disengages, as if to let her thoughts run through them.
"Should we look around?" I ask.
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She doesn't answer for a while, then looks up and says: "Well, should we go in?"
I nod.
When she met me first, my mother was dead, and now her father is. Though he shut me off from knowledge of her when I most needed it, he was at heart a kind man. Pacific by nature, he wrote with objective clarity about the history of warfare. Julia takes after him, I think, in cast of mind. But how can I draw such conclusions, who met him only once and that just for a day?
3-2
We wander around for two hours, walking from room to room, hardly talking at all. This is not a neutral environment but a competing one. She is preoccupied sometimes with a painting, sometimes with nothing explicable. She seems to attend to the expression on the faces of those portrayed, to sink into them, to be unaware of my presence, unresponsive to my comments. She stands for a while before Velazquez's The Lady with a Fan.
"I'm sorry, Michael - I was far away." "No, no, that's fine." She looks at the lady, I at her. But why be frustrated? She was always a bit like this when in a gallery. There was a painting in Vienna - a Vermeer - that she stood in front of for half an hour before I tapped her shoulder and broke her trance.
I follow her steps and her gaze. A young, unreadably inward-looking black archer; a naughty, fluffy young woman on a swing kicking off her pink slipper to her lover; Rembrandt's son Titus. Who are these people, and what chain of chance has brought them to the common
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shelter of this building? How many scores of faces have each of us added to our lives these last ten years?
We find ourselves in a room in which an attendant is performing discreet callisthenics. The walls are covered with paintings of Venice. Surely this can't be why she has brought me here.
She turns her gaze from the paintings to the attendant, then to me: "Well, have you been there after all?" she asks.
"No, not yet."
"I have," she says quietly.
"Well, you wanted to so much."
"I?" she asks with a trace of tension.
"We."
She stands before a painting of a domed church with a tower, far out across the water. Though I have never been there it looks familiar.
"Maria and I went a few months after my final exams," she says; "There was a thunderstorm the first night we were there, with lightning flashing out over the whole lagoon. I kept crying, which was stupid because, after all, it was beautiful."