An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "Of course, but I don't try to."

  "I try to remember it," says Helen, "from time to time." She smiles - to herself, not at me.

  162. I VIKRAM SETH

  V

  "Helen, it was a one-off thing. But I don't feel that way. And never will. Good thing too."

  "In the Quartetto Italiano the woman was serially married to all three of the men."

  "Well, in the Quartetto Maggiore that would involve bigamy and incest."

  "Not with you it wouldn't."

  "I, Helen, am no good to anyone. You should understand that once and for all."

  "Not to Virginie, certainly."

  "Perhaps it's because she's my student that I'm so sharp with her. I don't know. I wish I could help myself. "

  "Nor to Julia?" Helen, getting no response, takes her eye off the road and looks at me carefully. "You've been very preoccupied," she says, "ever since that night at the Wig."

  "Helen, we'd better concentrate. It gets a bit tricky here. Take the next right, and then a left about a hundred yards on. We're almost there." :->• Helen nods. She knows better than to press her point.

  3.14

  Eric Sanderson is about forty, large and full-bearded with great owl-like spectacles.

  His attic of a workshop is full of wood, in every stage of formation from mute logs to fully strung and tuned violins, violas and cellos. A couple of girls in aprons are tapping and chiselling away. The scent is ambrosial: the complex fragrance of many woods and oils, resins and varnishes.

  "Now, that's a failure," he says, introducing us to a perfectly decent-looking violin parked by the door. "A rare failure, I hasten to add. But it's got a buyer. What

  AN EQUAL MUSIC

  I63

  am I to do? I've got to make a living. And someone picks it up and plays it and says, 'That's exactly what I want.' Well, what should I do? I want to say, I'm not selling that one. Soundwise, it's just a bad fiddle . . . but then along comes an overdraft letter from the bank manager . . . Still, even if I sell it, I'd rather the world didn't know about it. But of course a year or two down the line and a good fiddle could sound bad. Or vice versa, don't you think?"

  "I'm sure," says Helen, perplexed and disarmed.

  "Is that natural?" he asks, looking at Helen's hair.

  "Yes," says Helen, blushing.

  "Good. Good. A lot of henna around recently. Interesting pigment. Would Strad have used it if he'd had it? Madder."

  "Madder?"

  "Yes. Madder. Now that lovely red colouring, that deep red varnish. What a thing it must have been after those pale yellows. Stradivari uses it in Cremona and Gagliano in Naples and Tononi in Bologna, and . . . but you have a Tononi for me, don't you?" he asks, turning

  to me.

  "Well, yes, but mine isn't red."

  "Oh," says Eric Sanderson, looking somewhat put out. "I can never understand it. Old Johannes has this lovely red in Bologna, but young Carlo goes off to Venice and reverts to the old yellow. Why? Why?"

  He looks at me closely through his owl-glasses. The two apprentices continue to work, unfazed by their master's cries.

  "I'm afraid I don't know," I say. "But, well, I suppose I'm used to it, and I really do like the colour. It's not just yellow. It's a sort of honey-amber." I take it out of its case, and Eric Sanderson turns it around.

  "Yes," he says with approval. "For a honey-amber it's

  l64|viKRAMSETH

  £

  ~Mk^

  w-ifr»

  *«SBMT " s

  MT ^

  a pretty passable sort of honey-amber. But it buzzes sometimes? Play something."

  I play about half a minute's worth of a Bach partita.

  He looks dubious. "Not much of a buzz. But I suppose it's shy in company. Leave it here."

  "I can't really," I say. "Not this week, anyway."

  "Well, how can I help you then? Anyway, what's the history of the problem?"

  "It buzzed quite a bit on our American trip last year. I had it looked at some months ago, but it played up again a few weeks later. It's settled down now, but I'm just worried it'll start up again."

  "Could be any of a number of things. So you went to Alaska and Hawaii in the same week?"

  "Neither, actually."

  "L.A. and Chicago?"

  "Yes, as it happens."

  "People travel too much nowadays," says Eric Sanderson. "And too fast. If they were made of wood they'd think twice about it. Hmm, shaved a bit," he says, examining the interior with a sort of dentist's mirror. "Not too bad, though. No obvious cracks. Could be anything. There was an exhibition of Venetian instruments a little while ago. Like a Gaudy, I suppose. Lots of gossiping among them. 'Haven't seen you for centuries, my dear. Did you hear about the Fenice? I was there when it happened the first time around, but I managed to escape. Poor old Serenissima. Musically hopeless now, of course, but everything was born there - opera, antiphony . . . Now, who was disputing that the other day?' . . . Where did you pick this up?"

  "Rochdale."

  "Rochdale, did you say?" Sanderson pats his beard, frowning.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 165

  "Yes."

  "There's no poetry in the name. No, no poetry there at all. Ashby-de-la-Zouch: now there's something. Listen: sandarac, dammar, mastic, colophony ..." He incants the names with mystic reverence.

  Helen sighs.

  "Poetry is more to me than music," says Eric Sanderson. "Anyway, most musicians are on beta-blockers. This will cost you dearly," he says, turning to Helen, who looks a bit alarmed.

  "It will?" asks Helen, rattled by these swift leaps.

  "And it isn't worth it. From your call I gather you want me to make you an instrument for one particular purpose. Scordatura . . . scordatura . . . now there's a delicious word. But how will it live out the rest of its life? Unplayed, un-honoured and unstrung."

  "Well," says Helen, "perhaps it could be tuned normally then, and I could play it like any other viola."

  This meets with silence, followed by further tangential musings.

  "I believe in sycamore and the English woods," says Eric Sanderson. "Why should everyone use Italian maple? Wouldn't the Italians have used sycamore if they'd lived here?"

  "I'm sure they would," says Helen.

  "They used beech, they used poplar, they used . . . why, even the purfling . . . pearwood here, ebony there, whatever was to hand. I was admiring a design the other day and someone said: 'But that's mere purfling.' 'Purfling is never mere,' I told him. 'Never, never mere.' " He turns to me. "For all I know, that could be the cause of your buzzing."

  "But can you do it?" asks Helen plaintively.

  Sanderson taps the plaster cast of a cello scroll. "I've

  166 VIKRAM SETH

  &

  ^

  been thinking about it," he says. "My first reaction was, it's a challenge. But on consideration . . . this is how it is. Tuning down a second, no problem. You could probably do that on your own viola. A minor third, very tricky. A major third, impossible, I would say. Even if you could get a sound out of it, it would be a flabby sort of sound. A fourth - but why would anyone in their right mind ever want to tune a viola down a fourth? Oh yes, 'Art of Fugue', 'Art of Fugue', you mentioned it. My mind isn't very receptive at that time of day. And my daughters were demanding breakfast. I think, you know, that you should try the early music fraternity. They'll give you much better advice than me. They're more experienced in tunings and retunings. I'll give you a couple of numbers."

  "You can't do it, then?"

  Eric Sanderson purses his lips. "Do you really want to throw seven or eight thousand pounds away on something so specific? Well, it would be an interesting design problem. But it would have to be very big."

  "I played on a seventeen-inch viola once," says Helen. "After a while it stopped feeling unwieldy."

  "Was it a good instrument?"

  "It was a wonderful instrument."

  "If I were you," says Eric
Sanderson, "and I say this against my own interests, get hold of that viola again, and talk to the early birds. They're a rum lot, but they know how to twist a gut."

  Back in the car, Helen is silent. Then, just as we are crossing Albert Bridge, she says: "He didn't tell me a single thing he couldn't have on the phone."

  "Well, I suppose not, but it's always good to ..."

  "I'm going to tell Piers it's fine. We've got to go ahead with the recording. I've got the viola I want."

  "But Helen, that's a barefaced lie. You don't."

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 167

  i ao, says neien. i can see it in my miners eye. i can hear it in my mind's ear. It exists."

  Helen is driving through Chelsea in a carefree manner. "You'll come with me to the early music people, won't you?" she asks.

  "No, I won't."

  "Oh, Michael, don't be unreasonable. You've always been so helpful. How could I have put up my shelves without you?"

  "No, no, Helen, don't try to jolly me along. And I'm not going to be part of your plan to tell Piers you've solved the problem either. Don't you realise how bad it'll be for all of us if we have to pull out later?"

  "But we won't have to," says Helen calmly. "Let's stop and have a coffee. It's such a relief to be back in London."

  ,^c 3.15 i;,,-.^- •- .; ..^v10.,-,

  A restless night, followed by a restless morning. At eleven

  - long after I ha've stopped expecting her, and without buzzing me from outside - Julia rings my doorbell. My delight must be evident. So must my surprise. For one thing, she is astonishingly well dressed: long black cashmere coat, grey silk dress, opal pendants. Her hair is done up in some sort of bun. She holds out her hand to me - to forestall, I suppose, any attempt at a kiss.

  "Your porter let me into the building. He must have remembered my struggles from the last time."

  "I'm not surprised."

  "But he didn't engage me in conversation this time."

  "I'm not surprised at that either. You look rather like a vision."

  '"^- 168 I VIKRAM SETH

  A,%^, & *>T_ ,^-ÎL-^

  -^

  *, "*J

  ** ^JL

  "Oh, don't worry about that," I say, helping her off with her coat. "But why all this finery at eleven a.m.?"

  Julia says nothing, but wanders over to the huge window. I don't press the question.

  "How calm and beautiful it looks from here," she says. "The park, the lake, the far hills on both sides. And the entire valley in between taken up by people. This morning as I was dressing I asked myself, what is a Londoner? You're not, I'm not, James is not, Luke doesn't want to be. There's some kind of lunch m the City today and for some reason James wants me to go. You must be wondering about all this stuff I'm wearing."

  "When's the lunch?"

  "Twelve thirty. I have a few errands to do before then, so I'm in a rush. I can't stay long. I haven't brought Bach, but I have brought someone else along. Is that all right?"

  "But yes! Yes, of course."

  We enter the little soundproof music room. I adjust the lamp so that the light falls on the music-rack of the

  piano. > .

  "Oh, that's all right, I haven't got the music. It’s just one movement, and I know it well enough. You'll remember it, too."

  I sit to one side of her.

  Julia begins playing without even testing the sound of the piano. With the first four notes, I am taken back to the student concert in Vienna where we first met. It is the slow movement of Mozart's Sonata in C major, KB30.

  There is something tender and indefinably strange and searching about her playing, as if she is attending to something beyond my hearing. I cannot put my finger on it, but it undoes me. I sit with my head in my hands, as Mozart drops note by note into my mind.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 169

  When it is over she turns towards me, looking at me very attentively.

  "I didn't expect that," I say.

  "Was it all right?" she asks.

  I shake my head. "No. It wasn't all right. It was a little better than that. . . Sometimes over these past years I've thought you were dead."

  Julia frowns, as if trying to comprehend what has brought about this remark, then murmurs: "I must go."

  "Don't go at once. How about a quick coffee?" I say as we enter the corridor. "Or tea. Did I say something wrong?"

  "I really can't." She looks at her watch.

  "I'd like you to listen to a movement of something else," I say, playing for time.

  "What is it?" " "One trip down memory lane deserves another."

  "Don't be a tease, Michael. What is it?"

  "You won't know if you won't listen. Forget your errands. I'll put'it on. It's an old friend transfigured. But I won't tell you in advance what it is."

  "Do you have it on CD?" asks Julia, perplexed. "May I borrow it? I really don't have time to listen to it now. And I don't - I really don't - want to burst into tears in front of you." •/ ; -

  "It's on an LP."

  . "That's fine. We've got a turntable." •; I remove the jacket of the Beethoven string quintet and give it to her in its plain white sleeve. "You mustn't look at the label on the disc itself," I tell her. "In fact, give it back to me for a second. It's difficult sometimes to resist reading things. I'm going to cover the label with a yellow sticker." ;

  "Why all this mystery?"

  170 | VIKRAM >SETH

  "So that you don't know what it is until you hear the first few notes."

  "Do you have the score as well?"

  "Well, yes, as a matter of fact."

  "Give it to me in an envelope. I won't open it until later."

  As I help her on with her coat, I feel an almost irresistible urge to hold her, to kiss her. But I can read that this is just what she fears. I must keep to the innocent rules of these visits, so filled with anxiety for her. Even the intimacy of music is not guiltless. The record in her hand reminds me of our trio, and she is so close I can hear her breathe.

  I wait for the lift with her, happier and uneasier for our few minutes together.

  This time, when she is inside, I press my nose to the gridded glass, and as the inner door slides across I can see

  - and hear - her laugh.

  3.16

  Late at night, I receive a fax, in English, from Julia:

  Dearest Michael,

  I could not believe it. I've never heard it. I've never even heard of it. You know what that trio

  meant to me.

  May I see you tomorrow morning, nine-ish? I assume from your earlier fax that you're free. If for some reason you're not, please fax me back.

  Julia

  I read and re-read the note. The first and last words, seen in that unchanged hand, contract the intervening

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 171

  years. She didn't write "Love", but surely one can't be "Dearest" without it.

  At nine, again avoiding the intercom, Julia buzzes my doorbell directly. Rob must be charmed off his feet, I think, though this morning she is in jeans.

  "What do you know by heart of Mozart?" she asks without preamble, leading me to my soundproof cell.

  "Of his violin sonatas?"

  "Yes." ;". ', "

  "Why?" ,

  "I don't want you standing behind me, looking over my shoulder."

  I stare at her in amazement. "I could have my own music separately on that stand," I say.

  "Well, answer my question," says Julia almost brusquely.

  "You mean a whole sonata? None, I don't think. Not now. "

  "A movement will do," she says. "Yes, in fact, a movement would be better. The second movement of the E minor?" She hums a phrase, dead on key.

  "Yes!" I say, still a bit dazed with anticipation. "I think that's one of the few I do know by heart - or almost. I've listened to it recently, but I don't think I've played it for a few years. I'll have to look at the music . . . Here it is. I'll keep my part open on that stand, but I'll only glance
at it if I'm stuck. I'll stand here if you want. But why don't you want me looking over your shoulder?"

  "Call it a whim."

  "All right. Let me tune up. Let's have an A."

  I pass my eye over the two facing pages of my music for a few seconds and tell her when I'm ready. Every joyful memory of Vienna comes flooding back to my mind.

  I/Z | VIKRAM SETH ;

  We play the movement through. I get the sense that Julia is leading me. Her part is continuous - she has no entries as such where she has to take her cue from me. She fluffs - or is it I who fluffed it? - the point where we both strike up together after a rest. Her eyes are often on me. But again, as with yesterday, an intentness, an inwardness that goes beyond Vienna, a lovely subtle directness imbues her music; and, by conduction, mine.

  In one zigzag descending line I play an A natural for an A sharp, rather a horrible mistake, but she doesn't say anything, then or later. Perhaps she has chosen not to be too exacting with me the first time around. Or perhaps she sees things more in the round, and feels it would be petty to cavil over a single note in a movement so intensely played.

  "Should we do the other movement too?" I ask when it is over.

  "Let's let it be," she says. We look at each other.

  "I love you, Julia. Pointless to say it, perhaps, but I do

  - still."

  She sighs, not from happiness. Her fingers massage an imaginary ring. Falling back in love with her, whom I had never forgotten, is inexpensive for me. For her, who had succeeded in putting me out of mind, whose very name has changed to another's, it could be costly indeed.

  "I you," she says at last in a voice so full of regret she could almost be saying the opposite.

  We do not even touch to confirm what we have said. Then, gently, lightly, I kiss the side of her neck. She breathes slowly, but says nothing.

  "Well?" I ask.

  She smiles, a little sadly. "Making music and making love - it's a bit too easy an equation."

  "Have you told him about me?" I ask.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 173

  "No," she says. "I don't know what to do about all . this subterfuge: faxes in German, coming up to see you here . . . but it's really Luke who I feel I'm ..."

  "Betraying?"

  "I'm afraid of all these words. They're so blunt and fierce."

  "And of music?" I ask.