An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "How can you be so philosophical about it?" I say. "I can't understand it."

  "Well, it's new to you, Michael, this whole weird world."

  "And it's getting worse all the time?"

  "A little."

  "Day by day?"

  "Well, month by month. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to play with other players. Luckily, with the piano, you can be more than one player all by yourself, so it won't be such a lonely world. I have a few solo concerts lined up, including one at the Wigmore this December. Schumann and Chopin. You can astonish me and come backstage for that one."

  "Oh no - I'm not coming to hear you play Schumann," I say, attempting to be casual. "He's the wrong Schu. " I can't for the moment remember where I've heard that before.

  Julia laughs. "You're so narrow-minded, Michael."

  "Narrow gorges run deep."

  Julia looks perplexed, then recovers. "Narrow gorges

  run narrow.

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  "All right, all right. But you haven't told me anything about your career. When did you begin to play in public again?"

  "When Luke was a few months old. As a baby he loved listening to me play, and I'd alternate between playing for him and feeding him. Sometimes I'd be feeding him at the piano and playing with my free hand - a sort of one-part invention." She smiles at the slightly ridiculous vision.

  "And you played like that in public?"

  "Very funny. Now you've made me - oh, yes, James asked me one day whether I'd play for a few people the next evening. He very rarely asks me to do anything he feels doubtful about, so I said yes without thinking. When they came, I discovered that they included the music critic of the Boston Globe and a couple of other high mucky-mucks in the musical world. I wasn't happy at his little trick, but I'd promised, so I played, and they liked it and things went on from there. Salon rather than stage at first, but after a year or so James and the others suggested I perform publicly - and I felt ready for it, so I did. But most people in the New England area knew me as Julia Hansen, so that was what I stuck to."

  "New name, fresh start, no old associations?"

  "Yes. It was Julia McNicholl who had stopped playing-" ,, ..m ....,-.. ..,.,:

  "You played for months after I left." :> v,. . •.<

  "I had my studies. I kept to them." ,i :

  I say nothing.

  "But I never knew how fortunate I was, despite all that," says Julia. After a while she continues: "No one knows how this thing came about. I get so exhausted lipreading. Our ears are strange things. We can't hear dogwhistles. Did you know that bats begin beyond Bach?"

  "You've lost me," I say.

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  "Their entire range of hearing lies beyond Bach's four octaves."

  "Well," I say, "I suppose one could transpose everything up four octaves for the benefit of bats."

  "Michael, you turned away. I missed that." ^

  "Oh, it's not worth repeating."

  "Repeat it," says Julia very quietly.

  "It was a pathetic joke."

  "Let me decide that," says Julia quite sharply.

  "I said that perhaps one ought to transpose Bach four octaves up for the edification of baroque bats."

  Julia stares at me, then begins laughing. Soon tears are rolling down her cheeks: the only tears she's shed so far, and not the right ones at all.

  "Yes, you're right, Michael," she says, giving me a hug, the first for a week. "You're right. That was pretty pathetic."

  4-7

  Helen phones me in high excitement.

  "Lunch. Yes. Today. No, Michael, no excuses. I'm paying. It's the viola. I've got it!"

  We meet at the Santorini Taverna. Helen, not willing to waste time with irrelevancies, orders for both of us.

  "I went to the opening of this marvellous ceramics exhibition yesterday," says Helen. "Very Chinesey, very quirky, very deep. But some disgusting collector marched in before anyone else had the chance to see anything, and put red dots under every single item. Everyone who came went around looking totally disconsolate, turning the pots upside down and scowling."

  "Why didn't you let me have a look at the menu?"

  "What would you want to look at the menu for?"

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  "Just in case there was something I might have liked better."

  "Oh, don't be silly, Michael, the kleftikon is absolutely delicious. You do like lamb, don't you? I can never remember. And let's have a bottle of the house red. I'm in the mood for a celebration."

  "We're rehearsing in an hour and a half."

  "Oh -" Helen waves her hand about. "Don't be such a damp squib."

  "It's you who'll get tipsy, not me. Or sleepy. Or both. Women get too high on too little at lunch."

  "Oh, is that so, Michael?" • : h

  "Believe me. And I want some spinach."

  "Why spinach?"

  "I like spinach."

  "Spinach is bad for you. It makes your eyes pop."

  "What nonsense, Helen."

  "I've never liked spinach," says Helen. "Nor has Piers. So there is something we agree on. I sometimes wonder why he ever asked me to join the quartet. And I wonder why I ever did. I'm sure we'd get along better if we weren't yoked together like this. Or if we weren't both musicians. Or if he hadn't bagged the violin first. Not that I mind - every decent composer preferred to play the viola . . . Ah, good." She has just noticed that our waiter is standing near her. "We'll have a bottle of the house red. And my friend here wants some horrible spinach," says Helen.

  "We only serve excellent spinach, madam."

  "Well, he'll have to have some of that, then."

  The waiter bows and disappears. Helen is obviously a much-loved regular.

  After a quick glass, Helen tells me that she has found someone in the early-music twilight zone who has solved her problem.

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  "The real difficulty wasn't getting one of those huge violas - there're quite a few lying around here and there it was the rigging. How do you rig it down a fourth? Hugo - he's absolutely brilliant, I've never met anyone like him, he looks rather like a hairy embryo, but he's an absolute darling - he strung the lower two with thick silver-covered gut and the top two with plain gut, and we rushed off to some fiddle-shop - in Stoke Newington, can you believe it? - to work out the tension. It was opposite a jazz bar and Hugo wants us to go there sometime, but I just don't feel it here -"

  Helen thumps her left breast and gulps down a glass with an alacrity reminiscent of Captain Haddock.

  I pour myself a second glass. If I don't share the bottle, Helen will be legless by the time we play our scale.

  "Well," continues Helen, "the first try at rigging it down a fourth was absolutely hopeless. The strings needed a huge amount of tension, and the plates stopped vibrating. It completely clammed up ... No: that's for him ... I really don't see how you can eat it, Michael. I really detest it. When I was six I had to sit in the corner for a whole hour because I refused to eat it. I never did. And I didn't say sorry either." .

  "So, Helen. It clammed up. And then?" . ,•:

  "We were talking about spinach-" , :

  "We were talking about your viola."

  "So we were. Clammed up. Etcetera. And then. Where was I?"

  "Right, Helen, no more wine until story-time's over."

  "And then - then, oh, yes, then he went up to Birmingham or Manchester or somewhere and found a man who's the Tsar of strings. He gets the guts straight from the slaughter-house, and they lie about steaming in tubs all over the place. Apparently his house smells like an absolute abattoir." Helen pushes her kleftikon aside

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 2.05

  with her fork. "Do you know, if it weren't for the fact that I don't like vegetables, I would certainly be a vegetarian."

  "Everything all right, madam?" asks our waiter.

  "Oh, yes, perfect," says Helen a little absently. "So then Hugo came down reeki
ng of strings - huge fat strings - and we tried a few of those. We got the right tuning without using too much tension, but of course when he applied the bow, the strings were so slack you could literally see them vibrating from side to side."

  Helen waves her hand about by way of illustration, and upsets her glass which, however, is empty. When she puts it down, I move it to safety.

  "I do try not to think of the poor cows. Or is it sheep?" asks Helen.

  "Your strings ..." I say.

  "Yes. It sounded weird, and you just had to coax the sound out. It took hours from the time the bow was in motion till you heard the note."

  "That's always a bit of a problem with the viola, though, isn't it?" I say, while several viola jokes amble through my head.

  "This was several hundred thousand times worse," says Helen. "But a bit of trial and error, and re-stringing with those northern guts, and Hugo got it going well enough. He used a very very very heavy bow which he borrowed from a friend of his, and it's still slow, but it sounds just wonderful. I just have to practise to get the time-lag right. I don't know how to thank him. He suggests ..."

  "That's marvellous, Helen," I say. "Now eat up. This calls for a celebratory glass of mineral water."

  "Water?" says Helen, blinking. "Water? Is that all your enthusiasm amounts to?"

  "Water," I say firmly, looking at my watch. "And

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  perhaps a coffee if we've still got time."

  "Wine," says Helen. "Wine. Without life, wine isn't worth living."

  4.8

  Billy has the habit of making expansive gestures on the open string: a disease common to cellists. When he hits one, especially at the end of a phrase, he raises his left hand from the neck of the cello in a gesture of ostentatious relaxation - look, Mum, no hand. When this happens with the C-string, it is almost a gesture of farewell.

  I have never taken to it. It's a bit like those pianists who describe grand parabolas with their hands, or liedersingers whose heads sway like daffodils on the stalks of their necks.

  There is a rather dangerous glaze of intentness in Helen's eyes. Considering how much she put away at lunch, she is playing surprisingly well. What is odd today, though, is what she does whenever she has an imitative phrase: she responds with a phrase that is almost a clone of the previous player's. At first this is limited to the sound of it, and this is bothersome enough: Piers stumbles at an arpeggio in staccato triplets, and Helen stumbles at exactly the same point in exactly the same way, as if some goblin had jumped out of him and into her. I should have helped her out more with that wine.

  We are playing one of the quartets in Haydn's opus 64, and zipping along quite happily as we often do with him, even though all this is a bit distracting. Billy's gestures, with so many delectable open Cs, have become even broader, and Helen's imitation has extended towards

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  facial expressions. But now I notice she is doing something even odder. Whenever she has an open string followed by a rest, she takes her hand off the viola.

  So fascinated am I by this that I do not notice that I have begun to do the same. But it comes to me as a bit of a shock when I see Piers staring at Helen and me, and beginning, with a broad grin, to raise his hand off the fingerboard too. All of us are playing with Billy-like abandon on our miniature cellos, making extravagant gesticulations whenever our left hands have nothing better to do.

  Billy's face becomes redder and redder, and his gestures smaller and smaller. And his playing itself becomes more and more cramped and pinched until, in the middle of a phrase, he sneezes twice and suddenly stops. He gets up, leans his cello against his chair, and starts to loosen the hairs on his bow. .:

  "What's the matter, Billy?" asks Helen. ;

  "I've had enough," says Billy. He glares at us. ;

  Piers and I both look contrite, but Helen merely looks puzzled. "Enough of what?" she asks.

  "You know what," says Billy. "All of you. When did you plan this?" -...;.

  "We didn't plan anything, Billy," says Piers.

  "It just sort of happened," I say.

  "What happened?" asks Helen. She smiles at Billy in a haze of benevolence.

  "You began it," says Billy accusingly. "You - you began it. Don't play the innocent."

  Helen glances at the chocolate biscuits, but decides that they might be more exacerbating than emollient.

  "I'm sorry, Billy," I murmur. "I don't think Helen even noticed. Piers and I shouldn't have joined her."

  "If you don't like what I do on the open string, it's a very nasty way to let me know."

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  Helen, comprehension dawning, stares at her left hand. "Oh, Billy, Billy," she says, standing up and kissing him on the cheek, "sit down, sit down, I had no idea what I was doing. Why are you so sensitive all of a sudden?"

  Billy, looking rather like a bear with a sore paw, consents to sit down, and tightens his bow. "I hate it when you gang up on me," he says with a hurt expression in his eyes. "I hate it."

  "But, Billy, we don't," says Piers.

  Billy looks at us darkly. "Oh, yes, you do. I know that you don't want to play the quartet I've written."

  Piers and I glance at each other, but before either of us can speak Helen blurts out: "But we do, Billy, of course we do, we'd love to play it."

  "To play it through," I add quickly.

  "Once," adds Piers.

  "Just for the heck of it, you know, sometime,,'' I mumble guiltily.

  "Well, it's not finished yet," says Billy. •-,» "Ah," says Piers with evident relief.

  "Perhaps we should wait till after Vienna," I suggest.

  "And after we've begun working on the Bach," adds Piers.

  Helen looks at Piers rather curiously but doesn't say a word. Billy, his fears confirmed, doesn't look at any of us. I busy myself examining the music for the next movement. Helen's fridge hums on, emitting a note stuck rather irksomely somewhere between G and G sharp.

  4-9

  Almost all the time - through spinach and open strings and all - my mind keeps drifting back to Julia, so I am ill prepared for a call from Virginie.

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  "Michael, this is Virginie speaking. If you are there, nlease answer, and do not hide behind your answering machine. Hello, Michael, can you hear me, please pick up the phone now, please, Michael, stop playing games with me, I am not going to ..."

  "Hello."

  "Why didn't you pick it up earlier?" -

  "Virginie, do you know what time it is?" .-<•,

  "It's eleven thirty. So what? You haven't spoken to me in two weeks. Do you think I can sleep easily?"

  "Virginie, I can't talk now."

  "Why not? Have you had a hard day?"

  "Well, yes, sort of."

  "Poor Michael, poor Michael, and you're qaite in a hurry to get back to sleep."

  "In quite a hurry." -rV

  "Oh, qu'est-ce que tu m'énerves! I'll speak any Way I like. Who are you sleeping with? Who is she?" ; :

  "Just stop this, Virginie."

  "Don't lie to me again. I know it, I know it. Are'vyou sleeping with someone?"

  "Yes."

  "I knew. I knew!" exclaims Virginie. "And you lied to jne. You lied and lied and said you weren't seeing anyone. And I believed you. How disgusting you are, Michael. Let me speak to her."

  "Virginie, calm down - be reasonable -"

  "Oh, I hate you English. Be reasonable, be reasonable. You have hearts like cement."

  "Virginie, listen, I'm fond of you, but -"

  "Fond. Fond. Put her on the phone. I'll tell her how fond you were of me."

  "She's not here."

  "I am not a cretin, Michael."

  "She's not here, Virginie, she's not here, OK? Don't

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  make yourself miserable. I feel bad about all this. But I don't know what to do. What would you do if you were me?"

  "How dare you?" a
sks Virginie. "How dare you ask me that? Do you love her?"

  "Yes," I say quietly after a second's pause. "Yes. I do."

  "I don't want to see you again, Michael," says Virginie, her voice veering between tears and anger. "I never want to see you again. Not as a teacher or anything. I'm young, and I'm going to have a good time. You'll see. And you'll regret it. You'll regret everything. I hope she makes you miserable. So that you can't sleep or anything. You always took me lightly because I loved you."

  "Goodnight, Virginie. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I really am. Goodnight."

  Before she can say anything, I put down the phone. She does not ring back.

  I am behaving dreadfully and I know it. But I have no room to manoeuvre. I never thought I was using her when I was with her. It was an arrangement I thought she was content with. But now I can see us becoming strangers, thinking of each other less and less as the weeks pass, and with time drifting entirely out of each other's lives. Poor Virginie, I say to myself, and feel a little ashamed even as I think the thought. I hope she finds someone unlike me: unexacting, happy of spirit and, most of all, not irreparably imprinted with the die of someone else's being.

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  '.- ; -'•' •' • ..,•:.* • 4-10 . , ., . ,•:•: , •

  One Saturday morning just before eight, Julia, to my astonishment, turns up at the Serpentine. Normally I would never see her on a weekend, but James is away and Luke is staying over at a friend's. She looks at the proceedings, amazed. She didn't believe I actually did this, and now she can see it she still doesn't understand why I do. After all, I'm not particularly sporty. I tell her that her job is not to speculate but to cheer me on. However, her presence makes me swim diagonally across the course, and I finish last. The rowdiest of the others make lewd enquiries as to who she is. I tell them she's my charlady.

  After we get back to my flat we make love. The tension falls away from her; and her tortured ambivalence. She closes her eyes. She sighs, she tells me what to do. The things I say to her she cannot hear.

  "I feel like a kept man," I tell her afterwards. "You visit me; I can never be sure exactly when. Then I can neve,r tell whether you'll want to make love or not. When you're here I'm ecstatic, and the rest of the time I go around wondering exactly when you'll turn up. And you bring me goodies, which I like - but when will I ever wear your cuff-links except on stage?"