An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "I'm not sure ... I think she likes the solo repertoire more."

  "Oh, well, that's not too important. . . Incidentally, Lothar said something about her living in London. We should have a couple of rehearsals before Vienna."

  "Yes . . . yes."

  "And, Michael, talking of rehearsals, Helen says that next Wednesday's venue might have to be changed. She's got builders in, and -"

  "Sorry, Piers. My money's about to run out. I'll call you later."

  I step out of the booth. I stand in the rain and laugh. I let it mat my hair and cool my skull.

  4.18

  Julia has ordered another coffee, and is sipping it with a worried expression. A young woman armed with a couple of Harrods shopping bags is standing by her table chatting away. Julia's replies are monosyllabic.

  Her face lights up when she sees me. She makes no attempt to disguise it.

  "Sonia; Michael," says Julia perfunctorily. "I'm so sorry, Sonia, we've got a bit of musical business to talk about, which you'd find very boring."

  The woman takes the hint and parts effusively: "I really have to be off, anyway, Julia darling. Lovely to have bumped into you, and in a place like this. Rain really does force one into taking refuge wherever one can. We must have you and James over soon." She smiles at

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  me, more with her ; mouth than her eyes, and goes downstairs.

  "Who was that?" ;

  "Oh, the mother of a friend of Luke's," says Julia. "Bossy woman. Pesters the teachers to give her son a good part in the nativity play. Your hair's wet. Where have you been?"

  "It's amazing," I say, holding her hand tightly. "I can hardly believe it. Mohnstrudel! Guglhupf! Palatschinken!"

  "Mmm!" says Julia, her face lighting up at the thought of her favourite confections. "Ouch! Let go my hand."

  "I've been talking to Piers."

  "Ah," says Julia, raising her eyebrows. ; "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it."

  "That was my reaction when I saw the fax from my agent yesterday."

  "How did you know I didn't know?"

  "It was perfectly obvious. You couldn't have remained so cool for so long," she says, laughing. l"And you could?"

  "Well, didn't I succeed?" she says, looking radiant.

  I am about to kiss her, then think better of it. Who knows what Sonias are lurking around? "I don't need a birthday present now," I tell her.

  "Well, I can see I'll have to choose one on my own."

  "Julia, Piers doesn't know about the hearing thing."

  "No," says Julia, the radiance dimming. "No. Of course not."

  "Does your agent know?" I ask.

  "Yes. But he thinks it could be disastrous if it got to be common knowledge in the musical world. If I can manage to play well enough, what does it matter?"

  "That's true," I say. "But how long can something like this be kept hidden?"

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  "I don't know," says Julia.

  "How have you managed?"

  "It's an impossible effort," she says. "I don't know if I've succeeded completely. But if anyone suspects, it hasn't come back to haunt me so far."

  I nod, distracted. My earlier unease is now a far haze. It is a weird and jarring joy, this sensation of my two worlds coming together: rehearsals here in London, and then Vienna a decade on. Julia and my colleagues will play together, and I will be only an observer, an auditor. But I must attend these rehearsals. They will be filled with hazard for her. And apart from that, what would I not give to hear her bring the Trout to life?

  4-19

  But meanwhile, I have been invited to an evening out with Julia, the first time since we parted.

  It is my birthday. James is not in town. We are in a restaurant not far from where she lives. It is spacious, with no music and good lighting. The walls are white, with variously shaped alcoves in deep green and indigo. White orchids in celadon vases are scattered here and there. She has made the reservation, though it is in my name. I arrive a little early, she a little late. She sees me, smiles, and looks quickly around the restaurant before sitting down.

  "Would you rather sit here?" I ask. "I mean, for the light?"

  "I'm fine," she says.

  "There's no one here that you know, is there?" I ask.

  "No. And if there is, I'm just having dinner with a friend."

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  "You'll let me take you out, won't you, on your birthday?"

  "Well -"

  "I don't mean on your birthday exactly, but thereabouts."

  "Maybe," says Julia, smiling, "but you'll have to dress better if we're to go out again. You're good-looking, Michael - how do you manage to dress so horribly? Don't you have a decent suit?"

  "I think I dress fine," I protest. "And I'm wearing your cuff-links."

  "It's that shirt -"

  "Well, you haven't been here to train me. Anyway, there's no point in my dressing well. When there's a do while we're on tour, it's usually just before or just after a performance, and we have our standard penguin garb."

  "Michael," says Julia, looking suddenly serious, "tell me all about the others in the quartet."

  "But you know them."

  "Hardly. What are rehearsals with them like? I've been worrying about it these last few days. Give me a sense of what to expect."

  "Well, I don't know where to begin. Rehearsals are pretty intense. Piers tries to run a tight ship. Billy has his own ideas about things. Once he gets something into his head it's difficult to dislodge it. And Helen, well, she's a wonderful player, but she's quite distractable. By the way, you'll be happy to know that Billy's always late for everything, so you'll have company. Oh, and also, Billy prefers to rehearse than to perform, or so he says. Rehearsals let him explore, performances just make him nervous."

  "But everyone's friendly with everyone else?" asks Julia. ,

  "Yes, basically - at the moment."

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  r

  "That's a relief. It'll be complicated enough as it is."

  The waiter has been hovering; we order.

  "Any vegetables?" he asks.

  "What do you have?" asks Julia.

  The waiter breathes deeply. Clearly we have not studied our menus with the respect they deserve. "Broccoli, courgettes, beans, leeks, spinach," he says.

  "I'd like peas," says Julia.

  The waiter looks at her with obvious puzzlement. Julia, noticing this, looks anxious.

  "I'm afraid, madam," says the waiter, "we do not have peas on the menu."

  A look of momentary bafflement passes over her face. "I meant beans - French beans," she says quickly.

  He nods. "And what would you like to drink? Have you seen the wine list? Or would you like to have a word with the sommelier?"

  I quickly pick out something at random from the wine list.

  Julia is upset by her slip and seems a bit defeated.

  "We don't have to eat here, you know," I say when he has disappeared.

  "Oh, let's forget it," she says. "At the end of the day I sometimes run out of energy. Actually, I prefer beans. What's the matter?"

  "Well, I don't like this fellow who's waiting on. He looks like an out-of-work actor who's trying to take it out on us."

  "Waiting on," says Julia, amused.

  This irritates me a bit. Julia, whose German never affected her English, was always pointing out little bits of dialect that occasionally surfaced in my speech.

  "What are you thinking about?" asks Julia. "You have a far-away look."

  "Nothing ..." I say, reverting to what I was thinking

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  about earlier. "I wish / were playing the Trout with you."

  "It is amazing, isn't it," she says, "that Schubert isn't among the composers on the frieze of the Albert Memorial. I read that just the other day. It makes me want to take a chisel and carve his name in with the others."

  I laugh. "Let's go and do
it tonight," I say.

  "Is it worth getting arrested for?"

  "Yes. James can bail us out."

  The moment I say it, I wish I hadn't. But to my surprise the remark passes without shadowing her mood. Nor does she bring up the question of my meeting him. Untenable - untenable - how could she think we could meet? . . . How often do they sleep together? . . . Had they met before she went to Venice with Maria? . . . Why has she chosen to play with the Maggiore now? For Vienna? For the chance to play the glorious Trout? For me? ... What is wrong with my conscience, that I can feel worried for her but not guilty?

  Perhaps he has. had to care so much for her these last three years that all that's left is tenderness. Perhaps the romance, if there ever was one, has waned. Is it his life with her I'm jealous of? She must wonder about me and other women, but she's never asked if there was anyone apart from Virginie these many years. Is that off-limits too, like why she married James: a reciprocal discretion between us?

  Yes, she can read my lips, but no, not yet my thoughts. We talk of this and that. The wine comes, and the food. Around us is an unimpinging blur of conversation. Julia is not looking at my face. She seems preoccupied.

  "Hearing is wasted on some people," she says suddenly with a sharp flare of bitterness. "A few days ago I was talking to a really hardboiled cellist from the Philharmonia, and it was obvious that he was utterly

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  jaded by his work and bored with music - he almost seemed to hate it. And I gather he must have been a good musician. Perhaps he still is."

  "Well, there's a lot of that," I say.

  "I can understand a banker or a waiter hating his work, but not a musician."

  "Oh, come on, Julia. Years of training, long hours, pathetic pay - and being no good for anything else - and having no choice in what you play - you could feel trapped, even if you loved it once. I felt like that a bit, when I was freelancing in London. Even now things aren't that easy. And, after all, you too gave up playing for a while. The only difference, I suppose, is that you could afford it."

  She frowns, then unknits her forehead. She says nothing, sipping her wine with determined serenity. My eyes move from her face to her little gold watch, and back again.

  "That wasn't the only difference," she says at last.

  "I shouldn't have brought that up."

  "I can't imagine you hating music," she says.

  "No, I suppose not," I reply. "Actually, Helen teases me for waxing too rapturous about it. And she thinks my relationship with my violin's a bit over the top."

  "Well, I'm very attached to my piano."

  "But you can't lug it around with you on tour."

  "So?"

  "Well, I don't think the relationship's the same if you practise on one instrument at home, and then go out and perform on another."

  Julia frowns.

  "Not that Helen is such a pragmatic soul," I quickly add. "Last week she was quite upset by a programme she saw about the universe and how it could all run down in

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  God knows how many billion years. Why get upset about where the universe is headed?"

  "When there's so much to get upset about closer to hand?" asks Julia, amused again.

  "Well, there is, isn't there?"

  "By the way, what's happened to your Mrs Formby?" asks Julia out of the blue.

  "Mrs Formby? Why Mrs Formby all of a sudden?"

  "I don't know," she replies.

  "But you haven't even met her, Julia."

  "I don't know what made me ask about her. I was thinking of Carl - or maybe I was thinking about your violin - and then she came to mind. For some reason I've often thought about Mrs Formby these last few years."

  "More often than you've thought about me, I'm sure," I remark flippantly.

  "Michael, I thought of you as if you'd committed suicide - without leaving a note."

  She looks down at her plate. I am not permitted to respond. For a while I sit still, too stunned to do anything. I press my foot against hers, and she looks up.

  "Mrs Formby is fine," I say. "How's your duck?"

  "Delicious," says Julia, who hasn't touched it for the last couple of minutes. "Do you really not care about the universe - and all that?"

  "Oh, no, you're not going to draw me into a religious argument," I say warily.

  "But you like reading Donne. 'Donne the Apostate', our nuns used to call him."

  "It doesn't mean anything, Julia. I like reading him precisely because I don't care about what's behind him. I find him relaxing late at night." •" "Relaxing!" says Julia, shocked.

  "I like his language. I mull over his ideas. I don't care

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  about his scriptural arguments ... I can never understand'why people make such a fuss about the God thing," I add brutally.

  "You just can't stand authority, Michael, in any form," says Julia. "You hero-worship, but you can't stand authority. And God save your heroes if they turn out to have feet of clay."

  "For heaven's sake," I say, annoyed by this analysis of my character - something Julia has always been prone to.

  "My father wasn't himself towards the end," she says. "I remember praying that he'd die quickly. Every time we visited him he seemed to be more hostile, more unclear. At the end he didn't even care about Luke. At least he died before I lost my hearing. It would have made quite a good comic turn: he not understanding me, and I not understanding him."

  I put my hand across the table and rest it on her wrist. She seems pleased, but then withdraws her hand.

  "Perhaps we should have dined somewhere else, further from home," I say. "I'll keep my hands to myself."

  "It's not that, Michael. It's too clear that we're not just friends."

  While our plates are removed, I try to change the subject. "You mustn't worry about the rehearsal," I say.

  "You'll be there, won't you?" she asks.

  "Of course."

  "Not that you need to be."

  "I'll be there because I want to hear you."

  "It's such an amazing part for the piano."

  "And for the violin," I say regretfully.

  "And the cello," she adds. She hums a bit of the cello part from one of the variations.

  The waiter enquires whether we would like coffee or dessert, but she continues to hum. He is standing behind

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  her, and it is only when she notices me looking at him that she is aware that we are being addressed. She turns towards him, sees him poised to take her order, and says quickly: "Yes, that's fine. Yes, that's what I'll have."

  An almost imperceptible ceilingward flick of the eyes is followed by emphatic patience. "Which, madam?"

  "Which? Oh, I'm sorry, could you repeat what you were saying?"

  "Espresso, cappuccino, latte, filter; decaffeinated or regular," he says, with exaggerated pauses between the words.

  Julia colours, but says nothing. ;F M,

  "Well, madam?" .,'f-.iU

  "Nothing, thank you."

  "And dessert? We have - "

  "No, thank you. If you could just bring the bill." Flustered, she pushes her chair back slightly.

  "I'm sorry," I say. "I'm really sorry. I should have said something to him. He was rude."

  She shakes her,* head.

  "He couldn't know what was going on," she says. "7 should have told him that I have a hearing problem and asked him to repeat the order. That's the first thing we're taught: not to be embarrassed about it. Why do I find it impossible? Is it because I can't afford to let people in general know about me? Or is it that I'm just a coward?"

  He brings the bill. She pays, leaving, I notice, a generous tip, and we get up to go. But she still seems ill at ease.

  The evening is ending on an unhappy note. I ask her to come to my place with me, knowing what her answer must be even before she tells me she must go home to Luke. But she consents at least to go to Julie's Bar, not far
away. It is a clear, warm night, and we sit outside and allow our happiness in each other's company to flow

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  «

  -c

  through us again. We dawdle over coffee and liqueur, and share a dessert. Afterwards I thank her but do not kiss her. I walk her most of the way home but, at her request, not to her door.

  4.2.0

  "I didn't realise," says Julia, "that we'd be rehearsing without a bass player."

  Piers, Helen, Billy and Julia have gathered for their first rehearsal of Schubert's Trout Quintet. We have managed to secure a practice room with a reasonable piano at the Royal College of Music. I am, for this part, an onlooker, but a short rehearsal of our quartet is to follow.

  If I had thought about it, I would have seen how the absence of the double-bass might affect Julia: its deep rhythmic pulse throughout the piece would have helped her immeasurably. If only I had warned her in advance, or done something about it.

  "Well, the problem is that the bass player is in Vienna," says Helen. "Nothing to be done about it. We'll have a couple of rehearsals with her when we get there."

  "Her?" says Julia, a bit surprised.

  "Yes. Petra Daut," says Piers.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't quite get her last name. How's it spelt?"

  I remain silent, and let Piers reply. The fewer faces she has to look at the better.

  "D, A, U, T. Do you know her? I mean, with your Viennese connections -"

  "Not really," says Julia. "But then, I don't move in the orchestral world, so I'm a bit out of touch with bass players."

  "Shall we begin?" asks Piers.

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  "Piers," says Julia. "Before we begin, just a couple of things -"

  "Yup?"

  "We do have another rehearsal before we leave for Vienna, don't we?" she asks in a deliberately relaxed voice. "I'd like us to - I'd really like us to have a bass player for it. I don't think we'll get the true feel of the piece without it."

  "Would you like us to provide a female bass player?" asks Helen. Billy looks up from his cello for a second.

  Julia refuses to be drawn. "I'm not particular," she says.

  Billy pipes up: "/ think we should practise with a bass as well. This is one of the few pieces where someone's supporting me from below, and I like that. I can ask Ben Flath if he'll rehearse with us."