An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "It might be a bit different, you're right. Well, I'll consider it, and - no, actually, I won't consider it. I'm happy where I am."

  "So you won't do the Trout?"

  "I will!" I say quickly.

  "Why? Another specific association?"

  "No, it's more ad hoc than that. I want to play with Julia. It may be one of the last times she -"

  "She what?" " *'.

  "She plays with other players."

  "What precisely do you mean?" Piers is looking at me carefully, with all his forensic feelers out. "Does she really have serious problems playing with others?"

  "No, not really."

  "Michael, I don't think you're being completely straight with me."

  "I am. I'm just telling you that she wants to develop her solo career. And that means gradually cutting down on ensemble playing. But I don't know exactly when she's going to decide to stop. I don't even really know whether she's going to."

  "So she doesn't enjoy playing chamber music?" says Piers.

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 2.57

  "I didn't mean that," I say heatedly.

  "Well, what did you mean? What is the matter with her exactly? What happened at the rehearsal? I mean, does her concentration lapse suddenly? Is it a problem with that particular piece? Or is it your, well, your friendship? You must know. Or you must at least have an idea."

  I try to evade this nervous and aggressive salvo. "I don't know, Piers," I say. "Anyway, in the future it won't be a problem."

  "But it is a problem," says Piers. "I'm beginning to wish I had managed to get in touch with you before we agreed to her playing with us. You obviously know something that the rest of us don't. We're in a quartet. It's based on trust. Now what is it? Spit it out."

  I am cornered. I have lied under compulsion, but I have lied, and Piers knows it. "I can't tell you until I speak to Julia," I say at last.

  Piers fixes me with an inquisitorial stare. "Michael, I haven't the least fucking idea what it is, but I do know it's got me worried. And it's obviously got you worried. Now, whatever it is, you've got to tell me - and you've got to tell me now."

  "It's a hearing problem," I say, almost inaudibly, looking at the floor.

  "A hearing problem? What sort of hearing problem?"

  I don't say anything. I am overcome by what I have been compelled to divulge. But wasn't it I who opened the crack that let him prise the matter out?

  "Well?" says Piers. "Let's have it, Michael. Or I'll phone Lothar right now and find out from him. I'm serious. I'm going to phone him right now."

  "She's going deaf, Piers," I say helplessly. "But for God's sake don't tell anyone."

  Z58 | VIKRAM SETH

  "Oh, is that all?" says Piers. His face has lost all colour.

  "Yes, that's all." I am shaking my head from side to side.

  Piers may be perplexed but I know he believes me. "This is true, isn't it? Yes or no. Just one word."

  "Yes."

  "We'd better phone Lothar," he says quietly. "This is a disaster."

  He half gets up. I grab his arm and almost force him to sit down.

  "Don't," I say, looking him in the eye. "Don't even think of it. It is not a disaster."

  "Does Billy know? Does Helen?"

  "Of course not. I haven't told them. I should never have told you."

  "You should have told us before," says Piers with a touch of contempt in his voice. "How could you have kept this from us? You owe it to us - and to yourself."

  "Don't tell me what I owe you," I say fiercely. "I've broken a confidence by saying what I've said. God knows I might never be forgiven for it. I never meant to tell you. I only hope it'll help her in some way -1 mean, if all of us understand what cues we need to give her, and where to let her lead -"

  "So we're to stumble along, are we?"

  "She'll give a great performance. She will stun you and the good burghers of Vienna, and Billy will call on the spirit of Schubert to bless us, every one."

  "Including me, the silent observer?"

  "Including you, since he'll know what you've sacrificed."

  "It doesn't seem much of a sacrifice now," says Piers wryly.

  "You'll see it is," I say fervently.

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  259

  I am waiting for him to say something cutting about Julia but he surprises me.

  "Well, I hope so," he says. "For our sake and for the spirit of Schubert."

  He muses for a few seconds in an almost unsettlingly calm manner. "Perhaps I was annoyed by Nicholas's remarks because I have mixed feelings about the Trout. It's a funny old piece. It stops and starts and has so many repeats - but I truly love it. It seems absurd that he was twenty-two. "

  "We may as well just give up," I say.

  After another longish pause, Piers says: "Well, yes, that's what I thought for a long time. But now I've stopped thinking that anything short of creating a masterpiece is pointless. I just ask myself two questions about what I'm doing here in my niche in the galaxy. Is it better done or not? And is it better that I do this than something else?" He pauses, then says: "And I suppose I've just added another one: is it better that someone else does this than me?"

  "I-see, Piers. Thank you for that. From the bottom of my heart."

  Piers raises his glass rather seriously. "And from the bottom of your glass?"

  I nod, and toast him gravely.

  "I suppose you're surprised I haven't said how sorry I am for Julia."

  "No, I'm not surprised," I reply, after considering the matter for a moment.

  But I am surprised at myself, that I should so suddenly have broken faith with her, that I should have, even if without premeditation, almost conspired by my responses to disburden myself - and her, I keep telling myself, hoping it is true - of the weight of this secret. But unpermitted, unlicensed, how could I have done it? I

  Zéo I VIKRAM SETH

  make Piers promise that he won't tell Helen and Billy on condition that I do so myself tomorrow.

  4.22 - :, ,.. .,.

  I fax her as soon as I get back home. No facetious parody of bureaucratic style this time, just the bare statement that as a matter of urgency we must meet tomorrow morning. Even if she can only spare ten minutes, she must come over to my flat.

  She does. I presume she has just dropped Luke off at school. This time when we kiss, she knows something is wrong, because she stops suddenly to ask what's worrying me. She has an hour to spare, but suggests we get the ten minutes of urgency over with at once.

  "Julia, he knows. I had to tell him."

  She looks at me with something akin to terror.

  "I told him last night - I couldn't get out of it. I'm so sorry."

  "But I was with him last night," says Julia.

  "With whom?"

  "With James."

  "No, no - I meant Piers. He sensed something was up."

  "But - what are you talking about, Michael? If Piers knows, does that matter so very much? What's the urgency?" She begins to relax, though she is still puzzled.

  "I have to tell Billy and Helen today. That's why I had to talk to you first," I say.

  "But, Michael - I don't understand - what exactly did you tell him?" <

  "Well, about you, your problem."

  She closes her eyes in all too evident shock.

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  "Julia, I don't know what I can say -"

  But her eyes are still closed. I hold her hand and put it to my forehead. After a while she opens her eyes - but now she is not looking at me but at something through and beyond me. I wait for her to speak.

  "Couldn't you have talked to me about it beforehand?" she says at last.

  "I couldn't. He asked me point blank. It was a question . of trust. "

  "Of trust? Of trust?"

  "I couldn't look at him and keep lying."

  "What do you think I have to do at home about you? It doesn't come easily to me. It's just that the alternative's worse." />
  I explain what happened and how it happened. I tell her that it could possibly even help - if it results in cues, sympathy, assistance. I know all this is pathetically selfexculpatory.

  "Perhaps," says Julia quietly. "But in the long run, why would anyone who knows this take me on?"

  Her question is unanswerable.

  "I've harmed you," I say. "I know it. I'm so sorry."

  "I'm not foolish, Michael," she says after a few moments. "It had to get around sometime. My father used to talk about the academic world being leaky, but the musical world is worse. Maybe some people apart from Lothar know or suspect already. I've given myself a reputation for eccentricity, just to disguise things somewhat. But all that's pointless now."

  "I'll swear them to secrecy."

  "Yes," she says in a tired voice. "Yes. Do that. I must go now."

  If no one wants to perform with her, I will have hastened what I most feared. How do I tell her now that

  2.ÔZ I VIKRAM SETH

  I'm playing with her in the Trout? This cannot be the time. But if not now, when?

  "Stay a little longer. Let me talk to you, Julia."

  "And the bass player - Billy's friend?" she says.

  "I don't know."

  "I must go."

  "What are you going to do?" I ask.

  "I don't know. Take a walk."

  "In the park?"

  "I suppose so."

  "You don't want me to come with you?"

  She shakes her head. She does not even wait for the lift this time, but begins to walk down the many flights of stairs.

  ' • •'• 4-^3 . :.'.' ^

  Helen, Billy and I meet in a café nearby. Helen has builders in, and I don't suggest we meet in my flat, which, for the moment, is haunted by this last encounter. I have decided to tell both of them together. I apologise to Billy for the place and the suddenness of the meeting, but he says he was coming into town anyway. To tell them separately would have been unbearable: I just want to get it over with.

  As soon as our coffee arrives I say what I have to say. At first, neither can believe it. Helen looks almost guilty. Billy questions me closely about the practical musicmaking side of it. I tell them I have told Piers, but that no one else must know. Helen nods. Her shock and sympathy are obvious. Billy says he'll tell Lydia but no one else. .

  "Please, Billy," I say. "Not even Lydia." , , ;

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  "But there are no secrets between us," he says, adding blandly, "That's what marriage is about."

  "Jesus, Billy, I don't want to know what marriage is about. This is not a secret between you. I'm trusting you with her musical life. Don't you think Lydia would understand?"

  Billy says nothing but looks astonished.

  "And the bass player, your friend Ben -"

  "It'll be impossible to keep it hidden from him," says Billy, recovering to address the matter at hand. "He's smart. It's not so much how Julia plays as the way all of us are likely to behave. Leave him to me. And no, I won't tell Lydia. I'll try to avoid it anyway."

  "Of all concerts it had to be this one," says Helen. "And the Musikverein of all places. What should we do? What can we do? It's not that I don't feel desperately sorry for her."

  Billy says, "Well, there are only four choices. We can withdraw from trie concert. We can try to find someone else immediately. We can just go ahead with her and not tell anybody. Or we can cut out the Trout and try doing something else with the hall's permission. I myself think we should have another rehearsal and see how it goes. It went well enough the last time except for that funny glitch in the Scherzo. Still, that's certainly a mystery cleared up. What does Piers think?"

  "Piers isn't playing in the Trout," I say. "I am."

  Helen and Billy both stare at me in stupefaction.

  "And I say we should go ahead," I continue. "In fact, we must go ahead. I have an incredible feeling about this. It'll be a superb performance. Believe me, we'll astound the Viennese. I know that nothing at all will go wrong on the night."

  264 IVIKRAMSETH

  4-M

  I fax Julia the news about the Trout. This is the only way to tell her before the rehearsal. There is no time to arrange a meeting, even if she still wants to meet me. I receive no answering fax.

  We meet at the rehearsal. I have been practising for days and have the external calm of someone numb with nervousness. She nods at me with no singular warmth. Perhaps she is trying to place an equal, a balanced distance between herself and each of us. Ben Flath presumably on Billy's advice - has turned his double-bass slightly towards the piano, so that she can get a better sense of the movement of his hands. The profound pulse of the bass helps enormously. So too do the exaggerated upbeats of Billy's head, and his open string gestures, which he now feels entirely justified in making. All this visual drama will have to be toned down when we rehearse in Vienna, but it helps us here.

  To play with her, indeed, just to play the Trout, which I have only played once before - and that in Manchester, years ago - is the fulfilment of an unsensed expectation. Yet for all the happiness of the piece, there is something in our playing that is tense and strange. Where we work on it in huge arcs, there are fewer problems. Where we work on it almost bar by bar, Piers, as the looker-on, with tact and analysis and very little by way of exaggerated mouthings and pointings, helps to explain what she might not have caught through that residue of sound which still beats against her nerves.

  At first it surprises me that Piers is sitting through this rehearsal. After all, he has just abdicated his part in this piece. But he is acting not as a control freak but a sort of outside adviser in a situation unprecedented both for our

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 265

  quartet and for Julia - one of clear mutual knowledge of this physical deficit.

  For all her coolness towards me, by the end of the rehearsal I feel that we have withdrawn from a precipice.

  But when Piers says, "I think you should all have another rehearsal before Vienna," everyone nods, including the obliging Ben Flath.

  4.25 •....-••.-.

  Once more we meet. This time it works out fine. The thrum of the bass is well bound to her pulse. But as soon as we have played, she leaves, with just one word or two to me - no more than she says to all the rest.

  I do not know what to fear in all this. Has her trust shrunk or does she need time on her own to grasp this piece? I have not heard from her for days. The bell does not ring; she does not write. It eats through the calm that I had gained. I think of her all the time.

  These nights are cool, these days are bright with spring. The low green on the trees has spread right to their tops, and in the park the wide, clear sight that I so much loved of lake and low knoll through nets of bare twigs has been leafed out and curbed. The world is in bloom, and if I am irked or sad it is due to the sense, more strained with the drift of each day, that it is not mine to share. In a few days it will be May, and we will all be on that plane.

  At last she sends a note: will I come to lunch in two days' time? It suits James: the end of the week, the day of rest, a brief snooze for stocks and shares. But she does say that she has missed me. Lunch makes sense, as Luke will not have gone to sleep, and he would like to meet me too. They all send their best.

  266 I VIKRAM SETH

  i*V

  These are her first real words, yet what do they mean? Why must I meet him now? Why take this risk - could this be what she wants? Need I be bound and lashed for what I've done? I don't know James, yet they all send their best. What then have I to say?

  All of them: man, wife, child, dog. From my high lair I view the world. I will say yes, of course; and try to feign, as best I can, the calm I do not feel. Those whom she loves must not be hurt. But I know I am no good at this: if I had my way I would not go at all. I would find some means, some sleight of time or work to put things off. But I have not seen her for so long. If it is a risk, it is one that has been made for me, one on whi
ch my grasp, like it or not, has closed. I write back, ill at ease, to say I will be pleased to come.

  4.26

  I have an ache that pulses behind my left eye. The bells ring, the one from the church near me tolling G. It is the day of my lunch at Julia's. I shave with care. These eyes are full of doubt.

  What does James Hansen know? How much would she have told him, for her sake, for his? She was bitter about our parting in Vienna all those years ago. If there was no solution, no resolution, to all that her heart had to bear, would she have spoken of it? Would she have spoken of it to him, with all he may have felt of not being the first one chosen - or the first of choice?

  But why should he know about our past? I am one of her musical friends, no more; a colleague from long ago, from the city where he met her. She would not tell me of his courtship, whether they went to Mnozil's together, or Lier's, or Café Museum, whether these zones, intimate to

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  us, admitted an intruder, or whether these were places she most particularly shunned. Why should she have told him of me, of our meetings in grey rooms, of our parting at a table under chestnut trees?

  What secrets survive nine years of marriage, or nine times that time?

  What if James and I dislike each other, what then? What if I like him?

  It was he who got her to play again, for which anyone who has heard her will thank him. I thank him. I cannot wish to meet him. Does she not sense any danger?

  Why does she want me to meet her there? Her first, long letter talked of windows, pianos, gardens: she knew my style and space; should I not know hers? But why unify disparate existences: her life with me, her life with him? Or will my coming assuage our guilt? Or head off doubts when Luke speaks of me? Or does she know it cannot work between us? Am I myself one of those letters, to be left intentionally-unintentionally in view, so that things can, unstated, be understood?

  Can I not be ill? But not to see her then? - to smell that light scent she wears, or dredge the memory of that darker musk. She says she misses me. It must be true. I walk along the white-housed squares and streets that lead me to her home.

  4.27 •' •:. : •:.- ... :::•

  He opens the door, not she.