An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  Petra has been told about it weeks ago. Piers and Erica insisted she should know as far beforehand as possible. According to Lothar, she paused for a second on the phone, then said: "All the better. She won't hear the hash I make of things." But Julia now tells her that the doublebass is in fact what she will hear most clearly. The three of us stand to one side and discuss ways of making things work in terms of sight and sound. I can see this conversation is a strain on Julia, who has had very little opportunity to lip-read German for the last few months. The problem is that Petra keeps slipping back into it from English whenever she is afraid of not getting some nuance right.

  The place is cavernous and deserted. When we enter our rehearsal room, we find that it contains an astonishing red grand piano decorated with abstract patterns in

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  gold leaf. Even the edge of the lid and the wings are redlined, and the brass legs have been designed to resemble the pedals. Julia stares at it with fascinated repulsion.

  "It's chic," says Petra.

  "I can't play on this," says Julia, a bit to my surprise.

  "How do you know? You haven't heard it yet," says Petra.

  Julia laughs, and Petra looks embarrassed.

  "Well," says Julia, "it's as if my old aunt had suddenly decided to put on a red-and-gold miniskirt and go to her favourite café. It's difficult to hold an ordinary conversation with her while she's dressed that way."

  "You don't like the colour red, I think," says Petra tentatively.

  "It looks fine on that Coke machine there by the lift," says Julia, pointing to the foyer.

  "Yes," says Helen suddenly. "Let's find something else. Horrible, garish beast. I wouldn't want to play Schubert on a polka-dotted viola."

  Luckily we find a large, empty, grey-carpeted practice room with an ordinary funereal piano. Petra has brought along her own collapsible stool, which she now sets up and adjusts so that Julia can get a better view of her. The rehearsal begins. We run through the piece almost without interruption.

  Petra, leaning forward, eyes closed, swaying, gives enormous emphasis to the syncopations in the last movement and then belts out the delayed quavers.

  Helen, who is sitting just in front of her, stops playing, and turns to her. "Petra, I think we should cool it here."

  "But that is what I do," says Petra. "This is supposed to be cool. Ur-cool."

  "I like jazz," says Helen. "And I'm sure Schubert would have liked jazz. But it wasn't jazz he was writing."

  "Oh," says Petra, "I wish we were playing in the

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  Konzerthaus. They are so bourgeois, the audiences in the Musikverein. They need to be woke up."

  "Please, Petra," says Helen. "This isn't crossover music. It's just the Trout."

  Petra sighs; we agree to try it less "innovatively", and the movement continues.

  Despite Julia's great nervousness and my own, the first run-through has gone well. What is amazing to me is the way she picks up the rhythm from Petra, who by no means provides a strict mechanical beat. Especially in the last movement, where the triplets of the double-bass create a rolling, low, almost non-specific growl, the piano doesn't lose its pulse, but sails exactly and easily above it all.

  I glance at her and almost cease to play. How well she plays; how well she plays with us. By what strange ways have we been led back here? The Trout and Vienna itself: are they not unfinished business for us? From time to time my doubts disperse, and I seem to appraise the scene from a perspective where, against its custom, the past rises to bless, not haunt, and where every impossibility seems possible again.

  5-4

  After going through the Trout once more, we rehearse the string quintet. Later, having returned the keys to the building, we walk outside into the sunlight.

  On the quiet, almost empty street, just opposite the Bosendorfer building, is an empty lot, covered in grass and the puffy heads of blown dandelions. In the middle of it, under an acacia tree full of white blossom, stands the improbable white statue of a bear. He stands life-size

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  on all fours, his shoulders high, his head lowered, rather like a large and lovable dog.

  The others leave. Julia and I remain. Each holding an ear of the bear, we talk about how things went.

  "I know how much of a strain all this must be," I say. "But you did really well."

  "It was one of my bad days," she says.

  "I'd never have guessed that."

  "The bass helps."

  "She's a good player. Though I agree with Helen ..."

  "I didn't mean that," says Julia. "I meant, I don't think I could manage without the bass. Things are getting worse. How much chamber music for piano contains a bass?"

  I say nothing for a moment; then blurt out, "Well, there's the Dvorak . . . no, I'm thinking of his string quintet."

  Julia turns away. Not looking at me, she says: "This concert will be the" last time I play with others."

  "You can't mean that!"

  . V

  She does not respond, having blinded herself to my response.

  I place my hand over hers, and she turns towards me. "You can't mean that," I say. "You can't."

  "You know I do, Michael. My ears are wrecked. If I keep at this, it'll wreck my mind."

  "No, no!" I cannot hear this. I begin to hit my head against the hump of the stone bear.

  "Michael - are you crazy? Stop that."

  I stop. She puts her hand to my forehead.

  "I didn't hit it hard. I just wanted you to stop saying that. I can't stand it."

  "You can't stand it," says Julia, with a touch of scorn.

  "I ... can't."

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  "We'd better get to Maria's or we'll be late," says Julia.

  She avoids my gaze till we get into the car. While she drives, I cannot speak to her at all. ;

  5-5

  At Maria's door our trio, together again, can find nothing to say for a couple of seconds. Then there are the embraces, the "how long it's been"s, the "you look just the same"s. But underneath all this are the swift ellipses of the earth, and the awkward knowledge that it is all quite different.

  Though Julia and she have met off and on in the intervening years, I have not seen Maria since I left Vienna.

  A small boy with curly brown hair pulls her back in. "Mutti, " he cries, "Pitou hat mich gebissen. "

  "Beiss ihn, " says Maria shortly. But little Peter is insistent, so his mother examines his hand, declares him to be extremely brave, and tells him not to tease the cat because it will turn into a tiger.

  Peter looks sceptical. Then, noticing that we are looking at him, he first hides behind his mother, then runs back in.

  Maria apologises that Markus, her husband, is out of town, but says that she has a surprise for me. We walk into the kitchen to find Wolf, my buddy from my first year in Vienna, making himself useful mixing a large salad. He grins and we hug. We kept in touch for a few years - he left before me - but haven't heard from each other for the last three or four. He too joined a quartet, though in his case Carl Kail did not object to his turning away from a solo career.

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  "And what are you doing here?" I ask him. "You've come all the way to hear us play, of course."

  "You've got a red mark on your forehead," says Wolf.

  "Yes," says Julia. "A bear attacked him. Or rather, he attacked a bear."

  "I walked into a door," I say. "Or rather, it walked into me. It'll disappear in an hour."

  "I hope you're not speaking from experience," says Julia to me before drawing Maria apart.

  "I can't come to your concert," says Wolf. "I'm going back to Munich tomorrow."

  "That's a pity," I say. "So what are you doing here? A concert with your quartet?"

  "Actually, they don't know I'm here, but they'll find out soon enough," says Wolf. "It's sort of hush-hush at the moment. I've been invited to try out
as the second violinist of the Traun."

  "That's amazing!" I exclaim.

  The Traun is one of the most famous quartets in the world; they are all in their fifties, and were already very well established in Vienna when we were students. I can hardly imagine my good friend Wolf among them. I remember their cellist, a fine player but a peculiar character, so shy he couldn't look anyone in the face. When we met after a concert, he acted as if he were expecting some devastating opinion from me, a humble student, about his playing - behaviour so unbelievable that at first I thought he was having me on.

  "It was really odd," says Wolf. "My own outfit is falling apart. Two of us just can't stand the other two, and that's it. Well, I'd heard on the grapevine that the Traun were looking for a second violinist after Gunther Hassler had decided to retire, so I just wrote to them. They tried me out for an hour or two with different bits and pieces - and here I am. They want me to play a

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  couple of concerts with them on a trial basis in a few weeks. I don't have any expectations, I'm completely in awe of all of them, I know they're trying out other people, but, well, you never know . . . Now tell me, what's on the programme apart from the Trout? - Maria told me about that."

  "The Quartettsatz to start off with; and the string quintet after the interval."

  "All Schubert, eh? Big programme."

  "Too big?"

  "No, no, no, not at all. How come you're the one who's playing in the Trout?"

  I tell him about Piers's suggestion.

  "How different from our first violinist," Wolf says, impressed. "That's a noble gesture. Really. You know what you should have done in response?"

  "What?"

  "Suggested that you replace the Quartettsatz with the longer of the two string trios. It's just about the same length, and your first violinist would have appeared in it without you. That would have evened things out."

  I consider this for a few seconds. "I wish I'd thought of that," I say. "But you know, he'd probably have said that we should appear at least once on stage as a quartet."

  "Nice fellow."

  "Not nice exactly," I say. "But good, maybe."

  "What's all this about Julia?" asks Wolf conspiratorially.

  "What's all what?"

  "Maria's being all tactful and evasive, so there's got to be something there."

  "You mean, between Julia and me?"

  "Oh, is that all?" asks Wolf, disappointed. "Anyone can see that. I thought there was something else. Well, is there? I mean, something mysterious?"

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  "No - not that I know."

  "She's quite a big name in Germany, you know, though she doesn't play that often: just a few solo concerts a year. She played in Munich a couple of years ago. Someone took me along, and I discovered it was her ... Is this your first time playing in the Musikverein?" : ?,-

  "Yes." . ... > •. ... : .-'.

  "Nervous?" , •-...••....•

  "Well ..."

  "Don't be. There's nothing you can do about it, so why worry? Are you going to do all the octavos in the first variation?" Wolf does a ludicrously exaggerated imitation of a desperate violinist squealing up and down the E-string, missing most of his high notes.

  "What do you mean, am I going to do them? Do I have a choice?"

  "Of course you do. One of the sources doesn't have those octavos. They sound bloody silly anyway."

  "It's too late; they're in my head and my hands."

  ",l heard it played that way once," says Wolf. "It sounded much better - but of course everyone thought the violinist had simply chickened out. . . How's your sustaining going? Sustain, sustain, sustain," says Wolf. "You know he's ill, don't you? Have you made up with him? Don't leave it till he's dead."

  "I was thinking about him last night, walking about the city."

  "From bar to bar." •:.>:.•. -'.--..

  "I wasn't with you." ; :, .,-.-.-

  "Well . . . and?"

  "And nothing; I just thought about him. Among a hundred other things."

  "We were performing in Stockholm a few months ago, and Carl came backstage afterwards," says Wolf. "He

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  looked pretty dreadful. . . You were too impatient with him."

  "7 was too impatient with him'}"

  "Exactly," says "Wolf, who never could decide whether he was a clown or a sage.

  He doesn't elaborate and I don't ask him to. Years ago, Julia implied something similar. But how can one battle the compulsions in one's head? I could no more have played my fiddle under Carl Kail's view than if my fingers had been smashed. A horrible incapacity had taken me over. I felt helpless at the time - as she herself must have felt today. But at least my condition could be allayed or reversed with time.

  5-6

  Over lunch, Maria talks more - and more nervously than I remember she used to, but whether this is to prevent Julia from speaking and giving herself away to Wolf or whether marriage, family and time have changed her in this respect I don't know. She, like Julia, has married "out of music", but she has retained Maria Novotny as her professional name. She moves rapidly from topic to topic: the gloomy grey winter this year without any touch of sun, the sudden early arrival of summer almost without an intervening spring, the vast bushes of lilac in the large back garden which we must see after lunch, the family's plans for spending Pentecost at her husband's hometown in Kàrnten, which she assumes Julia will come along for, Peter's relationship with their kitten Pitou, who is only a year old and likes sleeping in her cello case when she is practising, her regret that she isn't the extra cellist playing with us in the string quintet . . .

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  Wolf has to leave, and we see him to the door.

  "We have to escape from Vienna at Pentecost," says Maria over coffee. "There are hundreds of buses parked in the Stadtpark, and thousands of Italians, happy, happy geese. And Japanese, serious, polite geese."

  "Why would the Japanese celebrate Pentecost?" I ask.

  Maria looks at me for a second, then continues, turning to Julia: "So have you decided what you'll do after the concert? Will you come to Kàrnten with us or stay here in Vienna with your mother? You spend no time at all with me ever since she's come to live in Vienna."

  Julia hesitates. "I'm not sure yet, Maria. She's being very possessive. And my aunt's coming around today, so how I'm going to find time to work on my music I don't know."

  "But Karnten?"

  "I don't know, I don't know yet. Let's go out and see the lilacs. This is such wonderful weather."

  "I'll go and wake Peter first," says Maria.

  Peter is a bit cranky after his nap, but cheers up when he sees the kitten crouched beneath a lilac bush. He runs after it, stumbles and falls. After assessing the concern on his mother's face, he begins to cry. Maria takes him inside again, and Julia and I are alone.

  A wonderful scent pervades the garden.

  "Does Maria know about us?"

  "Well, it would have helped if you'd looked at me a little less at lunch."

  "I was storing your image in my mind, for later referral ... So you're going to your mother's this evening?"

  "Yes."

  "Then come to the hotel now. We can at least spend an hour or two together."

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  Julia shakes her head. "It's three. I've got to get home and practise before my aunt turns up. Also, well, I haven't had time to go to church."

  She touches my forehead, where a small bump has formed.

  "It's been such a long time," I say.

  "It's true," she says, misreading me. "It feels so odd, the three of us here together. I almost feel like saying, 'Maria, get out Beethoven's C minor trio . . .' I was about to say we should go to Mnozil's for lunch tomorrow but, you know, Mnozil's doesn't exist any more."

  "Doesn't exist?" I say. It is as if Schonbrunn had evaporated. I shake my head in disbelief - more than disbelief: dis
may. It feels strange that my wanderings last night didn't take my footsteps past it.

  "No," says Julia. "It's gone. There's something else there instead - one of those impersonal heartless places, bright and sad."

  "But how come you've never mentioned this before? In London, I mean. What happened? Is he alive still?"

  "I think so. I think he just sold up."

  I shake my head again.

  "Well, is Asia still there?" When the heart of the city used to die at the weekends, the local Chinese was almost the only place where we students could get a decent bite.

  "Yes," she says. "At least, it was a year ago."

  "Julia, did you mean - did you really mean - what you said about not playing with others again?"

  "It's getting worse, Michael. I don't think I can." Her eyes fill with pain.

  Maria has come up to us. She looks at us with uncertainty and, I sense, something of disapproval, aimed mainly at me.

  "We must go," says Julia.

  "All right," says Maria, not asking any questions. "I

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  know you're busy these next few days. But the day after the concert we should spend an afternoon by the Danube, just like old times. Markus has been working late most evenings and even on the weekends, so I'm sure he'll be able to take a couple of hours off and come with us. A nice family outing. Agreed?"

  "That's fine," says Julia at once. "Isn't it?" "Excellent idea," I say, trying to expunge from my voice all the regret I feel.

  The day after the concert is a free day for the Maggiore; the day after that we are due to fly to Venice. It is precious time, time that the two of us could have spent alone.

  ""^...•••". - v,' -• 5-7

  I practise in my hotel room, using my mute. At first inexplicably rebellious, in an hour or so my fingers and brain and heart,'ïall into a rhythm of calm.

  My room is on the top floor. It is quiet. High on the wall is a window through which I can see the tower of St Stephen's cathedral.

  Helen phones to ask me if I will have dinner with them: they haven't seen much of me; and as the only one in the quartet who speaks German and who knows this city, I'd be the best guide. I make some weak excuse, and assure them they can get by with English. At night, in this city, group-jollity will drive me mad.