An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  "I'm so sorry, Dad." " ';." ^

  "I don't know what to do."

  "Did you have to have her put down?"

  "No - she just lay down under the table like she usually does after lunch, and an hour or two later we found her there."

  "Oh Dad. I'm so sorry. She was a wonderful cat."

  "She could have died in my lap." I can hear my father's voice breaking. "I remember the day when your Mum named her."

  "How is Auntie Joan?"

  "She's upset," he says, trying to pull himself together.

  AN

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  Poor Zsa-Zsa. Poor old faithful, aggressive, salmonfilching, territorial, canny cat. But she had a long life and an eventful one.

  "Dad, I'll come and visit you next week. Or at the latest the week after."

  "Do come, Michael, please."

  "Dad, I'm sorry I haven't visited . . . Where do you plan to bury her?"

  "Now it's funny you should ask," says my father, cheering up. "We were just talking about it. Joan thinks we should cremate her, but I think we should bury her in the garden."

  "Not near the gnome, I hope."

  "Not near the gnome?" ' ;

  "No," I say firmly. j

  "But that's in the Boyds' garden anyway," he says.

  "I know, but it's two feet away from ours, and half facing it." ><

  "Where do yj3u suggest, then?" he asks. y "In a flower-bed."

  ^'All right, I'll think about it," says my father. "Thank you for calling, Michael. I was very upset, and if you i

  hadn't called I was thinking of calling you even though it's late."

  "But I didn't," I begin to say, then stop. "That's all right, Dad. Bye, then, Dad, goodnight."

  "Goodnight, Michael," says my father, and hangs up.

  I am tired: mind, hand and heart. I drift off, thinking: what does her husband want to speak about?

  My dreams, though, are of Zsa-Zsa. At one point I say to her - her head is resting on my arm - look, I know this is a dream, Zsa-Zsa, and you are dead, but I'd like to ]

  continue it with your permission; and somehow I manage 1

  to do so. :j

  4O2 | VIKRAM SETH H

  7-9

  I dial James Hansen's office number quickly; but before anyone lifts the receiver I hang up. After a few minutes I dial again. His secretary puts me through to him.

  "Thank you for getting back so soon, Michael," he says. "It's Julia's birthday in less than a week, as you perhaps know, and I'm throwing a party for her - and I wondered, since you are such good friends, whether you might be able to come . . . Hello, Michael, are you there?"

  "Yes. Yes, thank you, James, I'd love to come."

  "Well, then, Wednesday, seven o'clock or so. But it's to be a surprise, so I'd be grateful if you didn't mention it to anyone."

  "Where will it be?"

  "At home. A neighbour in the crescent is keeping the caterers and the food and drink in readiness, so I hope Julia won't cotton on to what I'm doing. I'm trying to keep numbers down to about a dozen, because, well, she can't concentrate in crowds - so I haven't asked your colleagues in the quartet."

  "No, I - I see why, I mean, that's a good idea." .>

  "I hope the weather's better than today."

  "Yes."

  "Well, I'm really delighted you can come. See you in a few days. It was good to meet you the last time."

  "Yes, well, thank you. My - my very best to Julia."

  "Well, that'll have to wait, wouldn't you say?"

  "Oh, yes, naturally. But how did you manage to get my number?"

  "The way anyone would. The phone book."

  "But of course."

  I put down the phone, dazed with relief. Yes, I will go

  - yes, I tell myself, I will have to go, for anything else

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  would be inexplicable. What will she say when she sees me? What will I get her as a gift? Has she told James about the blue frog that he must often see? She couldn't have. I would have sensed it, surely.

  7.10

  Wednesday comes. I have put down my gift, shrouded in paper, on the table near the door. I am shaking hands.

  But today he is not so delighted, not so cordial at all. He is polite, no more. He does not scowl, but is cold. The weather is marvellous and the guests spill out into the garden. Dark venous roses bloom. Waiters top the drained flutes, and Julia, who has not dressed for the occasion, is looking lovely.

  What is the explanation for his manner? Is it something at the office? Is it a tiff ? If it was anything else, something pointed at me, could he not have phoned and told me that the'whole thing had been called off ? Am I not, for him, at the periphery of things?

  Julia laughs, talks, then sees me - and looks distressed. Luke comes over to me and we talk for a while. What did the monster eat after he had all his teeth taken out? The dentist. Buzby bounds about and Luke runs after him. I stand aside and watch.

  After a while, Julia comes up to me and says, without even a greeting, "Michael, I don't know why James invited you - but I think he knows about us, somehow, I'm not quite sure how. These last couple of days he hasn't been himself."

  His eyes are on us from a distance.

  "I'm certain he didn't know last week," I say. "Are you sure?"

  She nods. ^;

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  "Has he said anything?" I ask.

  "No - nothing directly."

  "Not such a happy birthday after all."

  "No."

  "I'm going to Rochdale in a few days. Come with me. You used to say you'd go there with me - that you wanted to see where I was born and brought up."

  "I can't, now or ever."

  "Oh, Julia, it's not good, is it, what's happening?"

  "I don't know what's going to happen ... I'd better talk to the other guests now."

  "I've left my present on the table."

  "Thank you." She cannot meet my eyes. What will she say when she discovers it is a bonsai, twelve years old, that needs to be watered once every two days? If she does not tend it, it will certainly die.

  I wait till she finally looks up, and say: "I'm going to make some excuse and go. But please come and see me. Please."

  Even as the words leave my mouth, I think: what am I, a lapdog?

  "Yes, yes, I will - just leave me alone, Michael."

  "All right," I say. "I'll go up and beard James."

  "No. Don't," she pleads. "Just mingle and avoid him. I don't know how he knows. Perhaps I spoke in my sleep perhaps Sonia said something - or Jenny - oh, how grim all this is."

  "Julia, we're both transparent people."

  "Are we?"

  "I love you. Is that transparent enough? He can't lipread, can he?"

  "I must go," she says. "But please don't leave immediately. It'll look odd. Goodbye, then, Michael."

  She leaves me. After a few minutes of tippling and

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  nibbling with people I'll never know, I take my leave of Luke and, on the way out, of James.

  "Have you said goodbye to Julia?" he asks. "You must say goodbye to Julia."

  "I told her I'd be going early, so she knows I'll be slipping off."

  "What a pity. Something come up?"

  "Yes, some work."

  "What are you working on?" he asks. Is he toying with me?

  "The 'Art of Fugue'. We have a big rehearsal tomorrow, and I'm woefully unprepared."

  "Julia's fond of that - as you probably know," says James. "Plays bits of it sometimes. Quite subtle music, isn't it?"

  "Subtle?"

  "Oh, there's so much more going on than one senses at first. Of course, I'm not a musician; I don't know if I'm using the right word . . . but then, Julia tells me she's pretty glad on the whole that I'm not a musician. Kind of paradoxical. If I had been, I would have been able to make music with her. On the other hand, when she lost her hearing, perhaps I wouldn't have encouraged her to
continue. Of course, it's a hypothetical question, but it's a relief for me to discuss it with someone who's in the know."

  "Yes. I'm so sorry, James. I must be off. Thank you. I've enjoyed the party."

  He eyes me evenly and reaches out his hand. I shake it, and go. :••

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  : -• •-. .,.-> 7-11

  I have come, as promised, to Rochdale again. My father has aged since the Christmas holidays.

  We are sitting in Owd Betts at two in the afternoon, and his tears fall onto his stratified sole. It is cloudy outside. There is a pearly light in the lower half of the sky, and a dull gleam on the reservoir.

  "It's only a cat, Stanley," says Auntie Joan. "It's not Ada."

  This distracts my father enough to make him glare.

  "Give over, Stanley, you've seen enough turkeys die in your time."

  "Auntie Joan," I protest.

  "It's good for him," says Auntie Joan unfeelingly. "He's been like this for days. Doesn't say a word. It's unhealthy. And it's boring for me. Your coming has done him good, dear."

  "I hope so. Dad, why don't you get a kitten? I'll get one for you."

  "Don't suggest it," says Auntie Joan firmly. "If I die first, what'll become of it? And if he dies first, I don't want to have to deal with it."

  I am silent in the face of her brutal logic. It strikes me that one of her most admirable skills is taking charge at a scene of death and bustling everyone about till they face things. This could be because her husband was an undertaker in Balderstone.

  "And what's the matter with you?" continues Auntie Joan. "Has she left you?"

  I put down my Guinness. "Who?" I ask.

  "Whoever she is. You get these hangdog looks all of a sudden."

  "Auntie Joan, what exactly happened to that couple who went to Scunthorpe?"

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  "Well, he got a divorce and married her, of course. But the poor wife never got the full insurance on the shop. The lorry-driver's insurance company paid out a bit and then refused to pay any more."

  My father has started humming one of Gracie Fields's more risqué songs. One stratum of his stratified sole has disappeared.

  "There wasn't any embalming in those days," says Auntie Joan for no obvious reason. "They gave him a tumbler of whisky when he went to the house, that's how they greeted him, and he just went ahead and dressed the corpse. No embalming. They kept it at the house and then buried it."

  Dad's ginger and lemon pudding arrives in a lake of custard, to his evident delight. The ghost of Zsa-Zsa no longer hangs over the meal. Auntie Joan reverts to her more customary mixture of gossip and reverie, and stops bullying us.

  "Don't forget, JStanky," she says, turning suddenly to my father who has meanwhile perked up, "life's worth complaining about."

  I like it here, even if I nearly banged my head against the low beams when we entered. Owd Belts is for me a sign of friendly hope, though it stands so exposed on the moors, at the crest of the road. When we were at school, a friend and I did a sponsored walk from Blackpool to Rochdale. We were bussed out and dumped on the seafront, and told to find our way home on foot. Lashed by rain, blistered, exhausted and starving, we finally passed Owd Betts and felt for the first time that the end was in sight. I remember the shock in Mum's eyes when I got home. I slept for three days.

  I think back on those times, so far removed from these, when my heart neither knew of nor yearned for love. What would I have thought if an outsider had intruded

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  on my parents' marriage? James has been deft; he did not mention Luke.

  "I'm going to walk back," I say.

  "Whatever for, Michael?" asks my father.

  "I want to walk off my Guinness."

  "Who'll drive us back?" demands Auntie Joan.

  "You will, of course," I say with a smile. "You drove us here."

  "But it's miles. It'll take you hours."

  "Just a few miles. I'll be home by evening. I've been in London too long. I need it."

  "Well," says Auntie Joan, "don't blame me if you fall down a mineshaft."

  I pay, see them into the car, and watch it weave a little uncertainly down the road. Auntie Joan may have arthritis but she is as reluctant to share the steering wheel as the stove.

  Beyond Owd Belts there is a roadblock for some reason, with police in lime-green jackets busying themselves turning cars back towards Rochdale. A man in a little one-horse sulky is protesting, but to no effect. There must be an accident further down. I leave the road and walk up into the hills.

  , ' -Y 7.12

  From high up here the sign of Owd Betts, the inn itself, the road with its buttercups and thistles and weathered, blackened gritstone wall, the reservoir, the lime-green jackets distance themselves, and all there is is grass and wind.

  The sound of cars disappears, but I hear the hooves of the horse through the violent sough of the wind. It is

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  drizzling a little, so I may not be in luck, but there to the west I see a small cut of blue.

  The air is fresh and sharp and the ground is a subtle chart of tussocks and black earth: hundreds of different grasses, some tipped with feathery brush, some with minute white four-pointed stars; low bilberry bushes with their berries still green - all rippling with or resisting the flapping and rushing of the wind.

  I crouch in a hollow; the wind slackens; I lie in it, damp though it is, and the wind dies, and the horizon dies, and there is nothing but silence and sky.

  From somewhere a cow lows; and then through it comes a wheedle-wheedle sound, a whistle of joy and energy that becomes a frenzied untrammelled song that rises higher and higher as the lark itself spirals unseen into the low grey sky.

  Perhaps I will see it when it plummets. No, I would have to stand or scan; and I am happier to lay my arm across my eyes - or view the sky through my fingers.

  Now two, now-three, and now, though the sky is scarcely brighter,-legions of larks rise up from the damp earth in careless counterpoint, each retaining its self even as it merges with its fellows.

  But why can the lark not be itself alone, uninvested, uncompared even by those who love it most?

  Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

  O stodgy git.

  Like a high-born maiden .•.-•• s». "

  In a palace tower, ;

  Soothing her love-laden

  Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love which overflows her bower.

  O gushy twit.

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  He rises and begins to round,

  He drops the silver chain of sound

  Of many links without a break

  In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake . . .

  Ah, now that, now that is it.

  f

  7-13

  I have driven Mrs Formby up to Blackstone Edge and beyond, where the road cuts into the blackened rock. The stone walls end, the moors continue unmarked, the pylons march far into Yorkshire.

  We talk about the music the quartet is preparing. When I tell her of the planned recording, her face lights up.

  She asks me what has brought me to Rochdale this time. I mention my father and aunt and Zsa-Zsa. Besides, I say, I don't need a reason to come home. She seems unhappy and uncomfortable, and my own heart sinks.

  "Michael, the violin, I'm afraid it's no good. Blood is thicker than water, and ..."

  I nod.

  "In fact my blood is a bit too thick. Hypertension. Though why, I don't see. I'm a calm enough person."

  "I do hope you're all right."

  "Yes, I'm fine, I might live to be a hundred. Well, as I was saying, Michael, I'm not very fond of my nephew, but there it is."

  "I was afraid of this."

  "But you came to see me nevertheless."

  "Well, of course. And besides -"

  "Yes?" '

  "You asked my fat
her for my number some months ago, so I imagined you had something to say to me."

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  She is silent for a while, then says, "I didn't have the heart to call you. Well, what are you going to do for a violin?"

  "I haven't thought it through yet." I am silent for a while. "When do you want it back?"

  She looks puzzled, almost as if she hasn't understood the question.

  "Mrs Formby, you must know that I have it here," I say desperately. "I always bring it with me when I come to Rochdale. It's yours, it always has been. But I wonder if I could keep it for just a few more months. Till we've completed our recording. I wonder if you could grant me that period of grace."

  "Oh, but the trust isn't set up yet. It'll be a few months in any case."

  "Thank you."

  "No, Michael, no - don't thank me. This must be hard."

  I nod. "Well, 'tis better to have loved and lost, though, isn't it, Mrs Forrnby, than never to have loved at all?"

  ^Çfhat am I saying? Why is she smiling?

  "How are you rehearsing the 'Art of Fugue'?" she asks.

  I tell her about how Billy is structuring things, about Helen's deep viola, about my own viola-playing, about Piers's doubts, about Ysobel Shingle and Erica. She is rapt.

  "How low do you have to go?" she asks.

  "Usually F, but sometimes - for two or three pieces - E or D."

  "Didn't you tell me that you tuned the lowest string of our violin down to F at the Wigmore Hall recital, and that you were able to play it instinctively with that tuning?"

  "Yes." 4 - - . •• •.-.-., . ---; : ; •• . •;.,

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  "Why don't you do the same now?"

  I look at her. Indeed. Why don't I? I have, in fact,

  thought about it before, but never very seriously. It does

  have its advantages, though: apart from the three pieces

  where I go so low that I would be compelled to use a

  v viola, I can stay with the violin throughout. The texture

  "*(' of our quartet would be more consistent on the whole.

  On the other hand, it would be a bit odd to play with a

  variant tuning more often than with the standard one -

  especially as it could unsettle the violin for other

  rehearsals and concerts.

  But now what matters most is that I get to play my fiddle, however it is tuned, as much as I can contrive to in our last months together.