An Equal Music
Page 36
"Mrs Formby, I think that's a really good idea."
"I'm so sorry about all this, Michael. I don't want you to think I haven't thought about you."
"No, no, Mrs Formby. Don't say that."
I tell her about my walk yesterday, and the larks. Behind her thick spectacles her eyes grow wider, and she smiles.
"He rises and begins to round," she prompts.
"He drops the silver chain of sound," I continue, and we recite it in alternate lines, unerringly.
"Till lost on his aerial wings," she says at last, and sighs.
I am silent, and after a while, almost inaudibly, she herself murmurs the final line.
line.
7.14
What are my assets then, my means? My bow is my own, my furniture, my books, £4,000 in savings, and what I own of my mortgaged flat. No car alas, nor patron either.
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On my return to London I talk to Piers, who is himself looking for an instrument. He says nothing, then simply: "My dear Michael."
He tells me of a fund - I have heard of it before - that makes small loans at low interest rates to musicians seeking to buy instruments. But by themselves these loans are not enough.
Might my bank help? If I could pay for it, perhaps I can keep my violin after all. Piers doesn't know. His didn't.
Over these two years he has been to all the dealers in London but has found nothing he can afford that he likes enough. Now he has taken to attending violin auctions in the hope of a fortunate encounter. I should do the same, he says; we can examine instruments together, and play them, and bid for what we like and can afford. Am I interested? But it can break your heart, he warns; so far he has liked three fiddles, and been outbid for each.
Or perhaps I can get an instrument made for me by Sanderson along^'the measurements of my violin. The viojin; the violin. Practise that.
Time is not with me. Unlike Piers, I am not upgrading what I already have. I will be left with nothing in my hands by the end of this year. , ,
*<• "..; -; 7.15 •- ,.'•-•.•-•: =
I do go to my bank. I make my case. I am asked for documents and proofs. I return in two days.
I meet a cheerful young man from whose vocabulary the first person singular has been expunged. He shakes my untrembling hand. Do sit down. Please. We do not believe in desks. Coffee? Yes, and sugar, please, for all three Fates lie in this grateful cup: vegetable bean, animal
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milk, mineral spoon. I read my grounds and the iris flecks of his friendly, pitiless eye. From him I learn that the bank has considered my problem. The bank recognises my fidelity. The bank appreciates the fact that I have never been overdrawn. The bank values me as a customer. The bank will not help me.
Why? Why? Is it not a tool of my trade? Do you not find my word or credit good?
Mr Morton -1 think that's his name - explains that my income is low. My income is uncertain. I have no institutional affiliations. I am not even a permanent member of the Camerata Anglica. I am an extra, to be called upon as and when required. My mortgage payments are too high. The bank believes that the combination of my existing mortgage payments and the estimated payments on a loan for a fairly expensive instrument would leave me with very little to live on. The bank, in fact, is thinking chiefly of my interests.
But surely my interest lies in repaying any loan you make me.
Will anyone stand surety for you if you fall behind in your payments? Well, Mr Holme, we are sorry, but our guidelines . . .
So is that it, then? Will I lose the touch of it, the sound of it, the sight of it? I really can't bear the thought of that, Mr Morton. I have had it for as long as I can remember.
Norton.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. The forms have crushed themselves within my hands.
Now please remain calm, Mr Holme; let's have a look at your assets. Perhaps you would consider selling your flat? The bank is, well, associated with a residential sales company. The bank would be delighted to help.
I need a window. Where?
The bank should warn you, however, that your equity
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is not substantial, that the property market is volatile, and that there are, as we are sure you are aware, certain costs and commissions involved.
Is that what I must do then? What solution else? Is it the fault of the computer? Or is it Head Office? Why must there be no window in a manager's office? Is it a guideline? Why must this thing of wood undo me?
He will clone me a clone from woods both hard and soft; he will varnish it with resins from the argosies of Venice: sandarac, dammar, mastic, colophony. He will string it with the guts of beasts. Three hundred years of sweat and tears will rain acid into it, a year for every day, three hundred years of music will sing through its serpentine mouths, it will be mine again; the unique will be replicated.
Or I can go to the rooms with Piers, and stretch my hand forth with its urgent digits - I want that - or that or that.
But it is my Tononi that I want, which is too dear. Sell, beg and borrow;"as I may I cannot stretch so far.
*»'••••••••-.-• • . .
' '. >v: .'
7-16
i My dear Michael,
I said I would visit you but I can't. I can't take the strain of it any more. I can hardly play the piano these days. It seems as if my heart stops when I play.
Things are pressing down on me. Please don't reply to this or see me or ask me to explain. I won't say I will always love you. It will sound too false. It's not false at all - but what good will it do you or me to know it or say it?
I feel as if I am a prisoner in my mind and in this
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room. You have seen it now, so you can imagine me at my desk or at the piano. I wanted you to see it but now you are too much here, as everywhere else in my life. I have to learn peace again, for my own sake - and for Luke, and for James, who looks lost and tired. I have become restless with you, and uncertain, and afraid, and guilty, and unsustainably, stupidly full of joy and pain - none of which is anyone's fault but my own. Don't ask me why or how, because I don't know myself. I know that I cannot cope with seeing you or knowing that it is possible to see you.
I, of all people, who have a Before and an After, should have known that you can't relive your life. I should never have come backstage that night. Please forgive me and, if you are as little capable of forgetting me as I am of forgetting you, at least think of me less often with each day and each year.
Love - yes, you know what I feel. I may as well set it down again -
Julia
7.17
This is not true. But I saw the letter come through the slot. I saw her slanting hand and tore it open.
The lift. No. Stop it, recall him, undeliver this. Unpost, unwrite, unthink it.
Julia, rethink this for pity's sake, and for God's, in whom you trust. I will be deaf to it, I will ignore it. How about that? I will not re-read it, as I am re-reading it now. I will put on some Schubert. The Trout Quintet, blithe and lithe, the little fishes conjured from no vasty deep. This you played, and this, and this. It makes me
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gag. I hurriedly shave. My heart's blood stubbles my chin, but look, it is smooth again, and clean, and whole. None of this need be or have been.
I will journey on a double-decker bus to find you where I once saw you in the choked road. The summer leaves obscure the Serpentine. Only through knowledge do I divine the water beyond, as I trust in your kindness. Will you let my plant live, that was entrusted to your care? Of it you have not said a single word.
The Angel of Selfridges is not in the giving vein. Is it that we have offended?
Maculate with the black dregs of chewing gum, how grubby is the pavement all around. This is not the place.
Your address is known to me, so now in the bright day I am at your door
.
• :-H. 0 7-l8 . .: ' , -i
Ae '
Julia stands before me, her son at her side. I hear the qualities in her voice. For the words I care nothing.
Luke addresses me and I smile, unhearing, uncomprehending. "But shouldn't you be at school?" I ask.
"It's the holidays."
"I'm going to borrow your mother for a little while, Luke. We have some music to discuss. Is your Nanny in? Good. I promise to bring her back."
"Can't I come too?" he pleads.
I shake my head. "No, Luke, it's boring. It's worse than scales. But very important."
"I could play with Buzby."
"Darling, it's not a good idea," she says. "It slipped my mind that I had to go out. I'll be back soon. Oh, Michael, I forgot. I've still got your record."
"I can always take it later." " ,.
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"No, now would be best, I think," she says lightly. A quick smile at Luke. She is back in half a minute, with the LP of Beethoven's string quintet in its white inner sleeve.
"Julia, keep it." No, this intensity will not do.
"No, Michael, I won't," she says. She thrusts it into my hands.
Luke looks alarmed. "How soon is soon?" he asks.
"Just an hour, darling," says Julia.
We are walking up a hill and down a hill and into a park in which peacocks preen and cry. Her face says, I will indulge him for one hour and no more, and make things clear. There will be no interminable codas. In the Japanese garden we sit where others sit, on a gentle slope near the waterfall.
"Say something, Julia."
She shakes her head.
"Say something. Anything. How could you do this?"
"How could you do this?"
"I had to see you. You can't mean it."
Again she shakes her head.
"Have you been able to practise?" I ask.
"Michael, I don't want to see you again."
"How is the tinnitus?"
"Didn't you hear what I said?"
"Didn't you hear what I said? How is the tinnitus? How is it? Are you hearing better or worse? Will you play with me again? There's a problem with the Tononi, Julia - I need to think things through."
"Michael, I can't, because of a series of your problems, be forced to play with people."
"With people?"
"With anyone. I am not, I am not ever, I am never going to play with anyone again."
"What does he mean to you? Does he mean what I
meanr
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,. "Michael, stop this." :
:! "What's happening to us?" , . :
"Us? Us? What us?"
"Julia."
I close my eyes. I bow my head. The cataract sounds in my ears. "I'm not taking you away from anyone," I say at last. "I'd be content just to -"
"We're going to Boston for a month," she says.
I stroke the grass with my palm. "How do you know he knows?"
"He's injured. I can see it, and I can't bear it. In the worst days, when I could hardly recognise myself in the mirror, I saw in his eyes that I was myself. He helped me through. I can read him, Michael."
"How did he find out?"
"Michael, can't you understand - all this is beside the point. Perhaps no one else said anything. People who have lived together for years can sense such things. Perhaps he just heard the falsity in my voice."
"Can you hear that in his?"
"Michael!"
"You'll cope without me, Julia. I won't without you."
"Michael, don't make things more difficult."
"Have you ever danced with him?"
"Danced? What sort of question is that? Did you say danced?"
"Do you love him?"
"Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course I do."
"But you married him -" I stop. ,
"On the rebound?"
"I wasn't going to say that."
"You were. Or words to that effect. It's only partly true. I liked him from the start. He isn't volatile - like me. He isn't moody - like me. He doesn't ask questions that
42.0 | VIKRAM SETH
come out of nowhere. He comforted me. He made me happy. He kept me sane. He gave me courage."
"And I can't? I didn't?"
"I love him now. I can't live without him. What's the point of explaining these things? Or Luke. How could I have been so stupid - worse than stupid, so selfish, so self-indulgent, so reckless? I can't cope, you know, Michael. I seem to, but I don't. He can't even hear the sound of his parents talking to each other at night, when the lights are off. All children hear that. I hate my deafness. If I were blind I would have coped better. If it weren't for music I'd be a mess."
I can't follow this, I can't unravel this. It goes too far back into the separate hinterlands of our lives.
"You're an only child. So am I - that's part of it," she says, her voice quieter once more.
"Part of - do you mean part of the problem?"
"I want to have another child. Luke needs someone to share me with, or he'll grow up to be as selfish as I am."
"Why not apply this kind of logic to James? Why doesn't he need someone to share you with?"
She doesn't bother to respond to this. "I must get back," she says.
"So we're not to see each other again?"
"No."
"You'll pray for me, of course - as you did on Torcello."
"Yes. Yes." She's crying now, but she still has to look at my face for my words.
"An odd God to make you deaf." -: •*'
"What a cheap and easy thing to say."
"Possibly. But it's not so easy to rebut it." - ^
"And cruel."
"What do you think you're being? You think I'm like
AN
EQUAL MUSIC | 4ZI
some - some porcelain frog that you can pick up and smash down when you lose interest in it or decide it's inconvenient? How could you tell me all that in a letter, Julia? Couldn't you at least have-"
"OFF the grass. OFF the grass, please. OFF the grass." A stern dumpling of a policewoman is doing her prohibitory rounds. The quiet couples scatter. We stand up.
"But why?" I ask the woman, dazed. "Why?" r -
"There's a sign there. OFF the grass, please."
Beyond the grass are smooth stones, the zen marfpà; of the pond. I will touch you. Guide me.
"And the stones?" I ask.
"The STONES?" The policewoman turns to stare.
"There's no sign regarding the stones, is there?"
"Michael," says Julia, her hand on my arm. "Don't argue with her. Please. Let's go."
"Thanks, Julia. I'm living my own life now."
"I'm TELLING/you, OFF the stones."
"If there's no law, what does it matter what you say? What would you do if I did step on the stones?"
"I'd ... I'd ... I'd PROCESS you," the woman says, pointing her finger at me.
Off she goes, disappearing along the path. We brush ourselves off, and stand facing each other for a minute. I will not kiss her. It is peace I need. I will go down to the water's edge and touch the smooth round stones.
Julia is holding the record out to me once more. This is the music that we both once loved. This is what I lost, then found.
I look at it, and at her, and fling the wretched taunting thing into the pond.
It sinks. I do not turn to see her expression. I leave her there and walk away.
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7-19
The streets are full of noise. I sit in my nest above the world. The wind flaps against the panes, but apart from that there is nothing.
V My eye falls on her book, her paper-knife. No, let them ^' be, why rail against these things?
There are no messages on my phone. I turn off the answering machine. From time to time it rings. I do not answer it. Whoever it is tires of waiting.
I sit and let the sky darken.
The sky is grey, the room is not y
et cold. Let me sit in silence. Let my head drop on my chest. Let me, abjuring hope, find peace.
:' •'•'•' 7.20
The phone rings madly, maddeningly. I let it ring. It continues ringing, twenty, twenty-five rings, each drilling into the pulp of my brain. Finally I pick it up.
"Yes? Hello."
A woman's voice: "Is that the London Bait Company?"
"What?"
"I said, is that the London Bait Company? Why don't you answer the phone?" It is the braying, hateful voice of the deep South.
"Do you mean 'bait' as in catching fish?"
"Yes. Of course." : '
"Yes, this is the London Bait Company. What were you looking for?" My voice must sound quite wild.
"Trout pellets."
"Trout pellets? I wouldn't recommend them."
"Why ever not?"
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"It's better to tickle trout."
"I didn't exactly ask for your advice . . ."
"I'm new at the job. What particular trout feUets would you like?" : '
"What on earth do you mean?"
"We have small, medium and large; coffee, chocolate and liquorice flavoured; ribbed, textured, extrastrength -"
"Look here, this is the London Bait Company, isn't it?"
"Well, no, as it happens it isn't, but from the number of calls I receive it might as well be."
"How dare you speak to me in this manner? This is sheer harassment."
"May I remind you, madam, that it was you who called me? I have a good mind to dial 1471, get your number, and play 'Die Forelle' to you every midnight."
"This is absolutely intolerable. I shall report you to your manager - to the police."
"You can do Whatever you fucking well like, madam. Just, stop ringing this number. I have had a hard day, one which I wouldn't wish even on you. The love of my life has left me and the police have threatened to arrest me, so your menaces hold no terrors. And I wouldn't recommend trout pellets because the latest research shows, madam, that 99.93% of those who used trout pellets in 1880 have subsequently died."
There is a gasp at the other end of the line, and it goes dead.
I turn off the ringer and sit still, hour following hour, listening to nothing, waiting for nothing.
Part Eight
»*•• - : J*t"