An Equal Music

by Vikram Seth

  She covers her eyes. "And no, for God's sake don't tell me which is true."

  8.14

  Three weeks have passed since I met her. I am removing items one by one from the addresses in my mind.

  No, I have no use for this vision, I can dispense with this fact: rooms, books, meetings, the flecks in her irises,

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  the scent of her skin: let them be hauled away on weekday mornings, let them float off in helium balloons.

  I too believe, at last, that I can build on nothing, that there is nothing to build on. It has taken time, for hope has well-cased germs. As for myself, I think: if I left this darkness and this blankness, it would not make the universe sneeze. I would be free of dreams and thoughts and Be Your Own Maestro. My father, though, would grieve. Auntie Joan would grieve. As autumn deepens, rings form round my eyes.

  What can't be disposed of must be placed in deeper storage. I will hire a warehouse in the suburbs and in it lay all undesired entities: scent, sound, sight, inclination.

  It is Saturday morning, but I don't swim. From the bridge I watch the light play on the water, on the wake of the Water Serpents beyond the Lido. I read the helpful warning on the bridge: "Danger. Shallow Water. Do Not Jump from Bridge." No, no, I am a swimmer, I will live to be arthritic.

  This is my best-loved tree, the plane - all knots and knobbles and peeling bark. But why look here? In all my years on the moors I never found a lark's nest. Here too I hear not hooves but yapping. It is a quartet of dogs - a small white dog, a vast brown one, the limper of the Devil's Bridge, a fox-like interloper. They bark, they sing, they sniff. She flings her slipper into their number and with musical cries they rip it into shreds. They have no sense of who met whom, of what lies above our world or in our hearts. They are full of charm; in their eyes is love and ice.

  There are a hundred kinds of deafness. The more tense I am, the less well I hear. So it makes sense to put one's acts in order.

  Concentrate on these few things: the bread, the papers, the milk, some vegetables, some food to microwave, the

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  book you will read tonight. Read words again: you have no quartet to play, no music to look over. Defer till its own time the work you do.

  Tune the strings, though. Play scales. More than father, mother, friend or lover, it has companioned you. The residue now rests in weeks, in days. Play scales on it, things that may bring you calm. Remove the chin-rest, feel its wood again.

  Balance your books. Ride buses. Walk. You are in the lonely majority. Which of these sitting around you belong to your unselect fraternity? The chatterer, the smiler, the silent one who looks ashamed in a crowd?

  That conductor - that schoolgirl whispering, "Fou!" that man selling outdated diaries from a stall - that salesgirl with dark hair like Virginie's?

  8.15

  "Just flying off the tables they are, the T-shirts. Can't get

  enough of them." She smiles at me.

  "Do you have any large ones in that dark reddish

  colour there?"

  "The russet? Just what's on the table, I'm afraid. We

  emptied the stockroom this morning."

  "Ah ..." There is even something in her face which

  keeps me here.

  "Too few of the large," she says. "It's not the right

  mix. We've complained to Head Office."

  "Ah, yes, Head Office. That and the computer." "May as well blame someone!" she says, laughing. "Sorry, it's not my fault, the computer's down." "Sorry, I'm taking my lunch break. It's Head Office." "Well, if there's no russet, I'll have a black. Sorry, this

  five-pound note is forged. It's the computer."

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  "You'd be surprised!" she says, looking at it intently. "There're a lot of them going around."

  I suspect the shiny penny she returns me.

  "Better bite into it," she suggests, giggling. "It may be chocolate."

  "Sorry, we don't serve chocolate pennies on Saturday."

  "It's Head Office," both of us say, laughing.

  "When does Head Office let you off this evening?"

  "I have a boyfriend," she says.

  "Oh -" I say. "Oh." All laughter has left my voice.

  "Look here," she says, coolly, "I think you'd better go."

  Not fear of me, but a different fear, of the fragility of trust. She will not fraternise with customers for a while.

  "I'm sorry," I say. "I'm sorry. You're so nice. I just thought-"

  "Please go. Please."

  She does not look around for a supervisor, but at the table with the T^shirt-s, russet, black and grey.

  •*' • •>' t$ • •--'-~t'- '"' •

  4 j*«

  8.16

  At 1:30 at night, restless, I walk to the rank of phonebooths by the recycling bins. Even at this hour there are a few people wandering here and there on the streets. I press the numbers.

  "Hello?" A soft, sweet voice, a slight Irish accent. "Hello, I wonder if I could speak to Tricia." "This is Tricia's number. Can I help you?" "I, well, I saw - I just saw your card in a phone-booth, I mean her card, and I wondered if she might be free soon

  - well, in the next half-hour or so ..."

  "Yes, my darling, she would be. Where are you now, sweetheart?"

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  "In Bayswater."

  "Oh, that's very close. Let me tell you about Tricia. She's an English girl, long blonde hair, blue eyes, very nice legs, clean shaven, 36-24-36."

  "How old is she?" v "She's . . . twenty-six." ^ "And how much, I mean . . ."

  "From forty to seventy pounds, my darling."

  "Oh. And that would include . . ."

  "Massage to start with, and then oral and intercourse," she says sweetly.

  I am silent, then say: "Should I take your address?"

  "Yes, my darling, it's twenty-two Carmarthen Terrace, flat three. Just press the buzzer below."

  "I'm sorry, I'm - I don't know how it works. Do I pay you before?"

  "Whatever you like, love," she says with a smile in her voice. "The only thing I do insist on is that we use protection."

  "Are you Tricia?"

  "Yes, I am. I look forward to seeing you soon, sweetheart. Thank you for calling."

  ;. ,; ,. . •.; v:.'.''. Y'- ' ' 8-X7 -'.-;•• •"• ' • - T'-

  What she does not feel, she feigns. She is about 35, attractive, practised, sweet. All that I have withheld for months forces itself through me. Afterwards I begin to weep. She does not shoo me out but offers me a cup of tea.

  "It's someone you care about, darling, isn't it?" .

  "I don't know."

  "You don't have to say anything."

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  I don't. She doesn't. We sip our tea calmly enough together. The phone rings, and she says to me, "Would you like to take a shower and get dressed, darling?"

  "Yes. Yes. I need a shower."

  The pink of the bathroom, my face in the mirror, the small ragged Winnie-the-Pooh on the sill, the cloying smell. I feel a frightful nausea wrench my guts. I get to the toilet bowl and retch. Nothing comes up. In the shower I boil the skin off myself, steam all this away.

  I am dressed. I mutter my thanks and am about to leave.

  "You haven't paid yet, sweetheart."

  I pay what she asks, and say goodbye. I am sick at heart, sick to the heart. Has this been me this hour?

  "Don't lose my number, sweetheart. Do come again," she says, and lights the stairs.

  %?' •

  8.18

  Mf diary service fills my days with dates: jingles for ad companies, background music for movies. I sit around in a recording studio in Wembley, working out a chess puzzle, reading the newspapers. People have heard the news about the Maggiore, but they leave me alone. I overhear someone mention Julia Hansen once, but the rest is absorbed in a general tuning-up.

  Lucy from the Wigmore Hall phones to sa
y she has kept aside a ticket for Julia's recital on 30 December. Or was it two tickets I wanted? I thank her, but tell her I will be out of town. Let someone else have them.

  "Oh, where will you be going?"

  "I don't know - Rochdale, I suppose, for Christmas."

  "I'm sorry you're no longer with the Maggiore."

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  "Well, that's the way things go. Fresh woods and pastures new."

  "I hope I haven't disturbed you, Michael."

  "No. No. Not at all. Not at all."

  She rings off and I take stock of things. The stockroom ;, was emptied this morning, yet there are all sorts of things <-' in it already gathering dust: a porcelain frog, a stuffed stoat. I find myself on the Number 7 bus.

  Behind the British Museum is a small photographic department. I get two prints made of the drawing, one to be sent to me, one to her. I will examine the stoat at my leisure. Let her share my delectation and my musings.

  A kind woman in the Print Room gets out an old article containing the two pieces of music, one sacred, the other secular, standing open at St Augustine's feet. I gaze at them till I can hear them in the silent room. I orchestrate them at whim: strings, woodwinds, voices, lyres.

  These days I leave half my letters unopened. I avoid Holland Park, whose stones one may not touch. Mnozil's has new management, and I myself am purged, expurgated. All things must pass, all flesh is grass.

  I dream of Carl. He is listening to me play a dog-food jingle. He leans his head back in ecstasy. "Sustain," he says. "Always sustain. Your playing, which never displeased me much, now brings tears to my eyes. But do you know, I prefer Bach."

  "That's a subjective judgment," I say. "But, if you like, here is some for you."

  He grows infuriated. "That is not Bach, that is a Bàchlein," he thunders. "Give me Johann Sebastian."

  "I cannot get him under my fingers, Herr Professor. Julia McNicholl has taken him from me."

  He grows apoplectic. "I will not have this. I will not have this. I will throw you out of my class. You have

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  reacted badly to my letter. That was wrong, very wrong. You will leave Vienna at once - by the town sewer."

  "I will never leave Vienna again -"

  "Very well, then," he says sadly. "Very well then, indulge the whim of a dying man. Play the dog-food aria again. And with less feeling. We must learn to respect the composer's intentions."

  "As you say, Herr Professor," I reply. "But why bother to predecease me?"

  8.19 >r

  The doorbell rings. It is the registered letter from Rochdale.

  I sign for it. I leave it unopened on the counter in the kitchen. Those tangerines are mouldy. I must clean out that bowl.

  Is this what it is like? You stand there in the dock, and while the judge,*intones something, you notice that the dajck, almost purple lipstick of the woman in the second row is smudged.

  They have come for custody. Please let us be for a day. I do not contest anything. The child is asleep. He will wake of his own accord in his own time.

  Shall I play you and then give you up? Shall I give you up unplayed, so that the memory of our parting is not marred with sounds, so that Bach is not joined by other losses: Mozart, Schubert, all that gives me life.

  What would I play if not that, where would I play if not here? "Tea for Two" chez Tricia? The dog-food aria for my old, tired teacher? The untrembling scale with my estranged friends? "The Lark Ascending" in honour of a dispersed spirit?

  I take it out, I tune it up, I close the door of my cell. In

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  Jl

  i>"v

  the darkness I play it, and I do not know what it is I am playing. It is a medley of something, it is an improvisation such as I have never played before, it comes more from its own heart than from mine. It is a lament, but I sense, with a feeling of having been abandoned already, that it is not for me.

  But now it has swerved into the Vivaldi Largo that I played on that miraculous day, there in his church. I play it, it plays me, and in the darkness of my cell I know that I will not hear the repeat, that it is time to cease, to beg the guardian gods of the woods from which it sprang that in its future life - and may it live another two hundred and seventy years - or more, or more - it will be treasured by its owners and fare well.

  Farewell, then, my violin, my friend. I have loved you more than I can say. We are one being, but we now must part and never hear our common speech again. Do not forget my fingers or our voice. I will not hear you, but remember you.

  8.20

  Dear Mr Holme,

  You will doubtless be aware of the recent death of Mrs John Formby (Cecilia Formby). I understand you were a close friend of the deceased, and I would like on behalf of my firm to offer you our sincere condolences.

  Varms &c Lunn have acted as Mrs Formby's solicitors for many years, and she named my partner William Sterling and myself as her executors.

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  Mrs Formby's will was lodged together with the relevant documents at the District Probate Registry ten days ago. Probate has now been granted.

  In a codicil to her will drafted by this firm under her instructions and signed a week before her death, Mrs Formby left an old Italian violin (Carlo Tononi, circa 1727) to you, free of tax.

  I understand that the violin is presently in your possession. You may continue to look after it for the executors until the administration of the estate has reached the point where its ownership can be transferred to you.

  It has been some weeks since Mrs Formby's death, and there has been some delay in informing you of the terms of her will. Part of the difficulty arose from the fact that in her codicil Mrs Formby gave an address for you that no longer exists.

  Mrs Formby also left a note for you, which I enclose. She w,as incapacitated physically in the days immediately preceding her death, though her rriind was entirely sound and her intentions clear. She dictated this note to me in hospital. Since her speech was somewhat slurred, I read it back to her to ensure that there were no errors in my transcript. I then had it typed out, and she signed it.

  If you have any questions about the bequest or any other associated matter, either immediately or for any reason whatever in the future, I hope you will have no hesitation in getting in touch with us.

  Yours sincerely, Keith Varms

  enc: letter to Michael Holme Esq from Mrs John Formby

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  8.21

  My dear Michael,

  I fear I've caused you a great deal of anxiety in

  the last year owing to my uncertainty about my

  violin, and I'm sorry. I sensed your distress when

  we spoke of this matter earlier this year, and it was

  .„- honourable of you not to attempt to influence my

  previous decision, and to accept it without ques-

  « tioning.

  You have been a true friend of mine since you were six or seven years old, and we have seen each other pass through both good times and bad. I want to help you increase the good times, and this is the best way that I can think of to ensure this. Besides, I can't bear to imagine my violin passing by sale into the hands of a stranger when it's been played by you for so many years.

  I hope you'll forgive my signature. I am afraid I'd no longer be any good at Vaughan Williams's high trills.

  I send you my love, though by the time you receive this, the ashes of that "I" will be scattered quite contentedly, believe me - around Blackstone Edge.

  Goodbye, my dear Michael, and God bless you.

  Yours,

  - [illegible]

  .. ;•.. • •; , , ., : , 8.22 •• ,. .. .-o-?.: * .•-*•:•<•

  Not me, but you, Mrs Formby, if he exists. I can't sleep tonight for restlessness. I am filled not with relief but disbelief. I don't even take my violin out again. This can't

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  be true, yet is. It was lost to me, that now is found.

  Your words have given me life and taken sleep away. The park gates open at first light. Slate-grey and coral, dawn is reflected in the pool. The flowers have been turfed under in the sunken garden. The chack of a squirrel, the splash of a small duck, a blackbird hopping about beneath the thinned-out linden hedge: this is all. I am alone with this troubled joy.

  Let me report to you from my world. The views have widened as the world's grown bare. Someone has sprinkled orange lentils on the ground beneath the sycamore. The corporate pigeons waddle and strut among them. Cold fat black crows stand still, uncawing, watchful.

  As for music, the grey geese cry above the Round Pond. They fly low, then rush feet first to settle on the water. The swans sleep safely on, their heads tucked into their feathers.

  What possessed^ you to repossess me of it, you who were close to death and lacked clear speech? Is it the violin alone you want to give me, or must I learn some lesson from the world?

  8.2,3 "

  - : . .; >/j', : 3;^ . "•••:.'"'

  The voice on the telephone is taut with repressed fury.

  "Michael Holme?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Cedric Glover. We met briefly at my aunt's place last Christmas - Mrs Formby. I am her nephew."

  "Yes. I remember. Mr Glover, I am very sorry about your aunt's death . . ."

  "Are you now? I'm rather surprised, considering how well you have done out of it."

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  "But-"

  "My aunt was an old lady, and not in full possession of her faculties. It was easy enough to prey on her."

  "But I didn't even know she was ill - I never visited her

  - to my great regret."

  "Well, someone did. My wife was there almost the whole time - taking care of her, as only family can - so I do not see how she managed to contact her solicitor and make this ungrateful codicil. But she could be quite guileful."

  "I had nothing to do with this. How - how did you get my number?"

  "Do you really mean to dispossess my daughters of their education? Do you really believe my aunt meant to do that?"