by Vikram Seth
I sigh, and gulp my wine. i; • . -
471 | VIKRAM SETH
"Well, all right, all right," continues Piers. "I won't say anything for the moment. But how have you been? No one has seen you for ages. No one knows if you're alive or dead. Why are you hiding away? Can't you at least meet us? Helen's depressed. She misses you. We all do. She gave up calling after you stopped replying to the messages she left. Well, what is your news?"
"The good news? or the bad?"
"The good. Save the bad for the next time we meet."
"I've got a violin."
"Oh, wonderful. What is it?"
"It's a Tononi."
"Carlo?"
"Yes."
"But that's the same as your last one."
"That's because it is the last one."
"You mean you bought it? How could you afford to?"
"Piers, it was given to me."
"Given? How? By the old biddy up in Yorkshire?"
"Don't call her that."
"Sorry. Sorry." Piers holds up both hands, splashing a bit of wine onto the front of his shirt.
"She died. She left it to me."
"Oh shit!" says Piers. "Everyone inherits things except me. Oh, I don't mean that. I'm really happy for you. Really. To old biddies. May they all die quickly and leave all their money to starving fiddlers." He raises his glass.
I laugh and rather treacherously raise mine.
"Actually, I shouldn't complain," says Piers. "I've got a violin too. Or at least I think I do."
"What is it?"
"An Eberle. An exceptionally fine one."
I smile. "Well, Piers, congratulations. I felt really bad that day at Denton's. Eberle's Neapolitan, isn't it? Or is it Czech? Wasn't there a Czech Eberle too?"
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"I've no idea. This one's from Naples."
"Oh, by the way, Mrs Formby lives - lived'--in Lancashire, not Yorkshire."
"Just to put the record straight?"
"Exactly."
Piers laughs. "You see? We can talk. You've got to hear it, Michael. It's got a lovely tone - balanced on all strings, warm but clear. It sounds amazing in E major, if you can believe that. In a funny way, it's the opposite of the Rogeri. Perhaps that would have been too resonant for me. Especially for the Bach recording."
"Did you get it from a dealer or at an auction?"
"Neither," says Piers. "It's an odd story. Actually, I feel a bit of a profiteer in a friend's misfortune. Luis. You know Luis, don't you?"
"No."
"Oh?" says Piers, looking surprised. "Well, anyway, he was forced to sell it, and offered it to me, since he knew there'd be no dealer's commission that way. He'd taken out a big loan to pay for it, and for all sorts of reasons couldn't keep up with the payments. The final blow for him was when the LSO screwed him over."
"How was that?" I ask, deeply grateful to be talking about the London Symphony Orchestra and an unknown Luis rather than the Bach recording.
"Well," says Piers, "old Luis went for an audition, played well and was offered a trial as number four in the Firsts. His first real chance to play with them was going to be a tour in Japan and a few connected concerts in London the week before. He got out of a whole lot of pretty lucrative work in order to do it: poor benighted dago, he's always been in love with the LSO. Then, less than twenty-four hours before they were due to begin playing, someone from the board phoned him up to say that they had filled the position the previous week, but
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Luis could tag along if he wished. No regrets, no apologies - nothing."
"What reason did they give?" I ask, interested despite myself.
"Apparently, two other violinists had been on trial for that position for a while, and the board was 'under pressure' to decide quickly between those two without considering Luis." Piers tries to indicate the quotation marks with his fingers - a hazardous procedure.
"But why offer him a trial in that case?" I ask. "Or book him on the tour?"
"Search me. Search them. Their board is run by the likes of you and me, just ordinary oppressed musicians who think the world gives them a raw deal."
"Why didn't he just hold his nose and go along if the money was so important to him?"
"That's exactly what I asked him. I suppose I would have. After all, every world has its sleaze, and a lot worse goes on than that. But he said he had his honour, and he didn't want to start hating the orchestra whose sound he'd loved ever since he took up his little quarter-sized fiddle. Perhaps he's right. Perhaps if all of us had a bit more pride, they wouldn't treat us that way . . . Oh, God knows. I suppose it's no fun being crapped on, even by your favourite elephant. But this wasn't the only pressure, just the last straw. Anyway, I told Luis that I loved the Eberle, and that I'd buy it from him like a shot, but that if he wanted to buy it back within six months, I'd let him. He protested nobly and started blubbering, but I told him to shut up - I'd feel like a heel if I didn't give him the option. But, well, I also had to tell the poor bugger that after six months, I'd have bonded with it too deeply to give it up. Bonded! I'm beginning to talk like Helen."
"You, Piers, take some getting to know."
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"That's a nice remark from someone who's been married to me for six years."
"Well, divorced now."
"Yes."
The respite is over. There is no getting around it.
"Well, how have my other spouses bonded with their new second fiddle?" I ask as casually as I can. It doesn't come out casual, though, but almost coldly offhand; and unjust. For them the trauma of divorce leads straight on to the traumas of wooing and engagement and shotgun marriage.
Piers takes a deep breath. "We've tried out a number of people; more women than men, as it happens. I thought Helen wouldn't want to disturb the balance, but she's been quite keen to. She doesn't want another man to replace you. She's taken to yelling at me. She's even broken up with Hugo; well, thank heavens for that. She's really upset still ... Of course, because of the recording, we can only try out^people who play the viola as well."
"And Stratus?" I^ask, side-stepping what I can't engage with. 4
"Well, they've very decently agreed to keep the contract warm," says Piers. "But I associate you with the 'Art of Fugue', Michael. So do we all. It's not just that you're a fantastic player, it's that you're part of us. God knows how we'll manage to get the feel of it without you. Everyone else is on probation. They're all sort of OK, more than OK, but we couldn't play the scale with any of them."
I feel the pricking of tears behind my eyes.
Another expansive gesture, more spillage of wine. "Hey, Michael, steady on, I don't want to upset you twice in one evening." , I look away for a moment.
"You're a selfish bastard," says Piers suddenly. .'
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I say nothing. How I have let them down. If the "Art of Fugue" falls through, will Helen ever forgive me?
"It's still open. It's still open," he says. "Just about. But we can't play with a temporary second much longer. And we can't keep everyone hanging either. It's not fair on them." . "No."
"We'll have to decide by the end of January."
"Yes. Well -"
"Michael, tell me one thing: is it just the 'Art of Fugue'? I mean, it's not as if you can't play at all, is it?"
"I don't know. I really don't know what it is. I wish I knew. I've had six years with all of you that I wouldn't exchange for anything. When I saw you here this evening I wanted to leave. I knew I couldn't avoid the subject, but we've been through it now. So please, Piers, let's change it."
He looks at me coolly. "All right, then. Billy's son got meningitis a few weeks ago."
"What? Jango? Meningitis?"
Piers nods.
"Oh no. I can't believe it. Is he - is he all right?"
"Well, you've been out of touch with the world so long, how would you know what to believe or not? But yes, he
's all right. One day he was fine, the next on the verge of death. Billy and Lydia were totally freaked out. They've still not recovered. But the little bugger's in perfect health again - as if it had never happened."
"Piers, I'm getting out of here. I need to take a walk and get some fresh air. I don't think I can face the carols."
"Who can!"
"I'm a selfish self-centred bastard."
"Selfish? Why selfish?" Piers looks innocently surprised. But didn't he call me that himself a minute ago?
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"I don't know," I say. "Anyway, I don't think I want to hear any more tragic stories. But how is Billy generally? I mean, apart from that."
" 'Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?' "
"Oh, come on, Piers."
"Well, he's inflicted his piece on us."
"Oh. And?"
"Well, you won't know what it's like, will you, until you rejoin us. Or should I say 'unless'?" Piers is eyeing me cynically. "On second thoughts, perhaps that's a disincentive."
I laugh. "I - well, I miss all of you. I even miss our sticky fan. When's your next concert? No, not your next one - I'm going to be in Rochdale till the thirtieth - I mean the next concert after that."
"The second of January - the Purcell Room. But isn't the thirtieth when -"
"Yes." ^ ,
"So you're notf'going to hear her?"
"No."
"What's happening in Rochdale on the thirtieth?"
"Nothing."
"No, perhaps six years is not enough time to understand someone," says Piers, looking at me with troubled concern.
-,•,;. t. -:•:. • 8.31 - :' • •-..•:
Susurrus, sussurus, the wind in the poplars, electricpitched. The swans hiss at me. They swim between the ice-floes on the Round Pond, and the sky is as blue as in summer.
Panes of ice, frosted and clear: the wind pushes them
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onto the southern shore. They slide upon each other, give gently and break clean. Seven layers thick, half beached, they lie as clear as glass and creak and shift as the water moves with the wind.
No, not like an unoiled door; more like a tired boat. But no, it's not that, it isn't quite that. If I were not reading these surfaces, could I interpret their noises? Creaking, rippling, shifting, easing, crackling, sighing: this is not something I have heard before. It is a soft sound, easy, intimate.
This is the spot where I learned she could not hear. I break a sliver off; it melts in my palm. I met her in winter, and lost her before winter came.
No, on that day, I will not be here, within the reach of sound.
The ice shifts like a skin upon the ripples of the pond, and the swans move lightly on the winter water.
8.32
Once more I am going north from Euston.
For much of the journey I sleep. My destination is where the train, in the announcer's locution, terminates.
It is a cold morning, three days before Christmas. I am giving myself a day in Manchester to visit my haunts, and will drive to Rochdale tonight.
I return the music to the library. I close my eyes while a blind man taps his cane along, tracing the curve of the wall.
At the cathedral I touch the beasts carved on the misericords, the unicorns and dragons.
Near the Bridgewater Hall I stand by the huge rounded touchstone and look at the basin formed by the canal below.
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What keeps me in London? Why not come back home?
Nothing essential to my heart keeps me in London now. All those who love me have died or are very old. Dad and Auntie Joan are in Rochdale. Before my college years I came to Manchester. Even if my speech throws up only the odd Lancastrian trace, once here my ears relax into the lilt; they are at home with Bacup and Todmorden and all the names that aliens distort.
If I lived in Manchester, say, or Leeds or even Sheffield, I could visit them and spend more time with them - a weekend a month, even more perhaps, not three or four uncertain times a year. I could sell my flat and buy something cheaper here. But then, why not live in Rochdale itself, with its moors all around, and no Park Polizei to say: do not trespass, do not sing, do not shout for joy or grief, do not touch the stones, do not feed the larks Christmas pudding?
No, not Rochdale, with its Meccano guild, dry-stone walling, badmintgn, German shorthair pointer club. Not Rochdale with th*e heart Tom out of it, the claustrophobic mgrket, the murdered streets of my childhood, gutted into vertical slums. Not Rochdale to commute from to the city where I work.
What work though? The Halle perhaps, who filled the elephant ring with magic sound? A bit of teaching, something linked to my own old college? Some work with an itinerant trio I could form? I formed one once, I could do so again. Who would the pianist and the cellist be? There'd only be one work I'd never play.
London is a violin jungle. In its heartache, in its busyness lie its varied pickings. But I have ceased to swim in the Serpentine and have grown scant of breath. It is no longer, if-it ever was, my home.
I embrace the touchstone. I press my forehead and my face against it. It surrenders no swift answer. It is very
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smooth, very cold, and in its heart very old. The snow falls all around me and swirls above the basin of the canal. : . •-.. ,
8.33
It's a quiet Christmas. Snow falls intermittently. Zsa-Zsa lies under the garden she once roamed. My father has formless anxieties, then is cheerful. I do the shopping in my white rental car and get an un-Christian parking ticket. Auntie Joan creates her usual vast repast. We talk of this and that. I do not say I'm thinking of a move.
Afterwards, I drive around in the falling snow.
The cemetery is covered in white: the graves, the tops of gravestones, the flowers placed there a few hours ago. I lose my bearings: have they moved a hedge or is it just the snow that's muddling me? But here it is: a grey headstone engraved by Auntie Joan's husband's friend, a monumental mason: "Treasured memories of Ada Holme who fell asleep" on such and such a date, with space for a name or two below.
On my mother's grave I place a white rose.
Snow has closed some of the roads, but not the road to Blackstone Edge. I drive past Mrs Formby's: a notice tells me it's for sale.
On Blackstone Edge I crumble some Christmas pudding, warm in its foil, onto the snow. The moist black crumbs will melt through to the black earth of the moor. But of course the larks left months ago. The snow has stopped falling, and the view is far and clear. Yet I cannot see even a raven or a carrion crow.
I get the violin from the car. I play a little from "The Lark Ascending". And then I tune down the lowest string to F.
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My hands are not cold, nor my mind agitated. I am in no dark tunnel but the open moor. I play for her the great unfinished fugue from the "Art of Fugue". No doubt it makes no sense by itself, but she can fill in the parts that I can hear. I play it till my part runs out; and listen till Helen too has ceased to play.
8.34 •:•/ -•-.••,.. " ••'<• /-
- •'..'- -i" '- "••«• • :•':>: ''
On the 3oth I take a train down to London. It is a clear day with the odd cloud. By the time we get to Euston it is dark. I have no luggage, not even my violin.
I go directly to the Wigmore Hall. The evening's concert is sold out.
The young man at the box office says he was surprised, given the nature of the work. He thinks there may be another factor. " 'The concert by the deaf pianist', you know, that sort of thing. A bit off-putting, I think, that some of them don't even know her name. But there it is. It's-been sold out for weeks. I'm very sorry."
"If there are any returns . . ."
"We usually do have a few, but it all depends on the concert. I really can't guarantee anything. The queue's just along here."
"Haven't you kept any tickets aside for - you know, the odd pat
ron or benefactor or whatever?"
"Well, not officially, no, we don't officially do that kind of thing."
"I've played here before. I'm - I'm with the Maggiore Quartet."
"I'll do my best," he says, and shrugs.
There is an hour to go before the concert. I am sixth in the queue. But fifteen minutes before the concert only one
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ticket has been returned. The lobby has fille(j up with people hailing each other, chatting and laughing* buying programmes, collecting their pre-paid ticket*. Again and again I hear her name, and the woi'd de;if , dear , again and again.
I start to panic. I leave the queue and stand outside. The night is windy and cold. I ask everyone who comes in, passes by, programme in hand, or even goes down by the outside staircase to the restaurant below whether they have any tickets to spare.
Two minutes before the concert I am beside myself. Two warning bells have rung - and now the third.
"Oh, hello, Michael, so you've come after all. Piers said . . ."
"Oh, Billy, Billy - I've been standing here -1 - oh, Billy
- I was so shocked to hear about Jafig0-"
"Yes, he gave us quite a scare. Lydi* wanted to come to the concert, but decided to stay with him. She's the one who's been hit hardest by this. We'd better go in."
"Her ticket. Do you have a spare ticket? Billy?"
"No. I returned hers a couple of days ago ... You mean you don't have a ticket?"
"No."
"Take this." %
"But Billy-" .Y.--V.V-
"Take it. Don't argue, Michael, of neither of us will get in. They'll close the doors in half a minute. The lobby's almost empty. Don't argue, Michael. Take it and go. Go."
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8.35
I am in the front row of the balcony. A murmur fills the hall. I look down on the heads of the crowd below. In the fifth row I see a small boy, I would think the only one here, and next to him his father.
She enters, looks at them and smiles. For a moment, for more than just a moment, she casts her eyes around, troubled, searching, then sits down at the piano.
She plays without the music, her eyes sometimes on her hands, sometimes closed. What she hears, what she imagines I do not know.
There is no forced gravitas in her playing. It is a beauty beyond imagining - clear, lovely, inexorable, phrase across phrase, phrase echoing phrase, the incomplete, the unending "Art of Fugue". It is an equal music.