“The bread’s damp again—it isn’t fair,” grumbled Solange. “It’s always damp. I hate it, I hate it.”
“For the love of God, be quiet!” murmured Frederic. He sat moodily upright in his chair, fingering a knife nervously and sipping from time to time at some burgundy that, thank heaven, had been sent up to them by the French consul at Palma. His head moved rapidly and continuously from side to side, his bright eyes resting now on this object, now on that. There seemed no repose for him at all. The bright splash of colour made by the bowl of oranges on the table before him irritated him strangely—it seemed harsh, like a wantonly struck discord. When he lowered his gaze to the floor the rough esparto mat made him shiver—he thought of its coarse surface against his skin—a shirt made of esparto, perhaps—an eternal penance shirt . . . He did not know where to look. His mind jumped from subject to subject—his financial worry, his horror of being tricked by the publishers, his distaste of having to deal with money matters at all. He looked across the table at George (Madame Sand, rather—or Aurore: he hated to think of her as “George”), and he felt for a moment a sudden hatred and malevolence—a resentment. As she served he saw nicotine stains on her fingers, and he shuddered at the imaginary whiff of tobacco that came into his nostrils. Yet this passing disgust was replaced immediately by an upflow of affection: she seemed suddenly capable, calm—a refuge. He longed for the children to go away—he wanted to have her to himself, to have her caress him and quieten him . . . And all the time, as a background to these restless and inconsequential thoughts, his head was full of music. There was a constant urge to get up and go through to the piano in the cell—to play on and on, not remembering anything; but perhaps seeing, floating always before him as he played, scenes, incidents, images of his childhood in Poland—of Poland itself: the peasants dancing, the flat quiet countryside, the big colourful fêtes of the noblemen, the long low houses, and perhaps his mother and father talking to each other across the stove. And all these things seemed forlorn to him, and charged with sadness; for he was, he knew in his heart, eternally an exile from them.
Maria Antonia, the servant, came in, shuffling and staggering with a large ashet. She was incredibly frowsy—her hair in damp wisps, partly from the rain that reached her in the small lean-to shelter that covered the cooking stoves outside, partly from perspiration. Her loose, flaccid mouth was twisted in a perpetual rictus-grin, her clothes were filthy from the grease of many cookings. Madame Sand averted her head: more than anyone in the world she hated this terrible servant, whom they could not get rid of.
“Oh,” cried Solange, “it’s chicken! It isn’t pork after all—it’s chicken!”
Antonia put the dish down before Madame Sand, stood for a moment grinning and wiping her hands, then shuffled out, her loose mules rustling the esparto mat.
The four looked hopefully at the brown and withered roast chicken before them. It was lean and dry—“as old as God,” George muttered beneath her breath.
“I want a leg,” cried Solange.
“You can’t have it,” said Maurice belligerently. “You had leg last time—it’s your turn for wing this time.”
Chopin sipped at his burgundy. Then his eye caught something and he stared at the chicken with horror. And simultaneously they all became aware that the brown, dried-up bird was covered with fleas.
“Ugh!” cried Madame Sand, her face twisted with disgust. “Antonia—for God’s sake come here—Antonia! . . .”
Solange began to laugh delightedly and even Maurice gave a perverted smile.
Chopin said nothing. His lips were drawn tightly together, his hand gripped the knife with a nervous ferocity. Then he got up suddenly and went through to the next room. When Antonia shuffled in, wiping her wet nose with the back of her hand, he was coughing and spitting violently.
George signalled for the chicken to be removed. She leaned across the table, took Chopin’s burgundy glass, and drained it at one gulp. Then she rose, lit one of the long thin cigars she favoured, and strode angrily backwards and forwards, puffing at it greedily.
THE GHOSTS
Frederic had begged Madame Sand not to leave him alone, but in the evening she insisted on going out with Maurice. Solange had a slight cold and was sent to bed.
In spite of the brazier in his cell, Chopin was cold to the marrow. He trembled and started at the slightest sound, peered apprehensively into the dark corners of his room, huddled himself close at the table where he was trying to write. But the effort was great: he could not keep his mind on what he was trying to say to Fontana—he struggled to form phrases in the always-unfamiliar French.
“Indeed, I write to you from a strange place,” he began. “It is a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or curled hair, as pale as ever, in a cell with doors the like of which Paris never had for gates. The cell is shaped like a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting. There is a small window, and outside it orange trees, palms and cypresses. Opposite the window is my bed, on rollers, under a Moorish filigree rosette. Beside the bed is a square table, where I write now (though it is so rickety I can hardly use it), and on the table—a great luxury here—there is a leaden candlestick with a candle. Bach, my scrawls, wastepaper. Silence. You could scream—there would still be silence . . .”
He could not go on. He put down the pen and sat back in the chair. The silence flowed all round him, filled with the thousand small voices of the rain. The candle flickered for a moment in a draught. He was filled with a dreadful restlessness of spirit, an overwhelming fear—but of what he did not know. All round him, it seemed, were ghosts and unfriendly spirits. He was aware of the immense shell of the Chartreuse, himself desolate and pallid among the endless empty rooms and the trickling corridors. He stared at the table, and its immobility, the finality of it terrified him. He sank into himself till he did not know any more what he was, or what anything was: but existed, as it were, in a state of suspension, cut off strangely from his memories, his thoughts—all that constituted in normal life the person. It was like being dead and being aware still of the decomposition of the body, the disintegration of the spirit. The very music that filled him seemed something apart, something that had nothing to do with him, that existed elsewhere. The candle before him was his master: the pen he had just put down, and which lay so painfully still on the worm-eaten table, was greater than he was—was a thing, a shape, a meeting-place of qualities. He was, to himself, a mere sensation, intangible, indefinable.
A gust of wind rattled the door and he started apprehensively. The corners of the cell were dark, the high arched ceiling was filled with moving shadows. He rose, trembling, and went to the piano: then hesitated, with his hands over the keyboard, afraid for a moment to make any sound in that terrible silence. Then, mastering himself with an effort, he began to play.
The music restored him a little. But he was still fretful and ill at ease, and found himself longing for Madame Sand’s return. He hated her for leaving him—yet would have forgiven her anything if he could have seen her at that moment coming through the door of the cell. Her image was before him: the dark braided hair falling down on either side of the gypsy face, the short lithe figure—the whole heavy essence of her personality. He thought of all their torments since the decision to sacrifice propriety and come to Majorca together: their first ecstasies at the sight of the island, so soon to be changed into bitterness: Gomez turning them out of their cottage (and pestering them to have it disinfected and redecorated): the suspicion and terror with which they were regarded by the natives—both on account of his disease and because they were “unChristian”: and then the rain, the endless, endless rain—their removal to the Chartreuse—the bad food, the cold, the loneliness—and above all the blood, the “buckets of blood.”
And in all that nightmare, when he was at his weakest, when there was no hope in him, George had been a strength, a power—a refuge. He knew, deep down, that he wa
s not hers, nor she his: but he knew too that here, on this haunted island, he could not do without her—and knew, or suspected at least, half-consciously, that all his life was just such an island, and she a necessity on it.
He stopped playing and shuddered. For a moment the old fear was back—definable now: a fear of ghosts, of the eternal alien spirits he felt haunting this place. He felt stifled—as if he were dead, had been buried alive. It was as if the door had swung open and someone was standing there in the entrance regarding him—no more than that. There was a shadow by the table—a man: a shape on the bed—a man . . . He longed for someone to come to him—someone real, of flesh and blood—even the wretched Maria Antonia with her rictus-smile and trickling nose.
There came a sudden cry and he stiffened with terror: then remembered Solange in the next cell. A slight fever, perhaps, and a nightmare, causing her to cry out in her sleep. With an effort he rose, crossed to the table and picked up the candle. But he hesitated to leave the cell.
“I am Chopin,” he found himself saying to himself over and over again, “Frederic Chopin, Frederic Chopin. I am Frederic Chopin . . .”
His foot touched something that went rolling over the floor with a little rustling sound. It was one of Solange’s cheap rosary beads.
“I am Chopin, I am Frederic Chopin . . . O God, let someone come, let someone come! . . .”
When he heard the voices of Madame Sand and Maurice from outside he could have wept, so intense was his relief.
HISTOIRE DE NOTRE VIE
Madame Sand, indefatigable as always, had waited only to change her wet clothes and see Maurice safely in bed, and was now sitting writing. Her pen scratched rapidly over the paper, she held her head slightly to one side.
Chopin sat opposite her at the ricketty table, trying to finish his letter to Fontana. But he found it unbearably difficult—the words would not come: in his nervous exhaustion there was no incentive to write, no incentive to do anything. He pushed the letter aside and picked up instead the manuscript of some of the Preludes that lay on the table. But here again the same languor came over him: the “spider crawl” meant nothing—seemed incomplete and inadequate—a sketch and no more. He sighed and laid down his pen, then sat for a long time gazing at his mistress.
Her energy, her abstraction appalled him. The candlelight, playing on her face, enhanced the darkness of it, emphasised the high cheekbones and the full coarse mouth; so that, with her hair framing the whole countenance, she looked indeed like one of the old monks of Valdemosa. She was, he reflected, thirty-four—a woman with two children and a history of many loves: and he was twenty-eight, and a man of no previous experience. There had, of course, been Constantia, Marie—others: but these were all quite different. Nothing to compare with, for example, her marriage to Dudevant, her liaisons with Jules Sandeau and Alfred de Musset. He wondered about de Musset—the ill-fated journey to Italy—her uncondonable betrayal of the poet. And he felt: It will happen again—she will betray me like that too, suddenly and without warning: and, as always, she will be able to excuse herself—she will have an array of plausible arguments, for herself as much as for anyone. It was I who was fickle, I was the impossible and the volatile one . . . Yet these thoughts he put away quickly. This might all be different. She was aging—it would not be so easy for her in the future. She perhaps wanted something permanent now. There was Nohant—Maurice was growing up—Solange herself would soon be a woman—and therefore a rival. And she—George—was established as a writer, a force in the thought and movement of the day—her future was assured—she might want something stable . . .
Madame Sand paused thoughtfully for a moment and took from her lips the mouthpiece of the ornamental hookah she was smoking. She blew some of the pungent Latakia smoke into the air, and watched it slowly rising towards the arched ceiling of the cell and dispersing wraith-like among the shadows there.
“Where did you go?” asked Frederic, “you and Maurice?”
“Not far. He wanted to see how distant it was to the rocks where the eagles’ nests are. But we couldn’t reach them—it was too dark and wet.”
“An eagle came down into the orange grove to-day,” said Frederic. “It was after a small bird. I tried to frighten it away, but it wouldn’t go.”
“It was your own spirit,” she said with a smile. (And he thought: Which?—the eagle or the victim?)
“I must go back,” he said suddenly, rising in an access of impatience. “This place is killing me. I hate it with all my heart.”
“Patience, little one,” she murmured, with an abstracted and almost mechanical tenderness. “It can’t last for ever like this—the better days will come. Maurice feels healthier already—and your own health will improve when the weather changes. You’ll want to compose—you can’t stop the music in you: and you’ll forget these terrible days.”
“I shall never forget these days,” he said bitterly.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and she watched him for a time, puffing again at the hookah.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Chopin went on, in a low voice. “I can’t rest, I can’t settle. There’s something incomplete in me. I don’t understand myself, I don’t know anything.”
“You know too much,” said Madame Sand. “Darling, it’s the way with all us Artists” (she did genuinely think and speak so: a capital A for “artists” and “art”)—“we’re at the mercy of whatever’s inside us. We can’t help ourselves—we can’t expect to be or to act like other people.”
“It’s more than that,” he said. “I’m not talking about music now. Perhaps that contributes. But—there’s something else too—all the time there’s something else.”
She rose and went over to stand before him.
“Perhaps it’s me,” she said, with a curious smile. And went on, when he said nothing: “Balzac said he was the only man who could ever get on with me—because when he came to Nohant we hardly saw each other. He worked and I worked—he early in the morning and I late at night.”
She laughed. Chopin felt for her hand and pressed it against his cheek.
“Don’t say that,” he said. “It isn’t that. I need you—you’re all that keeps me sane in this place. I can’t live without you.”
She withdrew her hand and began gently to stroke his hair.
“Darling, darling,” she whispered.
He was quiet for a moment, then sighed and drew away a little.
“How is Solange?” he asked. “Is she better?”
“Only a very slight fever. She’ll be over it in the morning. And if the weather’s better we’ll go for our picnic.”
“I heard her call out earlier,” said Chopin.
“She dreams a lot. Poor child,” went on Madame Sand. “It’s a strange life for her too, I suppose. I want to do something about a tutor for her—I can’t go on myself all the time trying to educate her.”
“She’ll survive,” murmured Frederic: then he added abruptly: “Aurore, let’s go away—let’s go back to Paris.”
“Not yet, Frederic. Darling, your piano has only just arrived—and you aren’t well enough to travel yet—not in this weather.”
“I would get better again in France—we could go to Nohant—anywhere. Fontana can get us an apartment in Paris.”
“We can’t live openly together, dear.”
“Then he can find us separate places, near each other.” He was eager and animated. “I’ll have some money from the Preludes—they can’t do me out of it. There’ll be enough for a small place—I can give concerts.”
She shook her head.
“Not yet, Frederic.”
He relaxed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m keeping you from your writing. I’ll be all right—I’ll lie down for a moment.”
He lay back on the bed. She sat down beside him and took his hand.
“Poor little one! There isn’t any rest for you, is there . . . I won’t write any more, Frederic—not t
o-night. I shouldn’t have left you earlier. But you see, I feel I mustn’t do anything to hamper you—I leave you because I feel your genius can express itself more freely when you’re alone. It’s a torment—but it’s bound to be a torment. Il faut souffrir—il vaut mieux souffrir . . .”
She was speaking very simply, as if to a child. It was natural for her to do so—she saw, always, the role a situation demanded, and played it automatically.
And he, because of her tone, felt suddenly full of pity for himself—he felt dependent, helpless.
“It won’t always be like this,” he said at last, with a slight plaintive whine in his voice.
“No—not always, darling.”
“The world is hard. I can’t deal with it. I must be left alone, that’s all . . . I’m in the world like the E-string of a violin on a double bass.”
She nodded slowly, and made a mental note of the phrase. And to him too it seemed a good phrase, and with a sort of satisfaction he repeated it to himself:
“I’m in the world like the E-string of a violin on a double bass . . .”
So they remained quietly for a time, with their hands together. The candle was guttering. The hookah had gone out. The smell of the Latakia lingered, dispersing slowly in the damp still atmosphere.
IN THE NIGHT
And now they were lying together and he was not afraid any more. Her arms were round him. Now the darkness was a comfort, the sound of the rain came in as an hypnotic murmur. He felt weak, unable to move: but he did not want to move, and there was a deliciousness in his weakness.
His thoughts now were not any more of death and ghosts, the music was no longer sombre, but resolved and quiet. He was home again, in his dear Poland—with his family—out riding. He was a child again. He had built up a miniature platform with chairs and curtains and was imitating an old Jew to the delight of his mother and father. He and his friend Dominic were writing the magazine they had founded: “On the 12th of August a hen went lame and a drake lost a leg fighting with a goose . . .” His old teacher, Elsner, was sitting beside him at the piano, guiding his hands. He was in Berlin, in a crowded room, gazing shyly across to where a young man was talking animatedly to some ladies—Mendelssohn, none other. He was being tormented by the first pangs of love—all the ineffable magic of the first time, remembered elegiacally in other and darker days: Constantia—gone blind now, he had heard—and her young and pretty face had almost faded from his mind . . . Concerts, success, pretty women. The execrable music of Lanner and Strauss in Vienna. And his meeting with Madame Sand at his rooms——
The Other Passenger Page 15