Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

by Nadine Gordimer

  One month—when was it—she found she was pregnant; kept getting ready to tell him but didn’t. He was going on a concert tour in another part of the country and when he came back there was nothing to tell. The process was legal, fortunately, under the new laws of the country, conveniently available at a clinic named for Marie Stopes, past campaigner for women’s rights over their reproductive systems. Better not to have him—what? Even regretful, maybe, you know how men no matter how rewarded with success, buoyant with the tide of applause, still feel they must prove themselves potent. (Where had she picked up that? Eavesdropping adolescent, on tea-parties . . .)

  She was so much part of the confraternity of orchestras. The rivalry among the players, all drowned out by exaltation of the music they created together. The gossip—as she was not one of them, both the men and women would trust her with indiscretions they wouldn’t risk with one another. And when he had differences with a guest conductor from Bulgaria or Tokyo or god knows where, their egos as complex as the pronunciation of their names, his exasperation found relief as he unburdened himself, in bed, of the podium dramas and moved on to the haven of love-making. If she were in a low mood—bungles of an inefficient colleague at work, her father’s ‘heart condition’ and her mother’s long complaints over the telephone about his breaking doctor’s orders with his whisky-swilling golfers—the cello would join them in the bedroom and he’d play for her. Sometimes until she fell asleep to the low tender tones of what had become his voice, to her, the voice of the big curved instrument, its softly-buffed surface and graceful bulk held close against his body, sharing this intimacy which was hers. At concerts when his solo part came she did not know she was smiling in recognition that here was the voice she would have recognised anywhere among other cellists bowing other instruments.

  Each year, music critics granted, he played better. Exceeded himself. When distinguished musicians came for the symphony and opera season it was appropriate that he and she would entertain them at the house far from the pad they’d once dossed down in. Where others might keep a special piece of furniture, some inheritance, there stood in the livingroom, retired, the cello he’d learned to play on loan. He now owned an Amati, mid-18th-century cello found for him by a dealer in Prague. He had been hesitant. How could he spend such a fortune. But she was taken aback, indignant as if someone already had dared remark on presumptuous extravagance. An artist doesn’t care for material possessions as such. You’re not buying a Mercedes, a yacht! He had bought a voice of incomparable beauty, somehow human though of a subtlety and depth, moving from the sonority of an organ to the faintest stir of silences no human voice could produce. He admitted as if telling himself in confidence, as much as her, this instrument roused skilled responses in him he hadn’t known.

  In the company of guests whose life was music as was his, he was generous as a pop singer responding to fans. He would bring out the precious presence in its black reliquary, free it and settle himself to play among the buffet plates and replenished wine glasses. If he’d had a few too many he’d joke, taking her by the waist a moment, I’m just the wunderkind brought in to thump out Für Elise on the piano, and he’d play so purely, that the voice of the aristocratic cello she knew as well as she had that of the charity one, made all social exchange strangely trivial. But the musicians, entrepreneurs and guests favoured to be among them, applauded, descended upon him, the husbands and gays hunching his shoulders in their grasp, the women giving the accolade and sometimes landing on his lips. It wasn’t unusual for one of the distinguished male guests—not the Japanese—specially the elderly German or Italian conductors, to make a pass at her. She knew she was attractive enough, intelligent enough musically and otherwise (even her buffet was good), for this to happen, but she was aware that it was really the bloom on her of being the outstandingly gifted cellist’s woman which motivated these advances. Imagine if, next time the celebrated cellist played under your baton in Strasbourg, you would be able to remark aside to another musician your own age, ‘And his wife’s pretty good, too, in bed.’ Once the guests had gone, host and hostess laughed in the bedroom about the attention paid flirtatiously he hadn’t failed to notice. The cello stood grandly against the wall. Burglaries are common in the suburbs and there are knowledgeable gangs who don’t look for TV sets and computers but for paintings and other valuable objects. If anyone broke in they’d have to come to the bedroom to catch sight of his noble Amati, and face the revolver kept under his pillow.

  Bach, Mozart, Hindemith, Cage, Stockhausen, Glass are no longer regarded in the performance world patronisingly as music blacks neither enjoy nor understand, don’t play. The national orchestra which was his base, while his prestige meant he could absent himself whenever he was invited to festivals or to join a string ensemble on tour, had a black trombonist and a young second violinist with Afro braids that fell about her ebony neck as she wielded her bow. She spoke German to a visiting Austrian conductor; she’d had a scholarship to study in Strasbourg. Professional musicians have always been a league of nations, for a time the orchestra had a tympanist from Brazil. He became a particular friend, taken into the house on occasion as a live-in guest, and to keep her company when the beautiful cello accompanied its player overseas.

  She was aware that, without a particular ability of her own outside the everyday competence in commercial communications, she was privileged enough to have an interesting life: a remarkably talented man whose particular milieu was also hers.

  What was the phrase—she ‘saw the world’, often travelling with him. She’d arranged leave, to accompany the string ensemble to Berlin, one of the many musical events in commemoration of Mozart’s two-and-a-half-century birth date, but couldn’t go after all because her father was dying—cheerfully, but her mother must be supported.

  The ensemble met with exceptional success, where there were musicians of high reputation from many countries. He brought back a folder full of press cuttings—a few in English—glowing. He tipped his head dismissively; maybe you can become inured to praise, in time. Or he was tired, drained by the demands of his music. She had suggestions for relaxation—a film, a get-together dinner, away from concert-hall discipline, with the ensemble musicians, one becomes close to people, a special relationship she’s long recognised in him, with whom something has been achieved in common. He was not enthusiastic. Next week, next week. He took the revered cello out of its solitude in the case carved to its shape and played, to himself. To her—well, she was in the room, those evenings.

  It is his voice, that glorious voice of his cello; saying something different, not speaking to her but some other.

  He makes love to her, isn’t that always the signal of return when he’s been away?

  There’s a deliberation in the caresses. She’s almost moved to say stupidly what they’d never thought to say between them, do you still love me?

  He begins to absent himself from her at unexplained times or for obligations that he must know she knows don’t exist.

  The voice of the cello doesn’t lie.

  How to apply to the life of this man the shabby ordinary circumstance, what’s the phrase? He’s having an affair. Artists of any kind attract women. They scent some mysterious energy of devotion there, that will always be the rival of their own usually reliable powers of seduction. Something that will be kept from even the most desired woman. Who’d know that attraction better than herself; but for her that other, mysterious energy of devotion, made of love a threesome. The cello with its curved body reverentially in the bedroom.

  What woman.

  At music festivals around the world the same orchestral players, the same chamber music quartets and trios keep meeting in different countries, they share a map of common experience, live in the same hotels, exchange discoveries of restaurants, complaints about concert-hall acoustics and enthusiasm over audience response. If it were to be some musician encountered on a particular tour, that didn’t necessarily mean the affair was a brief one
that ended when the man and woman each went their way seas and continents apart; they might meet again, plan to, at the next festival somewhere else in the world—Vienna, Jerusalem, Sydney, where he had played or was contracted to play soon. The stimulation not only of performance before an unknown audience but of meeting again, the excitement of being presented with the opportunity to take up something interrupted.

  Or was the woman nearer home. A member of the national orchestra in which he and his cello were star performers. That was an identification she found hard to look for, considering their company of friends in this way. A young woman, of course, a younger woman than herself. But wasn’t that just the inevitable decided at her mother’s tea-table forum. The clarinet player was in her late forties, endowed with fine breasts in décolleté and a delightful wit. There was often repartee between them, the clarinet and the cello, over drinks. The pianist, young with waist-length red-out-of-the-bottle hair, was a lesbian kept under strict guard by her woman. The third and last female musician among the orchestra components was also the last one would be crass enough to think of: she was Khomotso, the second violinist of extraordinary talent, one of the two black musicians. She was so young; she had given birth to an adored baby who for the first few months of life had been brought in the car of Khomotso’s sister to rehearsals, so that the mother could suckle the infant there. The director of the orchestra gave an interview to a Sunday newspaper about this, as an example of the orchestra’s transformation to the human values of the new South Africa. The violinist was certainly the prettiest, the most desirable of the women in whose company the cellist spent the intense part of his days and nights, but respect, his human feeling, would be stronger than sexual attraction, his identification with her as a musician making her way would taboo distracting her from that. As for him, wouldn’t it look like the Old South Africa, white man ‘taking advantage’ of the precariously balanced life of a young black woman.

  His lover might be one of faithful concert-season-goers who gave post-performance parties.

  He had a lunchtime friendship with one of the male regulars, an industrialist, amateur viola player with a fine music library from which he was made free to borrow. So it might be one of the wives of such men. Many of these were themselves career women, much younger than the wealthy husbands, bringing intelligence of commitment to ideas and activities outside the arts, as well as what he might see as sexual availability.

  It was no longer assumed she would be with him as she always had been when he accepted invitations to receptions or private houses; the unspoken implication was that these were now strictly professional. He never suggested what also had been assumed, that when he was to give a recital in another city within their home country, of course she would be there; he packed the overnight bag open on their bed, took up the black-clad body of the cello and kissed her goodbye. There were dutiful acts of well-spaced intercourse as if it were routine as regular intervals for a haircut. She began to want to avoid the approach in bed; and then grew fearful she would send him to the other woman by suggesting she did not desire him; and at the same time she terribly wanted to put her hands, her mouth on the body beside her, no matter the humiliation of what he followed like a medical procedure prescribed to satisfy her. A bill to be paid.

  She waited for him to speak. About what had happened. To trust the long confidence between them. He never did. She did not ask because—she was also afraid that what happened once admitted, it would be irrevocably real. One night he got up in the dark, took the cello out of its bed and played. She woke to the voice, saying something passionately angry in its deepest bass. Then there came the time when—was it possible for this to be, in his magnificent, exquisite playing—there was a disharmony, the low notes dragging as if the cello refused him. Nights, weeks, the same.

  So. She knew the affair was over. She felt a pull of sadness—for him. For herself, nothing. By never confronting him she had stunned herself.

  Soon he came to her again. The three of them, he, she and the cello against the wall, were together.

  He makes love better than ever before remembered, caresses not known, more subtle more anticipatory of what can be roused in her, what she’s capable of feeling, needing. As if he’s had the experience of a different instrument to learn from.

  the third sense

  The senses ‘usually reckoned as five—sight, hearing,

  smell, taste, touch.’

  —Oxford English Dictionary

  HE’S the owner of one of the private airlines who have taken up the internal routes between small cities and local areas the national airline, flying at astronomical heights to five continents, hasn’t bothered with. Until lately, that is, when their aircraft with full-length sleeper beds and gourmet menus haven’t succeeded in cosseting them against falling profits. Now they want to pick up cents on the local routes’ discount market, enter into competition with modest craft flitting to unimportant places on home ground.

  But that wouldn’t have anything to do with this night.

  Could have been some other night (Tuesdays he plays squash) if it didn’t happen to be when there was a meeting of private airline owners to discuss their protest against the national carrier’s intention as a violation of the law of unfair competition, since the great span of the national wings is subsidised by taxpayers’ money. She didn’t go along to listen in on the meeting because she was behind time with marking papers in media studies from her students in that university department. She was not alone at her desk, their dog lay under it at her feet, a fur-flounced English setter much loved by master and mistress, particularly since their son went off to boarding school. Dina the darling held the vacant place of only child. So intelligent, she even seemed to enjoy music; The Pearl Fishers CD was playing and she wasn’t asleep. Well, one mustn’t become a dotty dog lover, Dina was probably waiting to catch his footfall at the front door.

  It came when the last paper was marked and being shuffled together with the rest, for tomorrow; she got up, stretching as she was instructed at aerobics class, and followed the dog’s scramble downstairs.

  He was securing the door with its locks and looped chain, safety for their night, and they exchanged, How’d it go, any progress, Oh round in circles again, that bloody lawyer didn’t show—but the master didn’t have to push down the dog’s usual bounding interference when the master came home from anywhere, anytime. Hullo my girl—his expected greeting ignored, no paws landing in response on his shoulders. While he was questioned about the evening and they considered coffee or a drink before bed, you choose, the dog was intently scenting round his shoes. He must have stepped in something. As they went upstairs together, he turning from above her to repeat exasperated remarks about why he was so late, how long the meeting dragged on, the dog pushed past her to impede him, dilated nose rising against his pants’ legs. Dina, down! What d’you think you’re doing! He slapped the furry rump to make her mount ahead. She stood at the top of the stairs in the hunting dog’s point stance, faced at him. Dina’d never been in the field, he was not a hunting man. Some displaced atavistic tic come up in an indulged housepet.

  While they undressed they decided for coffee. Dina didn’t jump on their bed in customary invitation for them to join her, she was giving concentrated attention to his discarded pants, shirt, shoes. Must be the shoes that perfumed his attraction. Doggy-doo, Eva said, Wait a minute, don’t put them on the rug, I’ll run the tap over the soles: Michael laughed at the crumple of distaste lifting her nose, her concern for the kelim. In the bathroom, instead, she wet a streamer of the toilet roll, rubbed each sole and flushed the paper down the bowl: although there was no mess clinging to the leather a smell might remain. She propped his shoes to dry, uppers resting against the wall of the shower booth.

  When she came back into the bedroom he’d dropped off, asleep, lying in his pyjama pants, the newspaper untidy across his naked chest: opened his eyes with a start.

  Still want coffee?

 
; He yawned assent.

  Come, Dina. Bedtime.

  As a child enjoys a cuddle in the parents’ bed before banishment to his own, it was the dog’s routine acceptance that she would descend to her basket in the kitchen when the indulgence was declared over. Tonight she wasn’t on the bed with master, she got up slowly from where she lay beside a chair, turned her head in some quick last summons to sniff at his clothes lying there, and went down to her place while Eva brewed the coffee.

  They drank it side by side in bed. I didn’t make it too strong? Looks as if nothing could keep you awake tonight, anyway.

  There were disturbed nights, these days, when she would be awakened by the sleepless changed rhythm of the breathing beside her, the interrupted beat of the heart of intimacy shared by lovers over their sixteen years. He had put all their funds into his airline. Flight Hadeda (her choice of the name of ibis that flew over the house calling out commandingly). Profits of the real estate business he’d sold; her inheritance from her father’s platinum mining interests. Those enterprises of old regime white capitalism were not the way to safe success in a mixed economy—politically correct capitalism. Such enterprises were now anxiously negotiating round affirmative action requirements that this percentage or that of holdings in their companies be reserved for black entrepreneurs with workers becoming token shareholders in stock exchange profits. A small airline, dedicated to solving something of the transport problems of a vast developing country, had patriotic significance. If Michael and his partner are white, the cabin attendants, one of the pilots and an engineer are black. Isn’t it an honest not exploitative initiative on which they’ve risked everything? She knows what keeps him open-eyed, dead-still in the night: if the national airline takes up the homely routes its resources will ground the Everything in loss. Once or twice she has broken the rigid silence intended to spare her; the threat is hers, as well. There is no use to talk about it in the stare of night; she senses that he takes her voice’s entry to his thoughts maybe as some sort of reproach: the airline is his venture, way-out, in middle age.