Music, in a Foreign Language

by Andrew Crumey

  ‘Jenny? Your girl? Yes, maybe you should keep an eye on her as well. Can’t trust anyone these days. Just get me some names, Dr. King – it’s not much to ask. You’ll be doing the world a favour. And yourself.’

  ‘How can you possibly expect me to betray my own friend?’

  ‘How? Well, it seems to me you’re not really in any position to refuse. You see, it’s like this. One day we get instructions from Section Five to check Waters out. So the first thing I do is send two men to do a routine search of his office in the university. Nothing heavy, just the usual once over. Do the drawers, a quick gander at the shelves – see if he’s reading anything dodgy. And check a few books in case there’s something hidden between the pages. One of my men takes a book – picks it at random – then taps the edge of it on the table. And a little piece of paper drops out – just a scrap, that’s been torn off a sheet and written on. Doesn’t seem anything special, but he brings it back just in case. Look, I’ve got it here. See? Read for yourself: FLO 343592. The number look familiar? That’s right; it’s your phone number. No problem for us to check that out. But what could FLO mean? I decide to have a look through the files just in case, and what should I happen to turn up but Flood, this old pamphlet here. Waters/Flood – get it? Some rubbish in it about history – sort of thing he knows about. But not only that, there’s all this poetry. Horrible pouf stuff. Hardly Wordsworth, I can tell you. And then this other article – all about making queers legal. Gives us some idea of the kind of man he is. A subversive and a homosexual. Charming friends you’ve got, Dr. King.

  ‘So now we’ve got the whole story. Waters is putting together this pamphlet. He meets you in a cafe and you get talking. He reckons you might be willing to help him, and he wants to take your number, so he looks in his pockets or his bag for a scrap of paper. Later he rings you, and you meet somewhere more private where he tells you what he’s doing.’

  ‘No. No, that’s not true.’

  ‘Then he sticks this bit of paper in a book and forgets all about it until my man comes along five years later.’

  ‘I can’t believe Robert would do anything like this.’

  ‘You mean he never said anything to you about Flood?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘In that case, can you tell me why he wrote those letters beside your phone number?’

  ‘I don’t know … We arranged to meet. To play music together. The letters must have been some kind of shorthand – an abbreviation perhaps. They could have meant anything. What is there to connect them with that pamphlet; just because there’s something in it about history?’

  ‘No point trying to cover up for him. Remember, Flood was done on his typewriter.’

  ‘But you didn’t know about that until today! What made you so sure already about Flood? Christ, it is Jenny isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s just call it copper’s intuition. Look, I know that you were involved in all this stuff somehow – but it doesn’t really matter. Not as long as I can have Waters. Just give me what I want, and you can go on doing your physics in peace. I want one rat to lead me to other rats. This Flood business – I’m fucking sick of it; this is nothing. But your friend Waters is a very nasty piece of work, and I’m going to have him. Him and all his anti-social friends. Just get me a name for starters, then you can go free. But try fucking us around and believe me, we can make your comfortable little life extremely difficult. Do I make myself clear? Now Perkins’ll show you out. Try and get me something by next week.’

  21

  Five years earlier, Robert Waters would bring his violin once or twice a week to Charles King’s house, where they would play music together. During the second such meeting, King mentioned again his ideas for Flood, and he was surprised that Robert now seemed far more enthusiastic about it. Again, Robert had brought the folder of poems he had written, but this time he was prepared to let Charles read some of the contents.

  A few days previously, King had told Anne that he wanted to end their affair. They had met after she finished work; Charles waited for her outside the school, and watched the clumps of children hurrying out at the end of the day. She had told him to go inside to meet her, nevertheless he preferred to wait. It was a cold winter’s afternoon, but the idea of going into the school seemed to him somehow ridiculous. When eventually she came out she kissed him on the cheek, and they took a walk together by the river. This was when he told her that he wanted to end things.

  It was unusual for Charles to terminate a relationship in this way. His attitude was that once you have slept with a woman, then something has come into being which never ends; some hidden thing – even though you might never see her again, you know that whenever you do there will still exist that mysterious, unspoken agreement which the meeting of flesh – however brief – necessarily implies. Relationships, as far as Charles was concerned, although they could change, could no more be ended than could a memory. But it was easy, perhaps, for him to feel this way, since the bond that held him to any particular woman was always a weak and tenuous thing. He had slept with Anne out of a curiosity that was aroused one afternoon in a museum, and now his curiosity was satisfied. One day his memory of her would be more vague, and he would feel interested again. In the meantime it was better to stop. But he could see that she felt differently; that she was becoming attached to him, and wanted things that he couldn’t give, and this had made him begin to feel resentful. The situation had to be dealt with now, before it got out of hand.

  Charles and Robert went through that Mozart sonata again; the one which they had first played together the previous week. Afterwards they had tea as before. Already they were forming a ritual, and this was only the second time they had come together like this. How easy it is for habits to form. King told Robert he had finished his essay, The River of History, and was eager to show it to him.

  Robert said he found it ‘interesting’, which Charles knew to be a sign of disapproval. ‘History is about people, Charles. It’s not some kind of equation.’

  Charles said he wanted to see history as an abstract process – rather like the evolution of different species. He imagined a sort of natural selection of ideas. Then he started talking about mountains and potential surfaces, and history as some kind of minimizing of free energy, and Robert was completely lost.

  ‘History ought to be all about the increase of human freedom,’ said Robert, ‘but it clearly isn’t. History is a gradual accumulation of human misery.’

  King was walking with Anne beside the river. Already the afternoon light was fading. He told her that he wouldn’t be able to see her much during the next few weeks – because he was very busy at work.

  This was the best he could do! The nation was in a state of upheaval; people were talking about change at last – perhaps even revolution. And Charles was agonizing over how to explain to Anne that her body no longer held for him that fascination he had felt when he watched her in the museum a few weeks earlier. How to tell her without hurting her feelings? King was writing essays about the need to seize the moment, to stand up and join the great tide of human will. And he was walking beside a river with a woman whose emotions frightened him.

  They played some more music – a Beethoven sonata, and then Robert put his hand on King’s shoulder, and suggested they stop again for a while. Last week he had done the same, but now the hand rested longer. Last week, Robert had made such a gesture, and Charles had permitted it. And permission was given for this further, more sustained gesture which was now being presented.

  Robert brought out some of his writing – from his briefcase, he drew that folder which King had found last week among the pile of scores. There had been time now to make a few improvements – perhaps some of it could go in King’s proposed pamphlet. He handed him a sheet to read – a translation from the Greek poet Cavafy. It was a fair copy written in Robert’s neat hand. Was his decision to show this to Charles another gesture?

  One a.m. it must have been,

  or
half past one.

  In a corner of the old taverna;

  behind the wooden partition.

  Except for the two of us, the shop completely empty.

  A single oil lamp barely lighting it.

  At the door, the faithful waiter nodding off.

  Nobody would see us. Though already

  we were so aroused,

  we’d gone beyond all thought of caution.

  Clothes half opened – few anyway,

  in the divine heat of July.

  Pleasure of flesh between

  half-opened clothes;

  Brief nakedness of flesh – an idea which has

  travelled through twenty-six years and now

  has settled in this poetry.

  King was rereading the last verse, and he was thinking of Anne’s flesh – that delight of first seeing, first touching, which could never be recaptured. What memories would one day come to him across a space of years?

  Robert sat close beside him, and reached out to take back the page which King held. Robert’s hand close to King’s, together on the page. Then King released his hold on the paper. He asked Robert about the poet, Cavafy. Robert said he had the original Greek text with him; he reached into his briefcase and brought out a small brown-covered book. Strange, King thought, that he should have carried this book with him; perhaps with the specific intention of showing it as part of an explanation. Last week, Robert had begged King not to look at his work; now, he had had time to plan its presentation.

  Robert opened the book at the appropriate page and handed it to Charles, who now tried to follow the Greek symbols which always reminded him of mathematics. Easy to forget that this really was somebody’s language. He only knew ancient Greek – and had forgotten most of that – and he could make no sense of the text before him. He admired Robert’s skill. He handed it back, and asked to see other translations.

  Robert opened the folder again and brought out some more pages. Again the closeness of shared reading; shared holding of the flimsy sheets. Poems about classical history, or memories of young Greek men. And then at last another sheet – more like a working draft now, with rough scribbles and words crossed out and corrected.

  ‘This is one of my own,’ said Robert.

  In a cafe, once more I heard

  Your voice – those sparse and frugal notes.

  Do they not say that you spoke your native Greek

  With an English accent?

  Briefest of visions: eyes meet across the cafe;

  A man of about my age – eyelids heavy,

  Perhaps from recent pleasures.

  I begin the most innocent of conversations.

  Again I see that image;

  Ancient delight of flesh

  Against guiltless flesh.

  Sweeter still, in its remembering.

  Most innocent of conversations: once more, I am mistaken.

  He leaves; the moment lost – and to forgo

  The squalor of this place, I read again your lines;

  those sparse and frugal notes.

  In a taverna, you found beauty, long ago.

  And when you draw, with your slim, swift pen

  The image of that memory – time’s patient hostage;

  Then how can I forget him, that boy

  whom you could not forget,

  Or that music, in a foreign language?

  Reading it twice over, King asked himself how he should respond to this gesture. He read again some of the lines, and thought of that first meeting two weeks earlier, and he asked himself if he were the man whom Robert had written about. Still, Robert was sitting close beside him, waiting for some reaction. And then King felt the approach once more of Robert’s hand; his hand on the page, close to King’s – not attempting to take away the paper. And a finger of Robert’s hand extended, and reaching out towards King’s. A silent question.

  (They were walking by the river, the two of them. Anne, trying to understand King’s meaning. They would still be friends, of course. And once he knew he had hurt her, further hurt became easier.)

  Charles let go of the page, stood up, moved away from Robert. Robert lowered his head in apology. Charles searched for words. He said they’d better forget all about it.

  And then the doorbell sounded. Charles went to answer while Robert hastily drew together his handwritten sheets. It was Anne. King thought she looked as if she had been crying, but she said she was alright.

  Entering the flat, Anne would have had the feeling that she was interrupting something; Robert, that it might be best for him to leave. But King was glad that she was here. He made the necessary introductions, and the three entered into a superficial conversation.

  Each was grateful for the lightness which the presence of a third person now permitted. Anne forgot the tears she had shed, and had been afraid of renewing. Robert felt saved from humiliation. And King was relieved of the sense of vulnerability by which he had been seized. They made the most superficial of conversations. King offered to make more tea.

  Anne and Robert got on well together, and soon Robert was talking freely with her about his work; she said she found history fascinating. Robert spoke easily, while King remained quieter. They were talking about their backgrounds, their families – things which King had never asked about. Watching Anne as she spoke and moved her hands, King rediscovered something of the fascination which had drawn him to her. As he watched Anne, he sensed that Robert was watching him.

  Robert was under the impression that Anne and Charles were in love – which was possibly half true. Perhaps he saw Anne as a way into Charles’s heart. In any event, they were soon to become intimate friends.

  When she had entered the flat, Anne looked tired and drawn. Now she had forgotten the excuse which brought her to the place; she was chatting amiably. And she too, while she talked to Robert, was watching Charles.

  Why would Anne and Robert eventually come to sleep together? It may have been no more than the merging of two streams, which had run down from opposite slopes into a common valley.

  Robert drew Charles back into the conversation, with mention of the music they had been practising together. Anne said she wanted to hear them play. Charles was reluctant – he insisted he wasn’t as good as Robert made out. But Robert was already lifting his violin from its case, and checking the tuning, so Charles went to the piano stool.

  Robert spoke to Anne. ‘Why don’t you turn the pages for Charles?’ She said she couldn’t read music, but Robert told her Charles would give a nod at the appropriate times.

  The Beethoven sonatas were still on the music rack, and Robert suggested the Kreutzer. Charles felt, though didn’t say, that it was a little unfair to choose a piece with such a difficult piano part – he would have preferred something simpler like the Spring. But then Robert began to play the opening bars, the sound of the unaccompanied violin filling the room and making every object within it seem to resonate. It was a piece which Robert had practised very thoroughly.

  What would lead Anne and Robert eventually to sleep together? Revenge against Charles, perhaps? Theirs would be a relationship based on friendship rather than sex; on trust rather than curiosity.

  Charles was beginning to play his part of the slow introduction. Anne sat close beside him on a chair she had pulled into position. He wondered if she would be in the way when he reached for the bass. Now the quickening of the tempo; the main movement. When Anne reached to turn the page, King could smell her perfume.

  He would not waver in his earlier judgement. Watching Anne speak with Robert, he had felt again that thrill of desire – but it was only because she was giving her attention to someone else.

  King was playing badly, but after the first mistake, the others became easier to tolerate. It was an effort to remember to make it clear to Anne when to turn the page. With his peripheral vision of her on his left, he could see that she mostly watched Robert. Was this perhaps some game on her part to arouse King’s jealousy? Yet for him, t
he situation would be perfect – to be free of her, and yet to desire her. If she became Robert’s lover, then he would truly want her. In the easier moments of the music, when King could find a brief period of relaxation, he imagined the joining of those two bodies; Anne’s and Robert’s – he pictured how they would look. Anne’s body, all too easy to reconstruct in his mind, but still more interesting now beneath the shadow of another.

  Charles knew Robert only through the performing of music, and he knew Anne only through the performing of sex. And with Robert, King was not afraid to play wrong notes. The two of them were beginning to laugh at the mistakes they were making. Anne remained silent, for fear of offending.

  After the end of the first movement, Charles said they had better stop – his hands were tired, and his mind was not on the music. Anne told them they both played beautifully. She could still feel the distant memory of the shiver which had run through her body during those austere opening bars. Afterwards, she would remember how Robert looked as he drew the bow across the strings; the careless fall of his fringe, and the concentration in his eyes.

  Was the union of Robert and Anne already ordained in those chords, and that remembered shiver?

  22

  By the end of the following week, Charles and Robert had produced Flood. King wanted Robert to write an essay about the oppression of homosexuals, but Robert was reluctant to do this. He said his poems expressed everything that he wanted to communicate on the subject. So Charles wrote it instead – ‘A Plea for Tolerance’. Strangely, it was this essay, which he wrote quickly one evening, which was to lead to the events five years later which would change his life, and bring Robert’s to an end. In fact, it was not even the essay itself – but rather a single sentence. Who would have thought, that a few words could have such effect?