The Drowning People

by Richard Mason

  The shadows were lengthening over us even then; for even as we reveled in the power our union gave us we lost control of its force. Love, though not everything, is many things; its weapons are varied and more powerful than we realize. Ella and I, in love for the first time, were unprepared for the energy of that first intoxicating rush. We were children. We behaved with the abandon of children. But our weapons were adult; they were not toys. We smashed our world with the arrogance of gods: tradition; responsibility; social constriction; all crumbled under the vehemence of our attack. We thought to recreate society in our own image. And in so doing we forgot our place in it and in the heavenly order. Human beings are not gods; they should not play with divine fire. Ella and I committed the sin which the Greeks have taught us is fatal. In our hubris we forgot ourselves. We forgot too that demolition requires rebuilding; that people’s hearts are fragile; that to touch them with anything but love returned is evil.

  CHAPTER 11

  MY CONCERT AT ST. PETER’S WAS NOT the last I played under the auspices of one of Regina Boardman’s charities; nor was it the only occasion on which Eric accompanied me. That much I know from factual recollection. If it comes to that, I know too that we were both regular in our attendance at Regina’s “mornings.” But this I know from what he told me later; I have no memory of him as distinct from the other guests who sat in the library at Cadogan Square and talked with such competitive erudition. I struggle to think now of anything Eric said; any point on which we disagreed; any joke we shared. Nothing returns to me. But we must have been on terms of easy familiarity for I was not surprised to receive his invitation to tea. We had played in two more concerts together since the night of our success at St. Peter’s, and we had had another good review in Michael Fullerton’s column in The Times. I remember reading the slip of blue note paper from Eric as I sat at home one morning, waiting for Ella; and I remember being vaguely pleased to receive it. Certainly it was no cause for surprise, nor even for particular interest.

  That fact and my memory of the afternoon I spent with him a few days later prove, I think, how much of my early friendship with Eric I have forgotten. In recollection, he remains a virtual stranger right up to the day of his great Idea; in actual fact, of course, he was by that stage a friend, and someone who thought of me as a good friend.

  I wish I could unearth the details of our first few conversations, of the gradual stages by which we approached intimacy; but the dust of years, conscientiously heaped upon all thoughts of him, has obscured them from view. They are irretrievable, a fact that frustrates me. Perhaps in them I might find some sign, some clue which might explain what happened later.

  But I do see the tiny flat he lived in now, with its grimy view of Battersea power station. I see its narrow hall and poky kitchen; its cramped sitting room and broom cupboard bathroom. His bedroom I cannot picture, for I probably never saw it, but the rest comes back with increasing clarity. Eric had a theory about houses. He argued, and not always flippantly, that like children they should be taught to overcome their limitations. The limitation of his flat was its size: in any given room it was quite possible for two adults, stretching, to touch the tips of each other’s fingers with one hand and a pair of opposing walls with the other. Eric rose above this restriction by ignoring it and his rooms were filled to their seams with oversized furniture.

  “Treat a house as though it will grow,” he said, “and one day it might.”

  Thus the small, rather dark flat in which the budget of a starting-out musician forced him to live was furnished with the opulence of a palace, its treasures looted, I gathered, from disreputable auction houses and estate sales. And although one might not be able to walk with much ease between the Chesterfield and a large potted palm that stood by it, it was impossible to deny that the effect produced by both was anything but impressive. Only Eric’s piano stood quite alone, for he believed in showing deference to objects he valued. It was thus that his instrument, unlike his sofa, was not cramped; it stood in an otherwise empty space, aloof from the haphazard indignities to which the other furniture was subjected.

  The more I go over that house in my mind, the more I find the character of its occupant returning to me. Eric was not only deferential to things, as so many people are whose intelligence and sensitivity removes them from the world as most understand it. He was not lost in his music, though he lived by it; his mind did not distance him from humanity, though it was superior to most minds. He was someone who engaged with people, whose first thought was more often for the good of his friends than for the satisfaction of his own desires. He had little of the selfishness that city living can inculcate: what he had, he shared. And his roots were in the country, in the fertile fields of Provence. He had something of the gentleman farmer in him, for all his urbanity, which lent a wholesomeness to his erudition while physical strength gave him presence. Regina Boardman—I am remembering now—called him a “son of the soil.” Unlike Charles Stanhope, education and social training had not robbed Eric of vitality; and although he was softly spoken, he was vigorous.

  I remember his vigor, his enthusiasm, his childlike trust.

  I remember, too, the afternoon in early September that I spent drinking tea with him. The anglophile in Eric loved the institution of afternoon tea: its rituals appealed to his Gallic flair and the delights of his tea table—which I must have sampled more than once, since I know this to be true—were varied and rich. On the afternoon I remember I am sitting in a corner of the Chesterfield, my feet positioned gingerly in the tiny space between sofa and tea table. Eric is busying himself with tea strainers—for he did not hold with tea bags—and lumps of sugar in an old porcelain bowl. His collection of china was eclectic: invariably of the highest quality, it was nevertheless all secondhand and acquired at random over years. Thus a Spode saucer might go with a Willow Pattern cup—that, in fact, is the combination into which he is pouring my tea as I follow the scene—or a Mason cake plate with a Wedgwood milk jug. Yes, I’m remembering now: the stuffy sitting room, the delicate china, Eric’s large hands moving gracefully between teapot and milk jug. I am in the middle of telling him about Camilla Boardman, whom he has not met, when he asks if I take one lump or two, he can’t remember. His English is almost without accent or error; only the occasional lapse in idiom betrays him, and he seems to be humorously aware of his mistakes. I reply too quietly that I take one lump and he asks me to repeat myself; so that when I continue my anecdote the thread of my account has been broken, and I grow conscious that it is no longer funny. I finish it nevertheless and when I have done so my friend settles himself opposite me on a large wing-backed armchair, suddenly serious. The chair is ramshackle but comfortable; for comfort, as well as opulence, is what Eric looks for in furniture. In his right hand is a slice of buttered toast; in his left a cup of tea. He turns to face me, smiling, but I sense that he has something important to say.

  I was right.

  “James,” he began slowly, choosing his words carefully, “how concrete are your plans for the next two or three months?”

  “They’re cast in stone,” I replied, with a certain satisfaction that this was indeed the case.

  “Stone can always be broken, can it not?”

  “Not this stone.”

  He smiled at me. “Any stone can be broken, if only there is the will.”

  “Perhaps, but in this case there is no will. Except,” I paused, thinking aloud, “possibly on my parents’ side, although they seem to have given up their objections to the Guildhall. I’ve got Michael Fullerton to thank for that.”

  “Monsieur Fullerton seems to have become an avid champion of yours in these days. Your discovery seems to be starting.”

  I was embarrassed by this and said nothing, for Eric had been only briefly mentioned in the review of our last concert and this was not a point I wished to underline. If my companion minded, however, he showed no sign of doing so.

  “Which is précisément why I think that you should
not cast your plans in stone,” he went on, “at least not until you have listened with the open ear to my suggestion.”

  Resolving not to listen, I told him politely to go on.

  “Well,” he began, “my mother’s aunt has died. My great-aunt.” As words of sympathy formed on my lips he raised a hand to stop them. “It does not affect me personally. She was old, you see. And besides, I did not know her well.”

  As I remember this remark, myself old now, I am struck by the callousness of youth which thinks itself immortal. It is closer to age than it realizes.

  “She was a painter,” he went on, “a woman of some reputation.”

  I nodded and asked her name.

  “Isabelle Mocsáry,” he told me, and I felt a faint twinge of recognition. “She was a Frenchwoman who married a Czech. A very cosmopolitan person. Very erudite. And as an artist the Communists treated her well.”

  I nodded again.

  “She has left a large apartment in Prague, completely full of furniture and paintings,” he continued. “Some of her things may be very valuable; many of them will, in any case, need to be sold. I am going there myself in ten days’ time to supervise the arrangements.”

  “Why you?”

  “My mother was Madame Mocsáry’s only relative. I am my mother’s only son. It is right that I should go.” He paused. “And I think that you should go with me.” This was said quietly, almost shyly. Seeing my surprise and sensing the beginnings of a refusal, he went on quickly, “I have a friend at the Prague Conservatory. You will have heard of him.”

  I said nothing.

  Eric looked at me anxiously and smiled. “Does the name Eduard Mendl mean anything to you?”

  My host leaned back, triumphant now; and I saw—as fully as he could have intended—a wizened head of silver hair, a hooked nose, black pointed eyes. Mendl’s was a face I had seen on concert programs and record covers since my childhood. His was a name I had revered since the day I first touched a violin.

  “How do you know him?” I asked, a little awed by such nonchalant mention of greatness.

  “He was a friend of my great-aunt,” came the reply. “When he traveled abroad and came to France, he would stay with us between concerts.”

  “But that’s amazing.”

  “You have not let me finish. I think Eduard Mendl is the man to teach you. He takes pupils, you know, now that he has retired from performing. You are getting a little notice in London, thanks to Monsieur Fullerton. Think how useful a term with Eduard Mendl would be. Think how it would sound in Monsieur Fullerton’s next column.”

  I had already thought how it would sound. “What makes you think he would want to take me?” I asked cautiously.

  “He would be willing to hear you purely on my recommendation,” said Eric. “Although Mendl is a violinist, he has perhaps done more for my piano playing than any man alive. We have a close relationship; he trusts my judgment.”

  “And you think …”

  “I think that if I asked him to, he would hear you. The rest would be up to you, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Eric saw that he had made the impression he desired. Slowly he smiled.

  “Do you really think it could be arranged?” I asked.

  And it was only after I had spoken that I thought with a pang of how long two months without my love would be; of how great a sacrifice they would represent. The melodrama of youth, I suppose. And I remember that as Eric looked at me I wished almost that he would say no; that he would tell me that things could not be arranged as he would wish them; that the undreamed-of opportunity he seemed to be offering would pass. But then the thought that Ella and I were equal to such a parting made me smile. And then he spoke.

  “I am certain that it could,” he said with confidence. “But you would have to persuade your professor at the Guildhall to defer your entry by a term.”

  At this my face fell again; for I foresaw little hope of success with such an unprecedented request. I brightened a little, but only a little, when Eric told me that he had already spoken to Regina Boardman who had promised to use her influence.

  “England works in a very funny way,” he said. “Everything is done behind the scene.” He paused “Regina knows the head of strings at the Guildhall. He is a dear friend of hers.”

  My heart sank. Anyone in a position to be useful to her was a “dear friend” of Regina Boardman’s. The formula was her own; it did not imply intimacy or affection on either side. Eric’s next remark, however, revived my hopes.

  “He is also the lover of Monsieur Fullerton,” he sad smoothly.

  “How do you know?” I was incredulous.

  “That is not for you to mind about, James. But I know. With Monsieur Fullerton and Madame Boardman behind us, it might well be possible to arrange something.”

  I considered this. Eric was right: if the head of strings at the Guildhall was in a position to be influenced by either Regina Boardman or Michael Fullerton I had a chance of winning him round to my unorthodox plans, for I knew that I could be assured of the complete support of both patron and reviewer. So long as Eric’s facts, however obtained, were correct, anything might be possible.

  “You’re right,” I said, beaming at the realization. “You’re absolutely right. There might just be a chance.”

  “And if you came to Prague and it was all arranged,” he went on, grinning now, “would you like to share Madame Mocsáry’s apartment with me?”

  “It’s very kind, but I couldn’t impose.”

  There was a pause.

  “I should be lonely without your company.”

  Another pause followed, as I cursed the polite reserve of twenty-two years’ training.

  “In that case,” I said, taking the plunge, “I … accept with pleasure.”

  “And the only rent,” he continued, “would be a little help with the organization of the sale. Otherwise it would be completely free. And Prague is, in any case, a very cheap city. We could live like kings, not like,” he gestured about the room, “the rats we are in London. I do not like to live in holes, James.”

  And in high spirits we shook hands on our plan and I got up to leave, glowing with excitement but telling myself not to allow my hopes to rise too high; that there were many hurdles yet to be jumped. But I thanked Eric for his generosity with sincere warmth.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I like you extremely.”

  And I, awkward at such direct affection, was irritated by my own awkwardness. I shook his hand again with renewed vigor; for thus does the Englishman express his regard for his friends. And as I did so I thought of Ella’s distaste for physical reserve; it was something which we had discussed at length. So I let go of Eric’s hand and hugged him, with a certain pride at thus proving my freedom from convention. He returned my hug, pleased but obviously surprised.

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  “I have told you,” he repeated, looking directly into my eyes, “it is nothing. To give pleasure to one’s friends is to give pleasure to oneself.”

  And I left him and walked home through the gathering blue dusk, watching pink turn to gold and then to gray as the sun set over the roofs and smog of a great city. And I thought, as I looked at the heavens above me, enormous in their beauty, that all their splendor could not match the splendor of my own happiness, that all their color was as gray against the riches of my life. It was a fanciful thought, I see that now; but Ella had made me fanciful. And as the sun set I sat by the river and watched it go, first seeking in its power a metaphor and then resting, quite content, in the pale warmth of its final rays.

  I find it strange, now, to think of how happy I was that day, to remember how I rejoiced in the opportunities that lay ahead at every turn. Experience has made me cynicm; for as innocence was the sin of my youth so cynicism is the sin of my age. I remember sitting by the river in the last warmth of that sinking sun, but the memory seems vicarious, as though synthesized from an account given me b
y a stranger. The boy who sat there, warm on that summer’s evening, is not the man who freezes in this icy room now. The image in my mind is not of me: the boy I see is someone I knew once and whom I know no more. He belongs to my past, an acquaintance from whom I am separated irrevocably, forever. The gulf between my knowledge and his innocence is too wide to be bridged.

  I follow his thoughts as he sits, thinking himself not thinking, and watch them as they fly to foreign cities; to thunderous applause; to praise earned from the wrinkled lips of a great teacher with a wizened face and silver hair. Love for Ella, you see, and the reciprocation of that love, had already made me vainglorious. In the space of a few short weeks my life had been transformed; and I was young enough to think that its transformation had something to do with an innate quality of my own. My father used to say that luck came to those who earned it; and I felt as I sat by that river that I was vindicated by good fortune. Ella’s love, Eric’s friendship, my own fledgling success, all had been earned and all were mine to enjoy. I had not yet grasped, nor would I grasp for many years, that Fortune with her scales is a capricious force. Sitting by that river I suspected nothing of what I have learned now to be the truth: that she acts independently of her victims, choosing to raise this one up, to cast this one down; to ennoble, to degrade, to protect and to persecute, all on the flimsiest of whims. She ensures her pleasures by devious means, artful in their cruelty. She fans the flames of human pride and extinguishes them without warning; she bestows fleeting immortality and takes it back when it is needed most, leaving wretchedness in its place. Her bounty brings misery and eternal isolation; for it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, we are told, than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

  Now that Sarah is dead I am, I suppose, a rich man. Is my wealth to be another obstacle on my path to peace? Is it to join the long succession of barriers I can never hope to cross? I am trapped on a journey I cannot complete; I am alone with no one to turn to. My only companion, the boy who sits, staring dreamily at the golden river, is powerless to help me; he cannot hear my questions and I cannot hear his answers. He knows nothing of me; how could he? He knows no pain; his only pain is irritation, the temporary thwarting of immediate desires. He knows no guilt; his only guilt is the lapse of yesterday, soon forgotten. He knows no remorse, no shame, no despair. I resent him. He, who thinks himself so fine, does not move as I question him. He sits by the river, in an end-less idle dream, as I beg for signs I might have seen, for warnings I might have heeded. But still he sits, moving only to toss a pebble into the fast-flowing waters. He pays no attention to the ramblings of an old man; he does not hear them. And I am left helpless, watching.