When he had finished he wrinkled his nose and widened his eyes, and waited for a response. At that moment Ruan appeared in the doorway behind him, and as he made to announce his presence with a rap on the door I drew a breath and said loudly to the young man, ‘Exactement.’
As it turned out, the man had come to fetch me for my first lesson with my teacher, which took place in a large airy room on the second floor. The young man was my teacher’s assistant (his homme de vendredi, as he later told me), a role which so far as I could tell involved driving him around in a small snail-shaped car, carrying his large leather pouch, opening doors, helping with coats and hats, and running errands for glasses of water, sheets of paper and – towards the end of my first lesson – a small bunch of flowers for me tied up in brown string. My teacher certainly needed this attention. He was a long retired professor of violin, tall, stooped and flamingo-like in the slow articulation of his movements. His hair was thick and the purest white, descending in two curtains from a central parting, matched by a moustache of the same colour and then set off by a multicoloured silk cravat tucked neatly into his shirt collar, all of which gave him the look – from the chest upwards – of an ornithological specimen.
Most importantly he seemed delighted to have me as a student, to be liberated from his ordinary life, and he announced that I was to prepare the Saint-Saëns violin concerto for the competition. This we proceeded to do, running our respective fingers along the lines of the score his assistant had spread out along a high bench, the professor giving guidance in French with a scattering of Italian musical terms, Ruan attempting to render this into Chinese, and the young man, who lurked in the corner throughout, contributing his own suggestions when Ruan faltered, only to be silenced by an indulgent shake of the old man’s head.
We were soon able to dispense with the services of our translator. The professor removed his jacket, with the help of his assistant, and stood by the window with his hands behind his back, listening to me play. Occasionally he would stop me and sing through a passage in a wavering falsetto, or play it on his own violin, whereupon I would repeat the phrase and he would say, ‘Bon, bon; continuez,’ and return to his station by the window. As the lesson progressed the young man would produce from his jacket pockets a series of billowing handkerchiefs, one for the old man’s nose, one to wipe his brow, and a third which was folded and refolded over the chin-rest of the professor’s violin to protect it from his sweat.
Eventually, a nearby church bell struck one o’clock, and the professor straightened to attention and began to pack up his violin, the young man immediately fussing around him, shoving papers into his leather pouch and helping the professor on with his coat. When all was done they stood beside each other and simultaneously inclined their heads in a polite bow. ‘A demain,’ the old man said, and his young friend mouthed the same words silently, took his charge by the arm and led him to the door.
So every day at ten Ruan and I would settle ourselves in the practice room and await the arrival of the small, snail-shaped car. Within minutes the professor and I would lose ourselves in the phrasing of some passage and our two companions would cease to exist for us until the clock struck one and the professor’s assistant would step out of the shadows, holding out the coat into which the professor would meekly reverse his arms before bidding me farewell and making his way to the door. On the fourth or fifth day, the young man disappeared after an hour and returned shortly with hot water, tea cups and a small sealed paper bag which, from the aroma that shortly filled the room, I could tell contained Chinese tea. He offered a cup each to the professor and me, addressing to me a long discourse which, although I understood barely a word, seemed to explain how he had been pleasantly surprised to find, in a back street of the arrondisement where the professor lived, a shop owned by a diminutive Chinese couple of uncertain age which sold, among other exotic fare arrayed on sagging shelves in an unaired back room, small tins of oolong tea painted with Ming Dynasty scenes of lakeside pavilions and ladies with parasols standing atop arched bridges musing (although one could not be certain of this) on love and loss. Ruan had by this time succumbed to boredom and was outside by the fountain smoking a cigarette. The young man poured two more cups and, balancing them on saucers, left the room, appearing a minute later at the fountain where he offered one to Ruan, and began to drink from the other. Ruan stubbed out his cigarette on the underside of the fountain, and drank his tea, and the two remained there for the next hour, with the young man leaning his buttocks on the edge of the fountain and talking while Ruan held his fingers under the trickle of water and occasionally gave a response.
During our time at the Conservatoire, Ruan insisted that we remain apart from the other students and faculty. We ate at a table by ourselves in the refectory, talking only to the elegant woman with the gem-cut features and brown hair, who joined us from time to time, drank a plate of thin soup and sought assurances that our accommodations, the food, and my instruction were to our liking, greeting our repeated affirmations with a distrustful nod of her head. We walked briskly between our quarters and the classroom, faces turned down, aware dimly of the rush of students in the corridors and the scales, truncated phrases, rotations and repetitions that echoed from every window and doorway.
When I was not with the professor or practicing in my room, I convinced Ruan to accompany me on walks around the neighbourhood. Our normal route took us past the Place de la Bastille and south to the Seine, with Ruan maintaining a vigorous pace, as if we had something to prove to the locals by overtaking them on the sidewalk and showing them our heels. On the return he took things more leisurely, stopping at a row of green metal bouquiniste stalls by the Pont Marie to scan the titles and examine the contents page of a volume or two. Sometimes he would buy something, counting out the required number of francs and clutching them tightly as he watched the proprietor wrap a small plain-covered volume in a sheet of crisp brown paper and tie it up with string. He would also stop at a tailor’s shop and study the group of headless mannequins in the window, meticulously turned out in pressed suits, collared shirts with matching cufflinks (changed every day, it seemed) and arrayed with hollow, handless arms raised, as if at a cocktail party, debating the leader from that day’s Figaro: the establishment of the Fifth Republic, the death of the Pope, Pasternak’s refusal of the Nobel Prize.
Towards the end of our walks we would stop at a café, and occupy one of the metal-hooped tables. The waiter would deliver our coffee and one of the selection of pastries from behind the counter, then retreat to the doorway, where he stood and sniffed the breeze, hands clasped behind his back, rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet. Ruan would sit bolt upright in his wicker chair until the waiter’s retreat; then he would remove his glasses, fold them and set them on the table, tug on his cuffs to straighten them, and address his cup and saucer: moving it to the midpoint of his gaze, turning the handle to the left and then the right, clearing his throat and bowing his head to the black-brown liquid as if paying homage to something foreign and perhaps forbidden. Once he had completed his little internal ceremony he would lift the tiny cup with his thumb and forefinger, as a philatelist lifts a stamp with a set of tweezers, and apply it softly to his lips. For myself I found the aroma exotic but the taste vile and abrasive on the tongue. While Ruan savoured his coffee and somehow managed to extend its thimbleful over a dozen or so delicate sips, I downed mine quickly like a dose of medicine and then tried discreetly to shift the bitter film it had attached to the back of my tongue.
When we had finished our coffee and picked up the last slivers of pastry with our fingertips, Ruan would produce a packet of Gauloises and a matchbook, and as he lit up he would ask me how my preparation was going, listening intently to my reply, questioning me about the challenges of Saint-Saëns and the professor’s suggestions on how to play it as if the concerto were some vital matter of state and the professor a sympathetic foreigner whose advice should nevertheless be subjected to po
litical analysis. I found his line of questioning slightly absurd, and turned the conversation onto other matters: news from China or the vexed question of whether the professor’s young assistant was working for French intelligence (Ruan assumed he must be; I thought it highly unlikely).
On one occasion a sparrow landed on our table as we were speaking, snatched up a crumb and ate it. We stopped talking. Ruan slowly lowered his cigarette and rested it in the ashtray to his right, cupping his hands over his knee. The bird stood its ground at first, eyeing another crumb under the edge of Ruan’s plate. Then, in successive blinks of an eye, it turned to face three points of the compass, so quickly I swear I did not see any movement; and after the next blink it was gone, leaving the crumb untouched. Ruan picked up his cigarette again and summoned the waiter, indicating that he wanted to borrow a knife to cut the string on a volume he had just bought. The waiter produced the clasp I had seen him use to open wine bottles, extended a small blade and deftly released the string at the knot. Ruan thanked him, opened the parcel, and examined the small volume. ‘Zola,’ he explained, and he studied the handwritten inscription on the flyleaf. ‘For Eugenie,’ he translated, ‘Noel 1955, with love.’
‘Who is Noel?’ I asked.
‘Her husband, perhaps,’ he replied. And, flipping the silk-ribbon page marker over the spine, he opened the book to the first page, lifted the volume to his face and began to read, stopping after a minute to light another Gauloise. I occupied myself with my own reverie for some minutes, barely aware of the customers at adjacent tables and the shoes and shopping bags of passers-by. Then I noticed that our little bird had returned, perching itself on the hooped edge of the table, hopping around the points of the compass once more, examining the empty cups, Ruan’s spectacles, the discarded paper and string, and of course the solitary pastry crumb. Ruan once more lowered his cigarette onto the ashtray to his right, and then closed his book, placed it in his lap, and cupped his hands over his raised knee. The bird jumped to and fro, as instantaneously as before, and again, in an instant, disappeared. It was some moments before I realised that Ruan’s cupped hands were now on the table by his plate. He released his thumbs a fraction and a beak poked out. I could hear the fluttering of wings under his hands.
‘How did you do that?’ I asked. ‘I barely saw you move.’ Ruan shrugged and smiled self-deprecatingly, but said nothing. The bird fluttered again, stopped and then was silent. ‘How does the trick end?’ I asked. ‘Does the bird live or die?’
Ruan began to laugh softly, and then turned to watch a cylinder of ash fall from his Gauloise. I reached over and picked it up from the ashtray and held it towards his lips, but at the last moment, as he leaned forward, mouth open, to receive it, I pulled it away and held it over my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the waiter start towards us, as if I had summoned him, and then step back to his post in the doorway.
‘These cigarettes are very expensive, right?’ I said. ‘So you wouldn’t want to waste one.’
‘True, true,’ he said. ‘Be my guest and smoke it before it burns down.’
I held the cigarette up and examined it, allowing the smoke to tickle my nose and throat. ‘I have never smoked,’ I said. And immediately Ruan released the bird and held out his two fingers to receive the cigarette.
*
One afternoon, a week or so before the competition, Ruan appeared at my door with an unsealed envelope containing a letter from my mother. He apologised for having opened it himself and read it. He was instructed to do so, he said. He would return in an hour so that we could go for our walk. The letter was in my mother’s hand, although the characters were loosely drawn. It read like one of the homilies she would give to me when I had performed well as a child. She wrote of her overwhelming joy and pride at my success in Bucharest, and her confidence in my ability to serve my country well in the upcoming competition in Paris. There the letter ended abruptly. There was no mention of my father’s condition, or of her own life and work. It gave me some pleasure to imagine her writing it hurriedly between examining patients, scrawling the address on an envelope and passing it to an intern to run to the post office before it closed for the day.
I read the letter several times sitting on the window sill behind the damask curtain. When I had finished I found myself looking across at the apartment building beyond the gate, examining each window until I found what I was hoping to see: the young girl staring out at the world and in the shadows behind her the old woman combing her hair, counting down the strokes until they reached zero.
The day of the competition arrived. The concert hall was dark and cool, and a welcome respite from the heat. As I stood to play my first piece, my eye was caught by one of the name plates on the judges’ table and prickly heat spread over my entire skin. M. Shostakovich, it read. A bespectacled figure sat behind it, chin on his hand, studying something on the table before him. Mitya?, I thought, could this truly be Mitya, the composer of the passacaglia, and author of the letter still sequestered in the lining of Vitja’s violin case, somewhere in Harbin, or perhaps now somewhere in Moscow?
After my performance, and the ragged applause it inspired, the lunch-break was announced and I made my way to the judges’ table.
‘You are Mitya Shostakovich?’ I said, in Russian, extending my hand to the young man.
‘Mitya is my father, Dmitri,’ he replied, as strands of blond hair fell forward onto the rims of his glasses. ‘I am Maxim, his son.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said.
‘Do not be sorry!’ he replied. ‘I am sorry I am not as famous as my father. And, indeed, I suspect I am here because some clerk in the Ministry of Culture misread the invitation. Or perhaps it is a joke. As you can see, my fellow judges are all old enough to be my father.’ He flicked his eyes towards the three grey-haired elders sharing the judges’ table.
Something in his manner made me trust him, or at least, made me think I could be reckless with him. I glanced over my shoulder, and spied Ruan some distance from me, stuck in the middle of a row of seats as the audience filled the aisle and shouldered their way towards the exit. He acknowledged me with a raised hand, half a wave and half an instruction to stop what I was doing. I turned back to Maxim and began to explain myself. He listened intently, nodding quietly as I related to him my link to his father via his grandmother’s friends, Kasimir and Piroshka, and asked if he had any news of them since their return to Moscow. As I finished speaking I felt the air move slightly beside me and knew that Ruan must have arrived at my shoulder, because Maxim raised his hand to stop me talking, and picked up a sheet of paper from the table between us and turned it towards me. ‘Perhaps it has not been explained to you sufficiently well,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the translators they use are barely competent. It says here you will be marked equally on all three of your performances: a concerto, a sonata and a solo piece. Judges are not at liberty to change this. I am sorry, that is all I can say.’ And with that he walked away from us without another word.
I turned away from the judges’ table, and found, not Ruan, but the professor’s young assistant standing beside me, his silvery-white eyebrows raised in a gentle, mocking admonition. Ruan was still making his way towards the stage through a family group adoring one of the other contestants. The young man and I turned to watch Ruan struggle up the steps.
‘What was that about?’ Ruan asked. ‘Do you know that man?’ He indicated Maxim, who was already withdrawing, clutching a leather satchel to his chest.
‘It was a mistake,’ I said. ‘A misunderstanding, that’s all.’
Ruan took me firmly by the elbow and drew me down the steps. I felt the young man slip his hand quietly around my other forearm, and I descended to the stalls as if under arrest, with Ruan hissing at me under his breath and the young man mute and bemused. The latter steered us into the lobby, where my tutor was waiting for us. The old man seized me by the shoulders and planted kisses on each temple, and, pretending not to hear or understand Ruan’s prot
estations that we must return to the embassy, drew me by the hand into the street and around the corner to a tiny bistro where a waiter showed us to a table set for four and produced, without our having to order, a light lunch accompanied by a bottle of white wine. This bottle, along with its two successors, was immediately commandeered by the young assistant, who filled Ruan’s glass to the brim and cajoled him into a series of toasts – to France, to China, to the bonds of friendship, to enduring allegiances between nations and peoples – while my tutor and I pushed aside the plates before us and pored over the Saint-Saëns score for the last time.
We rose from our meal an hour later and returned to the concert hall. We sat together in the dark and cool awaiting my turn to perform, and Ruan quickly slumped backwards in his narrow seat and fell asleep. He did not awake until the middle of my performance, and when I arrived back at our seats I found him on the floor in the aisle with his head between his knees. ‘Migraine,’ he said, without looking up, and passed a shivering hand through the sweat-glistened hair on the back of his head.
In one swift movement the young man went down on his haunches, inserted his arms through Ruan’s armpits, leant backwards and hoisted him upright, and the three of us marched him like a marionette out onto the street, stopping to let him dry-retch in the gutter before arranging his limp, damp limbs across the back seat of my tutor’s tiny car. The young man jumped into the driver’s seat and set off for the embassy, from whence he returned an hour later to inform me via a piece of mime that Ruan had taken a herbal infusion, was sleeping, and had entrusted me to his care.
The Phoenix Song Page 29