by Roald Dahl
The composing, presenting and conducting of nine great symphonies in as many days is a fair achievement for any man, and it was not astonishing that it went a little to Mr Botibol’s head. He decided now that he would once again surprise his public. He would compose a mass of marvellous piano music and he himself would give the recitals. So early the next morning he set out for the showroom of the people who sold Bechsteins and Steinways. He felt so brisk and fit that he walked all the way, and as he walked he hummed little snatches of new and lovely tunes for the piano. His head was full of them. All the time they kept coming to him and once, suddenly, he had the feeling that thousands of small notes, some white, some black, were cascading down a shute into his head through a hole in his head, and that his brain, his amazing musical brain, was receiving them as fast as they could come and unscrambling them and arranging them neatly in a certain order so that they made wondrous melodies. There were Nocturnes, there were Etudes and there were Waltzes, and soon, he told himself, soon he would give them all to a grateful and admiring world.
When he arrived at the piano-shop, he pushed the door open and walked in with an air almost of confidence. He had changed much in the last few days. Some of his nervousness had left him and he was no longer wholly preoccupied with what others thought of his appearance. ‘I want,’ he said to the salesman, ‘a concert grand, but you must arrange it so that when the notes are struck, no sound is produced.’
The salesman leaned forward and raised his eyebrows.
‘Could that be arranged?’ Mr Botibol asked.
‘Yes, sir, I think so, if you desire it. But might I inquire what you intend to use the instrument for?’
‘If you want to know, I’m going to pretend I’m Chopin. I’m going to sit and play while a gramophone makes the music. It gives me a kick.’ It came out, just like that, and Mr Botibol didn’t know what had made him say it. But it was done now and he had said it and that was that. In a way he felt relieved, because he had proved he didn’t mind telling people what he was doing. The man would probably answer what a jolly good idea. Or he might not. He might say well you ought to be locked up.
‘So now you know,’ Mr Botibol said.
The salesman laughed out loud. ‘Ha ha! Ha ha ha! That’s very good, sir. Very good indeed. Serves me right for asking silly questions.’ He stopped suddenly in the middle of the laugh and looked hard at Mr Botibol. ‘Of course, sir, you probably know that we sell a simple noiseless keyboard specially for silent practising.’
‘I want a concert grand,’ Mr Botibol said. The salesman looked at him again.
Mr Botibol chose his piano and got out of the shop as quickly as possible. He went on to the store that sold gramophone records and there he ordered a quantity of albums containing recordings of all Chopin’s Nocturnes, Etudes and Waltzes, played by Arthur Rubinstein.
‘My goodness, you are going to have a lovely time!’
Mr Botibol turned and saw standing beside him at the counter a squat, short-legged girl with a face as plain as a pudding.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Oh yes, I am.’ Normally he was strict about not speaking to females in public places, but this one had taken him by surprise.
‘I love Chopin,’ the girl said. She was holding a slim brown paper bag with string handles containing a single record she had just bought. ‘I like him better than any of the others.’
It was comforting to hear the voice of this girl after the way the piano salesman had laughed. Mr Botibol wanted to talk to her but he didn’t know what to say.
The girl said, ‘I like the Nocturnes best, they’re so soothing. Which are your favourites?’
Mr Botibol said, ‘Well…” The girl looked up at him and she smiled pleasantly, trying to assist him with his embarrassment. It was the smile that did it. He suddenly found himself saying, ‘Well now, perhaps, would you, I wonder… I mean I was wondering…’ She smiled again; she couldn’t help it this time. ‘What I mean is I would be glad if you would care to come along some time and listen to these records.’
‘Why how nice of you.’ She paused, wondering whether it was all right. ‘You really mean it?’
‘Yes, I should be glad.’
She had lived long enough in the city to discover that old men, if they are dirty old men, do not bother about trying to pick up a girl as unattractive as herself. Only twice in her life had she been accosted in public and each time the man had been drunk. But this one wasn’t drunk. He was nervous and he was peculiar-looking, but he wasn’t drunk. Come to think of it, it was she who had started the conversation in the first place. ‘It would be lovely,’ she said. ‘It really would. When could I come?’
Oh dear, Mr Botibol thought. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
‘I could come tomorrow,’ she went on. ‘It’s my afternoon off.’
‘Well, yes, certainly,’ he answered slowly. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll give you my card. Here it is.’
‘A. W. Botibol,’ she read aloud. ‘What a funny name. Mine’s Darlington. Miss L. Darlington. How d’you do, Mr Botibol.’ She put out her hand for him to shake. ‘Oh I am looking forward to this! What time shall I come?’
‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Please come any time.’
‘Three o’clock?’
‘Yes. Three o’clock.’
‘Lovely! I’ll be there.’
He watched her walk out of the shop, a squat, stumpy, thick-legged little person and my word, he thought, what have I done! He was amazed at himself. But he was not displeased. Then at once he started to worry about whether or not he should let her see his concert-hall. He worried still more when he realized that it was the only place in the house where there was a gramophone.
That evening he had no concert. Instead he sat in his chair brooding about Miss Darlington and what he should do when she arrived. The next morning they brought the piano, a fine Bechstein in dark mahogany which was carried in minus its legs and later assembled on the platform in the concert-hall. It was an imposing instrument and when Mr Botibol opened it and pressed a note with his finger, it made no sound at all. He had originally intended to astonish the world with a recital of his first piano compositions–a set of Etudes – as soon as the piano arrived, but it was no good now. He was too worried about Miss Darlington and three o’clock. At lunch-time his trepidation had increased and he couldn’t eat. ‘Mason,’ he said, ‘I’m, I’m expecting a young lady to call at three o’clock.’
‘A what, sir?’ the butler said.
‘A young lady, Mason.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Show her into the sitting-room.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Precisely at three he heard the bell ring. A few moments later Mason was showing her into the room. She came in, smiling, and Mr Botibol stood up and shook her hand. ‘My!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a lovely house! I didn’t know I was calling on a millionaire!’
She settled her small plump body into a large armchair and Mr Botibol sat opposite. He didn’t know what to say. He felt terrible. But almost at once she began to talk and she chattered away gaily about this and that for a long time without stopping. Mostly it was about his house and the furniture and the carpets and about how nice it was of him to invite her because she didn’t have such an awful lot of excitement in her life. She worked hard all day and she shared a room with two other girls in a boarding-house and he could have no idea how thrilling it was for her to be here. Gradually Mr Botibol began to feel better. He sat there listening to the girl, rather liking her, nodding his bald head slowly up and down, and the more she talked, the more he liked her. She was gay and chatty, but underneath all that any fool could see that she was a lonely tired little thing. Even Mr Botibol could see that. He could see it very clearly indeed. It was at this point that he began to play with a daring and risky idea.
‘Miss Darlington,’ he said. ‘I’d like to show you something.’ He led her out of the room straight into the little concert-hall. ‘Look,’ he said.
She stopped just inside the door. ‘My goodness! Just look at that! A theatre! A real little theatre!’ Then she saw the piano on the platform and the conductor’s dais with the brass rail running round it. ‘It’s for concerts!’ she cried. ‘Do you really have concerts here! Oh, Mr Botibol, how exciting!’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘Come back into the other room and I’ll tell you about it.’ Her enthusiasm had given him confidence and he wanted to get going. ‘Come back and listen while I tell you something funny.’ And when they were seated in the sitting-room again, he began at once to tell her his story. He told the whole thing, right from the beginning, how one day, listening to a symphony, he had imagined himself to be the composer, how he had stood up and started to conduct, how he had got an immense pleasure out of it, how he had done it again with similar results and how finally he had built himself the concert-hall where already he had conducted nine symphonies. But he cheated a little bit in the telling. He said that the only real reason he did it was in order to obtain the maximum appreciation from the music. There was only one way to listen to music, he told her, only one way to make yourself listen to every single note and chord. You had to do two things at once. You had to imagine that you had composed it, and at the same time you had to imagine that the public were hearing it for the first time. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘do you really think that any outsider has ever got half as great a thrill from a symphony as the composer himself when he first heard his work played by a full orchestra?’
‘No,’ she answered timidly. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then become the composer! Steal his music! Take it away from him and give it to yourself!’ He leaned back in his chair and for the first time she saw him smile. He had only just thought of this new complex explanation of his conduct, but to him it seemed a very good one and he smiled. ‘Well, what do you think, Miss Darlington?’
‘I must say it’s very very interesting.’ She was polite and puzzled but she was a long way away from him now.
‘Would you like to try?’
‘Oh no. Please.’
‘I wish you would.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t think I should be able to feel the same way as you do about it, Mr Botibol. I don’t think I have a strong enough imagination.’
She could see from his eyes he was disappointed. ‘But I’d love to sit in the audience and listen while you do it,’ she added.
Then he leapt up from his chair. ‘I’ve got it!’ he cried. ‘A piano concerto! You play the piano, I conduct. You the greatest pianist, the greatest in the world. First performance of my Piano Concerto No. 1. You playing, me conducting. The greatest pianist and the greatest composer together for the first time. A tremendous occasion! The audience will go mad! There’ll be queueing all night outside the hall to get in. It’ll be broadcast around the world. It’ll, it’ll…’ Mr Botibol stopped. He stood behind the chair with both hands resting on the back of the chair and suddenly he looked embarrassed and a trifle sheepish. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I get worked up. You see how it is. Even the thought of another performance gets me worked up.’ And then plaintively, ‘Would you, Miss Darlington, would you play a piano concerto with me?’
‘It’s like children,’ she said, but she smiled.
‘No one will know. No one but us will know anything about it.’
‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll do it. I think I’m daft but just the same I’ll do it. It’ll be a bit of a lark.’
‘Good!’ Mr Botibol cried. ‘When? Tonight?’
‘Oh well, I don’t…’
‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘Please. Make it tonight. Come back and have dinner here with me and we’ll give the concert afterwards.’ Mr Botibol was excited again now. ‘We must make a few plans. Which is your favourite piano concerto, Miss Darlington?’
‘Oh well, I should say Beethoven’s Emperor.’
‘The Emperor it shall be. You will play it tonight. Come to dinner at seven. Evening dress. You must have evening dress for the concert.’
‘I’ve got a dancing dress but I haven’t worn it for years.’
‘You shall wear it tonight.’ He paused and looked at her in silence for a moment, then quite gently, he said, ‘You’re not worried, Miss Darlington? Perhaps you would rather not do it. I’m afraid, I’m afraid I’ve let myself get rather carried away. I seem to have pushed you into this. And 4 know how stupid it must seem to you.’
That’s better, she thought. That’s much better. Now I know it’s all right. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. But you frightened me a bit, taking it all so seriously.’
When she had gone, he waited for five minutes, then went out into the town to the gramophone shop and bought the records of the Emperor Concerto, conductor, Toscanini–soloist, Horowitz. He returned at once, told his astonished butler that there would be a guest for dinner, then went upstairs and changed into his tails.
She arrived at seven. She was wearing a long sleeveless dress made of some shiny green material and to Mr Botibol she did not look quite so plump or quite so plain as before. He took her straight in to dinner and in spite of the silent disapproving manner in which Mason prowled around the table, the meal went well. She protested gaily when Mr Botibol gave her a second glass of wine, but she didn’t refuse it. She chattered away almost without a stop throughout the three courses and Mr Botibol listened and nodded and kept refilling her glass as soon as it was half empty.
Afterwards, when they were seated in the living-room, Mr Botibol said, ‘Now Miss Darlington, now we begin to fall into our parts.’ The wine, as usual, had made him happy, and the girl, who was even less used to it than the man, was not feeling so bad either. ‘You, Miss Darlington, are the great pianist. What is your first name, Miss Darlington?’
‘Lucille,’ she said.
‘The great pianist Lucille Darlington. I am the composer Botibol. We must talk and act and think as though we are pianist and composer.’
‘What is your first name, Mr Botibol. What does the A stand for?’
‘Angel,’ he answered.
‘Not Angel.’
‘Yes,’ he said irritably.
‘Angel Botibol,’ she murmured and she began to giggle. But she checked herself and said, ‘I think it’s a most unusual and distinguished name.’
‘Are you ready, Miss Darlington?’
‘Yes.’
Mr Botibol stood up and began pacing nervously up and down the room. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly time to go on,’ he said. “They tell me the place is packed. Not an empty seat anywhere. I always get nervous before a concert. Do you get nervous, Miss Darlington?’
‘Oh yes, I do, always. Especially playing with you.’
‘I think they’ll like it. I put everything I’ve got into this concerto, Miss Darlington. It nearly killed me composing it. I was ill for weeks afterwards.’
‘Poor thing,’ she said.
‘It’s time now,’ he said. ‘The orchestra are all in their places. Come on.’ He led her out and down the passage, then he made her wait outside the door of the concert-hall while he nipped in, arranged the lighting and switched on the gramophone. He came back and fetched her and as they walked on to the stage, the applause broke out. They both stood and bowed towards the darkened auditorium and the applause was vigorous and it went on for a long time. Then Mr Botibol mounted the dais and Miss Darlington took her seat at the piano. The applause died down. Mr Botibol held up his baton. The next record dropped and the Emperor Concerto began.
It was an astonishing affair. The thin stalk-like Mr Botibol, who had no shoulders, standing on the dais in his evening clothes, waving his arms about in approximate time to the music; and the plump Miss Darlington in her shiny green dress seated at the keyboard of the enormous piano thumping the silent keys with both hands for all she was worth. She recognized the passages where the piano was meant to be silent, and on these occasions she fol
ded her hands primly on her lap and stared straight ahead with a dreamy and enraptured expression on her face. Watching her, Mr Botibol thought that she was particularly wonderful in the slow solo passages of the Second Movement. She allowed her hands to drift smoothly and gently up and down the keys and she inclined her head first to one side, then to the other, and once she closed her eyes for a long time while she played. During the exciting last movement, Mr Botibol himself lost his balance and would have fallen off the platform had he not saved himself by clutching the brass rail. But in spite of everything, the concerto moved on majestically to its mighty conclusion. Then the real clapping came. Mr Botibol walked over and took Miss Darlington by the hand and led her to the edge of the platform, and there they stood, the two of them, bowing, and bowing, and bowing again as the clapping and the shouting of ‘encore’ continued. Four times they left the stage and came back, and then, the fifth time, Mr Botibol whispered, ‘It’s you they want. You take this one alone.’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s you. It’s you. Please.’ But he pushed her forward and she took her call, and came back and said, ‘Now you. They want you. Can’t you hear them shouting for you.’ So Mr Botibol walked alone on to the stage, bowed gravely to right, left and centre and came off just as the clapping stopped altogether.
He led her straight back to the living-room. He was breathing fast and the sweat was pouring down all over his face. She too was a little breathless, and her cheeks were shining red.