The Girl with the Peacock Harp

by Michael Eisele

  Maximilian did not wait for the reproaches that were sure to follow; one look at the face of his father was enough. Half blinded by tears of humiliation he somehow made his way out of the door by which he had entered, closed the silent violin into its plush lined case and clutching the precious instrument to his chest he half ran to his room.

  Thus he did not witness the conversation between his father and the dozent, the latter pleading with the Graf to be lenient, it had not been deliberate mockery on the part of the boy—nothing of the sort. In fact in Beethoven’s day it had been customary for the violinist to improvise at certain parts of the concerto. No, he admitted, that had not been one of those places but the boy was young and did not understand, and his musical talent was beyond question. Discipline was needed, yes, he would agree with that, and if the Graf permitted he had a suggestion to make.

  His head buried in his pillow, the counterpane bunched in his fists, Maximilian was only aware that his mother had entered the room when he felt her warm hand caressing the curls at the back of his neck, her low voice soothing in counterpoint to his sobs. It had been beautiful, beautiful, she murmured, he must not cry, Beethoven, she was sure of it, Beethoven himself would have been proud, or perhaps, she said tugging playfully at his ear, perhaps a little jealous, yes? ‘Ai, Pulika, miri chav . . .’ she said, drifting into that other language, whispering now extravagant things, how one day as he played o hona, the moon itself would come down to listen, bewitched by his music . . .

  The bang as his door was thrust open cut short her soliloquy, and he raised his head to see his father silhouetted in the light from the hallway, his voice harshly ordering his mother to leave, his son was no longer a baby who needed a woman to wipe his tears, and in any case if she had forgotten what he had ordered regarding that beggars’ speech, he would be obliged to remind her later.

  Next came Father’s command to stand up like a man and listen to what he had to say. Wondering if he were to be beaten Maximilian got to his feet unsteadily and stood as he had been taught, shoulders back and head up, braced for the blow that was sure to come. What he heard next, however, was worse than that.

  It seemed the dozent was acquainted with the conductor of the City Orchestra, and he was certain that he could secure Maximilian a place in the violin section, where he would be required to play what was on the page, that and that only, and exactly as written. Otherwise; well, Father sincerely hoped there would be no otherwise, but there was always military school, where he would learn what real discipline was, and an end to music.

  The days that followed assumed the quality of a waking nightmare. The City Orchestra was preparing for an important concert, and the Maestro was not best pleased to have a new musician to deal with, even the son of such a noble family and one of undoubted talent. It was only the fact that one of the second violins had fallen unaccountably ill which persuaded him. The other musicians, professionals to whom the orchestra was their bread and butter were at first slightly in awe of Maximilian for his title and the brilliance of his technique, but an orchestra is like any small village with its rivalries and petty spites, so that before long, if his section should come in half a beat too soon . . .’ it was the new man, Maestro, his timing is off today’; or if someone should be so unfortunate as to cough when the baton was raised, ‘It must have been the new second violin, Maestro, we all saw it.’ Add to this, a string cunningly frayed when he was not looking, his rosin misplaced, all the petty annoyances that could be contrived, which they had all suffered as new additions to the Orchestra in their turn, were gleefully perpetrated on Maximilian.

  Such flea bites were as nothing, however, compared to the rigours of playing in unison with a group for the first time. The Maestro had a sharp and sarcastic tongue, and Maximilian soon learned to watch the pointed tip of his baton as a slave might view the lash end of the overseer’s whip. Making music, which had once been his greatest joy was fast becoming something akin to drudgery, as the orchestra repeated a phrase over and over until he thought he might go mad with it, until it sounded to the satisfaction of the Maestro. Worse still, in common with many leaders of men, the Maestro had long realised that although it was doubtless unjust that one individual should suffer for the sake of the group, nothing so united an orchestra as having someone to bear the constant burden of the criticism that should have rightfully been shared by them all.

  Then came the concert itself. As the music rose around him, Maximilian for the first time heard it, not in fractured sections, but united into a glorious whole. Even the bullies and sneaks with whom he was surrounded seemed changed by the outpouring of sound which they were helping to create, and his heart rose within him until he perceived on the faces of his fellow musicians, not transport and bliss, but merely concentration on a difficult task. He realised suddenly that they were nearing the bottom of the score and felt a sharp nudge from his stand partner to remind him that as inside man it was his duty to turn the page, but he was a beat too late which threw his own playing off, and suddenly the rows of notes on the page were once again dead lifeless birds on a wire, as he hunted desperately for his place he saw out of the corner of his eye the deadly baton wielded with that extra jerk which told him that the Maestro had noticed, and suddenly the baton was merely a stiff bit of wire such as the gardener had used on that long ago summer day, hanging up the dead birds in a ghastly parody of flight forever stilled. Something within him burst its bonds and spread its wings in rebellion against restraint and with a sudden jerk he rose to his feet, upsetting the music stand and sending the sheets of the score flying. He tucked the violin and bow under his arm while with the other he gathered up his instrument case, and heedless of the chaos he was creating as the music died around him he pushed his way blindly out through the wings. Pushing open the first door he came to he found himself in an alley behind the concert hall.

  A light misty rain was falling which created a golden nimbus around the just lit streetlamps. Maximilian trudged along with no sense of direction, his dress jacket collar raised against the damp and the violin in its case tucked protectively under one arm. Where could he go? He felt as if by his actions he had severed the strings of his life, and now like a puppet he dangled with no way to decide anything or choose a destination. He knew vaguely that his mother had once belonged to or been associated with the troops of ragged wanderers one saw about the city from time to time, but they had their own tribes and families and he doubted that the few scraps of their language he had gleaned would be sufficient passport to join them.

  Finally, chilled to the bone, there was in the end only one destination possible, and so with weary steps he trudged the long way homeward.

  He thought that perhaps Mother and Father had missed his return from the concert, perhaps had even been searching for him throughout the city, and filled with a new guilt at having worried his parents needlessly he reached the great oaken door of the mansion and finding it locked raised the knocker and announced himself.

  To the concerned face of the manservant who opened the portal he gave a sheepish smile and allowed himself to be drawn over the threshold and conducted to the parlours, where the man left him after relieving him of his dripping outer garment. He stood absorbing the welcome warmth of the coal fire, hearing a confusion of voices raised in question and response, and within minutes the steady confident tread of his father approaching.

  One look at that stern face in the doorway, however, showed him what he should have realised, that already by now messengers would have reached his home from the concert hall seeking him and that the tale of his disruption of the concert would of course have reached his father’s ears. Head down in misery he heard the sound of his father’s heels striding over the parquet, each separate step like a pistol shot, heard the steps pause before him, and the pitiless command to ‘stand up like a man and look at me’.

  Schooled to obedience since childhood, Maximilian raised his head only to be knocked backward against the settee by a blow so
violent that his ears rang and a dark mist seemed to rise about him. As if from a vast distance he heard his father’s voice telling him that first thing in the morning he would be driven to the station, there to embark for the military academy at Wiener Neustadt. General Haynau himself had made the offer after the last disastrous spectacle. And he should have heeded him then, his father said.

  ‘And this—’ Maximilian saw his father’s hand as it plucked up the violin case from where it had fallen, ‘This shall be sold. It might go some way toward deferring what this latest prank of yours will undoubtedly cost me. You will of course,’ his father’s voice lowered, not in pity but only to add emphasis to his next words, ‘have no further need of it where you are going.’

  He thought then that it must have been his own voice which screamed, ‘NO!’ until as if in a dream he saw the flurry of skirts as Kisaiya entered the room, his mother with her hair tumbling out of its habitual confinement, her face distorted in passion, and words, words in that other language that was forbidden to be spoken, tumbling out of her mouth as if forced through her clenched teeth.

  Full against her husband’s chest she hurled herself, and such was his surprise that in spite of the fact that he over-topped her by a head and weighed a good deal more into the bargain he toppled over the settle into an undignified sprawl. His head struck the parquet with a crack and for a moment he lay there, eyes glazed. Kisaiya tore the handle of the violin case from his nerveless fingers and thrust it into her son’s grasp. He could only stand there and gape at the transformation, at his mother with her lips drawn back from her white teeth and her hair in snaky ringlets hanging about her face, and the invulnerable icon that was his father lying helpless on the floor.

  Kisaiya did not wait, but seized him by the arm and propelled him out of the room. She thrust aside the servants who were dashing to the aid of their master, gained the passage to the front door, and with her free arm flung it wide.

  The rain had ceased, and the street outside lay quiet with the lamplight reflected from the slick cobbles in a thousand golden sparks. A slow breeze had sprung up, bringing with it the mingled scents of damp foliage and blossoms mixed with the harsh tang of burning coal. Gasping for breath in the iron clasp of her stays, his mother pointed with a trembling hand at the empty roadway that stretched away into shadow, and said one word, ‘Dza!’, ‘Go!’ Her son stared at her, his eyes welling, and put out a hand in protest, but she struck it aside and seized him by his lapels and shook him. ‘Go!’ she repeated in the language of the People. ‘Go, Pulika, my son, never return! Live as you can, live as you must, but live free, Pulika, there is nothing here for you now!’

  Behind mother and son they could hear a confused scramble as the Graf was helped to his feet, the murmur of the solicitous servants and then the inarticulate bellow of his rage. With a strength hardly to be believed Kisaiya hurled her tall son down the steps and stumbling out into the street. ‘Dza!’ she screamed again so that it echoed from the prim façades of the neighbouring buildings, and at last he shook himself free of his paralysis and took to his heels, the precious violin tucked tightly under his arm.

  Then Kisaiya who was Isobel no longer, stood at the bottom step and watched him go, and the words she threw after him were as those she had whispered to him in the nursery so long ago: ‘Your soul comes from my soul! It will find you no matter where you are! Listen when it calls to you!’ Then she peered long after the disappearing figure of her son as he ran, ran as if at long last he had found his wings, the wings of the Vadni Ratsa, the wild goose of Romani legend, and his mother’s voice followed him, echoing through the narrow streets and down through the years and for all the days of his life.

  THE MUSIC

  The evening began to cool and the last heat of the sun rose from the dusty pavements. Couples and groups of couples, restless as water, flowed along the streets and boulevards of the city, as twilight brought an artificial dawn from its many lamps. Like water also, the gay bubbling of many voices rose and fell among the cobbled streets and squares, swirling for a moment at a café or thronging, compressed, at the entrance to a concert hall. Music there was too, in the streets, from entertainers picking their way among the diners at kerbside tables, spilling out from the suddenly opened door of a bistro or dance hall, or rising and falling as one approached certain corners where a solitary musician scraped or wheezed his battered instrument through the popular airs of the day.

  One such stood on a less frequented corner near a small park, a man of late middle years, one would say, grey bearded and unkempt, playing his violin with a remote detachment which had little in common with the ingratiating manner of his fellow artists, who nodded and grinned in appreciation of the occasional coin to fall in their instrument cases or battered caps. The elderly violinist by the park, though his instrument’s case gaped open with a scattering of coppers over its worn velvet interior, neither acknowledged the occasional contribution nor the small audience which collected from time to time to hear him. As he played with almost contemptuous ease the simple tunes of his repertoire his gaze was fixed and distant as if he were on stage, nor could the dull finish of his instrument, battered and shabby as its owner, disguise the fact that it had once been a very good one.

  As the evening gradually became twilight and then night, and the sky’s light dwindled to gas flame and lamp, the crowds slowed their restless flow to a trickle that then ceased, disappearing into doorways and shadowed streets, until gradually the empty spaces echoed with only the occasional footstep, the rattle of a passing carriage, or the solitary, hesitant bark of a tethered dog settling down to sleep. In his little park, far from the nearest streetlight, the elderly violinist played on, softly as a dream, while the shadows under the trees deepened, hiding him from view. The other street musicians had departed long since, when he at last lowered his instrument and looked about him, as if surprised to find himself alone.

  For a few moments he simply stood, frowning slightly, as if, having found himself in a strange place, he was trying to recall what errand or impulse had brought him to this shadowed copse in the midst of a silent city. The hand that held the neck of his instrument lifted slightly, and a light breeze made a quiet interrogative sound as it whispered over the carved sound holes. A nocturnal bird from somewhere nearby contributed a few tentative notes. The old man nodded and replaced the still warm violin under his chin.

  At first his playing merged with the sounds of the awakening night, so quiet it was. No recognisable tune emerged; rather the violin’s voice wandered seemingly at random, with queer little hesitations and sudden swoops, calling to mind a subterranean spring beginning its journey in some hidden outcrop high in the mountains. Cold and clear came the notes, too, holding something of the frozen snows that had reluctantly given them birth. A theme emerged and gradually the slender thread of melody was joined as it were by other trickles of sound, combining and gaining force. A small stream as yet, but soon, one felt, a force to sweep aside all in its path, gathering and changing all in one irresistible sweep of sound. And still the violin played on.

  Seated on a bench in the shadows under the nearby trees, another man cautiously raised the slide of a little tin lantern. There was a smell of burning oil as a beam of yellow light crept out, illuminating a pad of manuscript he held on his knee, and throwing his lean, intent features into sudden relief. He checked to see that nothing betrayed his hiding place, screened as it was behind the dense foliage of a stand of alder. Then he produced a silver propelling pencil from his coat pocket, placed the little lantern on the bench by his knee, and began furiously to write.

  For three nights he had been haunting the park where the elderly musician had taken up his station, ever since chance and sleeplessness had brought him to this neighbourhood during a nocturnal ramble. His name was Sandor Bottelli, and music was his passion and his driving force, from the time when as an infant prodigy he had performed on the pianoforte before an astonished public, to the present when, at an u
nusually young age, he headed one of the city’s major orchestras. It was a time of ferment in the arts; everywhere young artists experimented and changed traditional forms, sometimes discarding them altogether in favour of the new, the shocking. In music, too, staid committees shook their heads as composers began to incorporate peasant tunes into their music, even borrowing wild oriental harmonies from the roving gypsy bands, the despised Tsigane. But there was no arguing with the public response, they flocked to the concert halls, some to be amazed, some to jeer, it was true, and fistfights broke out occasionally between rival groups, but as one impresario put it, at least everyone paid at the door.

  Now Bottelli smiled in grim satisfaction as his pencil flew over the staves at a speed hardly to be believed, freezing the flood of sound into a pattern of ordered streaks and half formed words. That first night he had been impetuous, presenting himself with his usual arrogance as the old man paused during a complicated passage, only to have his new discovery slam the instrument into its case and shuffle quickly away, ignoring the banknotes held out to him in a belated gesture of appeasement. Then on the next two nights, as Bottelli concealed himself within the park, there had been no such wild invention, merely the mocking banality of waltz and ballad as long as the crowds lasted, then a slow pocketing of the few miserable coins and silence, followed by the shuffling footsteps as his quarry departed for whatever miserable hovel he inhabited. Yet he had persisted, knowing with a cold certainty that music such as he had heard could not be contained, but must seek expression.