Music & Silence

by Rose Tremain

  But there is one exception. Marcus, the youngest boy, the child informed by Emilia that he had killed his mother, is apparently impervious to Magdalena’s spell. When she picks him up he screams. He refuses to kiss her. If he goes to one of her cake makings, he holds his hands behind his back, so that she will not lick his fingers. And he is disobedient. Against all her orders he will go wandering away from the house on his own. He has been told that Emilia is no longer there, that she is in Copenhagen, but each time Marcus is brought back from his wanderings, when he is asked what he has been doing, his reply is always the same. He says that he has been looking for Emilia. Again and again it is explained to him that Copenhagen is miles and miles away, further than anyone is able to walk, further than the sea, further than the north star, but still he goes in search of her.

  At night, Marcus cries. Often, he wets his bed and in the morning is treated, not to the beguiling touch of Magdalena’s hand on his body that Ingmar longs for, but to a stinging slap on his legs or on his bottom. He lies in his damp cot with his face turned away from the room. He refuses to eat more than a few mouthfuls at mealtimes or to concentrate on his lessons. He is growing very thin and there are shadows under his eyes.

  This obstinacy of Marcus’s annoys Magdalena. Why, when with her irresistible smell and her buxom peasant beauty she has enslaved the entire household, must there be this one sorrowful little dissenter? There is no logic to it and this increases Magdalena’s irritation. Marcus is the one child who never knew his mother and therefore he can feel no loyalty towards Karen, yet he it is who pushes his stepmother away.

  “You must talk to him severely, Johann,” says Magdalena. “We cannot have a child in this house who refuses to flourish.”

  So Johann (who does whatever Magdalena asks) takes his youngest son for a ride on his bay pony, leading him slowly and carefully along the lanes that border the fruit fields, and, when they come to a meadow, he lifts him down and lets the pony graze and they sit on the edge of a stone water trough still filmed with ice.

  Johann looks at Marcus and sees in his small serious face the ghost of his first wife Karen. The other boys are growing up to look like Johann, with dark hair and sturdy countenances. Only Emilia and Marcus resemble Karen. And now, as Johann sits there on the horse trough, he wishes that they did not.

  “Now, Marcus,” says Johann, “pay attention.”

  The boy is examining the ice. He sees that there are things trapped in it: dead leaves and small sticks.

  “Are you paying attention?” asks Johann.

  “Yes,” says Marcus. But his gaze doesn’t move from the surface of the frozen water.

  “Well, now,” says Johann with a sigh, “you must tell me what is the matter with you.”

  He waits, but the boy doesn’t answer.

  “This running away and searching for Emilia. You know it is disobedient and very foolish.”

  Marcus looks up at his father. It is a sunny morning and Marcus rubs his eyes, as if the sunlight hurt them. He says nothing.

  “Do you understand?” says Johann.

  “Where is Copenhagen?” asks Marcus.

  “We’ve told you: a long way away, across the water. Further than you have ever travelled.”

  “Magdalena could fly there. She is a witch,” says Marcus.

  “Stop that!” snaps Johann. “I will not have you say that! It was wicked of Emilia to whisper such a thing to you. Wicked. Indeed I am beginning to think she is a sinful girl and that it would be better that she stay in Copenhagen, so that we may all be tranquil here. So you must forget her, Marcus. You must forget her shameful lies and you must forget her. She will not come back to us. And Magdalena is not a witch. She is my wife and she is your mother."

  “No, she isn’t. I killed my mother.”

  “Another example of Emilia’s disgraceful inventions! Upon my word, I thought her a good girl, but now I see how secretive she is. I believe I shall not permit her ever to return. And you, Marcus, if you don’t cease these doleful ways you have and make progress with your work and begin to behave properly at mealtimes, why then I shall devise some punishment that may be cruel and which you will not like. Look at what you have: these fields and woods, your pony, a loving father, handsome brothers. You are the most fortunate of children. And you will from now on mend your ways or the consequences for you will be very disagreeable.”

  Johann expects Marcus to look frightened by now, but he does not appear frightened, only distracted, his large eyes staring at the sunlit meadow.

  “Will Magdalena die?” he asks.

  Johann’s voice is loud and angry when he says: “Die? Of course she will not die! What thoughts are in your head? Whatever they are, they are not sensible and they are not good.”

  “I wish that she would die,” says Marcus.

  Now Johann feels a great torment come into him. He raises a hand to strike Marcus, but in that instant is aware of his youngest son as a pitiful creature, a ghostly soul adrift in his own confused world, a child without a future. He lowers his hand and, instead, picks Marcus up (how light he is, how small and weightless . . .) and sets him on his knee.

  “I will forget,” Johann says, “that you ever uttered those words, but you, in turn, must forget Emilia. You will never more go searching for her in the woods or by the lake or wherever it may be. And now you must promise me that all these wanderings are over. Promise me now.”

  Marcus, as if he were overcome with tiredness, leans towards his father and lays his face against his father’s chest. Johann holds him closely and waits, but the only sounds that break the silence of the field are the scufflings of a bird among the old dry leaves.

  “Promise,” Johann says again, but Marcus neither moves nor speaks.

  FROM COUNTESS O'FINGAL'S NOTEBOOK, LA DOLOROSA

  While I and the children were staying with my father in Bologna the conviction stole upon Johnnie O’Fingal that I was the sole author of all his anguish. He reasoned as follows: had I been of a more courageous disposition and never woken him on the night of the storm, why then his dream of sublime music would never have risen to the surface of his mind. Thus, it was my childish weakness, my “womanish terror of nature’s grandeur,” as he put it, which had brought about our tragedy. I was entirely and only responsible, and the man who had fallen in love with me at first sight could now only look at me with hatred and barely suppress in himself a constant desire to do me harm.

  The virginals had been locked and put away because Johnnie O’Fingal had renounced his struggles to recapture the lost melody, declaring that it had “gone beyond every reach of my mind and heart.” With this renunciation he decreed that henceforth no music of any kind could be played in the house, not even by the children. Never more would there be concerts or any musical entertainment at Cloyne. “There will be silence!” he thundered.

  And so silence there was. I and the children went about our lives—our lessons and pastimes, our walks and meals and reading and prayers—but we did all these things as quietly as we could and were by no means successful in including Johnnie in them, so that what came about in the month that followed our return from Bologna was no less than a separation between us on the one hand and him on the other.

  He never came near my bed, but occupied a distant room that looked northwards towards the hills of Cloyne. He never visited the children’s schoolroom nor talked to them at mealtimes nor took them out on any picnic or pleasing adventure. In the daylight hours he would either sit and gaze into the fire in his study or go about his lands all alone and often with no coat or hat, and walk for hour after hour until he grew tired and returned to sleep.

  Seeing him wandering like this, with his wild, distracted look and his hair unkempt and thin clothes in winter and the psora unhealed on his forehead, his tenant farmers and peasants on the estate grew anxious for their future. Always, in the old days, he would stop at every cottage or dwelling and talk to the people there, but now he passed them by and did not return
their greetings and when, as began to happen, they pleaded with him to set in motion repairs to their roofs or barns, or to take note of the damp that had come into the church, or to pay Doctor McLafferty his annual stipend for the care of them and their children, he did not give them any answer, but only passed by, as though he had not heard them.

  Naturally, I still went among them and when they saw me they would press their hands together or hold their heads, as if in pain, and say to me: “Oh, Lady O’Fingal, what calamity is come upon us? What has stricken His Lordship down?”

  “It is a mystery,” I would reply. “And I tell you truly that I do not know how it may be solved.”

  Then I would try to reassure the people that I would do everything in my power to find money for their repairs and to give the doctor his dues. But in a short time all the income to which I alone had any right or access was used up. I then went to Johnnie (though still afraid that his loathing of me might manifest itself at any second in some violent deed) and told him: “If you will not take care of everything on the estate as before, then you must give me the means to do it. You cannot let your people live in leaking houses or allow their children to sicken or die for want of the services of a physician.”

  “Francesca,” he said, regarding me with the stony look of hatred to which I had now grown accustomed, “the plight of these idle peasants is of no interest to me. What do they know of suffering, compared with what I know? I have been face to face with the sublime and they have never come near it. I have heard the melody in the heart of the universe and then lost it.”

  “Oh, but, Johnnie,” I said, “that you have heard it should make you the more inclined—and not less—to deal in all things like an honourable man. Surely I am right in this? What was revealed to you that night but a great beneficence to which you might aspire? And what prevents you from aspiring to it by means other than musical composition? You do not lack money. Only let me have the right to some control of the estate funds and I will aspire to do good in your place, and all will be well, and you will not be disturbed, I promise you, from your walks and reveries.”

  But he would not yield. He hounded me from the room. He declared that I, along with all members of my sex, was incapable of aspiring to anything noble for as long as I should live.

  By the end of the year I had no funds whatsoever to pay the household staff nor the children’s tutors. In shame and with fear and anguish in my heart, I rode to Corcaigh one day and pawned a diamond brooch Johnnie had given me for my twenty-fifth birthday.

  I then, in despair, wrote to my father and asked him to make me a loan from his paper business. This he did straight away and, what is more, hearing of my plight and acting still as a most tender parent towards me, he informed me that as soon as time permitted he would make the journey from Bologna to Ireland and strive with all his might to set in train some resolution to the catastrophe that had come upon us.

  It was Francesco Ponti who unlocked the key to the next chapter of our sad story.

  For no reason that I could determine, other than that he was a man and a most clever and kindly person, the presence of my father in our house started almost at once to work some soothing magic upon poor Johnnie’s exhausted mind.

  He began to talk to him. I do not know what many things they spoke of together (and indeed it is true that my father does make many mistakes in English, so that it may have been some words muddled or confused with others that made to his listener a strange kind of logic) but after a few days I began to see a change in Johnnie O’Fingal. He appeared in his chair at mealtimes and would, from time to time, say some words to the children and let them tell him about their games or their work.

  At lunch-time one day, while we ate a thin stew of lamb’s neck, he suddenly embarked upon a discussion of the great matter of God and religion, his mind turning endlessly upon the question of how and when and in what manner we are afforded any proof of the existence of God. And my father, being a Roman Catholic but also a merchant and in no wise a great philosopher, answered him in a plain manner with a tale from his life as a man of commerce. He said God appeared to him in the guise of opportunity.

  “You see, Johnnie,” he said by way of explanation, “in whatever is revealed to us, there I see the hand of God. You understand me? For a saint, this revealing might be to go and make some conversation with the birds, or to give away golden things to a mendicante. You know my thought? But for me, I have a different revelation. I go to a city. It might be Roma or Firenze. It might be London. It could be Corcaigh. I visit a law man, an apothecary, an ospedale, a seminary. Many places. I do then talk to these people in these places and watch what they do. And then, little by little, God reveals it to me: where and how I can do business with them. I have in a leather box my samples of paper, all different qualities, and it is God who says to me, ‘Francesco, show the Paper Numero Due.' ”

  I see that I have mocked my father’s language a little here, but any reader of this notebook will forgive me, for this account does indeed give some flavour of the way Francesco Ponti spoke about the subject of God and opportunity. And what it procured that lunch-time, causing astonishment to me and all the children, was a thing we had not seen for very many months. And this thing was a smile on the face of Johnnie O’Fingal.

  Some nights later my father came to my room after Johnnie had gone to bed and told me that he now at last understood how my husband might be rescued from the entrapment in which he found himself. With his simple logic, Francesco said to me that he believed the reason Johnnie O’Fingal had been unable to rediscover the music he had heard was that he lacked the professional skill to find it. He had proceeded “all on his own, without any qualified musician to help him,” and so, of necessity, his endeavours had come to naught.

  I protested that if a thing appears in a dream, then it is only the dreamer himself who has any hope of rediscovering it, but Francesco reminded me that Johnnie had “got very near” to playing the tune upon the virginals. If only some skilled composer had been by him to essay different melodies and harmonies, then it surely would have emerged at last and all our lives would have been glorified by its discovery.

  Still I expressed my doubts, saying that I did not see how any man may hear what is locked inside another’s heart, but my father then revealed that he had, on this very evening, put his opinion to Johnnie, who had listened attentively and said at last that he would now “endeavour to regain his strength to try again, with the hired help of some musical person.”

  I let a sigh escape from my breast. “Father,” I said, “since you are come to us, Johnnie has by slow degrees begun to return to a little normality and kindness. And for this I thank you more than I can express. But please do not urge upon my husband any return to his search. For this will surely bring him again to absolute despair and misery. Only stay with us a little longer and continue with your conversations, and I entertain some hope that we can at length have something of our old life again.”

  My father laid his hand gently upon my head. “Francesca,” he said, “this is a man who has seen paradise. You must not prevent a man who has been in this place from trying to go there again.”

  And so it was that, in due time, the padlock was removed from the virginals and a tuner hired to prepare them again to be played upon. The library was cleaned and repainted, and a great quantity of paper brought in by my father and laid beside a music stand. Upstairs a room was made ready and on the day that my father left us to return to Bologna a young musician by the name of Peter Claire arrived in our household.

  How CAN THIS BE So?

  Kirsten Munk has always believed that the rooms inhabited by her women should be plain and simple rooms, unadorned by any luxury.

  “Absence of luxury,” she has told her mother, “is essential, if I am to retain control of them. Give them luxury and they will believe that this is a permanent condition at Rosenborg—as if feather beds fell from the air, as if ebony dressing-tables grew out of the floor.
Whereas, when they see that this is not so, they will begin to ask themselves how they may get more things with which to warm themselves and embellish their ambitious bodies. And they will soon understand what the answer is: all luxury emanates from me! I can provide it and I can take it away. And so, comprehending this, they will always be striving to please me and always striving not to wake up my temper.”

  Thus it is that Emilia Tilsen lies now, on her first night at the castle, not in some spacious or comfortable room, but in a narrow bed in a high chamber with no fire to warm her, and a single candle to make a girdle of light against the Rosenborg dark. The sheets that cover her feel damp, as though they had never been aired in the sun, and Emilia is cold. She keeps the candle burning and lays her cloak trimmed with fur on top of the bedding, holding the fur against her face.

  She is thinking about Marcus. She can imagine his face, as if he were standing there, in this unfamiliar room, just beyond the candle flame. His eyes are huge and shadowy, and he clutches some little piece of cloth against his cheek as a comforter. He begs Emilia not to leave him at home with his father and Magdalena, and his brothers whose fingers Magdalena is implored to lick when they’ve gorged themselves on her cake batter. He says: “I want it to be true that you never left.”

  But she has left. She is alone for the first time. Despite the cold of the room, despite her worrying for Marcus, Emilia now tells herself that she has been fortunate in being summoned here to serve in Kirsten’s household. She is at the start of a new life. She has escaped from Magdalena and Magdalena’s obscenity and spite. She blows out the candle and wills herself to sleep in the knowledge that tomorrow will be good.

  Someone wakes her, calling her name.