An Equal Music Read online

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | II

  "Why?" asks Billy. "Why should I? Why should I get a mobile phone? I'm not a pimp or a plumber."

  Piers shakes his head and lets it go. Billy is far too fat, and always will be. He will always be distracted by family and money worries, car insurance and cornposition. For all our frustration and rebuke, he will never be on time. But the moment his bow comes down on the strings he is transfigured. He is a wonderful cellist, light and profound: the base of our harmony, the rock on which we rest.

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  Every rehearsal of the Maggiore Quartet begins with a very plain, very slow three-octave scale on all four instruments in unison: sometimes major, as in our name, sometimes minor, depending on the key of the first piece we are to play. No matter how fraught our lives have been over the last couple of days, no matter how abrasive our disputes about people or politics, or how visceral our differences about what we are to play and how we are to play it, it reminds us that we are, when it comes to it, one. We try not to look at each other when we play this scale; no one appears to lead. Even the first upbeat is merely breathed by Piers, not indicated by any movement of his head. When I play this I release myself into the spirit of the quartet. I become the music of the scale. I mute my will, I free my self.

  After Alex Foley left five years ago and I was being considered as a possible second violinist by Piers, Helen and Billy, we tried out various bits of music together, rehearsed together, in fact played several concerts together, but never played the scale. I did not even know that for them it existed. Our last concert was in Sheffield.

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  At midnight, two ^Mours after it was over, Piers phoned me in my hotel roc^m to say that they all wanted me to

  join-

  «It was gocJ, JVTlichael," he said. "Helen insists you

  belong to us."DesP>>ite this little barb, aimed at his sister, doubtless present £^t the other en^ he sounded almost elated - quite somes-thing for Piers. Two days later, back in London, wemet^ for a rehearsal and began, this time, with the scale A^ it rose? cami ancj almost without vibrato, I felt my happiness build. When it paused at the top before descend! -^ j glanceci at my new colleagues, to left and to right- î=»iers had slightly averted his face. It astonished me Pie 1-5 is hardly the sort of musician who weeps soundlessly ^t the beauty of scales. I had no idea at the time what wa^ going through his mind. Perhaps, in playing the scale a^amj he was in some sense letting Alex

  go.

  Today we are running through a couple of Haydn quartets and a Brahms. The Haydns are glorious; they give us joy. Where there are difficulties, we can understand them - anci therefore come to an understanding among ourselves. >^e iove Haydn, and he makes us love each other. Not so Brahms. He has always been a cross for our quartet-

  I feel no affinity for Brahms, Piers can't stand him, Helen adores hirn, Billy finds him "deeply interesting", whatever that means_ We were asked to include some Brahms in a programme we are due to perform in Edinburgh, and Piers, as our programmer, accepted the inevitable and chose the first string quartet, the C minor.

  We saw valiantly away through the first movement without stoppmg-

  "Good temP°5" says Helen tentatively, looking at the music rather than at any of us.

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  u»-

  "A bit turgid, I thought. We aren't the Busch Quartet,"

  I say.

  "You'd better not say anything against the Busch," says Helen.

  "I'm not. But they were them and we are us." -« "Talk of arrogance," says Helen.

  "Well, should we go on? Or clean up?" I ask.

  "Clean up," snaps Piers. "It's a total mess."

  "Precision's the key," says Billy, half to himself. "Like with the Schoenberg."

  Helen sighs. We begin playing again. Piers stops us. He looks directly at me.

  "It's you, Michael. You're sort of suddenly intense without any reason. You're not supposed to be saying anything special."

  "Well, he tells me to express."

  "Where?" asks Piers, as if to an idiot-child. "Just precisely where?"

  "Bar fifteen."

  "I don't have anything there."

  "Bad luck," I say shortly. Piers looks over at my part in disbelief.

  "Rebecca's getting married to Stuart," says Helen.

  "What?" says Piers, jogged out of his concentration. "You're kidding."

  "No, I'm not. I heard it from Sally. And Sally heard it directly from Rebecca's mother."

  "Stuart!" says Piers. "Oh God. All her babies will be born brain-dead."

  Billy and I exchange glances. There is something jerky, abrasive, irrelevant about many of our conversations during rehearsals which sits oddly with the exactitude and expressivity we are seeking to create. Helen, for instance, usually says the first thing that comes into her

  14 | VIKRAM SETH

  head. Sometimes her thoughts run ahead of her words; sometimes it's the other way around.

  "Let's go on," suggests Billy.

  We play for a few minutes. There is a series of false starts, no sense of flow.

  "I'm just not coming out," says Billy. "I feel like such a wimp four bars before B."

  "And Piers comes in like a gobbling turkey at fortyone," says Helen.

  "Don't be nasty, Helen," says her brother.

  Finally we come to Piers's high crescendo.

  "Oh no, oh no, oh no," cries Billy, taking his hand off the strings and gesticulating.

  "We're all a bit loud here," says Helen, aiming for tact.

  "It's too hysterical," I say.

  "Who's too hysterical?" asks Piers.

  "You." The others nod.

  Piers's rather large ears go red.

  "You've got to cool that vibrato," says Billy. "It's like heavy breathing on the phone."

  "OK," says Piers grimly. "And can you be a bit darker at one-oh-eight, Billy?"

  It isn't usually like this. Most of our rehearsals are much more convivial. I blame it on what we're playing.

  "We're not getting anywhere as a whole," says Billy with a kind of innocent agitation in his eyes. " That was terribly organised."

  "As in organised terribly?" I ask.

  "Yes. We've got to get it together somehow. It's just a sort of noise."

  "It's called Brahms, Billy," says Piers.

  "You're just prejudiced," says Helen. "You'll come around to him." -, •

  "In my dotage."

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  4-*.»-

  i

  "Why don't we plan a structure around the tunes?" Billy suggests.

  "Well, it sort of lacks tunes," I say. "Not melody exactly, but melodicity. Do I mean that? What's the right word?"

  "Melodiousness," says Helen. "And, incidentally, it doesn't lack tunes."

  "But what do you mean by that?" says Piers to me. "It's all tune. I mean, I'm not saying I like it, but..."

  I point my bow at Piers's music. "Is that tune? I doubt even Brahms would claim that was tune."

  "Well, it's not arpeggio, it's not scale, it's not ornament, so ... oh, I don't know. It's all mad and clogged up. Bloody Edinburgh ..."

  "Stop ranting, Piers," says Helen. "You played that last bit really well. I loved that slide. It was quite a shock, but it's great. You've got to keep it."

  Piers is startled by the praise, but soon recovers. "But Billy now sounds completely unvibrato'd," he says.

  "That was me trying to get a darker colour," counters Billy.

  "Well, it sounds gravelly."

  "Shall I get a new cello?" asks Billy. "After I've bought my mobile phone?"

  Piers grunts. "Why don't you just go up the C-string?"

  "It's too woofy."

  "Once more, then? From ninety-two?" I suggest.

  "No, from the double-bar," says Helen.

  "No, from seventy-five," says Billy. •"'

  "OK," says Piers.

  After a few more minutes we pause again.

 
"This is just so exhausting to play," says Helen. "To get these notes to work you have to dig each one out. It's not like the violin ..."

  "Poor Helen," I say, smiling at her. "Why don't you swap instruments with me?"

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  "Cope, Helen," says Piers. "Brahms is your baby." Helen sighs. "Say something nice, Billy." But Billy is now concentrating on a little yellow score that he has brought along.

  "My deodorant experiment isn't a success," says Helen suddenly, raising one creamy arm.

  "We'd better get on with it or we'll never get through it," says Billy.

  Finally, after an hour and a half we arrive at the second movement. It is dark outside, and we are exhausted as much with one another's temperaments as with the music. But ours is an odd quadripartite marriage with six relationships, any of which, at any given time, could be cordial or neutral or strained. The audiences who listen to us cannot imagine how earnest, how petulant, how accommodating, how wilful is our quest for something beyond ourselves that we imagine with our separate spirits but are compelled to embody together. Where is the harmony of spirit in all this, let alone sublimity? How are such mechanics, such stops and starts, such facile irreverence transmuted, in spite of our bickering selves, into musical gold? And yet often enough it is from such trivial beginnings that we arrive at an understanding of a work that seems to us both true and original, and an expression of it which displaces from our minds - and perhaps, at least for a while, from the minds of those who hear us - any versions, however true, however original, played by other hands.

  ï-5

  My flat is cold, owing to the perennial heating problems here on the top floor. The ancient radiators of Archangel Court, tepid now, will scald me in the spring. Each

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | 17

  winter I promise myself double glazing, and each spring, when prices are discounted, decide against it. Last year the money I'd set aside was soaked up by some primordial pipework that had rusted, almost rotted, into the concrete, and was dripping onto my seventh-floor neighbour's head. But this year I must do my bedroom at least.

  I lie in bed, I muse, I doze. The brass flap is lifted; letters shuffle onto the wooden floor. The lift door slams. I get up, put on my dressing gown, and walk to the front door: a phone bill, a postcard from one of the students I give lessons to, a travel brochure, a letter.

  I open my post with the silver letter-opener that Jul;a gave me a year to the day that we first met. The bill goes into the guilt-pile, where it will sit for a week or two. The brochure goes into the waste-paper basket. I enter the kitchen, shivering a bit, fill the kettle, switch it on and take the letter back to bed.

  It is from my old teacher, Carl Kail - pronounced, with typical contrariness, "Shell". We haven't been in touch for years. The stamp is Swedish. Professor Kail's hancwriting on the envelope looks cramped. It is a short nott, astonishingly unabrasive.

  He is no longer teaching in Vienna. He retired last year, and returned to his small hometown in Sweden. Hs says that he happened to be in Stockholm when w; played there. He was in the audience, but chose not tr> come backstage after the concert. We played well, h particular, he has this to say: he had always told me to "sustain", and sustain I did. He has not been in the best of health lately, and has been thinking of some of his ol
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  VIKRAM SETH

  translating from Martian.) Anyway, he wishes me well, and hopes that if I ever teach, I will have learned something from him of how not to. He has no plans to visit England.

  The kettle clicked itself off a few minutes ago. I go to the kitchen and find myself unable to remember where the teabags are. There is something troubling in the letter. Carl Kail is dying; I feel sure of it.

  Someone is hammering slates onto a roof. A few sharp taps, a pause, a few sharp taps. I roll up my blinds and the light floats in. It is a clear, cold, blue-skied day.

  I can smell the professor on a day like this. He is standing in a grey classroom and staring at five edgy students. He has come back from lunch at Mnozil's and his charcoal overcoat exudes an aura of garlic and tobacco. "Undjetzt, meine Eerren ..." he says, ignoring Yuko, "our colleague from the morning-land", as he sometimes calls her. He taps his bow on the piano.

  I stay behind after the class for my own session with him. As soon as they have left, he rounds on me.

  "If I have you here as a Casthorer it is because certain things are understood."

  "I understand, Professor Kail."

  "I wanted the Kreutzer Sonata, and you prepare this instead!"

  "I happened to get hold of a facsimile of this manuscript, and Beethoven's handwriting for once was so clear, I was amazed. I thought you wouldn't mind -"

  "Amazed. Excited, also, no doubt."

  "Yes."

  "Amazed and excited." The great Carl Kail savours the words, rich alien growths on the corpus of music. Yet it was not his fame but the excitement in his playing that first drew me to him, and it is this excitement that his

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  EQUAL.VIUSIC | 19

  playing retains - and transmits to those happy enoujgh to hear him. But how many concerts does he choose to) give these days? Five a year? Six?

  "I thought that another sonata ... the one just twefore the Kreutzer ..."

  Carl Kail shakes his head. "Don't think, I do) not recommend it."

  "Julia McNicholl and I have spent two weeks {practising it. I've asked her to join us in half an hour."" ! "What is today?"

  "Friday."

  Professor Kail appears to be pondering somethinjg.

  "That silly Yuko goes to the Zentralfriedhof to) lay flowers on Beethoven's grave on Fridays," he says.

  Despite myself, I smile. I am not surprised. Yuko (does all the things that young Japanese women students; are expected to do: practise obediently, suffer terribly, and visit all the Beethoven and Schubert houses they can locate. But Yuko also does what I know I should do would, indeed, if I knew how to. She ignores the fact ithat Carl ignores her, annuls his insults by not rising to them, and sifts out a musician's message from his playing, not his speech.

  "I want the Kreutzer by Monday," continues Carl Kail.

  "But, Professor -" I protest.

  "By Monday."

  "Professor, there is no way I can - or even if I cowld, that a pianist could -"

  "I am sure Fràulein McNicholl will assist you."

  "Our trio had set aside this weekend for rehearsing. We have a concert coming up."

  "Your trio manages with not much apparent practice."

  I say nothing for a few seconds. Carl Kail coughs-

  "When are you playing next?"

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  "In a couple of weeks - at the Bosendorfer Saal."

  "And what?"

  "We're beginning with an early Beethoven -"

  "Are you being deliberately unspecific?"

  "No, Professor."

  "Which?"

  "Opus i number 3. In C minor."

  "Yes, yes, yes, yes," says Carl Kail, provoked by my mentioning the key. "Why?"

  "Why?"

  "Yes, why?"

  "Because our cellist loves it."

  "Why? Why?" Carl looks almost demented.

  "Because she finds it amazing and exciting."

  Carl Kail looks carefully at me, as if wondering which of my cervical vertebrae it will cause him least trouble to snap. He turns away. I used to be one of his favourite students. It was at a masterclass in my last year at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester that we briefly met, and it was he who suggested, to my disbelieving joy, that I should come to study with him in Vienna as an older student outside the regular curriculum. He thought that I was capable of - and that I would want - a solo career. Now he is perhaps as disillus
ioned with me as I with him.

  "You spend too much of your time on chamber music," he says. "You could have a better career."

  "I suppose so," I say, bothered by his assumption of what "better" is, but not disputing it.

  "You should be guided by me. That is why you are here, is it not? You are very self-willed. Too much so."

  Carl's voice is temporarily gentle. I say nothing. He hums a phrase from the Kreutzer, reaches his hand out

  AN EQUAL MUSIC | ZI

  for the facsimile manuscript, looks at it with fascination for a few minutes, but won't relent. "Till Monday, then."

  My tea has overbrewed: it is bitter, but still drinkable. I turn on the television and return to the present. Four plump humanoid creatures, red, yellow, green and purple, are frolicking on a grassy hill. Rabbits nibble the grass. The creatures hug each other. A periscope emerges from a knoll and tells them they must say goodbye. After a little protest, they do, jumping one by one into a hole in the ground.

  Carl Kail, that old man, that stubborn magician, brutal and full of suffocating energy, did not, unaided, drive me from Vienna. It was as much my younger self, unyielding, unwilling to exchange a mentor for a dictator, or to sidle past a collision.

  If I had not met him I would not have brought to life the voice in my hands. I would not have gone to the Musikhochschule to study. I would not have met Julia. I would not have lost Julia. I would not be adrift. How can I hate Carl any more? After so many years, surely everything is subject to the agents of change: rain, spores, webs, darkness. Maybe I could have learned more from him if I had swallowed my sense of self. Julia must have been right, she must have been right. But now I think: let him die, his time has come, I cannot reply. Why should he foist on me this responsibility for absolution?

  I could not have learned more from him. She thought I could, or hoped I could, or hoped at least that for her sake I would remain for a while in Vienna. But I was not learning, I was unlearning, I was unravelling. When I came apart at the concert, it was not because I had been ill, or because I had not prepared what I was playing. It was because he had said I would fail, and I could see him in the audience and knew he willed me to.

  2.2. I VIKRAM SETH

  i.6

  "We seem to irritate so much each other tonight," says Virginie. She turns towards me without raising herself from the pillow.