Cloud Atlas (62 page)

J. senses the entente between Eva and me, and doesn’t like it one fig. Last night, I imagined E. was under me rather than her mother. Crescendo followed only bars later, a whole movement before J. Can women detect imaginary betrayals? I ask because, with stupendous intuition, she gave me this subtle warning: “I want you to know something, Robert. If you ever touch Eva, I’ll find out, and I’ll destroy you.”

“I shouldn’t think of it,” I lied.

“I shouldn’t even dream of it, if I were you,” she warned.

Couldn’t leave it like that. “Why in hell do you think I’m attracted to your gangly, unpleasant daughter, anyway?” She did the v. same snort Eva had done up on her belvedere.

Sincerely,
R.F.

ZEDELGHEM
24TH—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Where the blazes is your reply? Look here, I’m much obliged to you, but if you think I’ll wait around for your letters to appear, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. It is all perfectly hateful, hateful as my hypocrite father. I could ruin him. He’s ruined me. Anticipating the end of the world is humanity’s oldest pastime. Dhondt is right, damn his Belgian eyes, damn all Belgian eyes. Adrian would still be alive if “plucky little Belgium” never existed. Someone should turn this dwarf-country into a giant boating lake and toss in Belgium’s inventor, his feet tied to a Minerva. If he floats, he’s guilty. To sink a white-hot poker through my father’s damn eyes! Name one. Go on, name me just
one
famous Belgian. He has more money than Rothschild, but will he pay me another farthing? Miserable, so miserable. How Christian is it to cut me off without a single shilling to my name? Drowning is too good for him. Dhondt is right, I’m afraid. Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years. The End is what we want, so I’m afraid the End is what we’re damn well going to get. There. Set that to music. Timpani, cymbals, and a million trumpets,
if
you would be so kind. Paying the old bastard with my own music. Kills me.

Sincerely,
R.F.

ZEDELGHEM
29TH—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Eva. Because her name is a synonym for temptation: what treads nearer to the core of man? Because her soul swims in her eyes. Because I dream of creeping through the velvet folds to her room, where I let myself in, hum her a tune so—so—
so
softly, she stands with her naked feet on mine, her ear to my heart, and we waltz like string puppets. After that kiss, she says, “Vous embrassez comme un poisson rouge!” and in moonlit mirrors we fall in love with our youth and beauty. Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to
understand
me, to
cure
me, but Eva knows I’m terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she’s lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn’t tell C major from a sergeant major. Because
I
, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man—his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music—but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance “beauty,” yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.

Sincerely,
R.F.

LE ROYAL HÔTEL, BRUGES
6TH—XI—1931

Sixsmith,

Divorces. V. messy affairs but Ayrs’s and mine was over in a single day. Just yesterday morning we were at work on the second movement of his ambitious swan song. He announced a new approach for our Compositional. “Frobisher, today I’d like you to come up with some themes for my Severo movement. Something eve-of-war-ish in E minor. Once you’ve got something that catches my eye, I’ll take it over and develop its potential. Got that?”

Got that I had. Like it I didn’t, not one bit. Scientific papers are coauthored, yes, and a composer might work with a virtuoso musician to explore the boundaries of the playable—like Elgar and W. H. Reed—but a coauthored symphonic work? V. dubious idea, and told V.A. so in no uncertain terms. He tsked. “I didn’t say ‘coauthored,’ boy. You gather the raw material, I refine it as I see fit.” This hardly reassured me. He chided me: “All the Greats have their apprentices do it. How else could a man like Bach churn out new masses every week?”

We were in the twentieth century when I last looked, I retorted. Audiences pay to hear the composer whose name is on the program notes. They don’t pay money for Vyvyan Ayrs only to get Robert Frobisher. V.A. got agitated. “They won’t ‘get’ you! They’ll get me! You’re not listening, Frobisher. You do the block-and-tackle work, I orchestrate, I arrange, I polish.”

“Block-and-tackle” work like my “Angel of Mons,” robbed at gunpoint for the Adagio in Ayrs’s glorious final monument? One may dress plagiarism up however one wishes, it’s still plagiarism. “Plagiarism?” Ayrs kept his voice low, but his knuckles on his cane were whitening. “In bygone days—when you were grateful for my tutelage—you called me one of the greatest living European composers. Which is to say, the world. Why would such an artist possibly need to ‘plagiarize’ anything from a copyist who, may I remind him, was unable to obtain even a bachelor’s degree for himself from a college for the terminally privileged? You’re not hungry enough, boy, that’s your problem. You’re Mendelssohn aping Mozart.”

The stakes rose like inflation in Germany, but I am constitutionally unable to fold under pressure:—I dig in. “I’ll tell you why you need to plagiarize! Musical sterility!” The finest moments in “Todtenvogel” are mine, I told him. The contrapuntal ingenuities of the new work’s Allegro non troppo are mine. I hadn’t come to Belgium to be his damn fag.

The old dragon breathed smoke. Ten bars of silence in 6/8. Stubbed out his cigarette. “Your petulance doesn’t deserve serious attention. In fact it deserves dismissal, but that would be acting in the heat of the moment. Instead, I want you to think. Think about reputation.” Ayrs unrolled the word. “Reputation is everything. Mine, save for a youthful exuberance that earned me the clap, is beyond reproach. Yours, my disinherited, gambling, bankrupt friend, is expired. Leave Zedelghem whenever you wish. But be warned. Leave without my consent and all musical society west of the Urals, east of Lisbon, north of Naples, and south of Helsinki will know a scoundrel named Robert Frobisher forced himself upon purblind Vyvyan Ayrs’s wife, his beloved wife, yes, the enchanting Mevrouw Crommelynck. She will not deny it. Imagine the scandal! After everything Ayrs had done for Frobisher, too … well, no wealthy patron, no impoverished patron, no festival organizer, no board of governors, no parent whose Little Lucy Lamb wants to learn the piano will have anything, anything to do with you.”

So V.A. knows. For weeks, months, probably. Was badly wrong-footed. Highlighted my impotence by calling Ayrs some v. rude names. “Oh, flattery!” he crowed. “Encore, Maestro!” Stopped myself battering the pox-nibbled corpse to a premature death with the bassoon. Didn’t stop myself hissing that if Ayrs was half as good a husband as he was a manipulator and a larcenist of better men’s ideas, his wife might not put it about so much. Come to think of it, I added, how much credibility would his campaign to smear my name carry when European society learned what kind of woman Jocasta Crommelynck was in her private life?

Hadn’t even scratched him. “You ignorant ass, Frobisher. Jocasta’s numerous affairs are discreet, always have been. Any society’s upper crust is riddled with immorality, how else d’you think they keep their power? Reputation is king of the public sphere, not private. It is dethroned by public acts. Disinheritance. Fleeing famous hotels. Defaulting on monies owed to the gentry’s lenders of last resort. Jocasta had my blessing when she seduced you, you stuck-up piffler. I required you to finish ‘Todtenvogel.’ You fancy yourself a larky buck, but there’s alchemy between Jocasta and I you cannot begin to fathom. She’ll fall out of love with you the moment you threaten us. You’ll see. Now go away and come back tomorrow with your homework done. We will pretend your little tantrum never happened.”

Was only too pleased to comply. Needed to think.

J. must have played a major part in investigating my recent history. Hendrick doesn’t speak English, and V.A. couldn’t have done this delving alone. She must like louche men—explains why she married Ayrs. Where E. stands on all of this I couldn’t guess, because yesterday was Wednesday, so she was at school in Bruges. Eva could not know about my affair with her mother and still make such open signs of love to me. Surely?

Spent afternoon walking across the bleak fields in solitary rage. Sheltered from hailstones in a bombed-out chapel’s lych-gate. Thought about E., thought about E., thought about E. Only two things were clear:—hanging myself from Zedelghem’s flagpole was preferable to letting its parasite master plunder my talents a day longer; and never seeing E. again was unthinkable. “It’ll all end in tears, Frobisher!” Yes, possibly, elopements often do, but I love her, I actually love her, and there it is.

Returned to the château just before it got dark, ate cold meats in Mrs. Willems’s kitchen. Learnt that J. and her Circean caresses were in Brussels on estate business and would not be back that night. Hendrick told me V.A. had retired early with his wireless and instructions not to be disturbed. Perfect. Took a long soak in the tub and a wrote a well-knotted set of scalic bass lines. Crises send me scurrying into music, where nothing can harm me. Retired early myself, locked my door, and packed my valise. Woke myself this morning at four o’clock. Freezing fog outside. Wanted to pay V.A. a final call. Barefoot except for socks, I crept along the wintry corridors to Ayrs’s door. Shivering, eased it open, at pains to avoid the slightest noise—Hendrick sleeps in an adjoining room. Lights off, but in the ember glow from the hearth I saw Ayrs, stretched out like that mummy in the British Museum. His room stank of bitter medicine. Crept to the cabinet by his bed. Drawer was stiff, and as I jerked it open an ether bottle on top wobbled—just caught it. V.A.’s flaunted Luger lay bundled in its chamois cloth wrapped in a string vest, next to a little saucer of bullets. They rattled. Ayrs’s fragile skull was only inches away, but he didn’t wake. His breathing was wheezy as a ratty old barrel organ. Felt an impulse to steal a clutch of bullets, so I did.

A blue vein throbbed over Ayrs’s Adam’s apple, and I fought off an unaccountably strong urge to open it up with my penknife. Most uncanny. Not quite déjà vu, more jamais vu. Killing, an experience that comes to few outside wartime. What is the timbre of murder? Don’t worry, I’m not writing you a confession of homicide. Working on my sextet while evading a manhunt would be far too much trouble, and ending one’s career swinging in soiled underwear is hardly dignified. Even worse, murdering Eva’s father in cold blood might put the kibosh on her feelings for me. V.A. slumbered on, oblivious to all this, and I pocketed his pistol. I’d stolen the bullets, so taking the Luger too had a sort of logic. Curiously heavy things, guns. It emanated a bass note against my thigh: it’s killed people, for sure; this little Luger went to market. Why did I take it, exactly? Couldn’t tell you. But place its mouth against your ear and you hear the world in a different way.