Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (7 page)

Greg grasped what had eluded him earlier: his wife was pregnant at the time of his departure, he had forgotten. It was so unreal, the announcement of a child, when you couldn't even see the mother's belly getting round. Mary must have been expecting a daughter. If Dr. Simbadour didn't give the child's name, it was because the fetus didn't have one . . .

 

Mary and her four daughters were struck dumb by Greg's behavior in the days that followed. Not only did he look after his wife in a way he never had before, showering her with treasures of attentiveness, but he also insisted they baptize the little unborn girl.

“Rita. I am sure her name is Rita.”

He said they must bury her. Every day he went to the cemetery with flowers; every day he cried over Rita's tiny grave, this child whom he had neither seen nor touched, and he whispered sweet words to her. Kate, Grace, Joan, and Betty would never have believed that this brute of a man could be capable of so much affection, attention, and delicacy. As they had nearly always spent time with an absent father, and their contact had been limited to his physical strength or orders they must obey, they now looked at him with a different eye and began to fear him a bit less.

When two months later Greg informed them that he had accepted a position as a longshoreman in the port, which meant he would no longer be going to sea, they were glad that this stranger, once so distant and dreaded, had become their father at last.

 

I
t was while listening to Axel play the violin that Chris became aware of his own inferiority.
The notes of the concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” rose on the air, through the trees to the blue sky, the tropical mist, the trilling of birds, the lightness of clouds. Axel was not interpreting the piece, he was living it. He was inventing the melody; the changes of mood, shifts in pace, all came from him, and he carried the orchestra with him from one second to the next, using his fingers to create the melody that would convey his thoughts. His violin had become a voice, a voice that languished, hesitated, then found confidence and strength.

Chris succumbed to the charm of it, trying all the while to restrain himself, because he sensed there was danger: if he came to love Axel too deeply, he would despise his own self.

Ordinary musicians give the impression that they have walked in from the audience, merely left their seats to climb onto the stage, and most of the students who made up this festival orchestra were that sort of musician, with their tentative way of walking, their inexpensive eyeglasses, their hastily-chosen clothing. Axel, on the other hand, seemed to come from elsewhere, as if he had landed from some sublime planet where intelligence, taste, and elevated spirits reigned. He was of medium height, with a narrow waist, a smooth, proud chest, and a hypnotic, feline, triangular face framing immense eyes. His brown curls were light, carefree, youthful. Other boys with similarly harmonious and regular features might appear sad, or boring, because their expressions are empty; but Axel had an irrepressible energy about him. He was a young man of integrity and generosity, exuberant and severe at the same time, and he was as radiant as an idol, confident, at ease with the sublime, a willing accomplice to genius. As he played he meditated, with the incandescent authority conferred by inspiration; he accentuated the healing effect of the music, the way its spiritual dimension could make the listener a better person. His elbow moved with ease, his forehead was smooth, he embodied philosophy in a cantilena.

Chris fixed his gaze on his feet, annoyed. He had never played the piano to such perfection. Should he give it up? At the age of nineteen he already had a collection of medals, prizes, and certificates of excellence, and he was something of an ace at competitions, dealing easily with the sort of traps set for virtuosos, from Liszt to Rachmaninov; but now, confronted with this miracle called Axel, he realized that if he had a certain number of victories to his name it was because he had a rage in him, and was a hard worker. Chris knew only that which can be learned, whereas Axel knew that which cannot be learned. On a soloist's platform it is not enough to play correctly, one must also play with feeling; naturally Axel played with feeling, whereas Chris had only ever attained excellence through study, reflection, and imitation.

He shivered, despite the fact that the sun, on this island in Thailand, had driven the temperature to over thirty-five degrees. His shivering reflected his impatience: if only Axel would hurry up and stop inflicting this splendor upon him, and let the competition continue.

The workshop, entitled “Music and Sports in Winter,” provided students from conservatories—gifted amateurs or future professionals—with an opportunity to combine leisure and physical activity with the advanced study of their instrument. Each of them had a private lesson with a professor for two hours a day, then met as a group for ensemble practice and sports. They could enjoy sailing, deep-sea diving, cycling, and running, and to mark the end of their stay, a rally was going to be held. The first prize was a week with the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world's top orchestras.

Axel started on the second movement. Chris had always found this passage to be somewhat disparate, the composition not as strong, and he delighted in the thought that Axel might stumble, break the spell, and bore the audience. His hopes were in vain; Axel gave each note its color of indignation, rebellion, and fury, restoring shape and meaning to the piece. In the first movement Alban Berg's concerto evokes an “angel”—the dead child—but in the second, it describes the parents' sorrow.

“Unbelievable! He's better than any of the recommended recordings.”

How could this twenty-year old boy surpass artists like Ferras, Grumiaux, Menuhin, Perlman, and Stern?

The concerto came to a sublime close, the tip of the bow evoking a chorale by Bach, delivering the last-minute conviction that there is a reason for everything, even tragedy—an astonishing profession of faith for a modernist composer, but one which Axel managed to make as convincing as it was moving.

The audience applauded wildly, as did the members of the orchestra, tapping against their music stands. The young Australian musician was embarrassed, for he thought he had been self-effacing, in the service of Alban Berg alone, and he could not understand why they were applauding him; he was a mere performer. So he acknowledged them, awkwardly, but even his awkwardness had something graceful about it.

Chris rose to his feet to applaud along with his neighbors, and he bit his lip as he looked around him: this violinist had even managed to arouse the enthusiasm of an ignorant public—bathers, beach attendants, locals—for a dodecaphonic piece of music! By the third curtain call, Chris was beginning to find Axel's exploit unbearable, so he slipped through the excited crowd, leaving the concert hall that had been hastily set up among the palm trees, and headed for his tent.

On his way he ran into Paul Brown, the gentleman from New York who organized these international sessions.

“Well, did my little Cortot enjoy the concert?”

Paul Brown called Chris his little Cortot because Chris was a pianist, and French; for American academics Cortot was the quintessence of a French pianist.

“Axel has made me discover a work that normally I'm not at all keen on!”

“You seem almost annoyed—do you feel pushed to the point you want to lay down your arms? It's as if you were not at all pleased to find yourself liking Berg or admiring Axel.”

“Admiration is not my strong point. I prefer a challenge: competition and victory.”

“I know. You two are opposites, you and Axel. One smiles, the other sweats. You're a fighter, he's Zen. You view life as a struggle, while Axel just goes along never imagining there could ever be the slightest danger.”

Paul Brown eyed Chris closely. Nineteen years of age, dark eyes, a wild head of hair, all the pride of a pampered son. He had a solid, sturdy body and wore a pair of poet's eyeglasses and a manly pointed beard, trimmed with scissors, as if he were seeking to be treated with all the respect owed to maturity.

“And who's right?” asked Chris.

“I'm afraid you are.”

“Ah . . . ”

“Yes, I know I'm American for a reason, my little Cortot. Innocence and confidence are fine, but not much use in our world. Talent may be a prerequisite for starting off a career, but to get somewhere you have to have ambition and fierce determination. You have the right attitude.”

“Ah! And in your opinion, do I play better than Axel?”

“I didn't say that. No one will play better than Axel. On the other hand I imagine that you will have a greater career than he will.”

There was a considerable amount of reservation in his remark, even condemnation, but Chris decided to retain only the compliment. Tapping himself on the forehead, Paul Brown cried out, amused, “Cain and Abel! If I were to rename the two of you, that's what I'd suggest. Two brothers with completely opposite characteristics: Cain the tough guy, and Abel the gentle soul.”

Delighted with himself, the American rounded his mouth and looked at Chris, waiting for his reaction. Chris merely shrugged his shoulders and called out, as he went on his way, “Let's just keep to ‘little Cortot,' if you don't mind. And I hope the ‘little' only refers to my age . . . ”

 

On the morning of the last Sunday Chris bounded out of bed impatiently, his hair standing upright on his head: to sleep was impossible, he needed action, he could feel his muscles itching for a confrontation.

The night before, he had worried that he might miss the closing rally because his mother had informed him that he had an audition on Tuesday morning with some important Parisian program planners. The wise thing would have been to leave at once, the moment he got the news, because he had to reach the coast by boat, then make his way to Bangkok—four hours by road—before stewing for twelve hours on a long haul flight to go halfway round the globe; even supposing he did leave right away, he would never have time to recover from the jetlag in France. So Chris rejected the common sense solution, took another look at the timetables of the connections and managed, rather acrobatically, to justify his presence at the rally by proving that he could take the ferryboat on Sunday evening.

Why put himself through so much stress? He wasn't really interested in the prize, because for a pianist an entire week with an orchestra, even the Berlin Philharmonic, would not provide him with many opportunities to perform; no, it was because he was eager for combat, to challenge Axel and defeat him. He would not leave his Australian rival until he had proven that he was better; he wanted to make him bite the dust.

At breakfast, he swung his leg over the bench and sat down opposite the violinist, who looked up at him.

“Hi, Chris,” exclaimed Axel, “glad to see you.”

Axel smiled, and there was a vague tenderness about him, something to do with the shape of his eyelids and his almost feminine abandonment, an air which regularly left girls broken-hearted and men feeling disconcerted. At the same time, his wide open blue eyes often focused on other people, and it was as if they were being subjected to an X-ray rather than a mere gaze.

“Hi, Axel. Working up an appetite for today?”

“Why? What's on today? Oh, right, the rally . . . ”

When he laughed, he threw his head back, showing his neck, as if he expected to be kissed.

Chris could not imagine why Axel was not more excited about the competition. “He's making fun of me! He's pretending to be relaxed but in actual fact he only got out of bed for that very reason.”

“I wonder,” continued Axel, “whether I should go. All I feel like doing this afternoon is going down to the beach to do some reading, I've got some scores and a book to finish.”

“You can't go off and leave everyone like that!” protested Chris. “They might have liked your playing as a soloist, but they might take it badly if you go off on your own.”

Axel blushed.

“You're right, forgive me, I'll join in. Thanks for putting me back on track. Sometimes I behave in a really monstrous way, I tend to think only about myself instead of the group.”

To himself Chris grumbled, “Think about me, in particular, because you're going to get a hiding from me.”

 

The contest began at nine o'clock. The candidates were all given a bike, a map of the island, and a first clue; after the starting signal they had to go from marker to marker, finding the clues that led from one marker to the next, until they reached the last place where the treasure was hidden. Whoever broke into the pirate's chest first would grab the coin with the number one, the next in line would be number two, and so on.

“May the best man win!” shouted Paul Brown, red in the face, the veins in his neck bulging.

A loud bang resounded in the turquoise sky.

Chris set off, with all the energy of a final sprint, thinking hard as he pedaled and elbowed his way past his neighbors.

By the third stage he was at the head of the pack. Solving the rebuses and locating the hiding places were child's play to him, yet he was not about to relent or let up on the pressure.

There was a first annoying detail: two participants were hot on his heels, Bob and Kim, from Texas and Korea respectively. He thought with a moan, “I'm not in this competition to have two guys like that as my rivals! A tuba player and a percussionist!” Like all musicians, Chris had established a hierarchy: at the top were the great soloists—pianists, violinists and cellists; then came flautists, viola players, harpists and assorted clarinetists; at the bottom were the menial drudges who played poor, limited instruments that provided mere background noise, like tubas and percussion.

“Why is Axel so far behind in the pack?”

He tried to understand his rival through his own self, and concluded that Axel must be going slowly on purpose, taking part half-heartedly to avoid the confrontation with Chris; by competing at a slower pace Axel could always find the excuse that if he had wanted to, he would have won.

“Bastard! Cheater! Loser!” hissed Chris, weaving back and forth on his bike as he climbed a steep slope.

When he came to the tenth clue, he turned around and saw that Axel had caught up with Bob and Kim.

“Ah-hah, now he's at it.”

The mettle of one's adversaries determines the worthiness of a competition and sets the price of the victory: when Chris saw Axel on his heels, he felt a sudden boost of energy.

Despite the fact that the sun was at its zenith, he put all his mental and physical strength to work for the final stages. The increasing difficulty of the riddles had slowed Kim and Bob down, and left the rest of the group far behind; before long the only ones still in front were the Australian and Chris himself. At last the race was turning into the duel that Chris had hoped for.

“Duel, duet . . . That old jerk Pastella in chamber music said I was mixing up the two! ‘A duet means playing together, Mr. Chris; a duel is playing one against the other,' the old loser used to say over and over. It's no surprise he ended up rotting away in a teaching position, without ever confronting an audience—he never figured it out that everything, always, is a duel!”

Besides, wasn't that what happened last Wednesday, when Paul Brown asked Axel and Chris to perform César Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano? After a few bars, when Chris realized that Axel was performing the piece as easily and freshly as if he had composed it himself that very morning, he decided he must divert the listeners' attention by showing the range of his mastery of the piano—increasing the nuances, accentuating the contrasts, now lively, now tender and dreamy, now seething, excessive, and mannered, all according to the needs of the score; Chris was knowingly over-interpreting Franck's work so that Axel's contribution would seem timid and lifeless in comparison. And it worked: Chris was showered with compliments. Only Paul Brown frowned skeptically to convey to his French student that he knew what he was trying to do and didn't like it one bit.