Song Of Time (20 page)

“Why are you smiling?”

“Why are
you
smiling?”

Hand in hand, arm in arm, swinging our bags, pushing past the dervishes and demonstrators on the Sacré-Coré steps, noticed but uncaring—famously, obliviously happy—we wandered on. We found a shop filled with first editions, engravings, architectural blueprints and daguerreotypes of maids from
La Belle Époque
servicing moustachioed men. On the fall wall, almost buried behind a gilt washstand, hung a painting.

“Not for sale,” muttered the Moorish proprietor as he noticed me squeezing towards it.

Nothing more than a few brushstrokes, and delicate blue and rosé wash, but it was plainly of Venice, perhaps viewed from the island of Saint Marco, or possibly further off. The detail was scarcely there, yet the sense of a summer’s dawn over that lost, drowned city was intense.

“How much?”

“Not for sale. I told you.”

But we knew about Paris by now, and we knew about shopkeepers, and I really was Roushana Maitland, and this was Claude Vaudin, and money is only money, but art is always art.

“You want it don’t you?” Claude’s mouth nuzzled my ear.

Was it really a Turner? At the price which Claude was soon haggling, it seemed possible, although I still don’t know to this day.

“Well…” Once more, Claude’s arms surrounded me. “We’ve really done it now. We’ll be poor and happy forever.”

The Opéra de Paris Bastille loomed under flashing clouds. With its acid-corroded glass and greened concrete, it looked like something washed up from the distant sea—a giant sea anemone, which had sucked the juicy currents of all of socialite Paris into its gleaming bowels of grey granite and black leather.

The first half performance of
Eine Alpensinfonie
was already crack-ling through the monitor speakers when I flashed my pass and was admitted through the shockwire. There was barely enough time for me to change and tune up, but that was exactly how I’d planned things. In my dressing room, there were flowers, messages of encouragement, boxes of candy and chocolate. I was already shoving everything aside before I realised that a violin case already lay on the dressing table. I sighed. Some cock up. The wrong room. But a note hung by a ribbon from the handle.

this is for you

you deserve it

no good luck

no excuses

just play

C x

With screens and panels to control humidity and temperature along its top, the case was an impressive object in its own right, and nothing like my own battered example. The air it exhaled after a series of clonks and hisses was rich with rosin and varnish. The instrument at rest inside made me exhale as well, but already my hands were reaching for it, and the bow which lay beside, and their feel was like nothing else I’d ever touched. It was already tuned—it was already
everything
— and the sound it gave off and the sensation of playing it were equally lovely.
Wow…
Was I doing that? I ran through, as I still always do with any fresh instrument, some Bach phrases. But they’d never sounded like this.

I held it up to the light. The wood was surprisingly pale and the f holes weren’t even. Rather like the sound it made, the finish was beautiful, yet eccentric. Then, like any other ignoramus handling a great violin, I tried peering inside.

Giuseppe del Gesu Guarnerius.

A Guarneri. My skin grew cold. Of course, anyone could fake a label, but I was far more certain than I’d been about the Turner that this was the real thing. Compared to the decent but anonymous mid-nineteenth century French instrument which I still used for my concert performances, this was like touching the hand of God.

From above, applause boomed. When my dressing room door opened, Claude didn’t even wait for me to put aside this impossible object before giving me a hug.

“How on earth did you get this?” I gasped as I eased it out from between us.

He sat down on the edge of the dressing table and stretched out his long legs. “Apparently, it’s the 1734 Duc de Camposelice, whatever that means. It’s been owned and played by Ricci, Kessler and Lin, and there’s nothing worse than keeping these things in a bank vault, is there? So when I heard that it was available, I thought it might just suit you. Have you tried playing it yet?”

“Of course I have. It’s…”

“Good? Bad? I’ve heard these posh fiddles can be a lot less than they’re cracked up to be. We can sort something out if there’s a problem. And there’s always some rich idiot collector somewhere. If you don’t like it, just say.”

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, held or seen, Claude. How the hell—”

“No, no.” He waved a finger. “Never ask about gifts—or don’t they tell you that back in England?”

I subsided. Of course, I wanted this violin. But, reluctantly, glancing at the clock, I moved to place it back inside its intricate black shell. I’d one last performance to give with my old violin before this Guarneri took over my life…

“Hey—what are you doing?”

Already guessing what Claude had in mind, I shook my head. “You’ve got no idea how much work it takes to get familiar with a new instru-ment. It’ll be great, it’ll be fabulous, but—”

“Play it, Roushana. Play it this evening. It’s working, isn’t it? It’s not cracked or buzzing or distorted?”

“It’s even in tune, for fuck’s sake. But no…” I gazed at him: that limpid smile which could make me do anything. “I really
mean
it Claude. You don’t understand about violins. They’re not machines. Every one feels entirely different. It’s gorgeous and I love it and I love you and I don’t how you can possibly have managed to get hold of such a thing. But absolutely, definitely, no.”

Ten minutes later, I was standing in the wings, Guarneri in hand, watching as Claude led a quartet of kids from his Project through a rumbustious performance of
Les escaliers de Montmartre
which the audi-ence clapped along to gleefully. I was in a cold sweat. Claude had reassured me a hundred times that this whole concert was really about showbiz and money, and that the music didn’t count in the way it always should. But this, I knew, as the members of the Orchestra du Paris moved back to their places, was my big moment. I could either take it or throw it away. The worst thing I could do was to play with average competence—be merely good. Everyone would then assume that I, instead of any of a dozen star violinists, had simply got this gig because I was screwing Claude. Better that I made a complete mess of it. Better that I didn’t turn up at all…

Finally, the orchestra had tuned up and re-settled. Claude re-emerged, climbed to the podium, acknowledged his players and the audience, then gestured towards the space in the wings where I was standing. My feet felt light. There was an odd ringing in my head. People were clapping, then silence fell. I was conscious of a pulse to the light which washed through the enormous glass ceiling, and of the thud of my own heart. Why on earth had I agreed—although I was certain I never
had
agreed—to the totally ridiculous suggestion that I use the Guarneri tonight? The tone, the volume, the sound, the simple feel and weight and balance of it, were all entirely different to the instrument I’d rehearsed with. Claude looked down at me. Although it was the last thing I felt like doing, I lifted the centuries-old violin to my chin, and raised the bow, and gave a nod.

Of course, Claude was aware of my nervousness. But he waited and waited. The hall remained hissingly silent, but I could sense the begin-nings of puzzlement spreading across the audience. Was something wrong? Then, just at the last possible moment before stirrings and coughings began to arise, he counted in the beat, and a mist of sound arose from the strings, and, more by instinct than thought, I made my entry in the third bar. The melody unwound, and the woodwind joined me and the tympani rumbled, and the oddest thing of all was that I’d never been less conscious in my life of the instrument I was playing. All I could hear was music. I was far too caught up in the moment to think through such thoughts as played, but the effect was probably like that which a runner or a boxer experiences when, after months of training weighed down with weights or heavy gloves, they finally shed their encumbrances for the big event. I was flying. The Guarneri was mine and, just as Claude had long been telling me, I knew that this concerto was all about heat and passion, not ice and snow. By the time I’d poured out the first stuttering cadenza and the orchestra’s big theme was starting to emerge, I sensed that something miraculous was happening. Of course, the players were surprised by all the shifts in tone and timing I was making with the Guarneri, but they responded brilliantly. Their playing was dark, dynamic, energetic—it poured from the heart, and Claude urged them on as he swayed at the podium.

It just got better and better. Slower and sadder. Lighter and darker. More volcanic and, yes, scary as well. There was nothing on earth that wasn’t there in this music. As the swirling dance of the third movement commenced, I sensed the whole audience give a startled jump. I wanted to show them. I wanted them to laugh and weep. I wanted them to
know
. We all did—the whole orchestra. The strings were percussively sharp. I took the melody, I twisted it around, threw it back at them. Then we were together, and I didn’t want this to stop. Not ever. The basses growled as I floated by them. Then the threads were gathered as I made staccato interventions and the great musical beast against which I’d been pitting myself, which was by now something more than merely an orchestra or even Claude Vaudin, roared, then collapsed and died, impaled on my last high C.

For a while, I was so stunned by what had just happened that I barely heard the applause. What I sensed instead was a falling realisation that what I’d just experienced had gone, followed by a determination to recreate something like it as soon as possible—among its many attrib-utes, performing music at this level is an incredibly addictive drug—then the sense of the audience intruded. They were all standing, and the orchestra were standing as well. I looked towards Claude, but he was gesturing towards me as the roar in my ears increased and I remembered to bow. Even as he came down to me and took my hand as I disappeared behind bouquets of flowers, the roaring went on and on. The only way we could ever have shut them up was by playing something else. We ripped through Ravel’s
Carmen Fantasy
, which wasn’t just the usual stock encore to get the lights up and the seats emptied, but a matter of playing for sheer joy. And still everyone was clapping. I shot Claude a look, and he turned to the audience, made a gesture, a signal. The falling away of sound in this huge auditorium was eerie. He controlled them as easily as he controlled the orchestra by now.

His footsteps rang as he stepped over to the piano at centre stage. He gestured me to join him.

“What are we supposed to be playing?” I hissed, but Claude just smiled and kissed my hand.

A deeper quiet fell. For the first time tonight, I was fully conscious of all the thousands of watching faces, and the millions out there in virtu-ality, and that this moment was entirely unplanned. But, through a series of signals which may or may not have been rehearsed, a pair of percus-sion mallets were handed to Claude. Leaning into the piano, he ran a glissando across the bare strings with the end of the stick, followed by a ringing sequence of notes, then glanced towards me. Already, I was raising my violin. I recognised this tune, although we’d only played it once in our atelier, and that was mostly naked, and entirely alone.
She Moves Through the Fair
is an English folksong—a kind of music which I’d previously imagined was about Morris dancing and the odd decent bit of Vaughan Williams. But this particular tune is about death and loss, and the melody is far more icy and strange than Sibelius. Even as I drew out the first note, and Claude responded at the piano with eerie plucks and resonances, I felt coldly afraid. Not now because I doubted my ability to play, but because of the desolation of this song, which I suddenly felt mirrored so much of the world which lay outside this warmly lit concert hall and all the fuss and bustle of life in Paris, and the unknowable future into which we were heading. Drifting towards a quite dissonance which felt like the end of everything, then drawing the melody out again in the most achingly simple way, we shaped the empty air. I was shivering and exhausted by the time the piece had finished. There wasn’t another note I could possibly play.

Claude and I stood there together. Silence filled the Opéra de Paris Bastille. The audience just sat, barely breathing, for far longer than any group of so many people should ever remain. Then they erupted.

Everyone who was anyone—those who were at the concert and those who weren’t, but by now were claiming they had been—was there at Harad Le Pape’s apartment later on that evening. The tall, empty rooms were suddenly stuffed to their ceilings with the gestures, voices, faces, fames, cleavages, rivalries, star turns, reputations and egos. Harad was holding court—but I was as well. Everyone wanted to double-kiss and congratulate me, then to remind me of the word they’d put in for me, how they’d always known I was the one to watch. Interviews were arranged. My words and gestures were even more lavishly recorded than my performance has been. Claude, normally the kingpin on such occasions, was characteristi-cally gracious in his role of supporting act. I took the toasts. I gave a stumbling speech. The fact that the Guarneri had made all the differ-ence—that, through nerves and inexperience, I’d probably have played with nothing but cool efficiency without it, and that Claude had guided the orchestra so brilliantly, and then come up with that cataclysmic second encore single-handedly—all of these things my lover let pass without mention, and for that I loved him all the more.

Harad was dressed tonight in silk slippers and an embroidered Chinese robe. The effect was less camp than feminine, and the general opinion was that he or she was drifting back towards a more womanly phase. I was granted a warm smile, then a surprising hug, for Harad Le Pape never hugged anybody. This, with the entire Parisian world watching, was far better than any review.