Song Of Time (28 page)

The rain finally stopped for more than a few hours. The sun came out. The streets exhaled steam. I performed recitals. I went to parties. I gave interviews and delivered chaotic workshops to leftist students who had no time for anything so bourgeois as formal study. I endorsed a variety of products and services. I serenaded billionaires. I avoided seductions. I went to yet more parties. Being recognised soon lost any sense of novelty, especially when, like all modern-seeming women, I was harangued by Christos’ bottle vendors as a godless whore. So I wore dark sunglasses and a Chanel scarf, and was often mistaken for a Muslim, and had different curses shouted after me instead.

The first round of the elections came and went. The Christian and the Sunni candidates, and the token Fascist who’d been put up in place of Le Fale, were all pushed aside. Just as everyone had always expected, it was to end up as a fight between Pierre Boullard and Mathilde Irissou. It was June by now, and the Paris skies had cleared to a bluish haze through which the campaign adverts flickered their auroras. And it was so
hot
. The tar began to melt as the power supply stuttered under the pull of millions of air conditioners and fridges. People suffocated on the Metro, but the water-sellers still shouted and shuffled relentlessly through the shimmering streets. People routinely bought two bottles: one to drink; one to tip over themselves. Even I succumbed. Whatever else Christos’ people were, they were certainly well organised, and their whited-out vans, with their implied threat of kidnapping, crawled through the pestilential heat.

There was always a smell of smoke in the air. It was no longer a ques-tion of individual riots and demonstrations, but of a continuous bloody carnival of sit ins, road-blocks, barricades, so-called
events
and burnings. Claude and I, as we showed our solidarity with the encampment around the lock-out at the Renault Factory, or our opposition to the equally entrenched fundamentalist demonstration around the Musée de Evolution, grew used to the thump of riot shields, fusillades of stones and rubber bullets. In those searing times, the police water cannon was almost welcome, at least until you were hit in the belly, and the irremovable orange dye with which the jets were infused soon became a campaign medal, and the most chic of fashion statements.

Managing the crowds as easily as he managed an orchestra, Claude gave impromptu speeches balanced on burn-out cars. Twice, he got himself arrested—although, much to his disgust, the CRS let him go both times as soon as they realised who he was. But I was getting tired of endless demonstrations, and I often began to find myself alone in our atelier late into the evening. I knew that Claude was be out debating, or leading a fresh picket line, or drinking in one or another bar with his new-found political cronies. But he and I were musicians, weren’t we? That was what we lived for—not this. Although I would never have admitted it to Claude, I longed for these elections to end. When he did finally return, he’d be sweaty and tired, and drugged or drunk to one degree or another, and jerkily over-active. I’d urge him to stop talking and pacing and come to bed—not to make love, but simply so he could sleep, for I knew he’d have to be up as early as the water vendors next morning for another day of recordings and rehearsals. But Claude found time for everything—that was how he was, then. He remained keen to experiment with the latest drug or virtuality
de monde
, at least those which weren’t ridiculously dangerous, but, much though I then enjoyed drinking wine, the few I tried left me dizzy and confused. Ever-protective of my musicianly core, I soon began to refuse. Once, and having heard my story of Leo, Claude managed to get hold of some genuine marijuana, but even that wasn’t the same: it left me numb, speechless and cold.

I began to think of our atelier—that big space with its twin centres of gravity of the piano and the bed—as a haven from the turbulent world. I wasn’t exactly lonely, but, on those hot evenings with shouts and sirens ricocheting up from the streets, I felt that my relationship with Claude had taken a different turn. But I felt pure and focussed when I played my Guarneri and the sounds of Paris made a turbulent counterpoint to the Bach
Partitas
. I was still mostly happy, and deeply in love.

Karl Nordinger would sometimes call in. More often than not, as Claude was usually out, he and I would sit alone. By now, he was affecting colonial silk suits and fedoras which were to become his trade-mark, and an ebony cane which he claimed had once been owned by Debussy. He owned a luxury modern house near Fontainebleau which was said to be the site of a near-perpetual orgy.

“You can, you know, get sick of the taste of caviar and pussy. Believe me, when you’ve seen one rich cunt spread out on a Louis XIV divan in a chateau, you’ve seen them all…”

But I was no longer bothered by his attempts to shock me. The fact was, we’d come to enjoy each other’s company. He’d sit at the piano, pick out the things he was working on as he finished his
Fourth Symphony,
and I’d watch how the changes of the music were expressed across his surprisingly agile face, or he’d get me to play something, and he’d listen in absolute stillness.

I once asked him what he was thinking of writing next. He laughed and shook his head. “I think, maybe an opera. Something about what’s happening now, or perhaps the Merovingian kings. Then I decide, that’s too big, so maybe a series of miniatures. Of course, I can’t just do another symphony—so part of me says, why the fuck not? Something big and grand and stupid and comic. Or redefine disharmony. Shittiest thing is, I could do all of those things easier than pissing.” He gave another laugh and played a lovely, astringent discord. “So I do fuck all except fuck and spend my fucking money.”

Sometimes, we’d access his symphony, and listen to it whole, and smile and shiver at the subtle changes which were beginning to affect it. It really was assuming a life of its own.

“Are you available,” he asked me one night with uncharacteristic hesi-tancy, “on the third Sunday in July?”

“But that’s the day of the election.”

He rapped his stupid cane. “Exactly.”

“You’re not thinking of having the premiere then, are you? And isn’t that when Harad’s saying he’ll unveil the 6th floor? Won’t your work get drowned out in all the other things?”

“What if it does? And who cares about that mess of Harad’s? Harad’s just a fucking
theorist
. Harad wants do something creative which defines this shitty era but can’t and won’t. Still these elections probably are a turning point, just like you political groupies claim—although perhaps not in the way anyone imagines. The symphony will be different after-wards, so I might as well nail it to a recognisable moment in history. Who knows, perhaps that guy who claims to be God is right. It could be the first and the last performance. Now, that wouldn’t be such a bad way to end!”

The air-conditioner sighed weakly. Karl was leaning against the frame of one of our atelier’s big windows and his face was half-dark, half a red gleam.

“Have you spoken to Claude? Have you booked the hall? What about the orchestra?”

Have you
…
? What about
…
?
His face twisted as he mouthed my questions back to me. “Hey, and aren’t you little Miss Prissy, ticking off dates in your fucking diary? If I say it’ll happen on that day, we both know it will. This isn’t about arrogance. And neither is it about stupid modesty. The symphony’s a work of fucking genius. You know it and I know it, so grow up and stop all the Barbie-doll pretending. It’ll play on the day I decide it’ll play, and that’s that. And Claude’ll conduct it, too, even if he never, ever conducts anything else again in his pompous life. The only thing I wasn’t sure of, Roushana, was you…”

Claude came back soon after Karl had left, smelling of the Gitanes I’d given up smoking. He sighed his frustration at the chaos the
Fourth Symphony
would cause in his already over-crammed schedule. But Karl was right: he didn’t resist. With Claude, music always came first. By now, the political grouping with which he was most associated had coalesced around an agitprop group of artists. Many were merely street performers—fire eaters, contortionists, stilt walkers, pavement pornographers: not proper artists at all to my way of thinking—who’d published a manifesto stating that their aim was to orchestrate the elections through a series of “happenings”. Some of them, such as the release of the penguins from the Paris Zoo, had actually come off, although I found it hard to attach any meaning to them. I unclothed Claude and helped him shower as he talked of tonight’s event in which a banner condemning the repeal of the divorce laws had been released down one entire side of the Pompidou Centre—a great success, apparently, even if the words had been upside down—and I stroked his resolutely flaccid penis, and removed a medium-length strand of amber hair.

I’d received several calls from Mum announcing that she was heading for Paris. But finding the right sequence of flights which would get her here was complex, and then there was always the next emergency, let-down or crises in India which prevented her from coming. After many broken promises and near things, I’d decided that she’d probably never make it here when a fresh message chimed on my bracelet one morning.

“Is that you Roushana?”

“Of course it’s me, Mum.”

“I really don’t how I’m going to find my way to you.”

“Never mind. It’ll sort itself out in time.”

“The thing is, I’m a bit lost.”

“Lost?”

“Well, it’s so hard here to understand what people are saying. This man keeps trying to sell me what is it—oh? But doesn’t that just mean
water
? I’ve tried asking about landmarks. What’s that thing called that looks like the Blackpool Tower?”

Finding a small, lost, blind Indian woman in a city the size of Paris took some time, but Mum had nurtured her own small portion of fame in post-holocaust India, and she bore it with her as a neat, jagged and resolutely self-contained package. She refused to share our atelier with us, or a decent hotel, and chose instead to stay in a rundown hostel in the Opéra area, which was over-occupied by families of Algerian immigrants. But Mum was immovable, and Mum was irresistible, and Mum was Mum, and her safety and the worry that she wander off and get lost again was a perpetual headache. Not that she was bothered. So what, if she got mugged or kidnapped or run over? After all, Roushana, my dear, do you think I can’t cope with a city like Paris, when I manage quite well on my own in Gujarat?

Her presence generated a flurry of interest from the media, which she, as ever in pursuit of funds, did her best to maximise. There were inter-views. There was a reception where she met Harad Le Pape, and asked loudly if he or she was a ladyboy. Even President Boullard made a passing comment about her work during a speech in Arles and Mathilde Irissou met Mum at a well-publicised reception. She was obviously expecting a sweet, blind old Indian lady, but what Mum wanted was unequivocal support, and money. How much, in their first budget, would a socialist French government commit to foreign aid, and then, specifi-cally, to India? Mathilde, who had been all smiles for the initial image shoot, was soon in retreat.

Meanwhile, Claude and I were showing Mum around Paris. She insisted we visit all the famous sites, all the well-known places, many of which I had never yet been to myself. So we stood with a few other sight-seers on the top of the Eiffel Tower, and wandered the deserted Louvre, and she asked us both to describe the smile on the famously forged Giaconda.
What does it look like? What do you see?
For someone blind, her approach to the world remained extraordinarily visual. She had an especial fondness for Manet’s
Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe
, and insisted we go for our own picnic on the same stretch of river despite the risk from the knife gangs. I wouldn’t have been that surprised if she’s started removing her clothes.

Claude took to Mum from the start. His touchy-feely Americanness seemed a far better match for her busy Indian grabbiness than what I was starting to realise was my essentially English reserve. He was always taking her into embraces, and steering and helping her at times when I knew she would have batted me away. He roared at her stories of Maitland and Ashar family life, many of which I barely recognised from the events on which they were based.
You were there, Roushana, don’t you remember, and the look on your face!
Mum chortled and flapped her hands with equal delight at Claude’s Washington stories and all the ridiculous things which had happened to him here in Paris and when he was on the road. Amid this mutual admiration, and all the meals out and the endless sightseeing and the boat trips along the Seine—
now, tell me exactly where we are now, Roushana, and what is that noise coming from our left
—I sometimes felt left out, and my face ached (
what kind of expression do you call
that
, Roushana?
) from the sharp prod of Mum’s fingers, and from rigidly smiling.

“I’m so glad I got to meet Claude and see Paris,” Mum sighed as she lay back in a deckchair on a strip of sand beside the Seine on the last afternoon before her long flight back to India. “You really do seem well made for each other. He’s a charmer. And you don’t need to be blind to tell he’s fabulously handsome.”

“Thanks, Mum. Claude’s—”

“Just as long,” she cut across, “as you remember he’s not Leo.”

A rehearsal of the Nordinger symphony took place in the Opéra de Paris Bastille a few days after Mum returned to India. Despite the expense, Claude always maintained that the feel and acoustics of a rehearsal hall never told you enough about a piece, especially if it was new. From high in the balconies I watched him at work down on the podium. By turns laughing and serious. Those big gestures. The little signs.

The printouts for the
Fourth Symphony
were still changing and the final version probably wouldn’t be ready until the day itself. Any orchestra would normally have hated this, if Nordinger’s piece hadn’t been the masterpiece it so plainly was, and if they hadn’t so adored Claude. As it was, they performed the reshaped fragments with verve. Many of the chords and colours had darkened. Like all great works of art, even those which had been fixed for centuries, there were always new discoveries…