Cloud Atlas (11 page)

Eva returned as usual late on Friday afternoon. In the vestibule between her room and the door to the stables is an oaken throne. In this I planted myself. Unfortunately I became lost in the chords in the chroma of old glass and didn’t notice E., riding crop in her hand, not even aware she was being ambushed. “S’agit-il d’un guetapens? Si vous voulez discuter avec moi d’un problème personnel, vous pourriez me prévenir?”

Being caught by surprise like that made me speak my thought aloud. Eva caught the word.
“Sneak
, you call me? ‘Une moucharde’? Ce n’est pas un mot aimable, Mr. Frobisher. Si vous dites que je suis une moucharde, vous allez nuire à ma réputation. Et si vous nuisez à ma réputation, eh bien, il faudra que je ruine la vôtre!”

Belatedly, I opened fire. Yes, her reputation was precisely what I had to warn her about. If even a visiting foreigner to Bruges had seen her consorting in Minnewater Park during school hours with a scrofulous toad, it was only a matter of time before all the rumormongers in the city had turned the name of Crommelynck-Ayrs to Mudd!

One moment I expected a slap, the next, she reddened and lowered her face. Meekly, she inquired, “Avez-vous dit à ma mère ce que vous avez vu?” I replied that, no, I had not told anyone, yet. E. took careful aim: “Stupid of you, Monsieur Frobisher, because Mama could have told you that mysterious ‘consort’ was Monsieur van de Velde, the gentleman with whose family I lodge during my school week. His father owns the largest munitions factory in Belgium, and he is a respectable family man. Wednesday was a half holiday, so Monsieur van de Velde was kind enough to accompany me from his office back to his house. His own daughters had a choir rehearsal to attend. The school does not like its girls to walk out alone, even during daylight. Sneaks live in parks, you see, dirty-minded sneaks, waiting to damage a girl’s reputation, or perhaps prowling for opportunities to blackmail her.”

Bluff or backfire? I hedged my bets.
“Blackmail?
I have three sisters of my own, and I was concerned for your reputation! That is all.”

She relished her advantage. “Ah oui? Comme c’est délicat de votre part! Tell me, Mr. Frobisher, what exactly did you think Monsieur van de Velde was going to do to me? Were you
frightfully
jealous?”

Her awful directness—for a girl—quite knocked the bails off my wicket. “I am relieved that this simple misunderstanding has been cleared up”—I chose my most insincere smile—”and offer my sincerest apologies.”

“I accept your sincerest apologies in the precise same spirit they are offered.” E. walked off to the stables, her whip swishing the air like a lioness’s tail. Went off to the music room to forget my dismal performance in some devilish Liszt. Can normally rattle off an excellent
La Prédication aux Oiseaux
, but not last Friday. Thank God E.’s leaving for Switzerland tomorrow. If she ever found out about her mother’s nighttime visits—well, doesn’t bear thinking about. Why is it I never met a boy I couldn’t twist round my finger (not only my finger) but the women of Zedelghem seem to best me every time?

Sincerely,
R.F.

ZEDELGHEM
29TH—VIII—1931

Sixsmith,

Sitting at my escritoire in my dressing gown. The church bell chimes five. Another thirsty dawn. My candle is burnt away. A tiring night turned inside out. J. came to my bed at midnight, and during our athletics, my door was barged. Farcical horror! Thank God J. had locked it on her way in. The doorknob rattled, insistent knocking began. Fear can clear the mind as well as cloud it, and remembering my
Don Juan
, I hid J. in a nest of coverlets and sheets in my sagging bed and left the curtain half open to show I had nothing to hide. I fumbled across the room, not believing this was happening to me, deliberately knocking into things to buy time, and reaching the door, called out, “What in hell is the matter? Are we on fire?”

“Open up, Robert!” Ayrs! You can imagine, I was ready to duck bullets. Desperate, I asked what time it was, just to win another moment.

“Who cares? I don’t know! I’ve got a melody, boy, for violin, it’s a gift, and it won’t let me sleep, so I need you to take it down, now!”

Could I trust him? “Can’t it wait until the morning?”

“No, it bloody can’t, Frobisher! I might lose it!”

Shouldn’t we go to the music room?

“It’ll wake up the house and, no, every note is in place, in my head!”

So I told him to wait while I lit a candle. Unlocked my door, and there stood Ayrs, a cane in each hand, mummified in his moonlit nightshirt. Hendrick stood behind him, silent and watchful as an Indian totem. “Make way, make way!” Ayrs pushed past me. “Find a pen, grab some blank score paper, turn on your lamp, quickly. Why the deuce do you lock your door if you sleep with the windows open? The Prussians are gone, the ghosts’ll just drift through the door.” Garbled some balderdash about not being able to fall asleep in an unlocked room, but he wasn’t listening. “Have you got manuscript paper in here or should I have Hendrick go and get some?”

Relief that V.A. hadn’t come to catch me tupping his wife made his imposition seem less preposterous than it actually was, so fine, I said, yes, I have paper, I have pens, let’s start. Ayrs’s sight was too poor to see anything suspicious in the foothills of my bed, but Hendrick still posed a possible danger. One should avoid relying on servants’ discretion. After Hendrick had helped his master to a chair and wrapped a rug round his shoulders, I told him I’d ring for him when we were done. Ayrs didn’t contradict me—he was already humming. A conspiratorial flicker in H.’s eyes? Room too dim to be sure. The servant gave a near-imperceptible bow and glided away as if on well-oiled coasters, softly shutting the door behind him.

Splashed a little water on my face at the washbowl and sat opposite Ayrs, worrying J. might forget the creaking floorboards and try to tiptoe out.

“Ready.”

Ayrs hummed his sonata, bar by bar, then named his notes. The oddity of the miniature soon absorbed me, despite the circumstances. It’s a seesawing, cyclical, crystalline thing. He finished after the ninety-sixth bar and told me to mark the MS
triste
. Then he asked me, “So what d’you think?”

“Not sure,” I told him. “It’s not at all like you. Not much like anyone. But it hypnotizes.”

Ayrs was now slumped, à la a Pre-Raphaelite oil painting entitled
Behold the Sated Muse Discards Her Puppet
. Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden. Thought about J.’s curves in the bed, just a few yards away, even felt a dangerous throb of impatience for her. V.A. was unsure of himself for once. “I dreamt of a … nightmarish café, brilliantly lit, but underground, with no way out. I’d been dead a long, long time. The waitresses all had the same face. The food was soap, the only drink was cups of lather. The music in the café was”—he wagged an exhausted finger at the MS—”this.”

Rang for H. Wanted Ayrs out of my room before daylight found his wife in my bed. After a minute H. knocked. Ayrs got to his feet and limped over—he hates anyone seeing him assisted. “Good work, Frobisher.” His voice found me from down the corridor. I shut the door and breathed that big sigh of relief. Climbed back to bed, where my swampy-sheeted alligator sank her little teeth into her young prey.

We’d begun a luxuriant farewell kiss when, damn me, the door creaked opened again. “Something else, Frobisher!” Mother of All Profanities, I hadn’t locked the door! Ayrs drifted bedward like the wreck of the
Hesperus. J
. slid back under the sheets while I made disheveling, surprised noises. Thank God, Hendrick was waiting outside—accident or tact? V.A. found the end of my bed and sat there, just inches from the bump that was J. If J. sneezed or coughed now, even blind old Ayrs would catch on. “A tricky subject, so I’ll just spit it out. Jocasta. She isn’t a very faithful woman. Maritally, I mean. Friends hint at her indiscretions, enemies inform me of affairs. Has she ever … toward you … y’ know my meaning?”

Let my voice stiffen, masterfully. “No, sir, I don’t believe I do know your meaning.”

“Spare me your bashfulness, boy!” Ayrs leant nearer. “Has my wife ever made advances? I have a right to know!”

Avoided a nervous giggle, by a whisker. “I find your question distasteful in the extreme.” Jocasta’s breath dampened my thigh. She must have been roasting alive under the covers. “
I
wouldn’t call any ‘friend’ who spread such muck around by that name. In Mrs. Crommelynck’s case, frankly, I find the notion as unthinkable as it is unpalatable. If,
if
, through some, I don’t know, nervous collapse, she
were
to behave so inappropriately, well, to be honest, Ayrs, I’d probably ask for Dhondt’s advice, or speak to Dr. Egret.” Sophistry makes a fine smoke screen.

“So you’re not going to give me a one-word answer?”

“You shall have a two-word answer. ‘Emphatically, no!’ And I very much hope the subject is now closed.”

Ayrs let long moments fall away. “You’re young, Frobisher, you’re rich, you’ve got a brain, and by all accounts you’re not wholly repugnant. I’m not sure why you stay on here.”

Good. He was getting mawkish. “You’re my Verlaine.”

“Am I, young Rimbaud? Then where is your
Saison en Enfer?”

“In sketches, in my skull, in my gut, Ayrs. In my future.”

Couldn’t say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia, or scorn. He left. Locked the door and climbed into bed for the third time that night. Bedroom farce, when it actually happens, is intensely sad. Jocasta seemed angry with me.

“What?” I hissed.

“My husband loves you,” said the wife, dressing.

Zedelghem’s a-stirring. Plumbing makes noises like elderly aunts. Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end.

To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!”

How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

Sincerely,
R.F.

ZEDELGHEM
14TH—IX—1931

Sixsmith,

Sir Edward Elgar came to tea this afternoon. Even you’ve heard
of him
, you ignoramus. Now, usually, if one asks Ayrs what he thinks of English music he’ll say,
“What
English music? There is none! Not since Purcell!” and sulk all day, as if the Reformation were one’s own doing. This hostility was forgotten in a trice when Sir Edward telephoned from his hotel in Bruges this morning, wondering if Ayrs might be able to spare him an hour or two. Ayrs made a show of curmudgeonliness, but I could tell by the way he badgered Mrs. Willems about the arrangements for tea, he was pleased as the cat who got the cream. Our celebrated guest arrived at half past two, dressed in a dark green Inverness cape despite the clement weather. The man’s state of health isn’t much better than V.A.’s. J. & I welcomed him on the steps of Zedelghem. “So
you’re
Vyv’s new pair of eyes, are you?” he said to me, as we shook hands. Said I’d seen him conduct a dozen times at the festival, which pleased him. Guided the composer into the Scarlet Room, where Ayrs was waiting. They greeted each other warmly, but as if wary of bruises. Elgar’s sciatic pain bothers him greatly, and even on good days, V.A. looks pretty frightful at first sight, still worse at the second. Tea was served, and they talked shop, mostly ignoring J. & me, but it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall. Sir E. glanced at us now and then to make sure he was not wearing out his host. “Not at all.” We smiled back. They fenced over such topics as saxophones in orchestras, whether Webern is Fraudster or Messiah, the patronage and politics of music. Sir E. announced he is at work on a Third Symphony after a long hibernation:—he even played us sketches of a
molto maestoso
and an
allegretto
on the upright. Ayrs most eager to prove that he isn’t ready for his coffin either, and had me run through some recently completed piano sketches—rather lovely. Several dead bottles of Trappist beer later, I asked Elgar about the
Pomp and Circumstance
marches. “Oh, I needed the money, dear boy. But don’t tell anyone. The King might want my baronetcy back.” Ayrs went into laughter spasms at this! “I always say, Ted, to get the crowd to cry Hosanna, you must first ride into town on an ass. Backwards, ideally, whilst telling the masses the tall stories they want to hear.”