In the Claws of the Eagle (2 page)

It was the turn of the Abrahams family to host the other
members
of the
Tuning Fork Quartet
,
first to music, and then when the sun had gone down, to join their Sabbath dinner. Every week they would gather in one or other of their homes to play, mostly quartets and trios, with lots of enthusiasm and equal toleration of each other’s mistakes. As the afternoon wore on the music would get less demanding, steins of foaming beer would appear beside their chairs, and any piece that ended with all of them still playing, and still together, would be greeted with a cheer.

‘At least we look like a real quartet,’ laughed Uncle Rudi, who was their first violin. He was completely bald, with a head like the pointy end of an egg, and a beard that flowed out
generously
over his violin. He had to tuck his beard in, in case it got tangled up with his bow. Uncle Rudi’s son, Nathan, who played second fiddle, was a medical student, while Uncle Albert, their viola player, was neither an uncle nor a Jew, but became honorary ones on Fridays. Father played the cello, and the piano if needed. Today, however, they had a very special guest, an old friend of the family, none other than the great Madame Helena Stronski, still one of the most sought-after solo violinists out of her native Poland.

She had arrived towards the end of their session, sweeping in like a ship under full sail in a billow of diaphanous scarves.
She was a large woman, once strikingly beautiful, now inclined to weight and to ruff and gruff to hide a heart alloyed equally of steel and gold.

‘Don’t stop, don’t stop!’ she called as the music faltered, ‘I love it. This is what I’ve come for, real music on the hoof.’

The quartet, however, rose to a man, not the least offended. She offered both cheeks to her host David Abrahams, and the same honour to Uncle Rudi. She gave young Nathan a hearty shake of the hand, and let Uncle Albert kiss the back of it. Having dealt with them all in accordance with her code of
intimacy
, she declared: ‘Well gentlemen, what will we play?’ From Uncle Rudi’s music stand she picked up a sheet of the music they had been playing. ‘Good heavens, dears, this is far too
difficult
for me.’ She searched deeper among his sheets of music. ‘Here … this is much more my standard these days.’ They all burrowed through their music, eager as squirrels, while she surveyed the room with a smile of content. This was what she loved; people making music together. But they would all enjoy it more if they could play something within their ability.

Judit, Izaac’s mother, came in, holding her guest’s violin case and leading a boy of about three and a half by the hand. He was wearing a sailor suit; his eyes round in awe at the sight of their visitor.

‘This is Izaac.’ They shook hands solemnly. ‘You will play for us, won’t you? Izaac would love to hear you,’ said Judit.

‘Humph,’ said the great lady, looking down at Izaac. ‘I bet you’d prefer to be pulling the cat’s tail? Makes the same sort of sound if you think about it.’ She gave him the nearest thing to a wink that a great lady can make and turned to Uncle Rudi. ‘Rudi, all right if I double up with you on the first violin?’ Uncle Rudi made to rise. ‘No no no, don’t get up, I’ll read over your shoulder.’ She put her violin case on a chair, opened the lid and folded back the silk scarf that was wrapped around the
instrument. It lay for a moment in its case like a freshly opened horse chestnut in its husk. Izaac leaned forward for a better look. ‘It’s very, very old,’ she explained. ‘It was made by Stra…di…var…ius, I call it Strad for short.’ She took up her bow. ‘And this is the cat’s tail. It looks all floppy now, so we’ll tighten it up like this.’ She turned the tiny mother of pearl nut on the end of the bow until the hairs were tight and straight. ‘Now, all I need is my rosin and we are ready.’ She showed him how she rubbed the rosin on to the hairs of the bow. ‘So, where will I put it? I could put it on top of Uncle Rudi’s head?’ Izaac was still a little awed.

‘Wrong shape, my dear,’ said Uncle Rudi.

‘Uncle Rudi’s a little-ender, isn’t he Izaac?’ she laughed, and dropped the rosin back into her case. ‘Lead off when you’re ready, Rudi,’ she commanded.

The home team launched into the first movement of their quartet tentatively, as if shy in the presence of the maestro. To begin with, she appeared just to be playing very softly, a mere shadow of Uncle Rudi’s lead, but as they got used to her
presence
she began to play with them, leading them, nudging them, and a subtle transformation took place. They seemed to relax, their bow strokes became longer and they were moving better in time. They found themselves glancing at each other with secret smiles as they passed the notes and phrases back and forth between them.
Her
magic seemed to be flowing through their fingers and into their bows. When it came to Father’s entry on the cello, the deep notes of the instrument rang out rich and sweet. His eyebrows shot up with pleasure. When they paused between movements they didn’t chat, as they often did, but sat held in a trance. They approached the dramatic finale like ships entering harbour in a line, swinging up into the wind and dropping anchor as one. Only when they turned to applaud their leader, did they realise that Madame
Stronski had stopped playing, and that their triumphal finale had been all their own; she had her fiddle under her arm and was applauding them.

While the musicians were recovering, happily
congratulating
each other on this or that entry, Madame Stronski adjusted her scarves, which always seemed to be about to fall off, but never did, and took up a position near the piano. She raised her bow and launched into the first notes of a piece of music that none of them had heard before.

At her first notes Izaac Abrahams whipped about like
someone
stung. He had been accustomed to music since babyhood. Father would practise his cello in the evenings, and Mother played the piano in the afternoons, when she thought no one else would hear her. He would go about his business,
arranging
animals from his ark, putting them in fields outlined in dominoes, building castles from bricks, or stalking the cat. From time to time the music would inspire him to perform acrobatics and other things. Unfortunately people engrossed in making music tend not to notice other people’s
performances
, so Izaac would have to contrive his own audience. The animals of his ark would be arranged in appreciative rows and performed for, but their attention span was short. After they had been knocked over a couple of times he would dismiss them. Then he would turn his attention to the picture on the wall and would perform for the girl in the green dress. She could be relied on for the correct level of applause; she
understood
him. On this occasion, when the quartet had finished and everyone else was preoccupied, he had treated her to headstands, and he was doing this when Madame Stronski started to play her solo.

Izaac had never heard music played by a maestro. He had never heard a bow bite into the strings as if the note to be played had existed in the air, expectant and impatient ever
since the composer had first conceived it. His small body became rigid; two powerful forces were running through him like competing electric currents. The first, a sustained
vibration
, came from the music, the outward flow of something both beautiful and terrifying. The second came from his own sense of affront. He, Izaac, was the performer in this house! This was his territory. That Cloud Woman, the one with all the billowing scarves who talked about cats, was his competitior. He stamped his foot in temper.

As if sensing his challenge, the Cloud Woman half turned towards him; the violin gave the smallest dip of
acknowledgement
, her eyes glinted, but she played on. How dare she! He stood his ground, small, dark and sturdy. But Izaac had no defence against music like this, not in the hands of a master. In minutes he was overcome. The music penetrated every fibre of his small body, running like liquid silver into his bones where it hardened into something both brittle and sensitive. When the Cloud Woman finished playing, Izaac was the only one in the room who did not clap; neither did he turn somersaults.

Madame Stronski observed Izaac’s reaction and had a pang of conscience. She had noticed his sudden rigid attention when she had begun to play. It was a compliment, and what musician can resist the compliment of complete attention? So, she had played for him, a personal message of power and beauty, an example of musicianship that she was delighted she still had in her. But had she laid a trap for him? Oh, Helena, she said to herself, what have you done? Perhaps there was still time to get the genie back into the bottle. She pulled herself together and called out to Izaac’s father:

‘Come David, soon Judit will be lighting your Sabbath
candles
for our dinner, let’s play a round for Izaac before he goes to bed. How about
‘Pani Janie’,
as we call it in Poland,
‘Frère
Jacques’
in French, what is it in German?’ They laughed and
told her, ‘
Bruder Jacob!
’ But with variations!’ They smiled as they bent for their instruments. ‘Rudi, you begin. Then Nathan, then Uncle Albert, you, David, and then me. One, two, three.’ Uncle Rudi started playing the simple tune. Then, while he played on, Nathan started, beginning again so the tune was overlapping on itself. Uncle Albert came in on the viola,
followed
by Father on the cello, and last of all came Madame Stronski. Now they were all playing and the tune became a little symphony. Faster and faster they played until they all had to give up in laughter. The double doors opened and Mother stood there smiling. Dinner was ready. With a sweep of scarves Madame Helena laid her violin in its case.

‘Judit, I’m starving,’ she said, and led the way into the dining room, while Izaac was picked up by Lotte, and carried off to bed.

Voices rose and fell behind the double doors that separated the dining room from the music room. Dinner was progressing at a leisurely pace. Next door in the music room, Izaac, in pyjamas, was edging silently along, hugging the wall under the picture where he thought the girl inside it wouldn’t see him. This wasn’t a performance, it was more like a commando raid, and she had a habit of making him uneasy about his plans.

He was also apprehensive about the Cloud Lady. Her reference to cats had disturbed him; he still had scars from the time he had given their cat a loving hug. His interest was in her violin; he wasn’t sure whether it was alive or not, so he must be careful. Uncle Rudi and Nathan both played violins, but clearly these were just toys when compared to the Cloud Lady’s instrument. It, he had decided, was the key to her performance. If
he
could tame it, then
he
would turn everyone’s head and make their legs go wobbly as his had just done.

He could see the chair with her violin case on it, a tongue of the scarf she had wrapped around the instrument peeped from under the lid. Even the case had a special magic; it was old and scarred, the only bright thing about it was a scarlet hotel sticker on the lid with a picture of a dancing clown. He was afraid of it now, but the more he looked the more strongly it drew him, filling his vision until his feet had no alternative but to move. The case lay on a chair at chest-height to him. He reached out. The lid was unclasped; he lifted it cautiously, alert in case the violin might spring out at him. The silk was soft on his hands, but so had been the cat’s fur. He parted the folds, and there it was – the violin. The grain of its wood seemed to pulse with life. He reached out cautiously and touched the polished
surface
. It wasn’t cold like the marble floor in the hall; it was warm. He decided that it was probably alive. When he ran his fingers across the strings, they murmured back at him the familiar notes he heard whenever his uncles tuned up. Perhaps it liked him. He got it firmly by the neck and lifted; it was lighter than he expected, but when he tried to put it under his chin he found that his arms were too short. He looked around for the bow. The silly woman had called it a cat’s tail –
nonsense
– it was a sword. Uncle Rudi called
his
a sword and used it to duel with Izaac and the toy sword he’d been given for his birthday. There were two bows in the lid of the case; he put the violin on the floor behind him so he could pull properly. But the clip holding the bow was old and the bow came away in his hand. Izaac reeled backwards, waving it above his head for balance. For a moment his backside wavered dangerously above the violin before thumping down on the floor only inches away from it.

Louise, observing from the confines of her picture, was in an agony of apprehension as this saga developed, but all she could do was watch. Izaac did a swash and buckle or two to
save face and then examined his prize. The hairs were floppy. He remembered that the Cloud Woman had had the same problem. He was good on technical details and he found the small mother-of-pearl nut on the end of the bow and turned it. That made it worse. He made a couple of rather angry swipes in the air and then got the direction right and the hairs
tightened
. Now he turned his attention to the violin. The music he was about to play was already loud in his mind. As he couldn’t manage to put the violin under his chin, he laid it on his knees with the thin end away from him and prepared to play.