Madame Sousatzka (7 page)

‘Let's have a look at Russia, shall we,' he said, in his best rack-side manner. Marcus turned over. He was a boy who responded conscientiously to his cues. He knew the routine
by heart. Mr Cordle laid his hands across Marcus's chest. ‘Oh dear, we are skinny, aren't we,' he chided, thumping his fingers between the jutting ribs. ‘Here, have some chocolate.'

Marcus sat up on the couch. The offer of chocolate always marked an interval in the session. ‘And when are you going to give this concert of yours?' Mr Cordle always asked this question every week at chocolate time. It was another way of stating that Madame Sousatzka was afraid of losing her prize pupil to the public.

‘Next year, I suppose. Madame Sousatzka says I'm not ready yet.'

‘D'you think you're ready?'

‘Sometimes I do. I'd like to play for lots of people. I get fed up with practising on my own, with no-one listening except Madame Sousatzka. But maybe she's right. I haven't learnt everything yet.'

‘You'll always have a lot to learn. You'll never stop learning. If Madame Sousatzka has her way, you'll never be ready. Have you started on a programme?'

‘I know lots of pieces. They could be made into a programme. I know concertos, too, but however will I get a chance to play them?'

‘Never,' said Mr Cordle. He pulled what was left of his hair over his head as a fringe, and played with an imaginary watch round his neck, ‘Never,' he mimicked in the Sousatzka guttural, ‘You'll never be ready.'

Marcus laughed, but he quickly checked himself with the thought that he was being disloyal. He remembered his mother's threatened visit and fleetingly thought that it was justified. When away from her, he found it so easy to be on her side. ‘She's in my way,' he said suddenly, ‘I could be earning money. I could be famous. I'm ready. She knows I'm ready but she won't let me go. I'll leave her. I'll go to someone else.'

Mr Cordle put his hand on Marcus's shoulder. He felt responsible for the boy's sudden rebellion. ‘She's taught you everything you know,' he said quietly, ‘it would be ungrateful to leave her. Maybe she's right. Perhaps you aren't ready. She knows what she's doing. You're still
young. You've got a lot to learn. Lots of things, other than the piano.'

‘But she called me a genius. Only this week, she said I was a genius.'

Mr Cordle sighed. ‘You see that picture over there,' he pointed to a sheet on the opposite wall. It was the plan of a man's body and embedded in each bone, muscle and joint was a line which extended to the outside of the body and which ended in a name of the part to which it belonged. The titles were neatly and symmetrically placed together, assuming the contours of the human frame around a hollow man. ‘When I was a boy,' Mr Cordle said, ‘about your age, I suppose, that chart used to hang by my bed. And every night I looked at it and I cried. I cried for that man hemmed in by a battery of labels. Those lines you see travelling out of the body,' he went on, pointing to the chart with a long pole, ‘I was convinced that they were arrows. The blood was pouring through the body because of them. And there he was, hanging by my bed, crucified with labels, dying a little more every day, and there was nothing I could do about it. My mother came in one day to kiss me goodnight, and she saw that I was crying. She asked me why and I told her it was because of the man dying on my wall. She laughed and stroked my cheek and told me I was too imaginative. I saw a picture of myself in my mind, like the man on the chart, and at the end of the line it said, Imagination. You can kill a man with labels, Marcus. That was the first time in my life that I started to die. That was my first arrow. I've had lots since and each time it hurts a little more. Dying gets harder and harder,' he murmured, and Marcus was horrified to hear a break in his voice. Marcus only vaguely understood what Mr Cordle was getting at. He wished he'd never mentioned the genius business. It was bound to lead to some theory or another.

‘Lie on the couch,' Mr Cordle said softly. His tone of command frightened Marcus. For some odd reason, he felt he was about to sacrificed. He walked towards the couch and felt Mr Cordle's hand. But Mr Cordle turned his face as if to hide something and lightly lifted Marcus on to the bed. Marcus lay there, terrified. Mr Cordle looked down on
him and a tear from his cheek dropped on to Marcus's shirt. At the sight of Mr Cordle's weeping Marcus felt safer. He stretched out his hand and clasped Mr Cordle's knuckles, as Madame Sousatzka so often did to him.

‘I'm burdened with labels, Marcus,' Mr Cordle confided. ‘I have to shake them off before I die. That's the process of dying, Marcus. Shaking them off, shedding the labels one by one, until Man is free, pure and in space, until he is free of all his packaging. Until there is room for the only label that really matters.'

‘Which one is that?' said Marcus, who felt he ought to keep the conversation going if for no other reason than to divert Mr Cordle's attention from anything more violent.

‘When I die,' Mr Cordle went on, ‘I want to be lying unburdened, except for that one label.' He put a finger gently on Marcus's navel. ‘Here the label will be,' he whispered, ‘and the label will be called Man, the centre of the Universe.'

Marcus stared at Mr Cordle's bent head. The crown was completely bald, shining like a peeled hard-boiled egg. There was a tiny speck of dirt in the middle, and Marcus's eyes were riveted on the black dot in the centre of all that shining cleanliness. He stared at it for what seemed an eternity, and a surge of compassion overcame him. And out of pity for that poor little speck of dirt in the middle of all that whiteness he began to cry.

‘Turn over,' Mr Cordle suddenly said. ‘Back to business. Let's go back to the North Pole.'

Marcus gratefully turned over. He wanted to shut out the last five minutes from his mind. He tried to think of Jenny, but when he imagined her, he saw her cluttered up with labels. He closed his eyes and the portly figure of Madame Sousatzka blotted his vision. But he fared no better with her. The labels dangled from her as from a giant Christmas tree. Then he thought of himself. Where was the label that Madame Sousatzka had pierced him with? His heart, his head, his finger maybe? He felt suddenly tired and overburdened with scraps of knowledge and experience that lead a child to think he understands everything. Mr Cordle's hands were gentle on his back. He knew he was going to fall
off to sleep, but he wanted to do nothing about it. He heard Mr Cordle call his name, once and then twice, very softly. He thought he heard a door close, and even a fleeting thought of Jenny couldn't keep him from sleep.

Marcus's first thought on waking up was that he had been sleeping for many days. Firstly because he was hungry, and secondly, the feeling of utter remoteness. Mr Cordle was shutting the door quietly behind him. He turned round, surprised to find Marcus awake. ‘I thought you'd sleep till tomorrow, at least,' he laughed.

‘How long have I been sleeping?'

‘Not ten minutes,' Mr Cordle said. ‘I just saw Jenny on the stairs. She's waiting for you.'

Suddenly Marcus remembered in detail their strange session together. He looked quickly for the chart on the wall. But the space that it had occupied was bare now, a pure white space in an off-white frame. Marcus thought of the dirty mark on Mr Cordle's head, and wondered whether he had washed it off. Mr Cordle had obviously regretted his outburst and had removed all evidence of it whilst Marcus was asleep.

‘You'd better wash your face before you go up to Jenny's,' Mr Cordle said. ‘You look as if you've been asleep for a week.' Mr Cordle giggled with embarrassment. ‘Don't forget your exercises,' he said automatically. He seemed to realise that there was no point in trying to believe that nothing had happened. ‘Marcus,' he said pleadingly, ‘forget all that nonsense about the labels. It's just a theory I have,' he laughed. ‘I'm working it out. Sometimes I don't understand it myself, but it's something I feel.'

‘Does Madame Sousatzka know about it? The labels, I mean.' Marcus tried to laugh too. If Mr Cordle himself was prepared to ridicule his own theory, Marcus was ready to give him support.

‘She knows,' Mr Cordle answered. ‘She says I'm right. I think she understands it better than I do.'

Marcus didn't want to be drawn into any further discussion. He was heartily sick of labels anyway. ‘I'll be late,' he
said. He went over to Mr Cordle and touched his arm. ‘I'll see you tomorrow,' he said, reassuringly, as if he felt that Mr Cordle feared that he would not come again.

‘Yes,' Mr Cordle muttered, ‘tomorrow. Tomorrow,' he brightened up suddenly, ‘we'll take another look at America.'

Marcus didn't bother to wash. He ran up the stairs to the top landing. He paused at Jenny's door to get his breath back, then tip-toed quietly into the room. Jenny was sitting as always by the gas-fire, painting her nails. Marcus crept up behind her and put his hands over her eyes.

‘Oh!' Jenny screamed in mock horror. ‘Who is it?'

Marcus released his hold and she turned round to look at him. ‘Oh,' she said in surprise, ‘Marcus, it's you. You know, you act like a real man.'

Marcus felt a fluttering inside his navel. She took his hands in hers. ‘What's the matter, Marcus?' she said. ‘You're trembling.'

‘Jenny,' he said, ‘I think I'm growing old.'

Marcus didn't know anything about Jenny except that she was always in her room on Friday nights, painting her nails in front of her gas-fire with the kettle boiling and the crumpets on the table in the bay window. There was a telephone in the room, too. Marcus only noticed it because of its strange position. Jenny's gas-ring had a double burner, and the ‘phone stood on the jet next to the kettle, and Marcus often wanted to light the gas underneath to see if it would start ringing. Jenny was the only one in the house who had a private ‘phone. The dirty Countess who lived in the basement, Mr Cordle, even Madame Sousatzka, who was after all the landlady, had to resort to the telephone box on the first landing, armed with pennies and adaptable accents. Somehow it never occurred to Marcus to ask Jenny why she had a ‘phone of her own. He probably felt that Jenny was entitled to something that the others didn't have. In any case, Marcus had never heard it ring, never on a Friday anyway, so perhaps she looked upon it as an ornament. Which was why he was startled this Friday when suddenly, only a few minutes after he had come into her room, the telephone started ringing. Jenny was surprised too, and she got up quickly from her seat, and turned off the kettle as she picked up the receiver, as if the operation of the one depended on the non-operation of the other.

‘Hullo,' her voice was tentative and questioning. She listened for a while, glancing nervously at Marcus as he picked up a magazine from the floor. ‘You know I never work on Fridays,' he heard her say. Then another long silence.

‘I don't mind, Jenny,' Marcus whispered. She waved away his offer with her hand. ‘I really don't, if it's
important.' She would let him take the crumpets down to his room in the basement, and he'd play draughts with the Countess till it was bedtime. But the thought of missing a Friday night with Jenny and of upsetting his week-end routine made him miserable and, in spite of his offer, he looked at her pleadingly.

‘No, it's impossible,' he heard her say. ‘It'll have to wait until you come back. I'm sorry, Felix, but you know Fridays are out.' She said good-bye sadly and as she put down the receiver, she re-lit the gas under the kettle.

‘I'll go, really I will,' Marcus said with enthusiasm, knowing that his departure was no longer necessary.

‘Friday night is for you, Marcus. It has been for almost a year. In any case, I hate changing a routine. It brings bad luck, especially on a Friday.' Jenny was very superstitious. She was always on to Marcus if one of his socks was inside out, and she was forever touching whatever wood was in sight to ward off the evil spirits. ‘Take a crumpet,' she said. ‘The kettle's almost boiled. Bring the plate over here. We'll have it by the fire.'

‘What work d'you do, Jenny?' It was the first time Marcus had thought of asking her.

Jenny laughed. ‘All kinds of things.'

‘What things?'

‘I help people out. Give them a hand.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Oh, all sorts of things. How's Sousatzka today?' she added quickly. ‘Not ready for your concert yet, I suppose?'

Marcus grunted. Somehow he felt this Friday wasn't going to be like the others. Jenny seemed to be terribly nervous, and she was being awfully cagey about her job. She couldn't settle down with her nail-painting, either. Then there'd been that ‘phone call, and now she was on about the concert, just like Mr Cordle, and his mother. ‘No, I'm not ready,' Marcus said angrily, ‘and I don't want to talk about the concert any more.'

Jenny smiled. ‘We're both on edge today, aren't we? Come on,' she laughed, ‘let's make the tea, and when
you've drunk yours, I'll read your tea-leaves.'

Jenny had never read his cup before, though he had heard from Mr Cordle that she was a professional cup-reader. Madame Sousatzka, too, used to swear by her, which probably accounted for the odd unwashed cups which lay about the studio, guarding their secrets until Jenny was ready to reveal them.

The prospect of having his future read excited Marcus. He wanted most of all to know about the concert. He prepared himself to have faith in everything Jenny would tell him, and with each mouthful of tea, he swallowed a measure of disbelief. At last he strained the tea from the cup, leaving a pattern of leaves that lined the bottom and one of the sides, its intricacy promising a wealth of forecast. ‘Here, Jenny,' he said challengingly, ‘what does all that say?'