The Tooth Tattoo (15 page)

‘Thanks,’ he said, back to his denial of any interest, ‘only I don’t think I have the time right now.’

‘Have a quick look at the picture anyway,’ she said. ‘One of those artists’s impressions, I suppose you’d call it. You wouldn’t want to see a dead person’s face at breakfast time. I was thinking she could easily have been in the audience for one of your recitals.’

‘If she was, I wouldn’t have noticed,’ Mel said. ‘I have to give all my attention to the music.’

She was lingering again, her hand on the back of his chair. ‘Or you could have seen her after, hanging about to get your autograph. I’ve heard that you’re famous, you and the Stark Arty Quartet.’

‘Staccati. The others may be well known, but I’m not. I’m a late arrival, filling in for someone who dropped out. Nobody wants my autograph.’

‘Don’t put yourself down, Mel. Plenty of young ladies are dewy-eyed about you when you’re playing, I’ll be bound.’

The face on the front of the paper lacked any personality. He turned it over and pretended to take an interest in the football. Mrs. Carlyle finally moved away. It crossed his
mind that in future he might make a show of listening to his own iPod at breakfast. Would she take the hint? He couldn’t depend on it.

The quartet was supposed to be rehearsing Schubert’s
Death and the Maiden
at the Michael Tippett Centre, but Cat had phoned to say she had a bad headache and wouldn’t be coming in.

Ivan was unforgiving. ‘Women and headaches. That can mean anything. If I get a headache I take a painkiller. It’s about loyalty to the rest of us. What are we supposed to do – practise our scales?’

Mel said, ‘She must be in a bad way to miss a session. Shouldn’t we give her the benefit of the doubt?’

Anthony spoke up. ‘We can practise without her.’

Ivan shook his head. ‘This of all pieces requires the cello at the centre of things. It’s the way it’s arranged, with the rest of us responding to her variations. We’ll be all at sea.’

‘We can do the first variation. That’s mine essentially.’

‘A few bars and then what?’ Ivan said. ‘She becomes the soloist in the next. We can’t work through it piecemeal, picking the sections that suit us.’

‘Why not?’ Anthony said in his uncompromising way.

‘Because it will do more harm than good.’

‘I can’t think why.’

‘We lose the flow, the unity, the tempo, that’s why. It’s not just a waste of our time. It’s an insult to the composer. What do you say, Mel?’

After that, it was difficult to know what to say. ‘I see the difficulty –’

‘In that case, I’m not staying,’ Anthony said. He slammed his violin into its case and was off like the bishop who woke up in a brothel.

Ivan sighed and said to Mel, ‘I was about to suggest we looked for an alternative piece, something with less cello. He wouldn’t have agreed. He can’t deal with changes of plan.’

‘Pity. We needed him. There isn’t much two of us can do.’

‘He’s a fine player – brilliant, in fact – but as a personality he can be impossible. Well, you just saw. I ought to be used to his ways by now. Cat handles him better than I do. And so did Harry when he was with us.’

‘Did you know about this side of him when the quartet formed?’

‘Not really. We were so impressed by his musicianship that we overlooked the signs of oddity in his personal dealings with us. You expect eccentricity among musicians and we forgave the occasional outburst.’

‘Cat was telling me he doesn’t have much of a life outside his music.’

‘None at all that I’m aware of – which makes it so much more of a crisis each time anything upsets the arrangements. Shall we go for a coffee?’

In the months so far in Bath, Mel had not spent time alone with Ivan, apart from sharing taxis. He still felt in awe of him. Being told what to wear for that first meeting at the club in St James’s had set the tone. A chat over coffee might be a chance to get to know the real Ivan.

Mel made an immediate try to get personal. ‘This is my third this morning. All that caffeine. It starts off in my lodgings. Mrs. Carlyle, my landlady, wants to talk in the mornings and I don’t. I get through more of this than I should.’

‘Are you comfortable where you are?’

‘No complaints on that score. How’s your place?’

Ivan looked into his cup, taking a moment to decide whether he wanted to open up. ‘Adequate. I wouldn’t put it higher than that. They say they don’t mind me practising, but when I do, they turn up the volume on the television. I can hear it in my room with the door closed.’

‘A couple, are they?’

‘Civil partners, I think, is the term.’

‘Same sex?’

‘Gay men, yes. I don’t mind that. They keep the house in immaculate order. But they like to economise on the heating so the water is barely warm. I’m not looking forward to the winter.’

‘I thought you’d be used to cold winters.’

‘Outside, yes, but we were always warm inside. Old-fashioned brick-built Russian stoves are very efficient.’

‘Where were you brought up – Moscow?’

‘Odessa.’

‘So you’re Ukrainian now.’

‘Always was,’ Ivan said with a defiant tilt of the head.

‘Not a bad place to be a string player.’

‘The only place. Heifitz, the Oistrakhs, Zimbalist, Milstein.’

‘What a line-up.’

‘There are more I could name. It’s a world-wide phenomenon. Do you know the story about Isaac Stern when President Kennedy made him responsible for intercultural exchanges with the Soviet Union? Someone said to Stern that it must be a difficult job. He said, “On the contrary, it’s a piece of cake. They send us their violinists from Odessa and we send them our violinists from Odessa.” ’

An amusing story from Ivan? This was better than Mel could have wished for. ‘You started early, no doubt?’

‘Didn’t we all?’

Mel nodded. He couldn’t think of a top violinist who hadn’t begun as a child.

Without any more prompting, Ivan launched into his story. ‘I was giving recitals at ten years old. My parents were elderly and wanted to see me established as a musician, good enough to make my own way in the world when they passed on, so I mastered the basics early in life. I was accepted by the State Conservatory at fifteen, and there I learned about intonation and phrasing and so on. At seventeen I was playing in the Odessa Philharmonic. A year later I got an audition for the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and was accepted.’

‘Leaving your birthplace?’

‘I’d already decided to escape from the Soviet system. It was all the things you hear, oppressive, rigid, without a heart. The music we were playing spoke of joy, freedom, spirit and didn’t square with the life we were living. So I had this unstoppable urge to leave. To defect, I would need to get a
trip abroad. Odessa was classed as a regional city by the State, which meant no orchestra from there was allowed to travel. You had to play in Moscow or Leningrad, as it was known, if you wanted to visit the west.’

‘How old were you when you got out?’

‘Barely twenty, but old enough to know what I was doing. This was in the mid-eighties. I was friendly with some of the top chess players. I play a good game, up to tournament standard. At that time chess players were defecting regularly and some of them told me how to go about it. The main thing was to get invited to the west as part of a larger unit.’

‘Like the ballet stars who came over with the Kirov company?’

‘I suppose, yes.’ He didn’t seem to like the comparison. ‘Anyway, I would be well placed with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.’

‘I can understand that. They have a terrific reputation.’

Ivan shrugged. ‘More important to me, they often toured abroad. Six months after joining, I travelled with them to Frankfurt, gave the slip to our minders, got in a taxi and paid him over the odds to drive me to another town and stay silent. I asked for political asylum and never saw my parents again. This was 1987. They were dead before the wall came down.’

‘That was hard.’

‘Life was hard – then and for the next few years. I wasn’t a name. I couldn’t survive by playing my fiddle, but I had no other trade, so I worked as a hospital porter and mortuary attendant. These hands have performed tasks you wouldn’t want to know about.’

‘Better than working as a brickie. You wouldn’t want to damage your fingers.’

‘I would have earned more as a builder or a docker, it’s true. You’re right. I had to think of my hands.’

‘And obviously you got back to playing?’

‘I was always playing. Music is therapy. It nurtured my soul.’ An extraordinary stillness came over Ivan.

Mel understood why.

‘I kept my fiddle through the hard times and didn’t
change it until I was offered the use of a Strad – practising as often as I could and I also took on some teaching and ensemble work. If you have a talent and you don’t neglect it, the opportunities come. I filled in with various ensembles across western Europe and eventually got to England and found an opening with the Bournemouth Symphony. A happy choice.’

‘Have you been back to Odessa?’

‘Once, with the quartet. I found it much changed, but the music is still of the highest quality. Do you know it?’

Mel shook his head. ‘I haven’t travelled much.’

‘From now on, you will.’

‘I still find it hard to believe you took me on.’

‘It wasn’t a snap decision. We heard a number of others.’

‘Will Douglas be looking for more engagements for us?’

‘Undoubtedly. He wanted to see if we got along together, if the chemistry was right.’

‘It wasn’t this morning.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ve come through worse. We can all be prima donnas on our day. It’s when we’re on tour and compelled to travel with each other and not speaking that things get difficult. But I suspect all quartets are like that. It’s not as if we’ve promised to love, honour and obey. We happen to be stuck with each other like four prisoners in a cell.’

Mel grinned. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

‘Now you know why I didn’t want us sharing a house.’

‘I guess respect is what we should aim for.’

‘Exactly.’

Becoming more confident, Mel asked, ‘You chose me for my musicianship alone, is that right? You didn’t ask about my temperament.’

‘Or if you’re an axe murderer?’ Ivan said without a flicker of amusement. ‘No, we judged you on your playing, first and last, and we expect the same consideration from you.’

‘You’ve got it.’

He added a sly postscript. ‘Of course it will be inconvenient if you’re picked up by the police.’

‘You’ll bail me out?’

This prompted a rare smile. ‘If we’re not in custody ourselves. You have no idea what we’re capable of.’

Not a topic to explore, Mel thought. Ivan had mellowed in the last few minutes, but there were limits. ‘Will Anthony come round, or does he want some kind of apology?’

‘It will be as if nothing happened. An apology is needed and it should come from him, but he won’t give one. We’ll begin again when Cat is restored to her boisterous best. I hope
your
health is reliable.’

‘Usually.’

‘I haven’t missed a rehearsal or a concert since the quartet was formed, so I feel I have a right to expect high standards of others.’

‘What’s your secret – vitamin pills?’ Mel asked, keen to lighten the mood again.

‘A balanced life. I still play chess, these days more on the internet than with a real person across the board, more’s the pity. Do you play?’

‘You wouldn’t find me much of a challenge.’

‘Plenty of musicians enjoy the game,’ Ivan said. ‘I expect you have a life outside music. I’m sure you do.’

Now that the focus switched to Mel, he became ill at ease himself. ‘Nothing to speak of.’

‘Women,’ Ivan threw in. ‘I’ve seen you eyeing up the students in short skirts. Have you dated any of them?’

With his chess-playing skill, Ivan had definitely taken the initiative. Mel felt as defensive as when Mrs. Carlyle was making barbed hints about what went on with her nubile daughter. ‘I can’t afford the time. I need hours of practice to keep up with you and the others.’

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that we’re all practising like fury and not telling each other?’

Mel wasn’t sure if this was a heavy-handed attempt at humour. ‘That would be a comfort.’

But Ivan was serious as usual. ‘You may get the idea that because we played the repertoire many times before, we don’t need the preparation you do, but you’d be wrong. I practise
several hours each evening, however loudly my landlord turns up the volume. For me, the ideal time would be early in the morning, but they’d treat that as an act of war and I can see their point of view. Anthony does nothing else but practise, as we know, and I’m pretty certain Cat will be bowing her cello at this minute, even in the throes of a headache.’

‘Thanks. I’ll remember I’m not alone when I put in some hours tonight.’

Ivan became the abbot again. ‘Don’t get distracted by women.’

Mel felt himself blush, as much in annoyance as embarrassment. ‘You’re reading too much into a few glances at girls.’

‘Some of whom come to one-to-one tutorials.’

‘You’re out of order now. I can honestly say there’s nothing going on with any of my students.’

‘Keep it that way, then.’ Ivan hesitated, realising, possibly, that he needed to justify interfering. ‘We don’t know for sure if women were Harry’s undoing, but they could have been.’

‘In Budapest?’

‘Budapest, New York, Tokyo. He was always getting out of contact with the rest of us.’

‘But you’ve often said you respect each other’s space.’

‘Too much, in the case of Harry. He disappeared into a space none of us were aware of.’

‘From all I’ve heard about Harry, he comes across as a likeable guy.’

‘He was – or is, I suppose I’d better say. We valued his company as well as his playing.’

But not the playing away, Mel thought. ‘As his replacement, I often find myself wondering what he was like. I don’t even know his age. I may be wrong, but I get the impression he was one of my generation.’

‘A few years your senior.’

‘What was his musical background?’