The Voyage (5 page)

In the evening at an apartment on Karolinengasse, twenty to thirty people would have been standing under the chandelier said to be the largest and heaviest in Vienna, a city which has developed a chandelier neurosis, more cut-crystal chandeliers in Vienna than any city on earth, and so the spread of subtle artificial lighting, sipping champagne, chatting about this and that, pairs of women angled on apricot-colored settees, a few smokers, not a word of English, at least Frank Delage didn’t pick up any, to one side wearing his thin suit, waiting for something he could relate to, not even from the
waiters who had exceptionally smooth skin and stiff necks. He reached out for another glass as a tray passed. Elegance was important to these people. Much of it came from the immaculate state of their clothing and hair, the men especially. When he spotted Amalia von Schalla, who wore a silver dress, glittering as if lit up by electricity, she turned slightly, no more than a millimeter, enough to move out of his field of vision, and continued talking to several people at once. Delage wondered what he was doing there, she had scribbled down the address in the car, perhaps wanting to do or say something after what had occurred in the warehouse, touching his hand with a fingernail, “people will be there,” whatever that means. It is impossible to know what another person is thinking, it is difficult enough to know what we ourselves are thinking. In the piano warehouse, Delage didn’t know what her thoughts had been when his hand had—automatically—moved to her cheek and breast. In another room a piano and cello were being played. “Your name is? Amalia said you would come, and you did. Good. Let me introduce you to some of these wonderful people. On the phone Amalia reminded me you are from Sydney, not a place I have been to, unfortunately, and you know everything it is possible to know about pianos and their construction. Am I right? Even if only a speck of that is true, you must be very clever.” Frank Delage recognized her from the Sacher, Berthe Clothilde, large perspiring nose, which cried out for an oriental diamond, small eyes, not as slender as her friend, Amalia, sharp inquisitive manner, by extension the long single rope of large-diameter
pearls she continually twisted around one finger, while bobbing about below her throat a vintage brooch of a peacock, all gold and filigree (wings), its tail erupting like a fan cooling her throat. “It is a musical evening. Next month—it will be architecture. Or is it Islamic pottery? It doesn’t matter, there is much to learn. Are you with us for long? Look at Amalia. Where would our poor little Vienna be without her? Everybody wants to stand close to Amalia. There won’t be any room for Konrad”—glancing at Delage—“her husband. Excuse me.” The hostess stepped forward to greet a short man in a bulging black T-shirt, and a young woman with wild orange hair, wearing a transparent black blouse and various chains. Pierced lips, eyebrows and so on, streaks of color, paint thrown over their faces and hair, appeared in the early evening in parts of Sydney, and even other cities of Australia, as well as across Europe, England too, small outbreaks of flamboyant conformity, Delage felt around for his pen and notebook. Everybody had drifted into the adjoining room where the cellist and the male pianist continued playing, a Steinway, Delage noted, of course, an apartment with its own music room, its own Steinway concert grand, next to it a harpsichord, its ancient lid closed, mercifully, as far as Delage was concerned. The inadequacies of the harpsichord created the piano! The harpsichord had a bucolic scene on the lid, some sort of German custom, Delage assumed, cavorting nymphs, the distant castle etc., and so on, Old Europe arranging the scenery even back then, which gave Delage the idea, he made a note, paint a scene of native trees, eucalypts, on his piano which would rear up into a forest
when the lid was raised (notes flitting like birds through the smooth trunks?). If not to everybody’s taste it would at least declare where it was manufactured, a graphic reminder of the differences between his piano and the antiquated, established pianos, he needed as much help as he could get, from anywhere. He also wrote in his notebook something he had read in a newspaper, “All the same in our differences.” Or words similar, he’d have to think about that. Chairs had been arranged in rows, the men continued talking in a subdued manner, women sat expectantly. The cellist had the human-shaped instrument between her legs, giving birth to difficult music, the pianist who wore a white skivvy kept glancing across at her, the hostess, Frau Berthe Clothilde close at hand, waiting patiently for them to finish. There was nothing for it but to continue listening. Delage half turned to the blond woman who had taken the seat beside him, “What is it they’re playing?” not expecting an answer. “I would be the last person to ask,” came the voice, which was how he met Elisabeth von Schalla. “I like a tune, almost any tune,” Delage went on. “It’s not a lot to ask. Do you think our pianist knows what his fingers are up to? Or is it the contraption he’s trying to play? That’s an old piano making heavy weather of it, I feel like blocking my ears.” She was younger than he was, ten years, a rough guess, which would explain why she listened to him, instead of getting up and changing seats. He persevered. “I am not 110 percent sure he’s a professional pianist anyway. Where did he get the tan? A pianist usually spends all his time indoors. He looks more like a ski-instructor, playing a bit of
piano on the side. Knitted gloves. He would have learned to play by blowing into his hands and wearing knitted gloves. You probably don’t know, but where I come from there’s a hell of a lot of snow.” He felt he had to say something. “Every year in our winter, plane-loads of Swiss and Austrian ski-instructors fly in, and work the ski resorts, taking our women.” Again Delage wondered what he was doing in such a large room in Vienna, the strange impenetrable aspects of it. He could hear himself talking too much, as if he was talking to himself—one way of showing exasperation. And while he went on talking his eyes rested on Amalia von Schalla’s head and shoulders there in the front row, the refined gray-blond hair pulled together with an oval-shaped diamond clasp which seemed to flash signals back at him. To think that he had come to Europe with one and only one aim, to introduce to the world his new piano, a truly remarkable design, “if I do say so myself,” only to find his attention and therefore crucial energies drawn to the Austrian woman, a woman from the upper echelons, that was for sure, who had the softness to show some interest in him. Sun from the porthole divided her body at an angle. “My mother said you did not know anybody there, apart from her,” Elisabeth said in a vague sort of voice. She sat up, proud of her breasts. “Aren’t you pleased I went looking for you?” The music had stopped, the man in the bulging black T-shirt stepped forward without introduction, both he and his opinions being well known in Vienna, at least to the so-called intelligentsia, the cognoscenti, without notes, the much-feared music critic of the daily newspaper, squinted
and began speaking in rasping German. “What’s he on about? I don’t understand a word he’s saying.” Leaning against him, she breathed into his ear as she translated. “To say that Austria is the land of neurosis is to say something we do not need to hear any more. It is what the English call ‘old hat.’ In the same basket I put the figure of the mediocre watercolorist, undoubtedly one of our most successful exports, the devotee of
Tristan
, who took his impotence and his many rejections and disappointments out on the world, and I won’t bother to mention, as a by-the-way, his sympathizers, still alive, prominent citizens, and doing well in Vienna . . .” The speaker took a few steps backward and forward. “There is a different malaise now, just as insidious. Europe is tired. This city we call Vienna is tired. A spiritual and artistic exhaustion is here. Vienna is a broad face with half-closed eyes, stone circles under the eyes. And the eyes are old man’s eyes. It has always been difficult producing something exceptional. It is more difficult now. Hemmed in on all sides our writers are crazed, become vitriolic, repetitious, misanthropic, anti-state, catch alight. We all have our heroes who have committed suicide. Here every artistic endeavor shifts forward, then gets caught up in the circles.” From the front row Berthe Clothilde turned to her audience, smiling for their approval. It is always interesting to hear somebody attack their place of birth, the interpreter could have been smiling as she kept her mouth close to Delage’s ear. “The future is in other places. There are questions you should be asking. You are a pampered, complacent, self-satisfied, half-asleep lot who don’t care—see the way you
sit smiling at me! You are satisfied with what you know, and nothing more. You think that is enough. It is not. It is not enough. All it means is you are not sufficiently new. You are facing the other direction. Isn’t it time to look and listen beyond where you are? Wearing jewelry and silk neckties are in themselves not enough. You dress up and attend concerts, and the opera of course, always the opera, but you no longer listen. You are into repeats. Take up embroidery instead.” This was more or less what Frank Delage had been saying for years to anyone who would listen, be open to the new, although the Austrian expressed it better, much better. Under the flattering light of the chandelier, the overweight unshaven critic, who had done nothing in his life but listen to music, or read sheet music, or books analyzing music and the lives and correspondence of the great composers, cut a shabby figure in black, waving his arms about. To Delage, the speaker had every right to be impatient—he was surrounded by the problem! At least Delage could show a way forward with his breakaway piano. “Without renewal,” the mouth sighed into his ear, “everything falls in a heap, stays the same, doesn’t move. Is that really what you want? New movements must be allowed, and there are improvements to old instruments—they are waiting for us all.” At this point, the volunteer-translator began nibbling Delage’s ear and, unable to do two things at once, she stopped whispering the words, they’d hardly spoken, they hadn’t actually met, he didn’t know who she was or what she wanted, let alone, had anybody asked, what she looked like. She had taken the seat next to him. With his eyes fixed on the fearless critic,
he could feel her mouth smiling at his confusion, which suggested she was young, perhaps too young, but he couldn’t turn just then to see. If he turned she’d be forced to stop, which would surely embarrass her, and he didn’t want that; on the other hand, without translation he couldn’t understand a word being said, aside from the occasional name, Schoenberg and Glenn Gould he recognized, music was something he didn’t know a lot about, not in the fine details, he was a manufacturer, it happened to be concert grands, a narrow field, although it is amazing how businessmen are self-assured in other, entirely different fields, a businessman will have firm opinions on abstract art, or Russian history, or landscape gardening. The speaker was coming to the end, for all Delage knew, summing up by the look, it was hard to tell, he was moving his arms slowly, horizontally, like von Karajan requiring softness from the horns. In fact, as the restlessness of the audience showed, the speaker had shifted to questions of a philosophical nature, which would not normally interest Delage, who now concentrated on what was being said, while trying to work out the right response to the nibbling of his ear, an incident so unexpected it had become pleasant. “Music and the playing of music is important. Music does no harm, it is said. It’s something conductors like to trot out when interviewed. I’m not sure about it. What is harm? Let us examine ‘harm’—in a musical context—for a moment.” The speaker knew his subject from every possible angle, he thought about little else, listened with his eyes closed, he hardly had time to shave or wash, it gave him an untidy concentrated authority, enough to
attract a biggish crowd, although Delage noticed some of the men were nodding off or checking their watches. In Vienna, he was the man to talk to, no doubt about it, Delage decided, he’d introduce himself as soon as his lecture finished, if he could get near him. Perhaps he would write an article about the Delage piano for one of the newspapers, that alone would make the trip all the way from Australia worthwhile. To ready himself, he turned to the woman beside him, breaking the contact with his ear. She remained half facing him and didn’t smile, while he thought perhaps he should smile, just a bit, to ease himself away, not wanting to show disapproval. She had a factual expression, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, slightly long face and blouse buttoned up to her throat, which didn’t look chaste, if anything the opposite. In a foreign city, Delage was having more trouble than usual reading the signs, he resorted to an affected casualness, according to his sister in Brisbane, a nuisance to the rest of the world, she said, to women most of all. “Our hostess, Frau Clothilde—” She immediately nodded, “Her mother was one of Sigmund Freud’s patients, before the war that is.” “Really?” Delage was not sure what to say next. Elisabeth turned, “I don’t think she looks hysterical either. A perfectly well-adjusted woman.” Delage was watching the Bertolt Brecht lookalike who had stopped in mid-sentence, a tall man with an anxious look had hurried in from the side and taken his elbow to tell him, Delage learned later, his house near Ottakring had caught fire and was still ablaze; without another word, the critic hurriedly left. “He’s going, and I was keen to see him. I had something I wanted
to talk about.” Again, Delage felt to one side of whatever was happening, an opportunity was there but moved away from him. Elisabeth stood up. “I’m looking for my mother. I’m coming right back.”

Delage never went into Athens to see for himself how the most learned, graceful and philosophical city had become the ugliest, crassest, most disgraceful of cities, all sense of proportion trashed, along with imparted wisdom; what a people to allow it. At least Port Said, a few days later, where he had a haircut on the footpath while the ship unloaded European textbooks, electronics, medical instruments to take on Egyptian brass lamps, dates, cotton tea towels, there were no disappointments, it was all matter-of-fact, wide open in the brown heat, a straightforward mess with no reminders of previous grandeur, figures lay asleep on benches, the eucalyptus tree, dreamy slow-motion movement, the figures in long costume or else wearing cheap shirts, all of which left him in a stationary position, a person in a false situation, he distinctly felt. “Do you think there’s a piano here—anywhere? I don’t think so.” In hot countries, the weather favors drums and single-string instruments, and their repetitious melancholy, a grand piano would require tuning every other day. They were in a park, Elisabeth seated beside him. The other passengers went off in different directions, their alertness to novel sights gave the impression they had more energy than the locals, an optical illusion, most likely. Delage was happy to remain seated in the park with Elisabeth, a small crowd of men stood around watching. It was one thing to sit down at meals with virtual
strangers and make polite conversation, quite another to step off the ship and join them sightseeing. There is always a leader who attracts the timid, the conventional, it is how the European political and piano world has operated for centuries, to its detriment, Delage was looking down at his shoes and up at the young men looking at him, the majority fall into line behind the most established name in pianos, the least progressive piano, too afraid to take another path, as it is in all aspects of the world. “There I was, I experienced it firsthand. And I’m not impressed,” he said to her. The two weeks spent in Vienna had passed quickly. Elisabeth’s father told Delage from behind his ornate desk that his life up to sixty-five had passed slowly, but now approaching old age it began passing quickly. “Something for you to look forward to, perhaps,” with the faintest smile. Seated in the shade on a stone bench (so this is Port Said?), hemmed in by flat-roofed concrete buildings, people nearby slow-moving, watchful, he felt the opportunities for his Australian-made piano dissolving as Europe receded. There was no sign of Europe from where he was sitting. From the downtrodden park in Egypt, it didn’t exist, he could have been somewhere in outer space, Elisabeth seated beside him, providing a noticeable presence of loyalty, that was something; already he had difficulty remembering Vienna and its traffic, its heavy circles of architecture. It goes without saying they would stick their noses up in the air at an intruder, a concert grand made in a hopeless backward place, Australia. “Probably the wrong thing to do, going to Vienna. It had to be done, but I went too early—I’d say by about two years,” he
was saying, more or less to himself. “An expensive mistake, a fiasco, it achieved absolutely bloody nothing.” And never had he talked so much as he had in Vienna. “A fiasco did you say?” “That’s right.” In Sydney he would go for long periods without talking, or talking as little as possible, months would pass, then without any reason he’d begin talking his head off, something triggered it, whatever, there was nothing stopping him, whether talking to a single person or an entire table, they would hang on his every word, so it seemed to him, holding forth on a subject, packing it with information, not only about his piano, plenty of other subjects too, his line of thought wandering as he introduced other thoughts, other angles, so many possibilities and facts out there, including complaints, before bringing it back to the original subject, he could be amazing, very persuasive. This was Frank Delage. Sometimes even he had to remind himself. And his sister used to complain he didn’t talk enough, that is, to her, but as he grew older he knew he was talking more, coming out with pointless sayings and recollections and suggestions that went on too long, just as his street directions went on and on, there are women after a certain age who talk too much, cannot stop themselves, going on without pause, a word-flow not allowing an entry point, it was a habit he wouldn’t want to become established, he didn’t want to go down that path. “At least one thing of interest came out of Vienna, wouldn’t you say?” still with her head turned. Delage laughed. Here he was on a stone bench in Egypt with the archetypal blond from upper Austria, except she was unusual, very, her visual characteristic was indifference. “My
sister I’ve told you about keeps telling me I exaggerate. She of course is someone who’s never exaggerated in her entire life.” “I have not noticed exaggeration.” But Elisabeth showed little interest in what he was doing, or was trying to do with his piano. If anything, she shrugged at the subject and at the broad polished object itself, as if she wanted to avoid anything to do with music, while Delage talked too much about it. At least he had plenty of other things to say—when they occurred to him. “Why are we being stared at by these boys? Do they not have something better to do?” Even this she said in a languid way, as if she was accustomed to hot countries, such as Saudi Arabia nearby, or Laos, Cambodia, Burma, countries that were humid as well as hot, whereas the only hot countries she had been to were Spain and northern Italy, when she was a student. “It’s not me they’re interested in,” he said. “They only have eyes for you. If I were them I’d be doing the same.” Delage had been addressing a postcard to his sister, and stood up. There were five other passengers on the
Romance
, Dutch, English, two sisters from Melbourne, in each case their hair, skin, firmness of jaw, parts of clothing made them recognizable from specific parts of the world. The Dutchman introduced himself as Zoellner (bookseller, Amsterdam); to Elisabeth, the sisters were “very sure of their place, very. I cannot understand why.” One followed the other in divorce or separation, it doesn’t matter which, now sister-companions, six years apart. The Englishman, from Folkestone, was a blinker, always at short intervals an eruption of blinking, tiring to watch—wife equally tall, alongside. The cabins were a surprise, decked out in brown carpet. Delage’s
had a desk, an office chair. It was supposed to be the second engineer’s cabin, it said on the door, but it had been many years since a second engineer was needed on such container ships. Above the bed a large porthole faced the containers stacked in their different colors to the bow, the yellow gantry almost touched the window as it came forward, loading or unloading the “boxes,” so they are called. Elisabeth’s cabin was directly below. Most of the time she spent with Delage, and yet she didn’t seem to want anything. She slept in his bed.