Ravel

by Jean Echenoz

  Still overtired, he takes another vacation in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Things always settle down when he goes back where he was born: the ocean stretches out languorously, a pure sun sits in the vast sky, Samazeuilh and Marie Gaudin are there to welcome him, and yet it’s during that summer that everything begins to fall seriously apart. Now certain gestures ordinarily accomplished swiftly and automatically begin to slow down or go astray. Writing, for example: Ravel, a man so concerned with form and style, seems to be having trouble getting words down even when making a list of errands. One Sunday at the bullfights with the Gaudins, without being able to explain just what he’s looking for, he hunts through his pockets for a long time, then when Edmond pulls a cigarette from his, Ravel pounces on it: that’s what it was. There is also the beach where, rather a good swimmer, he has always loved to venture far out into the waves, but now he says he can no longer execute certain movements in the water: they become different, go in unexpected directions. And still at the shore, when he tries to teach Marie the art of skipping stones, the action goes awry, sending the missile into his friend’s face.

  Three days after that incident, stubbornly refusing to stop swimming, he heads out into the open water and doesn’t come back. A rescue party finds him floating on his back, letting himself drift while awaiting help. Brought back to safety and asked how he feels, he replies simply that he has forgotten how to swim. As for the doctors, not knowing what to think, they suggest that he continue his vacation in cooler weather, exchanging the Atlantic for the English Channel, for example: the beaches up north, they say, are much more invigorating. Arrangements are made to have him invited to Le Touquet, and in fact after a month he seems to be doing better. He can go home.

  Perhaps he is doing a little better but he can also see that his handwriting is going downhill, losing its elegance to become hesitant, clumsy, heading toward illegibility. Since the surrealists have recently been doing their damnedest to stir things up, they decide to invite some celebrities to the office of Minotaure21 to take part in one of the group’s solemn pranks: this time taking the prints of famous hands and having them analyzed by an expert. Some rather diverse personalities are there, from Duchamp to Huxley and Gide to Saint-Exupéry. Even though Breton is highly suspicious of music—unless of course he just doesn’t understand it at all—he has insisted that Ravel participate in this event, the only musician invited. Ravel, who seems back in form, is quite pleased to take part in this extravaganza. He arrives smiling, hair as impeccable as ever, double-breasted charcoal gray suit, bright-eyed and sprightly, rather moved to find himself with the surrealists, who may interest him more than he lets on, and he willingly plays his part: the expert places Ravel’s hands on a plate coated with lampblack, then on some white paper, and that’s that.

  There’s a little more to come, however: they must all then sign their own handprints. Well, when Ravel’s turn comes and someone hands him an old-fashioned nib pen, he shrinks back. I can’t, he says simply, I can’t sign. My brother will send you my signature tomorrow. Then, turning to Valentine Hugo22 who has come with him: Let’s go, Valentine, let’s leave quickly. Emerging silently into a pouring rain, Ravel climbs hastily into a taxi that drives off. Valentine is left standing on the sidewalk. The surrealists look at one another. As for the expert, it’s a woman, Dr. Lotte Wolff. Her commentary has been preserved: He’s a complete idiot.

  Shortly afterward, taking advantage of the presence in Paris of the Galimir Quartet, the producer Canetti has proposed to Polydor that they record Ravel’s String Quartet. He lets the composer know that he would appreciate having him come supervise the recording sessions. Fine, says Ravel, all right. Once settled in the control room, he watches the procedure without trying to direct it. He approves or not of what he hears but from a distance, occasionally saying that it’s good, sometimes less so, sometimes that they must do it again. He specifies a few details, amending a slight liberty taken with a measure, correcting a tempo. After each movement, when they have played back the wax masters, they offer to do it over if he wishes, but since he doesn’t wish to that much, the whole affair is wrapped up that afternoon. When they have finished, while the musicians are putting their instruments into their cases before putting themselves into their coats, Ravel turns to Canetti: That was nice, he says, really nice, remind me again who the composer is. One is not obliged to believe this story.

  Since new examinations reveal no apparent organic lesion, he is sent to the Swiss mountains to rest. He has already experienced mountains in that guise, having spent a month after the war in a sanatorium to be treated for tuberculosis, never labeled as such and for which sun baths were the preferred remedy in those days. This time the prescription is to soak in nice hot water scented with pine bath oil every evening. Since he has to write his friends the Delages, who are expecting to hear from him, they finally become worried when no letter arrives. When they receive it at last, they go to Switzerland to see Ravel, who must then explain what happened: it had taken him eight days to write that letter, forced as he was to look up all the words in the Larousse dictionary so that he could write them down.

  That’s where we are. The stay in Switzerland has not helped at all. When he goes to a concert where one of his works is played, he still sometimes asks if it really is by him or, which isn’t any better, he murmurs to himself that, still and all, it was lovely. Since he now knows that he can’t write his name at all anymore, when young people rush up to him brandishing their pens like weapons, looking for an autograph when he leaves after a concert, escorted by Hélène, he passes through their midst like a robot, seeming to neither see nor hear them and suffering even more from this apparent disdain, put on for his protection, than from his awareness of his illness. Soon, no longer able to love anything but solitude, he spends hours in an armchair on his balcony at Montfort, gazing out at the valley he had moved there to admire. Hélène joins him outdoors, worries about him, asks what he’s doing there. He replies simply that he’s waiting, but without saying for what. He lives in a fog that each day stifles him a little more even though one activity persists: he goes for a long walk in the woods every day. He never gets lost there. But it’s the world he’s losing, and its objects: dining one evening with his publisher, what does he do but pick up the fork by its tines, realize this right away, and dart a quick look of distress at Marguerite, who is close by.

  In short, things aren’t going well at all. Ida Rubinstein becomes concerned and involved. Ida is no less tall, thin, beautiful, and rich than she is generous, enough to think that Ravel must have a change of scenery and to start taking care of this. It’s a grand trip to Spain and then Morocco that she organizes for him, and it’s Leyritz who will be his companion. Let’s set out. In Tangier, things seem to be looking up already. In Marrakesh, for three weeks he roams the souks in all directions without any more getting lost than he does in the forest of Rambouillet, and back at the hotel, he manages to write three measures in the presence of Leyritz, who regains hope. Ravel is always welcomed and entertained wherever he goes, to the point of even involuntary homage, as on the day when, in an ocean of bicyclists, he seems to have heard a telegraph messenger open a path for himself by whistling Boléro—there again, no one is obliged to believe this story. In Fez, he is received by the French diplomatic representative who, while showing him around the city, suggests that it might prove inspiring to him. Oh, says Ravel, if I were to write something Arab, it would be much more Arab than all this. Leyritz reports back on everything by postcard to Ida Rubinstein who, for her part, telephones every day. Leyritz declares that all is well: Ravel seems quite pleased with his reception, is working a little, has even written to his brother. Leyritz tries to be reassuring but in truth Ravel is always prostrate with fatigue, irritated at everything, barely speaks at all and feels more than ever shut out of the world, especially of a world so swirling with dust, light, and movement. It is true that upon his return via Spain, once again he seems better. Attending the funeral of Duk
as, Ravel even turns to Koechlin:23 I wrote down a theme, he assures him; I can still write music. But this time he is the one nobody is obliged to believe.

  Not obliged because it’s happening fast and just gets worse: he now has trouble controlling most of his movements, has lost his sense of touch, can barely read or write at all anymore, and expresses himself with ever greater difficulty, constantly confusing words, with fewer and fewer of them at his command. As for music, although he can still sing or play a little from memory, and recognize works people arrange for him to hear, he can no longer read a score or decipher it at the piano. Not to mention sleep, which is still in short supply.

  Technique Number 3: To try listing things. To remember for example all the beds in which he has slept since childhood. The task is important, it can take some time; whenever he does this he finds new beds in his memory—it takes so much time that it becomes boring: he can count on this boredom as a soporific factor.

  Objection: this boredom can also keep Ravel awake, lead him to ask himself unexpected questions, so that he remains alert. He might also handle things poorly: sometimes a torpor sets in to which he should surrender, but instead he resists it. So strong is his desire to sleep that he observes the approach of slumber too nervously, even if he can feel its imminent arrival: this clinical attention staves off drowsiness when it’s almost there, and he has to start all over again. It’s just that one can’t do everything at once, right?—always the same old story: it’s impossible to fall asleep while keeping a sharp eye on sleep.

  NINE

  IN ANY CASE, he has always been delicate. From peritonitis to tuberculosis and from Spanish flu to chronic bronchitis, and even though he holds himself as straight as an “i” buttoned up tight in his perfectly tailored clothes, his weary body has never been robust. Nor has his mind, either, steeped in sadness and boredom, although he never lets this show, and is never allowed to forget himself in sleep, which is strictly off-limits. This, however, is different: now he can never find the comb sitting in front of him on the dressing table, can no longer knot his tie without help, can’t manage to fix his cufflinks all by himself.

  People try to amuse him, they take him to concerts as much as possible, but he melts into the background in his seat, calm and motionless as if he were not there, already dead. When Toscanini returns to Paris, they manage to convince Ravel to go listen to him conduct one of his works. Somewhat guardedly, he goes, appears moved by the applause for the orchestra and conductor but, dug in at the back of his box, refuses to go congratulate him. When his companions are surprised, disappointed that he will not, by showing his pleasure, erase the old disagreement over Boléro, Ravel says no: he never answered my letter. As he is leaving the theater, a couple comes over to him. Their faces remind him vaguely of something, but what . . . Cher maître, they say to him, do you remember when you used to play Daphnis on our piano, a few years ago? Yes, yes, yes, says Ravel tonelessly, in a voice completely cut off from his thoughts, without seeming to have any idea who the couple are.

  Although he no longer recognizes many people, he notices everything. He can see that his movements miss their targets, that he grasps a knife by its blade, that he raises the lighted end of his cigarette to his lips only to correct himself immediately every time: No, he then murmurs to himself, not like that. He’s well aware that one doesn’t cut one’s nails that way, or put on glasses like that, and although he gets them on anyway to try to read Le Populaire, the muscles of his eyes won’t even let him follow the print anymore. He observes all that clearly, the subject of his collapse as well as its attentive spectator, buried alive in a body that no longer responds to his intelligence, watching a stranger live inside him.

  It’s tragic, really, what’s happening to me, he tells Marguerite. Be patient, she always replies, it won’t last. Just wait a bit. And besides, look at Verdi, he had to wait until he was eighty to compose Falstaff. But when Ravel continues to grieve she points out to him that even if he can’t compose anything else, his oeuvre is there. His oeuvre has been completed, she says again, a magnificent and well-balanced body of work. Ravel doesn’t let her finish her sentence, interrupting her in despair: But how can you say that? I haven’t written anything, I’m leaving nothing behind me, I haven’t said anything of what I wanted to say.

  He is alone in his house at Montfort, without any illusions. He has always been alone, but held aloft by music. Now he cannot stand his useless life anymore, rebels helplessly at no longer serving any purpose, at being locked up inside himself. Fully aware that it’s all over, he tries to organize this solitude. Every day, after tramping through the forest of Rambouillet, which he still knows by heart in spite of his condition, he goes home to spend hours sitting expectantly by the telephone, hoping for a call from Édouard (who must often be away on business), still chain-smoking in spite of the doctor’s orders, getting up to go empty the ashtray—a full ashtray is no less sad than an unmade bed. Every day as well, though, at five o’clock, he does get a visit from Jacques de Zogheb. As soon as Zogheb rings the doorbell, Ravel hurries to the door to try to open it. Since nothing in his body works anymore, his stiff fingers jerk the latch around in every direction and the bolt in the wrong one until he resigns himself to calling for his housekeeper. Through the door, Zogheb hears Ravel’s increasingly frustrated curses answered by the desperate yapping of Mme Révelot until at last the door opens.

  Zogheb takes Ravel by the arm; they go into the red-and-gray drawing room. Zogheb sits down on the sofa while Ravel lounges in an easy chair near the window. And every day it’s the same dialogue. How are you? asks Zogheb. Poorly, says Ravel softly. Things are still the same. And when asked how he is sleeping, Ravel shakes his head. Any appetite? continues Zogheb. Appetite, yes, says Ravel distantly, some. And have you worked a little? Ravel shakes his head again, then tears well up suddenly, veiling his eyes. Why did this happen to me, he says. Why? Zogheb does not reply. Then, after a silence: Still, I’d written some things that weren’t bad, hadn’t I? Zogheb does not reply. He stays with Ravel until eight o’clock and the next day, at five, he returns to ask the same questions. Every day is the same until night falls and the question of sleep arises.

  Technique Number 4: Potassium bromide, laudanum, veronal, nembutal, prominal, soneryl, and other barbiturates.

  Objection: after serving him well, narcotics are now of very little help to him, they really don’t do much anymore. Ravel does finally doze off, though, at the first glimmers of dawn. This interlude, however, brings only a troubled sleep disturbed by uneasy dreams that give him no rest: Ravel must confront monsters or even worse, escape from them. And it’s at the worst moment of those struggles that he awakes with a start, worn out, each time more exhausted than the evening before, not even in a bad mood, not even in any mood.

  It has taken some time but he is present when the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is finally performed as it was written, stripped at last by Jacques Février of Wittgenstein’s embellishments. During the concert, Ravel leans once more toward his neighbor to ask her if what they’re listening to is really by him, although this time there is an extenuating circumstance: he had never heard it in that version. But when, three months later, he attends another concert devoted to his works for piano, he appears not to realize that he is the one being applauded at the end. He must think that these ovations are meant for an Italian colleague sitting next to him, for he turns to him politely with a rigid smile and frighteningly empty eyes. Then he is taken to dinner, going along without saying anything, a ghost as well-dressed as ever, except that on the lining of his jacket, in case of an emergency, Mme Révelot has taken care to pin his address.

  Something must obviously be done; his friends discuss the situation constantly. In vain does Ida Rubinstein seek the advice of specialists in Switzerland, Germany, and England, who admit their perplexity. When two pioneers of brain surgery are consulted in Paris, one counsels against any intervention while the other says essentially that he woul
dn’t try anything either if the patient were just anyone, that the only thing to do would be to leave him in that state, though it would mean watching him endlessly fade away. But, well, it’s Ravel. Given the situation, it would be better to try something. It is possible that a successful intervention would restore his faculties to him, offering him years of new creativity. Despite the results of examinations, which can always be unreliable, the hypothesis of a tumor might yet be considered and, from that point of view, he is willing to operate. Clovis Vincent is a famous neurosurgeon, one can only have confidence in him, his judgment proves persuasive, and the operation is scheduled for two days later.

  Since Ravel’s skull must be shaved beforehand, Édouard and the others try to reassure him when, seeing his hair falling, he begs to be taken home. They try to convince him that this is simply for another X-ray examination, some more extensive tests he must have, but Ravel doesn’t believe any of it. No, no, he says faintly, I know they’re going to slice up my noggin. Then while they enturban his head with white cloths, he seems to decide to make the best of it, the first one to smile at his unexpected resemblance to Lawrence of Arabia.

  With bare hands and a saw, Dr. Vincent and his surgical team remove the right frontal panel of the skull, then open the dura mater transversely to see what’s going on inside. They find a brain slightly shrunken on the left but of normal aspect otherwise, without any particular indication of softening even if the convolutions, not too atrophied either, are separated by some edema. Discovering no tumor, they puncture the ventricles to obtain a small amount of spinal fluid, which appears only when pressure is applied to the area. They inject a little water there several times in the hope of effecting a dilation; the brain swells but shrinks immediately: the cerebral atrophy seems irreversible, in short they haven’t really gotten anywhere. Giving up, they close the site of the injection and, leaving the dura mater open, they replace the bone section, which they suture with brown thread.