King imagined a situation which occurred during the war. An SS officer was assassinated by the Resistance, so the local commander rounded up a hundred civilians and held them hostage, guarded over by a single machine gunner. They stood huddled in the market square, with only the lone soldier holding them back from freedom. If one person tried to take action, he would be shot immediately. If fifty ran for the gunner, then perhaps a couple of dozen would die before he was overpowered, and the survivors would run free. But the hundred hostages stood and did nothing. If there had been a million of them, watched over by the gunner, would the crowd have wasted a moment over the puny guard? Surely, they would have pushed forward to overwhelm him without a second thought. But what if there had been a thousand? Or five hundred? What is it that can give a group of people the courage to put aside their individual thoughts of self-preservation, so that others might live? Yet each of those hundred civilians stood firm. Each clung to the hope that surviving another five minutes improved their chance of eventually going free. Some time later, the young machine gunner received the command to put an end to them all.
And what, King wondered, if that soldier had made the following humane offer to his hundred hostages: he would spare the first one who tried to escape, but would kill any who tried to follow. What then would be the response? A moment of nervousness, perhaps, and then a stampede.
A nation is oppressed, and does nothing. If one person cries out and protests, he is imprisoned. But then that rare thing appears: a leader who has both power and humanity. And he decides to be lenient with some of those who cry out. Then the stampede becomes inevitable. This was what was in King’s mind as he idly watched the anxious stranger at the counter.
He had his back to King, and had decided against food, which King considered a wise choice. This was not King’s usual cafe, and he would not use it again. Now the man was paying the girl, and turning round, trying not to spill the cup of tea he held. He looked again in King’s direction, and then he came over, paused, and asked King if he knew him from somewhere:
‘Excuse me; have we by any chance met before?’
And there was something in the way that this was said; in the slightly nervous tone of the young man’s voice, that made King realize that no, they did not know each other, and they had never met or seen each other before. It was only a line.
It was a line which King himself had used with countless women. In cafes like this, or in the street; the neutral testing of a situation. Sometimes they see through you at once and tell you you’re mistaken. And there are those who deal with the question as if it were a problem in algebra; searching their minds for the possibility of some forgotten encounter – mentally cataloguing the places where a chance meeting may have occurred, then finally concluding that there must be some mistake. But there are always a few who take it in the intended spirit; no they say, with a perplexed smile, I don’t think so – and you throw in a few suggestions and still she says no; she doesn’t go to that pub, no she doesn’t play tennis, but she does go swimming, and she often visits such and such a cafe, and perhaps you’ve seen her in the library.
‘You’re not an historian, are you?’
‘No,’ said King, ‘physics. Why don’t you join me?’
Robert introduced himself; he was a lecturer in the history department, and they considered a few possibilities where they might have met or seen each other. Robert’s nervous manner made King feel correspondingly more relaxed.
‘So you’re a physicist? Such a pity there’s so little communication between the arts and sciences; I’m sure each has a great deal to offer the other.’
‘Don’t you regard history as a science?’
‘Only up to a point. History is driven by certain principles, and it’s our business to see how those principles have been put into effect.’
King’s companion seemed rather puzzled that he should be so eager to discard the game of identifying some fictitious previous encounter. King was more interested in pursuing the line of thought which had been evolving while he had watched the stranger pay for his tea.
‘And what,’ said King, ‘are the principles which drive history?’
Robert fidgeted. ‘Human nature. Are you sure you’ve never been to the Red Lion? You really are awfully familiar.’
Robert kept looking now and again beyond King’s face, into other regions of the shabby cafe; still as if searching for something.
‘Are you expecting company?’ King asked him.
‘Me? No; I sometimes see friends here – sort of place where you’re always bumping into someone you know. You don’t usually come here though, I take it?’
Charles told him he preferred the one on Union Street, which was more convenient for him – half way between his office and his flat. Then Robert asked him whereabouts his place was, and what was it like (historians were never put very high on the housing list), and did he live there with his family?
‘Single, I see,’ said Robert. ‘Like me – best way to be, I think.’
King didn’t want to be thrown off his chosen theme. ‘So you’re a scientist of human nature, then?’
Robert laughed. ‘You can’t turn history into physics; it’s not a science in that sense. But you’ve got to be objective and analytical about things – that’s the scientific side of it. So refreshing to get a different point of view – you know, we need people like you to keep us on our toes.’
King wasn’t listening. ‘Suppose a hundred people are held hostage by a lone gunner. Each individual wants to live, but the only way that can be possible is if the crowd charges at the gunner en masse. The crowd can only survive at the expense of a few individuals; the simple sum of individual desires leads them all to wait motionless, in the interests of their own preservation, until they’re all killed.’
Robert looked still more perplexed. ‘In your crowd of hostages, though, there might be one brave man who decides to take his chances and run for the gunner; then the others might follow.’
‘I see,’ said King, and took a sip of tea. ‘But must there always be leaders? If you watch a flock of starlings they all fly one way or the other in unison – but I don’t think there’s one special bird that the others follow. Sometimes crowds act spontaneously; things happen without any one individual necessarily willing it to happen.’
‘But if history were about nothing more than crowd behaviour then you’d stand even less chance of being scientific about it. How can you explain the way a crowd of people behaves?’
‘That’s my point,’ said King. ‘And what is a nation, except a very big crowd of people?’
‘You scientists are so abstract! History is about facts, and interpreting facts.’
Robert steered the conversation back into the realm of the concrete. They found themselves talking about films, and whether it was better to go to the cinema alone or with a friend. And while Robert spoke, King found the memory rising involuntarily within him of the flesh which had lain next to his the previous night, and the slimy wetness as he had pushed his fingers inside her. Like drawing the entrails of a chicken, once when he was a boy. You could tell the future like that.
When they had both finished their tea, Robert offered to buy more, which Charles accepted. He watched Robert go back to the counter and try to attract the attention of the morose girl.
Must there always be facts? A flock of birds veers to the left, in a great wave – what facts lead to this? A hundred people stand cowed in a market square, or rush in a mad frenzy. A nation does nothing, or rises up in revolt, and then veers to the left or the right. Is there some sequence of events which can explain all this? And if explanation is possible, does this mean the ability to predict what will happen subsequently, or only the ordering of those events into some satisfactory pattern?
Robert was placing a tray on the table. Then lifting the pot; saying he’d be mother. He was pouring tea into their two cups. Plain facts. But what was his aim? Only to prolong their conversation – per
haps. Or else simple thirst, and politeness. But King still had the feeling he had when Robert first came over to him; that Robert had been trying out a line. That Robert had entered this conversation with the attitude with which King would begin talking to a pretty girl in the street. King was flattered by the thought that Robert might find him attractive. And there was something in the way Robert watched him while he spoke which tended to confirm such a motive. The eager way he agreed at certain moments.
Robert was apologising for the tea. ‘Horrible stuff in here. Don’t know why I keep coming back.’
‘Why do you?’
‘Oh. Habit I suppose. It’s warm and wet. The tea.’
King saw a young man of about twenty enter the cafe. He looked cold; rubbed his hands together, and steam was coming from his mouth like the breath of a horse. He closed the door behind him and walked to the counter. He bought a cup of coffee and went to sit down out of King’s view, but now Robert was watching him. King followed the movement of Robert’s eyes as the young man walked past and found a table somewhere at the back. And the eyes swung round to meet King’s again.
‘You’re not a musician are you?’ said Robert. ‘CPO?’ Robert played violin with that amateur orchestra; but no, he hadn’t seen King there – piano was King’s instrument. Robert said they were giving a concert soon, if King was interested. The main work would be the Pastoral Symphony.
‘Not one of his best, I’ve always thought,’ said King. ‘Beethoven Six, I mean. So repetitive; like sitting on a train and watching the fields go by one after the other – all exactly the same. All those sequences in the first movement; a real bore. It’s very overrated – almost as much as the Ninth.’
Robert was outraged. ‘The Ninth overrated? How can you say such a thing?’
‘The first three movements I love, but all that Nuremberg Rally stuff in the finale – no thanks.’
‘Are you saying Beethoven was a Nazi?’
‘Of course not. But I think the finale of the Ninth is the very worst sort of populism. Get a nice simple tune and play it again and again – loudly. Freu-de, schö-ner Göt-terfun-ken …’
King swung his arms in march rhythm while he sang, and Robert laughed, but then was embarrassed they might be making a scene.
‘Well I think the Ode to Joy is beautiful,’ he said. ‘It’s about freedom, equality.’
‘That’s just romantic nonsense. It’s a third-rate poem set to a third-rate tune. And if it’s really about freedom, then why do we keep hearing it on the radio?’
Robert flinched.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Robert, I love Beethoven more than anyone – all I’m saying is that he made mistakes. But that’s what makes him human.’
King could tell that although Robert disagreed, he was taking some delight in hearing these opinions. He was watching King in the way that a child watches a circus artist; waiting to see what comes next – which only made King all the more eager to perform.
‘And the Missa Solemnis – a waste of, what was it, four or five years’ work. Good in places, that’s all.’
Robert was suitably shocked. ‘What about the late quartets? What do you think of them?’
King pronounced his judgement: ‘Beethoven’s finest works, without doubt.’ Robert smiled and sighed with relief at the favourable decision.
In music, they had found the common ground that was to form the basis of a friendship that would last until Robert’s death five years later.
‘Do you ever do any accompanying?’
‘Never tried it,’ said King. ‘Wouldn’t mind a go, though. How do you fancy reading through some scores some time?’
Robert agreed enthusiastically, and they arranged that he would bring his violin to King’s flat next Wednesday evening. Then King rose and said he’d better be going now, and wished him goodbye. Robert waited behind, finishing the remnants of tea in the pot as King walked out. King fancied he saw him leave his seat and walk towards the young man at the back. And he imagined Robert asking him if, by any chance, they had met somewhere.
A hundred people stand in the market square of a small town. King tried to remember which town it was. Somewhere in Kent, wasn’t it? The mayor was later hanged for collaborating.
9
The following Wednesday evening, Robert appeared at Charles’s door with his violin and an armful of scores. King invited him inside, and Robert expressed his admiration of the flat’s spaciousness, so that King had to explain how he had won the place, in order that Robert didn’t suspect some act of bribery towards the Housing Department.
Robert then went straight to the piano and played an A. He put down the violin case which still burdened one arm, and sat himself on the stool. Then launched into a Mozart sonata; rather mechanically, and too quick. He got caught out on an arpeggio, tried the passage again a couple of times, then stopped.
‘It’s a nice instrument,’ he said.
Charles told him it had belonged to his grandmother. ‘She was a very fine pianist – I think she could have made a career out of it, if she’d wanted.’
Robert was opening the violin case. The instrument lay inside, swaddled in some soft cloth which Robert was lifting clear of the dark wood, then he picked up the violin and bow and began drawing a few notes. Charles gave him another A from the piano, and Robert twisted the tuning pegs until he became satisfied. Then he played a quick passage of Bach while he warmed up. This sounded very different from the effort he had made on Charles’s piano.
Robert put the violin back down in its case, then began to turn over the pile of scores he had brought.
‘What do you want to try, Charles? How about Mozart?’
They went through one of the sonatas. It was a new experience for King, holding the strict rhythm and keeping pace with the violin. He was grateful for the simpler passages in bare octaves.
On Saturday, he had seen Anne again; the woman with whom he had lain soundly sleeping before his first encounter with Robert the previous week. He would have preferred to be alone; she showed up at his flat without warning, and then wanted to stay the night. King knew that their relationship was dead. It was like a withered limb which has atrophied to the extent that the only hope is to have it lopped off.
Charles could see the da capo approaching. ‘Shall we do the repeat?’ he asked.
‘Alright.’ Then the turning back of the page, and again the rising of the theme in plain octaves.
Anne was twenty-four – three years younger than Charles. She was a schoolteacher, and he had met her one afternoon in the Fitzwilliam Museum, where he had gone to think about a particularly stubborn calculation. She was with a party of children; he had watched her as she led them round the exhibits, and she had also noticed him. At first when their eyes met her face was expressionless, or perhaps puzzled. When they passed later she smiled, and was near enough to speak, but only shrugged to express the difficulty of leading a group of excitable children round a boring museum, because someone thinks it’s good for them. Then she had armed them all with clipboards and paper to draw on, and they were sent to find something worth sketching. She was standing in a corner while the children were dispersing, and King took his chance to begin a conversation. Two months later, he lay sleeping in her bed until half past nine in the morning.
When King made a mistake he had to pass over it in order to hold the beat – difficult looking passages he would simplify so as to keep time with Robert’s violin. Then towards the end of the movement, he proposed playing the second half repeat, to give him another chance; and now things went more smoothly. When the movement came to its final close he felt satisfied. They went straight into the minuet.
King would leave Anne, the memory of whose flesh still refused to be refashioned into the memory of that first night, or the first moment when he had watched the movement of her body as she walked in the museum, and the bending of her body as she stooped to talk to the children, because King knew that all he felt was a great emptiness, and he
r flesh for him was only another region of that emptiness – that vast and unending void. He felt the chords repeat under his fingers, and each chord although it was repeated unchanged was nevertheless different, and each chord was a new mystery, and a new thing suggested, and the idea of a new world – of a new life which might be better, somehow. If only life could hold as much meaning as a piece of music! But he would never be able to recapture that mystery, when he had watched her body as she walked through the museum and each movement suggested something unseen, something to be discovered.
And when the theme of the minuet returned it came back renewed. The violin was sounding close behind his ear, swaying behind him as Robert joined with him in the melody. He could hear the rise and fall of Robert’s breathing; the sighs barely suppressed. Now he knew Robert as well as he knew this music. And then it was ended, and they were silent.
King needed to speak. ‘Not bad.’ He turned to look at Robert – in whose face he saw a look of pleasure, and a lifting of the concentration which they had both maintained. Robert agreed; not bad.
King suggested a break before they do anything else – he went to the kitchen to make tea, and again Robert rattled a few bars of Mozart on the piano. Then he felt Robert enter the kitchen behind him; coming close to stand at his side. Robert took the teapot and carried it to the other room. King followed, and they sat down in the two armchairs. King raised the subject of politics.
‘Did you see it in the papers today? Looks as if they’re going to put a Forum representative on one of the government committees. Only a gesture, mind you.’
‘Sometimes gestures can count for a lot,’ Robert replied. ‘Never underestimate the power of symbols. Even if whoever they took had no political influence, he would still be there – and that’s the important thing.’
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