Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

by Kazuo Ishiguro

  “Look at Marcus Lightfoot,” he said. “Look at Kris Bugoski. Or Tarrentini. Do any of them have a signature sound the way you do? No. Do they have your tenderness? Your vision? Do they have even half your technique? No. But they look right, so doors keep opening for them.”

  “What about Billy Fogel?” I said. “He’s ugly as hell and he’s doing fine.”

  “Billy’s ugly all right. But he’s sexy, bad guy ugly. You, Steve, you’re… Well, you’re dull, loser ugly. The wrong kind of ugly. Listen, have you ever considered having a little work done? Of a surgical nature, I mean?”

  I went home and repeated this all to Helen because I thought she’d find it as funny as I did. And at first, sure enough, we had a lot of laughs at Bradley’s expense. Then Helen came over, put her arms around me and told me that for her at least, I was the most handsome guy in the universe. Then she kind of took a step back and went quiet, and when I asked her what was wrong, she said nothing was wrong. Then she said that perhaps, just perhaps, Bradley had a point. Maybe I should consider having a little work done.

  “No need to look at me like that!” she yelled back. “Everyone’s doing it. And you, you have a professional reason. Guy wants to be a fancy chauffeur, he goes and buys a fancy car. It’s no different with you!”

  But at that stage I gave the idea no further thought, even if I was beginning to accept this notion that I was “loser ugly.” For one thing, I didn’t have the money. In fact, the very moment Helen was talking about fancy chauffeurs, we were nine and a half thousand dollars in debt. This was characteristic of Helen. A fine person in many ways, but this ability to forget completely the true state of our finances and start dreaming up major new spending opportunities, this was very Helen.

  Money aside, I didn’t like the idea of someone cutting me up. I’m not so good with that kind of thing. One time, early in my relationship with Helen, she invited me to go running with her. It was a crisp winter’s morning, and I’ve never been much of a jogger, but I was taken by her and anxious to impress. So there we were running around the park, and I was doing fine keeping up with her, when suddenly my shoe hit something very hard jutting out of the ground. I could feel a pain in my foot, which wasn’t so bad, but when I took off my sneaker and sock, and saw the nail on my big toe rearing up from the flesh like it was doing a Hitler-style salute, I got nauseous and fainted. That’s the way I am. So you can see, I wasn’t wild about face surgery.

  Then, naturally, there was the principle of the thing. Okay, I’ve told you before, I’m no stickler for artistic integrity. I play every kind of bubble-gum for the pay. But this proposition was of another order, and I did have some pride left. Bradley was right about one thing: I was twice as talented as most other people in this town. But it seemed that didn’t count for much these days. Because it has to do with image, marketability, being in magazines and on TV shows, about parties and who you ate lunch with. It all made me sick. I was a musician, why should I have to join in this game? Why couldn’t I just play my music the best way I knew, and keep getting better, if only in my cubicle, and maybe some day, just maybe, genuine music lovers would hear me and appreciate what I was doing. What did I want with a plastic surgeon?

  At first Helen seemed to see it my way, and the topic didn’t come up again for some time. That is, not until she phoned from Seattle to say she was leaving me and moving in with Chris Prendergast, a guy she’d known since high school and who now owned a string of successful diners across Washington. I’d met this Prendergast a few times over the years-he’d even come to dinner once-but I’d never suspected a thing. “All that sound-proofing in that cupboard of yours,” Bradley said at the time. “It works both ways.” I suppose he had a point.

  But I don’t want to dwell on Helen and Prendergast except to explain their part in getting me where I am now. Maybe you’re thinking I drove up the coast, confronted the happy couple, and plastic surgery became necessary following a manly altercation with my rival. Romantic, but no, that’s not the way it happened.

  What happened was that a few weeks after her phone call, Helen came back to the apartment to organise moving out her belongings. She looked sad walking around the place-where, after all, we’d had some happy times. I kept thinking she was about to cry, but she didn’t, and just went on putting all her things into neat piles. Someone would be along to pick them up in a day or two, she said. Then as I was on my way to my cubicle, tenor in hand, she looked up and said quietly:

  “Steve, please. Don’t go into that place again. We need to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Steve, for God’s sake.”

  So I put the sax back in its case and we went into our little kitchen and sat down at the table facing one another. Then she put it to me.

  There was no going back on her decision. She was happy with Prendergast, for whom she’d carried a torch since school. But she felt bad about leaving me, especially at a time when my career wasn’t going so good. So she’d thought things over and talked with her new guy, and he too had felt bad about me. Apparently, what he’d said was: “It’s just too bad Steve has to pay the price for all our happiness.” So here was the deal. Prendergast was willing to pay for me to have my face fixed by the best surgeon in town. “It’s true,” she said, when I looked back at her blankly. “He means it. No expense spared. All the hospital bills, recuperation, everything. The best surgeon in town.” Once my face was fixed, there’d be nothing holding me back, she said. I’d go right to the top, how could I fail, with the kind of talent I had?

  “Steve, why are you looking at me like that? This is a great offer. And God knows if he’ll still be willing in six months. Say yes right now and do yourself a big favor. It’s just a few weeks of discomfort, then whoosh! Jupiter and beyond!”

  Fifteen minutes later, on her way out, she said in much sterner tones: “So what is it you’re saying? That you’re happy playing in that little closet for the rest of your life? That you just love being this big a loser?” And with that, she left.

  The next day I went into Bradley’s office to see if he had anything for me, and I happened to mention what had occurred, expecting us to laugh about it. But he didn’t laugh at all.

  “This guy’s rich? And he’s willing to get you a top surgeon? Maybe he’ll get you Crespo. Or even Boris.”

  So now I had Bradley too, telling me how I had to take this opportunity, how if I didn’t I’d be a loser all my life. I left his office pretty angry, but he phoned later that same afternoon and kept on about it. If it was the call itself holding me back, he said, if it was the blow to my pride involved in picking up a phone and saying to Helen, yes, please, I want to do it, please get your boyfriend to sign that big check, if that’s what was holding me up, then he, Bradley, was happy to do all the negotiations on my behalf. I told him to go sit on a tall spike, and hung up. But then he called again an hour later. He told me he’d now figured it all out and I was a fool not to have done so myself.

  “Helen’s got this carefully planned. Consider her position. She loves you. But looks-wise, well, you’re an embarrassment when you’re seen in public. You’re no turn-on. She wants you to do something about it, but you refuse. So what’s she to do? Well, her next move’s magnificent. Full of subtlety. As a professional manager I have to admire it. She goes off with this guy. Okay, maybe she’s always had the hots for him, but really, she doesn’t love him at all. She gets the guy to pay for your face. Once you’re healed up, she comes back, you’re good-looking, she’s hungry for your body, she can’t wait to be seen with you in restaurants…”

  I stopped him here to point out that though over the years I’d become accustomed to the depths to which he could sink when persuading me to do something to his professional advantage, this latest ploy was somewhere so far down in the pits it was a place no light penetrated and where steaming horseshit would freeze in seconds. And on the subject of horseshit, I told him that while I understood how he, on account of his nature, could
n’t help shoveling the stuff all the time, it would still be sound strategy on his part to come up with the sort that had at least a chance of taking me in for a minute or two. Then I hung up on him again.

  Over the next few weeks, work seemed scarcer than ever, and each time I called Bradley to see if he had anything, he’d say something like: “It’s hard to help a guy who won’t help himself.” In the end, I began considering the whole matter more pragmatically. I couldn’t get away from the fact that I needed to eat. And if going through with this meant that eventually a lot more people got to hear my music, was that such a bad result? And what about my plans to lead my own band one day? How was that ever going to happen?

  Finally, maybe six weeks after Helen came up with the offer, I mentioned casually to Bradley that I was thinking it over again. That was all he needed. He was off, making phone calls and arrangements, shouting a lot and getting excited. To give him his due, he was true to his word: he did all the go-between stuff so I didn’t have to have a single humiliating conversation with Helen, let alone with Prendergast. At times Bradley even managed to create the illusion he was negotiating a deal for me, that it was me who had something to sell. Even so, I was having doubts several times each day. When it happened, it happened suddenly. Bradley called to say Dr. Boris had a last-minute cancellation and I had to get myself to a particular address by three-thirty that same afternoon with all my bags packed. Maybe I had some final jitters at that point, because I remember Bradley yelling down the phone at me to pull myself together, that he was coming to get me himself, and then I was being driven up winding roads to a big house in the Hollywood Hills and put under anesthetic, just like a character in a Raymond Chandler story.

  After a couple of days I was brought down here, to this Beverly Hills hotel, by the back entrance under cover of dark, and wheeled down this corridor, so exclusive we’re sealed off entirely from all the regular life of the hotel.

  THE FIRST WEEK, my face was painful and the anesthetic in my system made me nauseous. I had to sleep propped up on pillows, which meant I didn’t sleep much at all, and because my nurse insisted on keeping the room dark all the time, I lost sense of what hour of the day it was. Even so, I didn’t feel at all bad. In fact, I felt exhilarated and optimistic. I felt complete confidence in Dr. Boris, who was after all a guy in whose hands movie stars placed their entire careers. What’s more, I knew that with me he’d completed his masterpiece; that on seeing my loser’s face, he’d felt his deepest ambitions stir, remembered why he’d chosen his vocation in the first place, and put everything into it and more. When the bandages came off, I could look forward to a cleanly chiseled face, slightly brutal, yet full of nuance. A guy with his reputation, after all, would have thought through carefully the requirements of a serious jazz musician, and not confused them with, say, those of a TV anchorman. He may even have put in something to give me that vaguely haunted quality, kind of like the young De Niro, or like Chet Baker before the drugs ravaged him. I thought about the albums I’d make, the line-ups I’d hire to back me. I felt triumphant and couldn’t believe I’d ever hesitated about the move.

  Then came the second week, when the effect of the drugs wore off, and I felt depressed, lonely and cheap. My nurse, Gracie, now let a little more light into the room-though she kept the blinds at least halfway down-and I was allowed to walk about the room in my dressing gown. So I put one CD after another into the Bang & Olufsen and went round and round the carpet, now and then stopping in front of the dressing-table mirror to inspect the weird bandaged monster gazing back through peephole eyes.

  It was during this phase that Gracie first told me Lindy Gardner was next door. Had she brought this news in my earlier, euphoric phase, I’d have greeted it with delight. I might even have taken it as the first indicator of the glamorous life I was now headed for. Coming when it did though, just as I was falling into my trough, the news filled me with such disgust it set off another bout of nausea. If you’re one of Lindy’s many admirers, I apologise for what’s coming up here. But the fact was, at that moment, if there was one figure who epitomised for me everything that was shallow and sickening about the world, it was Lindy Gardner: a person with negligible talent-okay, let’s face it, she’s demonstrated she can’t act, and she doesn’t even pretend to have musical ability-but who’s managed all the same to become famous, fought over by TV networks and glossy magazines who can’t get enough of her smiling features. I went past a bookstore earlier this year and saw a snaking line and wondered if someone like Stephen King was around, and here it turns out to be Lindy signing copies of her latest ghosted autobiography. And how was this all achieved? The usual way, of course. The right love affairs, the right marriages, the right divorces. All leading to the right magazine covers, the right talk shows, then stuff like that recent thing she had on the air, I don’t remember its name, where she gave advice about how to dress for that first big date after your divorce, or what to do if you suspect your husband is gay, all of that. You hear people talk about her “star quality,” but the spell’s easy enough to analyse. It’s the sheer accumulation of TV appearances and glossy covers, of all the photos you’ve seen of her at premieres and parties, her arm linked to legendary people. And now here she was, right next door, recovering just like me from a face job by Dr. Boris. No other news could have symbolised more perfectly the scale of my moral descent. The week before, I’d been a jazz musician. Now I was just another pathetic hustler, getting my face fixed in a bid to crawl after the Lindy Gardners of this world into vacuous celebrity.

  The next few days, I tried to pass the time reading, but couldn’t concentrate. Under the bandages, parts of my face throbbed awfully, others itched like hell and I had bouts of feeling hot and claustrophobic. I longed to play my sax, and the thought that it would be weeks yet until I could put my facial muscles under that kind of pressure made me even more despondent. In the end, I worked out the best way to get through the day was to alternate listening to CDs with spells of staring at sheet music-I’d brought the folder of charts and lead sheets I worked with in my cubicle-and humming improvisations to myself.

  It was towards the end of the second week, when I was starting to feel a little better both physically and mentally, my nurse handed me an envelope with a knowing smile, saying: “Now that ain’t something you’ll get every day.” Inside was a page of hotel notepaper, and since I’ve got it right here beside me, I’ll quote it just the way it came.

  Gracie tells me you’re getting weary of this high life. I’m that way too. How about you come and visit? If five o’clock tonight isn’t too early for cocktails? Dr. B. says no alcohol, I expect same for you. So looks like club sodas and Perrier. Curse him! See you at five or I’ll be heartbroken. Lindy Gardner.

  Maybe it was because I’d become so bored by this point; or just that my mood was on the up again; or that the thought of having a fellow prisoner to swap stories with was extremely appealing. Or maybe I wasn’t so immune myself to the glamor thing. In any case, despite everything I felt about Lindy Gardner, when I read this, I felt a tingle of excitement, and I found myself telling Gracie to let Lindy know I’d be over at five.

  LINDY GARDNER HAD ON even more bandages than I did. I’d at least been left an opening at the top, from which my hair sprang up like palms in a desert oasis. But Boris had encased the whole of Lindy’s head so it was a contoured coconut shape, with slots only for eyes, nose and mouth. What had happened to all that luxuriant blonde hair, I didn’t know. Her voice, though, wasn’t as constricted as you’d expect, and I recognised it from the times I’d seen her on TV.

  “So how are you finding all this?” she asked. When I replied I wasn’t finding it too bad, she said: “Steve. May I call you Steve? I’ve heard all about you from Gracie.”

  “Oh? I hope she left out the bad part.”

  “Well, I know you’re a musician. And a very promising one too.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Steve, you’re tense. I want yo
u to relax when you’re with me. Some famous people, I know, they like the public to be tense around them. Makes them feel all the more special. But I hate that. I want you to treat me just like I’m one of your regular friends. What were you telling me? You were saying you don’t mind this so much.”

  Her room was significantly bigger than mine, and this was just the lounge part of her suite. We were sitting facing each other on matching white sofas, and between us was a low coffee table made of smoked glass, through which I could see the hunk of driftwood it rested on. Its surface was covered with shiny magazines and a fruit basket still in cellophane. Like me, she had the air-conditioning up high-it gets warm in bandages-and the blinds low over the windows against the evening sun. A maid had just brought me a glass of water and a coffee, both with straws bobbing in them-which is how everything has to be served here-then had left the room.

  In answer to her question, I told her the toughest part for me was not being able to play my sax.

  “But you can see why Boris won’t let you,” she said. “Just imagine. You blow on that horn a day before you’re ready, pieces of your face will fly out all over the room!”

  She seemed to find this pretty funny, waving her hand at me, as though it was me that had made the wisecrack and she was saying: “Stop it, you’re too much!” I laughed with her, and sipped some coffee through the straw. Then she began talking about various friends who’d recently gone through cosmetic surgery, what they’d reported, funny things that had happened to them. Every person she mentioned was a celebrity or else married to one.

  “So you’re a sax player,” she said, suddenly changing the subject. “You made a good choice. It’s a wonderful instrument. You know what I say to all young saxophone players? I tell them to listen to the old pros. I knew this sax player, up-and-coming like you, only ever listened to these far-out guys. Wayne Shorter and people like that. I said to him, you’ll learn more from the old pros. Might not have been so ground-breaking, I said to him, but those old pros knew how to do it. Steve, do you mind if I play you something? To show you exactly what I’m talking about?”