The Drowning People

by Richard Mason

  Eduard Mendl extolled the virtues of simplicity and clear thinking in the baroque elegance of his rooms at the Conservatory. He was a small, precise man with a sharp tongue and a mischievous flair for the debasement of Communist ideology. Thus it was that every instruction became an initiative and my practice was divided into weekly Five Day plans. He told me that he was not there to teach me technique — that was my own concern — but to teach me to understand beauty and to express it in a way which was uniquely mine. “I shall teach you to think,” he told me in his clipped tones. “To see things in your own way, to hear them in your own way. And I shall teach you also the beauty of expression. But the ease with which you express yourself,” by which he meant the facility of my playing, “must be your own affair. You must work at it alone.” And I was a conscientious student as worlds of musical possibility opened before me, illuminated by the genius of that fine old man whose silver hair and creased face, lit occasionally by a smile of praise, are as clear to me now as they were then when I saw him every day.

  I have never forgotten Mendl; he was never buried in my mind; there is no dust to clear from his image. His lessons, though I did not know this as he gave them, later saved me from myself. And I have always been grateful for that.

  I played from early morning until late afternoon every day and devoted the remaining hours of daylight to endless walks in the cobbled maze of streets beneath the Hrad or to lazy boating on the Vltava with Eric. We spent our evenings in cafés or clubs or in the splendors of the Rudolfinum or the State Opera. Sometimes we stayed at home, experimenting with cooking and praising the results of each other’s efforts, however dubious. It was a time of near tangible freedom, I remember that now; and we lived as we pleased, reveling in the lives we created for ourselves and for each other.

  One’s twenties are a time of reinvention, of regrouping and rethinking after the battles and fiery uncertainties of adolescence. And Eric and I learned that reinvention is easier and more pleasurable when the expectations of those you know are removed. Social ties can stifle growth, or at least alter it, and we relished their absence; we lived serenely in the present, content, with little care for the future or the past.

  Slowly we settled into life in Prague and made Sokolska 21 our home, filling its kitchen cupboards; fitting bulbs into unused sockets; even organizing the delivery of daily newspapers. Needing somewhere to work, we turned the sitting room into an impromptu rehearsal space, moving the piano from its corner and setting it instead between the two long windows which gave onto the street. Restored once more to its former glory, hung again with the yellow drapes of Madame Mocsáry’s day, that room became the focus of our Prague lives; and we spent many happy hours under its haphazard canopy, working hard — together and alone — but talking also. And as the days passed and familiarity (far from breeding contempt) bred intimacy instead, we found in each other and in the bond between us something which sustained us both; which gave us both a sense of excitement and adventure which neither of us, I think, had found in friendship before.

  Artistically Eric and I challenged each other, you see; personally, we supported and upheld; and in retrospect the easy companionship of those nights seems strange, for by nature I am a solitary worker and find the company of others a distraction from my music. Remembering Eric, and my friendship with him, I remember most that curious admixture of frivolity and commitment which characterized all he did; which became the basis of our joint artistic endeavors; which sustained us on the hard days and rewarded us on the good.

  Once a week we played together in the benignly august presence of Mendl himself; and in his quiet, measured way he took our youthful efforts and made something of them, or pointed the way for us to do so. Praising rarely but warmly, he was no easy master, certainly he put me through my technical paces at the Conservatory, whatever he said about the facility of my playing being my own affair. But in Eric’s presence he unbent a little, rewarding our efforts with a dreamy, glazed look of absorption which was thrilling from one such as he.

  And sometimes, when I was practicing alone, Eric would assume the role of audience which Ella had made her own in London; and on the mattress of velvet squares, his head in his hands, he would sit while I played to him; while I thought with pleasure of how Ella’s hair fell into her eyes when she listened to me; of how her lips curled sometimes into half smiles at the passages she loved most.

  Of course I missed her; but Ella did not write, as she had warned me that she would not; and I was sure enough of her not to mind, though I still thought of her constantly: seeing her supple form in every passing beauty; hoarding my anecdotes for her amusement; remembering my adventures so that one day she might share them. Once or twice I almost wrote or telephoned, but Eric argued against my doing so with a forcefulness I did not understand but which was strong enough to persuade me. So I waited, as Ella herself had told me to wait; and by and large I was content to do so, for there is a certain thrill in the anticipation of intimacy; and Prague, I felt, was a fitting setting for a star-cross’d lover.

  As time passed we settled down, separated ourselves from the tourist crowd and lived with the discernment of permanent Praguers. We became regular and recognized patrons at a few establishments, patronizing for preference the Café Florian, a bar run by two Czechs who spoke English with American accents and sold marijuana covertly after midnight. Florian’s was the haunt of the ex-pat community of artists and their hangers-on who came to Prague in search of the inspiration which Paris had offered the generation of their grandparents and great-grandparents. They were a motley crowd, a cosmopolitan collection of hopeful geniuses who sat in huddles on the sofas—the café was furnished with faded red and gold Chesterfields and armchairs grouped about low tables — and talked in low whispers of coming masterpieces. Occasionally one of the groups would explode in passionate argument, and the opinions of the other patrons would be volubly sought by the participants. Jean, a French-speaking waiter of Yugoslav extraction who had grown up in Warsaw — how he managed this curious combination he never divulged — was the supreme arbiter of such discussions, and when not waiting tables he spent his time writing poetry which appeared occasionally in some of the less underground magazines. He seemed to be the only published writer in the place, and as such his opinions carried appropriate weight.

  “Hey Jean,” an aging American who spent his life at Florian’s would call, “come and play backgammon and tell me about this new play everyone’s mad about.” But Jean would shake his head and leave the American to grumble sorrowfully into his gin. “Never did understand modern theater; never will unless someone gets off his ass and explains it to me.” It was one of Jean’s rules never to talk to customers unless their arguments threatened the peace and required arbitration. He wisely cultivated his aloofness, and thus his mystique amongst the patrons who provided his tips.

  Another American, this time a gangly woman with red hair and a severe nose, took a shine to me and would lecture me frequently, and at great length, on the subject of women poets. “In a patriarchal world,” she would say, “a woman can’t get her poetry talked about unless she commits suicide. It’s the only way. Look at them all,” and she would reel off a list of female poets of whom I’d never heard. “You’ve never heard of them, have you?” she’d crow triumphantly, her point proven to herself at least. “But I tell you, if one of these girls plucked up the courage to top herself for her art, your grandchildren would say she was the flower of her generation. Look at Plath.” Eric, who found the confidence of her pronouncements infuriating, would sometimes take her on; more often he didn’t, and we would both sit and listen to her, proving point after point to her mute audience, in cadences which reminded me of Ella and him of I know not what or whom.

  After a time, since we rarely participated in their arguments and seldom joined any of the groups on the larger sofas, the other regulars began to ignore us. We didn’t mind; in fact we rather enjoyed being left alone, free to talk to each othe
r and to form our own judgments on the issues debated with such passion around us. I enjoyed talking to Eric, and over many nights ensconced in two armchairs of purple velvet in one of the quieter corners of the caré I learned a great deal about his opinions, for there was much to learn. Of mine he must have learned less, for there was less to know; but Eric possessed the gentle art of making his friends interesting, even to themselves, and he drew me out of my shell is few had done before.

  He talked to me of Oxford, of my parents, of my music. And he listened with an air of affectionate under- standing as I explained my confused but sincere attempts to break free from the path my family had laid out for me to follow; to define and to achieve my own place in the world, independent of their influence and prejudice.

  “You are a very true person, James,” he told me one evening in the smoky half-light of Florian’s. “I admire you for that. And for the way you want to strike out for yourself. It is not a universal quality.”

  And I thought as he said this of how Ella and I would strike out for ourselves; of what the future held for us both. And I smiled at the friend who had provoked these happy thoughts.

  “Are you not glad you came here?” he asked me, quietly.

  “To Prague?”

  “To Prague.”

  I nodded. “Very glad.”

  “I think we will remember this as the finest time of our lives, James.”

  “I’m sure we will.” And seeing that Eric’s glass was empty, I ordered two more gins from Jean, who brought them with the smiling alacrity with which he honored his most deserving regulars. This pleased me. And after some minutes of silent contemplation, I asked Eric what his own family was like, for it struck me suddenly that he had not spoken much of them. All I knew, in fact, was that he was the elder of two children, and that he came from a line of gentleman farmers who had tilled the lands around Vaugirard and its small château for centuries.

  “What are my family like?” He repeated the question, more to himself than to me. “What are they like?” He paused. “I will tell you, James, what they are like. And one day, maybe, you will meet them yourself and form judgments of your own.”

  Eric’s English, excellent since I had first known him, had improved still further. He had developed a style of his own, a curious, considered way of speaking which lent his conversation an appealing gravity and inspired the trust of his audience.

  “My sister,” he began at last, choosing his words with care, “is two years younger than I. She is called Sylvie, and she is very pretty but not so clever …”

  “… As you are,” I finished for him, humorously chiding.

  “No. Not so clever as she might be.”

  “And why is that?”

  “She does not question things, James. She does not question things as any intelligent person must do. As you do, for example. She accepts. All the time she accepts what she is told.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Everything. She lives her life according to a plan someone else has designed for her. She is happily married. She lives near my parents at Vaugirard” — his family still lived in the village and farmed the fields around it, though the château had long since passed out of their hands — “and knits socks for the foreign legionnaires. A very safe, very narrow little life.” The disdain in his tone was unusual and real. It surprised me.

  “Sylvie is a devout Catholic,” Eric continued. “She spends her early mornings in prayer, her days in family duties and her nights in the duties of the wife.” He paused. “She will have many children,” he added wryly.

  “And how do you get on?” I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer already.

  “Well enough. But it is for the benefit of my parents. We do not discuss the things we disagree on.”

  “Things like …?”

  “You must know me well enough by now, James, to suspect.”

  There was an awkward pause, during which I tried to silence the promptings of a social reserve which told me that to ask further would be to pry. But life habits are difficult to break; and rather than pursuing my friend’s overture I smiled and signaled to Jean for another gin, nodding to the woman with the severe nose and saying something funny about her to cover the momentary tension between us. Unlike Eric I did not actively seek out confidences from others. Ella had whetted my appetite for them but I was still cautious. I had a vague fear still — explained, I imagine, by the repression inherent in any privileged English education — of emotional intimacy which might go too far; and I did not enjoy prolonged contact with the deeper, more secret sides of people’s natures. I still don’t. I might listen but I seldom pursue.

  With Ella, love and desire made me fearless and I relished her confidence; but with Eric there were no such powers to drive me and I remained wary. I liked people to be what they appeared to be. I shrank from the private fears and insecurities of others because, perhaps, by admitting theirs I had to move closer to admitting my own. I don’t know. But what I do know is that there are certain doors in one’s mind which are better left closed. And when they are opened by another, as the doors of Ella’s mind were opened by me and the doors of mine by her, their opening carries with it a great responsibility. I had no wish for the responsibility that Eric’s secrets might bring; despite my affection for him I desired no glimpse of what lay behind the secret doors of his mind. I wanted the easy understanding of friends; nothing more.

  And Eric, taking his cue from me, seemed to understand: for he turned the conversation, with characteristic deftness, from the intimate to the general, and from then on he offered me no more secrets. Instead he talked of his family history, and spoke with amusing erudition of the long line of knights in war and fanners in peace who had served their kings and emperors over centuries. “We have lived at Vaugirard, with brief absences for understandable reasons around the time of 1789,” he told me, smiling, “since the conquest of England.” And as he talked I thought of another ancient family and another smile and another voice telling me a similar story. And I thought that life was fine.

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN ERIC AND I HAD NO TASTE for the spirit-induced artistic confrontations of Florian’s we used to go to see English and French films at the Lucerna cinema, a monument of art deco and one of the few places in Prague where one could talk, in English, unhindered by sociable Americans. It had been left in a state of splendid decay: unbombed by invaders; untouched by restorers; unloved by developers. Its only concession to modernity was its selection of films and its prominent display of their posters, and Eric and I were among a core of loyal patrons who were not distracted by the flashing lights and glitz of the newer establishments which had sprung up since the revolution.

  It was on our return from one screening at the Lucema that we discovered Mr. Kierczinsky’s note and learned to our disappointment that the clogged wheels of bureaucracy — for so long our unlikely protectors — had finally ground into motion and produced all the documents required for the Mocsáry sale to begin. Under the smart letterhead of the estate’s lawyers we read that Mr. Kierczinsky himself, the head of the firm, would call the following day at eleven if that was convenient; and as the following day was a Friday and I had no classes, it was. He arrived promptly an hour before noon, an urbane little man with a small mustache and high cheekbones; and he explained the situation to us very patiently in correct but hesitant English.

  “You will see that there is much of … value here,” he said to us as we sat over tea in the sitting room. “Your family has taken what is of … sentimental merit, has it not?”

  Eric said that it had.

  He and I had dispatched a small parcel to Vaugirard the week before filled with letters from Eric’s grandmother to Madame Mocsáry and with one or two pieces of old jewelery, amber and jade mostly. The gold pocket watch had been sent too. The rest we had left in place, and our cleaning and care had done much to restore it to something of its former condition.

  “We cannot de
lay the sale of furniture and paintings … any longer,” Mr. Kierczinsky continued. “Your grand-aunt,” he was addressing me now, and seemed to take it for granted that I, too, was a Vaugirard relation, “was a great lady and she lived … beyond her means. Especially after the revolution. Before that,” he chuck-led to himself, “it was difficult to find anything to bur to push you beyond your means. No one … any means. Nor was there anything to buy, for the matter of that.”

  Eric and I nodded, unsure whether to laugh or sympathize. At once Mr. Kierczinsky’s face straightened again.

  “I shall begin the … process of the sale,” he continued. “I shall have everything here valued at once. If your family would like any of the pieces I suggest that they inform me with the least possible of delays.”

  When he had gone we wandered sadly through the rooms which we had come to consider our own. They had grown to symbolize something, something of the freedom which we had found together in Prague; and they were filled with memories of the work we had done there; the things we had talked about and laughed over. Our time in the city, like the apartment which had housed us during it, had been rich; unusual; full of diversity and beauty and … a thousand times and talks and views that I shall carry with me to the grave. But this is no time to speak of them; this is no time to pause.

  The process of the Mocsáry sale moved forward at a brisk pace. A valuer, in a shiny suit he did not seem at all accustomed to wearing, came and made detailed notes a week after the lawyer’s visit and returned two days after that with a colleague. They held long discussions in hushed tones and Eric and I stood awkwardly, uncertain whether or not it would be polite to listen. At length they went away, but their visits became longer and more frequent and as the last leaves fell from the trees — for it was late autumn now — talk of auction houses and catalogs began with the lawyer.