The Voyage

by Murray Bail

  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.”