by Andre Brink
My favourite Mozart has always been the B-flat piano concerto, K.595, preferably the Schnabel version. Above all, I love the Larghetto. Unfortunately I didn’t have a cassette recording of it in the car that day we were travelling to the farm. It occurred to me to ask Louis to tape it for me from the record. After all, he never seemed to be doing anything except fooling around with his sound equipment all day. Elise had started complaining that he was driving her up the wall. I’d tended to regard it as the sort of exaggeration to be expected of a housewife, until, during my convalescence at home earlier this year, I’d discovered how bad it really was. He would occupy himself with his tapes, with or without earphones, literally from the moment he got up (which, admittedly, was seldom before ten or eleven in the morning) until past midnight. The music as such was insufferable enough – he could never have acquired such a disgusting taste in my house – but what made it even worse was that he never listened to anything all the way. Every few minutes he would switch over to another piece, and the moment the barbaric rhythm began to work up towards an explosion at full volume he would either wind back to an earlier recording or forward to the next. Presumably he was constantly re-cataloguing the full extent of his cacophonic collection, switching cataloguing systems from day to day so that he had to start again from the beginning all the time. And this went on, not for days on end, but for weeks, for months.
Until I found it impossible to bear for another moment, so that I had to give him a choice between sending me to my grave with another coronary, or stopping forthwith. That was when he started disappearing from home. For days on end there would be no trace of him. And it was useless to question him about it. He would only shrug. Which wasn’t acceptable from a nineteen-year-old any more, good God.
So it might be a good opening gambit to ask him to record the Mozart for me as soon as we were home again. Perhaps it would even restore some good taste to him. Before Angola he had proved quite susceptible to decent music. Even he wouldn’t be able to resist the Larghetto, I felt sure.
I can remember very clearly where I heard the B-minor concerto for the first time. (I keep on surprising myself with the memories I retrieve now that I’ve set the process in motion: it’s like bubbles rising from the bottom of the sea and suddenly breaking on the surface in small explosions of shocking, clear reality.) It was the night in my last year at university, when I’d discovered Charl Kamfer’s body on the carpet in his lounge, with the blue circle drawn round his navel: a final act of defiance, an absurd and undecipherable message.
I hadn’t even known him particularly well (Bernard had introduced me to him the year before), just enough to feel a youthful sympathy for an obviously lonely and highly gifted artist. Perhaps it was his cynicism which fascinated me, the attraction of opposites. He was an artist whom I regarded, with naïve admiration, as “brilliant”. But after a few highly successful exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg he suddenly decided that he’d had enough of it, and packed away his paints. From then on he devoted all his time to lecturing and drinking, doing an occasional magazine illustration on the side.
“What’s this nonsense about looking for ‘meaning’ all the time?” he often asked me in his mocking, provocative way. “Any search for meaning in a country like this is pure escapism. What is ‘meaning’ really? It’s fuck-all. It’s packing your books into a briefcase, or eating a sandwich, or buying a bottle of ink, or walking on the beach, or killing a fly, or laughing at a drunk, or wanking off.”
“But surely one can’t just take things at face value,” I protested heatedly. “There must be something more. One’s got to achieve something.”
“Jesus, you’re still haunted by lofty ideals. What’s ‘achievement’? Let me tell you, buddy: Everything we do is just a way of marking time. There’s no bloody difference, essentially, between, let’s say, peeling a banana or making love.”
There was an undoubted homosexual element in his attitude towards me, but he never referred to it openly, let alone try to impose anything on me. In the end he became one of the key “influences” of my study years – his fiercely negative attitude, his incisive cynicism, his near-ecstatic nihilism acting as a corrective to Bernard’s enthusiasm and indestructible zest for life.
When I phoned him that night – a week after the Easter vacation on Bernard’s farm – to ask whether I could come over, he sounded particularly aggressive: “What’s suddenly driving you back to me?”
“I just felt like dropping in for some conversation.”
“I thought you had other people to talk to nowadays.”
“What do you mean, Charl?”
“Nothing.” A short bitter chuckle. “I heard you were going round with the daughters of clergymen lately.”
“Oh, Elise, you mean?” I felt embarrassed.
“Do you just read Song of Songs together or is she a good fuck?”
“Charl,” I said, “if you’d rather I didn’t come over tonight—”
“Of course you can come. By all means. I’ll have a conversation piece ready for you.”
When I reached his home, he had already bled to death.
I’d seen enough of death and accidents by then not to be shocked by his suicide as such, but it was the way he’d done it – that blue circle – and the deliberate timing of it, which really shattered me. In my consternation I went to Bernard for help. Late that night, after the police and the ambulance had come and gone after I’d given them my statement, he took me back to his rooms in an old house in the Lane. He made us coffee. And sometime in the course of the night he put the B-minor concerto on the record-player. That was the first of our long series of wordless conversations through the years. And perhaps that was why the music acquired some special dimension (“meaning?”) for me. Without any conscious decision it became “our” music. (After all, I was still in my Early Romantic Period.)
And then there was another night: a night I’ve never thought of consciously until this moment in my room in wintry London. Have I tried deliberately to suppress the memory? I doubt it, though. One must maintain one’s perspective and I don’t think it was really all that important.
It happened soon after the marathon “Conspiracy Trial” had opened in Johannesburg, when Bernard was still staying with us. Much to my relief, really, because it made things easier for me with Marlene.
There isn’t much to be said about Marlene (even though I can recognise her possibilities as a character for a novel!): she isn’t of any importance in her own right. There had been others before her, ever since a few months after Louis’s birth; and even more since her. The first time something like that happens, it still has the charm of the “forbidden” about it. But it soon becomes habit, like anything else. As one grows older, it offers the added satisfaction of confirming your prowess and bolstering your ego. But ironically, of course, it also becomes more and more easy with time, so one shouldn’t put too much store by what can be proved by it. It’s just a matter of increasing opportunities and perfecting techniques. Perhaps it becomes part of one’s life-style, just as it would be unthinkable not to have a swimming pool or not to order one’s red wine directly from the estate. And it’s all so predictable: middle-aged businessman impresses girl with his importance, status, self-assurance, offering a sense of security; girl opens legs; both feel content: she, because an important man has taken notice of her insignificant existence; he, because his virility has been confirmed by this triumph over an absent and invisible younger man.
Back to Marlene. Six months earlier she’d started working for me as a secretary. I hadn’t expected her to last very long: although she was twenty-five or twenty-six she was still much too soft for our sort of work, going through life with an expression of vulnerability on her innocent dark-eyed face: “Please hurt me!” Exploiting it while maintaining the illusion of being all virginal innocence: the defence of a woman who’d grown up too puritanically to admit to herself that she was no more than a delightful little whore. In additio
n, I suppose, her sensitive soul thrived on guilt feelings. In practice, her type is the most deadly of all predators.
She soon began to confide in me, and as time went on her confessions became more intimate.
On her birthday, I presented her with an expensive negligé from Paris. (One of the advantages of my many trips abroad is that I can always bring back “exotic” gifts to store away for the right occasion.) Accepting her thank you kiss I held her for just a moment longer than might have been expected of a father. And the expression in her dark eyes made it obvious that the matter had been all but clinched.
We dined out of town that evening, and I plied her with an excess of imported wine. Driving through a night flickering with lights, her head resting on my shoulder, we returned to my apartment in Joubert Park. (Originally I’d acquired it for the use of important visiting clients, but gradually converted it to suit my own needs. Elise, of course, knew nothing of it.) And so to bed.
The only complication was that Marlene soon became overwhelmingly possessive about me – “Oh Martin, no man has ever made me feel so intensely!” – “I’ve never had a lover like you before, you’re so considerate!” – “Oh Martin, Martin, Martin, I love you!” – Bloody little fool. The moment a woman tells you she loves you, it’s time to clear out.
But back to the great seduction scene. It was midnight when I finally persuaded her to put on her clothes so that I could drive her back to her own place – in Craighall Park, fortunately, which was on my way home. In her small bachelor flat she started slobbering all over me again and I was drawn into a new bout of lovemaking. It was another hour before I’d finally cleansed myself of the last sticky traces of her passion and went home.
The city was camouflaged in shimmering lights, as ugly as a Christmas tree. As if all the murder and violence and treachery and exploitation and God knows what else was nothing but illusion. I looked forward to getting back home, to a quiet hour with Mozart in my study. Perhaps Bernard would still be awake to share it with me. A glass of whisky. Then sleep.
It was before we’d bought the dogs, and the gates stood open. I drove into the garage, switched off the lights and sat for a while with my head resting on my arms on the wheel. My fingers still bore, faintly, the scent of the secretions of her undying love.
After some time I locked the gates, swung the garage door shut, and went into the kitchen. The house was dark except for a single reading lamp in the study. With my jacket flung over my shoulder and my tie loosened I went towards it. As I reached the door I discovered for the first time that both Bernard and Elise were still awake; and together.
I don’t mean to suggest for a moment that there was any hint of impropriety between them; nothing vaguely resembling the vulgarity of what Bernard once referred to as “fragrant delight”. And yet there was much, much more involved than that.
Elise was sitting in one of the deep easy chairs, barefoot and in her dressing-gown, her dark-blonde hair loose on her shoulders, the way she generally wore it at night when we went to bed, but never in the presence of others. Bernard had just returned from the drinks cabinet to hand her a glass of brandy. They were still in that position when I appeared in the doorway: he with the glass held out to her, her arm outstretched to take it, like that gesture of Michelangelo’s God creating Adam. Her face was raised towards him, her profile turned to me. Her mouth; her eyes. He was looking down at her with a little smile. In taking the glass her fingers brushed his, but fleetingly, barely touching.
On the record-player the Mozart was playing, turned down very low, but unmistakable. The Larghetto.
Bernard saw me first, and turned to me with a smile. Elise also looked up, and said:
“Oh, hello. You’re back.”
“Hello. Yes.”
“Finished your work?”
“Not all of it, but quite a lot. These option reports are a tedious business.”
I went towards her, possibly because Bernard was present, and kissed her lightly on the forehead; then turned to pour myself a drink. All the time she sat quite still.
There was no embarrassment, no suggestion that I was an impostor. And yet I knew, prompted as I was by that music, that something of inestimable importance had happened or was in the process of happening; expressed in that simple action of handing her the glass.
After a moment I went out for some ice. When I came back, Elise got up from her chair.
“Past my bedtime,” she said.
“Why don’t you stay?” I asked mechanically.
“No, I’m tired. I never thought it was so late already.”
After she’d gone I noticed her glass of brandy still untouched on the armrest of her chair. It occurred to me to take it to her. But why should I?
Bernard had seated himself on a corner of the desk; I sank into the chair she’d just vacated, feeling the gentle warmth of her body still in it. Elise. My wife. There was something strange about the thought. An ambiguity. A feeling both of possession and of distance, weary remoteness.
We sat in silence through what remained of the Mozart. I kept thinking of that gesture, that handing over, that reaching out to accept, their faces turned to each other. What I felt inside me was, I think, a sense of loss, a sense of waste, a dullness I couldn’t grasp. But what had I lost? What had gone to waste? Not Elise: how could I lose what I’d never had? Bernard then? Because he’d betrayed the exclusiveness of “our” music? Utterly ridiculous. Yet there was something, just in the way those two lovely, lonely people had been together in the half-dark room, in the raising of her arm, as if she would have liked to ask for more than just a glass.
He took off the record and put it away and switched off the player.
“Suppose it’s time for us, too,” he said.
“Sorry I was so late.”
“Doesn’t matter. We kept each other company.”
“Yes, I’m glad you did.”
With his hand on the switch of the reading lamp he looked up at me and asked: “Are you two happy together, Martin?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You don’t have to answer.”
“Yes. I think we’re happy. You know how it is. I’ve got to spend more and more time on my work, so we don’t see all that much of each other. But we get along well.”
“I understand.”
“You’re just feeling depressed about your own marriage.” (It was just after his divorce.) “You know, you’ve never yet told me what went wrong.”
“Nothing went wrong.” He smiled in the semi-darkness beyond the spotlight of the lamp. “We still love each other.”
“Why get divorced then?”
“Because I shouldn’t have got married to start with. I have no right to impose my sort of life on a woman.”
“What do you mean with ‘your sort of life’? You’re comfortably settled.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” For a while he looked at me as if he couldn’t make up his mind; then he said evasively: “Here I have to spend months away from home on a court case.”
“You could have brought her with you.”
He didn’t answer. Was there more to it than he wanted to trust me with?
“In that case I don’t understand why you got married.”
“A moment of weakness. Perhaps because of this sudden panic which strikes one just before you turn forty: knowing half your life is behind you and you’re still in search of something, still alone. But one can’t cancel loneliness by clinging to someone else. In the end one’s got to acknowledge that everybody is lonely. And if you won’t accept it you’re only kidding yourself.”
Without waiting for an answer he turned off the light and went out into the dark passage ahead of me. At the far end the dim light from our bedroom lay on the floor like something spilled.
“Well, good night, Martin.”
“Night, Bernard.”
Elise was still awake, even after I’d spent a long time in the bath. I had hoped to
find her asleep.
“I don’t know how you manage it, working so late every night,” she said in unexpected sympathy as I got into my bed, although I could see that she’d moved up to make room for me in hers.
“You know how it is with my sort of work. People come to me with new options every day, in search of backers; and it’s always urgent, they must have an answer before Friday, before Monday, or whatever. I’ve got to take all the decisions personally. One never knows when the great break will come. And so all the routine work must stay over for after hours. Unless there are still submissions or geological reports waiting to be studied —”
“I wasn’t reproaching you, Martin.”
“But you do feel neglected, don’t you?”
“Not really. At least Bernard is here now.”
“Elise.” I wasn’t sure whether I should go on.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I pulled the blankets over me. “Did the children go to bed without trouble?”
“Yes. Louis said he wanted to stay awake until you could come to read him a story. But then Bernard told him one.”
“Good.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“I don’t understand.” I looked at her hair shining in the light on the pillow (hand-embroidered, from Lisbon). “What were you really trying to say?”
