Cloud Atlas

windmill for a breather, wrapped myself against the damp, fell asleep.

Next thing, a witch was poking me awake with her broomstick, screeching something like “Zie gie doad misschien?” but don’t quote me. Blue sky, warm sun, not a wisp of fog to be seen. Resurrected and blinking, I offered her a pastry. She accepted with distrust, put it in her apron for later, and got back to her sweeping, growling an ancient ditty. Lucky I wasn’t robbed, I suppose. Shared another pastry with five thousand pigeons, to the envy of a beggar, so I had to give him one too. Walked back the way I might have come. In an odd pentagonal window a creamy maiden was arranging Saintpaulia in a cut-glass bowl. Girls fascinate in different ways. Try ’em one day. Tapped on the pane, and asked in French if she’d save my life by falling in love with me. Shook her head but got an amused smile. Asked where I could find a police station. She pointed over a crossroads. One can spot a fellow musician in any context, even amongst policemen. The craziest-eyed, unruliest-haired one, either hungry-skinny or jovial-portly. This French-speaking, cor anglais-playing, local operatic society-belonging inspector had heard of Vyvyan Ayrs and kindly drew me a map to Neerbeke. Paid him two pastries for this intelligence. He asked if I had shipped over my British car—his son was mad keen about Austins. Said I had no car. This worried him. How would I get to Neerbeke? No bus, no trainline, and twenty-five miles was the devil of a walk. Asked if I could borrow a policeman’s bicycle for an indefinite period. Told me that was most irregular. Assured him I was most irregular, and outlined the nature of my mission to Ayrs, Belgium’s most famous adopted son (must be so few that might even be true), in the service of European music. Repeated my request. Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction, and now was such a time. The honest sergeant took me to a compound where lost items await rightful owners for a few months (before finding their way to the black market)—but first, he wanted my opinion on his baritone. He gave me a burst of “Recitar!?.?.?. Vesti la giubba!” from I Pagliacci. (Pleasant enough voice in lower registers, but his breathing needed work and his vibrato quivered like a backstage thunder board.) Gave a few musical pointers; received the loan of a Victorian Enfield plus cord to secure valise and folder to the saddle and rear mudguard. He wished me bon voyage and fair weather.

Adrian would never have marched along the road I bicycled out of Bruges (too deep in Hun territory) but nonetheless felt an affinity with my brother by virtue of breathing the same air of the same land. The Plain is flat as the Fens but in a bad shape. Along the way I fueled myself with the last pastries and stopped at impoverished cottages for cups of water. Nobody said much, but nobody said no. Thanks to a headwind and a chain that kept slipping off, the afternoon was growing old before I finally reached Ayrs’s home village of Neerbeke. A silent blacksmith showed me how to get to Chateau Zedelghem by elaborating my map with a pencil stub. A lane with harebells and toadflax growing in the middle led me past a deserted lodge house to a once stately avenue of mature Italian poplars. Zedelghem is grander than our rectory, some crumbly turrets adorn its west wing, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Audley End or Capon-Tench’s country seat. Spied a girl riding a horse over a low hill crowned by a shipwrecked beech tree. Passed a gardener spreading soot against the slugs in a vegetable garden. In the forecourt, a muscle-bound valet was decoking a Cowley Flat Nose. Seeing my approach, he rose and waited for me. In a terraced corner of this frieze, a man in a wheelchair sat under foamy wisteria listening to the wireless. Vyvyan Ayrs, I presumed. The easy part of my daydream was over.

Leant the bicycle against the wall, told the valet I had business with his master. He was civil enough, and led me around to Ayrs’s terrace, and announced my arrival in German. Ayrs a husk of a man, as if his illness has sucked all juice out of him, but stopped myself kneeling on the cinder path like Sir Percival before King Arthur. Our overture proceeded more or less like this. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ayrs.”

“Who in hell are you?”

“It’s a great honor to—”

“I said, ‘Who in hell are you?’?”

“Robert Frobisher, sir, from Saffron Walden. I am—I was—a student of Sir Trevor Mackerras at Caius College, and I’ve come all the way from London to—”

“All the way from London on a bicycle?”

“No. I borrowed the bicycle from a policeman in Bruges.”

“Did you?” Pause for thought. “Must have taken hours.”

“A labor of love, sir. Like pilgrims climbing hills on their knees.”

“What balderdash is this?”

“I wished to prove I’m a serious applicant.”

“Serious applicant for what?”

“The post of your amanuensis.”

“Are you mad?”

Always a trickier question than it looks. “I doubt it.”

“Look here, I’ve not advertised for an amanuensis!”

“I know, sir, but you need one, even if you don’t know it yet. The Times piece said that you’re unable to compose new works because of your illness. I can’t allow your music to be lost. It’s far, far too precious. So I’m here to offer you my services.”

Well, he didn’t dismiss me out of hand. “What did you say your name was?” I told him. “One of Mackerras’s shooting stars, are you?”

“Frankly, sir, he loathed me.”

As you’ve learned to your cost, I can be intriguing when I put my mind to it.

“He did, did he? Why might that be?”

“I called his sixth Concerto for Flute”—I cleared my throat—“?‘a slave of prepubescent Saint-Saens at his most florid’ in the college magazine. He took it personally.”

“You wrote that about Mackerras?” Ayrs wheezed as if his ribs were being sawed. “I’ll bet he took it personally.”

The sequel is short. The valet showed me into a drawing room decorated in eggshell green, a dull Farquharson of sheep and cornstooks, and a not-very-good Dutch landscape. Ayrs summoned his wife, Mrs. van Outryve de Crommelynck. She kept her own name, and with a name like that who can blame her? The lady of the house was coolly courteous and inquired into my background. Answered truthfully, though I veiled my expulsion from Caius behind an obscure malady. Of my present financial straits I breathed not a word—the more desperate the case, the more reluctant the donor. Charmed ’em sufficiently. It was agreed I could at least stay the night at Zedelghem. Ayrs would put me through my musical paces in the morning, permitting a decision on my proposal.

Ayrs did not appear at dinner, however. My arrival coincided with the start of a fortnightly migraine, which confines him to his rooms for a day or two. My audition is postponed until he is better, so my fate still hangs in the balance. On the credit side, the Pies-porter and lobster a l’americaine were the equal to anything at the Imperial. Encouraged my hostess to talk—think she was flattered at how much I know about her illustrious husband, and sensed my genuine love of his music. Oh, we ate with Ayrs’s daughter, too, the young equestrienne I’d glimpsed earlier. Mlle. Ayrs is a horsey creature of seventeen with her mama’s retrousse nose. Couldn’t get a civil word out of her all evening. Might she see in me a louche English freeloader down on his luck, here to lure her sickly father into a glorious Indian summer where she can’t follow and isn’t welcome?

People are complicated.

Gone midnight. The chateau is sleeping, so must I.

Sincerely,

R.F. 

ZEDELGHEM

6^th—VII—1931

A telegram, Sixsmith? You ass.

Don’t send any more, I beg you—telegrams attract attention! Yes, I’m still Abroad, yes, safe from Brewer’s knuckle men. Fold my parents’ mortifying letter into a paper boat and sail it down the Cam. Pater’s only “concerned” because my creditors are shaking him to see if any banknotes drop from the family tree. Debts of a disinherited son, however, are nobody’s business but the son’s—believe me, I’ve looked into the legalities. Mater is not “frantic.”