Cloud Atlas

Only the prospect of the decanter running dry could make Mater frantic.

My audition took place in Ayrs’s music room, after lunch, the day before yesterday. Not an overwhelming success, putting it mildly—no knowing how many days I’ll be here, or how few. Admit to a certain frisson sitting on Vyvyan Ayrs’s own piano stool beforehand. This Oriental rug, battered divan, Breton cupboards crammed with music stands, Bosendorfer grand, carillon, all witnessed the conception and birth of Matryoshka Doll Variations and his song cycle Society Islands. Stroked the same ’cello who first vibrated to Untergehen Violinkonzert. Hearing Hendrick wheeling his master this way, I stopped snooping and faced the doorway. Ayrs ignored my “I do hope you’re recovered, Mr. Ayrs” and had his valet leave him facing the garden window. “Well?” he asked, after we’d been alone half a minute. “Go on. Impress me.” Asked what he wanted to hear. “I must select the program, too? Well, have you mastered ‘Three Blind Mice’?”

So I sat at the Bosendorfer and played the syphilitic crank “Three Blind Mice,” after the fashion of a mordant Prokofiev. Ayrs did not comment. Continued in a subtler vein with Chopin’s Nocturne in F Major. He interrupted with a whine, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?” Played V.A.’s own Digressions on a Theme of Lodovico Roncalli, but before the first two bars were out, he’d uttered a six-birch expletive, banged on the floor with his cane, and said, “Self-gratification makes you go blind, didn’t they teach you that at Caius?” Ignored him and finished the piece note perfect. For a finale of fireworks, gambled on Scarlatti’s 212th in A major, a bete noire of arpeggios and acrobatics. Came unstuck once or twice, but I wasn’t being auditioned as a concert soloist. After I’d finished, V.A. kept swinging his head to the rhythm of the disappeared sonata; or maybe he was conducting the blurry, swaying poplars. “Execrable, Frobisher, get out of my house this instant!” would have aggrieved but not much surprised me. Instead, he admitted, “You may have the makings of a musician. It’s a nice day. Amble over to the lake and see the ducks. I need, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I can find a use for your .?.?. gifts.”

Left without a word. The old goat wants me, it seems, but only if I’m pathetic with gratitude. If my pocketbook had allowed me to go, I’d have hired a cab back to Bruges and renounced the whole errant idea. He called after me, “Some advice, Frobisher, gratis. Scarlatti was a harpsichordist, not a pianist. Don’t drench him in color so, and don’t use the pedal to sustain notes you can’t sustain with the fingers.” I called back that I needed, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I could find a use for Ayrs’s .?.?. gift.

Crossed the courtyard, where a beetroot-faced gardener was clearing a weed-choked fountain. Made him understand I wanted to speak to his mistress and pronto—he is not the sharpest tool in the shed—and he waved vaguely toward Neerbeke, miming a steering wheel. Wonderful. What now? See the ducks, why not? Could strangle a brace and leave ’em hanging in V.A.’s wardrobe. Mood was that black. So I mimed ducks and asked the gardener, “Where?” He pointed at the beech tree, and his gesture said, Walk that way, just on the other side. I set off, jumped a neglected ha-ha, but before I’d reached the crest, the noise of galloping bore down on me, and Miss Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck—from now plain old Crommelynck shall have to do or I’ll run out of ink—rode up on her black pony.

I greeted her. She cantered around me like Queen Boadicea, pointedly unresponsive. “How humid the air is today,” I small-talked sarcastically. “I rather think we shall have rain later, wouldn’t you agree?” She said nothing. “Your dressage is more polished than your manners,” I told her. Nothing. Shooting guns crackled across the fields, and Eva reassured her mount. Her mount is a beaut—one can’t blame the horse. I asked Eva for the pony’s name. She stroked back some black, corkscrew locks from her cheeks. “J’ai nomme le poney Nefertiti, d’apres cette reine d’Egypte qui m’est si chere,” she replied and turned away. “It speaks!” I cried and watched the girl gallop off until she was a miniature in the Van Dyck pastoral. Fired artillery shells after her in elegant parabolas. Turned my guns on Chateau Zedelghem and pounded Ayrs’s wing to smoking rubble. Remembered what country we are in and stopped.

Past the sundered beech, the meadow falls away to an ornamental lake, ringing with frogs. Seen better days. A precarious footbridge connects an island to the shore, and flamingo lilies bloom in vast numbers. Now and then goldfish splish and gleam like new pennies dropped in water. Whiskered mandarin ducks honk for bread, exquisitely tailored beggars—rather like myself. Martins nest in a boathouse of tarred boards. Under a row of pear trees—once an orchard?—I laid me down and idled, an art perfected during my long convalescence. An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton. Watched the aerial bliss of coupled dragonflies. Even heard their wings, an ecstatic sound like paper flaps in bicycle spokes. Gazed on a slowworm exploring a miniature Amazonia around the roots where I lay. Silent? Not altogether, no. Was woken much later, by first spots of rain. Cumulonimbi were reaching critical mass. Sprinted back to Zedelghem as fast as I’ll ever run again, just to hear the rushing roar in my ear canals and feel the first fat droplets pound my face like xylophone hammers.

Just had time to change into my one clean shirt before the dinner gong. Mrs. Crommelynck apologized, her husband’s appetite was still feeble and demoiselle preferred to eat alone. Nothing suited me better. Stewed eel, chervil sauce, the rain skittering on terrace. Unlike the Frobishery and most English homes I have known, meals at the chateau are not conducted in silence, and Mme. C told me a little about her family. Crommelyncks have lived at Zedelghem since far-off days when Bruges was Europe’s busiest seaport (so she told me, hard to credit), making Eva the crowning glory of six centuries’ breeding. Warmed to the woman somewhat, I admit it. She holds forth like a man and smokes myrrhy cigarettes through a rhino-horn holder. She’d notice pretty sharpish if any valuables were spirited away, however. They’ve suffered from thieving servants in the past, she happened to mention, even one or two impoverished houseguests, if I could believe people could behave so dishonorably. Assured her my parents had suffered the same way, and put out feelers re: my audition. “He did describe your Scarlatti as ‘salvageable.’ Vyvyan spurns praise, both giving and receiving it. He says, ‘If people praise you, you’re not walking your own path.’?” Asked directly if she thought he’d agree to take me on. “I do hope so, Robert.” (In other words, wait and see.) “You must understand, he resigned himself never to compose another note. Doing so caused him great pain. Resurrecting hope that he might compose again—well, that’s not a risk to be undertaken lightly.” Subject closed. I mentioned my earlier encounter with Eva, and Mme. C pronounced, “My daughter was uncivil.”

“Reserved” was my perfect reply.

My hostess topped up my glass. “Eva has a disagreeable nature. My husband has taken very little interest in rearing her like a young lady. He never wanted children. Fathers and daughters are reputed to dote on each other, are they not? Not here. Her teachers say Eva is studious but secretive, and she’s never tried to develop herself musically. I often feel I don’t know her at all.” I filled Mme. C.’s glass, and she seemed to cheer up. “Listen to me, lamenting. Your sisters are immaculately mannered English roses, I am sure, Monsieur?” Rather doubt her interest in the Frobishery’s memsahibs was genuine, but the woman likes to watch me talk, so I painted witty caricatures of my estranged clan for my hostess’s amusement. Made us all sound so gay, almost felt homesick.

This morning, a Monday, Eva deigned to share breakfast—Bradenham ham, eggs, bread, all sorts—but the girl spouted petty complaints to her mother and snuffed my interjections out with a flat oui or a sharp non. Ayrs was feeling better so ate with us. Hendrick then drove the daughter off to Bruges for another week at school—Eva boards in the city with a family whose daughters also attend her school, the Van Eels or some such. Whole chateau breathed a relieved sigh when the Cowley had cleared the poplar avenue (known as the Monk’s Walk). Eva does so poison the air of the place. At nine, Ayrs and I adjourned to the music room. “I’ve got a little melody for viola rattling about my head, Frobisher. Let’s see if you can get it down.” Was delighted to hear it, as I’d expected to start at the shallow end—tidying up sketchy MSS into best copy and so forth. If I proved my worth as V.A.’s sentient fountain pen on my first day, my tenure would be well-nigh assured. Sat at his desk, sharpened 2B at the ready, clean MS, waiting for him to name the notes, one by one. Suddenly, the man bellowed: “?‘Tar, tar! Tar-tartar tattytattytatty, tar!’ Got that? ‘Tar! Tatty-tar! Quiet part—tar-tar-tar-tttt-TAR! TARTARTAR!!!’?” Got that? Old ass obviously thought this was amusing—one could no more notate his shouted garble than one could score the braying of a dozen donkeys—but after another thirty seconds, it dawned on me this was no joke. Tried to interrupt, but the man was so engrossed in his music making that he didn’t notice. Sunk into deepest misery while Ayrs carried on, and on, and on .?.?. My scheme was hopeless. What had I been thinking about at Victoria Station? Dejected, I let him work through his piece in the lean hope that having it complete in his head might make it easier to duplicate later.

“There, finished!” he proclaimed. “Got it? Hum it back, Frobisher, and then let’s see how it sounds.”

Asked what key we were in. “B-flat, of course!” Time signature? Ayrs pinched the