Cloud Atlas

listening. “Have you got manuscript paper in here or should I have Hendrick go and get some?”

Relief that V.A. hadn’t come to catch me tupping his wife made his imposition seem less preposterous than it actually was, so fine, I said, yes, I have paper, I have pens, let’s start. Ayrs’s sight was too poor to see anything suspicious in the foothills of my bed, but Hendrick still posed a possible danger. One should avoid relying on servants’ discretion. After Hendrick had helped his master to a chair and wrapped a rug round his shoulders, I told him I’d ring for him when we were done. Ayrs didn’t contradict me—he was already humming. A conspiratorial flicker in H.’s eyes? Room too dim to be sure. The servant gave a near-imperceptible bow and glided away as if on well-oiled coasters, softly shutting the door behind him.

Splashed a little water on my face at the washbowl and sat opposite Ayrs, worrying J. might forget the creaking floorboards and try to tiptoe out.

“Ready.”

Ayrs hummed his sonata, bar by bar, then named his notes. The oddity of the miniature soon absorbed me, despite the circumstances. It’s a seesawing, cyclical, crystalline thing. He finished after the ninety-sixth bar and told me to mark the MS triste. Then he asked me, “So what d’you think?”

“Not sure,” I told him. “It’s not at all like you. Not much like anyone. But it hypnotizes.”

Ayrs was now slumped, a la a Pre-Raphaelite oil painting entitled Behold the Sated Muse Discards Her Puppet. Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden. Thought about J.’s curves in the bed, just a few yards away, even felt a dangerous throb of impatience for her. V.A. was unsure of himself for once. “I dreamt of a .?.?. nightmarish cafe, brilliantly lit, but underground, with no way out. I’d been dead a long, long time. The waitresses all had the same face. The food was soap, the only drink was cups of lather. The music in the cafe was”—he wagged an exhausted finger at the MS—“this.”

Rang for H. Wanted Ayrs out of my room before daylight found his wife in my bed. After a minute H. knocked. Ayrs got to his feet and limped over—he hates anyone seeing him assisted. “Good work, Frobisher.” His voice found me from down the corridor. I shut the door and breathed that big sigh of relief. Climbed back to bed, where my swampy-sheeted alligator sank her little teeth into her young prey.

We’d begun a luxuriant farewell kiss when, damn me, the door creaked opened again. “Something else, Frobisher!” Mother of All Profanities, I hadn’t locked the door! Ayrs drifted bedward like the wreck of the Hesperus. J. slid back under the sheets while I made disheveling, surprised noises. Thank God, Hendrick was waiting outside—accident or tact? V.A. found the end of my bed and sat there, just inches from the bump that was J. If J. sneezed or coughed now, even blind old Ayrs would catch on. “A tricky subject, so I’ll just spit it out. Jocasta. She isn’t a very faithful woman. Maritally, I mean. Friends hint at her indiscretions, enemies inform me of affairs. Has she ever .?.?. toward you .?.?. y’ know my meaning?”

Let my voice stiffen, masterfully. “No, sir, I don’t believe I do know your meaning.”

“Spare me your bashfulness, boy!” Ayrs leant nearer. “Has my wife ever made advances? I have a right to know!”

Avoided a nervous giggle, by a whisker. “I find your question distasteful in the extreme.” Jocasta’s breath dampened my thigh. She must have been roasting alive under the covers. “I wouldn’t call any ‘friend’ who spread such muck around by that name. In Mrs. Crommelynck’s case, frankly, I find the notion as unthinkable as it is unpalatable. If, if, through some, I don’t know, nervous collapse, she were to behave so inappropriately, well, to be honest, Ayrs, I’d probably ask for Dhondt’s advice, or speak to Dr. Egret.” Sophistry makes a fine smoke screen.

“So you’re not going to give me a one-word answer?”

“You shall have a two-word answer. ‘Emphatically, no!’ And I very much hope the subject is now closed.”

Ayrs let long moments fall away. “You’re young, Frobisher, you’re rich, you’ve got a brain, and by all accounts you’re not wholly repugnant. I’m not sure why you stay on here.”

Good. He was getting mawkish. “You’re my Verlaine.”

“Am I, young Rimbaud? Then where is your Saison en Enfer?”

“In sketches, in my skull, in my gut, Ayrs. In my future.”

Couldn’t say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia, or scorn. He left. Locked the door and climbed into bed for the third time that night. Bedroom farce, when it actually happens, is intensely sad. Jocasta seemed angry with me.

“What?” I hissed.

“My husband loves you,” said the wife, dressing.

Zedelghem’s a-stirring. Plumbing makes noises like elderly aunts. Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end.

To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!”

How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

14^th—IX—1931

Sixsmith,

Sir Edward Elgar came to tea this afternoon. Even you’ve heard of him, you ignoramus. Now, usually, if one asks Ayrs what he thinks of English music he’ll say, “What English music? There is none! Not since Purcell!” and sulk all day, as if the Reformation were one’s own doing. This hostility was forgotten in a trice when Sir Edward telephoned from his hotel in Bruges this morning, wondering if Ayrs might be able to spare him an hour or two. Ayrs made a show of curmudgeonliness, but I could tell by the way he badgered Mrs. Willems about the arrangements for tea, he was pleased as the cat who got the cream. Our celebrated guest arrived at half past two, dressed in a dark green Inverness cape despite the clement weather. The man’s state of health isn’t much better than V.A.’s. J. & I welcomed him on the steps of Zedelghem. “So you’re Vyv’s new pair of eyes, are you?” he said to me, as we shook hands. Said I’d seen him conduct a dozen times at the festival, which pleased him. Guided the composer into the Scarlet Room, where Ayrs was waiting. They greeted each other warmly, but as if wary of bruises. Elgar’s sciatic pain bothers him greatly, and even on good days, V.A. looks pretty frightful at first sight, still worse at the second. Tea was served, and they talked shop, mostly ignoring J. & me, but it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall. Sir E. glanced at us now and then to make sure he was not wearing out his host. “Not at all.” We smiled back. They fenced over such topics as saxophones in orchestras, whether Webern is Fraudster or Messiah, the patronage and politics of music. Sir E. announced he is at work on a Third Symphony after a long hibernation:—he even played us sketches of a molto maestoso and an allegretto on the upright. Ayrs most eager to prove that he isn’t ready for his coffin either, and had me run through some recently completed piano sketches—rather lovely. Several dead bottles of Trappist