While organizing his string quartets, he decided to listen to them all again. He’s gotten to that point in his life where if he doesn’t do things now, he’ll never do them. Some of these recordings he’s played only two or three times, in some cases more than twenty years ago. He made a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the back of an envelope, keeping in mind multiple recordings of some of his favorite quartets, the complete Beethovens and Shostakoviches, too many Mozarts, all those Haydns, and he came up with something like 900 performances. If he listens to two or three a day, it will take him about a year.
Listening to them in alphabetical rather than chronological order will prevent him from getting tired of a particular era. It might also offer interesting juxtapositions. He began ten days ago with Arriaga, of whose three quartets he has two, written in 1821, when Arriaga was fifteen. A decent recording, cheaply produced by the Musical Heritage Society, which inimitably managed to misspell Arriaga’s name in the headline on the back cover. Then the mathematician-serialist Milton Babbitt, whose Quartet no. 2 (1952) Vernon has by the Composers Quartet, and no. 3 (1970) by the Fine Arts. This time around, no. 2 almost started to make a little sense, sounding here and there like a fugue based on tone-row fragments. Then Grażyna Bacewicz’s Quartet no. 7, from sometime in the 1960s—almost tuneful (after Babbitt), occasionally toe-tapping. Why so few female composers? Vernon’s an old fart, yes, an asshole male like all males, but even he noticed that the liner notes were all about the male Pipkov, whose Quartet no. 3 had been paired with Bacewicz’s. Following that, Bach—Art of the Fugue, by the Portland String Quartet, breaking off in the middle of a phrase where Bach put down his quill and died, which always moves this old man—and Barber’s single quartet from 1936, which includes the original version of Adagio for Strings, by the Cleveland Quartet on Red Seal, paired with Ives for that Americana effect. Then five thorny days of Bartók, because Vernon has two complete sets of the six quartets, Tátrai and Végh, both excellent and sounding remarkably alike, maybe it’s a Hungarian thing.
What does Vernon know? Nothing! But Bartók has always struck him as the greatest twentieth-century composer of string quartets. Something about those six—something unsystematic but compelling, something surprising yet inevitable, something nonBabbitty, disCartery, unSchoenbergisch—should Vernon punt, and call it genius?—reminds him of Beethoven. Whom he has now reached! And he’s not cheating by starting with the late quartets, because this yearlong perusal is alphabetical, not chronological, and all of Beethoven’s quartets are by Beethoven.
Plus, he can’t wait, and he might die tomorrow. Thus, Opus 127. Performed by the Pascal Quartet, on the dear old Concert Hall Society label. These were the first Beethovens he ever owned. He bought the whole set when he was still a student in Chicago, and they arrived monthly, in allotments of two or three. Jesus, he feels such nostalgia looking at the covers, in varied hues with a uniform illustration, a scrabbly charcoal sketch of Beethoven’s head, face down and scowling like an angry toddler. Susan was two; his unbearable mother; that broiling attic apartment in which it was so important to keep the LPs perfectly vertical.
This is a mono recording, the master from the late forties. To his spoiled ears of today it sounds tinny. The Pascals play Beethoven with that old-fashioned sweet sound, the vibratos fast and cloying. Too much first violin. There’s tracing distortion toward the end of each side, some of which would be wear and tear. He didn’t buy another set of the quartets until 1962, so it’s likely he’s played each of these Pascals more times than any other record he’s ever owned.
Vargas is asleep on his chest. This always happens. Vernon will lean back to listen and Vargas will edge up his stomach. Vernon leans farther back and Vargas inches higher. The cat ends up with his head tucked under Vernon’s chin, curled on the nearly level surface of Vernon’s expanding girth. Get your fat self out of my sight.
The tone arm has swung back, the turntable has clicked off. Vernon contemplates getting up.
He never wanted cats. Like so many things, it was Gen’s idea. She always said she preferred dogs (from 1958 on, they always had one or two); she couldn’t understand how anyone could like cats, they were so aloof, cat people were annoying nutjobs. Then about twenty years ago a black cat started hanging around the back door during a cold December.
“She looks hungry,” Imogen said.
“You feed that cat, you own that cat,” Vernon said.
“She’s shivering.”
“Shivering is the body’s way of generating heat. We ascribe emotion to it, but a cat doesn’t.”
Imogen set up a box with a
