Мариус Габриэль: The Ocean Liner

‘You mistake me,’ he said with a twisted smile. ‘I thank God every day for Walt Disney. Without his money, I should literally be destitute.’ He coughed and wiped a little smear of blood from his lips, inspecting his handkerchief with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Everything decays. Life, art, the world. It’s the natural process of dissolution. One must accept it.’

A harried steward came to take their order. They all chose the mutton, since the pervading aroma of the fish was dubious, and declined the first course. That little crimson stain on Stravinsky’s handkerchief had not escaped Katharine. It frightened her that he’d started smoking again. His lungs were still ravaged. His wife Katya’s tuberculosis had devastated the Stravinskys, working its way through the family like a poison. It had taken the life of their daughter Ludmila last year. Katya herself had died in March. Stravinsky had spent six months in hospital, during which time his mother had died of the disease.

It had been a terrible five years, years of personal, professional and financial loss. After his first struggles, then his explosive successes in music and ballet, moving to Paris had seemed like the culmination of Stravinsky’s career. Instead, it had proved the graveyard of his hopes. Exhausted and broken-hearted, the daring young composer, once thought of as the most advanced talent in modern music, had sunk into a middle age of illness and failure. Darkness hung around him, almost visible.

Katharine knew how bitter he felt about the sale of The Rite of Spring to Disney. It had been the music which, more than any other piece, had made his name and had exemplified the innovative brilliance of his genius. He saw it as a public humiliation. He had been brought low and forced to sell out to the arch-purveyor of American vulgarity. Not even the enthusiasm of Walt Disney himself – who was said to have danced around the gramophone when the music was played in his office – could make up for the shame he felt.

‘You haven’t seen any of Disney’s films,’ she ventured, trying to comfort him. ‘They’re charming, you know. Pinocchio was very good. And they say that Fantasia will be the most original one yet. Think of it as a new medium. You’ve always been at the forefront of culture.’

‘It’s amusing, really. The role that was commissioned by Diaghilev and danced by Nijinsky will now be performed by a caricature mouse in red knickerbockers.’

‘Oh, Igor.’ Katharine laid her hand on his.

Thomas König looked up from his book. ‘Do you mean Mickey Mouse?’

‘Yes,’ Stravinsky said, ‘I mean Mickey Mouse.’

The boy looked impressed. ‘Mickey is very famous.’

Stravinsky made a wry face. ‘I am glad to hear it. What’s that you’re reading?’

Thomas brightened. He held up the publication. It was a colourful guidebook entitled The New York World’s Fair, The World of Tomorrow . ‘They have a huge golden robot who can walk and talk.’

‘Yes?’

‘He can even smoke cigarettes.’

‘That is undeniably progress,’ Stravinsky said, looking at the picture Thomas was showing him.

‘His name is Elektro. He can count and do sums. He’s full of diodes and triodes and electromagnetic cells.’

‘I suppose you know all about those things,’ Katharine asked, her eyes on the gleaming swastika fixed in the boy’s lapel. ‘Diodes and triodes and so forth.’

‘A diode has only two terminals and it regulates current in one direction only, whereas a triode has three terminals – anode, cathode and grid. It’s used for amplification. It’s what allows Elektro to speak.’

‘What else do they have at this fair of yours?’ Stravinsky asked.

A little flush of pleasure touched Thomas’s angular cheekbones. ‘They have the Trylon and the Perisphere.’

‘Indeed. And what are they?’

The boy showed them the photograph of a gigantic white sphere and an equally dazzling needle which towered above it. ‘The Perisphere is eighteen storeys tall. The Trylon is sixty storeys tall. You can see them both from five miles away.’

Stravinsky gazed somewhat wistfully at the glowing geometric structures. ‘And this is the world of tomorrow?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘They look like the deserted monuments in the paintings of de Chirico or Salvador Dali. Who lives in them?’

‘The Democracity is inside the Perisphere. It’s the city of the future, where everyone is perfectly happy.’

‘No doubt your Führer will want a full report,’ Katharine said dryly.

The arrival of the mutton stew interrupted the conversation. Katharine found the German boy hard to stomach, but at least he seemed to distract Igor a little. Perhaps Igor was reminded of his own children.

Across the dining room, Masha and Rachel Morgenstern were also observing Stravinsky. They had chosen the fried flounder, which was proving to have been a mistake.

‘I’m terribly excited that Stravinsky’s on board,’ Masha said. ‘I can’t deny that. And I shall do my best to engage him in at least one conversation before we reach New York, so I can tell my grandchildren. I shall get his autograph, too. There!’

‘Good luck. He looks as though he could hardly lift a pencil.’

‘He’s so exotic,’ Masha murmured, fascinated by the composer’s weary face and drooping eyelids. ‘So Russian .’

‘I should say he’s just a funny little man with a funny little moustache,’ Rachel replied. ‘Not unlike our beloved Führer.’

‘Hush!’ Masha replied automatically.

‘You needn’t hush me. Nobody loves the Führer more than I do.’

‘People could be listening.’ Masha was finding it hard to shake off her terror at any disrespectful reference to Hitler. ‘Be prudent, Rachel, for God’s sake.’

‘This fish is a more immediate threat than the Gestapo.’ Rachel pushed her plate away. ‘I think my piece was bad.’

‘Mine was all right.’

‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am. I can feel it.’

‘But there’s the rice pudding to come.’

‘I need air. I have to go out.’ Rachel rose and Masha had no choice but to follow her. Their route out of the dining room took them past Stravinsky’s table. As they approached, Stravinsky raised his head slowly and Masha met his eyes. She could not stop herself from speaking.

‘Oh, Monsieur Stravinsky,’ she blurted out, ‘I saw your Rite of Spring in 1934.’ Everybody at the table looked up. Wanting to express the excitement she had felt, she could only stammer, ‘It was – it was—’

Stravinsky stared at her dully, waiting. Rachel was pulling urgently at her arm. With everything unsaid, she allowed herself to be dragged away.

Outside, she lamented, ‘Oh, I felt such a fool. I couldn’t think of anything to say.’ But Rachel was running up the companionway, her hand clamped over her mouth. Masha followed. When she reached the Tourist Class promenade deck, Rachel was leaning over the rail, retching. Masha went to offer what succour she could. The fish had not been nice, but Rachel had been prone to these vomiting fits ever since they’d left Bremen. She had brought up almost every meal. Masha suspected it was her way of expressing her grief and stress. She put her arm around her cousin’s shoulders consolingly.

It was very dark. There were no lights to be seen either on the ship or the land, other than the searchlight which occasionally reached out from the harbourmaster’s building across the vessels moored in the harbour. One of these sabre-strokes of brilliance swept across the Manhattan now. Masha looked up in its glare and saw, on the Lido deck above, an old man looking down on them. She gasped. The curling moustaches, the strong, passionate features, the white hair tossed by the wind: despite the wildness of the expression, there could be no doubt about it.