Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

‘No,’ Thomas replied.

‘You understand diodes and triodes, but not dissonance? Well, let us say that dissonance is when the composer squeezes lemon-juice in your eyes. You understand?’

The boy nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘So there was the dissonant music, to begin with. The audience started to shout and whistle. They weren’t happy. Other people were interested in the dissonance, and told them to shut up. And then, among all this tumult, the dancers appeared on the stage, young girls and boys. But they danced in a new way. Like this.’ Stravinsky made exaggerated, angular jerks with his arms and head. This brought a slight smile to the boy’s lips. ‘This was also something nobody had seen before. So the audience began to howl and stamp even more, and the ones who were enjoying it began to shout back even louder. But all this was as nothing to what happened when the star of the show appeared. Do you know who Nijinsky is?’

‘Well, Nijinsky was the greatest dancer in the world, but between you and me—’ Stravinsky twirled his forefinger around his ear. ‘He was a little crazy. In fact, more than a little crazy. And his dancing was crazy, too.’ His dark eyes opened very wide to express insanity. ‘Completely crazy – or so it seemed to those bourgeois people who had come to see frilly tutus and nice legs. So instead of watching and listening, they began to fight each other, right there in the theatre. They made so much noise that the performance could hardly continue. I was very angry. I got up from my seat and I told them, “Excuse me, but go to the devil, all of you.” And I walked out. I left them to fight and stamp and scratch each other’s faces and insult my art. I walked around the Champs-Élysées in a temper. But I could hear the rioting from streets away. It was a disaster.’

‘You said it was your greatest success,’ the boy said sleepily.

‘And that is true. The next day, the newspapers were full of the story. Everyone was talking about The Rite of Spring . And the next night, all of Paris came to see what these crazy Russians were doing. By the end of the week, everybody had heard of Igor Stravinsky. I was the most celebrated madman in France. So you see, my greatest success was a disaster.’

The boy smiled, but his eyelids were heavy now. ‘I would like to have seen that.’

‘The sight of a stockbroker punching a hole in another stockbroker’s opera hat is a touching spectacle. But close your eyes now, Thomas.’ He watched the boy’s face slacken as he drifted into an exhausted sleep. He reached out and touched the short blonde hair lightly. This motherless lamb had slipped away from the wolves. The son of Christians who dared criticise the regime, a crime which had carried a death-warrant, he had assumed the name of a dead boy. And his mother had taken his true identity with her to her grave. Her parting gift to him, a theft that had saved his life.

When he was certain Thomas would not wake again, Stravinsky sighed heavily, and lay down beside him, wondering whether sleep would come again.

‘I have good news,’ Katharine told Stravinsky the next morning at breakfast. ‘Our baggage has arrived during the night. And so have our papers. Just in time – we sail tomorrow.’ Stravinsky nodded without much interest as he stirred his coffee. He had slept badly, she thought. The dining room was even more crowded today, the waiters rushing to and fro with laden trays. The ship was being joined by passengers all the time, and the atmosphere of urgency was growing. ‘Where’s your little Nazi?’ she asked.

‘Still asleep. He passed a bad night.’

‘You seem to enjoy his company.’

‘He tells me about things.’

‘The World’s Fair?’

‘He’s particularly interested in the scientific displays.’

She pulled a face. ‘These Fascists and their worship of machinery.’

Igor seemed unable to even hold his head up. He spoke to his coffee. ‘One day, I suppose, we will see an orchestra of robots play a symphony written by a calculating machine.’

‘I hope I’m not around to see that day.’

‘One never knows what one will see in one’s lifetime,’ he said.

She laid her hand over his. ‘We are leaving Europe tomorrow, Igor.’

‘And perhaps for the last time,’ he replied.

‘You’re depressed. But remember, you’re going to a new life. Leaving behind the past, with its sorrows.’

‘I’m leaving my dead behind. My wife, my child, my parents. A man should not be separated from his dead.’

‘That’s morbid,’ she said.

He raised his eyes heavily to hers. ‘I feel that I am leaving half of myself behind me. I don’t think I will ever compose again.’

‘Oh, Igor, no.’ Shocked, Katharine pressed his hand, trying to shake him out of this mood. ‘Don’t say that. What about your Symphony in Cigarette?’

‘I will never complete it. My life’s work has been a failure.’

‘It hasn’t. You are still at the forefront of music.’

‘I’m a little old to be a daring young composer any more,’ he replied sardonically, ‘don’t you think, my dear?’

Katharine poured him more coffee without replying. Since the 1920s, Igor had been in a liaison with Vera de Bosset, a love affair to which poor Katya, a chronic invalid, had acquiesced, sometimes nobly, sometimes with feeble rages. And now Igor had lost Vera, with her huge eyes and long limbs, who could express herself in dance or in brilliant, witty paintings; she was the half of himself that was being left behind. Wife, daughter, mother and lover – Igor had lost all four female archetypes in the last year. What would Jung have said?

Across the room, Rachel and Masha Morgenstern were also in elegiac mood. In Rachel’s case, it was mock-elegy.

‘Ah, my dear Masha,’ she said, spreading marmalade on her toast, ‘we are the last two rosebuds on the bush. The last breath of perfume before the bottle is stoppered forever. Cultured, pretty, gay, in us you see the last two kneidels on the plate, before it is taken back to the kitchen and scraped into the bin.’ She bit a corner off her toast, and continued with her mouth full. ‘The last two bublitchki the fat man just couldn’t eat.’

‘I get the picture,’ Masha cut in. ‘You need not continue.’

‘What are you staring at?’ Rachel asked, noticing that her cousin’s attention was elsewhere. She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes facetiously. ‘Oh, of course. The great Stravinsky-Korsakoff. Honestly, I don’t know what you see in that man. He’s as yellow as a lemon this morning, and looks twice as sour.’

‘It breaks my heart to see him so sad.’

‘Indeed, he is sadder than the last latke that has been left on the saucer, and is starting to curl at the edges.’

‘You cannot be serious for one moment, can you?’

‘I could try, if there was anything to be serious about.’

‘But there is not?’

‘There is not.’

‘Well, I am glad your life is so free of trouble, dear cousin Rachel. Have you finished your breakfast?’

‘I think so.’

‘Then let us go to the promenade deck, and watch you vomit it up for the seagulls.’

Rachel clasped her hands prettily. ‘Oh, can we? What an appealing idea. Let’s not delay.’

But as Masha rose from her chair and turned to go, there was a ripping sound. The coat which she always wore had caught on the edge of the table. She clutched at the fabric in dismay, turning pale. ‘Rachel! My coat!’