Nadine Gordimer - Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

What woman.

At music festivals around the world the same orchestral players, the same chamber music quartets and trios keep meeting in different countries, they share a map of common experience, live in the same hotels, exchange discoveries of restaurants, complaints about concert-hall acoustics and enthusiasm over audience response. If it were to be some musician encountered on a particular tour, that didn’t necessarily mean the affair was a brief one that ended when the man and woman each went their way seas and continents apart; they might meet again, plan to, at the next festival somewhere else in the world — Vienna, Jerusalem, Sydney, where he had played or was contracted to play soon. The stimulation not only of performance before an unknown audience but of meeting again, the excitement of being presented with the opportunity to take up something interrupted.

Or was the woman nearer home. A member of the national orchestra in which he and his cello were star performers. That was an identification she found hard to look for, considering their company of friends in this way. A young woman, of course, a younger woman than herself. But wasn’t that just the inevitable decided at her mother’s tea-table forum. The clarinet player was in her late forties, endowed with fine breasts in décolleté and a delightful wit. There was often repartee between them, the clarinet and the cello, over drinks. The pianist, young with waist-length red-out-of-the-bottle hair, was a lesbian kept under strict guard by her woman. The third and last female musician among the orchestra components was also the last one would be crass enough to think of: she was Khomotso, the second violinist of extraordinary talent, one of the two black musicians. She was so young; she had given birth to an adored baby who for the first few months of life had been brought in the car of Khomotso’s sister to rehearsals, so that the mother could suckle the infant there. The director of the orchestra gave an interview to a Sunday newspaper about this, as an example of the orchestra’s transformation to the human values of the new South Africa. The violinist was certainly the prettiest, the most desirable of the women in whose company the cellist spent the intense part of his days and nights, but respect, his human feeling, would be stronger than sexual attraction, his identification with her as a musician making her way would taboo distracting her from that. As for him, wouldn’t it look like the Old South Africa, white man ‘taking advantage’ of the precariously balanced life of a young black woman.

His lover might be one of faithful concert-season-goers who gave post-performance parties.

He had a lunchtime friendship with one of the male regulars, an industrialist, amateur viola player with a fine music library from which he was made free to borrow. So it might be one of the wives of such men. Many of these were themselves career women, much younger than the wealthy husbands, bringing intelligence of commitment to ideas and activities outside the arts, as well as what he might see as sexual availability.

It was no longer assumed she would be with him as she always had been when he accepted invitations to receptions or private houses; the unspoken implication was that these were now strictly professional. He never suggested what also had been assumed, that when he was to give a recital in another city within their home country, of course she would be there; he packed the overnight bag open on their bed, took up the black-clad body of the cello and kissed her goodbye. There were dutiful acts of well-spaced intercourse as if it were routine as regular intervals for a haircut. She began to want to avoid the approach in bed; and then grew fearful she would send him to the other woman by suggesting she did not desire him; and at the same time she terribly wanted to put her hands, her mouth on the body beside her, no matter the humiliation of what he followed like a medical procedure prescribed to satisfy her. A bill to be paid.

She waited for him to speak. About what had happened. To trust the long confidence between them. He never did. She did not ask because — she was also afraid that what happened once admitted, it would be irrevocably real. One night he got up in the dark, took the cello out of its bed and played. She woke to the voice, saying something passionately angry in its deepest bass. Then there came the time when — was it possible for this to be, in his magnificent, exquisite playing — there was a disharmony, the low notes dragging as if the cello refused him. Nights, weeks, the same.

So. She knew the affair was over. She felt a pull of sadness — for him. For herself, nothing. By never confronting him she had stunned herself.

Soon he came to her again. The three of them, he, she and the cello against the wall, were together.

He makes love better than ever before remembered, caresses not known, more subtle more anticipatory of what can be roused in her, what she’s capable of feeling, needing. As if he’s had the experience of a different instrument to learn from.

HE’S the owner of one of the private airlines who have taken up the internal routes between small cities and local areas the national airline, flying at astronomical heights to five continents, hasn’t bothered with. Until lately, that is, when their aircraft with full-length sleeper beds and gourmet menus haven’t succeeded in cosseting them against falling profits. Now they want to pick up cents on the local routes’ discount market, enter into competition with modest craft flitting to unimportant places on home ground.

But that wouldn’t have anything to do with this night.

Could have been some other night (Tuesdays he plays squash) if it didn’t happen to be when there was a meeting of private airline owners to discuss their protest against the national carrier’s intention as a violation of the law of unfair competition, since the great span of the national wings is subsidised by taxpayers’ money. She didn’t go along to listen in on the meeting because she was behind time with marking papers in media studies from her students in that university department. She was not alone at her desk, their dog lay under it at her feet, a fur-flounced English setter much loved by master and mistress, particularly since their son went off to boarding school. Dina the darling held the vacant place of only child. So intelligent, she even seemed to enjoy music; The Pearl Fishers CD was playing and she wasn’t asleep. Well, one mustn’t become a dotty dog lover, Dina was probably waiting to catch his footfall at the front door.

It came when the last paper was marked and being shuffled together with the rest, for tomorrow; she got up, stretching as she was instructed at aerobics class, and followed the dog’s scramble downstairs.

He was securing the door with its locks and looped chain, safety for their night, and they exchanged, How’d it go, any progress, Oh round in circles again, that bloody lawyer didn’t show — but the master didn’t have to push down the dog’s usual bounding interference when the master came home from anywhere, anytime. Hullo my girl —his expected greeting ignored, no paws landing in response on his shoulders. While he was questioned about the evening and they considered coffee or a drink before bed, you choose, the dog was intently scenting round his shoes. He must have stepped in something. As they went upstairs together, he turning from above her to repeat exasperated remarks about why he was so late, how long the meeting dragged on, the dog pushed past her to impede him, dilated nose rising against his pants’ legs. Dina, down! What d’you think you’re doing! He slapped the furry rump to make her mount ahead. She stood at the top of the stairs in the hunting dog’s point stance, faced at him. Dina’d never been in the field, he was not a hunting man. Some displaced atavistic tic come up in an indulged housepet.