David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

M.D. asked about my hour in the Zonnebeke cemetery. Didn’t really answer. Mangled, bloodied pheasant kept flashing before my eyes. Asked M.D. where he’d spent his war. “Oh, you know, attending to business.” In Bruges? I asked, surprised, hard put to imagine a Belgian diamond merchant prospering under the Kaiser’s occupation. “Good God, no,” answered M.D., “Johannesburg. My wife and I got out for the duration.” I complimented his foresight. Modestly, he explained, “Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.”

Was he so sure another war was coming?

“Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity’s two eternal companions.”

So, I asked, what was the other?

“Diamonds.” A butcher in a bloodstained apron ran across the square, and the children scattered. Now he had the problem of luring the hen down from its plinth.

The League of Nations? Surely nations knew laws other than warfare? What of diplomacy?

“Oh, diplomacy,” said M.D., in his element, “it mops up war’s spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents. Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots, and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.”

The reductio ad absurdum of M.D.’s view, I argued, was that science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilization drives itself to extinction. M.D. embraced my objection with mordant glee. “Precisely. Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that’ll snuff out Homo sapiens before this century is out! You’ll probably live to see it happen, you fortunate son. What a symphonic crescendo that’ll be, eh?”

The butcher came over to ask the barman for a ladder. Got to end here. Can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

21ST—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Ayrs should be up on his feet tomorrow after a bed-bound fortnight. Wouldn’t wish syphilis on my worst enemies. Only one or two, anyway. The syphilitic decays in increments, like fruit rotting in orchard verges. Dr. Egret calls by every other day, but there’s not much left to prescribe except ever-bigger doses of morphine. V.A. loathes using it because it clouds his music.

J. prone to bouts of despondency. Some nights, she just clings to me as if I’m her life belt and she’s drowning. Feel sorry for the woman, but I’m interested in her body, not her problems. Was.

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.

Next day

Had the devil of a spat with V.A. He dictated a toccata-like étude during this morning’s compositional, it seemed deuced familiar, then I recognized the refrain from my own “Angel of Mons”! If Ayrs hoped I’d not notice he was v. much mistaken. I told him straight—this was my music. He changed his tune: “What d’you mean, your music? Frobisher, when you grow up, you’ll find that all composers draw inspiration from their environments. You’re one of many elements in mine, receiving a fair salary, I might add, enjoying daily master classes in composition and mingling with the greatest musical minds of the age. If you’re unhappy with these terms, Hendrick will drive you to the station.” Well, a v. different man from the one I’d wheeled down to the lodge house a few weeks ago, when he’d pleaded with me to stay on until next spring. I asked whom he had in mind to replace me. Mrs. Willems? The gardener? Eva? Nefertiti? “Oh, I’m sure Sir Trevor Mackerras could lay his hands on a suitable boy for me. Yes, I shall advertise. You’re not as singular as you like to think. Now. Do you want your job or not?”

Couldn’t find a way to win back lost ground so I walked out, complaining of agony in my big toe. V.A. fired this warning at my flank: “If your toe isn’t better by the morning, Frobisher, get it fixed in London and don’t come back.” Sometimes I want to build a bloody great bonfire and toss the old sod into its roaring heart.

Some days later

Still here, J. visited later, spun me a line about Ayrs’s pride, how much he values my work, artistic tempers etc., but please stay, for her sake if not for his. Accepted this proxy fig leaf cum olive branch, and our lovemaking that night was almost affectionate. Winter coming on, and I’m not up to adventuring around Europe on my modest nest egg. Would need to meet a stupid, wealthy heiress rather smartish if I left now. Anyone spring to mind? Will send another package for Jansch, to boost my emergency fund. If Ayrs won’t cut me in for my ideas that went into “Todtenvogel”— enjoying its twentieth public outing since Warsaw—I’ll just have to reimburse myself. Resolve to be much more cautious before showing V.A. my own compositions again. You know, having the roof over one’s head dependent upon the good offices of an employer is a loathsome way to live. Christ only knows how the serving classes stand it. Are the Frobishery domestics forever biting their tongues as I must? one wonders. Eva back from her summer in Switzerland. Well, this young woman says she’s Eva, and the resemblance is certainly striking, but that snotty duckling who left Zedelghem three months ago has returned a most graceful swan. She supports her mother, bathes her father’s eyelids with cotton wool dipped in cold water and reads him Flaubert for hours on end, she’s courteous to the servants, and she even asks me about my sextet’s progress. Was sure it was some new strategy to oust me, but seven days on I’m beginning to suspect E. the stinker just might be dead and buried. V. well, there is more to E.’s & my pax than meets the eye, but must first provide some background. Since my arrival in Neerbeke, Eva’s “landlady” in Bruges, Mme. van de Velde, had been on at both E. & J. for me to visit their house so her five daughters—E.’s schoolfellows—can practice their English on a genuine English gentleman. M. van de Velde, you’ll remember, is the alleged rake of Minnewater Park who turned out to be a manufacturer of munitions and respected civic pillar etc. Mme. van de Velde is one of those tiresome, persistent women whose ambitions won’t be thwarted by “He’s v. busy at the moment.” Actually, one suspects J. of fixing the fait accompli out of spite—as her daughter grows swanlike, the mother is turning into a nasty old rook.