The Devil's Harmony, page 16
She had been quite surprised when it transpired that Father knew one or two people connected with the Library, just as she had been surprised at him knowing about the arrangements for the Żelazowa Award. Once or twice she had even wondered if he knew who had donated it, because there had been rather a knowing smile when she had been nominated. But, of course, he had met and worked with a great many people during his professional life. He was more or less retired now, and living some way out of Warsaw, but he was still in touch with former colleagues and associates.
From the first rehearsal, it was clear to her that Yan Orzek was held in very high regard by everyone at the Library, from the musicians all the way down to the kitchen staff who prepared and served the Ivory Salon’s suppers. Bruno Sicora, who was the pianist and also the assistant director of music, told Tanwen that if Yan included a piano performance of his own at a concert, huge sums of money were paid for seats, and places were booked for weeks ahead so that people could see him and hear him play. He was a maestro, said Bruno, without the least trace of envy.
Studying Yan, Tanwen began to see him in a slightly different light, and when Bruno called him a maestro, she wondered if he would also be a maestro in the bedroom. She had gone to bed with several young men at the Academy, partly because it was a good idea to practise – practice meant you became skilled, whether it was playing the violin or engaging in bedroom activities. It had not made her a cheap tart, it had simply been that it was a good idea to acquire any skills that might be useful. Also, she had been curious to know what the bed thing was like, and whether it was as good as people said. Mostly, it had not been; it had been messy and undignified and even a bit boring. She had tried it with a couple of older men, who ought to know a bit more about such things – and also, who might be of use to her career in the future. They had been a bit better, although not much, and they had vanished politely from her life after a couple of sessions.
But with Yan it might be very different indeed. She might even forgive him for the way he had spoken to her about that first night when she had been given the Żelazowa Award.
It was annoying to find that nobody at the Chopin Library seemed very impressed by the Żelazowa Award. Alicja, who was currently the Library’s resident cellist, even said, in a die-away voice, that she had never heard of it.
‘But I suppose it’s something they award in provincial schools, is it?’
Tanwen knew quite well that this remark came from pure jealousy, because it was obvious that Alicja was in love with Yan. She gazed at him with open adoration – once or twice Tanwen even wondered about suggesting that if Alicja did something about her stringy hair and the complexion which did not look as if it had ever known the touch of a powder puff, she might have a better chance.
Bruno Sicora asked if the award had taken the form of a silver cup or a bowl, because if so, he and Tanwen might fill it with wine some evening and share the drinking of it. Tanwen had no intention of drinking wine from silver cups with mere assistant directors; it was perfectly clear what Bruno’s intentions were, and she was not going to jump into bed with somebody she had just met, which really would be the behaviour of a cheap tart.
Yan Orzek was angry that he had been forced into taking Tanwen into the Library. He had always chosen his own musicians, but in the end the Trust’s chairman had huffed a bit and talked about dwindling bank balances, and she had been appointed despite Yan’s objections.
‘The truth is,’ said the chairman, ‘that the Chopin Library, distinguished and historic as it is, won’t run on nothing. Even,’ he said, meaningfully, ‘with a musical director as gifted and as knowledgeable as yourself.’
The message was clear. Appoint this girl, and someone is prepared to deposit a substantial amount of money in the Library’s coffers. But continue to refuse, and you’ll find there are other, equally gifted and knowledgeable musicians who will be more amenable and who could take your place.
And so there had been a somewhat pretentious award ceremony, at which Tanwen had behaved like a precocious six-year-old showing off in front of the grown-ups. When Yan had made it clear at her first rehearsal that he was not prepared to put up with such behaviour, she had stared at him with shock and then with fury, clenching her small fists. The fury was quickly suppressed, but for a disconcerting moment, Yan had caught himself wondering how she would look if her eyes were not glowing with angry defiance, but with an entirely different emotion – and how she would look if her hair were unpinned and tumbling around her bare shoulders.
Such thoughts – such feelings – had to be suppressed. And it was not very surprising if some unknown person was prepared to help Tanwen’s career in return for certain favours. If Tanwen was indeed bestowing those favours on some unknown Library benefactor, or even on the entire Trust board, it was no concern of Yan’s. He would acknowledge that she was a skilled violinist, and he would admit that she would be an asset.
But preparing for the concert at which she would make her debut, he wondered, as he had done more frequently of late, how much longer the Chopin Library could survive. He would fight for it, but he was afraid there could not be many more concerts. Nobody actually came out and said that the Nazis were tightening their grip on the city – most people would be too worried that such comments could be overheard and reported – but it was what everyone thought.
But this concert, at least, would go ahead, and the chef came puffing up from the kitchens to discuss the supper that would be served. He said they could not be expected to provide the kind of food that had been possible a year or two ago, but they would do their best. They would, of course, serve the Mrożony Polonez – Anatol was shocked to his boots to think of a Chopin Library concert without it. He became loquacious on the subject, describing how his father, who had been chef here thirty years ago, had always led the procession up the steps from the old ice room, deep in the bowels of the building – they would forgive the use of the word bowels in this context, Anatol hoped – and how the procession was always accompanied by two violinists playing one of Chopin’s own polonaises. He paused, overcome by the emotion of the memory, then went on to describe how servants would carry wax candles in gilt holders. ‘Lighting the Mrożony Polonez, they used to call it.’
‘I wish I could have seen it,’ said Yan.
‘It’s a very great pity, Mr Orzek, that that original stairway became unsafe and they had to block it off,’ said Anatol. ‘It was done during the last tsar’s visit – before he was assassinated, of course.’
‘Of course.’ From the corner of his eye, Yan saw Bruno grin, but they all liked Anatol, and they enjoyed his stories about the Library’s past and its traditions.
‘These days,’ said Anatol, ‘we have to use the scullery steps which are narrow and deep, and no kind of background for a ceremonial procession, at all. Also, they are difficult for persons of larger girth to ascend.’
After Anatol had gone, Bruno observed that it was a pity they could no longer have the full ceremonial procession and the Lighting of the Iced Polonaise.
‘I didn’t know there was an ice room here, though,’ he said. ‘Did you, maestro?’
‘What? No, but logically there’d have to have been one in the place’s heyday. And all houses of this size had ice rooms or ice pits.’ Yan sounded preoccupied. They were in the big rehearsal room, and he was at the piano, a Debussy score propped up in front of him. Alicja was in the other corner, drooping over her cello.
‘I might explore sometime,’ said Bruno. ‘A closed-off stairway going down to an old ice room sounds nicely spooky. You could come with me, Tanwen. We’ll hold hands and hunt for ghosts.’
Without looking up, Yan said, ‘More likely you’ll find nothing but cobwebs and spiders. I wouldn’t worry about ghosts, Tanwen. I never do.’
Bruno said, ‘Your trouble, maestro, is that you have no romance in your soul.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ said Yan, returning to Debussy.
Yan hoped that Tanwen was not taking Bruno’s teasing for anything other than the mischievous flirting it undoubtedly was. Whatever else she might be, she was still quite young and probably not very worldly, and Yan had a responsibility towards his musicians. He wondered whether he ought to speak to Bruno, but he would find it difficult and embarrassing. Bruno would not be in the least embarrassed, of course, in fact he would consider it amusing.
Bruno had rooms in the same house as Yan, on the floor immediately above, which could be convenient and friendly, although sometimes awkward. There were times when it was impossible not to hear female giggles and shrieks of delight, or groans of an unmistakable rhythm and character. It was occasionally quite difficult to face Bruno in the rehearsal room on the mornings after those nights.
Once, Yan had said, carefully, ‘Bruno, I never pry, as you know, but these days you do need to be careful about who—’
‘Whose bed I get into and who I let into my own bed?’ said Bruno. ‘Are you wondering if I’m unwittingly passing information to the Nazis? Because if so—’
‘No, of course not.’ Yan hesitated, then said, ‘You go to some of the meetings, though, don’t you? The secret ones?’
‘Yes,’ said Bruno, in a low voice. ‘And so, I think, do you.’
As the night of the concert drew nearer, the city began to feel more and more uneasy. People in the streets began to have a hunted look; they did not exactly hide in their homes, but they kept off the streets as much as possible, and they tried to avoid the patrols that regularly marched through the city.
Anyone with even the smallest vein of Jewish ancestry now went in genuine fear, because by this time it was known that Hitler was hell-bent on purging Poland – and probably as much of Europe as he could get at – of anyone with Jewish blood. There were a number of theories as to the reason for this, one of which was that the Führer had caught a venereal disease from a Jewish prostitute in the Great War and this was his revenge. Nobody dared say this very loudly, of course, and not many people actually believed it, although Yan thought most people would like to.
He knew that soon he would have to talk to his musicians about the Library’s future and their own futures. This was a daunting prospect. How would they react? Alicja would be sympathetic, but in the wrong way. She would fix her large, burned-out-lamp eyes on him, and say this was another of life’s tragedies, and that her family had known many of them. Then she would vow to shut herself away and compose music that would express anguish and sorrow. Alicja was always composing music expressing anguish and sorrow.
‘When the Muse visits me, I cannot ignore her,’ she said, with a sad, brave smile.
Yan always accepted Alicja’s compositions when she presented them to him, and they were always terrible.
‘A nocturne,’ she might say. ‘A haunted piece, born of sad dreams. Or perhaps it might be an étude. You shall decide.’ Several times, after Tanwen’s arrival, she said, ‘I’ve brought a piece that I composed with you in mind, maestro. We could rehearse it together – just the two of us, I mean. Anyone else would be an intrusion.’ She sent a disparaging look towards Tanwen.
Tanwen …
But so far she was accepting Yan’s direction without demur, and it was hardly her fault that when she sat by a window during rehearsals, the afternoon sunshine fell across her hair, making it look as if a glowing sunset shone through it.
SIXTEEN
Warsaw, late 1930s
Bruno said that they would all rattle around like four peas in a pod at the concert.
‘Personally, I prefer the bigger events,’ he said. ‘Thirty-piece orchestra and footmen in liveries and wigs and all the rest of it.’
‘I don’t suppose there’ll be much of an audience, anyway,’ said Alicja, mournfully, and added, ‘the Germans are everywhere. Their boots are like huge steel claws scraping on the cobblestones. I lie awake listening for the sounds of their marching in the street outside my window.’
‘Personally,’ said Bruno, ‘if I hear anything untoward in the street outside my window, I pull the sheets over my head. And,’ he said, with a wink at Tanwen, ‘over the head of anyone who might be in bed with me at the time.’
Tanwen said firmly that she had never heard the marching boots, and Bruno added that if you let the Third Reich squash you to the extent that you stopped trying to entertain people with your music, you might as well give up once and for all. For himself, he would fight to his last breath, said Bruno, and for a disquieting moment something seemed to blaze from his eyes, so that it was no longer the familiar flippant, careless Bruno – the man who liked to sit down at a piano and pour out music of all kinds and slide mischievously into modern swing or jazz. It was someone very different indeed.
Father had written to say he could not get to Warsaw for the concert. He found travelling tiring these days, and, of course, travelling of all kinds was becoming difficult. But he would telephone Tanwen the morning after at her lodgings, and they would have one of their talks. Father loved to know about her days and about her new life at the Library. He said it made him feel that he was sharing it with her, and she must be indulgent of an old man’s foolishness. He would look forward to hearing who had been at the concert, and which rooms had been used.
They had to wear traditional black for the concert, of course. Evening or semi-evening frocks for Tanwen and Alicja, and white tie and tails for the men. It was becoming impossible to buy new clothes, but Tanwen scoured the second-hand clothes shops – the good ones, where aristocratic ladies sent their clothes after they had only worn them a couple of times, but were too mean to actually give them away – and found a really beautiful silk cocktail frock in black silk jacquard. It fitted perfectly, the skirt swished alluringly around her ankles, and there were black shoes with glacé bows to match. The shoes pinched a bit, but Tanwen could put up with pinched toes for a couple of hours.
It was annoying to find that Alicja had been right about the audience being small, but they were very appreciative and Yan looked marvellous in his sharp, formal evening dress. Tanwen thought the very air sizzled with his energy.
After the audience had gone, the rooms were cleared and swept, and the gilt chairs carried back to their store cupboard by the two girls who helped Anatol. The leftover food was diligently gathered up – by some strange and secret method it would be taken to Anatol’s cousin who kept sheep on the slopes beyond the Kampinos Forest. Presently some racks of lamb and loin chops would make their appearance in various larders by way of payment. It was what was being done nowadays. If the Germans knew about it – and probably they did because they knew most things that went on – nobody seemed overly concerned.
What was left of the Mrożony Polonez would not go to the Kampinos pigs, of course. In any case, it would have melted to nothing by the morning. It was carefully scraped into a large bowl and carried away. Alicja said, mournfully, that she supposed it would be refrozen so that it could be served up in the future to a different audience, and added that most things in life were rehashed and re-served in a different form, but essentially they remained the same and you lived a life of leftovers.
Tanwen wondered if this was meant as a philosophical observation or whether it was just Alicja’s usual pessimism, but she was only half listening, because her mind was too alive with her own plans.
Yan was glad they had gone ahead with tonight’s concert. Walking through the empty rooms, he felt, as he always did, how different the Library seemed immediately after a performance. Often, when he was on his own here, he would imagine the Library’s glorious days, when glittering and famous people flocked here – when Paderewski and Chopin himself performed and the Russian tsars came to hear them. Surely, if ever there were to be a time when the ghosts of those great composers ventured out, this would be it. He thought they would be polite and unobtrusive, tiptoeing back to see if their music was still being played, shying away from the light, because they had never known electric light – only candlelight, or lamplight.
Lamplight. Something stirred at the edges of his mind, and with it came the feeling that this was a night when other ghosts might stir, and that they would not be the shades of inquisitive composers or musicians. He frowned, and went into the Ivory Salon. This, too, was in shadow, but through the tall windows he saw that storm clouds were scudding across the night sky, and that rain was lashing against the glass. There had been a storm when those other ghosts had walked …
Don’t look at the memory, said his mind. Do what you always do when those ghosts try to push their way into the present – turn to music, and pretend, as you always pretend, that the music might one day take you back. And that if by some fantastical chance it does, you’ll be able to change what happened.
He crossed to the dais, but once seated at the piano, he hesitated. Normally on nights like this he reached for Mozart, because nothing drove away ghosts like Mozart at his insouciant best. But tonight, different music was taking hold of him, and it was music that had been sung on a long-ago night, the words only heard in fragments, but the whole learned and understood years afterwards. The Demon by Anton Rubinstein, beautiful and sinister and melancholy, with, at its heart, the Demon’s impassioned farewell.
Don’t cry … your tear will drop on my hand
And tomorrow I’ll be left without you …
Only the storm light illuminated the Ivory Salon, but for this, of all music, Yan did not need light. His fingers found the piano keys, and the soft sad harmony stole into the room, mingling with the storm.
He was still lost in the music and the memories, when on the edges of his mind he became aware of soft footsteps. With the footsteps came singing – soft and sweet, the words those of the aria he was playing … The words that had been written when this music was composed nearly seventy years earlier.
