Tales of Disturbance

The Violinist

I stand, centre stage, under the lights. Costume: black silk. High drama. Femme fatale.  Audience, seated, waiting.  A cough, then another, splits the silence. Low whispers, just audible. When my nerves are all a jitter like this, I wonder who they are (critics? politicians?) and what they're talking about (me? Him?)

I have only had a few concert performances to date but I know I am good. At least for someone they have never heard of. I have impressed the critics: even in Stadt, the reviews have been adoring.

I step back a little. Cradle my violin in my right hand, bow in my left. I must be careful of the resin - how it attaches to black silk. I have to stand here, cradling my violin, praying she stays in tune, for two whole movements.

The conductor is small and sickly; an old man with a monocle and a turn in his eye. He strikes the baton. The orchestra flares like a match, the music pours out like flame; it seems to descend from the ceiling, out of the walls. It seems to rise up from the floor like lava. It's overpowering from where I'm standing, I am nearly lifted off the floor as I feel it thrilling through me. The silver knife slashing of the violins, the grandfatherly fall of the cellos, the sassy impertinence of the brass, the regretful woodwind- apology after apology like a disappointing lover; the gunshot percussion - I know them all like childhood friends. I listen out for the baritone - my favourite perhaps because it echoes with the heart of a human voice; yet at the same time takes it to a separate place - a pure, clear place- that mocks all the pettiness in the world.

I close my eyes. Arrange my fingers, ready to strike with the bow. There. The note sings out like a fine, clear star over the flourish of the piano. It may be the finest, clearest note I have ever played. 

I am concentrating hard, thinking about my sound reaching right to the back of the room. I am a doctor, a priest; a healer, a saviour. I feel their eyes leaning in towards me; the room is full of eyes. I think about my ivory arms working, working against the midnight of my dress. 

I worry in a momentary way, about the one eyed lens watching me like a spy. I don't let it unsettle me, the camera, for there's danger in that. I concentrate on the swish of the raw silk between beats and in the rests; the gutted silence of the audience in contrast with the furore. Then the fire and life swells again and the notes pour over like a powerful spell. 

I realize, with some surprise, that I am playing the concerto of my life. Some spirit has taken over me; it drags me over borders, through an unknown country; of beauty and chaos and terror and order - over flat plains and rugged mountains; into cold prisons - out to wild freedom. Tonight the music is a path I simply know without even thinking about it. I close my eyes and let my instrument wield it's power; it is separate from me or perhaps part of me, or inside of me, but either way it knows and I trust it, and I am free to think. 

There have been five or six prison releases. This has lifted me and I know there is hope. 

 It has been more than eight months since he was arrested. He was walking home from work by the  Moskva river.  I wonder about his violin. I find myself thinking about it in the night, in a tea room, during a performance. No one could give him an estimate; it was priceless, but that was not it.  It had to do with the richness of heritage - being played by his grandfather, and his grandfather before.  

Sometimes I play it like a tape in my head, his arrest; or at least how I imagine it. The black coated guards seizing him, one of their silver badges catching his cheek in the struggle. Blood. Was he wearing his wool coat? 

But it is the violin that floats up in my thoughts the most. It's value. Could they tell? Perhaps they had thrown it into the Volga. Perhaps he saw. My notes sing out his sorrow, into the hush of the dark. The emotional anguish he would have endured if they did this. I feel for him; more sorry than I can say. But apart from this he would have surrendered easily. No drama. I'm sure there was no violence. No. Fighting back was not his style.

I have heard nothing of his whereabouts or wellbeing since that day. On my worst days I think he may, after all, be dead. I think I see his wintered corpse on the landscape; his eyes of Icelandic blue staring up at me from some Siberian ditch at sunrise, as beautiful as a symphony, haunting as a minor key. 

Or perhaps he is in hospital, recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning in an undisclosed location. They could slip it into your drink, spread it on the door handle; sprinkle it in your shoe. They had done all of these things and more. Why wouldn't they do it to him? 

The music rises to a crescendo. Fortissimo. I have found out nothing despite my very best efforts. I have exhausted every contact in the musical community; the old Conservatorians who sign fake petitions with Louis Quinze fountain pens, The Bonvast Plenary School were elite party members revel by the dozen yet pretend to be liberal. Humanitarian. Bright young things who will do anything for a promotion.

 But everyone is guilty. Everyone is a spy. No one talks, no one trusts. No one talks and fear is a disease; and everyone is infected. So I'm beginning to think something unspeakable has happened to him. 

Yet here I am, on stage, under the lights, in a beautiful silk dress, playing a beautiful instrument. I wonder about that sometimes, how I can carry on. I conclude there is a part of me that is colder than a Siberian winter.  Fame has made me cold.

I find myself wandering down the Holland Road again. I remember the curtains had bothered me that morning, split wide apart like legs, the sun screaming through my room. We met to talk. Traffic in July. A woman in a red shawl. Rain. A child running after a ball trying to cross. Heavier rain, finally pelting rain on a summer pavement. An earthy smell, everywhere, the smell that always took me back to playing in the street before a thunderstorm. The first spots of rain on a pale grey pavement under a darkening sky. The thought of the holidays ahead. 

I could see you with your instrument across the road. You were a holiday ahead. You waved at me. Looked up at the rain and back at me with a funny face. Your figure powering through July like a conquering hero. The violin always looked so small next to you - like you were carrying it to school for a child. 

We went to a hotel. Blue flowers. Yellow sign. A waiter with a sense of humour. We talked about it. We talked of Paris and Vienna, and we talked about what was coming. White wine. The funny waiter poured. You talked of Pythagarus; you talked ofyour grandfather, a new string for your violin, love. Our world seemed to swirl around the room like wine poured into a glass, only to be poured away...

 Within months the bar was ripped out of Chez Moi; the funny waiter dragged out to the street and shot in the back of the head. I watched from an upstairs window on Portelot street where I was hiding. Gun shots spitting their ugly sound. The bar was reconfigured as Northern Head Party Quarters, and the beautiful architecture became ugly.

 You were not worried that afternoon. I know that. I watched you carefully, talking, sipping your drink and your broad, toned shoulders were relaxed and your arm dangled on the back of the sofa. No, you were not worried. I suddenly saw you very clearly, as if I was looking at your thoughts through some magnifying glass. We left each other on Qui Amor Square. You did a funny skip to make me laugh. It'll be alright, you said. They're throwing people in prison I said. You cannot imprison the human spirit you said. Let them try and throw music in prison. Let them try. 

How wrong you were.

A thought, alarming and sudden, springs off the string and into the tense air and just like that, it's over. The midnight sea of the audience comes alive, pours out and falls over the stage. A storm of applause like waves crashing over the edge of my thoughts. It feels quite close to magic, the surprise of it. The affirmation. I bow low, very, very low. I am as grateful to the party as I ought to be.

I wonder, I can't help it, if it was a fair trade in after all. I informed on you in exchange for this. This. But I want you to see, because then you would surely understand. For a moment I think I see your face in the back, sliding out of the shadows and then back again. But then I look again and it's only a trick of the darkness.