THE STRING QUARTET

THE STRING QUARTET

The two couples sit and listen. The sun sets slowly over the lake. The waves on it seem calmed by the music, glistening as the level light strokes them. The lake used to be a small gravel-pit, but no one who knows that mentions it.

The four players are happy, except for those moments when the music moves them to be sad. They look at one another when they need to. They are glad to be here, in these pleasant surroundings. The scent of jasmine steals in from the trellis by the veranda where they are sitting, playing music they love. If they have time, between their entries, they can steal a glance at the view over the lake, even though it is behind them.

The one they can see is reflected in the mirror above the fireplace. It is smaller, darker and further away than the one in reality behind them, but one cannot have everything. It is only right that the owner of the house and his guests should be able to enjoy the view while listening to the music. He has paid handsomely for all of it.

The players are happy with the money they will take away. They do not need to worry about where it has come from. A fine dinner is waiting for them. They smelt it being prepared as they came through the marble hallway into the summer salon – it is a small villa. They are also relieved that they will not have to make conversation with their employer – he calls himself their host – and his guests. He told them when he hired them that he respected their artistic independence, and understood their need to regain their own inner calm after the emotional stresses and strains of playing such a work. They did not contradict him.

They will eat well in the small dining-room, adjacent to the kitchen, where the staff, the cook and butler, will eat last of all, when dinner has been served and the host and his guests have expressed the desire to be left to their own devices. By then the players, dined and wined, will have made their way, instrument-laden, down the hill through the soft darkness to the gently glowing railway station, to catch the last but one train back to the city. There they will part, the second violinist to his young family in the suburbs, the viola-player to the large flat he still shares with his elderly mother, the cellist to the half-villa on the edge of the city that his wife inherited from her aunt, and the bachelor first violin to a game of cards and a few glasses of schnaps with his regular circle, not too far from his spacious and expensive apartment in the inner city.

They finish playing – and only just in time. It is a long work, and the sun has already set. There is only just enough light left to read the parts on the music-stands in front of them. The players are glad that the host has chosen to demonstrate his sense of culture by providing the stands. One thing less to carry. The first violin decides he should visit his friend the optician before the winter brings darker days. They hold the last chord together, flawlessly, because they have been playing together a while. The last vibrations die into silence. Their bows still rest on the strings. It is a kind of game. Will the listeners know when it is over? They are polite, or perhaps experienced, and wait till the players relax and lift their bows before even shifting their own positions. Even then, they do not applaud, but murmur appreciation. The players understand. Four people do not constitute an audience. They are individuals. The sound of breath released that has been retained is enough of a tribute.

One by one, the players stand and begin to pack away. As if by arrangement, the listeners move forward and mingle with them, trying not to disturb them in their activities, but each separately intent on having a word, commenting on a particular passage, expressing how moved, impressed, touched, even surprised they were by one particular moment. The players, though different in their characteristic movements, all essentially respond in the same way: a deprecating gesture with one hand or the other, an understanding nod of the head, a pinching of the mouth, a wrinkling of the lips, the sort of response made to the tasting of an unfamiliar wine, a recognition that different people have different tastes and that there is, in the long run, little point in discussing them, and none at all in contradicting them, which would only give offence.

The first violin, who has dealt with their host before in other contexts and to whom the approach was made which has led to this engagement, suspects strongly that their host has primed the other listeners, though he is not entirely certain why. Nor does he think that concerns him and his fellow-players. He nods away the comment being made in his ear with a convincing impersonation of agreement and appreciation and snaps his violin-case shut. Then he turns to his fellow-players, nods at them, just as he does when signalling an entry, and the quartet files past the listeners, who are lined up as if at some formal garden-party given by a figure of distinction, shaking hands down the line.

The host moves across and shuts the door leading to the hallway. Then he moves to open the door which leads into the large dining-room. Candles are already lit. Open windows admit the scent of jasmine. Barely-noticeable fly-screens exclude undesirable intruders, which occasionally flutter at them with a subdued drumming. Four places are set at the lake end of the long table. No one is seated at the head. The host directs his wife to sit opposite him, while the other couple are placed correspondingly, so that each man has a woman as his neighbour, as is normal in polite society.

“Did you enjoy it?” asks the host, as he pours the white wine. His wife covers her glass. He pours the wine himself because he does not believe in discussing things in front of servants. Besides, the cook will be busy serving the quartet. Moreover, he does not believe in mixing conversation with the appreciation of food. He is a great believer in distinction and separation. He will summon the dinner when he is ready.

It is the male guest who answers first. He is younger than the host, his hair is blonde and unruly, his skin pale, freckled, his eyes ice-blue, his teeth prominent and flashing.

“Well,” he says, “it’s not what I’m used to, it’s not perhaps my taste, but I can appreciate it.”

“Good,” says the host, sipping his wine, as he pours some sparkling mineral water for his wife. The wine is not quite cold enough. He replaces the bottle in the cooler and sprinkles some salt on the ice that surrounds it. “I like honesty.”

“I admire the skill,” says the male guest. “Even though it’s not something I’d wish to be able to do.”

“Oh yes,” says the guest’s wife, shifting on her chair with excitement, “the way their fingers flash up and down, always making different sounds and always getting it right! I couldn’t take my eyes off them!”

“Yes, they’re clever, Jewish fiddlers,” says the host’s wife, sipping her mineral water.

“Are they – all – ?” asks the male guest, turning to his host’s wife.

It is the host who answers him. “Yes. Does it matter?”

“Well – no – not really – if they’re good at what they do – ”

“And they clearly are,” says the host. “Your wife is very impressed with their capabilities.”

“Aren’t you?” asks the male guest, a little uncertain.

“Oh, yes,” says the host, laying his right hand on the left hand of the woman next to him, “I share many of your wife’s tastes. If not quite all of them.”

The guest’s wife looks at the host beside her in a way which suggests that she has looked at him many times before, in different circumstances. “No,” she says, smiling, and slipping her hand out from under his to adjust her dress, “not quite all. But most.” And she puts her hand back, on top of his.

“And you, my dear,” says the host to his wife, “what do you think? How did the performance strike you?”

The host’s wife dabs her lips with her napkin, leaving a little lipstick on it. She notices, and purses her lips in annoyance. “I think they stir up our emotions too much,” she says. “I don’t think they have any business doing that. A beautiful melody is one thing. Anyone can enjoy that. You don’t have to sing along, or march to it, or dance to it, or bellow it out at the top of your voice over a whole orchestra scraping and puffing away. You can appreciate it inside yourself. But those harmonies, those sliding, slipping ambiguities, those places where you can’t be quite sure whether you’re dealing with pain or pleasure – to me, they are signs of sickness, inner sickness. And worst of all is that people should make their living by doing that kind of thing. Bad enough that they can’t help it themselves – but to encourage it, to parade it publicly, to call it art! People like that are spreading it like a disease.”

She drains her mineral water in one go, as if she wants to wash away the taste of the words she has just had to take into her mouth. Her husband sits and looks at her for a moment, then reaches a little awkwardly with his left hand, his right still being occupied, to grasp the bottle of mineral water and refill her glass.

“My wife,” says the host, “is extremely forthright in her opinions. I cannot say that I share them, but I see what she means.”

“And yourself, sir?” asks the male guest, toying with his empty wine-glass.

“Ah,” says the host, “let me, before I speak, refill your glass – I fear I have been remiss in my duties.” He frees his right hand, pours for the guest’s wife, the guest, and himself. His own wife drinks off her mineral water, and pushes her glass forward. He fills that, too, though he needs to take another bottle from the cooler to do so, but the cork comes out easily.

“I appreciate a string quartet for its organisation,” he says.

“Do you mean the music, or the group of players?” asks the male guest.

“Both,” says the host, moving his wine-glass so he can use his left hand to drink from it. His right hand twines its fingers round those of the guest’s wife, and the two hands lie together on the table as one. “In the music, it is that integration of apparently disparate emotions which appeals to me especially – just as it appals my wife. There is an added piquancy in the juxtaposition of pain and pleasure. The presence of each reminds one of just what there is to appreciate in the other.”

The male guest nods, as if to suggest that he understands. But his eyes indicate that he does not – at least, as far as his own emotions are concerned.

“At the level of performance,” continues the host, “I am fascinated by the way that the members of a quartet respond to one another, defer, make way, appreciate dominance and submission, while acknowledging that every one of them is necessary for the functioning of the whole. There is none of that crude striving after equality – rather, there is recognition that everyone has their place, and that the right thing to do is to be content with that, especially if those who have the greater importance and therefore the greater responsibility pay due tribute to those whose positions are lesser and lower, but equally vital. By saying which, of course, I am paying tribute to those who cook for us and those who serve us, and whose patience I shall now reward.”

The bell is within reach of his left hand. Dinner begins. Hands are separated. Conversation is limited to reflections on the food. More wine is poured. Different wines are brought and consumed. Plates are removed. Servants are formally dismissed. The host rises.

“My wife, I know, is weary,” he says, “and you – ,” he indicates the male guest, “were at work early this morning, and must catch the very last train back to be at your desk in the morning, but your charming wife has consented to stay overnight, not least to enjoy the rising of the sun, and see how it colours our lake. We shall have to walk round to the other side, to see how it rises above this house.”

Those who have been dismissed, depart. They know their places. There is a small room, just off the dining-room, called a cabinet, which contains two chairs, a table and a couch, provided for just such an occasion as this. It is used for the purpose for which it was designed and intended – that, in itself, is part of the pleasure, the host thinks. One must not confuse things. Only one person can possibly sleep on the couch. And then, only during the day. Robes are hung on the back of the door. There is no need for the messy process of dressing again after the delights of undressing. Discreet servants will restore the necessary order in the morning.

Alone, as, in a sense, he always is, the host reflects. This is the coda, in which themes are reviewed and their implications explored. What, he wonders, will eventually become of the string quartet, or rather its players? Will they survive the changes that are to come? Do they need to? They have produced beauty and piquancy for him. Their function has been fulfilled. Once you have the honey, do you still need the bees?

Before he goes to bed, he wants some fresh air. He extinguishes the candles. There is moonlight. He lets up one of the fly-screens and breathes in deeply. Almost at once, a large moth flies in. His reactions are quick. He has it by one wing. It flutters. He holds it tight while it does so and looks at it. It is very beautiful. But it is in the wrong place. He crushes it in his hand and drops the tattered remnant on the floor. Someone else can clear it up. He knows his place, and for now it is bed.

The good thing about music, he reflects as he goes up the stairs, is that you always know when it is over.

Frome, 12.00-15.00, 07.vi.2020