Madame Sousatzka (11 page)

If only she hadn't said it, Marcus thought, we could have gone on with the lie together. He turned away from her. ‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘Why can't I give concerts and still have lessons with you?'

He suddenly thought of Peter Goldstein and his stuttering brother. What would they be doing now? Probably practising in the garden for the school match tomorrow. He wished he could be with them, with all the others, getting filthy on the football pitch, getting detentions, or staying in after school to help with the Christmas decorations. He
looked sadly at his bitten fingers. There was never any nail-stock when he really wanted it. Why didn't Peter Goldstein bite his nails? Why didn't
his
mother wear a brown hat? How could he eat his spinach? Did he have a Madame Sousatzka who came to him almost every night and left him exhausted? He'd ask him, he'd ask him on Monday during prep. Then perhaps he'd be accepted as one of them. They wouldn't keep thinking he was someone special. ‘But you are special, Marcus,' he said to himself. ‘You're chosen.'

At a quarter to ten that evening the dirty Countess set out on her journey. She wanted to be the first to arrive, to have a word about the session with Jenny beforehand. She reckoned if she took two minutes for every stairway, she would reach Jenny's room with five minutes to spare, and not unduly exhausted. But Mr Cordle had similar ideas. He too wanted a word with Jenny before the session started, and as the Countess climbed the stairs that led to Cordle's apartment, he came out of his door. ‘You're early,' they said to each other simultaneously, and, both thwarted, there was nothing to do but to go up together. But Madame Sousatzka had beaten them to it. She was already in Jenny's room.

She had dressed for the occasion. She wore a long red velvet dress that reached down to her ankles. A black nondescript fur curled around the hem, and drooped into a tired train at the back. She was obviously very nervous and paced the floor clutching her hands, stopping very often and looking at the door like a prima donna whose partner has overlooked his cue.

Jenny, too, wore her seance uniform; a long black sheath dress that wound itself tightly around her ankles so that it looked like a rolled umbrella. Cordle was still in his white coat, and Uncle's exhausting afternoon had left her with little strength to change her clothes, but they shuffled in trying hard to look as if their carriage was waiting at the door. Madame Sousatzka looked at them long enough to show that there were no hard feelings, though they reasonably deserved some.

Jenny had rearranged the room to suit the severity of the occasion. The black curtains were drawn and two green lamps at each end of the room threw the shadows of the four participants on to the walls. In the middle of the room
was a green baize table and four identical chairs were symmetrically placed on each side. Around the rim of the table, evenly spaced, lay the letters of the alphabet. And in the middle, turned upsidedown, stood an ordinary tumbler. Beside it was a small bowl of French chalk. There were four extra chairs around the gasfire. They grouped around it, taking their seats for the initial stage of the session.

‘Are we ready?' Jenny asked.

Cordle fidgeted in his chair to find a comfortable position, and Madame Sousatzka draped the folds of her fur-lined hem around her feet. A strong smell of mint pervaded the room. The ceremony of mint-tea drinking preceded every session and was intended to relax the participants and to induce concentration. No-one was allowed to speak after being handed their glass of tea. Each glass was marked with the owner's name on a piece of adhesive tape. While drinking, they were supposed to concentrate on the problem they would put to the glass that evening. Although Uncle didn't publicly admit it, the mint tea didn't work with her. It made her relax all right, but into a reverie that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem in hand.

She invariably had the same day-dream, which she would consciously induce with the first sip. She was sitting in a street cafe in Paris and Paul was by her side. He was fingering the red feathers of the boa around her neck. ‘Are you glad we're married, Louise?' She remembered trying to say ‘yes' but her happiness choked her. She put her hand over his and he kissed it, and when he looked up at her, two single red feathers sprouted from his moustache. She laughed at him and he smiled and she was sitting in a street cafe in Paris with Paul by her side. He was fingering the red feathers of her boa … As she looked at him she grew aware of Mr Cordle, staring at her accusingly, as if conscious of her illegal thoughts.

But in fact Cordle was no more concentrating on the problem than she was. All Mr Cordle was doing was making a speech, between sips of tea, to the community who had erected his statue in the park to honour his discoveries. Cordle's past life was best left buried, and his
day-dreams concentrated on what might yet be. ‘I am grateful, very grateful,' he said, ‘for the way in which you have shown your appreciation. And I am honoured, deeply honoured. I have spent a lifetime working on my theories, and when at last I made the great discovery that the essence of Mankind is … is … I am grateful, very grateful, for the way in which you have shown your appreciation, and I am honoured, deeply honoured,' he caught sight of a tear in Madame Sousatzka's eye and marvelled that his oration had so moved her.

But of them all, only Madame Sousatzka was thinking of the glass. Supposing, as she inwardly feared, that the glass advised her to allow Marcus the concert? She would have to obey. It was bad luck to go against the glass. And then what? The concert and a great success, and offers from all over the world. New teachers, new methods and new investigations. Marcus would be lost to her and every so often she would get a letter of gratitude and a card at Christmas. She didn't even feel the hot tear that slid down her cheek, only a vast hole in her stomach, the sad and stubborn pain of rejection.

Jenny was looking at her and hoped, for her sake, that tonight the glass would make a misjudgment. She knew what Marcus meant to Madame Sousatzka, and so much of it had nothing to do with the piano. But Felix was right. It was wrong for the boy to hibernate, and Marcus would never thank her for it. Somebody would have to be hurt and Jenny tried hard to decide which one. She loved them both. She began to wish that she had never met Manders. She remembered the old days, when she used to wait outside nearby, on the whore-road that skirted the park, and how Manders had pulled up his car and asked her the way to Oxford. Did she look as if she needed to know the way to Oxford, with her tight skirt, her peep-toe shoes, and the fox-fur cape that Beatie had bequeathed her when her own cat-days were over? Anyhow, she'd offered to keep him company. He wasn't going to Oxford anyway, but they drove around for a bit and they talked. She was grateful to him that he hadn't immediately got down to business, that he had treated her as if she were a respectable girl who was
just a bit lonely. That's why she liked him, and why perhaps it had lasted for so many years. She looked at her watch, a gift from another client, also a regular, a businessman from the North whose wife didn't understand him.

She usually allotted ten minutes for thought-acclimatization, as she called it. To give more was dangerous. Thought becomes idle and wanders. She tapped her finger on her glass, which was her signal for them to come to. Both Cordle and Uncle jumped at the noise and their first realization of the matter at hand.

‘I think we can begin now, but before we begin, I think we must decide who will ask the questions.'

There was some discussion. Uncle declared Sousatzka to be an interested party, and therefore partial, at which Sousatzka explained to Uncle that as Marcus's week-end landlady, she also was not completely disinterested. Cordle, too, would be personally affected by the tumbler's decision, and so it was left to Jenny, who was considered the least partial of them all. Jenny took her seat at the table. Madame Sousatzka sat opposite her, with Mr Cordle and Uncle on the other sides.

They sat in silence for a moment, then at a sign from Jenny, they lifted the index finger of their right hands, and dipped them together into the bowl of chalk. Then they placed them lightly on the tumbler.

‘Is there a spirit in this house?' Jenny asked. There was no answer.

‘Do you know why we are here?' Jenny tried again in a low voice.

Uncle sneezed and the glass trembled. ‘It knows,' said Cordle.

‘Whose problem are we concerned with?'

They waited and concentrated. Even Uncle had come back from Paris for the occasion. Then slowly the glass began to move. It knew where it was going but it took its time. It moved slowly to Madame Sousatzka's corner and stopped with assurance at the letter M. But not for long. Barely touching the letter, it moved away to the other end of the table where Jenny was sitting, and paused at the letter A.

‘It's Manders,' said Uncle.

‘Could be Marcus,' said Jenny solemnly.

They all looked at the glass, which seemed to have retired. Jenny repeated the question, and the glass obediently set off again. It passed the letter N and came to rest at R, but only for a moment, after which it skidded to the C, U and S in quick succession.

‘Marcus,' Madame Sousatzka breathed, as if it hadn't been quite clear, and whether from its own volition or from external pressure, the glass returned to the middle of the table.

‘What is Marcus?' asked Jenny. It was a question posed only as a formality. Jenny didn't for one moment doubt the authenticity of her tumbler. It had served her well for many years. It had always been right, and she guarded it and respected it as a child does a long-service conker.

The glass began to move again, this time unmistakably and assuredly to the letter P. ‘That's enough,' said Jenny. She brought the glass back into the centre. It had proved itself to be genuine.

‘Excuse me,' said Uncle, who had to sneeze again.

‘You're not concentrating,' Jenny accused her.

‘That's not true,' Uncle said. ‘It's this French chalk.' She had been thinking of nothing else but Marcus and out of pique she took herself once more off to Paris.

Jenny braced herself. The next questions were decisive, and she wanted to give the tumbler time to compose itself. ‘We're not all ready,' she said. ‘One of us is not here. Let us come together. Let us join in concentration for the best results.' She waited again. ‘Pour your minds into your finger-tips. Uncle, come back,' Jenny whispered. Uncle was in the process of changing trains, but she shook herself out of her reverie and concentrated on the tip of her finger.

‘What should Marcus do?' Jenny asked, quietly and deliberately. At that moment the ‘phone rang. Madame Sousatzka, who was nearest, picked it up with her free hand, shouted ‘Out', into the receiver and promptly put it down again. But the peace had been disturbed. They all rose and returned to their chairs by the gas-fire, while Jenny put on the kettle. No-one said a word.

It was a bad omen, and Madame Sousatzka began to feel that whatever the glass advised would be unreliable. But there was the risk of offending it. They had to go through with the session.

Jenny collected their used glasses and looked at the tea-leaves, each in turn. Three of them were of little interest to her, and she rinsed them under the tap. But Madame Sousatzka's she put aside for further scrutiny, and she reached for a clean glass from the shelf. She poured out fresh glasses of mint tea and the ceremony started again. This time it was difficult to relax at all, and Jenny sensed their restlessness. ‘Drink up quickly,' she said, ‘we mustn't keep the tumbler waiting.'

They drank in silence. Jenny was first to finish, and while waiting for the others she went over to the sink to pick up Sousatzka's old glass. What she read in the tea-leaves was exactly the same as she had read in Marcus's cup in the afternoon, except that in this vision Marcus was visible. He was crouching underneath some furniture, surrounded by hundreds of people.

She quickly washed the glass and all trace of the misfortune she felt was bound to follow. ‘Are we ready now?' she asked, collecting the glasses.

Uncle was sitting staring into the gas-fire. Somehow with this glass of tea she hadn't been able to see Paris. Instead she was on the verge of thinking of Madrid two years later. The day they'd sent a message from the Embassy where he worked to say that Paul had collapsed. She tried not to let her thoughts carry her to the vision of his utterly dead body on the Chippendale couch of the Embassy drawing-room. She was grateful when Jenny called them back to the table.

Madame Sousatzka took her seat first and the others followed. Jenny went once more through the preliminaries and the answers were the same. The decisive question could not be delayed any longer.

‘What?' said Jenny deliberately. ‘What should Marcus do?' All eyes were on the glass. Slowly it started to move, at first in a small circle, and gradually widening in diameter until it was skidding almost uncontrollably within a few inches of the rim of the table. Their fingers went with it,
and the top of the glass looked like a Catherine Wheel, with Jenny's red-painted nail briefly smudging Cordle's, which lay next to hers.

Sousatzka didn't want it to stop; she hoped that its speed would gather and that it would fall from the table and smash to pieces. She hated it and willed its destruction. Cordle was concentrating as never before, and even Uncle grew aware of the vital decision the glass was about to make. Then gradually it slowed down, moving further towards the centre. Then suddenly it stopped revolving and, as if magnetized, it moved towards the letter C, where it stopped sadly as if it couldn't help it. It wanted to get it over with, and the next letters of the word ‘concert' were visited reluctantly and quickly by Jenny's tumbler. When it had spat it out, like a dirty word, Jenny brought the glass back to the centre and they all took their fingers away.