The Concert Pianist (31 page)

‘Nigel looks alert.'

‘Vadim!' said Fouad. ‘You have nice friend. Distinguished English gentlemen.'

Vadim drew himself closer to Philip and Fouad. He made no eye contact but sat solidly, arms on the table, eyes on the club floor.

‘Oh
là là!'
Fouad's expensive dentistry was on offer as he smiled at Shiva, now sinking on her haunches, now revolving, hands on the floor, jackknifing back, scissor-splitting down. Her bra was wrapped around Nigel's neck.

Vadim looked across. ‘This is where suicide bombers come when they die.'

‘I hear you stole my concert,' said Philip.

Shiva finished off with a breast-shaking flurry a few inches from Nigel's face, then she cuffed him gently on the cheek and swayed back to the table, where she collected her garments and pulled them on. Vadim glanced at Philip before flourishing a bank note at Shiva, who was getting her breath back. ‘For my friend,' he said.

‘Hang about! Can't a girl have a drink?'

‘That was super,' said Nigel, rather flushed.

‘Maybe Mandy and Brit would like to . . .' Fouad smiled hospitably at Philip.

Vadim drew close, twiddling the note in his fingers. His breath was hot in Philip's ear. ‘Money is good.'

‘Fouad's money, I expect.'

‘It is good money. Nice money.' He kissed the note, sniffed it, kissed it again.

Nigel leaned forward. There was a perspiration on his forehead but he had not loosened his tie. ‘By the way, Philip. I loved your new Chopin disc.'

The girls were giggling. Nigel smiled diffidently. He knew he was a young fogey; but tonight he was a happy young fogey.

‘You stole my concert,' repeated Philip.

‘You're indisposed,' said Vadim, looking away.

‘
No. I'm ready to play.'

‘I speak to my agent. He tells me Philip Morahan is having nervous breakdown.'

‘Did he, indeed?'

Vadim raised the note, beckoning to Shiva. ‘Promoters are crazy, insurance problems, you're not returning calls . . .'

‘You never called to check.'

‘You tell me not to cancel. Then you cancel. Then I offer to help for John's sake and now you are being hypocrite. Shiva!'

‘What's that then?'

‘Twenty.'

‘I want fifty.'

‘Fifty.'

‘For two.'

‘That's forty.'

‘I'll make it a good one.'

Fouad nodded indulgently. ‘I promise you, Philip, money has never been this valuable.'

‘Let's go,' said Vadim, pushing Philip on.

‘No.'

‘Please come.'

‘No.'

‘You come, we talk.'

Shiva swigged back a half-glass of Perrier water, came off her stool and slinked around towards Philip, taking him by the hands. ‘What's your name?'

Philip averted his eyes.

‘Come on. I'm not going to bite you.'

‘No thanks.'

‘Please,' she said.

‘When in Rome . . .' said Nigel with a kindly smile.

He felt dizzy as he crossed the floor to the chairs. As he sat he could see other dancers entertaining men across the room. The men watched with unnatural stillness, as though it required an extra level of concentration to get abreast of this snaking flesh with only one's eyeballs.

Vadim sat down beside him, patting his hand as he did so. Shiva stood her ground, one leg before the other to emphasise her hips, summoning their attention with overture poise.

Philip
touched his spectacles and avoided her gaze. Vadim sat, hands together on his lap, smiling serenely.

‘I hear you've been practising a lot,' said Philip.

‘I practise all my life.'

‘That's good.'

‘Not good. Not bad. I sleep. I breathe. I practise.'

Suddenly she was smooching towards them, hands on the front clip of her bra, shoulders gyrating, knees bending.

‘Vadim, my breakdown is over. I need to play. I must play.'

‘Good.'

‘On Wednesday.'

‘Are you crazy?'

‘Let's share the concert. Take one half each.'

‘I cannot share concert.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because we don't believe in the same thing.'

‘That's nonsense.'

‘Look . . . she is . . . so wonderful.'

Shiva's hands were travelling her body in a self-embrace. Her pelvis swivelled in graceful arcs. Her eyes were shut tight.

‘She is an artist. She gives everything.'

Philip was at a loss. He lacked the concentration to reply effectively. The lights seemed to be attacking him, getting under the lids of his eyes. He saw Shiva as an intermittent silhouette until suddenly she was close, bending towards him, her breath in his ear.

‘For Serebriakov,' he said.

‘Every concert in the world will be dedicated to that man.'

Her bottom was bucking in front of him now. He saw the two indentations at the base of her back.

‘Look, I'm sorry about what I said to you.'

‘I have a life, Philip. You have to understand.'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘You attack me because your old girlfriend had an abortion and you afraid suddenly - look at this - that all your good behaviour was a waste. You take out on me. What you said was not good, but why you say it was terrible.'

‘Maybe. I'm sorry. I don't deny it. But, Vadim -' He had pain now, like bad indigestion. ‘You know what I've been through. Have you no pity for your old friend?'

‘
You sound like Jewish mother.'

‘Hey, guys.' Shiva was anxious to break up the back chat. ‘Watch this!'

She was super-committed suddenly, running fingers through straps, and then facing away from them to flip out languid, teasy bendovers, and then straightening up, rear at the ready, hand on a side rail, bracing herself to send something through her body, some ripple or pulse that produced great spurts of gibbering arse-quiver.

‘More, more.'

Her buttocks shivered to a stir-crazy climax of speed, a spasm of cross-ripple and shudder and paroxysmal deep tremor, the melons of her arse speed-blurring and bunching, trembling and tensing, shuddering and clenching.

‘Have you no pity for me?' Vadim seized his wrist.

Philip turned. ‘I'm your friend, for God's sake.'

‘You insult my work because it suits you. Because you're unhappy. Because your star is not rising.'

Her palms were flat on the floor. A white line of tension ran up the backs of her thighs.

‘Is everything I say envy?'

‘There is no right way. To live your life. To play the piano. There is only improvisation. I'm not interested in this cult of purity or self-denial or self-sacrifice to reach the highest, the most beautiful perfection in art. This is vanity.'

‘I agree.'

‘What d'you hate most? My piano-playing or my life?'

Shiva was venturing towards the obstetric.

‘I . . .'

‘You cannot play this volcanic repertoire and live like a petit bourgeois. We don't belong with nappies in our hand. We do what we have to do. Anything else is a lie. Philip, you have no understanding. I made a mistake. I married someone who likes me to be famous but understands nothing. I'm not going to live inside a mistake. But this is irrelevant. Because music has nothing to do with this. Music exists outside all this problems.'

‘Vadim, let me . . .'

Shiva was reversing towards Vadim's lap, the bulb of her backside looming.

‘You cannot judge.'

Philip
watched her bottom hover and bounce off Vadim's knees, then stir the air a bit, then bounce again.

He was feeling dazed and peculiar. So this was it: illness. He was truly sick. He looked into the glittering light and blinked.

The next thing he knew Vadim had got up and gone and Shiva was grinding his lap, earning every penny, and he was detached, which he remembered later with complete disbelief, as if something so disgraceful could not really have happened. He felt a pain below his ribs and tried to lever himself up. ‘Excuse me,' he said, and she pirouetted off, slowing down and eventually halting on the spot as he made his escape, walking quickly to the loo where a few moments later he stood at a urinal, peeing and trying to get a grip, the pain seeming dimmer. He gazed at the tired face in the washbasin mirror, rubbed away dew from his eyes. He was so terribly weary.

He trailed back to the table, and here again it was infinite deja vu as Fouad smiled his welcome, tipping the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and Nigel chatted amiably to Brit the schoolgirl as she rose, taking him in hand, and Fouad watched the two of them clamber off for a dance.

He sat next to Vadim. ‘ I have no wife or children. No parents. For me, you're like family. That's why I spoke out. One's allowed to be honest with family.'

‘Honest is wrong. Honest is not true. Honest is for me crap.'

Philip sipped at his champagne. He had the beginnings of a migraine. The music had got louder all of a sudden.

‘I'm not a crutch for you,' said Vadim.

Philip wiped his eye. He seemed to have a watery tear duct. ‘Can't you accept an apology?'

‘No, because you only apologise because you want this concert. You're selfish. Worse than me.'

The others were talking amongst themselves, Fouad sharing his ideas with Kasia.

Philip was grey-faced. ‘Why are you so angry?'

‘You insult my work, then you want to be on stage with me.'

‘I was speaking from the heart.'

‘Englishman's heart is a stone.' Vadim shook his head. ‘Philip, you have no idea where I come from, why I'm like this, my parents, this Russian mayhem, how you cope with this history without going
mad.
Why I am like this, why I do this, how I play? You don't understand anything of this. Because I cannot be any other way. You cannot play the piano like this and obey what other people who are having easy lives think is right.'

He struggled to see sense. He was suddenly weak with tiredness.

Vadim got up and went to the toilet.

Philip realised with a sinking heart that he had impugned Vadim's dignity as well as his vanity in the one area of his life where he had dignity, plenty of it, because like any pianist he lived for music, lived it every day of his life on his own terms, according to his talent, his temperament, and Philip had not acknowledged the imperative purity of energy that goes into all that. He had tried to force an equation between the artist and the life, mixing the two up, because he was probably disappointed with his own example, at his failure to find an absolute, which he had somehow projected on to Vadim, as if it were Vadim's task to live up to Philip's aspirations for himself, according to ideas that Philip had generated in order to hold on to something beyond the permutations of music itself, a reason for being. Temperament had enabled Vadim to exist without such props, to be free, protean, recreative, to chase frenzy when the mood took him, or play without style for better or worse, seeking combinations that would someday release secrets.

Minutes seemed to pass in a blink.

Vadim was talking to Mandy. Shiva had disappeared. Suddenly Fouad rose, guiding Kasia like a bride to a cubicled recess behind the partition. Philip saw a complex of suspenders beneath her nurse skirt. For an odd moment he pictured Marguerite in Vadim's Pimlico apartment, flicking through a magazine and crying.

He knew he was sinking, though whether into sleep or some tranced state he could not tell, but allowed the sharpness of his observation to fail, a general dimming and shutting-down. Flickers of female form dissolved and blanked out, or broke up in Cubist fragmentation as he struggled with the lights. He saw the black backs of punters standing up to look at something, the tireless maitre d' threading about, girls picking their way around tables and chairs. He was sitting in Peaches and Banana and he had played his last concert. This was the tail end. It could just slide over you without your knowing.

He
must have dropped asleep, because suddenly he awoke with a lurch and saw Vadim at a neighbouring table. A big man stood up. Shiva jiggled back. Vadim's arm was raised, pointing at Fouad.

It happened quickly: bouncers moving in fast, broad backs converging too late, because a rabbit punch went in and Vadim buckled. Shiva screamed. People at tables turned. There was sudden agitation, Vadim bucking up, hitting the man on the face. The bouncers surged bulkily, blocking off, separating. Vadim was in an armlock, grimacing with discomfort. The other man was holding his chin and glowering with pain. Philip rose suddenly. The bouncers were coming his way, forcing Vadim to the exit door. ‘Release him, for God's sake.' Vadim tried to wrestle free and the bouncers crunched in harder. Philip tried to restrain them, but then somebody grabbed him and he was enclosed in frilly shirts and cummerbunds. ‘Let go!' He was in an armlock being rolled towards the exit. He lost his footing. He was yanked back, buffeted through swing doors into a corridor, followed by a barrage of bodies. The two men were frog-marched down a flight of steps under an archway and on to the street where they were thrown free and fell on the ground. The maitre d' was suddenly outside with his walkie-talkie. ‘Sorry, gents. Strict rules. Thanks for your custom and goodnight.'

The fire door slammed shut.

Vadim's face was creased with a mixture of anger and pain. He flexed his fingers, worked his arm around in a circle.

Philip had felt a sharp pain below the shoulder. He had landed awkwardly and bashed his knee. He began to pick himself up. The pain in his arm was throbbing.

Vadim waited for a moment longer, as if taking stock. He was drunk, sitting on the pavement, and there was something the matter with his elbow joint.

They walked silently down the street. It took a while for a cab to come by. When it did they bundled in and sat either side of the back seat staring out of the window. Vadim's thick breathing was still audible.