The Gradual (34 page)

I quickly settled down into the way of life I knew best, what I could only describe as compositional bliss. The endless voyages across the Archipelago had left their imagic impressions, and I could sense the music of the islands swirling inside me. I started with a simple piece, almost an exercise after so long away from a piano: I wrote a sonata for the piano, a melodic and conventional piece, a private route towards a rediscovery of my art. I gave it no title – just the Sixth Piano Sonata, for that is what it was.

Something had changed in me, though. While I was still in Glaund I had been inspired by the islands in a general way: their actual existence, their presence offshore from the mainland, the unspecified promise they seemed to hold. It had all been how I felt, rather than what I knew. Now I related to the islands in a direct and personal way, knowing them as well as having feelings. Each one had communicated something to me, something personal and unique. My sonata, with its unrevealing title, was in fact about the island of Quy. For some reason, images of my time on Quy flooded through my imagination as I composed.

After that I began some melodic sketches for what I thought would probably grow into a larger orchestral work, but I became restless with it. Again, images of individual islands were dominant.

As I turned from one piece to another it was as if, internally, my consciousness also moved. I was on, or in, or somehow submerged by, the island of Callock. Then I turned to Leyah and was across warm seas and through new currents into a weird islander sensibility I barely understood. I moved on to Unna, tiny Unna, which I had only glimpsed from afar, late one night on a deck beneath the stars, yet something from that lay within me, bright, a derived dazzle of arpeggios.

But I did not want to commit to only one piece at a time, especially not a large work which would take some time to complete. I was still not in contact with any classical musicians on the island and I would need at least a small ensemble to work with so that I could try out my ideas. I stopped composing and the mad consciousness of the islands left me.

I turned to another idea I had been nurturing while I crossed the seas from island to island. I had become fascinated by the idea of time slippage, the experience of gradual time. How might that be translated into music?

It made me think of an unsuccessful early suite, which I had called
Dream Island
, written in the difficult period after I returned from the tour. I had long thought of that as a failed piece, an experiment with counterpoint and randomness. I had known all along that it would be difficult for the performers to play and probably baffling for an audience to hear. I wondered now if the same idea of betrayal by time, of the undetectable detriment, might be better achieved if I worked it into a more conventional format.

I wrote at the piano keyboard, page after page of draft, some of it satisfactory, some of it less so. It was the transition that I found difficult: I had clear musical images in my mind, but working them into the actual score often defied me.

At night I dreamed of the islands I had seen and visited, the slow progression of one after another as the ferries ploughed their routes across the calm straits between them, places varied and mysterious, land close at hand but often unattainable, each small island with its invisible, indiscernible power of time distortion. I began to realize that I best understood the effect of the gradual if I interpreted it in musical terms. The Archipelago was in my dreams, and every morning I would rise from my bed and go straight to the piano, trying to capture, define, describe, use the fleeting impressions, the unreliable memories of the music of dreams.

One evening, after a long day at the piano keyboard, I walked down into Waterside. I had been living and writing alone too long and needed the company of other people. I went after sunset, relishing the quiet as the cicadas stilled at last. A warm wind blew from the sea.

I went first to the harbour, where I watched the departure of the regular motorboat that acted as a ferry between Temmil and Hakerline Promise. The lights in the harbour were dimmed after the boat left, so I walked into the town. The streets were mostly quiet, although a few of the restaurants were open. I had eaten already.

I wandered further away from the centre and eventually came to an area I had seen during daytime, where there were several large warehouses or stores. I noticed a lighted doorway leading off from one of the narrow streets. I heard music drifting up from below. There was a man standing by the door but he ignored me as I walked past and went down a narrow wooden staircase into the darkness of the building’s cellar. The low ceiling created a claustrophobic environment, but the air was clear and breathable. Tables were scattered about, where customers were sitting with drinks. The place was not full.

A woman was seated at a piano, leaning forward across the keyboard, her back towards the crowd. She swayed gently from side to side as she played, responding to the rhythm. She was playing jazz, a slow piano blues. The only other musician on the platform with her was a double bassist, standing beside the piano, his eyes closed as he played.

I took a seat at a table and ordered a large glass of beer.

The place was so dark I could barely make out who else was there – the only lit area was the tiny platform and a patch of dance floor in front of it. I watched the pianist, admiring the lightness of her touch, the way she appeared to feel the music more than play it. I had never had much time for jazz, but I was quickly won over to the sort of music she was playing, and the skill with which she performed.

After about thirty minutes she came to the end of her set. While she remained at the piano she pushed the stool back and turned to speak to her bassist. She was holding a long glass of light beer, which she sipped several times.

Staring at her, I suddenly realized I knew who she was. The lighting remained diffuse, the sort of stage light that illuminates without making detail clear. I could hardly see her face, but her manner, her bearing, was completely familiar to me.

I left my table and walked across to the raised stage. She turned towards me with a ready smile as I approached – the bassist laid his instrument on the floor, and walked down from the stage, heading for the bar.

I said, ‘You’re Cea, aren’t you? Cea Weller?’

‘Yes, I am.’

I had the light behind me, so I could see that she was trying to peer at me to see my face. ‘I am Sandro,’ I said. ‘Alesandro Sussken. Do you remember me? You performed my—’

‘Sandro!’

She stood up quickly, smiling with recognition and presented her face to me. We kissed briefly, coolly, on each cheek. Then she sat down again.

‘I’ve moved to Temmil,’ I said, still standing, my body throwing a shadow across her. She did not seem surprised to see me.

‘Yes, I heard you were coming here. My father told me.’

‘Your father?’

‘You met him that evening at the concert.’

I thought back – I had been introduced to many people that evening. Nothing about him registered now. Why he should know my movements I had no idea.

‘Yes – that’s right.’ I said. ‘But he wasn’t my main interest that evening.’

‘I thought you’d forgotten about me, Sandro.’

‘We agreed, didn’t we?’

Just one night. I had been due to sail across to Hakerline the next day, while she was in the process of preparing for a series of recitals on another island. Demmer? I could not stay on Temmil, she could not leave with me, I was full of remorse because I was married, we had to part and knew we would and then we did so.

She stretched out and briefly took my hand. ‘I know what happened, Sandro. I’ve no regrets.’ When she let go of my hand I crouched down on my haunches so that I was no longer standing over her. ‘We obviously have some catching up to do,’ she said. ‘So where are you staying?’

‘I’ve rented a house on the edge of town. Just for a while.’

‘If you’re renting that sounds like a more than temporary stay.’

‘I’m not sure what I want to do. For now I will stay put but I might even settle down here. I like being here on Temmil and I like the house. There’s a baby grand in there.’

She looked impressed by this news. The bass player was heading slowly back towards the platform. At that moment he had paused to talk to a couple of people at one of the tables.

Cea said, ‘I will be playing for another half-hour. Are you going to stay on and listen to the rest?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Let’s have a drink or two afterwards to celebrate.’ The bassist had stepped up to join us on the platform. Cea looked towards him and said, ‘Teo – this is Sandro Sussken. An old friend of mine.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Sandro,’ he said pleasantly. When we shook hands I felt the hardened fingertips of someone who regularly played a string instrument. The fingers of my left hand were similarly callused from the violin. They had been like that all my life.

I walked back to my table and sat down. After a few moments Cea made an announcement into her microphone but because of the muffled acoustics I could not hear exactly what she said. I thought I heard her say my name. In a moment she and Teo began playing again.

The piece started with a slow introduction, Teo leading with a series of long bass runs, while Cea played quietly sustained chords, but then she took over the main theme.

I was suddenly fully alert. I recognized the music – it was an improvised, extended, subtly restructured version of the cadenza from the second movement of my piano concerto, the one Cea had performed at our final concert. As I realized what she was doing I saw her shifting on her stool before the piano, turning and looking back towards me across the wide cellar space. She was smiling.

Shortly before she completed the second half of her set I ordered a bottle of wine and two glasses, and had them brought to my table.

Someone put on records after Cea had finished her set and a few people began dancing in the space in front of the platform. We wanted to talk so we had to raise our voices to hear each other. Our heads were close together.

I told Cea the story of what had happened to me since the last time I saw her. She had known at the time that I was married, but said she was shocked to hear that the marriage had ended so suddenly and irretrievably. When I explained about the time detriment, it was a subject obviously familiar to her, but she nevertheless sympathized. I described in some detail my long journey across the Archipelago, the dealings with the adepts, and much else.

‘You didn’t give them money, did you?’

‘I had to.’

‘No you didn’t. It’s a racket – a way of taking money from tourists.’

‘They wouldn’t help me unless I paid them.’

‘That’s what they tell you. But the detriment can be corrected in other ways. No one who lives in the islands would ever go near the adepts. They’re a bunch of crooks. There’s an inexpensive insurance policy you could have taken out. You claim exemption at the Shelterate offices. You should talk to my father when you meet him. He travels around the islands a great deal.’

I was remembering the annoyance of dealing with the adepts, the apparently endless walking or driving about as a way of correcting lost or gained time, while I hobbled along with my luggage. I said nothing. I did not like the idea of having been rooked by those people, but I didn’t want to go into the subject with Cea just then.

She was drinking quickly and soon we ordered a second bottle. She told me what had happened to her since we parted. The most serious change was the closing of the concert hall. Audience numbers declined sharply after our tour and several sponsors had withdrawn funds. The social nature of Temmil was changing, Cea said. More and more people were coming to the island to retire. Many of them were business people with a lot of cash to spend. There was some kind of scheme the seigniory had set up to attract wealthy people to Temmil, few of whom had any interest at all in the arts.

The sense of excitement about having an orchestra on Temmil, of greeting visiting artists, of setting up workshops for young musicians – all this had begun to fade away. Her own career as a concert soloist had come to an end, partly because of the loss of the hall but also because she had become the unwitting carer for her elderly mother. She said she was more or less trapped at home on Temmil, until what she called the inevitable happened. Her mother was in her early eighties. Cea said she adored her, of course, but—

‘I loved what you were playing tonight,’ I said. ‘How does that sit alongside your classical training?’

‘Music is music,’ she said, which was of course something I entirely agreed with. ‘When you hear the great jazz musicians you realize how skilful they are. My father played jazz – I grew up listening to him and playing the records he had. He took me to some of his gigs. I enjoyed his music but it was always the great classical composers I felt most drawn to. When I realized my career as a concert pianist was most likely over, playing in clubs like this was the only work open to me in town. It was really difficult for me and not simply because of money – I had never played jazz before and I had to learn the hard way. Back then there were more bars where they wanted live music so I was able to pick things up as I went along. That wouldn’t be possible now – these days there’s just this place still open. And one other, but that only opens at weekends.’

A new record came on, a slow number with romantic lyrics. Several couples stood up and began to dance. Cea pushed back her chair.

‘This is the one they always play before closing,’ she said. ‘Come on – let’s celebrate. I’m happy to see you, Sandro.’

We went to the dance floor and she pulled me close against her. I realized she was slightly drunk, but then so too was I. We began moving around the dance floor, hardly in step, holding on and leaning against each other. The side of her face was against mine. I breathed her scents.

When we finally left the club she declared she wanted to see my house and try out the baby grand. She said she had recently retrained as a piano tuner – playing in clubs didn’t pay enough, so she needed a secondary career. Tuning was interesting and lucrative. She promised to put everything right for me. I said I would like that. We laughed at what we saw as a double meaning. We were soon alone in the darkened street, unsteady on our feet. We walked slowly and deliberately up the gentle hills towards the edge of town. It was another hot night but there was a breeze from the sea and the stars were out. We held each other, arms and hands touching, and sides pressing. I was full of excitement – it had been a long time.