The Gradual (38 page)

I was all too aware of the inconvenience of shipboard life, the discomforts, the feeling of being trapped by it.

And I could not, should not, forget the fact of the arrest warrant. I felt reasonably safe from the long reach of the military junta so long as I remained on Temmil, but I worried that the moment I started making myself known to authorities by passing through official border controls I would be identified and arrested. I did not dare to imagine the retribution the Generalissima and her cronies would exact on me.

Above all I felt a dread of having to engage again with the gradual and the time detriment it created. Every port of call that I made on my travels would involve having to deal with the adepts, never resolving the mysteries of the stave, never finding a solution to the tiresome carrying of my baggage through hot streets and on small boats. Nothing would be explained and I would suffer a constant drain on my money.

All practicalities, some of them dreary. Music for me was the voice of the human spirit. It existed only in the space between the instruments that produced it and the ear that appreciated it. It was the movement and pressure of molecules of air, dispersed and replaced instantly and unceasingly. It lived nowhere in reality: gramophone records, digital discs, were merely copies of the original. The only real record that existed of music was the original score, the black pen marks on the staves, but they were cryptic, had no sound, were written in code – they had no meaning without the human spirit that could break the code, interpret the symbols. And music survived not only the lives of those who played it, but the life of the man or woman who composed it.

Yet for all this recondite idealism I was tied to the real world by its realities. I wished profoundly I could walk away from them.

I went down to the harbour in Waterside, thinking I would make some enquiries about travelling without the need for the stave, free of the adepts. Cea had mentioned the existence of an insurance policy that I had not heard of before, and the adept Kan had told me about a licensing arrangement provided by tour operators. Both of these seemed promising alternatives. Regardless of the possible financial cost I felt either of them might be a better method, less involving, less annoying.

My hopes were disappointed. The tour operators would only provide the licence when a firm and pre-paid booking was made several months in advance and after the route had been set out in detail and agreed. Only standardized routes could be used – any diversion from these had to be surveyed in advance and an extra fee paid. The licence would in any event never be applied to a route that ended up in Glaund. The insurance policy was available solely to people who had been born in the Archipelago and had been permanently resident in the islands for at least the last ten years.

New practicalities, new oppressors of the spirit.

While I was in the harbour area I walked across to the Shelterate building, with a half-formed idea of perhaps speaking to some of the adepts who were normally waiting around for business. I was surprised to discover there was no one there. The bench and canopy where the adepts normally waited were empty. The Shelterate building itself was closed and locked. The harbour office told me no inter-island ships were expected that day.

I accepted that as an explanation yet as I walked back I noticed the familiar sight of the regular ferry that plied between Temmil and Hakerline. This was a large open motor boat, piloted by a single crewman – passengers sat on the thwarts around the inside rim of the hull, or stood in the main well. It was heading into Waterside’s harbour at that moment. Did the ferry not count as an inter-island ship?

I waited around to see what happened.

It pulled up alongside the sloping jetty, the motor idling. Passengers disembarked, others boarded for the return trip to Hakerline. The arriving passengers walked across the harbour, past the closed Shelterate building and strolled into town or went to the line of waiting taxis.

That evening I walked down to the club where Cea played, but after I had paid the entrance fee and was inside the dance area I discovered that another small group was playing. Among them was the bassist, Teo, who had accompanied Cea, so in the interval I approached him.

‘I was hoping that Cea would be playing tonight,’ I said to him. ‘Will she be here later?’

‘Who did you say?’

‘Cea – Cea Weller. You were playing with her a few nights ago.’

‘Weller – is she a pianist? Guitarist?’

‘A pianist,’ I said.

‘I’ll ask one of the others.’ Teo lit a cigarette then turned his back on me and went to where the other musicians were standing at the bar. I waited around for a few minutes but it was clear my message about Cea was not being relayed.

I walked home, following the road out of town along the coast. Because of the lie of the land along here it was possible to see the Gronner from a short section of the road. As I was approaching the side lane that led up eventually to my house, I heard a deep rumbling noise from the direction of the mountain and saw a brilliant yellow-white spill of flame bulging up from the summit. It was followed by a second eruption, even bigger, but not a third. I could see a torrent of lava, molten rocks, spurting up into the sky – from this safe distance the explosions looked like a wild fireworks display. The noise of the eruptions, delayed for a few seconds, reached me. They were powerful enough to feel like a pressure wave.

I hurried home, switched on the television and soon the science and news channels were describing what was happening. The lava flows had suddenly intensified – a new one had appeared on the town side but it had poured into a transverse valley and was not likely to threaten the main part of the town. I left the television playing but went through to the other room. I sat by my piano, hands on the keys.

I was in darkness. Behind me, visible through the open windows, was a view of the calm sea, untroubled beneath the night sky. If I looked back over my shoulder I could see a few navigation lights and the dark, vague shapes of the islands that were out there in the near distance.

I could not hear the eruption itself although I was as aware as always of a deep, throbbing bass note, the sound of the pressure of the magma releasing into the world. Even in the darkness I was keeping my eyes closed. I was concentrating on what I understood to be the spirit of the music, the heart of the island, the explosion into the world.

I was where I wanted to be: islanded. This island, any island. My dissatisfaction with Temmil was based on the surface, so not relevant to the spirit – the true island lay beneath. My hands felt alert, the fingertips were tingling. My heart was beating a little faster. I was excited but calm. I was waiting. I remembered how Cea had taken the cadenza of my piano concerto, had clearly listened to it intently and deeply several times, learnt it as a classical pianist would, but then later through improvisation, the freeing of the spirit, she had disentangled the heart of the music from the notes I had written. What she then played was both instantly recognizable as my music yet was produced completely afresh, as new, as if it came from the soul, the spirit.

I found the basso profundo note of the eruption: a deep F sharp, wavering, half a tone up, down, back again. I sustained it, played it again and again. One note, unheard by any but me.

The volcano continued.

Later I improvised, sensing the relief of magmatic pressure as the eruption continued, clearing out the hidden passages of the mountain’s core: a less deep note, less certain, more likely to burst, relax, find a different tempo. Music from the spirit of the island’s heart.

As dawn came I was still awake, still at the keyboard, exhaustion holding me to account. My left hand ached, my head felt heavy, my eyes had been closed for much of the time. I sensed the growing lightness of daybreak from the window, but by then I had found the sound, the beating heart of the island. As Weller had said, the island spoke. I alone heard, I alone listened through the night. I alone responded.

I dressed. I put on my loose robe, my hat with the widest brim. I found my most comfortable sandals. I might need a little money so I took two small denomination notes, each of thalers, simoleons and talents. A handful of coins. I had been keeping a note of household bills in a pocket memo pad so I took that too, first tearing off the pages where I had written down what I spent on groceries, postage stamps, and so on. All the remaining pages were blank. I found a pencil, sharpened it.

I tidied my house then locked it up. I fed my arms through the straps of the case, and hoisted my violin on my back.

These were the only practical matters that interested me.

I walked down the lane, along the road, down the sweeping curve of hill that led to the town. The sun was up, but still low. White gauzy clouds high in the east filtered the rays. It was the coolest part of Temmil’s day.

Overhead, the sky was clear. No outflow of ashes or smoke or steam or dust.

The road ran beside the sea for a short distance so I walked down to the beach. Temmil’s lagoons were gentle in their action on the shores, so there was only shingle here. I crunched down to the waterline and squatted on my haunches to watch. Small waves broke. I stared across at the reef – a brown jaggedness was containing the lagoon. I had always intended to swim out to the reef one day but had never done so. I had seen photographs in the shops by the harbour, some of them taken underwater in brilliant colours. There was much of Temmil I still did not properly know.

When I reached the harbour the whole place was still. Small boats were at their moorings, others were drawn up on the shingle where part of the beach continued. The tide was low. No ship waited at the quay. The harbour office was closed without lights showing. The Shelterate building was the same.

I felt a breeze coming in from the sea, with a hint of the day’s heat to come. It blew in from elsewhere, carried marine freshness, the scents of distance.

I walked around to the wharf side of the Shelterate building, where the adepts’ canopy was strung above the metal bench on which they waited for custom. No one was there.

I went to the bench, sat down, stared at the cracked concrete floor, the remaining ashes and dust from the eruption, a few pebbles from the beach. A metal sign clanked lightly against a wall as the breeze moved it to and fro.

Renettia appeared. She was unsurprised to see me.

‘Are you going to use a name?’ she said, without preamble.

‘I am Sandro. Is that good enough?’

‘You should have a name to use. What’s in there?’ She was indicating the case on my back.

‘That’s my violin.’

‘Then that is the name you should use. Never tell it to anyone you help. They will know who you are, because they will see that on your back.’ She produced one of the hand tools that I had thought were knives and offered it to me. ‘Do you have one of these?’

It appeared to be new. The handle was made of varnished wood and the blade, forged steel, was contained in a stiff little leather protector. A silver chain dangled from the handle. I popped open the leather cover, looked closely at the precisely milled point, sharp as a needle, cold as a chisel. I held the tool by the handle, felt its balance, the cleanness of a good knife, a craft tool.

‘May I have this one?’ I said.

‘It’s yours.’

‘How much?’

She looked uninterested. ‘No charge. Do you know how to use it?’

‘I know how it is used,’ I said.

‘Not the same. Can you use it?’

‘Show me.’

She sat down on the bench beside me, while I used the strap to attach the chain to my wrist. I was going to take out my own stave, which I had stored inside the violin case, but Renettia had brought another stave with her, new and untouched. She passed it to me, allowed me to feel it, hold it, run my fingertips along its smooth length. I felt the familiar sensation of awareness, of readiness.

‘This is a stave for practice,’ she said. ‘Never, ever, give it to a traveller. Keep it or throw it away when you are ready, but it is for learning with.’

‘No charge?’ I said.

‘No charge.’

She showed me how to hold the stave in one hand, the tool in the other. I would find the relevant area by touch. I tried it.

Halfway along the shaft of the stave I sensed something akin to a pinpoint of heat. It touched me with a spot of energy, without burning. I moved my finger over it several times to be certain of where it was. Then I moved the point of the tool to the place and held it there.

Renettia said, ‘It detects a detriment. Move the blade forward, towards the tip.’

I did so and in the same instant, without my volition, I felt the handle turning within the grip of my hand. As I slid the point of the blade forward, an exact, precise spiral was etched around the stave. It stopped without my intervention.

‘There is an increment too,’ said Renettia. ‘See if you can find it.’

I concentrated on what she was showing me. I became absorbed. I was mystified by what was happening but elated too. After a few attempts I could readily discern the difference between a detriment and an increment. The nature of the island was another challenge: a broader area of sensitivity, easier to miss or misinterpret. Renettia showed me how to slide my thumb along the main rod of the stave, feeling for the island.

‘You will know it,’ she said.

But it was difficult and my thumb went to and fro. I was seeking an area of heat, or vibration, or that more general sense of awareness, but nothing was there that I could sense. Then Renettia showed me – there was a tiny patch of roughness which I had thought was a flaw in the way the stave was smoothed. I held my thumb against it. The bass note I had sustained through the night was immediately clear to me. To my spirit.

‘It’s Temmil,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

‘There’s another one – find it.’

The second one was easier to locate because now I knew what I was looking for. This time the minute area of roughness was close to the tip of the stave.