‘Why today of all days?’ Christoff shouted suddenly. ‘No one wants you here! They’re all still very angry at you! Look! Look for yourself!’
Dr Lubanski, ignoring this outburst, embarked on some other reminiscence concerning himself and Christoff. The point of the story quickly eluded me and I found my gaze wandering past him to those watching nervously from the tables at the back.
None of them appeared to be over forty years of age. Three were women and one of them in particular, I noticed, was looking at me with a peculiar intensity. She was in her early thirties, dressed in long black clothes and wearing spectacles with small, thick lenses. I would have studied the others more closely, but just at this point I remembered again what a busy day still lay before me, and how imperative it was that I remained firm with my present hosts if I were not to be detained here beyond the allotted time.
As Dr Lubanski came to a pause, I touched Christoff’s arm, saying quietly: ‘I wonder if the others will be much longer.’
‘Well …’ Christoff glanced around the room. Then he said: ‘It seems this might be all for today.’
I had the impression he was hoping to be contradicted. When no one said anything he turned back to me with a short laugh.
‘A small gathering,’ he said, ‘but nevertheless we have … we have the best minds of the town here, I assure you. Now Mr Ryder, please.’
He began to introduce his friends to me. Each smiled nervously and uttered a greeting as his or her name was called. All the while, I was aware of Dr Lubanski walking away slowly towards the back of the room, never taking his gaze off the proceedings. Then, as Christoff was coming to the end of his introductions, Dr Lubanski let out a loud laugh, causing the former to break off and throw a look of cold fury towards him. Dr Lubanski, who by this time had seated himself again at his table in the corner, gave another laugh and said:
‘Well, Henri, whatever else you’ve lost over the years, you’ve not lost your nerve. You’re going to repeat the whole Offenbach saga to Mr Ryder? To Mr Ryder?’ He shook his head.
Christoff went on staring at his former friend. Some devastating retort seemed about to leave his lips, but then at the last moment he turned away without speaking.
‘Throw me out if you like,’ Dr Lubanski said, starting on his mashed potato again. ‘But it’s beginning to look as though’ – he waved his spoon around the room – ‘as though not everyone here is finding my presence so irksome. We could put it to a vote perhaps. I’d gladly leave if I’m genuinely not wanted. What about a show of hands?’
‘If you insist on staying, I don’t care in the least,’ Christoff said. ‘It makes no difference. I have my facts. I have them here.’ He raised a blue folder he had produced from somewhere and tapped it. ‘I’m quite sure of my ground. You can do what you want.’
Dr Lubanski turned to the others with a shrug that seemed to say: ‘What can you possibly do with someone like this?’ The young woman with the thick spectacles immediately looked away, but her companions seemed mostly confused, one or two of them even smiling back shyly.
‘Mr Ryder,’ Christoff said, ‘please sit down and make yourself comfortable. As soon as Gerhard returns, he will serve you lunch. Now’ – he clapped his hands together and his voice assumed the tones of someone addressing a large hall – ‘ladies and gentlemen. I must first of all thank Mr Ryder, on behalf of each of us present today, for agreeing to come and debate with us in the midst of what must surely be a very busy few days …’
‘You’ve certainly got nerve,’ Dr Lubanski called from the back. ‘Not intimidated by me, not even by Mr Ryder. Quite a nerve, Henri.’
‘I’m not intimidated,’ Christoff retorted, ‘because I have the facts! Facts are facts! I have it here! The evidence! Yes, even Mr Ryder. Yes, sir’ – he turned to me – ‘even a man of your reputation. Even you are obliged to defer to facts!’
‘Well, this will be worth witnessing,’ Dr Lubanski said to the others. ‘A provincial cellist lecturing Mr Ryder. Fine, let’s hear it, let’s hear it.’
For a second or two, Christoff hesitated. Then with some resolve he opened his folder saying: ‘If I may start with a single case, which I think leads us to the heart of the controversy concerning ringed harmonies.’
For the next few minutes, Christoff outlined the background to the case of a certain local business family, leafing through his folder, reading out the occasional quotation or statistic. He seemed to present his case competently enough, but there was something about his tone – his unnecessarily slow delivery, the way he explained things twice and three times – that quickly got on my nerves. Indeed, it occurred to me Dr Lubanski had a point. There was something preposterous about this failed local musician presuming to lecture me.
‘Now that you call a fact?’ Dr Lubanski suddenly broke in as Christoff was reading from the minutes of a civic committee meeting. ‘Ha! Henri’s “facts” are always interesting, aren’t they?’
‘Let him have his say! Let Henri present his case to Mr Ryder!’
The young man who had spoken up had a pudgy face and a short leather jacket. Christoff smiled at him approvingly. Dr Lubanski raised his hands, saying: ‘All right, all right.’
‘Let him have his say!’ the pudgy-faced young man said again. ‘Then we’ll see. We’ll see what Mr Ryder makes of it all. Then we’ll find out once and for all.’
It seemed to take Christoff a good few seconds to absorb the implication of these last words. At first he remained frozen, the folder held aloft in his arms. Then he looked around at the faces surrounding him as though for the first time. All about the room there were searching gazes directed at him. For a moment Christoff appeared badly shaken. Looking away he muttered, almost to himself:
‘These are indeed facts. I’ve gathered evidence here. Any one of you can see it, peruse it.’ He peered into his folder. ‘I’m just summarising the evidence for brevity. That’s all.’ Then with an effort he seemed to regain his poise. ‘Mr Ryder,’ he said, ‘if you will bear with me a moment. I believe things will be much clearer very shortly.’
Christoff carried on with his argument, a slight tension in his voice, but otherwise in much the same manner as before. As he talked on, I remembered how the previous night I had given up precious hours of sleep in order to carry out further my investigations of the local conditions. How, despite my great tiredness, I had sat in the cinema, talking through the issues with the town’s leading citizens. Christoff’s repeated assumptions about my ignorance – even now, he was embarking on a long digression to explain a point completely obvious to me – were steadily bringing me to the point of exasperation.
I was not, it seemed, alone in my impatience. A number of others in the room were shifting uncomfortably. I noticed the young woman with the thick spectacles glaring from Christoff’s face to mine, and several times she looked to be on the verge of interrupting. But in the end it was a man with closely cropped hair sitting somewhere behind me who broke in.
‘Just one moment, one moment. Before we go further, let’s just get one thing settled. Once and for all.’
Dr Lubanski’s laugh again came from the back of the café. ‘Claude and his pigmented triad! You still haven’t resolved that?’
‘Claude,’ Christoff said, ‘this is hardly the time …’
‘No! Now that Mr Ryder’s here, I want it settled.’
‘Claude, this isn’t the time to raise that again. I’m presenting an argument to show …’
‘Perhaps it’s trivial. But let’s get it settled. Mr Ryder, Mr Ryder, is it truly the case that pigmented triads have intrinsic emotional values regardless of context? Do you believe that?’
I sensed the focus of the room fixing upon me. Christoff gave me a swift look, something like a plea mingled with fear. But in view of the earnestness of the enquiry – to say nothing of Christoff’s presumptuous behaviour up to this point – I saw no reason not to reply in the frankest terms. I thus said:
‘A pigmented t
riad has no intrinsic emotional properties. In fact, its emotional colour can change significantly not only according to context, but according to volume. This is my personal opinion.’
No one spoke, but the impact of my statement was discernible. One by one, hard gazes turned towards Christoff – who meanwhile was pretending to be engrossed in his folder. Then the man called Claude said quietly:
‘I knew it. I always knew it.’
‘But he convinced you you were wrong,’ Dr Lubanski said. ‘He bullied you into believing you were wrong.’
‘What has this to do with anything?’ Christoff cried. ‘Claude, look, you’ve taken us on a complete tangent. And Mr Ryder has so little time. We must return to the Offenbach case.’
But Claude seemed to be lost in thought. Eventually he turned and looked towards Dr Lubanski, who nodded and smiled back gravely.
‘Mr Ryder has very little time,’ Christoff said again. ‘So if you’d all allow me, I’ll try and summarise my argument.’
Christoff began to go through what he considered the key points concerning the tragedy of the Offenbach family. He was affecting an air of nonchalance, though by now it was clear to everyone he was badly upset. In any case, around this point, I ceased to attend to him, his remark concerning my lack of time having caused me suddenly to remember Boris sitting waiting for me in that little café.
A considerable period, I realised, had elapsed since I had left him there. A picture came into my mind of the little boy, shortly after my departure, sitting in his corner with his drink and cheesecake, still full of anticipation about the trip before him. I could see him gazing cheerfully towards the other customers out in the sunny courtyard, now and then looking beyond them to the traffic in the street, thinking how before long he too would be out there travelling. He would recall once more the old apartment, the cupboard in the corner of the living room where, he had become increasingly certain, he had left the box containing Number Nine. Then as the minutes went by, the doubts that had always been lurking somewhere, doubts he had so far kept well buried, would begin creeping to the surface. But for a while yet, Boris would succeed in keeping up his spirits. I had simply been detained unexpectedly. Or perhaps I had gone somewhere to buy a picnic to take on the trip. In any case, there was still plenty remaining of the day. Then the waitress, the plump Scandinavian girl, would ask if he wanted anything further, betraying as she did so a note of concern which Boris would not fail to detect. And he would make a renewed show of being unworried, perhaps ordering with bravado another glass of milk shake. But the minutes would tick on. Boris would notice, outside in the courtyard, customers who had sat down long after his arrival closing their newspapers, getting up and leaving. He would see the sky clouding over, the day moving into the afternoon. He would think again of the old apartment he had so loved, the cupboard in the living room, Number Nine, and slowly, as he picked away at the remains of his cheesecake, he would begin to resign himself to the idea that yet again he would be let down, that we would not set off on the journey after all.
Several voices were shouting around me. A young man in a green suit had risen to his feet and was trying to make a point to Christoff, while at least three others were waving their fingers to emphasise something.
‘But that’s an irrelevance,’ Christoff was shouting over them. ‘And in any case, it’s just Mr Ryder’s personal opinion …’
This brought an onslaught down on him, almost everyone in the room attempting to respond at the same time. But in the end Christoff again managed to shout them down.
‘Yes! Yes! I’m aware of exactly who Mr Ryder is! But local conditions, local conditions, that’s another matter! He doesn’t yet know about our particular conditions! While I … I have here …’
The rest of this statement was drowned out, but Christoff raised the blue folder high above his head and waved it.
‘The nerve! The nerve!’ Dr Lubanski was calling from the back with a laugh.
‘With all respect, sir’ – Christoff was now addressing me directly – ‘with all respect, I am surprised you aren’t more interested in hearing about the conditions here. In fact, I’m surprised, your expertise notwithstanding, I’m surprised you should simply leap to your conclusions …’
The chorus of protest came again, now more furious than ever.
‘For instance …’ Christoff yelled over the top. ‘For instance, I was very surprised that you should allow the press to photograph you in front of the Sattler monument!’
To my consternation, this brought sudden silence.
‘Yes!’ Christoff was clearly delighted at the effect he had created. ‘Yes! I saw him! When I picked him up earlier on. Standing right in front of the Sattler monument. Smiling, gesturing towards it!’
The shocked silence continued. Some of those present seemed to grow embarrassed, while others – including the young woman with the thick spectacles – stared at me questioningly. I smiled and was about to make some comment when Dr Lubanski’s voice, now controlled and authoritative, said from the back:
‘If Mr Ryder chooses to make such a gesture, it can only indicate one thing. That the extent of our misguidedness is even deeper than we suspected.’
All eyes turned to him as he rose and came a few steps closer to the gathering. Dr Lubanski stopped and leaned his head to one side as though listening to the distant sounds of the highway. Then he continued:
‘His message is one we must each of us examine carefully and take to our hearts. The Sattler monument! Of course, he’s right! It’s not overstating the case, not for one moment! Look at you, still trying to cling onto Henri’s foolish notions! Even those of us who’ve seen them for what they are, even us, the truth is we’ve remained complacent. The Sattler monument! Yes, that’s it. This city is at crisis point. Crisis point!’
It was gratifying that Dr Lubanski had immediately highlighted the preposterousness of Christoff’s statement, at the same time underlining the strong message I had wished to send out to the city. Nevertheless, my indignation towards Christoff was now considerable and I decided it was high time I cut him down to size. But the whole room was again shouting all at once. The man named Claude was repeatedly banging his fist on a table surface to emphasise a point to a grizzled man with braces and muddy boots. At least four people, from different parts of the room, were shouting at Christoff. The situation seemed on the verge of chaos and it occurred to me this was as good a point as any to take my leave. But as I stood up, the young woman with thick spectacles materialised in front of me.
‘Mr Ryder, please tell us,’ she said. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of it. Is Henri right in believing we can’t at any cost abandon the circular dynamic in Kazan?’
She had not spoken loudly, but her voice had a penetrating quality. The whole room heard her question and immediately became quiet. A few of her companions gave her searching looks, but she glared back defiantly.
‘No, I’ll ask it,’ she said. ‘This is a unique opportunity. We can’t waste it. I’ll ask it. Mr Ryder, please. Tell us.’
‘But I have the facts,’ Christoff muttered miserably. ‘Here. I have it all.’
No one paid him any attention, every gaze having focused once more on me. Realising I would have to choose my next words carefully, I paused a moment. Then I said:
‘My own view is that Kazan never benefits from formalised restraints. Neither from the circular dynamic, nor even a doublebar structure. There are simply too many layers, too many emotions, especially in the later works.’
I could feel, almost physically, the tide of respect sweeping towards me. The pudgy-faced man was looking at me with something close to awe. A woman in a scarlet anorak was muttering: ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ as though I had just articulated something she had been struggling to formulate for years. The man named Claude had risen to his feet and now took a few steps towards me, nodding vigorously. Dr Lubanski was also nodding, but slowly and with his eyes closed as if to say: ‘Yes, yes, here at last is
someone who really knows.’ The young woman with the thick spectacles though had remained quite still, continuing to watch me carefully.
‘I can understand,’ I went on, ‘the temptation to resort to such devices. There’s a natural fear of the music flooding the musician’s resources. But the answer surely is to rise to such a challenge, not to resort to restraints. Of course, the challenge might be too great, in which case the answer is to leave Kazan well alone. One should not, in any case, attempt to make a virtue out of one’s limitations.’
At this last remark, many in the room seemed no longer able to hold back their feelings. The grizzled man with the muddy boots broke into vigorous applause, throwing snarling looks towards Christoff as he did so. Several others started to shout again at Christoff, and the woman in the scarlet anorak was again repeating, this time more loudly: ‘That’s it, that’s it, that’s it.’ I felt strangely exhilarated and, raising my voice above the mounting excitement, continued:
‘These failures of nerve are, in my experience, very often associated with certain other unattractive traits. A hostility towards the introspective tone, most often characterised by an over-use of the crushed cadence. A fondness for pointlessly matching fragmented passages with each other. And at the more personal level, a megalomania masquerading behind a modest and kindly manner …’