Cloud Atlas

ZEDELGHEM

10^th—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Ayrs in bed for three days, fogged with morphine, calling out in pain. V. distracting and distressing. Dr. Egret warns J. and me not to confuse Ayrs’s newfound joie de vivre in music with actual health and forbids V.A. to work from his sickbed. Dr. Egret gives me the creeps. Never met a quack whom I didn’t half-suspect of plotting to do me in as expensively as he could contrive.

Buried in music of my own. Cruel to say it, but when Hendrick arrives at breakfast and tells me, “Not today, Robert,” I’m almost relieved. Spent last night working on a rumbling ’cello allegro lit by explosive triplets. Silence punctuated by breakneck mousetraps. Remember the church clock chiming three A.M. “I heard an owl,” Huckleberry Finn says, “away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.” Always haunted me, that line. Next thing I know, Lucille was ballooning sheets of bright morning by the window. Morty Dhondt was downstairs, she told me, ready for our excursion. Thought I was dreaming, but no. My face was crusted over, and for a second I couldn’t have told you my name. Grunted I didn’t want to go anywhere with Morty Dhondt, I wanted sleep, I have work to do. “But last week you arranged to go motoring today!” objected Lucille.

I remembered. I washed, put on fresh clothes, and shaved. Sent Lucille to find the houseboy who’d polished my shoes, etc. Down in the breakfast room, the amiable jewel merchant was smoking a cigar and reading The Times. “Don’t hurry,” he told me, when I apologized for my tardiness. “Where we’re going no one will notice if we’re early or late.” Mrs. Willems brought me some kedgeree, and J. breezed in. She hadn’t forgotten what day it was and gave me a bunch of white roses, tied with a black ribbon, and smiled, just like her old self.

Dhondt drives a claret 1927 Bugatti Royale Type 41, a real spanker, Sixsmith. Goes like a greased devil—nearly fifty on the metaled highway!—and boasts a Klaxon hooter that Dhondt fires off at the least provocation. Beautiful day for a grim journey. The nearer to the Front one goes, naturally, the more blasted the countryside becomes. Beyond Roeselare, the land grows crater-scarred, crisscrossed with collapsing trenches and pocked with burnt patches where not even weeds take root. The few trees still standing here and there are, when you touch them, lifeless charcoal. The skein of green on the land seems less nature revivified, more nature mildewed. Dhondt shouted over the engine’s roar that farmers still daren’t plow the land for fear of unexploded ordnance. One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground. Any moment, the order to charge would be given, and infantrymen well up from the earth, brushing off the powdery soil. The thirteen years since Armistice seemed only as many hours.

Zonnebeke is a ramshackle village of semirepaired ruins and the site of a cemetery of the Eleventh Essex of the Fifty-third Brigade. The War Graves Commission told me this cemetery has the best chance of being where my brother was laid to rest. Adrian died in the charge of July 31 on Messines Ridge, right in the thick of it. Dhondt dropped me off at the gates and wished me luck. Tactfully, he told me he had business nearby—we must have been fifty miles from the nearest jeweler’s—and left me to my quixotic quest. A consumptive ex-soldier guarded the gates when not tending his sorry vegetable plot. He also worked as a groundsman—self-appointed, one suspects—and waved a donation box at me, for “upkeep.” Parted with a franc, and the fellow asked in tolerable English if I was looking for anyone in particular, as he had committed the entire cemetery to memory. Wrote down my brother’s name, but he did that Gallic mouth droop that indicates, “My problems are mine, and yours are yours, and this one is yours.”

Always felt I would divine which KNOWN UNTO GOD was Adrian’s. A glowing inscription, a nodding magpie, or just a musical certainty would lead me to the right plot. Utter tripe, of course. The headstones were uncountable, uniform, and arrayed as if on parade. Coils of brambles invaded the perimeter. The air was stuffy as if the sky were sealing us in. Along the aisles and rows I searched the F’s. Long odds, but one never knows. The War Office makes mistakes—if war’s first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency. In the event, no Frobisher was resting in that plot of Flanders. The closest was “Froames, B. W., Private 2389 18th (Eastern Division),” so I laid J.’s white roses on his stone. Who is to say? Maybe Froames asked Adrian for a light one tired evening, or cowered with him as bombs rained down, or shared a Bovril. Am a sentimental fool and I know it.

One encounters buffoons like Orford in your college, who wear an air of deprivation that the war ended before they had a chance to show their mettle. Others, Figgis springs to mind, confess their relief not to have been of service age before 1918 but a certain shame that they feel this relief. I’ve often banged on to you about growing up in my legendary brother’s shadow—every rebuke began with an “Adrian never used to . . .” or “If your brother were here now he’d . . .” Grew to hate the sound of his name. During the runup to my forcible ejection from the Frobishery, it was all “You’re a disgrace to Adrian’s memory!” Never, ever forgive the parents that. Remembered our last send-off one drizzly autumn afternoon at Audley End, Adrian was in uniform, Pater clasping him. Days of bunting and cheering were long over—later heard Military Police were escorting conscripts to Dunkirk to deter mass desertions. All those Adrians jammed like pilchards in cemeteries throughout eastern France, western Belgium, beyond. We cut a pack of cards called historical context—our generation, Sixsmith, cut tens, jacks, and queens. Adrian’s cut threes, fours, and fives. That’s all.

Of course, “That’s all” is never all. Adrian’s letters were hauntingly aural. One can shut one’s eyes but not one’s ears. Crackle of lice in seams; scutter of rats; snap of bones against bullet; stutter of machine guns; thunder of distant explosions, lightning of nearer ones; ping of stones off tin helmets; flies buzzing over no-man’s-land in summer. Later conversations add the scream of horses; cracking of frozen mud; buzz of aircraft; tanks, churning in mud holes; amputees, surfacing from the ether; belch of flamethrowers; squelch of bayonets in necks. European music is passionately savage, broken by long silences.

Do wonder if my brother liked boys as well as girls too, or if my vice is mine alone. Wonder if he died celibate. Think of these troopers, lying together, cowering, alive; cold, dead. Tidied B. W. Froames’s headstone and went back to the gates. Well, my mission was bound to be futile. Groundsman was twiddling with twine, said nothing. Morty Dhondt collected me bang on time, and off we hurtled back toward civilization, ha. Passed through a place called Poelkapelle or some such, down an avenue of elms lasting mile after mile. Dhondt chose this straight to push the Bugatti as fast as she would go. Individual elms blurred into a single tree repeated to infinity, like a spinning top. The needle was nudging top speed when a form like a running madwoman ran out smack in front of us—she hit the windscreen and spun over our heads. Heart popped like a gunshot, I can tell you! Dhondt braked, the road tilted us one way, shrugged us the other, the tires screamed and singed the air with hot rubber. We had run out of infinity. My teeth had bitten deep into my tongue. If the brakes hadn’t locked in such a way that the Bugatti continued its trajectory along the road, we would have finished our day—if not our lives—wrapped around an elm. The car scraped to a halt. Dhondt and I jumped out and ran back—to see a monster pheasant, flapping its broken wings. Dhondt blew out an elaborate oath in Sanskrit or something, and gave a ha! of relief that he hadn’t killed someone that also expressed dismay at having killed something. Had lost the power of speech, and dabbed my bleeding tongue on my handkerchief. Proposed putting the poor bird out of its misery. Dhondt’s answer was a proverb whose idiocy may have been deliberate: “To those upon the menu, the sauce is no concern.” He went back to try to coax the Bugatti back to life. Couldn’t fathom his meaning but walked up to the pheasant, causing it to flap ever more desperately. Its medallion breast feathers were matted with blood and fecal spewings. It cried, Sixsmith, just like a two-day-old baby. Wished I had a gun. On the roadside was a stone as big as my fist. I smashed it down on the pheasant’s head. Unpleasant—not the same as shooting a bird, not at all.

Wiped its blood off the best I could, using dock leaves plucked from the roadside. Dhondt had the car running, I hopped aboard, and we drove as far as the next village. A no-name place, as far as I could see, but it had a miserable café-cum-garage-cum-funeral parlor shared by a gang of silent locals and many flies who wheeled through the air like drugged angels of death. The hard braking had misaligned the Bugatti’s front axle, so M.D. stopped here to have it seen to. We sat alfresco on the edge of a “square,” in reality a pond of cobbly mud with a plinth plonked in its navel whose original inhabitant had long ago been melted down for bullets. Some dirty children chased the only fat hen in the country across the square—it flew up to the plinth. The children began throwing stones at it. Wondered where the bird’s owner might be. I asked the barman who had formerly occupied the plinth. He didn’t know, he was born in the south. My glass was dirty, so I made the barman change it. He took umbrage and was less talkative from then on.

M.D. asked about my hour in the Zonnebeke cemetery. Didn’t really answer. Mangled, bloodied pheasant kept flashing before my eyes. Asked M.D. where he’d spent his war. “Oh, you know, attending to business.” In Bruges? I asked, surprised, hard put to imagine a Belgian diamond merchant prospering under the Kaiser’s occupation. “Good God, no,” answered M.D., “Johannesburg. My wife and I got out for the duration.” I complimented his foresight. Modestly, he explained, “Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.”

Was he so sure another war was coming?

“Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity’s two eternal companions.”

So, I asked, what was the other?

“Diamonds.” A butcher in a bloodstained apron ran across the square, and the children scattered. Now he had the problem of luring the hen down from its plinth.

The League of Nations? Surely nations knew laws other than warfare? What of diplomacy?

“Oh, diplomacy,” said M.D., in his element, “it mops up war’s spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents. Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots, and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.”

The reductio ad absurdum of M.D.’s view, I argued, was that science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilization drives itself to extinction. M.D. embraced my objection with mordant glee. “Precisely. Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that’ll snuff out Homo sapiens before this century is out! You’ll probably live to see it happen, you fortunate son. What a symphonic crescendo that’ll be, eh?”

The butcher came over to ask the barman for a ladder. Got to end here. Can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

21^st—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Ayrs should be up on his feet tomorrow after a bed-bound fortnight. Wouldn’t wish syphilis on my worst enemies. Only one or two, anyway. The syphilitic decays in increments, like fruit rotting in orchard verges. Dr. Egret calls by every other day, but there’s not much left to prescribe except ever-bigger doses of morphine. V.A. loathes using it because it clouds his music.

J. prone to bouts of despondency. Some nights, she just clings to me as if I’m her life belt and she’s drowning. Feel sorry for the woman, but I’m interested in her body, not her problems. Was.

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, ’cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.

Next day

Had the devil of a spat with V.A. He dictated a toccata-like étude during this morning’s compositional, it seemed deuced familiar, then I recognized the refrain from my own “Angel of Mons”! If Ayrs hoped I’d not notice he was v. much mistaken. I told him straight—this was my music. He changed his tune: “What d’you mean, your music? Frobisher, when you grow up, you’ll find that all composers draw inspiration from their environments. You’re one of many elements in mine, receiving a fair salary, I might add, enjoying daily master classes in composition and mingling with the greatest musical minds of the age. If you’re unhappy with these terms, Hendrick will drive you to the station.” Well, a v. different man from the one I’d wheeled down to the lodge house a few weeks ago, when he’d pleaded with me to stay on until next spring. I asked whom he had in mind to replace me. Mrs. Willems? The gardener? Eva? Nefertiti? “Oh, I’m sure Sir Trevor Mackerras could lay his hands on a suitable boy for me. Yes, I shall advertise. You’re not as singular as you like to think. Now. Do you want your job or not?”

Couldn’t find a way to win back lost ground so I walked out, complaining of agony in my big toe. V.A. fired this warning at my flank: “If your toe isn’t better by the morning, Frobisher, get it fixed in London and don’t come back.” Sometimes I want to build a bloody great bonfire and toss the old sod into its roaring heart.

Some days later

Still here, J. visited later, spun me a line about Ayrs’s pride, how much he values my work, artistic tempers etc., but please stay, for her sake if not for his. Accepted this proxy fig leaf cum olive branch, and our lovemaking that night was almost affectionate. Winter coming on, and I’m not up to adventuring around Europe on my modest nest egg. Would need to meet a stupid, wealthy heiress rather smartish if I left now. Anyone spring to mind? Will send another package for Jansch, to boost my emergency fund. If Ayrs won’t cut me in for my ideas that went into “Todtenvogel”— enjoying its twentieth public outing since Warsaw—I’ll just have to reimburse myself. Resolve to be much more cautious before showing V.A. my own compositions again. You know, having the roof over one’s head dependent upon the good offices of an employer is a loathsome way to live. Christ only knows how the serving classes stand it. Are the Frobishery domestics forever biting their tongues as I must? one wonders. Eva back from her summer in Switzerland. Well, this young woman says she’s Eva, and the resemblance is certainly striking, but that snotty duckling who left Zedelghem three months ago has returned a most graceful swan. She supports her mother, bathes her father’s eyelids with cotton wool dipped in cold water and reads him Flaubert for hours on end, she’s courteous to the servants, and she even asks me about my sextet’s progress. Was sure it was some new strategy to oust me, but seven days on I’m beginning to suspect E. the stinker just might be dead and buried. V. well, there is more to E.’s & my pax than meets the eye, but must first provide some background. Since my arrival in Neerbeke, Eva’s “landlady” in Bruges, Mme. van de Velde, had been on at both E. & J. for me to visit their house so her five daughters—E.’s schoolfellows—can practice their English on a genuine English gentleman. M. van de Velde, you’ll remember, is the alleged rake of Minnewater Park who turned out to be a manufacturer of munitions and respected civic pillar etc. Mme. van de Velde is one of those tiresome, persistent women whose ambitions won’t be thwarted by “He’s v. busy at the moment.” Actually, one suspects J. of fixing the fait accompli out of spite—as her daughter grows swanlike, the mother is turning into a nasty old rook.

Today was the day appointed for me to dine at the van d. V.s—five evenly spaced daughters plus Mater and Pater. Needed a new set of strings for the ’cello, and it does Ayrs no harm to see how helpless he is without me, so I put on my brave face and hoped the v.d.V.s employ a chef commensurate to a factory owner’s income. So at eleven o’clock the van de Velde car—a silver Mercedes-Benz, thank you very much—arrived at Zedelghem, and their driver, a perspiring snowman with no neck and no French, drove E. and me back to Bruges. In the past we would have ridden in stony silence, but found myself telling E. a little about my Cambridge days. E. warned me that the eldest van de Velde, Marie-Louise, had decided to marry an Englishman at any cost, so I should have to guard my chastity with the utmost care.

How do you like that?

At the van de Veldes’ town house, the girls were arranged on the stairway to greet me in ascending order of age—half-expected ’em to burst into song, and stone the crows, Sixsmith, that’s what they did. “Greensleeves,” in English. Syrupy as humbugs. Then Mme. v.d.V. pinched my cheek as if I were a homecoming runaway and said, owlishly, “How do you do-ooo?” Was ushered into “the salon”—a nursery—and seated on “the question chair,” a toy box. The v.d.V. daughters, a hydra of heads named Marie-Louise, Stephanie, Zenobe, Alphonsine, and I forget the last, ranged from nine years of age to said Marie-Louise, one year Eva’s senior. All girls possess a thoroughly unjustified self-confidence. A v. long sofa sagged beneath this family of porkers. The maid brought lemonade while Mme. began the questions. “Eva tells us your family are v. well connected in Cambridge, Mr. Frobisher?” Glanced Eva-wards; she pulled a mock-fascinated face. Hid my smile and admitted my family are in the Domesday Book and that Pater is an eminent churchman. All attempts to turn the topic away from my eligibility were yorkered, and after a quarter of an hour the bug-eyed Marie-Louise had sensed her mater’s approval and settled I would be her Prince Charming. She asked this: “Mr. Frobisher, are you well acquainted with Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street?” Well, thought I, the day might not be a complete wreck. A girl with a taste for irony must conceal some depths. But Marie-Louise was serious! A congenital dunce. No, I replied, I didn’t know Mr. Holmes personally, but he and David Copperfield could be seen playing billiards at my club every Wednesday. Luncheon was served on fine Dresden crocks in a dining room with a large reproduction of The Last Supper over floral wallpaper. Food a disappointment. Dry trout, greens steamed to a sludge, gâteau simply vulgar; thought I was back dining in London. The girls tittered glissando at my trivial missteps in French—yet their frightful English rasps on one’s ear unbearably. Mme. v.d.V., who also summered in Switzerland, gave laborious accounts of how Marie-Louise had been eulogized in Berne as “the Flower of the Alps” by Countess Slãck-Jawski or the Duchess of Sümdümpstädt. Couldn’t even force out a civil “Comme c’est charmant!” M. v.d.V. arrived from his office. Asked a hundred questions on cricket to amuse his daughters with this quaint English ritual of “Ins that are Out” and “Outs that are In.” A pi-jawed ass of kingly proportions, so busy planning his next boorish interruption that he never listens properly. Pays himself unveiled compliments, beginning “Call me old-fashioned but . . .” or “Some consider me a snob but . . .” Eva sent me a wry look. It said, “And to think you honestly thought this oaf was a threat to my reputation!”

After luncheon, the sun came out, and Mme. v.d.V. announced we would all go for a walk to show the honored visitor the sights of Bruges. Tried to say I’d already impinged on their hospitality enough, but wasn’t to get away so lightly. The Great Patriarch excused himself—had a pile of chits to sign as high as the Matterhorn. May he die in an avalanche. After the maids had hatted and gloved the girls, the carriage was summoned and I was carted around one church after another. As dear old Kilvert notes, nothing is more tiresome than being told what to admire, and having things pointed at with a stick. Can scarcely recall the name of a single sight. By the itinerary’s finale, the great clock tower, my jaw was hurting from all the yawns I’d suppressed. Mme. van de Velde gave the pinnacle one squint and announced that she would let us young things scramble up there by ourselves and wait in the patisserie across the piazza. Marie-Louise, who outweighs her mother, remarked that it wouldn’t be ladylike to allow Maman to wait alone. Brainbox couldn’t go because of her asthma, and if Brainbox wasn’t going etc. & etc., until in the end only Eva and I bought tickets to go up. I paid, to show I wasn’t blaming her personally for the hideous waste of a day. Went first. The stairway was an evernarrower spiral. A rope ran at hand height through iron rings set into the wall. Feet had to feel their own way. Only source of light was occasional narrow windows. Only sounds were our feet and E.’s feminine breathing, reminding me of my nocturnes with her mother. The van de Veldes are six never-ending, ill-tuned harpsichord allegretti, and my ears rang with gratitude to be free of ’em. Had forgotten to count the steps, I thought aloud. My voice sounded locked in a closet of blankets. Eva gave me a lazy “Oui . . .”

Emerged into an airy chamber housing the cartwheel-size cogs of the clock mechanism. Ropes and cables disappeared into the ceiling. A dogsbody snoozed in his deck chair. He was supposed to inspect our tickets—on the Continent one must forever be producing a ticket—but we slipped by him up a final flight of wooden stairs to the viewing belvedere. Tricolor Bruges spread out, far below: roof-tile orange; masonry gray; canal brown. Horses, automobiles, cyclists, a crocodile of choirboys, witch-hat roofs, washing on lines across side streets. Looked for Ostend, found it. Sunlit strip of North Sea turned Polynesian ultramarine. Seagulls wheeled in currents, I got giddy following ’em and thought of Ewing’s mollyhawk. Eva declared she had spotted the van de Veldes. Assumed this was a comment on their ampleness but looked where she said and, sure enough, six little blobs in pastels around a café table. E. folded her ticket into a paper dart and flung it over the parapet. Wind carried it off until the sun burned it up. What would she do if Dogsbody woke and demanded her ticket? “I’ll cry and say the horrible English boy stole it.” So I folded my ticket into a paper dart, too, told E. she had no evidence, and launched it. Instead of soaring high, my dart fell out of sight in a moment. E.’s character depends on which angle you’re looking from, a quality of superior opals. “You know, I can’t remember seeing Papa so content and alive as he is now,” she said.

The awful v.d.V.s had created a camaraderie. Asked her straight what had happened in Switzerland. Had she fallen in love, worked in an orphanage, had a mystical encounter in a snowy grotto?

She began to say something several times. In the end, she said (blushing!), “I was missing a certain young man I met this June.”

You’re surprised? Imagine my feelings! Yet I was every inch the gentleman you know me for. Instead of flirting back, I said, “And your first impression of this young man? Was it not wholly negative?”

“Partly negative.” I observed her beads of perspiration from the climb, her lips, and the fine, fine hairs on her upper lip.

“He’s a tall, dark, handsome, musical foreigner?”

She snorted. “He is . . . tall, yes; dark, quite; handsome, not so much as he thinks, but let us say he can catch the eye; musical, prodigiously; a foreigner, to his core. Remarkable that you know so much about him! Are you spying on him too, as he passes through Minnewater Park?” I had to laugh. So did she. “Robert, I sense . . .” She gazed at me shyly. “You’re experienced. May I call you Robert, by the way?”

I said it was about time she did.

“My words are not . . . entirely appropriate. Are you angry?”

No, I said, no. Surprised, flattered, but angry, not at all.

“I behaved so spitefully to you. But I’m hoping we can start again.”

Answered, of course, I’d like that too. “Since my childhood,” E. said, looking away, “I’ve thought of this balcony as my own belvedere, from A Thousand and One Nights. I often come up here at this hour, after school. I’m the empress of Bruges, you see. Its citizens are my subjects. The van de Veldes are my jesters. I shall chop off their heads.” A beguiling creature, she really is. My blood was hot, and I was seized by an impulse to give the empress of Bruges a lingering kiss.

Got no further; a party of infernal American tourists swarmed up through the narrow doorway. Fool that I am, I pretended not to be with Eva. Took in view from other side, trying to wind in all unraveled strings of myself. When Dogsbody announced that the viewing balcony was closing shortly, Eva was no longer there, like a cat. How true to form. Once again forgot to count the steps going down.

At the cake shop Eva was helping littlest v.d.V. at pussy’s cradle. Mme. van de Velde fanned herself with a menu and ate boule de l’Yser with Marie-Louise as they dissected the fashions of passersby. Eva avoided my eye. Spell was broken. Marie-Louise sought my eye, the spoony-eyed little heifer. Ambled back to the v.d.V.s’ house where, hallelujah, Hendrick was waiting with the Cowley. Eva bade me au revoir in the doorway—glanced back to see her smile. Bliss! The evening was golden and warm. All the way to Neerbeke, saw Eva’s face, strand or two of hair across her face, left there by the wind. Don’t be hatefully jealous, Sixsmith. You know how it is.

J. senses the entente between Eva and me, and doesn’t like it one fig. Last night, I imagined E. was under me rather than her mother. Crescendo followed only bars later, a whole movement before J. Can women detect imaginary betrayals? I ask because, with stupendous intuition, she gave me this subtle warning: “I want you to know something, Robert. If you ever touch Eva, I’ll find out, and I’ll destroy you.”

“I shouldn’t think of it,” I lied.

“I shouldn’t even dream of it, if I were you,” she warned.

Couldn’t leave it like that. “Why in hell do you think I’m attracted to your gangly, unpleasant daughter, anyway?” She did the v. same snort Eva had done up on her belvedere.

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

24^th—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Where the blazes is your reply? Look here, I’m much obliged to you, but if you think I’ll wait around for your letters to appear, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. It is all perfectly hateful, hateful as my hypocrite father. I could ruin him. He’s ruined me. Anticipating the end of the world is humanity’s oldest pastime. Dhondt is right, damn his Belgian eyes, damn all Belgian eyes. Adrian would still be alive if “plucky little Belgium” never existed. Someone should turn this dwarf-country into a giant boating lake and toss in Belgium’s inventor, his feet tied to a Minerva. If he floats, he’s guilty. To sink a white-hot poker through my father’s damn eyes! Name one. Go on, name me just one famous Belgian. He has more money than Rothschild, but will he pay me another farthing? Miserable, so miserable. How Christian is it to cut me off without a single shilling to my name? Drowning is too good for him. Dhondt is right, I’m afraid. Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years. The End is what we want, so I’m afraid the End is what we’re damn well going to get. There. Set that to music. Timpani, cymbals, and a million trumpets, if you would be so kind. Paying the old bastard with my own music. Kills me.

Sincerely,

R.F.

ZEDELGHEM

29^th—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Eva. Because her name is a synonym for temptation: what treads nearer to the core of man? Because her soul swims in her eyes. Because I dream of creeping through the velvet folds to her room, where I let myself in, hum her a tune so—so—so softly, she stands with her naked feet on mine, her ear to my heart, and we waltz like string puppets. After that kiss, she says, “Vous embrassez comme un poisson rouge!” and in moonlit mirrors we fall in love with our youth and beauty. Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I’m terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she’s lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn’t tell C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man—his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music—but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance “beauty,” yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.

Sincerely,

R.F.

LE ROYAL HÔTEL, BRUGES

6^th—XI—1931

Sixsmith,

Divorces. V. messy affairs but Ayrs’s and mine was over in a single day. Just yesterday morning we were at work on the second movement of his ambitious swan song. He announced a new approach for our Compositional. “Frobisher, today I’d like you to come up with some themes for my Severo movement. Something eve-of-war-ish in E minor. Once you’ve got something that catches my eye, I’ll take it over and develop its potential. Got that?”

Got that I had. Like it I didn’t, not one bit. Scientific papers are coauthored, yes, and a composer might work with a virtuoso musician to explore the boundaries of the playable—like Elgar and W. H. Reed—but a coauthored symphonic work? V. dubious idea, and told V.A. so in no uncertain terms. He tsked. “I didn’t say ‘coauthored,’ boy. You gather the raw material, I refine it as I see fit.” This hardly reassured me. He chided me: “All the Greats have their apprentices do it. How else could a man like Bach churn out new masses every week?”

We were in the twentieth century when I last looked, I retorted. Audiences pay to hear the composer whose name is on the program notes. They don’t pay money for Vyvyan Ayrs only to get Robert Frobisher. V.A. got agitated. “They won’t ‘get’ you! They’ll get me! You’re not listening, Frobisher. You do the block-and-tackle work, I orchestrate, I arrange, I polish.”

“Block-and-tackle” work like my “Angel of Mons,” robbed at gunpoint for the Adagio in Ayrs’s glorious final monument? One may dress plagiarism up however one wishes, it’s still plagiarism. “Plagiarism?” Ayrs kept his voice low, but his knuckles on his cane were whitening. “In bygone days—when you were grateful for my tutelage—you called me one of the greatest living European composers. Which is to say, the world. Why would such an artist possibly need to ‘plagiarize’ anything from a copyist who, may I remind him, was unable to obtain even a bachelor’s degree for himself from a college for the terminally privileged? You’re not hungry enough, boy, that’s your problem. You’re Mendelssohn aping Mozart.”

The stakes rose like inflation in Germany, but I am constitutionally unable to fold under pressure:—I dig in. “I’ll tell you why you need to plagiarize! Musical sterility!” The finest moments in “Todtenvogel” are mine, I told him. The contrapuntal ingenuities of the new work’s Allegro non troppo are mine. I hadn’t come to Belgium to be his damn fag.

The old dragon breathed smoke. Ten bars of silence in 6/8. Stubbed out his cigarette. “Your petulance doesn’t deserve serious attention. In fact it deserves dismissal, but that would be acting in the heat of the moment. Instead, I want you to think. Think about reputation.” Ayrs unrolled the word. “Reputation is everything. Mine, save for a youthful exuberance that earned me the clap, is beyond reproach. Yours, my disinherited, gambling, bankrupt friend, is expired. Leave Zedelghem whenever you wish. But be warned. Leave without my consent and all musical society west of the Urals, east of Lisbon, north of Naples, and south of Helsinki will know a scoundrel named Robert Frobisher forced himself upon purblind Vyvyan Ayrs’s wife, his beloved wife, yes, the enchanting Mevrouw Crommelynck. She will not deny it. Imagine the scandal! After everything Ayrs had done for Frobisher, too . . . well, no wealthy patron, no impoverished patron, no festival organizer, no board of governors, no parent whose Little Lucy Lamb wants to learn the piano will have anything, anything to do with you.”

So V.A. knows. For weeks, months, probably. Was badly wrong-footed. Highlighted my impotence by calling Ayrs some v. rude names. “Oh, flattery!” he crowed. “Encore, Maestro!” Stopped myself battering the pox-nibbled corpse to a premature death with the bassoon. Didn’t stop myself hissing that if Ayrs was half as good a husband as he was a manipulator and a larcenist of better men’s ideas, his wife might not put it about so much. Come to think of it, I added, how much credibility would his campaign to smear my name carry when European society learned what kind of woman Jocasta Crommelynck was in her private life?

Hadn’t even scratched him. “You ignorant ass, Frobisher. Jocasta’s numerous affairs are discreet, always have been. Any society’s upper crust is riddled with immorality, how else d’you think they keep their power? Reputation is king of the public sphere, not private. It is dethroned by public acts. Disinheritance. Fleeing famous hotels. Defaulting on monies owed to the gentry’s lenders of last resort. Jocasta had my blessing when she seduced you, you stuck-up piffler. I required you to finish ‘Todtenvogel.’ You fancy yourself a larky buck, but there’s alchemy between Jocasta and I you cannot begin to fathom. She’ll fall out of love with you the moment you threaten us. You’ll see. Now go away and come back tomorrow with your homework done. We will pretend your little tantrum never happened.”

Was only too pleased to comply. Needed to think.

J. must have played a major part in investigating my recent history. Hendrick doesn’t speak English, and V.A. couldn’t have done this delving alone. She must like louche men—explains why she married Ayrs. Where E. stands on all of this I couldn’t guess, because yesterday was Wednesday, so she was at school in Bruges. Eva could not know about my affair with her mother and still make such open signs of love to me. Surely?

Spent afternoon walking across the bleak fields in solitary rage. Sheltered from hailstones in a bombed-out chapel’s lych-gate. Thought about E., thought about E., thought about E. Only two things were clear:—hanging myself from Zedelghem’s flagpole was preferable to letting its parasite master plunder my talents a day longer; and never seeing E. again was unthinkable. “It’ll all end in tears, Frobisher!” Yes, possibly, elopements often do, but I love her, I actually love her, and there it is.

Returned to the château just before it got dark, ate cold meats in Mrs. Willems’s kitchen. Learnt that J. and her Circean caresses were in Brussels on estate business and would not be back that night. Hendrick told me V.A. had retired early with his wireless and instructions not to be disturbed. Perfect. Took a long soak in the tub and a wrote a well-knotted set of scalic bass lines. Crises send me scurrying into music, where nothing can harm me. Retired early myself, locked my door, and packed my valise. Woke myself this morning at four o’clock. Freezing fog outside. Wanted to pay V.A. a final call. Barefoot except for socks, I crept along the wintry corridors to Ayrs’s door. Shivering, eased it open, at pains to avoid the slightest noise—Hendrick sleeps in an adjoining room. Lights off, but in the ember glow from the hearth I saw Ayrs, stretched out like that mummy in the British Museum. His room stank of bitter medicine. Crept to the cabinet by his bed. Drawer was stiff, and as I jerked it open an ether bottle on top wobbled—just caught it. V.A.’s flaunted Luger lay bundled in its chamois cloth wrapped in a string vest, next to a little saucer of bullets. They rattled. Ayrs’s fragile skull was only inches away, but he didn’t wake. His breathing was wheezy as a ratty old barrel organ. Felt an impulse to steal a clutch of bullets, so I did.

A blue vein throbbed over Ayrs’s Adam’s apple, and I fought off an unaccountably strong urge to open it up with my penknife. Most uncanny. Not quite déjà vu, more jamais vu. Killing, an experience that comes to few outside wartime. What is the timbre of murder? Don’t worry, I’m not writing you a confession of homicide. Working on my sextet while evading a manhunt would be far too much trouble, and ending one’s career swinging in soiled underwear is hardly dignified. Even worse, murdering Eva’s father in cold blood might put the kibosh on her feelings for me. V.A. slumbered on, oblivious to all this, and I pocketed his pistol. I’d stolen the bullets, so taking the Luger too had a sort of logic. Curiously heavy things, guns. It emanated a bass note against my thigh: it’s killed people, for sure; this little Luger went to market. Why did I take it, exactly? Couldn’t tell you. But place its mouth against your ear and you hear the world in a different way.

Last port of call was Eva’s empty room. Lay on her bed, stroked her clothes, you know how I get sentimental over partings. Left the shortest letter of my life on her dressing table: “Empress of Bruges. Your belvedere, your hour.” Back to my room. Bade my four-poster bed a fond farewell, raised the stubborn sash window, and effected my flight over the icy roof. Flight was nearly the word—a tile slid out and crashed down to the gravel walk below. Lay prone, expecting shouts and alarums at any second, but no one had heard. Reached Earth courtesy of the obliging yew tree and made my way through the frosty herb garden, keeping the topiary between me and the servants’ rooms. Rounded the front of the house and walked down the Monk’s Walk. East wind straight from the steppes, was glad of Ayrs’s sheepskin. Heard arthritic poplars, nightjars in the fossilized woods, a crazed dog, feet on frozen gravel, rising pulse in my temples, some sorrow too, for myself, for the year. Passed the old lodge, took the Bruges road. Had hoped to hitch a lift on a milk truck or cart, but there was nothing about. Stars were fading in the frosty predawn. A few cottage candles were lit, glimpsed a fiery face in the smithy, but the road north was nobody’s but mine.

So I thought, but the noise of an automobile was following me. Wasn’t going to hide, so I stopped and faced it. Headlamps dazzled, the car slowed, the engine stalled, and a familiar voice shrieked at me: “And where might you be creeping off to at such an ungodly hour?”

Mrs. Dhondt, none other, wrapped up in a black sealskin coat. Had the Ayrses sent her out to capture the runaway slave? Confusedly, I garbled out, like an utter ass, “Oh, there’s been an accident!”

Cursed myself for this cul-de-sac of a lie, for clearly I was fit as a fiddle, alone, on foot, and with my valise and satchel. “What terrible luck!” responded Mrs. Dhondt, with martial gusto, filling in my blanks for me. “Friend or family?”

I saw my lifeboat. “Friend.”

“Morty did warn Mr. Ayrs against buying a Cowley for precisely this reason, you know! Unreliable in a crisis. Silly Jocasta, why didn’t she telephone me? Jump in, then! One of my Arabian mares gave birth to two glorious foals just an hour ago, and all three are doing splendidly! I was on my way home, but I’m far too excited to sleep, so I’ll drive you to Ostend if you miss the connection at Bruges. I do so love the roads at this hour. So what is the nature of the accident? Buck up, now, Robert. Never assume the worst until you have all the facts to hand.”

Reached Bruges by dawn by virtue of a few plain untruths. Selected this superior hotel across from St. Wenceslas because its exterior looks like a bookend and its flower boxes are well planted with miniature firs. My rooms overlook a quiet canal on the west side. Now I’ve finished this letter, will take forty winks until it’s time to go to the belfry. E. might be there. If not, will lurk in an alleyway near her school and waylay her. If she fails to appear there, a call at the van de Veldes’ may be necessary. If my name is fouled, shall disguise myself as a chimney sweep. If I am rumbled, a long letter. If long letter is intercepted, another one is waiting in her dressing table. I am a determined man.

Sincerely,

R.F.

P.S.—Thanks for your anxious letter, but why the clucking Mother Goose? Yes, of course I’m fine—apart from the consequences of described contretemps with V.A. Am more than fine, to tell the truth. My mind is capable of any creative task it can conceive. Composing the best work of my life, of all lives. Have money in my pocketbook and more in the First Bank of Belgium. Reminds me. If Otto Jansch won’t budge from thirty guineas for the Munthe pair, tell him to skin his mother and roll her in salt. See what the Russian on Greek Street’ll cough up.

P.P.S.—One last serendipitous discovery. Back at Zedelghem, whilst packing my valise, checked nothing had rolled under the bed. Found half a ripped-in-two volume wedged under one of the legs by a long-since-departed guest to stop the bed wobbling. Prussian officer, maybe, or Debussy, who knows? Thought nothing of it until a minute later, when the title on the spine registered. Grimy job, but I lifted the bed up and extracted the bound pages. Sure enough:—“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.” From the interrupted page to the end of the first volume. Would you believe it? Slipped the half-book into my valise. Will finish gobbling it down v. soon. Happy, dying Ewing, who never saw the unspeakable forms waiting around history’s corner.

LE ROYAL HÔTEL, BRUGES

NEAR THE ENDTH—XI—1931

Sixsmith,

Working nights on Cloud Atlas Sextet until I drop, quite literally, no other way to get off to sleep. My head is a Roman candle of invention. Lifetime’s music, arriving all at once. Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. Take this island, midstream between timbre and rhythm, not down in any book of theory, but it’s here! Hear the instruments in my head, perfect clarity, anything I wish for. When it’s finished, there’ll be nothing left in me, I know, but this king’s shilling in my sweaty palm is the philosopher’s stone! A man like Ayrs spends his allotted portion in dribs and drabs over a dragged-out lifetime. Not I. Heard nothing from V.A. or that adulterous, rubbery, melodramatic wife of his. Suppose they believe I ran home to England. Last night dreamt I fell from the Imperial Western, clutching my drainpipe. Violin note, misplayed, hideously—that’s my sextet’s final note.

Am perfectly well. So damnably well! Wish I could make you see this brightness. Prophets went blind if they saw Jehovah. Not deaf, but blind, you appreciate the significance. Could still hear him. Talk to myself all day long. Did it absently at first, the human voice soothes me so, but now it takes real effort to stop, so I let it run and run. Take walks when not composing. Could write a Michelin guide to Bruges now, had I but space enough, and time. Round the poorer quarters, not just the groves of the wealthy. Behind a grubby window a grandmother was arranging Saintpaulia in a bowl. Tapped on the pane and asked her to fall in love with me. Pursed her lips, don’t think she spoke French, but I tried again. Cannonball-headed fellow with absolutely no chin appeared at the window, spat out brimstone curses on me and my house.

Eva. Every day I’ve climbed up the belfry chanting a lucky chant at one syllable per beat, “To—day—to—day—let—her—be—here—to—day—to—day.” Not yet, though I wait until it’s dark. Golden days, bronze days, iron days, watery days, foggy days. Turkish delight sunsets. Nights drawing in, frosty nip in the air. Eva is guarded in a schoolroom down on Earth, chewing her pencil, dreaming of being with me, I know it, me, looking down from amongst exfoliating apostles, dreaming of being with her. Her damn parents must have found the note in her dressing table. Wish I’d gone about things more cunningly. Wish I’d shot the damn fraudster when I had the chance. Ayrs’ll never find a replacement for Frobisher—Eternal Recurrence’ll die with him. Those van de Veldes must have intercepted my second letter to Eva in Bruges. Tried to bluff my way into her school but got chased out by a pair of liveried pigs with whistles and sticks. Followed E. back from school, but the curtains of day are undrawn so briefly, cold and darkling when she leaves her school, cowled in her brown cape, orbited by v.d.V.s, chaperones, and classmates. Peered out between my cap and muffler, waiting for her heart to sense me. Not funny. Today I brushed Eva’s cape as I passed in drizzle, in crowd. E. didn’t notice me. As I near her a tonic pedal rises in volume, from groin, resounding in my chest cavity, up to somewhere behind my eyes. Why so nervous? Tomorrow maybe, yes, tomorrow, for certain. Nothing to be afraid of. She has told me she loves me. Soon, soon.

Sincerely,

R.F.

LE ROYAL HÔTEL

25^th—XI—1931

Sixsmith,

Streaming nose and bad cough since Sunday. Matches my cuts and bruises. Hardly stepped outside, nor do I wish to. Freezing fog crawls out of the canals, it stifles one’s lungs and chills one’s veins. Send me an india-rubber hot-water bottle, would you? Only earthenware ones here.

Hotel manager dropped by earlier. An earnest penguin with no bottom at all. One presumes it is his patent-leather shoes that squeak so as he walks, but one never knows in the Low Countries. His real reason for calling was to ensure I am a wealthy student of architecture, not some dubious Cad the Lad who’ll skip town without settling his account. Anyway, promised to show the color of my money at Reception tomorrow, so a bank visit is unavoidable. This cheered the fellow up, and he hoped my studies were proceeding well. Excellently, I assured him. I don’t say I’m a composer because I can no longer face the Moronic Inquisition: “What kind of music do you write?” “Oh, should I have heard of you?” “Where do you get your ideas from?”

Not in the mood for letter writing after all, not after my recent encounter with E. Lamplighter is making his rounds. If I could turn back the clock, Sixsmith. Would that I could.

Next day

Improved. Eva. Ah. I’d laugh, if it didn’t hurt quite so much. Can’t remember where I was when last I wrote to you. Time is an allegrissimo blur since my Night of Epiphany. Well, it had become pretty clear I wasn’t going to be able to catch E. on her own. She never appeared at the belfry at four P.M. That my communiqués were being intercepted was the only explanation that occurred to me. (Don’t know if V.A. kept his promise to poison my name back in England; maybe you’ve heard something? Don’t overly care, but one would like to know.) Half-hoped J. might track me down to this hotel—in my second letter I wrote my whereabouts. Would even sleep with her if it could open a channel to Eva. Reminded myself I’d not committed any crime—va bene, hare[sic]splitter, not a crime against the Crommelynck-Ayrses that they know of—and it seems that J. was once again playing under her husband’s baton. Probably always was. So I had no choice but to pay a call to the van de Veldes’ town house.

Crossed dear old Minnewater Park in twilit sleet. Cold as the Urals. Ayrs’s Luger had wanted to come along, so I’d buttoned my steel friend into my sheepskin’s cavernous pocket. Jowly prostitutes smoked in the bandstand. Was not tempted for a moment—only the desperate venture out in this weather. Ayrs’s ravages have put me off ’em, possibly for life. Outside the v.d.V. house cabriolets queued, horses snorted cold air, drivers huddled in long coats, smoking, stamping to keep warm. Windows were lit by vanilla lamps, fluttery debutantes, champagne flutes, fizzing chandeliers. A major social event was under way. Perfect, I thought. Camouflage, you see. A happy couple climbed the steps with care, the door opened—Sesame—a gavotte escaped into the frozen air. Followed ’em up the salt-strewn steps and rapped the golden knocker, trying to remain calm.

The coattailed Cerberus recognized me—a surprised butler is never good news. “Je suis désolé, Monsieur, mais votre nom ne figure pas sur la liste des invités.” Boot already in door. Guest lists, I warned him, don’t apply to established family friends. The man smiled an apology—I was dealing with a professional. Sequined gaggle of mantled goslings streamed past me just then, and the butler unwisely let ’em pass me. Was halfway down the glittering hallway before the white-gloved hand clamped my shoulder. Snapped, must admit, in a most undignified manner—it’s been an abysmal time, shan’t deny it—and roared Eva’s name, over and over, like a spoilt child in a temper tantrum, until the dance music collapsed and the hallway and stairs were packed with shocked revelers. Only the trombonist played on. That’s trombonists for you. A beehive of consternation in all major languages opened up and swarmed forth. Through the ominous buzzing came Eva, in an electric blue ball gown, a rivière of green pearls. Think I shouted, “Why have you been avoiding me?” or something equally dignified.

E. did not glide through the air into my arms, melt into my embrace, and caress me with words of love. Her First Movement was Disgust: “What’s happened to you, Frobisher?” A mirror hung in the hallway; looked to see what she meant. I’d let myself go, but I become a lax shaver when composing, as you know. Second Movement, Surprise: “Madame Dhondt said you’d gone back to England.” Things went from worse to worst. Third Movement, Anger: “How dare you show your face here, after . . . everything?” Her parents had told her nothing but lies about me, I assured her. Why else had they intercepted my letters to her? She had received both my letters, she said, but shredded them “out of pity.” Now rather shaken. Demanded to speak with her tête-à-tête. We had so much to sort out. A superficially handsome young fellow had his arm round her, and he barred my way and told me something in proprietorial Flemish. I told him in French he was pawing the girl I loved, adding that the war should have taught Belgians when to duck in the face of superior force. Eva caught his right arm, cupped his fist in both her hands. An intimate act, I see now. Caught her gallant’s name, muttered by a friend warning him not to belt me one: Grigoire. Bubble of jealousy deep in my gut now had a name. I asked of Eva who her fearsome lapdog was. “My fiancé,” she said, calmly, “and he’s not Belgian, he’s Swiss.”

Your what? Bubble popped, veins poisoned.

“I told you about him, that afternoon on the belfry! Why I came back from Switzerland, so much happier . . . I told you, but then you subjected me to those . . . humiliating letters.” No slip of her tongue or my pen. Grigoire the Fiancé. All those cannibals, feasting on my dignity. There we were. My impassioned love? No such thing. Never was. That unseen trombonist was now monkeying about with “Ode to Joy.” Roared at him with elemental violence—damaged my throat—to play it in the key Beethoven intended or not play it at all. Asked, “Swiss? Why’s he acting so aggressively, then?” Trombonist began a flatulent Beethoven’s Fifth, also in wrong key. E.’s voice was one degree off absolute zero. “I think you’re ill, Robert. You should leave now.” Grigoire the Swiss Fiancé and the butler each clamped one of my unresisting shoulders and marched me backwards to the doorway through the herd. High, high above, I glimpsed two small v.d.V.s in their nightcaps peering down the stairwell through the landing railings like nightcapped gargoylettes. Winked at ’em.

Gleam of triumph in my rival’s lovely, long-lashed eyes and his accented “Go home to England!” ignited Frobisher the Rotter, sorry to say. Just as I was flung over the threshold, I embraced Grigoire in a rugger grip, determined that smug cockatoo was coming with me. Birds-of-paradise in the hallway shrieked, baboons roared. Down the steps we bounced, no, we thudded, slipped, swore, thumped, and tore. Grigoire cried in alarm, then pain—the very medicine prescribed by Dr. Vengeance! Stone steps and icy pavements bruised my own flesh as black as his, banged my elbows and hips just as hard, but at least mine was not the only ruined evening in Bruges, and I yelled, kicking his ribs once for each word, before half-running, half-hobbling off on my whacked ankle, “Love hurts!”

Am in better spirits now. Hardly remember what E. even looks like. Once, her face was burned into my idiotic eyes, saw her everywhere, in everyone. Grigoire has exquisite fingers, long and pliant. Robert Schumann maimed his hands by tying weights to ’em. He thought it’d increase his range at the keyboard. Majestic string quartets but what a bloody fool! Grigoire on the other hand possesses perfect hands by birth but probably doesn’t know a crotchet from crochet.

Six or seven days later

Forgot about this unfinished letter, well, half-forgot, it got buried under my piano MS & too busy composing to fish it out. Icy seasonal weather. Half the clocks in Bruges have frozen fast. So, now you know about Eva. The affair hollowed me out, but what, pray, resounds in hollows? Music, Sixsmith, let there be Music and behold. During a six-hour fireside bath last night I scored 102 bars of a funereal march based on “Ode to Joy” for my clarinetist.

Another visitor this morning; haven’t been this popular since that notorious day at the Derby. Woken at noon by a friendly but firm knock-knock-knock. Called out, “Who’s there?”

“Verplancke.”

Couldn’t place the name, but when I opened the door, there stood my musical policeman, the one who had lent me the bicycle in my old life. “May I come in? Je pensais vous rendre une visite de courtoisie.”

“Most certainly,” I replied, adding rather wittily, “Voilà qui est bien courtois, pour un policier.” Cleared him an armchair & offered to ring for tea, but my visitor declined. Couldn’t quite conceal his surprise at the untidiness. Explained how I tip the maids to stay away. Can’t abide having my MS touched. M. Verplancke nodded in sympathy, then wondered why a gentleman might check into his hotel under a pseudonym. An eccentricity inherited from my father, I said, a notable in public life who prefers to keep his private one private. Keep my own vocation similarly hush-hush so I’m not put upon to tinkle the ivories during cocktail hour. Refusals cause offense. V. seemed satisfied with my explanation. “A luxurious home away from home, Le Royal.” He glanced around my sitting room. “I did not know amanuenses were so well paid.” Admitted what the tactful fellow doubtless already knew: Ayrs and I had parted company, adding I have my own independent income, which a mere twelve months ago would have been the truth. “Ah, a bicycling millionaire?” He smiled. Tenacious, isn’t he? Not quite a millionaire, I smiled back, but, providentially, a man of sufficient consequence to afford Le Royal.

He got to the point at last. “You’ve made an influential enemy during your short residency in our city, M. Frobisher. A certain manufacturer, I think we both know of whom I speak, made a complaint to my superior about an incident a few nights ago. His secretary—a very fine harpsichordist in our little group, in fact—recognized your name, and deflected the complaint to my desk. So here I am.” Took pains to assure him it was all an absurd misunderstanding over a young lady’s affections. Charming fellow nodded. “I know, I know. In youth, one’s heart plays più fortissimo than the head. Our difficulty is, the young man’s father is banker for several of our city elders and is making unpleasant noises about charging you with battery and assault.”

Thanked M. Verplancke for his warning and tact, and promised to keep a lower profile from now on. Alas, not so simple. “Monsieur Frobisher, don’t you find our city intolerably cold in winter? Don’t you think Mediterranean climes might better inspire your Muse?”

Asked if the banker’s anger might be appeased if I gave my word to leave Bruges within seven days, after my sextet’s final revision. V. thought yes, such an understanding should defuse the situation. So I gave my word as a gentleman to make the necessary arrangements.

Business concluded, V. asked if he might have a preview of my sextet. Showed him the clarinet cadenza. He was unnerved at first by its spectral and structural peculiarities, but spent a further hour asking perceptive questions about my semi-invented notation and the singular harmonics of the piece. As we shook hands, he gave me his card, urged me to post a published copy of the score for his ensemble, and expressed regret that his public persona had had to impinge upon his private one. Was sorry to see him go. Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.

So you see, I must put my final days to good account. Don’t worry about me, Sixsmith, I’m quite well, and far too busy for melancholia! There’s a sailors’ tavern at the end of the street where I could find companionship if I chose (one catches salty boys going in and out at any hour), but only music matters to me now. Music clatters, music swells, music tosses.

Sincerely,

R.F.

HÔTEL MEMLING, BRUGES

QUARTER PAST FOUR IN THE MORNING, 12^th—XII—1931

Sixsmith,

Shot myself through the roof of my mouth at five A.M. this morning with V.A.’s Luger. But I saw you, my dear, dear fellow! How touched I am that you care so much! On the belfry’s lookout, yesterday, at sunset. Sheerest fluke you didn’t see me first. Had got to that last flight of stairs, when I saw a man in profile leaning on the balcony, gazing at the sea—recognized your natty gabardine coat, your one and only trilby. One more step up, you’d have seen me crouching in the shadows. You strolled to the north side—one turn my way, I would have been rumbled. Watched you for as long as I dared—a minute?—before pulling back and hotfooting it down to Earth. Don’t be cross. Thank you ever so for trying to find me. Did you come on the Kentish Queen?

Questions rather pointless now, aren’t they?

Wasn’t the sheerest fluke I saw you first, not really. World’s a shadow theater, an opera, and such things writ large in its libretto. Don’t be too cross at my role. You couldn’t understand, no matter how much I explained. You’re a brilliant physicist, your Rutherford chap et al. agree you’ve got a brilliant future, quite sure they’re right. But in some fundamentals you’re a dunce. The healthy can’t understand the emptied, the broken. You’d try to list all the reasons for living, but I left ’em behind at Victoria Station back in early summer. Reason I crept back down from the belvedere was that I can’t have you blaming yourself for failing to dissuade me. You may anyway, but don’t, Sixsmith, don’t be such an ass.

Likewise, hope you weren’t too disappointed to find me gone from Le Royal. The manager got wind of M. Verplancke’s visit. Obliged to ask me to leave, he said, on account of heavy bookings. Piffle, but I took the fig leaf. Frobisher the Stinker wanted a tantrum, but Frobisher the Composer wanted peace and quiet to finish my sextet. Paid in full—bang went the last Jansch money—and packed my valise. Wandered crooked alleys and crossed icy canals before coming across this deserted-looking caravansary. Reception a rarely manned nook under the stairs. Only ornament in my room a monstrous Laughing Cavalier too ugly to steal and sell. From my filthy window, one sees the very same dilapidated old windmill on whose steps I napped on my first morning in Bruges. The very same. Fancy that. Around we go.

Knew I’d never see my twenty-fifth birthday. Am early for once. The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one’s audience with one’s mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it—suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what’s selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers’ days by forcing ’em to witness a grotesqueness. So I’ll make a thick turban from several towels to muffle the shot and soak up the blood, and do it in the bathtub, so it shouldn’t stain any carpets. Last night I left a letter under the manager’s day-office door—he’ll find it at eight A.M. tomorrow—informing him of the change in my existential status, so with luck an innocent chambermaid will be spared an unpleasant surprise. See, I do think of the little people.

Don’t let ’em say I killed myself for love, Sixsmith, that would be too ridiculous. Was infatuated by Eva Crommelynck for a blink of an eye, but we both know in our hearts who is the sole love of my short, bright life.

Along with this letter and the rest of the Ewing book, I’ve made arrangements for a folder containing my completed manuscript to find you at Le Royal. Use the Jansch money to defray publishing costs, send copies to everyone on the enclosed list. Don’t let my family get hold of either of the originals, whatever you do. Pater’ll sigh, “It’s no Eroica, is it?” and stuff it into a drawer; but it’s an incomparable creation. Echoes of Scriabin’s White Mass, Stravinsky’s lost footprints, chromatics of the more lunar Debussy, but truth is I don’t know where it came from. Waking dream. Will never write anything one-hundredth as good. Wish I were being immodest, but I’m not. Cloud Atlas Sextet holds my life, is my life, now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework.

People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it’ll no longer function.

Luger here. Thirteen minutes to go. Feel trepidation, naturally, but my love of this coda is stronger. An electrical thrill that, like Adrian, I know I am to die. Pride, that I shall see it through. Certainties. Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one’s core. Rome’ll decline and fall again, Cortés’ll lay Tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian’ll be blown to pieces again, you and I’ll sleep under Corsican stars again, I’ll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you’ll read this letter again, the sun’ll grow cold again. Nietzsche’s gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.

Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger lets me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we’ll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I’ll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.

Sunt lacrimæ rerum.

R.F.