The Unconsoled

  ‘Except for that morning he shouted at us.’

  ‘He shouted at us? I don’t remember that. The tadpole man was always so polite. And we never bought his books.’

  ‘Oh yes. Once we went in, it was raining, and we took great care not to drip water over his books, we shook our coats at the doorway, and yet he was very ill-tempered that morning and shouted at us. Don’t you remember? He shouted about my being English. Oh yes, he was very rude, but only that morning. The next Sunday, he seemed to have no memory of it.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Brodsky said. ‘I don’t remember. The tadpole man. I always remember him as so shy and polite. I don’t remember this time you’re talking about.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve remembered incorrectly,’ said Miss Collins. ‘Perhaps I’ve muddled him with someone else.’

  ‘I think so. The tadpole man, he was always respectful. He wouldn’t have done such a thing. About you being English?’ Brodsky shook his head. ‘No, he was always respectful.’

  Miss Collins stopped again, for a moment absorbed by a fern.

  ‘So many people in those days,’ she said eventually. ‘They were like that. They would be so polite, so long-suffering. They’d go out of their way to be kind to you, sacrifice all sorts of things, and then one day, for no reason, the weather, anything, they’d just explode. Then back to normal again. There were so many like that. Like Andrzej. He was like that.’

  ‘Andrzej was crazy. You know, I read somewhere, he was killed in a car accident. Yes, I read it, in a Polish journal, five, six years ago. Killed in a car accident.’

  ‘How sad. I suppose many of those people from those days might be gone now.’

  ‘I liked Andrzej,’ Brodsky said. ‘I read it in a Polish journal, just a mention in passing, saying he’d been killed. A road accident. It was sad. I thought about those evenings, sitting in the old apartment. How we’d wrap up in blankets, share the coffee between us, all those books and journals everywhere and talk. About music, about literature, hours and hours, looking at the ceiling, talking, talking.’

  ‘I used to want to go to bed, but Andrzej would never go home. Sometimes he stayed till dawn.’

  ‘That’s right. If he was losing an argument, then he wouldn’t go. He’d never go until he thought he was winning. That’s why sometimes he stayed till dawn.’

  Miss Collins smiled, then sighed. ‘How sad to hear he was killed,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t the tadpole man,’ Brodsky said. ‘It was the man in the picture gallery. He was the one who shouted. A strange one, always pretended not to know who we were. You remember? Even in the days after that performance of Lafcadio. Waiters, taxi drivers wanting to shake my hand, but when we went to the gallery, nothing. He looked at us, face like a stone, same as always. Then at the end, when things were going badly, we went in, it was raining that day, and he shouted at us. We were making his floor wet, he said. And we’d always done it, whenever it rained, for years we’d done it, got his floor wet, all these years and he was sick of it. He was the one who shouted, said about you being English, it was him, not the tadpole. The tadpole was always respectful, right to the end. The tadpole shook my hand, I can remember, just before we left. You remember? We went to the bookshop, he knew it was the last time, he came out from behind his table and shook my hand. Most people didn’t want to shake my hand by then, but he did. He was respectful, the tadpole, always.’

  Miss Collins shielded her eyes with a hand and looked across to the far corner of the garden. Then she began to walk slowly again, saying: ‘It’s nice to remember some of these things. But we can’t live in the past.’

  ‘But you remember it,’ Brodsky said. ‘You remember it, the tadpole, the bookshop. Remember too that wardrobe? The door that fell off? You remember it all, just as I do.’

  ‘Some things I remember. Other things, inevitably, I’ve forgotten.’ Her voice had now become guarded. ‘Some things, even from those times, are best forgotten.’

  Brodsky appeared to give this consideration. Finally he said: ‘Maybe you’re right. The past, it’s full of too many things. I’m ashamed, you know I’m ashamed, so let’s finish. Let’s finish with the past. Let’s choose an animal.’

  Miss Collins went on walking, now several steps in front of Brodsky. Then she stopped again and turned to him. ‘I’ll meet you this afternoon in the cemetery if that’s what you wish. But you mustn’t take that to mean anything. It doesn’t mean I’m agreeing about your animal or about anything else. But I can see you’re worried about tonight, that you’d wish to talk over your anxieties with someone else.’

  ‘These last months. I saw the caterpillars, but I went on, I went on, I made myself ready. It will be for nothing if you don’t come back.’

  ‘I’m only agreeing to meet you for a short time this afternoon. Half an hour perhaps.’

  ‘But you’ll think about it. You’ll think about it before we meet. You’ll think about it. The animal, everything.’

  Miss Collins turned away and for a long time stood examining another shrub. Finally she said: ‘Very well, I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You can see how it’s been for me. How hard. Sometimes it was so terrible I wanted to die, just to stop it, but I went on because this time I could see a way. Conductor again. You’d come back. It will be like it was, even better maybe. Sometimes it got terrible, the caterpillars, there’s nothing more I can do to prove it. We never had children. So let’s get an animal.’

  Miss Collins began to walk again, and this time Brodsky kept up alongside her, gazing gravely into her face. Miss Collins seemed about to speak again, but just at that moment Parkhurst said suddenly from behind me:

  ‘I never join in with them, you know. I mean when they start in on you the way they do. I don’t even laugh, not even smile, I don’t join in at all. You probably think I’m just saying that, but it’s true. They disgust me, the way they go on. And that braying noise! As soon as I walk through the door, that braying noise again! Not even a minute, they won’t even give me that, they won’t give me sixty seconds to show them I’ve changed. “Parkers! Parkers!” Oh, they disgust me …’

  ‘Look,’ I said, feeling suddenly very impatient with him, ‘if they annoy you so much, why don’t you just speak your mind? Next time, why don’t you confront them? Tell them to stop the braying noise. And ask them why, just why they hate me so much. Why my success offends them so. Yes, ask them that! In fact, for maximum impact, why don’t you do it right in the middle of your clowning? Yes, right in the middle of one of your anecdotes, when you’re doing all those funny voices and faces. When they’re all laughing and slapping you on the back, so delighted you haven’t changed a bit, do it right then. Ask them suddenly: “Why? Why does Ryder’s success challenge you so much?” That’s what to do. That would not only do me a service, it would demonstrate to these fools in one elegant move that there is, and always was, a much deeper person behind your clowning exterior. Someone not easily manipulated or compromised. That would be my advice.’

  ‘That’s all very well!’ Parkhurst shouted angrily. ‘It’s very easy for you to say that! You’ve nothing to lose, they hate you anyway! But these are my oldest friends. When I’m out here, surrounded by all these continentals, most of the time I’m fine. But now and again something happens, something unpleasant, and then I say to myself: “So what? What do I care? These are just foreigners. In my own country, I’ve got good friends, I’ve only to go back, they’ll all be waiting there.” It’s all very well, you coming out with smart advice like that. Actually, come to think of it, it probably isn’t all very well for you at all. I don’t see why you’re so complacent. You can’t afford to forget your old friends any more than I can. It’s right, you know, some of these things they say. You’re downright complacent and you’ll pay for it one day. Just because you’ve become famous! They’re right, you know. “Why don’t you confront them?” What arrogance!’

  Parkhurst continued in this vein for a while longer, but I
had stopped listening. For his mention of my ‘complacency’ had triggered something, causing me suddenly to remember that my parents were due shortly to arrive in the city. And there came over me, there in Miss Collins’s front parlour, seizing me with an icy panic that was almost tangible, the realisation that I had not prepared at all the piece I was to perform before them this evening. Indeed, it was several days, perhaps even weeks, since I had last touched a piano. Now here I was, only hours from this most important of performances, not even having made arrangements to rehearse. The more I thought over my situation, the more alarming it appeared. I saw I had allowed myself to become far too preoccupied with the talk I was to deliver, and somehow, unaccountably, had neglected the more fundamental matter of the performance. In fact, I could not for a moment even remember which piece I had decided to play. Was it Yamanaka’s Globestructures: Option II? Or was it Mullery’s Asbestos and Fibre? Both pieces, when I came to think about them, were disturbingly hazy in my mind. Each, I remembered, contained sections of great complexity, but when I tried to think further about these passages, I found I could recall almost nothing. And meanwhile, for all I knew, my parents were already here in the city. I saw there was not a minute to be lost, that whatever the other calls on my time I had first to secure for myself at least two hours of quiet and privacy with a good piano.

  Parkhurst was still talking earnestly.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said, moving towards the door. ‘I have to go immediately.’

  Parkhurst jumped to his feet and his voice now took on a pleading tone.

  ‘I don’t join in, you know. Oh no, I don’t join in at all.’ He came after me as though to grasp my arm. ‘I don’t even smile. It’s disgusting, the way they go on about you …’

  ‘That’s fine, I’m grateful,’ I said, moving out of his reach. ‘But I really have to go now.’

  Letting myself out of Miss Collins’s apartment I hurried up the street, now unable to think of anything other than the need to get back to the hotel and the piano in the drawing room. In fact I was so preoccupied I not only neglected to glance towards the little iron gate as I passed it, I failed to see Brodsky standing before me on the pavement until I was virtually on top of him. Brodsky bowed and greeted me calmly in a way that suggested he had been watching my approach for some time.

  ‘Mr Ryder. We meet again.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Brodsky,’ I replied, not breaking my stride. ‘Please excuse me, but I’m in a terrible hurry.’

  Brodsky fell in step alongside me and for a while we walked together without speaking. Although it occurred to me there was something odd about this, I was too preoccupied to attempt any conversation.

  We turned the corner together into the wide boulevard. Here the pavement was more crowded than ever – the office workers had come out for their lunch break – and we were obliged to slow down. It was then that Brodsky said beside me:

  ‘All that talk the other night. A big ceremony. A statue. No, no, we won’t have any of that. Bruno hated all these people. I’m going to bury him quietly, just me, what’s wrong with that? I found a place this morning, a little spot to bury him, just me, he wouldn’t want anyone else, he hated them all. Mr Ryder, I wanted music for him, the best music. A quiet little spot, I found it this morning, I know Bruno would like it there. I’ll dig. No need to dig so deep. Then I’ll sit beside the grave, think about him, all the things we did, say goodbye, that’s all. I wanted music while I think about him, the best music. Will you do it for me, Mr Ryder? Will you do it for me and Bruno? A favour, Mr Ryder. I’m asking you.’

  ‘Mr Brodsky,’ I said, walking briskly again, ‘I’m not clear what exactly you’re requesting. But I have to tell you, I’m in no position to consider any more calls on my time.’

  ‘Mr Ryder …’

  ‘Mr Brodsky, I’m very sorry about your dog. But the fact is, I’ve been obliged to attend to too many requests, and as a result I’m now very hard pressed to get done the most important things I came here to …’ Suddenly I felt a flash of impatience seize me and came to an abrupt halt. ‘Frankly, Mr Brodsky,’ I said, almost shouting, ‘I must ask you and everybody else to stop asking favours of me. The time has come for it to stop! It must stop!’

  For a second Brodsky regarded me with a slightly puzzled expression. Then his gaze fell away and he looked utterly dejected. I immediately regretted my outburst, realising also the unreasonableness of blaming Brodsky for the numerous distractions I had had to deal with since arriving in the city. I sighed and said more gently:

  ‘Look, let me make a suggestion. Just now I’m going back to the hotel to rehearse. I’ll require at least two hours completely undisturbed. But after that, depending on how things have gone, I might be in a position to discuss further with you this matter concerning your dog. I must emphasise I can’t promise anything, but …’

  ‘He was just a dog,’ Brodsky said suddenly. ‘But I want to say goodbye. I wanted the best music.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Brodsky, but I must now hurry on. I really am very short of time.’

  I began to walk again. I had fully expected Brodsky to fall in step with me as before, but he did not move. I hesitated a second, somewhat reluctant simply to leave him on the pavement, but then remembered I could not now afford to be side-tracked at all. I hurried on past the Italian cafés, and did not glance back until I had reached the crossing and was waiting for the lights to change. For a moment, I could not see past the throngs of pedestrians, but then Brodsky’s figure came into view standing exactly where I had left him, leaning forward a little to gaze at the approaching traffic. The thought occurred to me that the spot where I had halted earlier was in fact a tram stop and that Brodsky had remained standing there for the simple reason he was waiting for a tram. But then the lights changed and, as I crossed the boulevard, I found my thoughts turning back again to the much more pressing matter of my evening’s performance.

  23

  When I came into the hotel I gained the impression the lobby was busy, but I had by this time become so preoccupied about my practice arrangements I did not look around at all. In fact I might even have pushed in front of some other guests as I leaned against the reception desk to address the clerk.

  ‘Excuse me, but is there anyone in the drawing room at the moment?’

  ‘The drawing room? Well, yes, Mr Ryder. Guests like to go there after lunch, so I should think …’

  ‘I need to speak to Mr Hoffman immediately. It’s a matter of the utmost urgency.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mr Ryder.’

  The desk clerk picked up a phone and exchanged a few words. Then putting down the receiver he said: ‘Mr Hoffman won’t be a moment, Mr Ryder.’

  ‘Very well. But this is a matter of some urgency.’

  As I said this, I felt a touch on my shoulder and turned to find Sophie next to me.

  ‘Oh hello,’ I said to her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was just trying to deliver something. You know, for Papa.’ Sophie gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘But he’s busy, he’s over at the concert hall.’

  ‘Oh, the coat,’ I said, noticing the package she was holding over her arm.

  ‘It’s getting chillier, so I brought it along, but he’s over at the concert hall and hasn’t come back. We’ve been waiting almost half an hour now. If he isn’t back in the next few minutes, we’ll have to leave it for today.’

  I noticed Boris sitting on a sofa on the other side of the lobby. My view of him was largely obscured by a group of tourists standing in the middle of the floor, but I could see that he was engrossed in the tattered handyman’s manual I had bought at the cinema. Sophie followed my gaze and laughed again.

  ‘He’s been so absorbed in that book,’ she said. ‘After you left last night, he was looking at it right up until bed. And then this morning, from the time he got up.’ She gave another laugh and looked over towards him again. ‘It was such a good idea, to buy it for him.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s
enjoying it,’ I said, turning back to the reception desk. I raised my hand to enquire of the desk clerk what had become of Hoffman, but just then Sophie came a step closer and said in a different voice:

  ‘How much longer are you planning to keep it up? It’s really upsetting him, you know.’

  I gave her a puzzled look, but she continued to fix me with a severe stare.

  ‘I know things are difficult for you just now,’ she went on. ‘And I haven’t helped much, I realise. But the fact is he’s upset and worried by it. How much longer is it going to go on?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re referring to.’

  ‘Look, I said I realise it’s my fault too. What’s the point in pretending it’s not happening?’

  ‘Pretending what’s not happening? I suppose this is that Kim’s suggestion, is it? To come to me with all these accusations?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Kim always says it’s best I be much more frank with you. But this time, it’s nothing to do with her. I’m bringing this up because … because I can’t bear to see Boris worrying like this.’

  A little bewildered, I began to turn back to the desk clerk. But before I could attract his attention, Sophie said:

  ‘Look, I’m not accusing you of anything. You’ve been very understanding about everything. I couldn’t ask you to have been more reasonable. You haven’t even shouted at me. But I always knew there’d have to be some anger and it’s coming out like this.’

  I gave a laugh. ‘I suppose this is the sort of pop psychology you talk with that Kim, is it?’

  ‘I always knew it,’ Sophie continued, ignoring my remark. ‘You’ve been very understanding about everything, more than anyone could ever expect, even Kim admits that. But it was never realistic. We couldn’t just go on like this, as though nothing had happened. You’re angry. Who can blame you? I always knew it would have to come out somehow. I just never thought it would be like this. Poor Boris. He doesn’t know what he’s done.’