The Gradual Read online

  ‘Not at present, not while the war goes on.’

  ‘Do people live over there?’ I said, pointing with my hand. My father said nothing. ‘Who are they? Do they have music too?

  ‘Come on down, Sandro.’

  That was the end of the adventure, such as it was. I had glimpsed a distant view I had not known before: a shining sea, the bulking of unnamed islands and the possibilities they enigmatically suggested. I knew nothing of them, but the sight of them was alone enough to charge my imagination. The sounds of waves broke around me, wild ocean winds blustered, tall trees bent on shorelines and high mountains, and there were foreign voices in the towns.

  I felt within me unexplained images of beaches, reefs, harbours, lagoons, ships’ sirens, violent gales, the cries of seabirds, the suck of a tide moving back over shingle.

  I wrote a little piece for the piano, trying to transcribe to real music the delicate and confusing sounds inside my mind. It did not work out as well as I wanted it to, but to this day I think of it as my first full composition. I have not played it for many years.

  3

  By the time I was fourteen all my plans of becoming a professional musician had to be put aside. The war continued with no apparent conclusion in sight. Militarily it had become a stalemate. An arranged cease-fire brought an end to the bombing of towns, but our lives were still disrupted. The cease-fire was only temporary at first, but it was better than nothing and as the months went by it did seem to hold. Temporariness turned slowly into a feeling of permanence. The political and economic disputes remained – we heard about border infringements, mineral rights disputes, arguments about access to water sources, there was an apparently intractable row about reparations, and of course beneath it all was a clash of political ideology.

  The main consequence was that a treaty was drawn up, but not a treaty for peace. The war itself, the actual fighting, was to be continued abroad. The great frozen continent at the southern pole of the world, which was called Sudmaieure, was uninhabited, deemed to be valueless terrain and was appropriated as a pitch for a standing war. Young people were drafted into the military in increasing numbers, shipped south, and made to stand on the pitch and fight for their masters.

  No one therefore made the mistake of thinking that because our homes were no longer under attack the war had ended and we were at peace. Everyone realized that it would take years, perhaps decades, to return to that. However, the fabric of civilian lives might at least now be repaired. So many cities had been damaged, houses lost, factories and infrastructure destroyed – rebuilding work began. Ordinary people tried to resume their former lives.

  The letter Jacj dreaded most arrived one day. The recruiting of young men and women had redoubled. He threw the letter on our breakfast table for us to read. He was given a date by which he must report for a medical examination. Assuming his health was acceptable he would be drafted immediately. He would be sent south to fight for the honour of our country, and had been pre-selected for something called the 289th Battalion, an active service unit.

  Jacj and I often played duets together. Sometimes I accompanied him on the piano, but most often we simply stood side by side with our violins, quietly playing. One day, when we had finished, Jacj said, ‘Sandro, we need to talk.’

  He led me to his bedroom, which was on the top storey of the house, and closed the door securely behind us. His pet cat, Djahann, a forest cat, mostly white and long-haired, was asleep on his bed. He sat beside her, pressed his hand lightly on her neck then teased her gently under the chin as she raised her head, large green eyes blinking.

  ‘I’ve got to join up,’ he said. ‘There’s no way out of it.’

  ‘When will it be?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘You saw the letter that came,’ he said. ‘That was the third one. I hid the others as soon as they arrived. I destroyed them.’

  He told me then some of what he had been doing to try to avoid the draft. The anti-war group he belonged to had various strategies for avoidance, or at best for delay. The group mostly consisted of teenagers like himself, all dreading the call-up. He had tried all their ideas: begging for medical notes, claiming educational commitments, obtaining a letter from his tutor. The response from the army authorities had been implacable. Jacj said that going into hiding was the most desperate method, tried by many young conscripts he knew.

  ‘All were discovered,’ he said. ‘These people know where to look. It’s useless trying to escape them.’

  ‘But Dad said—’

  ‘I know. But in the end I realized that trying to hide only made things worse. It’s the coward’s way.’

  I knew my father had arranged for a close friend from his days at university to take Jacj in. He and his wife had a farm in a remote village high in the Glaundian mountains – Dad said the escouades, the recruit squads sent out by the military authorities to find draft dodgers, were rarely seen in the mountains. Jacj would be safe there.

  ‘It’s not being a coward to oppose war,’ I said.

  ‘Then how long would I hide from the escouades? A few days? A few months? The rest of my life on a farm in the mountains?’

  He said that he had made a decision. He believed that under international law the war was illegal – it was cruel, it had killed many thousands of innocent civilians, it had no social worth, it had no moral justification. Hostilities would have to be brought to an end soon, and in the meantime he would yield to the draft. There was little any young recruit could do alone, but at the least he would learn the system from the inside, gain and collect evidence, and one day after he returned to civilian life, and had completed his law studies, he would be able to act.

  We were two boys: I was fourteen, Jacj barely eighteen. The draft was more than just a vague threat to me: I knew that in four more years my turn would come. To me, Jacj’s plan seemed, for a short time at least, to be brave and workable.

  Jacj lifted Djahann from the bed, her legs drooping. She was still half asleep. He let her spread out on his lap, purring. He stroked her back, played with her paws, tickling the pads behind her claws in a way she loved.

  ‘She’s my priority, Sandro,’ he said. ‘Will you look after Djahann for me, until I’m back?’

  We both fell silent, staring at the cat. She rolled on her back, raising her paws towards him.

  A week later I walked down to the centre of Errest with Jacj, where he was to report to the recruitment building. Our parents, tearful but supportive, stayed at home. Following instructions, Jacj carried no luggage, but he was allowed one luxury. The letter had suggested a book, a photograph, a diary. Jacj had decided to take his violin, and it was strapped across his back.

  We came to a line of white plastic tape, forming a barrier in front of the building. Here we said goodbye: too young to show the emotion we felt, too old not to feel it. We mocked a couple of brotherly punches, then he turned away and headed for the building. Halfway across the concourse a uniformed soldier directed him instead towards a grey-painted bus that was parked to one side. It had windows, but they were silvered against the chance of people being able to see inside. I waited for a while, watching other young recruits shepherded on to the same vehicle, but I was finding the scene depressing. I headed for home.

  A few minutes later the bus was driven along the street past me. It left behind a cloud of oily black smoke.

  A few days later my parents received an official letter from the Staff Strategy Office in Glaund City – this was known to everyone as the headquarters of the military junta. The letter was signed by Jacj himself, as if he had written it, but the countersignatures of two junta officers revealed the true source of the letter. The letter confirmed that his battalion was being sent to join a large operational division. Because of the conditions of war he would be unable to contact us until he returned to this country.

  At the end of the letter there was an extract from something called an Article of War, which impo
sed secrecy and confidentiality on all the next of kin of serving troops, but it added that his family would be notified immediately the 289th Battalion was released from active duty.

  Jacj’s drafting into the army was a terrible matter for my parents to bear, because it was known that conditions on the southern continent were harsh and dangerous. There were already many stories of young people who had not returned. The only consolation my parents had was that the battalions were normally demobilized in numerical order, so that they would eventually be able to work out when Jacj would come home. Around this time the 236th Battalion was said to be returning from duty, so we knew there was going to be a long wait.

  4

  We three remained at home. My parents were still both having to work as freelance music teachers, but as the conditions of the half-peace took hold they were hopeful of finding more permanent employment. There was talk of the possibility that the Industrial Palace would be rebuilt, although this would of course take several years to complete. My father said there were already moves to re-form the Philharmonia Orchestra.

  I was wrapped up in my own worries, aware that it would be only a matter of time before I too was drafted, even though there were still four years before the problem became actual. I was desperate not to have to follow Jacj into the army. A full-time course at the conservatoire in Glaund City would defer the draft for two years, but even that postponement was not a possibility for me – the main building had been damaged in a raid and student places were few.

  When I left school at the age of sixteen I had to look around for a job, and by a stroke of good fortune managed to obtain a lowly position as a trainee cost clerk with an electronics company in Errest. They had a contract to supply missile guidance systems, so although I was an insignificant member of the staff, without technical skill, their role as an arms supplier meant they were a safe haven for me.

  The work I did was administrative and dull, but it gave me an adequate income while allowing me to develop as a composer in my spare time. So long as they went on selling their weapons systems to the junta I would be spared the army.

  With a regular income I was eventually able to leave home. I rented an apartment with three good-sized rooms in a tall house not far from the sea. The area had been badly bombed, so rents were low. Music became my obsession and commitment once more – I spent most of what was left from my wages on gramophone records and printed scores. It was the period when long-playing vinyl records were available at affordable prices. I slowly built up a collection of the works I most loved. I borrowed books on composition from the local library, and read biographies of the great composers. I listened, I played, I wrote. Music rang through my head.

  The cease-fire continued to hold. Many people were nervous that without a formal armistice the violence could break out again, but even so life was returning to what it had been before the raids. I managed my job so that I had as much spare time as possible, attending almost every concert I could find, sometimes having to travel a long way.

  One summer I took a week’s holiday and stayed alone in a small hotel in Glaund City, which was about an hour’s train journey along the coast from Errest. By this time the worst damage to the centre of the capital had been repaired, so that public concerts were once again taking place. Live music was at last emerging from behind the alarms and from inside the shelters where we had all been forced to hide. It was a thrilling time. I used up most of my savings during this one week, but afterwards regarded it as an important period. It confirmed to me what I had been reading in music magazines, and had heard from a few other musicians, that although the traditional repertoire was as popular as ever modernist music was once again being composed and performed.

  The music I was writing soon started to make a mark, albeit a small one. Through my father, and other contacts, I arranged local performances of some of my pieces. One was a song cycle based on the verse of the Glaundian poet Goerg Skynn, another was a suite for piano and flute, my most complex work at this time was a piano sonata and when I was twenty-seven I mounted an impressionistic piece for piano and violin at a recital in Errest Town Hall. It celebrated Memorial Day and it was called Breath.

  Breath was a composition inspired by and depicting moorland scenes on the hills I could see in the distance from the windows of my apartment. I made several solitary trips to the moors, soaking in the feelings and sounds. I went the first time because I wanted to breathe unpolluted air, and I guessed that the altitude of the moors would be above the layer of airborne muck that we normally had to take in, but once I was there I began to appreciate the greater subtleties of the area. Much of the landscape evoked silence: the spaces in the music represented the absence of sound when a bird or an animal sprang away from me as I trudged over the tussocks and along the paths. Wind flowing through the coarse grasses was suggested in the background. Windless days created a quietness I had never known before. The sounds of steeply flowing streams wound their way through my melodies.

  For this recital I played the piano myself, with a young woman called Alynna Rosson taking the violin part. I had met Alynna at one of the concerts I went to in Glaund City, and we had become friends.

  Neither of us had played in front of an audience, even one so small as ours that night, and it was an emotional experience for both of us. Afterwards, in the bare room behind the platform, where Alynna had left her violin case, we were both crying. For me it was partly the relief of having completed the performance without obvious mistakes, but also I had been living again the emotions I felt while conceiving and writing the piece. Imagining she must be undergoing the same feelings of release I tried to comfort Alynna by putting my hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged me away.

  ‘I felt I was alone up there,’ she said, and her voice was low, but not because she was crying. I realized only then that she was angry with me. ‘I could not hear you playing,’ she said, and her voice broke up.

  ‘The score has many silences. I was with you, but it was the same for me.’

  ‘When we rehearsed—’

  ‘A rehearsal is never the same,’ I said. ‘You played perfectly tonight. I found it very moving to hear you playing like that.’

  ‘I was only following the score.’

  ‘That is how it should have been. The score is the shape of the music. You are still shaking.’ Once more I tried to console her with a hand on her arm, but again she pulled away from me. People were passing and the door opened and closed a couple of times. The lights in the corridor outside went out. The staff wanted to close the building. ‘You are upset,’ I said stupidly, wishing I knew how to make things better for both of us.

  ‘It was those silences,’ she said. ‘I could not hear them properly and I was trying to count the bars. I was terrified of missing them.’

  ‘The notes were written to go around the pauses. They describe and define the spaces. It is only in silence that music is pure.’

  She was staring at me, frowning, not comprehending. I wished neither of us had said anything.

  ‘I saw the silences on the score. I didn’t know you were going to mark them with red ink.’

  ‘The score has to show the pauses as well as the notes. I am giving another recital next month,’ I said. ‘Would you like to be there with me?’

  ‘After what just happened?’

  ‘Please, Alynna.’

  For me, what had just happened had been a transcending experience, with a purity of note and expression from her violin that made me shake inside. Her sensitive playing made me want to wave my arms with excitement. Her negative response was really confusing to me.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, putting away her violin.

  Soon after this Alynna left without saying goodbye. I was in turmoil. My constant need to be writing and playing meant that I had never formed proper relationships with anyone of the opposite sex. The events of that evening reminded me painfully of my inexperience. Alynna made me think I had failed her, frightened he
r, and because I was blundering I had actually damaged whatever it was that had seemed sensual and intimate when we were playing together. In those few minutes of playing Breath she had come to seem beautiful to me. I had a lot to learn.

  Outside, as I left the hall, a few members of the audience were waiting in the cold darkness to greet me, to congratulate me. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to me before, and I was unprepared. I tried to respond graciously to the polite compliments but as soon as I could I retreated to the yard at the back of the town hall, found my bicycle where I had left it and pedalled home through the chill fog.

  My route led me for part of the way along the shore, a narrow road close to the edge of a cliff. As always I glanced to the south, across the sea, towards those islands that had so briefly enchanted me in childhood. I could see nothing of them in the murky darkness, no hint of lights, not even a sense of their bulking shapes. I had stared at them so often, though, that I knew their dark outlines, their silent mysteries. I hummed a fragment of music, imagining myself walking on the hills of one of the islands.

  5

  When I was thirty years old I made the breakthrough I had been hoping for. An independent record label based in a small town a long way from Errest, on the far side of Glaund City, approached me. They specialized in commissioning recordings by new or emerging musicians and featured small orchestras. They packaged their records well, priced them reasonably and for a small label managed to have most of their catalogue distributed through the shops. They had decided to release a long-playing record to showcase contemporary Glaundian music.

  As soon as I heard about it I submitted several recent pieces. The first scores I sent in were returned to me, often without comment, but at least two of them were described as unsuitable. They gave no reasons. I kept trying, and finally they accepted a short piece I had written the year before. It was called Dianme.