Fig and the Flute Player Read online

  Maisie took the lift up to their floor. Inside the cage there was plush velvet, and mirrors all the way round it. Maisie’s side-view, her neat head and pale high forehead, her softly shadowed eyelids; the elegant bobbed hair showing off finely drawn ears with the cornucopia earrings. Maisie front-view, feathered eyebrows, delicate, fine long nose, neck clasped about with a triple-banded Mexican silver plaited necklace. She had had enough of mirrors. She closed her eyes.

  When she got back to the room Michael was reading in bed. He looked about eighteen years old. At once her feelings changed, like the sudden lifting of a fever.

  What did it matter if he left her? What did she really matter in the whole sum of things?

  This young man – so young, his dark hair fallen over his forehead, his gold spectacles rakishly on the end of his nose.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Origins of Christian Iconography,’ he said. He had really been absorbed in it. ‘It’s interesting.’

  ‘Good. I’m just going to have a shower.’

  ‘Oh – don’t wash off all your smells.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She unclasped the heavy necklace and took out the earrings.

  ‘Oh, I found your shampoo – it was in with my things.’ He went back to his book and forgot her until she came in beside him smelling of her favourite sharply haunting perfume.

  ‘It’s not silly,’ he said. ‘Attraction is supposed to be based on smells.’

  ‘It’s all chemistry, then.’

  ‘No, of course not. It’s everything. Everything about you. You.’

  ‘You don’t know everything about me. You don’t know much. Only what I tell you.’

  ‘I know you. I know you.’

  ‘I don’t know myself,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps we are figments of the other’s imagination.’

  ‘Yes, I think we are.’

  ‘My little figment. My sweet little figment. I’m going to call you that. My little fig. Fig.’

  ‘I don’t like that name. I’d rather be “rare beast”.’

  ‘No, you’re a fig.’ And he began licking her. His body was ice and fire. Nothing else mattered at all. Questions and answers, unable to be apprehended by touch, taste or smell, retreated.

  His eyes were closed; that cold, clear light, like the light over the sea, was shuttered over. Hidden away. Only his touch. And her passion for this chance-encountered man.

  3

  A BRILLIANT red cloth overlaying a white one ran down the centre of a long narrow table. This was the cave ballroom, set for a feast. The statues outside the window peered in from the darkening snowy garden. They whispered to the one that had lost his head telling what they saw; what rich splendour had returned. Crystal dishes filled with pears and a centrepiece of a many-branched candelabra, like a little tree with flames.

  Everyone was skirting round looking for their place-name. Maisie found her place: Professor Werner on one side and the poet Lozinsky on the other.

  Michael was sitting opposite her; partly obscured by the candelabra. An Irish academic from Cork, a woman in her early thirties with masses of auburn, Rossetti-like hair, was taking her place on his right, and the obstinate-looking hostess with the flat pretty face sat on his left.

  ‘I’ve never seen champagne decanted into jugs before,’ said Maisie. She was watching fascinated as two of the staff – young students from the university by the look of them – busily uncorked bottle after bottle and poured the champagne into tall glass jugs. Everyone was having their glasses filled before any food appeared, as if there was no time to be lost.

  ‘I think it means we are supposed to drink deeply,’ said Werner.

  Different from abstemious conferences she had attended in England, thought Maisie.

  She was wondering how she would broach the subject of the ikon she had promised to investigate for Denisov. If anyone knew anything, it would be Werner. He seemed to be concentrating on his soup, which had just arrived.

  She turned to Lozinsky. ‘Have you a special interest in some aspect of the conference?’ she asked politely, in Russian.

  ‘I am a poet,’ said Lozinsky. ‘I am interested in everything.’

  She had never much liked bouillon, and sipped her champagne, nibbling bits of bread. She smiled across at Michael. He looked relaxed and happy, wolfing down his soup in an heroic way.

  The uncertainties and doubts of the previous day had gone. She had recovered her poise and was in possession of herself once more. What had she been about – trying to make something unassailable out of their relationship? It was like trying to capture fire and imprison it. It was the way to put it out, she knew. Freedom was like oxygen to a love affair. Today she accepted this and felt strong and powerful. She saw Michael say something to the Irishwoman which made her laugh, throwing back a lovely white neck. Seeing this only made Maisie feel more powerful. Nobody was any sort of rival to her. Michael was her lover. No woman was strong enough to take him away from her, however beautiful the red-gold hair in the candlelight.

  ‘Philip Larkin is a very good poet,’ Lozinsky was saying. Maisie nodded; she could see that Larkin might appeal to the Russian mind.

  ‘But poetry changes so much in translation,’ she said. It was rather pleasant to find a poet at this conference. There seemed to be a sprinkling of such people, members of the intelligentsia; perhaps they were all keeping an eye on each other and on the conference. Perhaps it was policy from above.

  ‘I am afraid I do not know your work,’ said Maisie. ‘Is it like Larkin at all?’

  She had asked for it. As the soup plates were cleared and the next course was placed before them, he began reciting in a slow, deliberate voice:

  ‘I tried to break my way out of the chrysalis

  I used hatchets and every means I could

  But all I could hear in the commotion

  Was the sound of my own breathing.’

  ‘It is about the breaking of the systems of order,’ he explained.

  ‘Politics?’

  ‘Of course politics. This conference is politics. The ikon, the image – it was a system of order. Sometimes the image is human – Stalin, a tsar. My poetry is about the breaking of images.’

  ‘Do you think Russia could ever have a tsar again?’

  ‘Nothing is impossible. Russian people cannot stand freedom. They are afraid of their own inner chaos.’

  ‘Perhaps you could let me have a copy of your poem,’ she said, ‘later in the week, there’s plenty of time.’ Something about the man’s eyes had moved her. Who knows what his life had been?

  ‘The fish is very good,’ she said. It was some sort of pike, or carp, perhaps, stuffed with sultanas and celery and other things in sour cream. The poet beamed at her and tucked into his meal, elbows all over the place.

  She turned to Werner. ‘I enjoyed your book on Byzantium so much,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It is an important work,’ he admitted.

  Maisie smiled and ate her fish, it had some faint delicious spice in it. A musician had started to play a balalaika. It all reminded Maisie of when she had been taken as a child to Lyons Corner House; she had had the same sense of opulence then.

  ‘I have been interested lately,’ she said to the German professor, ‘in the miracle-working ikons and in those carried into battle. The ikon as a magical helper.’

  ‘Like the Ikon of the Steppes that one is hearing about.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maisie, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

  ‘That is a most strange case,’ said Werner. ‘It seems to have suddenly disappeared again from the face of the earth. Perhaps that is part of its miracle-working properties – the ability to disappear.’

  ‘It must have a most fascinating history.’

  ‘I have not made a study of it,’ said Werner, gulping down forkfuls of food. ‘Someone should make a special study of it. Perhaps you.’ He wiped his mouth with a huge white napkin.

&
nbsp; ‘I think they must be left from before the Revolution,’ Maisie said, fingering the thick damask of her napkin and smoothing the tablecloth.

  ‘Indeed we are living like tsars. Is your hotel comfortable?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And yours?’

  ‘It is clean – but very hot. At night I cannot sleep – it is too warm. And you cannot regulate the heat at all.’ He drained his glass and looked around for it to be refilled. ‘But we must not complain.’

  It looked as if Michael might be doing just that. He had fixed their hostess with his gaze. Maisie wondered vaguely what he could be saying to make her look so stern.

  In fact he was telling her of his difficulties with her language. ‘I want to learn Russian in ten days,’ he said.

  ‘That is quite impossible,’ she was saying severely.

  ‘I have been working very hard at it, I sit up at night and work.’

  ‘Yes. That is good,’ she said. ‘But you must have a teacher.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Michael, ‘that is what I need. A teacher. I would get on much better if I had a teacher.’

  His hostess looked pleased with herself. ‘I studied English for many years,’ she said. ‘You cannot learn a great language in a few days, you are too impatient. Which party are you with?’

  Michael pointed with his fork to Maisie, who caught his eye and blew him an imaginary thistledown kiss from the palm of her hand; the champagne was getting to her. Their hostess looked disapproving. She herself had a tremendous capacity for sobriety as well as study.

  ‘I think our hostess would agree to give you lessons,’ the Irishwoman whispered in his ear. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘I think I’ll stick to my own method,’ said Michael.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I try to switch off my own language. And switch another on. It’s like listening to a different sort of music. Listening is the key to it. Really listening hard. You start to pick it up.’

  ‘It’s nice to hear another Irish voice. Where do you come from? You sound Dublin.’

  ‘You’re not far out. Between Dublin and Wicklow – I’ve spent a lot of time in Dublin, though. I was brought up on a farm – chicken droppings in the kitchen, holy pictures on the wall – you know – but we used to bring back fish for supper that tasted even better than this. Straight from the sea. And you live in the fair city of Dublin!’

  ‘Do you ever go back?’

  ‘Oh, I still live in Ireland.’

  ‘Still with the chicken droppings and the holy pictures?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never got away, then?’

  ‘Well, you could say I lead a nomadic life, but the old farm is still somewhere I always go back to. It’s still my home, I suppose – at least, I haven’t any other. Only homes I make here and there for a time. At the moment I’m living in London with my lady love. That’s her – Maisie Shergold.’

  ‘I’ve heard of her, I think. I love the way she dresses. Most academic women have an extraordinary way of dressing, eccentric but doleful as well. She looks elegant – and interesting.’

  ‘She is a very nice lady.’

  ‘What is your subject?’

  ‘I’m a camp follower,’ said Michael. ‘I shouldn’t really be here. Eating the food. Drinking the booze. They had some spare places – a whole delegation from Czechoslovakia dropped out – some wrangle. Look, they’re just about to pop a few more corks. Have you ever seen champagne poured from jugs before? I never have and I’ve seen some queer things. I wish it was draught Guinness.’

  ‘You sound homesick.’

  ‘It’s talking to you. You didn’t tell me your name.’

  ‘O’Grady – everyone calls me Philomena.’

  ‘And is it your name?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Maisie sensed they had been talking about her, she wondered what they were saying. The woman was the professor from Dublin – Maisie was looking forward to her paper that evening.

  ‘Just the smallest taste,’ she said to the girl with the platter of pheasant, ‘please – one piece only.’

  She watched amazed as Werner piled his plate. She imagined him dying of a surfeit of pheasant and thought she had better get some information out of him before that happened. Without preamble she plunged in.

  ‘Do we know anything about the origins of the Steppes ikon?’

  ‘Both its origins and its present whereabouts,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘are equally mysterious.’

  Maisie decided to leave him to eat.

  ‘You are speaking of the Mother of God of the Black Steppes ikon,’ murmured the poet Lozinsky.

  ‘Mm.’ Maisie turned to him. ‘I suppose it does follow that its beginnings should be so obscure – it’s a feature of miracle-working ikons that they were miraculously discovered.’

  ‘You are interested in this ikon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maisie carefully, ‘but I think the furore around it at the moment has got out of proportion.’

  ‘All at once,’ said Lozinsky, ‘everyone wants to claim it for different reasons. The Church. Moscow. Even the Ukrainians.’

  Werner leaned across to join in. ‘It is said to have been miraculously found,’ he said, ‘by a young peasant girl who had been raped by Tartars. She had been left for dead by the soldiers who raped her. She had a vision of the Mother of God walking towards her over the black earth of the Steppes. She recovered and found her vision made into matter – in the shape of this ikon. It came from nowhere. Not made by human hand. Or so the story goes.’

  ‘It is almost,’ said Maisie, ‘as if somehow we are expecting another miracle from it.’

  ‘Yes, I think we are,’ said the poet, ‘it is a time of crisis. The people are looking for something to pull them together, to save them from chaos. Ironic that a religious image is involved.’

  ‘Even more ironic that it is, apparently, a missing image,’ said Maisie.

  ‘Of course it has disappeared before,’ said Werner. ‘More than once. If you really want to find out more about it,’ he said to Maisie, ‘you should speak to – let me see – I’ll write it down for you.’ He wrote a name on a piece of paper. ‘He is an ikon painter and works at restoring old and damaged ikons. He is the last documented person to have seen it.’

  Maisie was overwhelmed with gratitude. She felt elated. Perhaps she would have some real information to take back to Denisov.

  ‘Will you have a marzipan cake?’ she asked, passing him a dish of little decorated cakes in gold paper. He took three.

  The red cloth had gradually become wrecked with crumpled napkins, spilled wine and nutshells. The uncurtained windows looked out now on a starry night sky.

  Catching Michael’s eye, and in response to his signals, Maisie carried her coffee into the library. Michael and Philomena followed, Michael playing an imaginary balalaika, and the poet scuttled after them. They sat on old wooden chairs with narrow high backs, which Michael drew into a little circle for them.

  A sense of camaraderie had quickly sprung up among the four and they chatted for a while contentedly.

  ‘You must come to Ireland,’ Philomena said to Maisie. ‘I have a house in Dublin which is empty often. You would be welcome to use it. Though I should like it if you visited while I was there.’

  Philomena looked hard at her with a kind of boldness, singling her out. But Maisie turned away then and leaned over to Michael, taking his hand.

  ‘It is Christmas Day,’ she said, ‘and you haven’t given me a present.’ She knew in some obscure way that she had rebuffed the Irishwoman. And now she wanted to get away.

  ‘Shall we walk to the hotel?’ she asked Michael.

  ‘You won’t miss my lecture?’ asked Philomena. ‘I shall be devastated if you aren’t there to hear it.’

  ‘Nothing would make me miss that,’ said Maisie. ‘But we have time. Our hotel isn’t far.’

  They all stood up, except Philomena O’Grady. Michael and Maisie left, and the poet sa
t down again to try a very halting conversation with a now slightly bored Irishwoman.

  Michael and Maisie walked back in the moonlight, which picked out glittering diamonds in the hard-packed snow. When they got back to their room, Maisie said she would have a little sleep, she was tired after the festive luncheon.

  ‘I’ll play you to sleep,’ said Michael. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t anything to give you. I really couldn’t find anything in the shops. But I’ll play you to sleep.’

  He played soft carols on his flute. Some sweet, some sad, some she had never heard – folk carols. She could tell he needed to play.

  ‘Well, I never got anything for you,’ she said sleepily. ‘No, you are very bad and you don’t love me or deserve me to play to you. But I will.’

  She smiled and slept. When she woke he was still playing quietly.

  When it came to his flute, he was left-handed. He had explained to her that the Brothers at his school had managed to make him right-handed in everything – except his flute-playing, which they knew nothing about. The left-handedness made him hold his instrument a little differently from usual; the slight awkwardness about it made her love him with a great desperation. I love him because of this sort of thing, she thought, how he can make something graceful out of something awkward.

  When he saw she was awake, he stopped playing.

  ‘I am stopping you sleeping,’ he said.

  ‘No, I like watching you play. It’s marvellous. Just by blowing air across holes in a pipe – all those ravishing sounds.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve been playing since I was nine or thereabouts – starting with a tin whistle.’

  She loved his flute, because it was part of him. It was a wooden flute with eight keys, and she guessed it was an old one, at least nineteenth-century, probably older. Its fundamental tone was strong and mellow. She loved it.

  He stopped playing and began cleaning it with a bit of rag and a stick, breaking the instrument down, blowing through the pieces, spitting on the pads and blowing across them. When he had finished he wrapped the flute in an oily, slightly dirty red silk handkerchief. She caught a faint whiff of almond oil as he stowed it away at last in its old leather case.