Glancing at them, Jules recognized the beatific expression musicians sometimes have when they play the allegro of the Third Brandenburg and do not want to stop. He had never heard his own piece played, never seen how it could affect others. He thought that, as in all good music of every kind, he had been privileged to allow the escape of – in this case – the tiniest sliver of an ever-present perfection that presses invisibly against the heart of all things. And he knew that were they to go through the cycle too many times, as they might, something would be lost. There was only so much of the gift of music that the soul could support until exhaustion. So he stopped it while they were still vibrating almost as much as their strings.
“Beautiful,” said a violinist as the instruments were cased.
“American telephones,” said another, “will now surpass ours. You’re a traitor.”
“It’s for our telephones, too.”
They liked it, but would the Americans? After all, it had no “Bop bop, sheh bop!” Or anything like that. America was a giant country that seemed always to be racing ahead and bouncing up and down. Very violent Europeans had clashed with very crazy savages in a place where geysers popped out of the ground, and what you got was “Bop bop, sheh bop!” At least that was the view of the French. His piece would have to pass muster in Los Angeles, which was sunny, pastel, green, and unreal. Jules didn’t even know how to send it there. “Can you make this into an MP9?” he asked the engineer.
“An MP3? Sure. Do you have an email address?”
Jules didn’t like having even a cell phone, but Cathérine was able to attach one to him by arranging a beautiful aria as its ring tone. Sometimes Jules would call himself on his landline so he could listen to it over and over. And often he missed calls because he listened rather than answer. He didn’t remember his cell number, and most of the time left the phone off. Of the engineer at his bank of equipment, he asked, “You can do it right here, now?”
The engineer, knowing that Jules was of several generations past, nodded tolerantly. “This is a computer,” he said.
“It records and it mails? It’s all prepared?”
“All prepared.” With some rapid keystrokes and mouse movements, he set it up. “What’s the address?”
It was [email protected].
“What would you like to say?”
“I would like to say, in English, ‘Dear Jack, here is the music you asked for. I hope it pleases you. Please let me know at your earliest convenience. Jules Lacour.’”
“That’s all?”
“What else?”
The engineer hit send. “It’s done.”
Jules thanked him. Things had gone wonderfully, and for the moment he was not thinking of élodi, but when he turned she was right there, staring at him. She couldn’t have been either more forward or more inexplicable. He almost started. Now he could see directly into her eyes, and never had he beheld a more elegant and refined woman, not even Jacqueline. This pained him, but he couldn’t escape either the truth of it, the traction, or the feeling of euphoria as he stood by her.
She broke the silence. “Bonjour. I’m going to be your student,” she said matter-of-factly, extending her hand. He reciprocated, they shook hands, and when they stopped they failed to disengage – for perhaps five extraordinary seconds.
After a moment, he came out with, “I don’t think you’re on my list.” It was all he could manage to say.
“I’m not, but I will be,” she replied.
He was astounded. Among other reasons, this did not happen. But though placement was not up to the students, he had no doubt that in fact she would be on his list.
“I may have to go to America for a few weeks,” he said.
As if he were an idiot, she replied, instructionally, “You’ll be back, and I’ll be here.” Then, without looking at him, she lifted her cello, turned, and walked out. He might as well have been hit with a shovel.
AT THE BEGINNING of fall, cool nights at Saint-Seine-l’Abbaye (the source of the Seine, near Dijon), and in the Haute Marne and other regions descending from the lower parts of Switzerland into the ?le-de-France had sped up the flow of the Seine and made it suddenly cold. At no preset date, but as September wears on, it is as if a switch is thrown to banish summer. The strength of the sun is equivalent to that of March, the leaves begin to turn, with many having fallen already in August, and the scent of burning brush, floating up the hill in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, hints at the wood fires that will arrive with winter.
Jules had put his boat in the water and begun to row upstream against the stiff current that just before he got in his shell had tried to rip it from the dock. For half an hour he would fight the flow, moving slowly, and then shoot back to the boathouse in less than ten minutes. The turn at the Bir-Hakeim Bridge would be tricky, for when the current was perpendicular to the boat, swinging the stern around required force greater than that which pushed against it from upstream. He had seen single shells swept downriver sideways, totally out of control, until they were either fortuitously turned in an eddy, thrown against the embankment, or capsized.
Unlike many who found themselves once every few years struggling in the water, Jules had never gone over. Not only was he anxious of maintaining his perfect record, but, for him, capsizing would be dangerous especially when the water was cold and fast flowing. So he tried to concentrate, but found that he couldn’t. Possessed by excitement, fear, and regret, his mind raced as he strained at the oars. Thinking of the young woman, élodi, who had appeared and disappeared, leaving teasing words that echoed through him, he felt what he had felt half a century before when he had fallen in love with Jacqueline – a dizzying, euphoric, internal rocket launch.
But it was impossible and it was wrong. Though Jacqueline was dead and by the world’s standards far more than a decent interval had passed, she lived in his memory, and to replace her would be to silence her. He spoke to her many times a day. He brought back her image and could see her in color, moving and three-dimensional. He was able to feel her touch and retrieve the scent of her perfume just in imagination. Little was left of her except in the fidelity he dared not compromise.
Had Jacqueline never existed, falling in love with élodi would anyway have been ill-advised. He was not Fran?ois Ehrenshtamm, who could leave even a living woman he had once loved and start all over again with someone else young enough to be his daughter. Jules had always thought that this kind of desire for a much younger woman was a vain play against death – which, because it of all things could not be denied, would end the gambit in hellish suffering not in an afterworld but this one, when the aged man who had become a repulsive husk would despair upon the sight of a young woman who wanted and deserved others.