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— What did he mean, I asked him, by a space for solitude inside himself?

— I don’t know, he said.

— He did not explain?

— You know how it is, sir. Mr Pavone talked and I listened. Especially when I was driving.

— Of course. Go on.

— Especially in later years, sir, he said, he would ask me to drive him out into the Campagna. Then he would talk. I think he felt the need to talk. Drive, Massimo, drive, he would say. If we are hungry we will stop somewhere for a bite to eat. Sometimes he was completely silent, he was thinking about his music. He would close his eyes and sit back in his seat. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes he would make a little noise, a hum or a bark or something like la-la-la. Sometimes he would pass his hand in front of his face or make a movement of his hand as if he was trying to hold something. Then he would be still again for a long time. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. It was difficult to tell. When he walked all night he would have a long siesta during the day. Sometimes he would not get up till six or seven in the evening. At other times he liked to talk as I drove. He talked about everything. In his slow hypnotic voice. The voice of an aristocrat, if you know what I mean, sir. But also the voice of someone who is not so much talking to you as talking to himself. When we die, Massimo, he said, we should make sure we do not leave chaos behind us. That would not be fair on those who come after us. No, he said, we should leave this life with everything in order. Everything should be labelled and classified. We will turn into dust, he said, but the music will live on. Music that is genuine will always live on, he said, just as music that is not genuine will soon wither and die, even if it brought fame and wealth to its composer in his lifetime. A true musician has a duty to his music, he said. If he believes in his music then he should believe that it will live on after his death.

— Was he happy that at the end of his life his works were at last being performed? I asked him.

— He did not say, he said.

— But you must have formed an impression.

— Since you ask me, sir, I have the impression that he was happy, he said. But also that he resented the time it took up that kept him away from his music. Monsieur Balise came to see me, he said. He was a waste of time, talking to me about Marmy and about mathematics. I had had enough of that sort of talk when I studied with Scheler in Vienna, he said. Scheler made me think, he said, and thinking is the worst thing a musician can do. It took me ten years to stop thinking after I left Vienna, he said. It was only Nepal that saved me from Vienna, he said. Scheler had studied with Schoenberg, he said, that is why I went to study with him. I have always wanted nothing but the best for my music, so I picked as a teacher a pupil of Schoenberg. What I had not grasped at the time was that Schoenberg, far from advancing the cause of music, as he claimed, had set music back a hundred years with his ideas and his theories and above all with his excessive Jewish anxiety. A composer cannot be anxious, Massimo, he said. To be anxious is to live in time, he said, and the composer does not live in time, he lives in eternity. When the composer understands that eternity and the moment are one and the same thing he is on his way to becoming a real composer, he said. Without that understanding he is nothing, He can be the most intelligent man in the world and the most profound, but he is not a composer. Schoenberg and Monsieur Balise were both highly intelligent, in some ways they were geniuses, he said. Their human ears were among the best the world has ever known, but they were merely human ears and for music you need an inner ear,

une oreille intérieure, he said. Have you seen photographs of Stravinsky and Schoenberg Massimo, he said. Have you noticed the size of their ears? Do you think that is merely a coincidence? It is not a coincidence, he said, the size of their ears reflects their ability to discern human sounds. But the true composer does not listen to human sounds but to the sounds of the universe. Have you seen portraits of Bach and Mozart? he said. Have you noticed their ears? I doubt if you have, he said, because the point about their ears is that they are unobtrusive ears. In other words they are normal human ears, a great deal smaller than yours, Massimo, though yours have no doubt been altered a little in the course of time by the blows life has inflicted on you. The ears of Bach and Mozart, on the other hand, he said, did not change much from their childhood to their death. They remained small, delicate, quite ordinary small and delicate ears. That is because they listened to inner and not to outer sounds. The inner ear, Massimo, that is what must be cultivated, the inner ear and the inner eye. Signor Berio came to see me, he said. He is a peasant. A man of the people. He has all the charm of the Italian peasant and all the limitations of that species. He is both innocent and cunning, he said, like the Italian peasant, who is incomparably superior to the French and the Spanish peasant, an incomparably superior human being and an incomparably superior tiller of the soil. But, he said, like the Italian peasant, Signor Berio is both lazy and self-satisfied. If he makes a beautiful sound and is paid a lot of money for doing so and the audience cheer and clap when the piece is performed he is satisfied. The curse of the age, Massimo, he said, is that people are too easily satisfied. They have forgotten how to listen with their inner ear, to listen to silence and to listen to the moment. Signor Berio justifies his large output by saying that he has to provide alimony for all his past wives, he said. Of course he says this as a joke, but there is a grain of truth in it. It never crosses his mind that he should not have married so many wives because, like the Italian peasant, he is at heart a sensualist. He feels that it is his right to sleep with a woman and to take his pleasure with her, it is his right that she should darn his socks and cook his meals. But it is not a right, Massimo, he said. That is why I have hired you, so that you can make sure I have a sufficient number of socks and that my shirts and ties and suits are always clean and freshly ironed. I pay you a great deal of money, Massimo, he said, and I pay Annamaria a great deal of money, but even so I pay less than Signor Berio spends on alimony to all his past wives. Monsieur Balise at least is not a sensualist, he said, but he is in the end what amounts to the same thing, he is an ascetic. He prides himself on living in hotels and out of a suitcase. He prides himself on having nothing to do with the bourgeois comforts of a family and a home. But he is in fact a living exemplar of what Ni Che described as the priestly spirit, the spirit of ressentiment. For he uses his asceticism as an instrument of power and he is not satisfied unless he has absolute power in the world of music. Signor Berio came to see me and drink wine with me in a spirit of peasant comradeliness, he said, and Monsieur Balise came to see me to exert his power over me. It all amounts to the same thing, he said. It all amounts to the negation of the spirit of music. Now I am famous, he said, and the world runs to my door, it expects me to throw that door wide open. But why should I do that? Why should I talk to these people and let them photograph my nose?