29
After the Dvořák came the interval. All the usual milling around, people not knowing exactly what to say about what they had just heard and what was to come. Sam wondered whether to try and find a drink, but Eric Whittaker was somewhere in the auditorium, and Madeleine with him. And Lenka had brought along those bloody hitchhikers she seemed to have adopted, which made things that bit more awkward. The girl was fine but the boy had seemed out of place in a concert hall. He had even started to applaud after the first movement of the Dvořak until the girl – Ellie, wasn’t it? – hushed him to silence.
‘So why the hell don’t people clap when it’s so good?’ he was demanding as they stood around in the aisle, stretching their legs.
‘Because they don’t,’ the girl retorted.
Sam noticed the Whittakers and couldn’t avoid catching Madeleine’s eye. He excused himself and made his way to the back of the auditorium where there was a fraught conversation in which Eric extolled the virtues of the Elgar Cello Concerto above the Dvořák while Madeleine strained to see who Sam had brought with him.
‘What’s next?’ Eric asked, trying to read the programme. ‘The Brahms Double Concerto, is it?’
Sam translated for him. ‘A Russian violinist called Nadezhda Pankova. Can’t say I’ve heard of her. Apparently studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Igor Oistrakh. Second place in the 1966 Wieniawski Competition in Poznan and third place in the International Tchaikovsky Competition, 1965.’
‘Hardly a star,’ Eric remarked. ‘Studied under Oistrakh? How many thousands?’
A bell rang; people filed back into the auditorium. Madeleine touched Sam’s wrist. ‘Who is the lovely lady, Sam?’
‘A friend.’
‘The friend looks very attractive.’
He feigned indifference. ‘And a couple of hitchhikers she’s taken under her wing. I think I’d better get back…’
They filed back into their seats and settled. The orchestra was returning, followed by Egorkin himself, who now faced the audience with clenched hands held aloft in some kind of demonstration of solidarity. A Russian saluting the Czechs. The applause rose appreciatively, a tide of enthusiasm borne on their awareness of his reputation, his public protest over the trial in Moscow of the dissidents Daniel and Sinyavsky and the subsequent withdrawal of permission for him to travel to the West. They knew well enough where his sympathies lay.
Further applause greeted the soloists, Birgit Eckstein leading the way as befitted the senior player, followed by the young violinist, bringing with her a small reputation, promising abilities and a condescending smile from Birgit Eckstein. Yet, as the pair acknowledged the applause, the young woman’s flame-red evening dress quite consumed Eckstein’s charcoal grey.
There was that collective settling before the music began. And then the conductor raised his baton and launched the piece, the Brahms Double Concerto, a complex interplay of orchestra, violin and cello in which the young Pankova fenced with the more experienced cellist and matched passage for passage, thrust for thrust, always keeping her opponent at bay, all of this without either looking at the other, as though they were two swordsmen fighting blind. Except towards the end of the final movement when the women glanced at each other for a moment, and smiled.
Applause. A tumult of applause. Catharsis.
Afterwards, in a pillared room with views over the river, there was a reception in honour of the musicians. The conductor was there with a small escort from the Soviet embassy to keep him company, while the Soviet ambassador himself, stout, bespectacled and grim, watched in disapproval. Beside him stood the minister for cultural affairs and the mayor of Prague, beaming on everyone as though they were to take the credit. Guests, journalists, photographers clustered round the soloists. Glasses of Moravian wine were raised in salute. Flashbulbs popped like bursts of summer lightning. Thankfully, Eric and Madeleine had gone, in the name of duty, to some diplomatic event or other on the other side of town.
Sam led Lenka towards the Russian group. ‘I don’t want to speak with them,’ Lenka protested, but Sam only laughed. ‘You can do what you please, but if diplomats applied that criterion we’d never talk to anybody.’
Reluctantly the conductor’s guardians edged aside to let them through to the great man. There was a shaking of hands. Lenka was introduced. Surprise was expressed at Sam’s fluent Russian and at Egorkin’s near-fluent English. ‘But my friends here do not like it when I speak in English. They fear I am saying dangerous things.’ He laughed, slipping back into Russian to the obvious relief of the escort. They discussed the performance, the emotional impact of the Dvořák, the technical difficulties of the Brahms. It was hard for a young violinist to perform the Double Concerto with a cellist of such standing as Frau Eckstein, but Nadezhda Nikolayevna had achieved it with brilliance, didn’t Mr Wareham agree?
Of course he did.
‘You must come to one of our recitals,’ Egorkin said. ‘I will accompany Nadezhda Nikolayevna on the piano. We play in Brno, of course, and Ostrava, but also Marienbad. Perhaps you will make it to Marienbad? It would be good to have a sympathetic ear in the audience.’ There was a sudden and surprising tone of pleading in his voice. ‘Please come. Perhaps there we can speak more freely. I will give you tickets so you cannot refuse.’ He glanced round and summoned the violinist from where she was talking with a journalist. She came obediently, more like a secretary than a principal performer. ‘We will have tickets for Marienbad sent to this gentleman. Mr…?’
‘Wareham.’
Further introductions were made. Hands were shaken. Pankova’s were small and slender but with a sharp grip. She wrote the name Wareham into a little notebook in careful Latin characters. ‘Mr Wareham is at the British embassy,’ Egorkin explained. He glanced at Lenka. ‘Two tickets, of course.’
‘Yes, but I’m not sure—’
‘You cannot be sure to come?’ The Russian made an expression of exaggerated disappointment. ‘But you must come, Mr Wareham. We will be playing the Kreutzer Sonata, which everyone knows, but particularly the Janáček, which no one knows but everyone should. Do you know it? It is very beautiful and deeply mysterious. Full of the soul of this wonderful country.’ And then one of the Russian embassy people had stepped in with an approximation of a smile and the suggestion that Comrade Egorkin and Comrade Pankova had other commitments to meet and could not spend too much time talking to just two guests.
‘I would be most sad if you cannot make it,’ Egorkin said, giving a jaunty salute as he and the violinist were encouraged away.
30
They wait while the diminutive grey figure of Birgit Eckstein sips mineral water and talks to someone from Czech Radio. James feels awkward and embarrassed but Ellie is determined. Jitka has managed to get them this far, into the room where Frau Eckstein sits and brings her mind back from Dvořák and Brahms to focus on the commonplace and the trivial. ‘We’ve come all this way in order to hear her,’ Ellie insists. ‘We can’t just walk away.’
When the interview is over Frau Eckstein looks round vaguely at the two of them, saying something in German. Even without knowing a word of the language, James can tell what she is saying. Who are these people? Are they students?
‘Hello, Frau Eckstein.’
She doesn’t recognise them.
‘Frau Eckstein,’ Ellie says. ‘It’s us. Eleanor and James. We stayed at your house a few days ago. We came to Prague, just as you said. To hear you play.’