The Emperor is finished. According to the program, the time has come for the Melancholy Arabesques of Van den Broek. In which case, she has eight whole minutes to recover and calm down. Lucky for her that in the end they didn’t cut anything from the already short piece. She waits for the opening shriek of the piccolo, and now, here goes, the third time she’s heard these insane arabesques, this one through a little speaker in the ceiling, and quite miraculously, what had earlier sounded chaotic and gratuitously provocative seems cloaked in a kind of decadent beauty. Yes, despite his disdainful objections to this work, the maestro has succeeded, perhaps under the influence of his wife, in shaping it to shock listeners without repelling them.
Her eyes are glued to the clock, and at the fifth minute she gets up, straightens her clothes and quickly applies makeup before the mirror to conceal her pallor, and as the Dutchman’s demanding arabesques flow to a finish, she feels a vague flowing within herself. Could this be a vestige of the old abortion? It’s crazy just to raise the possibility.
She returns to the hall precisely as the young composer rushes with excitement to embrace the conductor, whose interpretation, in the end, was an improvement. Her new partner is already sitting on the stage, tuning his harp. She walks over slowly and bows slightly to him, and now he does recognize her, but instead of returning the bow he surprises her by extending his hand.
Sitting close to his black harp, she can examine it thoroughly. It looks large and unwieldy, owing perhaps to its extreme age, or in contrast to its tiny player. At the top of the harp there is no portrait of an angel or embossment of a gold crown, but the face of a black bird. The Japanese has his score open, and from the folds of his robe he produces thin gold-rimmed glasses and places them on his nose. At least he won’t be playing from memory, Noga consoles herself as she begins to tune her strings. The harpist, her very old new partner, listens with concern as she works, without a word or suggestion — just his tiny hand trembling at every twitch of a string, then relaxing when it reaches its proper pitch.
The musicians who have played three pieces in a row and gone out for a break now return to the stage. Ingrid, the French horn player, walks past Noga and senses her distress. “Is anything wrong?” she asks, placing a soft hand on the Israeli’s shoulder. “Yes,” Noga decides to admit. “If you have a little time after the rehearsal, I will need your help.” “Of course I’ll have time,” promises the musician, “as much as you want.”
The words are spoken sincerely. Ingrid de Monk is a beautiful young woman who protects herself through generosity of spirit. Well aware of the attraction, envy and confusion that her beauty can arouse, she tries to dull her glamour by means of simple, rumpled clothes, and also tries to be as helpful as possible to anyone who needs help. From her husband, older by a number of years, a family doctor at a rural clinic, she has acquired useful snippets of medical knowledge, plus a little toolbox containing pills and ointments, bandages and tape, a thermometer and blood-pressure gauge, pins and needles and buttons, and even a makeup kit. She carries this box, dubbed the “Wonder Horn” by her fellow musicians, not only when traveling, but sometimes to long rehearsals, possibly as a sort of penance for the gift of beauty bestowed on her.
Dennis van Zwol takes the podium and waits for the absolute silence that enables the sounding of the first note. To Noga’s astonishment, the Japanese harpist has removed his wooden clogs and is poised to press the pedals with his tiny, wrinkled bare feet. The conductor turns to the two harpists, readies their entrance with a finger of his left hand and then, with the baton in his right hand, gives a clear sign for the timpani to stroke the opening beats, and the old man plucks the first note with a stunning power that Christine could never accomplish, and Noga joins him an eighth note later, plucking rapidly and without accents. Side by side, in partnership and dialogue, with four swift hands and quick, precise pressure on the pedals, the two summon the wail of the wind and the sparkle of the waves from the music of Debussy, convincing the strings and woodwinds, and the percussion in their wake, that they are in fact sailing together on the wide-open seas.
And with love and devotion to her instrument Noga is able to conquer her pain. Inspired by the fierce virtuosity flourishing in the fingers of the old man, whose black harp seems entwined with his body, she discovers that her own instrument has a tone and resonance she had not known or imagined, and these tempt her to pluck its strings with all her might, nearly to uproot them.
The maestro settles down, and instead of waving his arms and jumping, he closes his eyes, and with soft, nonchalant hand motions he lets the orchestra guide its conductor, who sails alone in a simple sailboat, trusting the music not to drown him or betray him, but land him safely on the shore of his desires.
When the last note disappears and silence conquers the hall, the administrative director cannot contain himself and leaps from his seat with the cry of “Bravo! Bravo!” while Dennis’s wife rushes from her seat to the stage and bows emotionally to the entire orchestra.
And the conductor sighs and says, “What a pity this is just a rehearsal.”
Fifty-Four
SEVEN HOURS REMAIN until the concert. Some of the musicians run off to see a few more temples, but most, including her roommate Pirke, go in search of culinary delicacies. Only a few, Noga among them, return to the guesthouse. Her nightgown is still damp, and the morning’s blood spots are still visible. She will need to find a stronger detergent, but where and when? She takes off her clothes and examines with dismay the new spotting on her panties, then wraps them in a bag and buries them deep in the trash. For a moment she deliberates whether to take a shower or immerse her suffering body in the bath. The dream of the woman with her eyes closed, floating in the reddish foam, was frightening yet seductive. But no, it’s too soon. A person must not wallow in her own blood.
After her shower, she curls up under the blanket in a clean, flimsy nightgown, hoping that if the bleeding stops, the pain will too. All is quiet at the guesthouse. The musicians are wandering from temples to restaurants, refreshing their souls before the concert. The warm, clear sounds of a clarinet playing an old folksong waft from a room on the top floor. No, she is sure, these cannot be the signs of a monthly period. Hers ended a good while ago, and why should it return? No, she knows that this is something else, new and serious, plotting against her in this strange and distant land to put an end to the freedom she has allowed herself.
She does not hear the knock at the door, and when her eyes open the French horn player is hovering over her, blushing shyly, here to keep her promise, to which end she has brought her Wonder Horn box.
Ingrid wears no makeup, her clothes are baggy, but her natural beauty triumphs over self-imposed restrictions, and now, with the two of them alone, close to each other in a small room, Noga knows she has no further need to lift her eyes to the sky at dawn or sunset to find the planet whose name she shares, for that planet had descended to her room in the form of a young Venus, a musician in her orchestra, who will try to interpret her pains in order to relieve them.