The two men made an odd contrast: the Italian conductor dishevelled by the wind and his emotion, the Russian composer impeccably turned out in homburg hat, plus-fours, argyle socks and spats, as though for a promenade through the Bois de Boulogne. ‘I understand you are waiting for your wife?’
Toscanini groaned by way of an answer. He raised his arms to the autumn sky, his gnarled fingers crooked, his lined face anguished.
‘Calm yourself, maestro,’ Stravinsky said. ‘She will come. There is time. Passengers are still boarding.’ Indeed, a group of new passengers was even now hurrying up the gangplank, lugging suitcases and trailing coats. The ark would sink under their weight soon. ‘They tell us that you don’t go to your cabin or the dining room.’
‘I cannot stand the company of idiots.’
‘You should not have become a conductor, then,’ Stravinsky replied.
Toscanini was unamused. ‘You laugh, but I cry,’ he said angrily.
‘I am not laughing. I have left my wife behind – in her grave.’ Stravinsky was in a mood of weary irony. ‘My young friend Thomas here has been telling me about a talking robot they have in America. It can do sums and smoke cigarettes. Perhaps your occupation and mine will be usurped by such inventions in time.’
Toscanini groaned again. He yearned for Lake Maggiore, for Isolino, for the palazzo on the island where he had made his home, in a coppice of cypresses and pines, in a thicket of peace. He yearned for Italy and Italians. For how many years would he be condemned to spend his life on an alien shore, among crazy foreigners?
‘I was invited,’ Stravinsky went on, ‘by the manufacturer Pleyel to transcribe my compositions for the Auto-Pleyela, their mechanical piano. The music is conveyed on to perforated paper rolls, which are put into the device. Through a system of membranes and pneumatic valves, the machine then plays the music exactly as the composer transcribed it. No need for a conductor or a performer. What do you think of that?’
‘That is a diabolical invention,’ Toscanini retorted.
Stravinsky shrugged. ‘I hope to leave a series of model performances to guide future interpreters. A composer hears every sort of distortion of his work, which of course prevents the public from getting any true idea of his intentions.’
Toscanini drew himself up stiffly. ‘Are you saying you were dissatisfied with my conducting of your Petrushka in Venice?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I take no liberties,’ Toscanini went on, deeply offended. ‘I have never tried to enforce my own ideas from the podium. I have always had the utmost contempt for that kind of conductor, in love with showy effects and self-aggrandisement.’
‘Of course, maestro.’
‘I rely on my iron discipline, my mastery of the score, my excellent memory. My only desire is to enter the spirit and intention of the composer.’
‘Indeed, maestro,’ Stravinsky said blandly. ‘Yet is it not a pity that your Promethean energy and marvellous talents should almost always be wasted on such eternally repeated works as fragments of Verdi and Wagner that have long since grown stale?’
‘Stale!’
‘I mean in the sense that food exposed for too long on a buffet will inevitably lose its freshness and become mouldy.’
‘Mouldy!’
‘Concert programmes,’ Stravinsky went on, ‘contain too much that is wearisomely familiar, don’t you agree?’
‘Luckily,’ Toscanini snapped, provoked beyond endurance, ‘we have composers who do not scruple to mangle the rules of music beyond all comprehension in the pursuit of something new!’
Stravinsky tipped his hat, as though he had received some exquisite compliment, and walked on, accompanied by the pale German youth.
No sooner had this irritation passed, however, when Toscanini was confronted with a second, in the shape of two young women, who had been standing behind Stravinsky, forming a kind of queue.
‘Oh, maestro,’ one said breathlessly, ‘please could you autograph this?’
Toscanini was about to snarl a rebuff when he noticed that the young woman in question was extremely pretty, her expression appealing. ‘Hmmm?’
‘This is all I have,’ she went on, ‘but if you were to sign it, it would be a great honour!’
The thing she was holding out, he now saw, was a Tourist Class dining room menu. He caught the words mutton stew on the list of fare. He took it and the proffered pen. ‘To whom should I inscribe it?’
‘My name is Masha Morgenstern. And this is my cousin, Rachel Morgenstern.’
She was of the type that he liked best – petite but curvaceous, with a heart-shaped face and a full mouth. He glanced over her shoulder. The other girl, though of a more austere type, with angular cheekbones and the cold blue eyes of a Siamese cat, was also attractive in her way.
‘You young ladies are travelling to New York?’
‘Yes, maestro.’
‘Emigrating?’
‘We are Jews.’ She looked up at him shyly. Her lips were parted, the gloss of youth upon them, fresher than any paint. Toscanini stroked his moustache with the tip of the young woman’s pen. His recent annoyance with Stravinsky was fading swiftly. Even thoughts of Carla had receded. Under his scrutiny, she dropped her gaze modestly. Her eyelashes were thick and soft as owl’s feathers. The sun caught the golden glow of down on her cheeks. He felt a stirring. One could imagine such a face smiling up at one shyly from the pillow. ‘I wish you luck in your new home, my dears.’
He uncapped the pen and wrote, in his elegantly sprawling hand,
‘Me, pellegrina ed orfana,
Lungi dal patrio nido.
Un fato inesorabile
Sospinge a stranio lido…’
He signed it with his name.
Masha took it from him and gasped. ‘Why, it’s Verdi! From La forza del destino! Oh, maestro, I will treasure this all my life!’
He beamed at her. ‘I hope we will see one another many times more on this voyage.’
Rendered speechless by this gracious condescension, Masha nodded. Flushing, she allowed herself to be led away by Rachel.
‘Old goat,’ Rachel said shortly.
‘Hush!’ Masha exclaimed in shock. She looked over her shoulder. Toscanini, who appeared not to have heard Rachel’s observation, raised his hat after them. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘He was practically undressing you with his eyes.’
‘That good, kind old man? Nonsense!’
‘He’s still leering at your backside.’
Masha pulled her arm out of Rachel’s. ‘You’re awful sometimes, Rachel.’
‘I thought you admired my awfulness.’
‘But you see the worst in everyone.’
‘Toscanini is no saint, believe me.’
‘Look what he has written,’ Masha said, holding up the menu. ‘So apt. Such sensitivity. What a wonderful soul, Rachel.’
‘Make sure he doesn’t get you alone in a dark corner,’ was all that Rachel would comment.
The Western Approaches
Jürgen Todt was in a state of nervous elation. He had sunk two more vessels within forty-eight hours. It was true that they had been small fry – a 1,500-ton collier limping along the Irish coast, and a 2,000-ton freighter carrying pig iron to the Clyde – but his total was already approaching seven thousand tons sunk. At this rate, the Knight’s Cross would be his in a matter of weeks.
In the lens of his periscope now was a fishing smack of around 250 tons. She was so close that he could read the name on her bows, Kitty of Coleraine, and underneath that, the name of her owner, a Northern Irish fisheries company.
She was fair game. And he lusted for her. But U-113’s complement of sixteen torpedoes was already reduced to nine. To use a torpedo on such a small prize would be wasteful. He weighed up his options, then closed the handles of the periscope and pushed it down with a pneumatic hiss.