The Mozart Question Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Author’s Note

  For Christine Baker – M.M. & M.F.

  The question I am most often asked is always easy enough to answer. Question: how did you get started as a writer? Answer: funnily enough, by asking someone almost exactly that very same question, which I was only able to ask in the first place by a dose of extraordinarily good fortune.

  I had better explain.

  My good fortune was, of course, someone else’s rotten luck – it is often that way, I find. The phone call sounded distraught. It came on a Sunday evening. I had only been working on the paper for three weeks. I was a cub reporter, this my first paid job.

  “Lesley?” It was my boss, chief arts correspondent Meryl Monkton, a lady not to be messed with. She did not waste time with niceties; she never did. “Listen, Lesley, I have a problem. I was due to go to Venice tomorrow to interview Paolo Levi.”

  “Paolo Levi?” I said. “The violinist?”

  “Is there any other Paolo Levi?” She did not trouble to hide her irritation. “Now look, Lesley. I’ve had an accident, a skiing accident, and I’m stuck in hospital in Switzerland. You’ll have to go to Venice instead of me.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” I said, smothering as best I could the excitement surging inside me. Three weeks into the job and I’d be interviewing the great Paolo Levi, and in Venice!

  Talk about her accident, I told myself. Sound concerned. Sound very concerned.

  “How did it happen?” I asked. “The skiing accident, I mean.”

  “Skiing,” she snapped. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, Lesley, it’s people feeling sorry for me.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I would postpone it if I could, Lesley,” she went on, “but I just don’t dare. It’s taken me more than a year to persuade him to do it. It’ll be his first interview in years. And even then I had to agree not to ask him the Mozart question. So don’t ask him the Mozart question, is that clear? If you do he’ll like as not cancel the whole interview – he’s done it before. We’re really lucky to get him, Lesley. I only wish I could be there to do it myself. But you’ll have to do.”

  “The Mozart question?” I asked, rather tentatively.

  The silence at the end of the phone was long.

  “You mean to say you don’t know about Paolo Levi and the Mozart question? Where have you been, girl? Don’t you know anything at all about Paolo Levi?”

  I suddenly felt I might lose the opportunity altogether if I did not immediately sound informed, and well informed too.

  “Well, he would have been born sometime in the mid-1950s,” I began. “He must be about fifty by now.”

  “Exactly fifty in two weeks’ time,” Meryl Monkton interrupted wearily. “His London concert is his fiftieth birthday concert. That’s the whole point of the interview. Go on.”

  I rattled off all I knew. “Child prodigy and genius, like Yehudi Menuhin. Played his first major concert when he was thirteen. Probably best known for his playing of Bach and Vivaldi. Like Menuhin he played often with Grappelli, equally at home with jazz or Scottish fiddle music or Beethoven. Has played in practically every major concert hall in the world, in front of presidents and kings and queens. I heard him at the Royal Festival Hall in London, five years ago, I think. He was playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; he was wonderful. Doesn’t like applause. Never waits for applause. Doesn’t believe in it, apparently. The night I saw him he just walked off the stage and didn’t come back. He thinks it’s the music that should be applauded if anything, or perhaps the composer, but certainly not the musician. Says that the silence after the performance is part of the music and should not be interrupted. Doesn’t record either. Believes music should be live, not canned. Protects his privacy fiercely. Solitary. Reticent. Lives alone in Venice, where he was born. Just about the most famous musician on the planet, and—”

  “The most famous, Lesley, but he hates obsequiousness. He likes to be talked to straight. So no bowing or scraping, no wide-eyed wonder, and above all no nerves. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, Meryl,” I replied, knowing only too well that I would have the greatest difficulty even finding my voice in front of the great man.

  “And whatever you do, stick to the music. He’ll talk till the cows come home about music and composers. But no personal stuff. And above all, keep off the Mozart question. Oh yes, and don’t take a tape recorder with you. He hates gadgets. Only shorthand. You can do shorthand, I suppose? Three thousand words. It’s your big chance, so don’t mess it up, Lesley.”

  No pressure, then, I thought.

  So there I was the next evening outside Paolo Levi’s apartment in the Dorsoduro in Venice, on the dot of six o’clock, my throat dry, my heart pounding, trying all I could to compose myself. It occurred to me again, as it had often on the plane, that I still had no idea what this Mozart question was, only that I mustn’t ask it. It was cold, the kind of cruel chill that seeps instantly into your bones, deep into your kidneys, and makes your ears ache. This didn’t seem to bother the street performers in the square behind me: several grotesquely masked figures on stilts strutting across the square, an entirely silver statue-man posing immobile outside the café with a gaggle of tourists gazing wonderingly at him.

  The door opened, and there he was in front of me, Paolo Levi, neat, trim, his famous hair long to his shoulders and jet black.

  “I’m Lesley McInley,” I said. “I’ve come from London.”

  “From the newspaper, I suppose.” There was no welcoming smile. “You’d better come in. Shut the door behind you; I hate the cold.” His English was perfect, not a trace of an accent. He seemed to be able to follow my thoughts. “I speak English quite well,” he said as we went up the stairs. “Language is like music. You learn it best through listening.”

  He led me down a hallway and into a large room, empty except for a couch by the window piled high with cushions at one end, a grand piano in the centre and a music stand near by. At the other end were just two armchairs and a table. Nothing else. “I like to keep it empty,” he said.

  It was uncanny. He was reading my thoughts. Now I felt even more unnerved.

  “Sound needs space to breathe, just the same as we need air,” he said.

  He waved me to a chair and sat down. “You’ll have some mint tea?” he said, pouring me a cup. His dark blue cardigan and grey corduroy trousers were somehow both shabby and elegant at the same time. The bedroom slippers he wore looked incongruous but comfortable. “My feet, they hate the cold more than the rest of me.” He was scrutinizing me now, his eyes sharp and shining. “You’re younger than I expected,” he said. “Twenty-three?” He didn’t wait to have his estimate confirmed – he knew he was right and he was. “You have heard me play?”

  “Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The Royal Festival Hall in London, a few years ago. I was a student.” I noticed his violin then, and his bow, on the window ledge.

  “I like to practise by the window,” he said, “so I can watch the world go by on the canal. It passes the time. Even as a child I never liked practising much. And I love to be near water, to look out on it. When I go to London I have to have a room by the Thames. In Paris I must be by the Seine. I love the light that water makes.” He sipped his mint tea, his eyes never leaving me. “Shouldn’t you be asking me questions?” He went on. “I’m talking too much. Journalists always make me nervous. I talk too much when I’m nervous. When I go to the dentist’s I talk. Before a concert I talk. So let’s get this over with, shall we? And not too many questions, please. Why don’t we keep it simple? You ask me one question and then let me ramble on. Shall we try that?” I didn’t feel at all that he was being dismissive or
patronizing, just straight. That didn’t make it any easier, though.

  I had done my research, made pages of notes, prepared dozens of questions; but now, under his expectant gaze, I simply could not gather my thoughts.

  “Well, I know I can’t ask you the Mozart question, Signor Levi,” I began, “because I’ve been told not to. I don’t even know what the Mozart question is, so I couldn’t ask it even if I wanted to; and anyway, I know you don’t like it, so I won’t.”

  With every blundering word I was digging myself into a deeper hole. In my desperation I blurted out the first question that came into my head.

  “Signor Levi,” I said, “I wonder if you’d mind telling me how you got started. I mean, what made you pick up a violin and play that first time?” It was such an obvious question, and personal too, just the kind of question I shouldn’t have asked.

  His reaction only confirmed that. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. For fully a couple of minutes he said nothing. I was quite sure he was trying to control his impatience, his rage even, that he was going to open his eyes and ask me to leave at once. When he did open his eyes he simply stared up at the ceiling for a while. I could see from the seriousness of his whole demeanour that he was making a decision, and I feared the worst. But instead of throwing me out he stood up and walked slowly to the couch by the window. He picked up his violin and sat back on the cushions with his violin resting on his drawn-up knees. He plucked a string or two and tuned it.

  “I will tell you a story,” he began. “After it is over you will need to ask me no more questions. Someone once told me that all secrets are lies. The time has come, I think, not to lie any more.”

  He paused. I felt he was stiffening his resolve, gathering his strength.

  “I will start with my father. Papa was a barber. He kept a little barber’s shop just behind the Accademia, near the bridge, two minutes from here. We lived above the shop, Mama, Papa and I, but I spent most of my time downstairs in the barber’s shop, sitting on the chairs and swinging my legs, smiling at him and his customers in the mirror, and just watching him. I loved those days. I loved him. At the time of these memories I must have been about nine years old. Small for my age. I always was. I still am.”

  He spoke slowly, very deliberately, as if he was living it again, seeing again everything he was telling me. My shorthand was quick and automatic, so I had time to look up at him occasionally as he spoke. I sensed right away that I was the first person ever to hear this story, so I knew even as he told it just how momentous the telling of it was for him, as in a totally different way it was for me too.

  “Papa was infinitely deft with his fingers, his scissors playing a constantly changing tune. It seemed to me like a new improvisation for every customer, the snipping unhesitatingly skilful, so fast it was mesmerizing. He would work always in complete silence, conducting the music of his scissors with his comb. His customers knew better than to interrupt the performance, and so did I. I think perhaps I must have known his customers almost as well as he did. I grew up with them. They were all regulars. Some would close their eyes as Papa worked his magic; others would look back in the mirror at me and wink.

  “Shaving was just as fascinating to me, just as rhythmical too: the swift sweep and dab of the brush, the swish and slap of the razor as Papa sharpened it on the strap, then each time the miraculous unmasking as he stroked the foam away to reveal a recognizable face once more.

  “After it was all over, he and his customers did talk, and all the banter amongst them was about football, Inter Milan in particular, or sometimes the machinations of politicians and women. What they said I cannot exactly remember, probably because I couldn’t understand most of it, but I do know they laughed a lot. I do remember that. Then the next customer would take his seat and a new silence would descend before the performance started and the music of the scissors began. I am sure I first learnt about rhythm in that barber’s shop, and about concentration. I learnt to listen too.

  “Papa wasn’t just the best barber in all of Venice – everyone said that – he was a musician too, a violinist. But strangely he was a violinist who never played the violin. I never heard him play, not once. I only knew he was a violinist because Mama had told me so. She had tears in her eyes whenever she told me about it. That surprised me because she was not a crying woman. He had been so brilliant as a violinist, the best in the whole orchestra, she said. When I asked why he didn’t play any more, she turned away from me, went very quiet and told me I’d have to ask Papa myself. So I did. I asked him time and again, and each time he would simply shrug, and say something meaningless like: ‘People change, Paolo. Times change.’ And that would be that.

  “Papa was never a great talker at the best of times, even at home, but I could tell that in this case he was hiding something, that he found my questions both irksome and intrusive. That didn’t stop me. I kept on at him. Every time he refused to talk about it I became more suspicious, more sure he had something to hide. It was a child’s intuition, I suppose. I sensed a deep secret, but I also sensed after a while that Papa was quite unmovable, that if I was ever going to unlock the secret it would be Mama who would tell me.

  “As it turned out, my instinct was right. In the end my almost perpetual pestering proved fruitful, and Mama capitulated – but not in a way I had expected. ‘All right, Paolo,’ she said after I’d been nagging her about it unmercifully one morning. ‘If I show you the violin will you promise me you’ll stop asking your wretched questions? And you’re never ever to tell Papa I showed you. He’d be very angry. Promise me now.’

  “So I promised, promised faithfully, and then stood in their bedroom and watched as she climbed up on a chair to get it down from where it had been hidden on top of the cupboard. It was wrapped up in an old grey blanket. I knelt on the bed beside her as she pulled away the blanket and opened the violin case. I remember it smelt musty. The maroon lining inside was faded and worn to tatters. Mama picked up the violin with infinite care, reverently almost. Then she handed it to me.

  “I stroked the polished grain of the wood, which was the colour of honey, dark honey on the front, and golden honey underneath. I ran my fingers along the black pegs, the mottled bridge, the exquisitely carved scroll. It was so light to hold, I remember. I wondered at its fragile beauty. I knew at once that all the music in the world was hidden away inside this violin, yearning to come out. I longed to be the one to let it out, to rest it under my chin, to play the strings, to try the bow. I wanted there and then to bring it to life, to have it sing for me, to hear all the music we could make together. But when I asked if I could play it, Mama took sudden fright and said Papa might hear down below in the barber’s shop, and he’d be furious with her for showing it to me; that he never wanted it to be played again. He hadn’t so much as looked at it in years. When I asked why, she reminded me of my promise not to ask any more questions. She almost snatched the violin off me, laid it back in its case, wrapped it again in the blanket and put it back up on top of the cupboard.

  “‘You don’t know it exists, Paolo. You never saw it, understand? And from now on I don’t want to hear another word about it, all right? You promised me, Paolo.’

  “I suppose seeing Papa’s old violin, holding it as I had, marvelling at it, must have satisfied my curiosity for a while, because I kept my promise. Then late one summer’s evening I was lying half awake in my bed when I heard the sound of a violin. I thought Papa must have changed his mind and was playing again at last. But then I heard him and Mama talking in the kitchen below, and realized anyway that the music was coming from much further away.

  “I listened at the window. I could hear it only intermittently over the sound of people talking and walking, over the throbbing engines of passing water buses, but I was quite sure now that it was coming from somewhere beyond the bridge. I had to find out. In my pyjamas I stole past the kitchen door, down the stairs and out into the street. It was a warm night, and quite dark. I ran up over
the bridge and there, all on his own, standing by the lamp in the square, was an old man playing the violin, his violin case open at his feet.

  “No one else was there. No one had stopped to listen. I squatted down as close as I dared. He was so wrapped up in his playing that he did not notice me at first. I could see now that he was much older even than Papa. Then he saw me crouching there watching him. He stopped playing. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re out late. What’s your name?’ He had kind eyes; I noticed that at once.

  “‘Paolo,’ I told him. ‘Paolo Levi. My papa plays the violin. He played in an orchestra once.’

  “‘So did I,’ said the old man, ‘all my life. But now I am what I always wanted to be, a soloist. I shall play you some Mozart. Do you like Mozart?’

  “‘I don’t know,’ I replied. I knew Mozart’s name, of course, but I don’t think I had ever listened to any of his music.

  “‘He wrote this piece when he was even younger than you. I should guess that you’re about seven.’

  “‘Nine,’ I said.

  “‘Well, Mozart wrote this when he was just six years old. He wrote it for the piano, but I can play it on the violin.’

  “So he played Mozart, and I listened. As he played, others came and gathered round for a while before dropping a coin or two in his violin case and moving on. I didn’t move on. I stayed. The music he played to me that night touched my soul. It was the night that changed my life for ever.

  “Whenever I crossed the Accademia Bridge after that I always looked out for him. Whenever I heard him playing I went to listen. I never told Mama or Papa. I think it was the first secret I kept from them. But I did not feel guilty about it, not one bit. After all, hadn’t they kept a secret from me? Then one evening the old man – I had found out by now that his name was Benjamin Horowitz and that he was sixty-two years old – one evening he let me hold his violin, showed me how to hold it properly, how to draw the bow across the strings, how to make it sing. The moment I did that, I knew I had to be a violinist. I have never wanted to do or be anything else since.