Free Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

word out of her all evening. Might she see in me a louche English freeloader down on his luck, here to lure her sickly father into a glorious Indian summer where she can’t follow and isn’t welcome?
    People are complicated.
    Gone midnight. The château is sleeping, so must I.
    Sincerely,
R.F.

    ZEDELGHEM
6TH—VII—1931
    A telegram, Sixsmith? You ass .
    Don’t send any more, I beg you—telegrams attract attention! Yes, I’m still Abroad, yes, safe from Brewer’s knuckle men. Fold my parents’ mortifying letter into a paper boat and sail it down the Cam. Pater’s only “concerned” because my creditors are shaking him to see if any banknotes drop from the family tree. Debts of a disinherited son, however, are nobody’s business but the son’s—believe me, I’ve looked into the legalities. Mater is not “frantic.” Only the prospect of the decanter running dry could make Mater frantic.
    My audition took place in Ayrs’s music room, after lunch, the day before yesterday. Not an overwhelming success, putting it mildly—no knowing how many days I’ll be here, or how few. Admit to a certain frisson sitting on Vyvyan Ayrs’s own piano stool beforehand. This Oriental rug, battered divan, Breton cupboards crammed with music stands, Bösendorfer grand, carillon, all witnessed the conception and birth of Matryoshka Doll Variations and his song cycle Society Islands . Stroked the same ’cello who first vibrated to Untergehen Violinkonzert . Hearing Hendrick wheeling his master this way, I stopped snooping and faced the doorway. Ayrs ignored my “I do hope you’re recovered, Mr. Ayrs” and had his valet leave him facing the garden window. “Well?” he asked, after we’d been alone half a minute. “Go on. Impress me.” Asked what he wanted to hear. “I must select the program, too? Well, have you mastered ‘Three Blind Mice’?”
    So I sat at the Bösendorfer and played the syphilitic crank “Three Blind Mice,” after the fashion of a mordant Prokofiev. Ayrs did not comment. Continued in a subtler vein with Chopin’s Nocturne in F Major. He interrupted with a whine, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?” Played V.A.’s own Digressions on a Theme of Lodovico Roncalli , but before the first two bars were out, he’d uttered a six-birch expletive, banged on the floor with his cane, and said, “Self-gratification makes you go blind, didn’t they teach you that at Caius?” Ignored him and finished the piece note perfect . For a finale of fireworks, gambled on Scarlatti’s 212th in A major, a bête noire of arpeggios and acrobatics. Came unstuck once or twice, but I wasn’t being auditioned as a concert soloist. After I’d finished, V.A. kept swinging his head to the rhythm of the disappeared sonata; or maybe he was conducting the blurry, swaying poplars. “Execrable, Frobisher, get out of my house this instant!” would have aggrieved but not much surprised me. Instead, he admitted, “You may have the makings of a musician. It’s a nice day. Amble over to the lake and see the ducks. I need, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I can find a use for your … gifts.”
    Left without a word. The old goat wants me, it seems, but only if I’m pathetic with gratitude. If my pocketbook had allowed me to go, I’d have hired a cab back to Bruges and renounced the whole errant idea. He called after me, “Some advice, Frobisher, gratis. Scarlatti was a harpsichordist, not a pianist. Don’t drench him in color so, and don’t use the pedal to sustain notes you can’t sustain with the fingers.” I called back that I needed, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I could find a use for Ayrs’s … gift.
    Crossed the courtyard, where a beetroot-faced gardener was clearing a weed-choked fountain. Made him understand I wanted to speak to his mistress and pronto—he is not the sharpest tool in the shed—and he waved vaguely toward Neerbeke, miming a steering wheel.