‘This is the posture of fortune’s slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.’ James Thurber
Nothing could go wrong. I was in charge of the cooking myself. My favourite fish dish – hake with an Asian cross-over flavour, a real winner. I had already tried it out on various guests and each time received this winsome, tearful puppy-look across the table after the first forkful, that simultaneous look of sadness and ecstasy as if to say – you’re killing me, this is so delicious. Some people have even uttered dust-jacket terms like amazing, stunning, genius.
Everything was on course for a great night. What could be more exciting than sitting down with another writer, an internationally well-known novelist to whom I had promised dinner in Dublin. She and her husband were in town and coming around for a quiet chat. Just four of us around the table. Lots of shop talk, no complications with mismatched guests, no writer running into vicious reviewer, no awkward questions and nobody saying ‘sorry, I haven’t read any of your books – yet’. Nothing like the time I was once invited to dinner in Canada myself and sat beside somebody who was fascinated by the fact that I was a writer and then said: ‘I know somebody who reads.’
Of course there were the usual pre-dinner anxieties, irrational paranoia that every host experiences over the unlikely odds that you might actually poison your guest with kindness, that they will turn suddenly blue in the face at the whiff of peanuts, do a Saint Vitus dance or just drop dead from the spice. You do your best. After that it’s guest beware.
It was none of these things that went wrong on the night. No choking, no spluttering, no famous writer suddenly rushing off to the bathroom. In fact I soon got the familiar nod across the table, the one that makes you feel you’ve pulled off the great miracle once again by some sheer fluke. Everything was perfect. No big conversation gaffe either, no clanger hanging in the air with an awkward silence.
It was much worse, an own-goal of the most embarrassing kind. The music. I had a CD on low to fill in the background silence. Just a hint of sound leaking out from the speakers to colour the air. Everybody was talking so much, in any case, that you would not even notice who was playing.
Music is the enemy of literature, I recall George Steiner saying at one time. I never realized how true it was until that night. I suppose he meant that the two are so close in nature that they compete like rejected lovers, that music has the edge because it goes straight to the heart. On the night, the music killed everything. The writer I had invited to dinner was beginning to talk about the book she was just about to write, telling us how it involved researching certain human rights issues. Everyone was listening, paying attention to every word. And then, I thought, the music was too loud, an interference, the enemy of writers.
I decided to turn it down. I didn’t want to switch it off altogether, but it needed to be put in its place a little. I picked up the new remote control on the table and zapped, just a tiny touch to allow the writer centre stage. She was in full flow now and we were inhaling every word, nodding, occasionally prompting her to say more.
The music was still too loud. It was Buena Vista Social Club, all the rage and appropriate enough, at the time, to the conversation we were having. But it was overpowering. It sounded like a right fiesta going on in the background, too raucous, too happy and too much of a defiant celebration.
As she continued talking, I picked up the remote control again and discreetly zapped once more. Down. Stay down, music. She looked at me with a strange expression, a little irritated, I thought, as if she didn’t want me to turn it down. Everybody loves those dilapidated Cuban bars with the faded paint and slow fan overhead and the musicians pounding out their songs in a great spirit of survival. But hold on, we wanted to hear what this writer was saying.
I zapped again, and this time she seemed even more surprised than before. She stopped talking for a moment. Her husband looked up in shock. What I failed to realize was that I was actually turning the music up, instead of down. With great subtlety, I was increasing the volume each time, pressing the wrong button so that the music was getting louder and louder. As if I had no interest in her new book. As if I was hinting that any half-forgotten old musician from Cuba had more in his little finger than three hundred pages of her next novel.
It wasn’t true of course. I was immensely interested and kept nodding, despite the jubilant rhythm which was now blasting out like a persistant menace, telling us to dance instead of talk. This time I decided I would turn the volume right down. I mean, there is a time for music and a time for talking. I took the zapper one last time and squeezed my thumb on the button with great vigour. Down, you guys in Havana. We’re trying to talk here. Instead, they suddenly came to a proper jazz band, blasting and hooping. Brass instruments yelping like profane circus. It was deafening.
Only then did I realize what I was doing. I immediately corrected and switched off the music altogether. I tried a lame apology, but there was a look of hurt shock in her eyes. She stopped talking. She said she didn’t really like talking about her work.