Esther Tusquets*

Summer Orchestra

Summer was already well advanced – more than halfway through August – when the decision was made to begin renovating the smaller dining room in the hotel and to move the children, together with their governesses and their nursemaids and their mademoiselles, into the grown-ups’ dining room. Throughout the whole of July and the first two weeks of August the children had formed a wild, unruly and increasingly uncontrollable gang that invaded the beaches, raced through the village on bikes with their bells ringing madly, prowled with restless curiosity around the stalls at the fair, or slipped – suddenly surreptitious, silent, almost invisible – into secret places among the reeds. Year after year they built the huts there that housed their rarest treasures and where they initiated each other into marvellous, secret and endlessly renewed transgressions (smoking their first cigarettes, often communal, crumpled and slightly damp; getting enmeshed in poker games played with a ruthlessness that would have astonished the grown-ups – games so intense and hard-fought that the participants often preferred to play on rather than go down to the beach – and venturing into other stranger and more ambiguous games, which Sara associated obscurely with the world of grown-ups and the forbidden, and to which, during that summer, she had reacted with both fascination and shame, eager to be a spectator but very reluctant to take part. She – possibly alone among all the girls – had been astute or cautious enough when playing forfeits and lucky enough at cards to get through those days without once having to let anyone kiss her on the mouth or touch her breasts or take her knickers down), transgressions that were doubly intoxicating because they were the culmination of that parenthesis of temporary freedom provided by the summer and would be unthinkable once they were all back in the winter environment of schools and city apartments.

But within a matter of two or three days the summer community had broken up and with it the band of children, some being transported inland to spend what was left of their holidays in the mountains or in the country, most of them going home to prepare for the September results. And Sara had stayed on as the one female straggler among the decimated gang of boys (Mama and Mademoiselle had promised consolingly that, at the end of August, four or five of her best friends would be allowed to come up for her birthday), but the atmosphere had changed, it had grown suddenly tense and unpleasant, the general mood of irritability and discontent aggravated perhaps by the frequent rain and the shared feeling that all that remained now of summer were a few unseasonable, grubby remnants. One thing was certain, the boys’ pastimes had grown rougher and Sara had simply had enough of them, of their fights, their games, their practical jokes, their rude words and their crude humour, had had enough of them spying on her through the window when she was changing her clothes, of them upending her boat, of having three or four of them corner her among the reeds. That was why she was so pleased about the change of dining room: there, at least during mealtimes, the boys would be forced to behave like civilized beings. And they must have had the same idea, for they protested and grumbled long and loud, complaining that, now there were so few of them and the rain deprived them not only of many mornings at the beach but also of almost every afternoon previously spent among the reeds, it really was the end to be expected now to sit up straight at table without fidgeting, barely saying a word, eating everything that was put in front of them, being required to peel oranges with a knife and fork and, to crown it all, wear a jacket and tie to go into supper.

But Sara was radiant and so excited on the first night that she changed her dress three times before going down – opting in the end for a high-necked, full-skirted organdie dress that left her arms bare and which her mother did not much approve of, saying that it made her look older than her years and was inappropriate for a girl who had not yet turned twelve – and then caught up her long, straight, fair hair with a silk ribbon. What most excited Sara that first night was the prospect of getting a good look at the adult world, until then only glimpsed or guessed at, since during the long winters the children’s lives were confined to school, walks with Mademoiselle, and the playroom. There was hardly any contact between children and parents during the summer either – not this year nor in any previous year. (Sara had overheard Mademoiselle making a comment to one of the chambermaids about the delights and charms of the family holiday, at which they had both laughed, only to fall silent the moment they realized she was listening, and the whole episode had filled Sara with a terrible rage.) For the fact was that, while the grown-ups slept on, the children would get up, have breakfast, do their homework or play table tennis and be coming back from the beach just as their parents would be finishing breakfast and lazily preparing themselves for a swim; and, when the grown-ups were going into the big dining room for lunch, the children would already be off somewhere, pedalling down the road on their bikes or queueing at the rifle range at the fair. It was only occasionally, when Sara – quite deliberately – walked past the door of one of the lounges or the library, that she would catch sight of her mother sitting, blonde and evanescent, among the curling cigarette smoke. She would feel touched and proud to see her there, so delicate and fragile, so elegant and beautiful, like a fairy or a princess hovering ethereally above the real world (the most magical of fairies, the most regal of princesses, Sara had thought as a child, and in a way still thought), and for a moment her mother would stop playing cards or chatting to her friends to wave a greeting, call her over to give her a kiss, or pick out a liqueur chocolate from the box someone had just given her. At other times, her father would come over to the children’s table and ask Mademoiselle if they were behaving themselves, if they did their homework every day, if they were enjoying the summer. And, of course, they did coincide at church on Sundays because there was only one mass held in the village and the grown-ups had to get up early – relatively speaking – but even then they would arrive late and sit in the pews at the back, near the door. Although they did wait for the children on the way out to give them a kiss and some money to spend on an ice cream or at the rifle range.

So Sara dressed with great care the first night the children moved into the big dining room – where they occupied only four tables – and she entered the room flanked by her brother and Mademoiselle, both of whom looked bad-tempered and morose. Her own face was flushed and her heart was beating fast, and she was so excited and nervous that it was an effort to finish the food they put on her plate, and she felt she could see almost nothing, that she was unable to fix her gaze on anything, such was her eagerness to see and record every detail: the women in their long dresses, with their shoulders bare and their hair up and the earrings that sparkled on either side of their neck; the men, elegant and smiling, so different from the way they looked in the morning on the beach or on the terrace, and talking animatedly – what about? – amidst the laughter and the tinkling of crystal glasses. The unobtrusive waiters slipped furtively between the tables, treading lightly and barely uttering a word, so stiff and formal and impersonal that it was hard to recognize in them the rowdy, jokey, even coarse individuals who, up until yesterday, had served them in the children’s dining room. And no one, neither the waiters, nor the other diners, took the slightest notice of the children, so that any attempts by governesses and mademoiselles to stop the children fidgeting, make sure they left nothing on their plates and used their knives and forks properly were futile. As was the music played by the orchestra (hearing it as she crossed the foyer or from far off on the terrace, Sara had imagined it to be larger, but now she saw that it consisted only of a pianist, a cellist and a violinist, and the pianist, it seemed to her, had terribly sad eyes), for no one appeared to be listening to it, or even to hear it. People would merely frown or raise their voices when the music increased in volume, as if they were obliged to superimpose their words over some extraneous noise. There wasn’t a gesture, a smile, even any pretence at applause. That surprised Sara, because in the city, parents and their friends attended concerts and went to the opera (on those nights her mother would come into their room to say good night, when the children were already in bed, because she knew how Sara loved to see her – the way she was dressed now in the dining room – in beautiful, long, low-cut dresses, fur coats, feathered hats, jingling bracelets with the little gold mesh bag in which she kept an embroidered handkerchief and opera glasses, and all about her the sweet, heavy perfume that impregnated everything her mother touched and that Sara would never ever forget). But in the library there were several shelves full of records which, on some nights, when her parents were not at home, Mademoiselle would play so that Sara could hear them from her bedroom and drift off to sleep to the music. But here no one paid the least attention and the musicians played for no one and for no reason, so that when Sara went over to her parents’ table to kiss them good night, she couldn’t help asking them why that was, at which they and their friends all burst out laughing, remarking that ‘that’ has little to do with real music, however hard the ‘poor chaps’ were trying. And that remark about ‘poor chaps’ wounded Sara and, without knowing why, she associated it with the jokes the boys told and the stupid acts of cruelty they perpetrated among the reeds. But she immediately discounted the thought, since there was no possible connection. It was as irrelevant – she had no idea why this came back to her now either – as Mademoiselle’s tart, sarcastic comment about the delights of family holidays.

Nevertheless, the following night, because she still thought the music very pretty and because it infuriated her that the grown-ups, who did not even bother to listen, should then condescendingly pass judgement on something to which they paid not the slightest attention, she said to Mademoiselle: ‘The music’s lovely, isn’t it? Don’t you think they play well?’ And Mademoiselle said yes, they played surprisingly well, especially the pianist, but in the dining room of a luxury holiday hotel in summer it made no difference if you played well or badly. It really was a waste of good musicians. Then, screwing up all her courage, with her cheeks flushed and heart pounding but without the least hesitation, Sara stood up and crossed the empty space separating her from the orchestra and told the pianist how much she enjoyed the music, and that they played very well. She asked why they didn’t play something by Chopin, and the man looked at her, surprised, and smiled at her from beneath his moustache (although she still thought he looked terribly sad) and replied that people there didn’t normally expect them to play Chopin, and Sara was on the verge of saying that it didn’t matter anyway since they wouldn’t be listening and wouldn’t notice and then she felt – perhaps for the first time in her life – embarrassed by her parents, ashamed of them and of that glittering grown-up world, all of which seemed suddenly rather less marvellous to her. Before returning to her table, without quite knowing why, she apologized to the pianist.

From then on, Sara put on a pretty dress every night (alternating the three smart dresses that she’d brought with her and not worn all summer, because, up until then, she had gone around in either jeans or swimsuit) and she did her hair carefully, brushing it until it shone and tying it back with a silk ribbon. But she still felt awkward and self-conscious when she entered the dining room (the boys made angry, spiteful, possibly jealous comments, but Sara no longer heard them, they had simply ceased to exist) and she would mechanically eat whatever was served up to her because it was easier to eat than to argue. She still observed the women’s lovely dresses, the new jewels and hairstyles, their easy laughter and chatter among the clink of glasses; she still noticed how elegant the men looked and how gracefully they leaned towards their wives, smiled at them, lit their cigarettes and handed them their shawls, while a few waiters, as insubstantial as ghosts, bustled about them. The music played on and, outside, the full moon shimmered on the dark sea, almost the way it did in Technicolor films or advertisements. But her eyes were drawn more and more towards the orchestra and pianist, who seemed to her to grow ever sadder, ever more detached, but who, when he looked up from the keyboard and met Sara’s gaze, would sometimes smile and make a vague gesture of complicity.

Suddenly Sara felt interested in everything to do with the pianist and discovered that the pale, thin woman (though she was perhaps faded rather than pale, like the blurred copy of a more attractive original) whom she must often have seen sitting on the sands at the beach or strolling along the farthest-flung and least frequented parts of the garden, always accompanied by a little girl who would hold her hand or be running about nearby, this woman was the pianist’s wife and the little girl was their daughter. Sara had never seen a lovelier child, and she wondered if at some time in the past the mother had also been like that and wondered what could have happened since then to bring her so low. And, having definitely broken off relations with the gang of boys, and Mademoiselle having raised no objections, Sara began to spend increasing amounts of time in the company of the woman and the little girl, both of whom inspired in her a kind of transferred or displaced affection. Sara loved the pianist – she discovered this on one of those nights when he looked up from the piano at her and their eyes had met; it was a discovery that brought with it no surprise, no confusion or fear, it merely confirmed an obvious reality that filled her whole being – and, because the little girl and the woman were part of him, Sara bought the child ice creams, candied almonds, bright balloons and coloured prints and took her on the gondolas, the big wheel, the merry-go-round, to the circus. The little girl seemed quite mad with joy, and when Sara glanced at the child’s mother, perplexed, the mother would always say the same thing: ‘It’s just that she’s never seen, never heard, never tried that before’, and here her look would harden, ‘We’ve never been able to give her such things.’ And then Sara felt deeply troubled, as if she were somehow in danger – she would have liked to ask her forgiveness, as she had of the pianist one night, long ago now it seemed, though she did not know for whom or for what – perhaps because she could not understand it or perhaps because something within her was doggedly coming to fruition – and because when it did finally emerge and spill out of her, she would be forced to understand everything and then her innocence would be lost forever. The world would be turned upside down, and she would be shipwrecked in the midst of the ensuing chaos with no idea how best to adapt in order to survive.

At nightfall – by the end of August it was already getting darker earlier – while the woman was giving the little girl her supper and putting her to bed in the servants’ quarters, Sara almost always met the pianist in the garden, and they would walk up and down the road together, holding hands, and the man would speak of everything he could have been, of all that he had dreamed in his youth – his lost youth, even though he couldn’t have been much more than thirty – of what music had meant to him, and how much he and his wife had loved each other and of how circumstances had gradually caused everything to wither and crumble, forcing him to abandon everything along the way. It was a bleak, terrifying speech and it seemed to Sara that the man wasn’t talking to her – how could he unburden such stories on a child of eleven? – but perhaps to himself, to fate, to no one, and on the road, and in the darkness of the night, they couldn’t see each other’s faces, but at certain points the man would hesitate, a shiver would run through him, his voice would tremble and then Sara would squeeze his hand and feel in her chest a weight like a stone, whether pity or love she no longer knew, and she would have liked to find the courage to tell him that there had doubtless been some misunderstanding, that fate had conspired against them, that at any moment everything would change, life and the world could not possibly go on being the way he described them. And, on a couple of occasions, the man stopped and held her tightly, tightly to him and, although she had no way of knowing for sure, it seemed to Sara that his cheeks were wet with tears.

Perhaps the woman felt subtly jealous of their walks alone together in the dark, or perhaps she simply needed someone to whom she could pour out her own anguish, someone she could justify herself to (although no one had accused her of anything) because she sometimes alluded bitterly to ‘the things my husband has probably told you’ and, however hard Sara tried to stop her, tried not to listen, she would go on. ‘Did he tell you that, now there are fewer guests in the hotel, the management won’t even pay us the pittance they originally promised us, something he simply doesn’t want to know about?’ ‘Did you hear what the manager did to me the other day, right in front of him, and did he tell you that he didn’t say a word in my defence?’ ‘Did you know that I’ve borrowed money from everyone, we don’t even own the clothes on our backs, that we have nowhere to go when the summer season ends in a few days’ time and that he just stands on the sidelines as if none of this had anything to do with him at all?’ And one day, she grabbed her by the shoulders and looked at her with those hard eyes that left Sara defenceless and paralysed: ‘Yesterday, I felt so awful I couldn’t even eat, but do you think he cared or bothered to ask me what was wrong? No, he just picked up my plate and, without a word, finished off both our suppers. I bet he didn’t tell you that.’ And Sara tried to explain to her that the man never talked to her about real events, about the sordid problems of everyday life, about what was going on just then between him and his wife; he talked only, in melancholy, desolate tones, of the death of love, of the death of art, of the death of hope.

The day of Sara’s birthday came round, the last day of the holidays, just before the hotel was to close and they were all due to go back to the city and, just as Mama and Mademoiselle had promised, her best friends travelled up especially and even the boys behaved better, wearing their newly pressed suits and their Sunday smiles, and she got lots of presents that she placed on a table for everyone to see, including a new dress and, from Papa, a gold bracelet with little green stones that had been her grandmother’s and which signalled that Sara was on the threshold of becoming a woman. There were sack races, lucky dips, fireworks, mountains of sandwiches, a vast cake and a fruit punch with lots of champagne in it, which, because it was the first time they’d ever been allowed to drink it, got them all a little merry and was just one more sign that they were leaving childhood behind them. And the whole afternoon Sara was so excited, so happy, so busy opening her presents and organizing games and attending to her friends that it was only when night fell, when the party was over and some of the guests were already leaving to go back to the city, that she realized that the musician’s little daughter had not been among them, and, however much she tried to deny what to her seemed at once both obvious and inconceivable, she knew instantly what had happened. She knew even before she grabbed Mademoiselle by the arm and asked, shaking her furiously: ‘Why didn’t the little girl come to my party? Tell me!’ and there was no need to specify which little girl she was talking about, and Mademoiselle blushed, she did her best to act naturally, but instead blushed to the roots of her hair and, not daring to look at Sara, said: ‘I don’t know, Sara, really I don’t, I think it must have been the doorman who wouldn’t let her in,’ adding, in an attempt to placate her, ‘but she is an awful lot younger than all your other friends …’ She knew before she confronted the doorman and screamed her bewilderment and spat out her rage at him, and the man simply shrugged and explained that he’d simply done as he was told, that her mother had issued instructions about who should be allowed into the party; and she knew before she went over to her mother, swallowing back her sobs, her heart clenched, and her mother looked up from her book with surprised, unflinching eyes and said in a slow voice that she had no idea they were such good friends and that anyway it was high time Sara learned the kind of people she ought to be associating with, and then, seeing Sara’s eyes fill with tears, seeing that she was shaking, said: ‘Don’t cry now, don’t be silly. Maybe I was wrong, but it’s not so very important. Go and see her now, take her a slice of cake and some sweets and it’ll all be forgotten.’ But in the musician’s room, where she had never set foot before, the woman gave her a hard look, a look, thought Sara, that was now fixed, a look the woman had been rehearsing and learning throughout the summer, but her voice quavered when she said: ‘The worst thing, you see, was that she didn’t understand, she saw you all having tea and playing games and didn’t understand why she couldn’t go in; she cried a lot, you know, before she finally went to sleep.’ But the woman didn’t cry. And Sara dried her own tears and did not ask forgiveness – now that she knew for whom and for what, she also knew that there are some things for which one does not ask forgiveness – and she took them no cakes or sweets, made no attempt to give them presents or to make anything better.

She went up to her room, tore off the ribbon, the dress, grandmother’s little bracelet and threw them all down in a heap on the bed, then she pulled on her jeans and left her tousled hair hanging loose over her shoulders. And when she went into the dining room, no one, not Mademoiselle or the boys, her parents or the head waiter, dared say one word to her. And Sara sat down in silence, without even touching the food they put on her plate, sitting very erect and very pale, staring at the orchestra and repeating to herself that she would never ever forget what had happened, that she would never wear a long, low-cut dress and a fur coat and jewels or allow men in dinner jackets to fill her glass and talk to her of love, that she would never – she thought with surprise – be like the rest of them, that she would never learn what kind of people she ought to be associating with, because her place would always be at the side of men with sad eyes who had had too many dreams and had lost all hope, at the side of hard-eyed, faded women, old before their time, who could barely provide for their own children, not after this terrible, complicated summer in which Sara had discovered first love and then hate (so similar, so intimately linked), not after this summer in which, as the grown-ups kept telling her in their very different ways, she had become a woman. She repeated all this to herself again and again while she looked and looked at him and he looked at no one but her, not even needing to look down at the piano on which, all through supper, he played nothing but Chopin.