Interior with Violin

Fiction by John Saul

The city: the hotel rooms, the apartments, the solitude. Every­thing that was the Côte d’Azur. The broad sea, the sky, the palms. For a long time, however, a full sense of these surroundings was checked from developing by the continual rain. I turned inward, as might an animal, as if waiting in­stinc­tively for the mistral. This was cold and awesome when it reached the Mediterranean. Along the back of the hotel it howled and moaned. The manage­ment were strict on keeping shutters battened; they vigorously counselled staying in. Outside, as I glimpsed down through the cream-colored louvres, papers flew, and the treetops at the beach dipped and bent frenziedly towards the whipped up sand.

Once passed, however, the dry wind left behind a clarity in which the great colored reflections of January flourished. And whereas the rain had decided me on leaving, I changed my mind abruptly with the weather; for the drab-wallpapered hotel rooms were filled suddenly with mercurial light. I put on my hat and walked along the Promenade des Anglais; made forays into the nearby gardens, the old twisting streets tucked behind the front. The city, it so happens, then approached more closely the images in my precon­ceptions. I had come with visions of clear zones of sky, olive-green, sometimes mauve mountains crowding at my back, a blue bay below. Much of this I had guessed from having known Marseilles, not so far to the west. In fact the blue of my imagination had been too deep, the line of the baie des Anges made a tighter bow outside the window. Meanwhile another unlocatable tension, like that before the gales blew, continued to reign. Almost certainly because the Great War kept on. Since I had brooded on the war throughout the periods of confinement brought on by the rain and then the mistral, the war and gales mingled easily in this feeling of dark-veiled tension. When, for example, I had opened both windows and one shutter, I noted that although the wind had gone for good I was awaiting at each moment an in­definable force to blast the second shutter inwards.

When it became unbearable, I side-stepped this force in part by walking. I passed again, at the newspaper stands, Raoul’s familiar postcard photographs of the quai des Etats-Unis, the very Hôtel Beau-Rivage. I thought of buying such a card to send to you, Adèle. My dear friend Raoul, I might say, has returned to the war and left me here with his violin. But the mood to write to him was absent. My thoughts were simply dwelling on the sense to his unexpected act. Raoul, in his own words, had not left this possession in the conviction he would not return. I shall return, he declared; but quite think I shall be changed. No, he knew my own instrument was up north, in the very occupied area the army was struggling to regain; so that it simply fitted to leave his violin in my care. Not that I play that well; I nowhere match his brilliance of ex­pression. I took it from the case and bowed a phrase or two. The sound was sour, the strings in need of tighten­ing; all in all the sere­nade I began attempting—and broke off quickly—was unworthy of that sharpness with which my dear friend plays. I admired the shapes of the back and belly of the instrument slowly, with my hands, before replacing it. With the case left open on the hotel chair I then indulged my awe for the sil­vered light. This requires a certain forceful resolution on my part. I have had to learn not to fear derision, not to fear my­self, when lingering on my obsessions. They are necessary obses­sions. Light and architected space are wonders to me, as are nature, the human form and character. With­out my ob­sessions I might never have noted this room for what it is: a veritable box of light.

You who know me best, Adèle, would guess the next step. It is no good turning straight away to my paints. I have to take a walk again, in this case seize the opportunity to re­gard the objects of my obsession on their obverse sides, at other angles; to look from below at the date palm and the line of waves, visible through the open shutter. Once wrapped up for the sake of my bronchitis I shall perhaps walk along as far as the pier, take a leisured loop round the casino. If the day is sufficiently warm there is mint tea or lemon juice to be had at tables on the pier; you can watch the sea, the bay, its curved band like a clock spring, while sat before the mock-oriental decor. Yet I confess the opposite direction draws me more, the small boats at the beach and the groups of people milling by them. I must buy one such for the summer. You and Raoul shall visit, for by then the armistice must come. Meanwhile I shall produce, produce; Henriette is coming and shall take a room in the hotel next door. I shall paint her until the pair of us shall drop. She is my best model; she is among the very few to understand what it is I want. I had not known until I had the postcards from Raoul, incidentally, that he and Henriette are engaged. This explains her prompt agree­ment into coming: to be here in case of a sudden he returns. This may provide another reason why he has left me his violin, as something tangible of himself; a direct link to the flesh-and-blood Raoul, a torment as the sight will be for her. And yet I am well persuaded such pain must be undergone; one way or another.

I have been restless from the moment of arrival. I went from one hotel to the next, trusting only my eyes and feel­ings, before deciding on the Beau-Rivage. A full day, in other words, just viewing the string of potential rooms. There is no alternative to this thoroughness. Yet everywhere the rooms were similar, in shape if not in size; certainly for the muted stripes or flowers on the walls. All were deep and narrow, each saved from charmlessness by the same one window looking to the bay; all with their dresser and a mirror, a squat hotel chair and encircling boards of coat-pegs. I have never seen as many coat-pegs as there are in Nice. This suggests constant visiting and being visited; though this will hardly be my lot. Only Henriette will come. Given now her distraught situation with Raoul, I shall first have to decide if I truly want to portray her. Not that por­traits are my object. As you know, my aim is to make a pic­ture. Yet how could I not paint her. If she finds a calm she will pull and stretch out from herself all I ask of her. But I must remember to instruct the hotel management to withhold interruptions. She will be waiting constantly for a letter, a telegram, a knock at the door. Her first reason for coming here is in order to be doing something, anything but con­stantly imagining Raoul’s inevitable end; or wondering, should he die, how on earth she is to live with his eternal failure to return. She may arrive sad and heavy; certainly in­consol­able. It will not be simple. I need her alert, Adèle, but not restless; yet I know that Henriette will bring the war with her.

First we shall talk. We shall decide jointly how soon to begin. In all events we shall make an outing once a day. I shall show her the pier and the Jardin Albert I; the new aquarium on the Promenade des Anglais. Come with me if you will, I shall say to her, to the bird market, I guarantee we'll see such surprising colors. I shall visit her, certainly, and see if she too has a squat chair and a dresser with a mirror; look if her window-frames, like mine, are as heavy and liable to deal such a crack when left to blow back against the wall. We may even share the sight of the great date palm down there, let’s see; I have to move the chair and violin to reach the window. Yes indeed, it will be a sight in common. Yet why don’t I close the case, I don’t know why, I doubt I shall take out the instrument again. So: I am merely caretaking it after all. Now the lining of the case, I note, has changed in moving round with the light. Its blue in this position is curiously a deeper shade of the same marine I had instinctively pre-imagined for the sea; curious, as if I had somehow held a reservation on this color. A plush blue fit for the violin’s resined wood, a Norwegian spruce just beginning ageing. There the reddened top of the dresser picks up the body’s tones. I see this now. Seeing being essential to my métier, this interior with violin is the product of my obsessions; and so much the better. I no longer wanted the north, the proximity to the younger men falling at the guns. I came here for the light, this daylight. And yet, although I shall paint while the light lasts, after my siestas I shall leave the blinds closed, and draw; by electric light, draw.

Raoul must have met Henriette through me in the summer of last year, 1917. He will return, is that what I shall say to her. He will appear one day, Henriette, hav­ing carefully measured his walk from the station to arrive at a befitting hour. First he will simply hang his coat up on a peg. As he turned we would embrace him with tears, no words. But naturally he would go first to you, only coming this way later; then you would be standing in the corridor outside, tears of happiness streaming. And so on; any conjecture to dispel all the miserable speculations. Yet I shall say nothing of this sort. He came once already, but now that he is being held in Germany I cannot imagine that a second time. Henriette wrote his hair had become a stiffly bristled doormat. My phantom, she calls him now. Nonetheless she confided that she often thought about him living. She could re­call his voice, feel the warm strength of his hands. I can feel them as well, I think of them when my thoughts of him get ruffled once again, when again I speculate on him returning. In he comes, apparently whole, not after all having left the path of life too soon. Sometimes I see he stands there embittered; he stares at his case, which fortune has left open, mocking the fact he is not going to play again.

One final walk beside the palms. Along the quai des Etats-Unis, perhaps as far as the harbour basin; just now I must drive out direct thoughts of the war. The implod­ing shutter, the heavy windows shall gently but darkly threaten the violin, its case left open. The sea beyond the window, blue and per­haps with lines of black, will be its own restless, repeating self; the grey-green treetop of the date palm is to thrust up before it. In the center of the scene will come the quiet but necessary resolution, an ac­tual banded spectrum of these col­ored January reflec­tions. It is an explosive stillness I have in mind. I cannot then employ my private title for the work, Raoul and Henriette. It will simply have to be an interior, with violin.

The picture of the same name, Intérieur au violon, was made by Henri Matisse, and hangs in the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. 

John Saul made the contribution from England to Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2018 and had work in Best British Short Stories 2016. His short fiction has been published extensively in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, and in Australia and Canada. www.johnsaul.co.uk