Ravel Read online

  Luckily there is no shortage of trains, and luckily as well it’s aboard luxurious convoys that he must crisscross the North American continent in all directions, because the itinerary they’ve set up for him is aberrant. It’s a route as disconcerting as a fly’s through the air and will have him make, in climates glacial to tropical, absurd round trips, dubious stopovers, and ill-chosen byways on a tour of twenty-five cities.

  The trains, named Zephyr, Hiawatha, Empire State Express, Sunset Limited, or Santa Fe de Luxe, carry on in their own way the standard of comfort maintained aboard the France. As refined as an ocean liner, they are sumptuous five-star hotels made up of fifteen eighty-ton cars, and the brow of each streamlined locomotive, with the profile of a rocket, is equipped with a colossal central headlight. The cars offer every imaginable service: desks for businessmen, movies, dancing, manicure and hairdressing salons, consultations with beauticians, a concert hall with an organ for Sunday services, a library, and numerous bars. As for the staterooms with all their precious woods, carpets, leaded-glass windows, and drapes, they are furnished with canopied four-poster beds and bathrooms providing a choice of fresh or sea water. At the tail of the train, an observation car opens onto a porch fitted out like a balcony and crowned with a dome.

  It’s aboard the San Francisco Overland Limited that Ravel arrives in California at the end of January. He catches his breath for a moment; his agenda is less crowded, things have calmed down quite a bit: when he’s not trying to nap under his four-poster canopy, he spends his time in the train’s club car. From San Francisco he leaves for Los Angeles and, since mild temperatures have made the observation car an option, he is at leisure to observe the countryside. Shaded by tall trees that look like oaks but are actually hollies, traveling through forests of eucalypti, the train wends its way among mountains of differing aspects, yellow rubble or bright greenery. Approaching Los Angeles, it passes through sparsely settled residential suburbs where each house, set here and there, is a story (sometimes a story with swimming pool), is one rather than tells one, and the few shops fleetingly glimpsed are the kind of small many-colored toys that Ravel likes.

  In Los Angeles he gives a concert in the ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel, from which he sends his brother Édouard a postcard of this skyscraper, pierced by a pin: the front shows the hotel, and on the back Ravel explains that the pinhole indicates his room. It’s much better than Chicago, Los Angeles: here it’s summer in midwinter, a big city brimming with flowers that we only see growing in hothouses but that here line the avenues in a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, where big palm trees are right at home. And being in the neighborhood—it isn’t even an hour’s drive away in not only another convertible but this time a garnet-red and lavender-blue Stutz Bearcat with whitewall tires—Ravel takes a turn around Hollywood where he meets a few stars: Douglas Fairbanks who speaks French but Charlie Chaplin not a word. All this is most entertaining to Ravel who displays a remarkably constant good humor, although his triumph is tiring and the food still just as bad.

  He heads toward Seattle aboard a Southern Pacific train out of Perth, passes through Vancouver and Portland, then switches to the Union Pacific system to leave Denver—gold and silver mines, sun, pure air, altitude—for Minneapolis via Kansas City. Since the weather seems to be clouding up, however, he’s afraid he’ll be returning the following week to a freezing New York City.

  In the end it’s not that cold there for celebrating his fifty-third birthday on March 7 with quite a big crowd including Gershwin, whom he’d wanted to see again to hear him play The Man I Love. Which Gershwin does, of course, going all-out so that he can ask him after dinner for lessons in composition but Ravel bluntly refuses, pointing out to him that he’d risk losing his melodic spontaneity and for what, I ask you, for nothing but second-rate Ravel. Plus he doesn’t like taking on pupils and after all, Gershwin—it’s as if his universal success weren’t enough for him anymore, he’s aiming higher but lacks the tools he needs, no sense in crushing him by handing them over. In short Ravel wriggles out of it, it’s getting on his nerves. And even though care was taken this evening—they’re beginning to know him—to fix him a dinner he ought to enjoy, in particular red meat which he likes blue, as always here it’s way overdone.

  Two days later, heading south once again aboard the Crescent Limited, Ravel finds himself back in springtime, such a lovely summery warmth that he finds his stateroom bearable only in his shirtsleeves with all the vents open and the fan set on high. It’s a trifle less hot on the balcony of the rear observation car, where Ravel dozes all day; after dinner he settles into the club car to write a few letters in which he describes in detail his complicated journey: first he’ll visit New Orleans, to eat fish cooked in paper bags and drink French wine in spite of Prohibition (and if only people knew what kind of Prohibition they really had!). At around eleven o’clock, as the club car is beginning to empty out, he returns to his stateroom at the other end of the train.

  Although New York had already begun to enjoy nice weather, spring flowering there lags far behind New Orleans, where Ravel spends only one day before leaving that same evening for Houston to give two concerts. At rehearsals, the instrumentalists are struck by the way he matches his suspenders to his shirt and changes colors daily: pink one time, blue the next. Everything is still going quite well, at least that’s his impression, although he doesn’t ask himself if the reception he’s receiving accurately reflects the feeling of triumph he’s been enjoying for four months now. A feeling that leads to a certain nonchalance, an increasing offhandedness in his already insecure piano playing. He thinks no one has noticed, in fact he doesn’t think about it. Well, people have noticed. He doesn’t know this. Even if he did he wouldn’t give a goddamn.

  Before the second concert, he gives a lecture at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, where he explains that he usually requires a long gestation period to compose. That during this period he begins gradually, but more and more precisely, to see the shape and overall trajectory of the work to come. That he can be preoccupied like this for years, without setting down a single note. And that afterward the writing goes rather quickly, even though it still takes quite a bit of work to eliminate whatever is superfluous before arriving—insofar as is possible—at the intended final clarity.

  That said, Ravel speeds off in a car to visit the Gulf of Mexico before bouncing back toward the Grand Canyon where, based in Phoenix, he spends one week, then heads across the continent to Buffalo aboard the California Limited. After which—let’s cut this short—he returns to New York and then it’s Montreal and on to Toronto, Milwaukee, Detroit, last hop to Boston, final swing through New York City where he embarks on the Paris at midnight.

  He returns to Le Havre on April 27. He is in fine fettle, and above all, his little blue suitcase, emptied of its Gauloises, now contains twenty-seven thousand dollars. On the pier, the whole gang is there, keeping an eye out for him. Édouard is waiting with the Delages, Hélène as well of course, still accompanied by Marcelle Gérar and Madeleine Grey, who throw themselves at Ravel’s knees to present him with a bouquet nestled in a scalloped paper-lace doily. In a jovial mood, Ravel finds it only natural that they’ve come to Le Havre to welcome him and it never occurs to him to thank them. Well, he simply tells them, I would really have liked to see you try not showing up.

  SIX

  BACK IN MONTFORT-L’AMAURY, a classic and temperate French spring provides a change from American eccentricities. Even before Ravel has opened his front door, he is greeted by flocks of birds overhead, putting the finishing touches to their recitals. From the robin to the titmouse, piping songs that Ravel has at his fingertips, lots of little fellows warble away in the trees, watched closely by his two Siamese cats.

  The house itself, for all its splendid view of the valley below, is rather bizarrely slapped together. Shaped like a quarter-wheel of brie, distinctly different in aspect when seen from the street and the garden, it contains five or six rooms as cramped as nests, l
inked by a spindly staircase and a hallway one person wide. As Ravel himself is not tall, one may laugh at his desire for a home his own size, but he has the last laugh. First, he found something within his means, which are limited: not being rich, obliged to count costs, he would never have been able to buy the place with-out a small inheritance from a Swiss uncle. And besides it’s the view above all that convinced him, that view over the valley discovered from the balcony: horizon almost rectilinear beneath changeable skies, long even waves of overlapping hills, foothills of grass and woods, punctiform clumps of trees, stretches of hedgerows.

  True, this small dwelling is itself stuffed with small things, miniatures of all kinds, statuettes and knickknacks, music boxes and windup toys: a wooden Chinaman sticks out his tongue on demand; a sailboat rocks over cardboard waves at your pleasure; a mechanical nightingale the size of a billiard ball flaps its wings and sings whenever you like. Millefiori and bottle imps, tulip of spun glass, rose with articulated petals, boxes of colored Austrian crystal, a midget ottoman in scalloped bone-china lace. This home is equipped, moreover, with every modern comfort: vacuum cleaner and phonograph, telephone and radio.

  Once the house has been inspected, the taffeta drapes in the drawing room and the green silk ones in the dining room opened, all clothing unpacked and put away, the pleasure of returning home promptly evaporates. There is a feeling of being at a loss, unsure of what to do with oneself. Too fatigued by traveling to think about resting, nerves too on edge for that, and anyway, five-thirty in the afternoon, that’s no time to try sleeping, he’ll never succeed—if he does it will be worse. No question either of opening a book or the piano, not focused enough for that. Nothing to tidy up in the house either, no errands to run: in preparation for her employer’s return, Mme Révelot has cleaned the place from top to bottom, turned the heating back on, and restocked the kitchen. True, there are all those articles devoted to him over these last few months by the American newspapers, they’ve been cut out for him and he’s kept them without much understanding what they say; he dumps them en masse into an album but that doesn’t take long. There’s always the possibility of strolling in the garden, a triangular, grassy, sloping space as curved as a girl’s G-string. But that garden, that day—even though Ravel usually pays close attention to it, he hardly sees it at the moment, hardly takes any interest at all in the work the gardener has done while he was away. One would think he was beginning to get bored.

  Now, boredom, Ravel knows it well: paired with loafing around, boredom can make him play with a diabolo-top for hours, watch his fingernails grow, make chickens out of folded paper or ducks from soft bread, inventory or even try to sort through his record collection, which runs from Albéniz to Weber, without hitting Beethoven but not excluding Vincent Scotto, Noël-Noël, or Jean Tranchant;12 in any case he doesn’t listen to his records much. Combined with the absence of projects, boredom rather often comes coupled with bouts of discouragement, pessimism, and melancholy that lead him to reproach his parents bitterly, at such moments, for not having pushed him into the grocery trade. But the boredom of this moment, utterly devoid of projects, seems unusually physical and oppressive: it’s a febrile acedia, unnerving, with a feeling of loneliness that grips his throat more painfully than the knot of his polka-dotted tie. I see only one solution: to call Zogheb. It’s Montfort 56, provided he’s home.

  On the phone, alleluia, Zogheb is home. They’re happy to talk to each other, to hear each other’s voice and of course we’ll get together and why not right away. Five minutes later they meet on the terrace of a café near the church where, over a vermouth-cassis, Ravel talks about America to his pal who’s eager to hear all about it. Jacques de Zogheb? Nobody really knows what he does. It seems he writes but no one ever knows what. He’s a fellow with gleaming black hair and a matte complexion, slightly taller than Ravel but also much more robust and, like him, most particular about his clothes. What’s good about him is, he knows practically nothing about music, so they can talk of other things. Yet as he’s more than willing to learn about the subject, Ravel can talk music more freely, as when Zogheb asks him, Chopin, basically, who’s he? It’s quite simple, replies Ravel, stubbing out his cigarette: He’s the greatest of the Italians. Since the vermouth-cassis, even followed by one or two more, is not enough to finish the American tale, Zogheb invites him to dinner after which fatigue from the time lag, which Ravel has never experienced before, kicks in to the point that he goes home at around eleven o’clock.

  Back home, instead of wandering as usual through his house until all hours, he goes straight downstairs to his bedroom, he’s that sleepy. But feeling sleepy, it’s common knowledge, still doesn’t mean falling asleep: too much fatigue can keep one awake. He turns the light off anyway only to switch it back on fifteen minutes later, grabs a book he opens to no effect, turns the light off then on again several times after tossing and turning in bed, the same old story. He has never slept well anyhow, most of the time going to bed late without going to sleep, then when he has barely drifted off, he always awakens too quickly. It’s hardly a new problem; he’s even tried to perfect a few techniques.

  Technique Number 1: to make up a story and organize it, stage it in detail, as meticulously as possible, taking care to contrive conditions favorable to its growth. To create characters (not forgetting oneself in the lead role), construct sets, arrange the lights, imagine a soundtrack. Good. Now enter this scenario and develop it, control it methodically until the situation reverses itself and, taking on a life of its own, takes hold of you, inventing you in the end the way you yourself invented it. That’s how, in the best of cases, this story uses what’s on offer to its own advantage, becoming independent and evolving according to its own laws completely into a dream, and to dream means to sleep and off you go.

  Objection: that’s all very nice but to imagine that you can see sleep coming is to seriously misunderstand it. In a pinch you can feel it settling in, but you can’t any more see it than you can look directly at the sun. It will be sleep that grabs you from behind, or from just out of sight. Because you don’t approach sleep on the alert, peering into the distance, watching for the sudden appearance of hypnagogic visions—grids, spirals, constellations—that ordinarily herald its arrival. And if you go looking for them, these visions, if you try to induce them—they retreat, clear out, steal away, waiting until you’ve given up on them before mounting their attack. Or not. So.

  On a Sunday three weeks later, about fifty guests show up at Montfort under threatening skies to present to Ravel, with great pomp, a bust of himself sculpted by Léon Leyritz. At first they spread out through the house, which is rather untidy, but as always, nothing is lying around in Ravel’s study: it’s a point of honor with him to leave no sign of work there. Neither pencil nor eraser nor ruled paper on his worktable or, beneath the portrait of his mother, on his Érard piano, always closed when he has company: nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves. Then, despite the gloomy weather, everyone decides to go outdoors to have a drink. Well suited to the house, the garden isn’t really a large one but, semi-Japanese, it’s organized around steps, paths winding among small lawns, and walks bordered with rare flowers and dwarf trees that converge on an ornamental fountain in which jiggles a thin jet of water.

  So aside from Hélène, of course, and Leyritz who is a nice boy with a pleasant voice, a tiny bit affected, there are quite a few people there that you must not know, like René Kerdyck, Suzy Welty, or Pierre-Octave Ferroud, but also others of whom you have perhaps heard such as Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert, or the poet Léon-Paul Fargue, in short the usual friends including young Rosenthal13 who—it’s always his job—must pump on the ice-making machine for hours to keep the drinks cool. A self-proclaimed specialist in cocktails, Ravel spends an insane amount of time in the basement inventing secret recipes for weird mixtures he christens Andalou, Phi-Phi, or Valencia. Consumption of a certain number of them is de rigueur before posing for the photograph: it’s rare to se
e him—always so formal—in his shirtsleeves like that, cuffs rolled up, the Gauloise always in hand, the other hand always in his pocket, surrounded by five pretty and broadly smiling women. He alone is not smiling even though everyone seems to be having a grand old time: they play blind-man’s buff after a luncheon with copious libations, then Ravel in fine form—borrowing Hélène’s hat and Mme Gil-Marchex’s coat—performs a few dance steps to general acclaim. After that it seems they’ll wind up this fine Sunday in a nightclub.

  Or not, according to the neighbors, the eternal neighbors. Two days later, invited to dinner by Ravel, Zogheb finds him in his kitchen with the diminutive Mme Révelot in her black dress, shoulders hunched, face impassive, attending to her ovens, back turned, seeming displeased. Since her employer also looks irritated, Zogheb asks what’s going on. Tell me, Ravel blurts out, has anyone ever said unkind things about you? Zogheb replies that he has no idea, and that actually he couldn’t care less. And about me, hints Ravel, you haven’t heard anything? I have indeed, I’m afraid, admits Zogheb. Certain things, yes. What things? asks the other man. Well, says Zogheb, it seems that you invited fifty people to your house the day before yesterday to unveil your bust, which first off I find hardly believable considering the size of your home. True enough, admits Ravel. That’s not all, says Zogheb. It would appear that afterward all these fashionable society people wound up stark naked by the end of the evening in order to, well, you see what I mean—is that what you’re talking about? That’s it! exclaims Ravel. That’s the nasty gossip my housekeeper heard at the market. Don’t you think it’s a disgrace? That’s not the disgrace, announces Zogheb. Well then, what is? asks Ravel in astonishment. The disgrace, replies Zogheb sternly, is always to invite me to genteel and frankly rather boring parties only to forget me the one time everyone has some fun. Ravel stiffens for a second, then turns to Mme Révelot, who hunches her shoulders a bit more. There, he barks at her, there’s the reproach you’ve brought on me by making all that fuss. Ravel starts laughing violently, Zogheb joins in, then they fall silent.