Ravel Page 6

  When it’s completed at last, Marguerite Long, informed immediately, begins to sight-read it and not without difficulty: when the composer isn’t breathing down her neck, constantly correcting her, he’s pestering her over the phone. Hesitantly, she tells him of her misgivings about his second movement, about how hard it is for the performer to hold up under that slow progression, she says, that long, flowing phrase. Flowing? Ravel starts shouting. What do you mean, flowing? But I wrote it two measures at a time and it almost killed me! Point taken, but he did the whole thing rather fast, all in all, taking only a little more than a year to polish off his double idea.

  When he decided that his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was done, Ravel invited its commissioner to Montfort to present it to him. Paul Wittgenstein still seems just as impassive: small glasses and German brush cut; a stiff, brusque bearing; the end of his empty right jacket sleeve tucked into his pocket. Fortunately he’s not staying for lunch; Ravel is already imagining how to go about cutting his meat for him and foreseeing that a brief glance from his guest will warn him off. They stick to discussing the results of the commission. After laying out the composition of the orchestra and the basic atmosphere of each movement, Ravel plays the solo part with both hands, and not very well. First off, Wittgenstein finds him a rather poor pianist, and as for the work itself, proud of the fact that he was never taught to pretend, he doesn’t hide his opinion that it’s not too hot. Ravel tries to conceal his disappointment by fiddling with a Gauloise, rolling it between his fingers quite a while before placing it between his lips, smoking it silently for as long as that takes. Wittgenstein then coldly slips the score into his left pocket before taking his leave.

  But this wound is only a minor splinter. He can see for himself these days that his fame is solidifying, that he’s played everywhere, that the newspapers speak only of him. No one has ever seen anything like it, so that a Paris-Soir columnist even exclaims that the composer of the Valses nobles et sentimentales can legitimately boast of having justified the invention of those extra flap-seats in theaters. He has become so unassailable that young composers are growing restless, raising a ruckus, even vilifying him in the press, but it seems that once more he doesn’t give a goddamn. One evening when he and young Rosenthal are attending a performance of a ballet by Darius Milhaud, he applauds until it hurts, finding it absolutely wonderful, bravo, magnificent, superb. Wait a minute, his neighbor tells him, don’t you know what Milhaud says about you? He spends his time dragging you through the mud. He’s not wrong, Ravel points out: When you’re young, that is what you must do. Another evening, with Hélène, another ballet, this time it’s by Georges Auric and he finds it just as wonderful, so well done that he wants to go compliment the composer. What, says Hélène, you’d go congratulate Auric after what he’s written about you? Why not, he replies. He lashes out at Ravel? Well, he’s right to lash out at Ravel. If he didn’t lash out at Ravel, he’d be cranking out Ravel and that’s enough, now, of Ravel.

  And speaking of celebrations, in mid-August a festival in his honor is organized in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, during which his name will be given to the quay where he was born. His piano, his bathing suit, and his daily routines are all waiting for him; the ceremony goes well, too, even though the novelist Claude Farrère (white beard and deep voice, classic merchant-marine-officer profile) somewhat botches his speech—before which, in any case, Ravel makes himself scarce. Let’s go have a cherry brandy instead, he tells Robert Casadesus,19 taking him by the arm; I don’t want to be fool enough to attend the laying of my own plaque. On the other hand, he takes a keen interest in the pelota tournament that winds up the festivities, and after which, in his suit, bareheaded, the eternal Gauloise in hand, he poses for the photographer among four colossal and thuggish-looking pelotari wearing white and topped with berets. This time, in the photo, amid the stony-faced colossi, he is the only one smiling. Even though the final event of the day will be a concert of his works, given to benefit various charitable enterprises, as usual he’s late; still not there, he makes everyone wait a long time for him, arriving at last only to discover in horror that he has forgotten his fancy pocket handkerchief and that’s a whole new song and dance. Casadesus offers to lend him his own hankie but it’s no use, Ravel says that’s impossible. Well, of course that’s impossible, since it doesn’t have the same initials on it. But after all it’s not the end of the world since he takes off the next day in the Hispano of Edmond Gaudin, Marie’s father, to watch the bullfighting in the arena at San Sebastián by Marcial Lalanda (one ear and division), Enrique Torres (ovation and whistles), and Nicanor Villalta20 (silence and silence).

  Back in Paris, his fame makes him feel like working harder than ever. Tired of shuttling between Montfort and Paris, he sets up a small studio where he can work in his brother’s house in Levallois. It’s Leyritz who designs the décor in a style that’s half ocean liner, half dentist’s office: nickel-steel furniture and tubular chairs, circle rugs, mobile bar with high stools, shaker, tall glasses, and bottles in every possible color. No paintings on the walls, not even fakes as in Montfort, just a few Japanese prints and some photographs by Man Ray. Anyway, Ravel will hardly ever set foot there.

  Perhaps his shining glory produces a slight giddiness as well, because now this man who is usually ironic and rather aloof is beginning to lose his grip. While hard at work these past few months, even before he had finished composing his two concertos, he had come up with a plan to go on a world tour with the one written for two hands: his own hands. He wants to present it on every continent, the five parts of the world, all five, he insists to anyone who will listen. But meanwhile, his body has grown still weaker, he’s not up to it, the doctors intervene. Worried about his health, they firmly oppose this plan. Gently does it. Threats and prognoses, warnings, prescriptions and treatments. Injections of serum and complete rest.

  Not for long: it will be against medical advice that he stubbornly sets off on tour, he and his concerto, with Marguerite Long bringing up the rear. In the end she is the one who will play it, not himself as he’d hoped, despite his killing efforts trying to achieve the required virtuosity, hours spent breaking his fingers on the Études of Liszt and Chopin to improve his skill. But in vain: he is truly forced to admit that this time, his music is beyond his reach, much too complicated for his hands, which will make do with directing it. He must therefore set out with Marguerite, which isn’t so bad with regard to the keyboard but a lot less jolly with regard to life because she’s impossible, bossy, full of herself, the kind of governess you get saddled with on every vacation, not to mention that she’s a real eyesore. Plus it won’t be the five parts of the world, they’re just doing Europe although they are doing a good twenty cities. As always, however, it will go very well: from London to Budapest and from Prague to The Hague, with him at the podium and Marguerite at the piano they knock them dead wherever they go.

  On the train to Vienna, he pulls the same stunt as in Chicago, realizing that he has forgotten his patent-leather shoes again: no question of appearing without them. It’s not that serious, you’ll find the same ones there, says Marguerite, unaware that such a small size can’t be ferreted out just anywhere. This time it isn’t a devoted singer but, once Paris is alerted, the engineer of the following train who manages to retrieve them. In Vienna, Ravel is invited with Marguerite to a big dinner party followed by a musical soirée in their honor in the home of Paul Wittgenstein, during which the latter, the commissioner and dedicatee of the work, will play the concerto with his own hand. The dinner proceeds like others of its kind, meaning that initially it’s a dreaded chore but one gets dressed, arrives, is introduced to scads of people with names no sooner barely heard than forgotten, bored stiff at first one then gets used to it, the alcohol loosens things up, this could even be fun and lo and behold, after an hour or two everything’s wonderful and wild horses couldn’t drag one away.

  In short it’s always the same except that this evening, sitting to th
e right of Wittgenstein, Marguerite hears him disclose to her that he had to make certain changes in the concerto she doesn’t yet know about. Supposing that the pianist’s infirmity has led him to simplify a few things, she suggests nevertheless that he warn Ravel about these adjustments, but Wittgenstein doesn’t listen to her. They rise from the table, they proceed to the concert. As soon as the performance begins, with Marguerite following the score of the concerto, this time sitting next to its creator, she sees in his ever more aghast expression the distressing consequences of the one-armed pianist’s initiatives. The thing is, Wittgenstein has not simplified the work at all to adapt it to his abilities, on the contrary: he must have seen an opportunity to show, handicapped though he might be, how very good he is. Instead of addressing the work and serving it as best he can, there he is piling stuff on, adding arpeggios here, extra measures there, embroidering trills, rhythmic shimmies, and other performance embellishments that no one had asked him for, appoggiaturas and gruppetti, racing up the keyboard into the high notes at every opportunity to show how skilful he is, how clever he is, how supple he still is, and how he’s telling you all to go to hell. Ravel’s face is white.

  At the end of the concert, anticipating trouble, Marguerite immediately attempts to create a diversion by talking about something else with the ambassador, but in vain: Ravel slowly approaches Wittgenstein with a look no one has seen on his face since he advanced upon Toscanini. That won’t do, he says icily. That won’t do at all. That’s not it at all. Wittgenstein tries to defend himself: Listen, I’m an old pianist and frankly, it doesn’t sound good. Well, I’m an old orchestrator, replies Ravel, growing more and more frosty, and I can tell you that it sounds fine. As for the silence that settles over the room at those words, it sounds even louder. Malaise beneath the moldings; embarrassment below the stucco. The shirt fronts of tuxedos blanch; the fringes on evening gowns freeze; the butlers study their shoes. Without a word Ravel puts on his coat and leaves early, dragging after him a bewildered Marguerite. Vienna, a January evening, filthy weather but so what: he sends away the car placed at his disposal by the embassy and, counting on a short walk in the snow to calm down, returns to the hotel on foot.

  But he is still just as upset the next day while waiting for the train home, Gauloise in his right hand while the left, gloved, keeps absentmindedly crumpling his right glove. At the moment of departure, on the station platform, Marguerite rummages through her purse with increasing panic and grows pale. It’s silly, she stammers, scrabbling with her fingers at the bottom of the purse—I can’t find them. What, snaps Ravel, what can’t you find? The tickets, says Marguerite. They must be around somewhere, they’ve got to be here, I mean wherever could I have put them? You really are an idiot, Marguerite, says Ravel, coldly exasperated. A fucking idiot, he adds deliberately, folding a newspaper over twice. Marguerite blinks rather a lot, startled by this sudden vulgarity, which isn’t like him but continues: That bitch, she’s lost the tickets, he groans to himself—she always has to forget something. Here they are! exclaims Marguerite at last, showing him the tickets tucked into her fur muff: I put them there so they’d be safer. Immediately recovering his relative composure and detachment, Ravel returns to his newspaper, showing no further interest in his escort, who makes a few chatty remarks while flicking the tag ends of worried looks his way. He doesn’t even glance up at the arrival on the run of a breathless Artur Rubinstein, informed at the last minute of Ravel’s presence in Vienna and certainly hoping to shake the master’s hand before his departure, but the master jumps onto the train as if he didn’t exist.

  Still, it is better that Marguerite should take care of the tickets because he is forgetting everything: his appointments, his patent-leather shoes, his luggage, his watch, his keys, his passport, his mail. Which can pose problems: welcome everywhere, sought after by the powers-that-be, entertained on all sides, Ravel tends to let official invitations languish in the neglect of his jacket pockets, and he is expected in vain. The king of Romania doesn’t take it too badly, but the Polish prime minister raises one hell of a fuss. Diplomatic incidents, panic in the consulates of France, ambassadorial interventions. Ravel has always forgotten everything, always been absentminded, subject to memory lapses regarding proper names in particular, often relying on images to designate places or people as familiar to him as Mme Révelot: the lady who takes care of my house, you know, with the nasty disposition. And even Marguerite herself: the woman who doesn’t play the piano too well, you see who I mean, her husband died in the war. Although Marguerite knows all that, she still thinks he’s forgetting more and more things. For her part, Hélène noticed a year ago that Ravel is now revealing, from time to time, a kind of absence before his own music.

  Nevertheless he doesn’t forget what counts the most in his eyes: as soon as he returns to France, he bluntly opposes the coming of Wittgenstein, who’d confidently seen himself paying a little visit to Paris. The composer sends him a short note pointing out that his interpretation is based on counterfeiting, and enjoining him firmly to pledge that henceforward he will play the work strictly as it was written. When Wittgenstein, offended, writes back that performers must not be slaves, Ravel’s reply is three words long: Performers are slaves.

  So. He is fifty-seven years old. Thirteen years earlier he wrapped up his works for piano with Frontispice, which consists of no more than fifteen measures, lasts no longer than two minutes, but requires no less than five hands. He settled the formal hash of the sonata and the quartet. After pushing his powers of orchestration to the limit—at the risk of smashing his toy—with Boléro, he has just solved the concerto problem, the only one he had always put off confronting. Now what? Well, these days, two projects. One is some music for a film about Don Quixote that Pabst was supposed to film with Feodor Chaliapin in the title role and Paul Morand doing the dialogue. About the other one, which for the moment bears the code name Dédale 39, we know only what Ravel is willing to say about it one day to Manuel De Falla: it was supposed to be an airplane in the key of C.

  EIGHT

  PARIS, AN OCTOBER NIGHT, one in the morning. In front of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Jean Delfini, florid complexion and pale cap, has just taken a fare on board his taxi, a Delahaye 109. The passenger gives him an address, Hôtel d’Athènes, 21 Rue d’Athènes, and the cab sets out, it’s not a long trip. In the back seat, the passenger watches the streets slip by, glances at the driver behind his glass partition, and then, increasingly absorbed by an idea, stops considering the scenery. They have almost arrived; they’re going down the Rue d’Amsterdam, they’re about to turn left into the Rue d’Athènes when another taxi speeds out of the intersection, this one a Renault Celtaquatre driven by Henri Lacep, sallow complexion and checkered cap.

  The lateral collision is quite violent: the impact breaks the glass partition inside the taxi into a two-edged blade that attempts to cut the passenger Ravel in half. Meeting with only partial success, it merely staves in three ribs—so that he feels a brutal dent in his chest, like an inside-out bump—and shatters three teeth while shards of glass tear busily at his face, especially the nose, one eyebrow, and the chin. The authorities open up the closest pharmacy to give the passenger first-aid before taking him to the Hôpital Beaujon, where he is stitched up and allowed to return to his hotel. The next day, however, since he seems to be suffering from internal injuries, his doctor prefers to send him to a clinic on the Rue Blomet, where he can be kept under observation.

  During the next three months, Ravel does absolutely nothing. He has been examined, treated, bandaged, and fitted out with new dentures. Cared for attentively, he remains stupefied. He does not say much and never complains except to remark, from time to time, that his thoughts occasionally fail him, that they don’t always develop as usual. Although he has often appeared distracted, such episodes are in fact becoming more frequent. Every morning, someone brings him Le Populaire, which he used to read religiously from first page to last, but now he seems le
ss interested in the paper, simply skimming it abstractedly. Since he has been working hard these last few years, his doctors have been constant in their admonitions: given his chronic fatigue, his condition was not going to improve. Now, after the accident, he seems to have greatly deteriorated. While they put him through various tests, he finally explains that it’s as if his ideas, whatever they are, always remained trapped in his brain. That’s completely normal after such a shock, and one should expect that this confusion will pass. The doctors examine him some more; they examine him in vain. Everyone close to him recommends a different treatment, each one a sovereign remedy. Electricity, injections, hypnosis, homeopathy, physical therapy, positive thinking, enough drugs to stun an ox, but nothing, apparently, works.

  Three months having past, with stubborn Wittgenstein back in Paris after all, Ravel’s condition seems somewhat improved. He even appears to have made peace with the crippled veteran—or else he couldn’t care less about all that at this point—since he agrees to conduct, Salle Pleyel, the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris while the other man performs the concerto to which he has exclusive rights for six years. Which isn’t enough to make Wittgenstein, bending deeply over his instrument, his empty sleeve as always tucked into his pocket, abstain from embellishing the score to his taste. He still takes liberties, indulges in virtuosic showboating, stepping up the fioritura and ripple-effects, ornamenting phrases that had never hurt a soul, his left hand obstinately straying toward the right side of the keyboard where it just doesn’t belong. Apparently indifferent to this, Ravel stands at the podium, beating time and, as always when he conducts, getting a bit balled up in his movements. He gives the impression of not being completely present. What’s more, since the baton passes from his right hand to his left when he turns the pages of the score, one may infer that he no longer conducts his work by heart.