‘Well, here we are,’ said Rampion, when Spandrell opened his door to them the next afternoon. ‘Where’s Beethoven? Where’s the famous proof of God’s existence and the superiority of Jesus’s morality?’
‘In here.’ Spandrell led the way into his sittingroom. The gramophone stood on the table. Four or five records lay scattered near it. ‘Here’s the beginning of the slow movement,’ Spandrell went on, picking up one of them. ‘I won’t bother you with the rest of the quartet. It’s lovely. But the heilige Dankgesang is the crucial part.’ He wound up the clockwork; the disc revolved; he lowered the needle of the sound-box on to its grooved surface. A single violin gave out a long note, then another a sixth above, dropped to the fifth (while the second violin began where the first had started), then leapt to the octave, and hung there suspended through two long beats. More than a hundred years before, Beethoven, stone deaf, had heard the imaginary music of stringed instruments expressing his inmost thoughts and feelings. He had made signs with ink on ruled paper.
A century later, four Hungarians had reproduced from the printed reproduction of Beethoven’s scribbles that music which Beethoven had never heard except in his imagination. Spiral grooves on a surface of shellac remembered their playing. The artificial memory revolved, a needle travelled in its grooves and through a faint scratching and roaring that mimicked the noises of Beethoven’s own deafness, the audible symbols of Beethoven’s convictions and emotions quivered out into the air. Slowly, slowly, the melody unfolded itself. The archaic Lydian harmonies hung on the air. It was an unimpassioned music, transparent, pure and crystalline, like a tropical sea, an Alpine lake.
Water on water, calm sliding over calm; the according of level horizons and waveless expanses, a counterpoint of serenities. And everything clear and bright; no mists, no vague twilights. It was the calm of still and rapturous contemplation, not of drowsiness or sleep. It was the serenity of the convalescent who wakes from fever and finds himself born again into a realm of beauty. But the fever was ‘the fever called living’ and the rebirth was not into this world; the beauty was unearthly, the convalescent serenity was the peace of God. The interweaving of Lydian melodies was heaven.
Thirty slow bars had built up heaven, when the character of the music suddenly changed. From being remotely archaic, it became modern. The Lydian harmonies were replaced by those of the corresponding major key. The time quickened. A new melody leapt and bounded, but over earthly mountains, not among those of paradise.
‘Neue Kraft fuehlend,’ Spandrell quoted in a whisper from the score. ‘He’s feeling stronger; but it’s not so heavenly.’
The new melody bounded on for another fifty bars and expired in scratchings. Spandrell lifted the needle and stopped the revolving of the disc.
‘The Lydian part begins again on the other side,’ he explained, as he wound up the machine. ‘Then there’s more of this lively stuff in A major. Then it’s Lydian to the end, getting better and better all the time. Don’t you think it’s marvellous?’ He turned to Rampion. ‘Isn’t it a proof?’
The other nodded. ‘Marvellous. But the only thing it proves, so far as I can hear, is that sick men are apt to be very weak. It’s the art of a man who’s lost his body.’
‘But discovered his soul.’
‘Oh, I grant you,’ said Rampion, ‘sick men are very spiritual. But that’s because they’re not quite men. Eunuchs are very spiritual lovers for the same reason.’
‘But Beethoven wasn’t a eunuch.’
‘I know. But why did he try to be one? Why did he make castration and bodilessness his ideal? What’s this music? Just a hymn in praise of eunuchism. Very beautiful, I admit. But couldn’t he have chosen something more human than castration to sing about?’
Spandrell sighed. ‘To me it’s the beatific vision, it’s heaven.’
‘Not earth. That’s just what I’ve been complaining of.’
‘But mayn’t a man imagine heaven if he wants to?’ asked Mary.
‘Certainly, so long as he doesn’t pretend that his imagination is the last word in truth, beauty, wisdom, virtue and all the rest. Spandrell wants us to accept this disembodied eunuchism as the last word. I won’t. I simply won’t.’
‘Listen to the whole movement, before you judge.’ Spandrell reversed the disc and lowered the needle. The bright heaven of Lydian music vibrated on the air.
‘Lovely, lovely,’ said Rampion, when the record was finished. ‘You’re quite right. It is heaven, it is the life of the soul. It’s the most perfect spiritual abstraction from reality I’ve ever known. But why should he have wanted to make that abstraction? Why couldn’t he be content to be a man and not an abstract soul? Why, why? ‘ He began walking up and down the room. ‘This damned soul,’ he went on, ‘this damned abstract soul—it’s like a kind of cancer, eating up the real, human, natural reality, spreading and spreading at its expense. Why can’t he be content with reality, your stupid old Beethoven? Why should he find it necessary to replace the real, warm, natural thing by this abstract cancer of a soul? The cancer may have a beautiful shape; but, damn it all, the body’s more beautiful. I don’t want your spiritual cancer.’
‘I won’t argue with you,’ said Spandrell He felt all at once extraordinarily tired and depressed. It had been a failure. Rampion had refused to be convinced. Was the proof, after all, no proof? Did the music refer to nothing outside itself and the idiosyncrasies of its inventor? He looked at his watch; it was almost five. ‘Hear the end of the movement at any rate,’ he said. ‘It’s the best part.’ He wound up the gramophone. Even if it’s meaningless, he thought, it’s beautiful, so long as it lasts. And perhaps it isn’t meaningless. After all, Rampion isn’t infallible. ‘Listen.’
The music began again. But something new and marvellous had happened in its Lydian heaven. The speed of the slow melody was doubled; its outlines became clearer and more definite; an inner part began to harp insistently on a throbbing phrase. It was as though heaven had suddenly and impossibly become more heavenly, had passed from achieved perfection into perfection yet more deeper and more absolute. The ineffable peace persisted; but it was no longer the peace of convalescence and passivity. It quivered, it was alive, it seemed to grow and intensify itself, it became an active calm, an almost passionate serenity. The miraculous paradox of eternal life and eternal repose was musically realized.
They listened, almost holding their breaths. Spandrell looked exultantly at his guest. His own doubts had vanished. How could one fail to believe in something which was there, which manifestly existed? Mark Rampion nodded. ‘Almost thou persuadest me,’ he whispered. ‘But it’s too good.’
‘How can anything be too good?’
‘Not human. If it lasted, you’d cease to be a man. You’d die.’
They were silent again. The music played on, leading from heaven to heaven, from bliss to deeper bliss. Spandrell sighed and shut his eyes. His face was grave and serene, as though it had been smoothed by sleep or death. Yes, dead, thought Rampion as he looked at him. ‘He refuses to be a man. Not a man—either a demon or a dead angel. Now he’s dead.’ A touch of discord in the Lydian harmonies gave an almost unbearable poignancy to the beatitude. Spandrell sighed again. There was a knocking at the door. He looked up. The lines of mockery came back into his face, the corners of the mouth became once more ironic.
‘There, he’s the demon again,’ thought Rampion. ‘He’s come to life and he’s the demon.’
‘There they are,’ Spandrell was saying and without answering Mary’s question, ‘Who?’ he walked out of the room.
Rampion and Mary remained by the gramophone, listening to the revelation of heaven. A deafening explosion, a shout, another explosion and another, suddenly shattered the paradise of sound.
They jumped up and ran to the door. In the passage three men in the green uniform of British Freemen were looking down at Spandrell’s body. They held pistols in their hands. Another revolver lay on the floor beside the dying man. There was a hole in the side of his head and a patch of blood on his shirt. His hands opened and shut, opened again and shut, scratching the boards.
‘What has…?’ began Rampion.
‘He fired first,’ one of the men interrupted.
There was a little silence. Through the open door came the sound of music. The passion had begun to fade from the celestial melody. Heaven, in those longdrawn notes, became once more the place of absolute rest, of still and blissful convalescence. Long notes, a chord repeated, protracted, bright and pure, hanging, floating, effortlessly soaring on and on. And then suddenly there was no more music; only the scratching of the needle on the revolving disc.
The afternoon was fine. Burlap walked home. He was feeling pleased with himself and the world at large. ‘I accept the Universe,’ was how, only an hour before, he had concluded his next week’s leader. ‘I accept the Universe.’ He had every reason for accepting it. Mrs. Betterton had given him an excellent lunch and much flattery. The Broad Christian’s Monthly of Chicago had offered him three thousand dollars for the serial rights of his St. Francis and the Modern Psyche. He had cabled back demanding three thousand five hundred. The Broad Christian’s answer had arrived that afternoon; his terms were accepted.
Then there were the Affiliated Ethical Societies of the North of England. They had invited him to deliver four lectures each in Manchester, Bradford,
