Mel made an immediate try to get personal. ‘This is my third this morning. All that caffeine. It starts off in my lodgings. Mrs. Carlyle, my landlady, wants to talk in the mornings and I don’t. I get through more of this than I should.’
‘Are you comfortable where you are?’
‘No complaints on that score. How’s your place?’
Ivan looked into his cup, taking a moment to decide whether he wanted to open up. ‘Adequate. I wouldn’t put it higher than that. They say they don’t mind me practising, but when I do, they turn up the volume on the television. I can hear it in my room with the door closed.’
‘A couple, are they?’
‘Civil partners, I think, is the term.’
‘Same sex?’
‘Gay men, yes. I don’t mind that. They keep the house in immaculate order. But they like to economise on the heating so the water is barely warm. I’m not looking forward to the winter.’
‘I thought you’d be used to cold winters.’
‘Outside, yes, but we were always warm inside. Old-fashioned brick-built Russian stoves are very efficient.’
‘Where were you brought up — Moscow?’
‘Odessa.’
‘So you’re Ukrainian now.’
‘Always was,’ Ivan said with a defiant tilt of the head.
‘Not a bad place to be a string player.’
‘The only place. Heifitz, the Oistrakhs, Zimbalist, Milstein.’
‘What a line-up.’
‘There are more I could name. It’s a world-wide phenomenon. Do you know the story about Isaac Stern when President Kennedy made him responsible for intercultural exchanges with the Soviet Union? Someone said to Stern that it must be a difficult job. He said, “On the contrary, it’s a piece of cake. They send us their violinists from Odessa and we send them our violinists from Odessa.” ’
An amusing story from Ivan? This was better than Mel could have wished for. ‘You started early, no doubt?’
‘Didn’t we all?’
Mel nodded. He couldn’t think of a top violinist who hadn’t begun as a child.
Without any more prompting, Ivan launched into his story. ‘I was giving recitals at ten years old. My parents were elderly and wanted to see me established as a musician, good enough to make my own way in the world when they passed on, so I mastered the basics early in life. I was accepted by the State Conservatory at fifteen, and there I learned about intonation and phrasing and so on. At seventeen I was playing in the Odessa Philharmonic. A year later I got an audition for the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and was accepted.’
‘Leaving your birthplace?’
‘I’d already decided to escape from the Soviet system. It was all the things you hear, oppressive, rigid, without a heart. The music we were playing spoke of joy, freedom, spirit and didn’t square with the life we were living. So I had this unstoppable urge to leave. To defect, I would need to get a trip abroad. Odessa was classed as a regional city by the State, which meant no orchestra from there was allowed to travel. You had to play in Moscow or Leningrad, as it was known, if you wanted to visit the west.’
‘How old were you when you got out?’
‘Barely twenty, but old enough to know what I was doing. This was in the mid-eighties. I was friendly with some of the top chess players. I play a good game, up to tournament standard. At that time chess players were defecting regularly and some of them told me how to go about it. The main thing was to get invited to the west as part of a larger unit.’
‘Like the ballet stars who came over with the Kirov company?’
‘I suppose, yes.’ He didn’t seem to like the comparison. ‘Anyway, I would be well placed with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.’
‘I can understand that. They have a terrific reputation.’
Ivan shrugged. ‘More important to me, they often toured abroad. Six months after joining, I travelled with them to Frankfurt, gave the slip to our minders, got in a taxi and paid him over the odds to drive me to another town and stay silent. I asked for political asylum and never saw my parents again. This was 1987. They were dead before the wall came down.’
‘That was hard.’
‘Life was hard — then and for the next few years. I wasn’t a name. I couldn’t survive by playing my fiddle, but I had no other trade, so I worked as a hospital porter and mortuary attendant. These hands have performed tasks you wouldn’t want to know about.’
‘Better than working as a brickie. You wouldn’t want to damage your fingers.’
‘I would have earned more as a builder or a docker, it’s true. You’re right. I had to think of my hands.’
‘And obviously you got back to playing?’
‘I was always playing. Music is therapy. It nurtured my soul.’ An extraordinary stillness came over Ivan.
Mel understood why.
‘I kept my fiddle through the hard times and didn’t change it until I was offered the use of a Strad — practising as often as I could and I also took on some teaching and ensemble work. If you have a talent and you don’t neglect it, the opportunities come. I filled in with various ensembles across western Europe and eventually got to England and found an opening with the Bournemouth Symphony. A happy choice.’
‘Have you been back to Odessa?’
‘Once, with the quartet. I found it much changed, but the music is still of the highest quality. Do you know it?’
Mel shook his head. ‘I haven’t travelled much.’
‘From now on, you will.’
‘I still find it hard to believe you took me on.’
‘It wasn’t a snap decision. We heard a number of others.’
‘Will Douglas be looking for more engagements for us?’
‘Undoubtedly. He wanted to see if we got along together, if the chemistry was right.’
‘It wasn’t this morning.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ve come through worse. We can all be prima donnas on our day. It’s when we’re on tour and compelled to travel with each other and not speaking that things get difficult. But I suspect all quartets are like that. It’s not as if we’ve promised to love, honour and obey. We happen to be stuck with each other like four prisoners in a cell.’
Mel grinned. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘Now you know why I didn’t want us sharing a house.’
‘I guess respect is what we should aim for.’
‘Exactly.’
Becoming more confident, Mel asked, ‘You chose me for my musicianship alone, is that right? You didn’t ask about my temperament.’
‘Or if you’re an axe murderer?’ Ivan said without a flicker of amusement. ‘No, we judged you on your playing, first and last, and we expect the same consideration from you.’
‘You’ve got it.’
He added a sly postscript. ‘Of course it will be inconvenient if you’re picked up by the police.’
‘You’ll bail me out?’
This prompted a rare smile. ‘If we’re not in custody ourselves. You have no idea what we’re capable of.’
Not a topic to explore, Mel thought. Ivan had mellowed in the last few minutes, but there were limits. ‘Will Anthony come round, or does he want some kind of apology?’
‘It will be as if nothing happened. An apology is needed and it should come from him, but he won’t give one. We’ll begin again when Cat is restored to her boisterous best. I hope your health is reliable.’
‘Usually.’
‘I haven’t missed a rehearsal or a concert since the quartet was formed, so I feel I have a right to expect high standards of others.’
‘What’s your secret — vitamin pills?’ Mel asked, keen to lighten the mood again.
‘A balanced life. I still play chess, these days more on the internet than with a real person across the board, more’s the pity. Do you play?’