“But we thought they had accepted it,” explained the first violinist. “We thought they understood. After all, they said they loved music when we married them.”
“Well,” said the second violinist, “my Gudrun did.” “And my Ludmilla also,” said the violist. “Not really.” The cellist sighed, being realistic. “Ja, that is correct,” the men agreed in unison. There was a four-measure rest in the conversation as they contemplated this phenomenon. For the wives finally came to resent their sleeping places on the floor.
One morning, Gudrun and Ludmilla got together to discuss the situation. Gudrun had arthritis, and she no longer wanted to hunker down on the carpet while the violin slept on her fine feather bed, the high one with the big pillows, between the sheets she had embroidered. And Ludmilla also was having problems sleeping; the throaty whimpers of the viola, expressing ecstasy in the middle of the night, disturbed her. And then they spoke to Olga and to Inge.
“This is too much,” the four wives agreed. Olga, it turned out, wanted to smash the belly of the violoncello, which sang with such pleasure its part in the Brahms quintet each time its owner laid his cheek against its smooth wood. And Inge was jealous of the second violin.
One day, while the men were deep in a rehearsal of the Mozart Quartet in F Major, the four women decided for the first time to enter the room. “It is enough!” said Olga.
The four men played on, oblivious. “Do you hear?” demanded Inge. “It is enough, we say.”
“Shh, my darling,” her husband replied mildly, not taking his eyes from his score. “It must wait till we are finished.”
Gudrun spoke for all four women. “No. It can’t wait another moment.”
Alarmed by this, the four men put down their bows and turned their mild, astonished faces toward their wives. “But darlings, we are rehearsing,” protested the first violinist.
“We don’t care about your rehearsals. We are fed up!” the women shouted.
“Tonight we play in the concert hall; tomorrow we talk,” suggested the cellist reasonably.
“To hell with the concert hall!” shouted Olga boldly. “Yes,” said the other wives, emboldened. “To hell with music. To hell with the Tolstoi Quartet. We want to lie in our own beds!”
The men were astonished by this outcry, so astonished that the violoncello gave a small involuntary scrape of the open G string. “Forgive me,” the cellist said to the instrument. “What is it you wish, my darlings?” he continued, turning to the women, who stood, arms akimbo, hair flying out straight from their heads, glaring at their husbands.
“We want to lie in our own beds,” repeated the women. “Where we belong,” Inge added.
“But, my pets, you know this cannot be,” protested the viola player.
“We know no such thing,” said Gudrun grimly.
The instruments began to whimper, but the men stroked their smooth sides. “Shh.” They turned to the women where they stood blocking the light. “But haven’t you been happy? Haven’t we all been happy together? Don’t we exist to serve music?”
“No!” said the wives together. “We hate music.” At that they took up a little chant and began to prance around the room, shouting, “To hell with music. To hell with music!”
The four men looked at one another. They could not imagine such a thing. “But…,” expostulated the viola player. For fifteen years, they had all lived happily together — the players, their instruments, and the wives.
“You can suppose, my dear Herr Doktor,” confided the first violinist, leaning forward into Herbert’s gaze, “how surprised we were.”
“We must continue our rehearsal,” the first violinist had finally interjected. “Dearest women, we will discuss all this later. But for now, we must rehearse, for we have our concert tonight. Please.” He turned to the other players with iron in his voice. “Gentlemen, measure number one ninety-nine.” At the authority in his voice, the wives subsided, and the four men picked up their instruments and resumed, albeit a bit shakily, where they had left off. “Don’t forget the mezzo forte,” reminded the violinist, and they continued the rehearsal.
“But it didn’t go so well,” recalled the violist. “And the concert that night, it didn’t go so well, either,” added the cellist. “No, we didn’t play well. And I broke a string,” he recalled. The instruments were peevish and bad-tempered and the men a little off. “It happens,” the violinist said to Herbert. “But I remember this night particularly.”
After the concert, the men returned to their homes. Their beds were turned down as usual, and after kissing and polishing and again kissing their instruments, they all slept. The instruments lay in the beds and the wives lay meekly on the rugs beside the beds. All seemed to have been forgotten, and soon this episode receded in everyone’s memory.
But the wives stopped going to the concerts. Where before they had occupied a box of their own in the concert hall, chatting among themselves companionably at intermissions, and, during the performances, knitting endless sweaters, even sweaters for the instrument cases, now they no longer attended. All of Vienna wondered what had happened. But it was supposed that perhaps they were tired of hearing the Beethoven late quartets after fifteen years of faithful attendance. Or perhaps, so used were they to exquisite rehearsals of the works at home, they did not need to be present at the lesser fare for the public. Or maybe, more simply, there was more work to be done at home as the Tolstoi String Quartet became more famous.
And at night, after the concerts, it was different, too. “Good night, my dear friends,” each man would call to the others, as they parted at the street corner in front of their houses. “Good night.” But upon their return, the musicians found no warm supper, no clean towels waiting for them. All was silent. At night, when they entered the bedrooms and prepared to wipe down their instruments, they found their wives, already undressed, stretched out on the beds. “But my darling,” each musician protested to his wife. Without a word, but with a look — oh, a look that carried far more than words — the women got out of bed, naked, and stretched themselves upon the carpet beside the beds, where they would, with cold, passionless eyes, observe the men’s caressing of the musical instruments.
“Turn off the light, Ludmilla,” protested the violist. “It is not decent.” But Ludmilla would not; she would watch and watch and say nothing. The musicians laid their instruments upon their pillows and turned off the lights themselves.
And then Olga, or Inge, or Ludmilla, or Gudrun would whisper into the darkness, but in a sforzando, “I hate music!”
“Shh, my little one,” replied the husbands, stroking the bellies of their waiting, faithful instruments. “You do not know what you are saying.”
“I hate music, I tell you.”
The musicians could not respond; they merely grazed the soft curves of the stringed instruments beside them gently with their lips, and the instruments shuddered with a slight ping of the open G string.
“Furthermore,” added the wives, “I hate your music!”
The men did not respond to these provocations, but their enjoyment of their instruments at night was slightly curtailed. No longer did the instruments sing out with joy; they sang in furtive whispers now.
“I want to sleep in the bed,” the wives whined all night long. The men could hear them turning over on the floor restlessly. “I want the bed! Listen to me,” they complained. Where before the men went to sleep listening to the strains of the Brahms or Schubert they had just finished playing, now their concentration was disturbed.