Nocturnes_ Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro [66]
That summer seven years ago had been an unusually warm one, and even in this city of ours, there were times you could believe we were down on the Adriatic. We played outdoors for over four months—under the cafe awning, facing out to the piazza and all the tables—and I can tell you that’s hot work, even with two or three electric fans whirring around you. But it made for a good season, plenty of tourists passing through, a lot from Germany and Austria, as well as natives fleeing the heat down on the beaches. And that was the summer we first started noticing Russians. Today you don’t think twice about Russian tourists, they look like everyone else. But back then, they were still rare enough to make you stop and stare. Their clothes were odd and they moved around like new kids at school. The first time we saw Tibor, we were between sets, refreshing ourselves at the big table the cafe always kept aside for us. He was sitting nearby, continually getting up and repositioning his cello case to keep it in the shade.
“Look at him,” Giancarlo said. “A Russian music student with nothing to live on. So what does he do? Decides to waste his money on coffees in the main square.”
“No doubt a fool,” Ernesto said. “But a romantic fool. Happy to starve, so long as he can sit in our square all afternoon.”
He was thin, sandy-haired and wore unfashionable spectacles—huge frames that made him look like a panda. He turned up day after day, and I don’t remember how exactly it happened, but after a while we began to sit and talk with him in between sets. And sometimes if he came to the cafe during our evening session, we’d call him over afterwards, maybe treat him to some wine and crostini.
We soon discovered Tibor was Hungarian, not Russian; that he was probably older than he looked, because he’d already studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then spent two years in Vienna under Oleg Petrovic. After a rocky start with the old maestro, he’d learnt to handle those legendary temper tantrums and had left Vienna full of confidence—and with a series of engagements in prestigious, if small, venues around Europe. But then concerts began to get cancelled due to low demand; he’d been forced to perform music he hated; accommodation had proved expensive or sordid.
So our city’s well-organised Arts and Culture Festival—which was what brought him here that summer—had been a much-needed boost, and when an old friend from the Royal Academy had offered him a free apartment for the summer down near the canal, he’d taken it up without hesitation. He was enjoying our city, he told us, but cash was always a problem, and though he’d had the occasional recital, he was now having to think hard about his next move.
It was after a while of listening to these worries that Giancarlo and Ernesto decided we should try and do something for him. And that was how Tibor got to meet Mr. Kaufmann, from Amsterdam, a distant relative of Giancarlo’s with connections in the hotel world.
I remember that evening very well. It was still early in the summer, and Mr. Kaufmann, Giancarlo, Ernesto, all the rest of us, we sat indoors, in the back room of the cafe, listening to Tibor play his cello. The young man must have realised he was auditioning for Mr. Kaufmann, so it’s interesting now to remember how keen he was to perform that night. He was obviously grateful to us, and you could see he was pleased when Mr. Kaufmann promised to do what he could for him on his return to Amsterdam. When people say Tibor changed for the worse that summer, that his head got too big for his own good, that this was all down to the American woman, well, maybe there’s something in that.
TIBOR HAD BECOME A WARE of the woman while sipping his first coffee of the day. At that moment, the piazza was pleasantly cool—the cafe end remains