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“I see. So anyway, it goes like this: Rudi produces an experimental work, whose logic is that of his own associations and not that of the orchestral sounds. He’d be satisfied with even minimal comprehension on the part of the listener; instead, his audience listens only for the sake of the sounds themselves, thus missing the whole point of the work. His hopes dwindle. He gets more and more helpless even when he deliberately restricts the range of associations on which he bases his music, and as he approaches nearer to the conventional, he more and more feels that he’s abandoning what he wants — rather: needs — to achieve.

“If he enlists Jay’s help, it’s because he’s cut himself down to the absolute bearable minimum. Discarding all other sensory cross-references such as those he himself experiences, he thinks he might as well convey plain images of colour and movement rather than nothing at all. Right ? I haven’t a very clear impression of Jay’s work, except for the description Rudi gave me, but he made me feel he didn’t regard it too highly.”

“He does, though. He doesn’t regard Jay himself too highly, which isn’t the same thing.”

“Hmmm!” Howson rubbed his chin. “But the difficulty one always runs up against in every attempt to integrate music and visual impressions is that the machinery is expensive, complicated and generally inadequate. What one needs is an instrument as simple and versatile as a piano, which combines the resources of a colour-organ with those of an unlimited film library.”

Clara stared at him. “Do you know, those are almost exactly the same words that Charma once used to me when things were going badly between Rudi and Jay ?”

“Not surprising. Probably they were the words Rudi himself used.” Howson stared into space. “Clara, let’s go and call on the Homes. There are things I ought to know before I try any therapy for Rudi.”

“You said,” Clara reminded him timidly, “you were on vacation… ?”

“A man at Ulan Bator hospital asked me why I didn’t use my talents for my own satisfaction,” said Howson with a hint of bitterness. “So that’s what I propose to do. I can’t deny that I look forward to seeing Rudi Allef thank me for all I’ve done for him. Only first I’ve got to find something I can do for him. Let’s go.”

29

Jay and Charma lived in a two-room apartment on the top of an old house not far from Grand Avenue. The air was full of dust from the demolition work in progress near by. When the visitors arrived Charma was attempting to cope with the additional housework this caused under a barrage of furious complaints from Jay about the disturbance to his precious equipment. Howson and Clara exchanged glances; they could sense the raised tempers from outside the door.

However, they knocked and were let in, and when Charma had cleared off a couple of chairs and conjured a pot of coffee out of the wrecked-looking kitchenette Howson realized that he could detect a harmony of attitude between the couple which underlay and supported their superficial eternal disagreement. It rather took him aback, but evidently it was a workable arrangement.

He repressed the desire to probe farther and stated the purpose of their call. It wasn’t until he had almost finished that he realized neither Jay nor Charma knew who he really was. He explained, wondering what their reaction would be.

“Good grief!” said Jay, his mild blue eyes growing round with astonishment. “Talk about angels unawares! When I think where poor old Rudi would be now, if it hadn’t been for you—! Thanks, Dr. Howson. I think he was worth saving. He’s going places — even if he does get on my nerves.”

“Call me Gerry,” said Howson, relieved beyond measure at the ready acceptance Jay revealed. “Anyway, I came hoping to see something of what you and Rudi have been doing together.”

“That’s no trouble. Charma, honey, suppose you clear the piano and get out that thing we were looking at yesterday. I’ll turn on the gadgets.”

At one side of the small, crowded room there stood a battered upright piano; Howson hadn’t noticed it for the tangle of electrical and other equipment hanging down over it. When Charma cleared it off, he saw that it wasn’t quite an ordinary piano — it had two additional keyboards, one governing an organ-simulator and the other controlling a battery of strips of tape, each with a separate playing head.

“That’s for special effects,” explained Jay as he went from point to point in the room turning switches. “Rudi is hell for getting everything just so. Now here’s my own particular pet.” And he took the wooden lid off a large glass box like an aquarium, at the bottom of which a pool of luminescent fluid gleamed faintly. A row of coloured lights shone down each side of the tank.

“Lights down,” said Jay, taking his place at a haywire panel of electrical controls. There was darkness as Charma hauled the curtains across the window; by the eerie green glow of the luminous liquid Howson saw her sit down to the piano.

“Watch the tank,” Jay said briefly. “Okay, honey — one, two, three.”

A succession of irregular intervals down the keyboard, ending in a swelling peal of bells from one of the special keys, and shapes began to form in the glass tank: multi-coloured, responding vaguely and randomly to the music. Within a few seconds they were growing definite, and hard square forms followed hard square chords.

Watching intently, Howson thought he detected a shallow, distorted resemblance to certain things he had seen in Rudi’s mind, but how elementary this makeshift was compared to the vivid, far-reaching volumes of association he had perceived there!

The music stopped. “That’s as far as we got with that one,” said Jay coolly. “Open the curtains, there’s a dear.”

And as Charma let in the light, he looked at Howson. He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“It’s clever,” said Howson. “But it’s much too limited for really ambitious treatment.”

Jay looked delighted. “Precisely what I’ve been saying. I’ve gone along with almost everything Rudi has asked me to do, because he’s a genuine creative artist and I’m a tinker. But he’s taken up a hell of a lot of my time, and we don’t seem to have been very happy collaborators. If you’ll come into the other room, I’ll show you what I’m doing myself.”

In the other room there were dozens of the glass tanks ranged on shelves, some of them dusty, all dark and unprepossessing. Jay went to an electric point and plugged in a wandering lead.

“My ‘wet fireworks’, as my beloved wife will insist on calling them,” he murmured. “Watch — this is my latest.”

He connected the lead to a socket beneath one of the larger tanks. A faint light came on; after a pause, it brightened, and a stream of opalescent bubbles began to work their way through the tank in a switchback formation. Shafts of green, yellow and blue shifted through the tank in an irregular series of graceful loops; then a square form in bright red loomed up from a point till it almost filled the side of the tank nearest to the watchers. It vanished, and the graceful swerving curves continued.

“It never repeats itself,” said Jay thoughtfully. “It’s like a kaleidoscope — in fact, I guess that’s what it most resembles.”

“It’s much more successful than what you’ve been doing with Rudi,” said Howson. “But its scope isn’t so great.”

Jay connected another of the tanks; this one was darker, dark red, midnight blue and purple shot with heavy gold and rare flashes of white. His eyes fixed on it, he nodded. “And yet this is what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I’m after something quite simple: I just want to convey movement and colour in a — well, in a beautiful combination. Or an ugly one, come to that. Like this!” He snapped a switch, and a third tank lit — hesitantly moving, abrupt in its changes of colour, the drab pattern dissolving frequently into muddy brown and a sickly olive-grey.