“Well, what?” Lena asks.

“To forget me! Tell them that. I’m retired. Out of it. From work and from life.”

Mick raises his eyes to heaven, as if he has heard this same old song too many times and is sick of it.

“I’ve got nothing to say, and more than anything else, I’m just not interested,” Fred continues.

“Can you give over with this bullshit? You and your music have managed to communicate completely new emotions.”

“But, Mick, the emotions are overrated.”

Mick throws his chopsticks down on the table. He is pissed off. “When you put on the garb of the depressive cynic you’re unbearable. How I’ve managed to stay friends with you all these years is a real mystery.”

“You’re a patient man, Mick.”

“And you’re an idiot.”

“Some truth in that!”

Lena is about to make a comment, but in his anger Mick gets in before her. “A book on your work, about what you’ve experienced, will be there for ever. It’ll help young musicians – everyone. It’s important—”

Fred interrupts him. “Yes, it’s important . . . You have to leave a memento for future generations, hand your knowledge down . . . I’ve heard the same old story for years . . . but they’re just a feeble excuse, Mick, a means of pretending not to see the one great problem.”

“And what’s the one great problem?”

“Death, Mick! Death. Lurking just around the corner.”

“Yes, and while you’re thinking about death lurking round the corner, you forget to live. Even while you’re alive.” Mick nods vigorously as he turns to Lena. “You know why he pisses me off?”

“Yes, she does know why,” Fred replies.

“But doesn’t running through your life and work again hold any fascination for you?” his daughter asks.

“No. It makes me feel ill. Can’t you two understand that? Besides, there’s nothing to say. Stravinsky said it all. He started to compose simple music and they all attacked him. ‘Sacrilege’, they said. ‘He’s deserted Modernism’, the critics thundered. But he was only rediscovering the past and its mirror. And then he said to them this wonderful thing: ‘You respect, but I love.’ What can I add to that?”

Lena and Mick say nothing more. Fred picks up his chopsticks again and holds them in mid-air without eating. Lena stares at him.

Completely unexpectedly, the boy who plays the violin approaches. Fred does not even notice him.

With great delicacy, the boy moves the hand that holds the chopsticks by three centimetres, as if to correct its position. Fred raises his eyes and gives him a mournful smile.

The boy smiles back at him and then nothing more. He runs off, as all children do, needing to keep on the move all the time.

40

On the stage in the hotel garden, a fakir is lying on a bed of nails.

At a table, Lena, Fred, Mick and Jimmy Tree are watching. “These performances are really depressing,” Jimmy says. “All we need now is the mime artist.”