The Concert Pianist Read Online Free PDF

passing waiter. ‘I’m not depressed. Just desperate.’
    â€˜Even better, “Ivan the Absolutely Terrible”. Girls from Slovenia, lap dancing, American cigarettes, everybody in kind of fantasy. Let me take you there. You have some therapy for your desperation.’
    â€˜Only you would call lap dancing therapy.’
    â€˜Cheaper than psychoanalyst.’
    â€˜But more expensive for your marriage!’
    Vadim was not so sure about that. ‘Marriage is maybe another kind of Russian roulette.’
    â€˜Getting married to you would be. With all the chambers loaded.’
    He liked this and smiled appreciatively. ‘Philip, you must try to have more pumpy rumpy.’
    Philip grimaced and shook his head. ‘You’re a bad boy.’
    The trolley rolled up to the table. Hot plates were distributed, space organised. Vadim followed the arriving trays with interest: chicken tikka masala, sag aloo, a team of onion bhajis in case there was a hole in his total satisfaction after the set-pieces had been obliterated. He took a long draught from his lager. Both pints were his.
    Philip lit up a cigarette, exhaled away from the table. He regarded the food neutrally as it mounted higher on Vadim’s plate.
    They had met years ago when Philip was touring the Ukraine, and Vadim was a remarkable eighteen-year-old with two international piano competitions behind him. Like most young pianists he idolised Philip, was honoured to meet him. Philip reciprocated with the older pianist’s judicious reserve. In fact, both saw elements in the other’s playing beyond his own capabilities without realising the envy was symmetrical. If Vadim regarded Philip as a role model, Philip might consider Vadim a successor of sorts. A latent rivalry was thus relaxed. Later, in England, after Vadim had won the Leeds, Philip helped him find a flat, contacts, and representation. Vadim joined a growing band of world-class pianists who had made London their home. For a while, they lived around the corner from each other, went to concerts together, and sometimes shared a platform.
    For Vadim, London was a relief. He was liberated from his uncle and the madness of Moscow, and took in the galleries and parks with elation. If nowadays there was no aristocracy to greet and pamper musical genius, Vadim would flaunt the peacock fan of his talent by insisting on freedom. He did what he liked, when he liked, odd things, good things, reckless things, and made it clear to everybody involved in his life that this was the way it had to be because he could not suffer boredom, and only worked hard when the cross-hairs of a growing obsessive-compulsiveness were aimed at the keyboard, frequently, but not often enough for a pianist who wants to conquer the world. Having been tied to the piano through his teens, he would no longer be tied to anything. He needed to displace the energy focused to an unbearable degree by his training and talent. This Philip expected. What bothered him was Vadim’s new tendency to use dissipation almost as a means to electrical pianism. His unruly lifestyle generated mood-swings that infected his playing, sometimes dazzlingly. Every concert became a kind of crisis, with higher stakes, and mixed results. Brutality had crept into his touch, for sure, mirroring the conduct of his marriage. Already, alas, there had been infidelities, casual cruelties. Marguerite was possessive, but Vadim was impossible to own, and already the pact was in train whereby heady acclaim set the seal on an independence no valuable relationship could survive. These days he was a good companion only to those who made no demands and were tolerantly dazzled by his company. More responsible relations he found suffocating or tedious. Philip feared both a moral decline and an emotional depletion. He feared that Vadim would evade the maturing bonds he needed most. How to say this was another matter.
    After an interlude, Vadim wiped his