Spring 2007

Ravel, an excerpt
Jean Echenoz

1

Leaving the bathtub is sometimes quite annoying. First of all, it's a shame to abandon the soapy lukewarm water, where stray hairs wind around bubbles among the scrubbed-off skin cells, for the chill atmosphere of a poorly heated house. Then, if one is even a bit short, and the side of that claw-footed tub a bit high, it's always a challenge to swing a leg over the edge to feel around, with a hesitant toe, for the slippery tile floor. One should proceed with caution to avoid bumping one's crotch or risking a nasty fall. The solution to this predicament would be of course to order a custom-made bathtub, but that entails expenses, perhaps even exceeding the cost of the recently installed but still inadequate central heating. Better to remain submerged up to the neck in the bath for hours, if not forever, using one's right foot to periodically manipulate the hot-water faucet, thus adjusting the thermostat to maintain a comfortable amniotic ambience.

But that cannot last: time presses, as always, and Hélène Jourdan Morhange will arrive within the hour. So Ravel climbs out of his bathtub and, when dry, slips into a dressing gown of a refined pearl gray to clean his teeth with his angle-headed toothbrush; shave without missing one whisker; comb every hair straight back; pluck a stubborn eyebrow bristle that has grown overnight into an antenna. Next, selecting an elegant satin-lined manicure case of finest "lizard-grained" kid from among the hairbrushes, ivory combs, and scent bottles on the dressing table, he takes advantage of the hot water's softening effect on his fingernails to cut them painlessly to the correct length. He glances out the window of the tastefully arranged bathroom: beneath the bare trees, the garden is black and white, the short grass dead, the fountain paralyzed by frost. It is early on one of the last days of 1927. Having slept little and poorly, as he does every night, Ravel is in a bad mood, as he is every morning, without even an inkling of what to wear, which increases his ill humor.

He climbs the stairs of his small, complicated house: three stories, seen from the garden, but only one is visible from the front. On the third floor, which is thus level with the street, he examines the latter from a hall window to estimate the number of layers enveloping passersby, hoping to get some idea of what to put on. But it is much too early for the town of Montfort-l'Amaury. There is nobody and nothing but a little Peugeot 201, all gray and showing its age, already parked in front of his house with Hélène at the wheel. There is nothing else at all to see. A pale sun sits in the overcast sky.

There is nothing to be heard anywhere, either. Silence reigns in the kitchen, Ravel having told Mme. Révelot not to come in while he is away. He is running late as usual, grumbling as he lights a cigarette, forced to dress too quickly at the same time, snatching up whatever clothing comes to hand. Then it's his packing that exasperates him, even though he has only an overnight bag to fill; his squadron of suitcases was transferred to Paris two days ago. Once he is ready, Ravel checks his house, verifying that all the windows are closed, the back door locked, the gas in the kitchen and the electric meter in the front hall turned off. It really is a small place and the inspection doesn't last long, but one can never be too careful. Ravel confirms for the last time that he has indeed turned off the boiler before he leaves, muttering furiously again when he opens the door and icy air suddenly buffets his backswept and still-damp white hair.

So: at the bottom of the flight of eight narrow steps, the 201 sits parked, its brakes gripping the sloping street, with Hélène shivering at the wheel, which she drums on with fingers left bare by her buttercup-yellow knit driving gloves. Hélène is a rather attractive woman who might look somewhat like Orane Demazis, to those who remember that actress, but at that time quite a few women had something of Orane Demazis about them. Hélène has turned up the collar of her skunk fur coat, beneath which she wears a crepe dress of a delicate peach color with a vegetal motif and a waistline dropped so low that the bodice seems more like a jacket, while the skirt sports a decorative belt with a horn buckle. Very pretty. She has been waiting patiently. For what is beginning to feel like a long time.

For more than half an hour, on this frigid morning between two holidays, Hélène has been waiting for Ravel, who appears at last, carrying his overnight case; as for his ensemble, he is wearing a slate-gray suit beneath his short, chocolate-brown overcoat. Not bad either, although old-fashioned and perhaps a touch lightweight for the season. Cane hooked over his forearm, gloves folded back at the wrist, he looks like a stylish punter or even an owner in the stands for the running of the Prix de Diane or the weighing-in at Enghien, but a breeder less interested in his yearling than in dissociating himself from the classic gray cutaways or linen blazers. He climbs briskly into the Peugeot, sits back with a sigh and, pinching the pleats of his trousers at the knees, tugs gently to keep them from bagging. Well, he says, undoing the top button of his overcoat, I believe we can get going. Turned toward him, Hélène swiftly inspects Ravel from head to toe: his lisle socks and silk pocket handkerchief, as always, nicely match his tie.

You might perhaps have had me wait in your house rather than in the car, she ventures, starting the engine. You could see how cold it is. With quite a dry smile, Ravel points out that he had to do a little straightening up before his departure, it was quite a chore, he was dashing all over. On top of not getting a wink of sleep, as usual, he also had to rise at dawn and he hates that, she knows how he hates that. And besides she knows perfectly well how tiny his place is, they would have been in each other's way. All the same, observes Hélène, you've made me catch my death. Nonsense, Hélène, he says, lighting a Gauloise. Really . . . and when does it leave, exactly, this train?

Twelve past eleven, replies Hélène, letting in the clutch, and in next to no time they drive across Montfort-l'Amaury, as frozen and deserted as an ice floe in the steely light. Near the church, before they leave Montfort, they pass in front of a large bourgeois mansion where the yellow rectangle of one upstairs window leads Ravel to remark that his friend Zogheb seems to be already awake, after which they press on to Versailles, where they take the Avenue de Paris. When Hélène hesitates at an intersection, letting the car drift for a moment, Ravel frets briefly. But you're such a bad driver! he exclaims. My brother Édouard is much better at this. I don't think you'll ever get there. As they approach Sèvres, Hélène again brakes suddenly when she spots a man on the sidewalk, wearing a felt hat and carrying under one arm what looks like a large painting tied up in newspaper. Since the man seems to be waiting, she stops to let him cross but above all to study Ravel, whose face is more lean, pale, and drawn than ever: when he closes his eyes for a second, he resembles his own death mask. Aren't you feeling well?

He says that he's all right, that he should be fine but that he still feels quite run-down. After ordering a battery of tests for him, his doctor, upset by Ravel's refusal of the prescribed year of complete rest, wanted to put him on stimulants to prepare him for this trip. Which meant that he had to undergo massive injections of cytoserum and natrum cacodylate, and extracts of pituitary and adrenal glands—it was one shot after another, not much fun. And in spite of everything he's still not really feeling like his old self. When Hélène suggests that he change treatments, he replies that a colleague has just written him with the same advice, urging him to try homeopathy: some people simply swear by it, homeopathy. Well, fine, he'll look into it when he returns. Then he falls silent to watch Sèvres slip past for a moment but in fact there's nothing much to see this morning in Sèvres either, except gray locked-up buildings, black shut-up cars, dark buttoned-up clothing, somber hunched-up shoulders. He's not all that sure anymore that he feels like leaving, now. It's always the same story, isn't it: he accepts these offers without thinking about them and at the last moment they drive him to despair. And what about the cigarettes—is Hélène quite certain that his cigarettes will be delivered to him throughout the trip? Hélène replies that it has all been arranged. And the tickets? She does have the tickets? Everything is here, says Hélène, pointing to her purse.

They enter Paris by the Porte de Saint-Cloud, find the Seine, and follow its embankments to Concorde, where they turn north to speed through the city toward the Gare Saint-Lazare. Things are livelier than in the western suburbs, obviously, but not really by much. They see men on bicycles, women without hats, posters on walls, quite a few automobiles, including the occasional luxury model from Panhard-Levasseur or Rosengart. Coming to the end of the Rue de la Pépinière, for example, they notice, heading down the Rue de Rome, a long, two-toned Salmson VAL3, as sleek as a pimp's pumps.

Shortly before ten o'clock, Hélène parks her humble Peugeot in front of the Hôtel Terminus, whence they proceed to the Criterion, a bar on the Cour du Havre where Ravel is a regular and two singers of the kind known in those days as chanteuses intelligentes, Marcelle Gérar and Madeleine Grey, are waiting patiently with their hot drinks. Ravel takes his sweet time ordering a coffee, then another that he drinks even more slowly while the three young women, exchanging questioning looks, consult the clock on the wall with increasing frequency. Growing worried, they finally move things along, deciding to escort Ravel resolutely across the street to the station, which they enter a good half-hour before the departure of the train. The special isn't even at the platform when they arrive, Ravel leading the way, trailed by his friends who are helping, more or less, two porters from the Terminus drag along his four bulky suitcases plus a trunk. This luggage is quite heavy, but these young women are so very fond of music.

Leaning out over the tracks, Ravel lights a Gauloise before pulling from his overcoat pocket a copy of L'Intransigeant, which he has just bought at a kiosk after failing to find his customary Le Populaire. Since the year is almost over, the newspaper sums it up in time-honored fashion, recalling the reestablishment of constituency polls, the launching of the ocean liner Cap Arcona, the electrocution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the production of the first talking picture, and the invention of television. Although unable to include everything that has happened worldwide this year in the field of music (the birth of Gerry Mulligan, for example), L'Intransigeant does mention the recent inauguration of the concert hall Salle Pleyel, over which Ravel lingers, seeking and finding his name, then shrugs his shoulders. When the breathless young women rejoin him, leaving the factotums of the Terminus to pile the baggage into a pyramidion on the edge of the platform, Hélène inquires timidly about the latest news, gesturing toward the paper. Nothing much, he replies, nothing much. In any case, it's a right-wing paper, isn't it.

The special arrives at last, hauled by a type 120 locomotive, a hybrid version of the high-speed 111 Buddicom. The porters begin stowing the luggage in the baggage compartments while Ravel takes his leave of the ladies, deploying his very best manners: compliments and hand-kisses, thanks and professions of friendship. Then he gets on the train and easily finds his reserved seat in the first-class car, by the window, which he lowers. They engage in more smiling and ever-smaller small talk until departure time, when the ladies pluck from their purses handkerchiefs they then begin to wave. Ravel waves nothing, contenting himself with one last wry smile and an uplifted hand before closing the window and returning to his paper.

He is leaving for the harbor station at Le Havre to sail to North America. It is his first trip there; it will be his last. He now has ten years, on the nose, left to live.

2

As for the ocean liner France, second of that name, aboard which Ravel will head off to America, she still has nine active years ahead of her before her sale to the Japanese for scrap. Flagship of the transatlantic fleet, a mass of riveted steel capped with four smokestacks (one a dummy), she is a block 723 feet long and 75 feet wide, sent into service twenty-five years ago from the Ateliers de Saint-Nazaire-Penhoët. From first to fourth class, the vessel can carry some two thousand passengers besides her five hundred crewmen and officers. This ship of 22,500 tons burden—propelled at a cruising speed of twenty-three knots by four groups of Parsons turbines fed by thirty-two Prudhon-Capus boilers generating 40,000 units of horsepower—needs only six days for a smooth transatlantic voyage, while the fleet's other steamers, less powerfully driven, take nine to huff and puff across.

A Ritz or Plaza under steam, the France triumphs not only in speed but in comfort as well: Ravel has barely stepped on board when a band of impeccable cabin boys in brand-new red livery leads him along stairs and passageways to his reserved suite. It's a luxurious apartment with chintz curtains, inlaid woodwork of sycamore and Hungarian oak, kingwood and bird's-eye maple, furniture of citron wood and palisander, and a bathroom suite of vermeil and clouded marble. After rapidly inspecting the premises, Ravel glances out one of the portholes that still, for the time being, overlook the quay: he observes the throng of well-wishers jostling one another while waving handkerchiefs—as at Saint-Lazare—but hats and flowers as well and other things besides. He doesn't try to recognize anyone in that crowd; although he welcomed an escort to the train station, he prefers to set sail on his own. After he has taken off his coat, unpacked three items, and arranged his toilet articles around the sinks, Ravel goes off to reserve a seat in the dining room from the maitre d', then a steamer chair from the deck steward. Waiting for the ship to get under way, Ravel spends a few moments in the nearest smoking lounge, where the mahogany walls are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There he has one or two more Gauloises and—judging from certain lingering or averted looks, certain discreet or knowing smiles—the impression that people have recognized him.

That's not unusual, and with good reason: fifty-two years old, he is at the height of his fame, Stravinsky his only rival as the world's most revered musician, and Ravel's picture is often in the papers. That isn't unusual, either, given his appearance: his lean, close-shaven face and long narrow nose form two triangles set perpendicularly to each other. Dark eyes; a restless, piercing gaze; bushy eyebrows; hair slicked back to reveal a high forehead; thin lips; prominent ears without lobes; a matte complexion. Elegantly aloof, icily polite, not particularly talkative, he is a man of courteous simplicity, gaunt but jaunty, dressed to the nines at all times.

He was not always so clean-shaven, however. In his youth he tried everything: sideburns at twenty-five, with a monocle and chatelaine, then a pointed beard at thirty followed by a squared beard and, later, a trial run with a mustache. At thirty-five he shaved all that off, at the same time taming his mane, which went from bouffant to permanently severe and sleek and quickly white. But his chief characteristic is his shortness, which pains him and makes his head seem a little too large for his body. Five feet three inches; ninety-nine pounds; thirty inches around the chest. Ravel has the build of a jockey and thus of William Faulkner who, at the time, is dividing his life between two cities (Oxford, Mississippi, and New Orleans), two books (Mosquitoes and Sartoris), and two whiskeys (Jack Daniel's and Jack Daniel's).

A blurry sun sits in the cloudy sky when Ravel, alerted by the sirens announcing that the anchor is weighed, goes to the veranda deck of the liner to observe the activity from inside the enclosed promenade. The deep fatigue of which he complained that morning in the Peugeot seems to vanish at the song of the three-ton sirens: suddenly he feels light, enthusiastic, charged with enough energy to go out into the fresh air. But that doesn't last: very soon he feels very cold without his overcoat, pulls his jacket tightly closed across his chest, and shivers. The wind has come up suddenly, clamping his clothes against his skin, denying their existence and function, attacking the surface of his body head-on, so that the man feels naked and must try repeatedly to light a cigarette, since the matches haven't time to catch fire. He finally succeeds but then it's the Gauloise, which, as in the mountains (brief memory of the sanatorium), no longer tastes right: the wind is taking advantage of the smoke to slip alongside it into Ravel's lungs, now chilling his body from the inside, assailing him from all directions, taking his breath away, mussing his hair, sending cigarette ash into his eyes and onto his clothes—he's overmatched, best beat a retreat. He returns with everyone else to the shelter of the glass wall to observe the steamship's maneuvers as she turns heavily in the harbor, crosses the roads, bellowing as she goes, and emerges grandly off Sainte-Adresse and the Cap de la Hève.

Since they are swiftly out at sea, the passengers have just as swiftly lost interest in the view. One after another has deserted the enclosure to go marvel at the sumptuous fittings of the France, her bronzes and rosewood, gilt and damask, carpets and candelabras. Ravel remains, preferring to contemplate as long as possible the green and gray surface streaked fleetingly with white, which might furnish him with a melodic line, a rhythm, a leitmotif, who knows. He's well aware that it never works that way, that inspiration does not exist, that composition takes place only at the keys. Still, since this is the first time he has ever seen such a spectacle, it doesn't hurt to try. After a moment, however, it seems that no motif has presented itself and that Ravel, too, is growing bored: the shadow of tedium has its foot in the door, hand in hand with the boomerang return of fatigue—which incoherent reflections provide more proof that it wouldn't be a bad idea to rest awhile. Ravel wanders in the bowels of the ship looking for his suite, almost amused to be lost in that apartment house on the high seas. Back in his quarters, he lies down on the bed to wait for Southampton, where the France will put in only briefly toward sunset. After which, the Atlantic crossing will truly begin.

Once more he feels weak, having breakfasted barely at all on a hardboiled egg he downed on the quay, and besides, the huge volume of sea air has saturated his frail chest. Stretched out, he tries to nap for a moment, but since his nervous tension is at war with his weakness, this conflict merely goads both increasingly exasperated contenders into engendering a third malaise that is mental and physical and greater than the sum of its parts. Although Ravel sits up and attempts to read, his eyes skid over the lines without grasping the slightest meaning. He gives in and gets up, pacing the suite, studying it in detail without any better result, and finally decides to rummage through his suitcases to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything. No, not a thing. In addition to a small blue valise crammed full of Gauloises, the other bags contain—among other things—sixty shirts, twenty pairs of shoes, seventy-five ties, and twenty-five pajamas that, given the principle of the part for the whole, offer some idea of the scope of his wardrobe.

He has always taken care with the selection, maintenance, and replacement of his clothes. When not following the latest fashions, he invariably precedes them: he was the first in France to wear pastel shirts, the first to dress entirely in white if he so chose (pullover, trousers, socks, shoes), and he has always been most attentive and particular on this point. In his youth he was observed wearing formal black with a stunning vest, a jabot at his neck, an opera hat, and butter-yellow gloves. He was observed with Satie in a raglan overcoat and bowler hat, carrying a Malacca cane with a curved handle (this was before Satie began bad-mouthing him). He was observed gazing into the distance, one hand tucked inside the front of a frock coat, and this time sporting a cronstadt hat, during a candidates' recess at the Prix de Romecompetition—this was before he'd failed the examination five times in a row, having taken too many liberties with the assigned cantatas for the jury members not to have taken umbrage, declaring that although Ravel had the right to consider them fuddy-duddies, he would not get away with treating them as idiots. He was observed in a black and white suit, black-and-white-striped socks, white shoes, and a straw hat, his arm still prolonged by his cane, the cane being to the hand what a smile is to the lips. He was observed as well, chez Alma Mahler, upholstered in a striking taffeta—this was also before Alma let some ambiguous gossip about him flourish unchecked. Apart from all that, he owns a black dressing gown embroidered in gold and two tuxedos, one in Paris, the other in Montfort.

When, announcing Southampton, the sirens raise their voices once again, Ravel dons his overcoat to go watch the ship draw alongside the quay. Viewed from the upper deck, in the abruptly fallen darkness, the port is much better illuminated once the yellowy spangles of the street lamps have outlined both banks of the channel leading into the harbor. Ravel begins to discern the frames of the tall cranes looming over the piers, a Mauretania in dry dock, the bronze angel towering atop the Titanic memorial, and a green train of the Southern Railway sitting alongside the quay on which, shortly before the steamship berths, Ravel also notices a small group of people. When the vessel has been made fast, one of them steps forward, folder in hand, and climbs briskly on board as soon as the gangway has been secured.

Gentle voice, sage expression, sober dress, wing collar, monocle: Georges Jean-Aubry seems like a professor or a lawyer or a doctor, or else a professor of legal medicine. Ravel met him more than thirty years ago, Salle Érard, at the premiere of his Miroirs performed by Ricardo Viñes. Jean-Aubry, who lives in London, has traveled to Southampton to greet Ravel during this brief stopover and present him with a copy of La Flèche d'or, his just-completed translation of Joseph Conrad's The Arrow of Gold, to be published in the coming year by Gallimard. Convenient reading material, he thinks, for Ravel during the voyage. As for Conrad, he has been dead for three years.

3

Three years before Conrad died, Ravel and Jean-Aubry had gone to see him. The visit had been no picnic. More solidly built than Ravel, Conrad was, like him, a short man of angular features and rather few words. And even less inclined to pour out his feelings, given his ill health, neurasthenia, erratic moods, his wrists and fingers crippled with gout and lumbago. When he was willing to talk, it was in colorful French with a Marseilles accent, a souvenir of his first stay in France: three years aboard various vessels of the Compagnie Delestang & Fils, as a passenger at first, then an apprentice in the merchant marine, then a steward, before his attempt to kill himself—when he aimed to put a bullet through his heart but missed, right after Ravel was born.

So, Ravel often proving, like Conrad, not too chatty, their conversation had had a tendency to dry up, despite a few oases where the former spoke guardedly of his enjoyment of the latter's writing, while the latter strove tactfully to hide his ignorance of the former's music. In this desert, Jean-Aubry had shuttled between the two mutes like an exhausted fireman, trying to bestow upon each one in turn a little artificial respiration. On the deck of the France, that meeting evokes a few brief memories, and after Jean-Aubry promises to send Ravel a copy of Frère-de-la-côte, his translation of Conrad's The Rover, also recently completed and due to appear at the same time as La Flèche d'or, the sirens bring that conversation to an end and it's adieu Southampton.

Back in his suite, Ravel doesn't feel up to changing for dinner. All things considered, tired as he is, this evening he doesn't really feel like facing the dining room, either. Informing the staff of this after having room service bring him a Pernod, he prefers to compose his menu himself, finding it amusing to reproduce his daily terrestrial fare in Montfort-l'Amaury out on the high seas: mackerel au vinaigre, a thick steak (bleu), some gruyère, fruit in season, and a carafe of white to wash everything down.

Then it's still early, not even nine-thirty once all that has been eaten. After dinner at Montfort, ordinarily, since sleep is inconceivable, the night has barely begun. The reduced scale of Ravel's home condenses a wealth of possible activities, even though they may be only momentary, or merely idle impulses. From the kitchen to the drawing room, via the library and the piano, a last little turn around the garden—Ravel can have lots to do even though he doesn't do a thing, until he must finally head off to bed after all. But here? No distractions, no tasks, no attachments, no desire, either, to go kill time in the bars or the gaming rooms of the France. Although his suite is of course smaller than the house in Montfort, it produces a doubly inverse effect: too roomy in one sense, at the same time it allots his body the precise range allowed by a hospital room—a vital but atrophied space with nothing to cling to but oneself, and which still feels like a floating sanatorium. Ravel turns to the first page of Jean-Aubry's Conrad translation and considers the first sentence: The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only&$8212;not a bad start but this evening no, not in the mood. Once won't matter, why doesn't he just go to bed.

So here he is undressing. Then, after hesitating over his pajamas—in the green spectrum—and finally opting for the emerald instead of the veronese, he unfolds one of his twenty-five pairs of sleepwear. So doing, he yawns and feels drowsy, which comforts him in his decision. He turns off all the lights except the bedside lamp, intending to read awhile after all before trying to sleep. Once in bed, he opens the translation again, tackling the second sentence and pressing on: She seems to have been the writer's childhood's friend. They had parted as children, or very little more than children. Years passed, his eyes are already blinking by the end of the fourth sentence, he has completely lost track, he'll try again tomorrow. Reaching confidently for the lamp, as if they were old friends, Ravel turns out the light, and at barely ten o'clock, drops off—he who invariably chases sleep until dawn only to snag just some mediocre cut-rate, secondhand variety or indeed none at all—like a rock down a well.

He sleeps and the next day, as on each day from time immemorial on the ocean liners of the world, everyone is served a cup of bouillon at eleven o'clock out on deck. Wrapped in a thick plaid blanket on a deck chair, nice and warm despite the salt spray, you sip the steaming bouillon while contemplating the ocean; it's quite pleasant. Deck chairs like these, soon to appear in gardens and on beaches, on terraces and balconies, are currently to be found only on the decks of transatlantic liners, which appellation they will keep, out of attachment, when they set foot ashore.

Ravel's chair has blue and white stripes, and the promenade deck, made of yellow pine from the Canary Islands, is veined with red. So: Ravel is gazing at the ocean like the other passengers without striking up a relationship with them, that's not in his nature. Although he has given up the cold aloofness of his youth, he has hardly become a man who throws his arms around other people. To his right is a couple who look like industrialists; to the left, a woman of thirty-five completely on her own, her eyes moving back and forth between oceanic contemplation and the reading of a book that almost causes Ravel, who is trying to decipher its title, to discreetly dislocate his neck.

As for him, open upon his knees lies the manuscript left by Jean-Aubry, introduced by the author as "A Story Between Two Notes." Ravel has just finished reading the first one—A remarkable instance of the great power of mere individuality over the young&$8212;and now, his bouillon finished, since the air is growing chilly, he abandons the deck for the reading room, pausing along the way to examine the décor of the grand staircase of yellow and gray Lunel marble, a replica of the one in the mansion of the Comte de Toulouse in Rambouillet. While the other passengers scatter, some toward the gymnasium or the squash court, others toward the pool, the electric Turkish baths, or the miniature golf course, perhaps the boat deck for a game of shuffleboard, or the smoking room to be fleeced by professional cheats, Ravel prefers to continue reading while awaiting lunchtime. When the moment arrives, however, rather than proceed to the dining room where he has a reserved seat, he elects to postpone the meal, which he'll eat a little later at the à la carte restaurant. Fewer restrictions there: one goes when one likes and eats what one likes. As it is the last day of the year, the evening threatens to be long, lively, bountiful, noisy—in the expectation of which, Ravel prefers to eat lightly.

The afternoon begins at the movie theater, with Napoléon, which along with Metropolis has just tolled the knell for silent films. Ravel watches this film for the second time without displeasure, although a fondness for light humor and his penchant for laughing at trifles would have led him to prefer less serious recent works such as The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, which he'd found quite amusing last year, or even Patouillard and his Cow or indeed Bigorno the Roofer. Then, after a little lie-down in his suite, he prepares, donning tuxedo number one, to go have dinner, in the first-class dining room this time. He can't get out of that, unavoidably at the captain's table, the latter sporting his inevitable short white beard and dress whites. And during this dinner, no less inexorably, given the imminence of the tenth anniversary of the armistice, the conversation will turn to the Great War, with everyone contributing a modest memory. Since Ravel finds himself seated near the industrial couple noticed this morning out on deck, they are the ones who hear about his private war.

In '14 he had honestly tried to enlist, even though the authorities had exempted him from every kind of military obligation, explaining bluntly that he was too frail. Home again disappointed, then convinced he'd hit upon a persuasive idea (because he ardently wanted to become, go figure, a bombardier), he'd gone back to insist to the recruiters that it was precisely his light weight that fitted him for aviation. Although that seemed logical, his argument hadn't swayed them, they'd wanted nothing to do with it. Too light, they kept saying, too light, you're at least four and a half pounds underweight. Since he kept at them relentlessly, though, after eight months under siege they had finally accepted him, rolling their eyes heavenward with a shrug and finding nothing better to do than assign him with a straight face to the motor transport service as a driver, heavy vehicle section, of course. That's how an enormous military truck came to drive one day down the Champs-Élysées containing a small figure in a too-large blue greatcoat clinging to the too-big steering wheel for dear life, a wharf rat riding an elephant.

He had been posted at first to the garage on the Rue de Vaugirard, then sent in March of '16 to the front, not far from Verdun, still assigned to drive heavy vehicles. Now a full-fledged soldier, a gas-masked, helmeted, goatskin-clad poilu, he had driven several times through artillery barrages so fierce one would have thought that a faction of music-hating enemy gunners had singled him out, perhaps even had it in for him personally. It seems that no one in any motor service, even the ambulance corps, could have been more at risk than Ravel had been in the 75 section: 75-mm guns, mind you, mounted on armored trucks. One day, his vehicle broke down and he found himself on his own out in open country, where he spent a week alone à la Crusoe. Taking advantage of the situation, he transcribed a few songs from the local birds, which, weary of the war, had finally decided to ignore it, to no longer interrupt their trills at the slightest blast or take offense at the constant rumbling of nearby explosions.

This tale having met with much success at the dinner table, we may take a moment to consider the festive repast itself, a quite commonplace gala menu: caviar, lobsters, quails from Egypt, plovers' eggs, hothouse grapes, all sluiced down with everything imaginable. Once the meal has been dispatched and it's time for liqueurs, the captain sends a subtle smile Ravel's way while briefly waving two fingers, at which signal a couple of musicians suddenly appears in tails and boiled shirts: one carries a violin, and the other takes his seat at the piano, the cue for silence to fall throughout the dining room.

After glancing and nodding at one another, they attack the first movement of the sonata Ravel completed that year, dedicated to Hélène, and premiered himself with Enesco on violin, Salle Érard again, in May. Ravel is embarrassed, to say the least, almost a little annoyed. At a concert, he usually steps out for a cigarette when one of his pieces is played. He doesn't like to be there during the performance. But he can't possibly slip away—they meant well by offering him this little surprise—and tries to smile while seething inside. Particularly since they're not doing too well with it, his new sonata, he finds. And when after a good fifteen minutes they wind up the last movement, Perpetuum mobile, another problem arises: applaud or not? Because applauding one's own work is as disagreeable as not applauding the performers. In his uncertainty he stands up, obviously reaching out toward the two hired musicians as he claps his hands, then he warmly shakes theirs, and joins them in acknowledging the cheers of the entire first class of the France.

After dinner, after the traditional collection on behalf of the Seafarers Charity, after Ravel has contributed as he always does, the party can begin. This considerable celebration unfolds throughout the ship's upper decks until late at night or even into the morning for some souls, once the revelers have congratulated one another at length upon the stroke of midnight to salute the new year, greetings which—given the varied geographical origins of the passengers, the time lag, and the alcohol-fueled enthusiasm—ring out hourly in ever-jollier fashion until the first rays of dawn. Balloons, confetti, garlands, and streamers are everywhere you look in the lounges, smoking rooms, cafes, verandas, and passageways enlivened at every turn by different kinds of orchestras ready to satisfy any sort of taste. A chamber group plays soberly at a respectful distance from a dance band, while a French cabaret singer fraternizes with a Russian quartet, but Ravel, for his part, spends most of his night among the drunken Americans not far from a jazz combo, attentive to this new and perishable art.

Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

Notes

Hélène Jourdan-Morhange: A violinist, to whom Ravel dedicated his Sonata for Violin and Cello.

Orane Demazis: The actress who played Fanny in Marcel Pagnol's film trilogy set in 1930s Marseilles (Marius, 1931; Fanny, 1932; César, 1936).

Jacques de Zogheb: A writer in whose home Ravel met such literary figures as Colette, Paul Morand, and Jacques de Lacretelle.

Marcelle Gérard: The singer to whom Ravel dedicated Ronsard à son âme. Madeleine Grey: A noted interpreter of songs by Kurt Weill, De Falla, Villa-Lobos, and many others. Madeleine Grey premiered numerous works by Fauré and Milhaud, as well as Ravel's Chansons madécasses and Mélodies hébraïques.

The SS Cap Arcona: A German luxury ocean liner of the Hamburg-South America line. Launched in 1927, she was taken over by the German Navy in 1940. On April 26, 1945, loaded with prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp, she was sent into the Bay of Lübeck where she was to be scuttled in an attempt to destroy evidence of the atrocities at the camp. On May 3, 1945, although she hoisted the white ensign, the Cap Arcona was among several ships sunk in four separate attacks by RAF planes. Many survivors were shot by SS troops, while others were machine-gunned by British pilots.

Gerry Mulligan: One of the most versatile musicians in American jazz, a composer and arranger best known for his baritone saxophone playing.

Prix de Rome: A French scholarship created under the reign of Louis XIV that sent promising painters, sculptors, and architects to study in Rome. Musicians were allowed to compete after 1803. Ravel attempted five times to win the prize, and the scandal of "the Ravel Affair," his last failure in 1905, when he was favored to win, led to the reorganization of the administration at the Paris Conservatory.

Editor's Note: Ravel was originally published by Editions de Minuit and the translated edition will be published by The New Press in June 2007.