Tearoom

Whether you came to the tearoom because you like tea or you like to gossip, it’s all the same to the violinist, who arrives every Sunday evening with the same violin case and the same uniform and the same purpose. He goes into his corner and begins to play for those who are having a late supper of smoked salmon mousse and Earl Grey gateaux and more wine than tea. Other days there is a pianist. Sometimes there is no music, only the seaside lilt of many voices washing over the patterned floor and the brown armchairs. The  tea tables are white and like lilies in a pond, everywhere and placid, floating. You like this place; you like black strawberry tea, the ritual of superfluity, the dust motes streaming in their great migrations through the lateday light. The taking of tea is a ritual because it resists acceleration. Many small treats accumulate on the crystal plates that rise into a point on the cake stand in front of you. They are like beautiful bodies climbing over each other on their way to Heaven, surpassing each other in refinement. But the final climax promised at the very last plate, on which rests a single diamond of chocolate, is ruined. You are too full, too languid, and too dull. Dullness sleeps in the tearoom. It penetrates the carpets and cushions and makes itself evident only to the most habitual of guests, who one day may find hollow eyes staring at them from the walls before life on the easy carousel goes on.

This is so for all the old regulars: the Dumeuble twins in black and white come every Sunday, as does the opera singer Josefa, who is not plump and bold but thin and blue, and her Russian friend Dimitrov the trainer of dogs, and those on whom they eavesdrop and who eavesdrop on them, a young girl with no legs, the poet Sterla and one of her ephebic muses, a fat man with a humid nose, a nervous psychologist who has refused to look inward for many years now, and finally your mother, and you. Together they form a constellation of possible interactions, though none has dared wander down the roads that stretch invisibly between them. Instead they sit and listen, sit and talk, eat and drink.

Sometimes the music of the violinist falls through the fissures of attention as the ear strains to hear what a neighbor says, and you find yourself for a moment entranced, for a troubling moment gripped by an excess of feeling during which your teacup trembles with the investment of a new myth. In those moments, your steady ascent towards the chocolate diamond is interrupted. Your mother’s roaming eyes notice, and she puts down her teacup. The neighbors all notice too, and they put down their teacups. The violinist notices the patrons noticing and begins to climb a staircase of exquisite notes. He has felt a slight snag in the fabric of the room and is now pulling at its seams, wider and wider, louder and louder, higher and higher until there is a rip and the whole room bursts into tears. You remember with a pang of horror that your mother hates you, and your mother remembers the life she dreamed of before she met your father. Sterla, whose heart feels like a single string of the terrible violin, remembers why she began to write poems. The young legless girl yearns for the long-abolished freedom of movement and the psychologist recalls vividly the woman he used to love, and perhaps still loves, who doesn’t exist and never will. They flee the room as one, unable to bear the weight of their desires and the irretrievable loss of something unknown. When the room is finally empty, the violinist slowly finishes his song. Every Sunday is like this, like autumn coming to a close as the last leaf falls off the last tree. He puts away his violin and wanders through the white tables, gorging himself on all the leftover sandwiches and wine, yielding to the carousel.