Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,93

so-and-so? And she said, Oui. Je suis la fille de Geneviève et je suis votre fille. And I said, Can that be? How old are you? And she told me. And I said, But how can you be sure I’m your father? And she said, My mother told me. I said, Were you waiting for me here? Oui. You knew I was in Paris? Oui. Then she said: My brother’s on his way. Oh? said I. How old is he? The same age. That’s right, you have a daughter and a son. And at this point my editor stood up and said, “We can discuss the translation another time.”

INTERVIEWER: You tell this story so calmly, but it must have been a shock.

EZRA BLAZER: A colossal shock and a colossal delight. I hadn’t had to raise them, you see. I met them as adults, and the next night we had supper with their mother, and we had a wonderful time. And now they have children, my grandchildren, and I’m besotted by them. I like my children, but I’m besotted by my little French grandchildren.

INTERVIEWER: Do you see this secret family?

EZRA BLAZER: I go to Paris once a year. I see them in France, but rarely in America, to keep the gossip at bay. Maybe now I’ll see them in America. I help them out financially. I love them. I didn’t know there were rumors. How did you hear? How did you know?

INTERVIEWER: A little bird told me.

EZRA BLAZER: A little boid told you. That’s delicious, you know, in an English accent.

INTERVIEWER: A Scottish accent.

EZRA BLAZER: You’re Scottish. Everyone’s Scottish. You’ll be telling me next Obama is Scottish.

INTERVIEWER: Anyway, Ezra Blazer, I thought you might appreciate an opportunity to set the record straight. In your own voice.

EZRA BLAZER: Well, it’s certainly been a more significant Q & A on the radio than I was expecting. I’ve been outed as a father. There it is. It’s a wonderful thing, what happened to me. A miraculous thing. As I told you earlier, life is all accidents. Even what doesn’t appear to be an accident is an accident. Beginning with conception, of course. That sets the tone.

INTERVIEWER: Has this particular accident affected your work?

EZRA BLAZER: It would have, if I’d had to raise them. But I didn’t. And no, I’ve never written about them, not obviously. I’m amazed even to find myself talking about them now. I don’t know why I didn’t lie to you. You took me by surprise. And you’re just such a charming young woman yourself. And I’m a decrepit old man. It doesn’t matter any longer what biographical facts get added to or subtracted from my life.

INTERVIEWER: You’re not decrepit.

EZRA BLAZER: I am the soul of decrepitude.

INTERVIEWER: Last record. What are we going to hear?

EZRA BLAZER: Something from Albéniz’s Iberia, which he wrote in the last years of his life—he died in his late forties, of kidney disease, I think—and bear this in mind, while you’re listening to it: that it sprang from a mind, a sensibility, that so soon afterward would be snuffed out, leaving behind this magnificent burst, this smoking flare . . . If I were in charge, we’d sit here and listen to the whole hour and a half of it, because each of the pieces builds on the last, they’re discrete and yet all the richer for being heard together, and you just ache with the mounting intensity of it. The vibrancy. The innocence. The concentration. I like Barenboim’s version, partly because of his association with Edward Said, who of course before he died wrote an essay on late style—the notion that an awareness of one’s life and therefore one’s artistic contribution coming to an end affects the artist’s style, whether by imbuing it with a sense of resolution and serenity or with intransigence, difficulty, contradiction. But can you call it a “late style” if the artist died at only forty-eight years old? How did he compose such a marvelous, buoyant, triumphant masterpiece while contending with the excruciating pain of kidney stones? As I said, I’d like to listen to the whole thing with you, but as you’re motioning for me to wind this up, let’s go with the second track, which is called “El Puerto.” The technical term, I understand, is zapateado, which I suspect is Mexican for tap music.

INTERVIEWER: “El Puerto,” from Isaac Albéniz’s Iberia, performed on the piano by Daniel Barenboim. Now tell me, Ezra Blazer. Why not monogamy?

EZRA BLAZER: Why not monogamy.