Are you kidding? said Nina. It’s the entire opera that they take issue with! But I’m glad you see (she went on sarcastically) that the “organs” may not appreciate your denunciation of police corruption, and that maybe, just maybe, in this day and age, the vanguard might not be thrilled that you put in two priests and a ghost . . .
Glikman and his wife want to pay us a visit. Do you think that you can prepare something, if it’s not too much for you in your, you know? I was hoping that perhaps—
You haven’t even heard my argument, and I’m going to bed. You think you know what I’m saying, so you don’t even listen. I’m not against you, Mitya, you know that. But just because everybody keeps telling you to toe the line just a little . . .
But—
Oh, Mitya, please, please be careful. What would I do without you?
He dreamed that men in high, shining boots came calling for him in the night time.
10
His former mistress Konstantinovskaya had just come home from the unmentionable regions. He went to congratulate her. (When he departed, she turned her face to the wall.) He said: Well, Elena, you see how lucky it is that you didn’t marry me . . .
But she didn’t care to talk about that. She merely said: I’m so very sorry about “Lady Macbeth.”
May I please tell you something, dear? In fact, I—well, of course you didn’t have a chance to attend my opera when you were in that place. So you may not be familiar, if I may say so, with the final act. The adulterous lovers are in prison, and . . .
She had been gazing so lovingly into his face; he knew that she loved him, which he would always know; she loved him more than anyone, so naturally circumstances prevented him from marrying her, not that he hadn’t, so to speak, considered the possibility of—well, the truth was that every night he’d tried to, so to speak, compose the score of his life, which bifurcated unyieldingly between Elena and Nina, so that he’d frequently dreamed that an upper tooth was loose, and in the dream he kept wiggling it indecisively, until suddenly it came out in his hand, and with it a long strange bone which terrified him—oh! he didn’t dare wiggle that tooth anymore!—and now she rose, naked from the waist down, and stood at the frosty window, lighting another cardboard-mouthpieced “Kazbek” cigarette.
And you see, I thought of us. That’s why I wanted to remind the audience that prisoners are wretches to be pitied, and you shouldn’t kick somebody when he’s down. I was thinking of you, Elenka, oh, yes, I was—
Don’t cry, Mitya. It’s much too late for that. Anyhow, it’s not my own suffering, but your own grief that you’re afraid of—
What do you mean?
Stay the night with me, Mitya. Please. Nina won’t care.
But—
He sat down and fiddled with his briefcase. He couldn’t stop thinking of a certain violin theme.
She knows. You told me she knows!
If they’re watching—
Of course they’re watching. But I’m just back from there, and you’re probably (I hate to say it), on your way there, so don’t you want one more fling together? How can Nina begrudge us that? She’s got everything else! By the way, are you shaking from nerves, or are you angry on account of what I’ve just said?
No, no, he replied, decrescendo, and then: I feel cold . . . Don’t you think we both need some vodka, and maybe a little smoked fish? In my briefcase I’ve got five hundred grams of—please, not a word; it’s a present! And I also wanted to say . . . Shall we each have a sample? Well, to be sure, they’re all waiting for my bad end. It’s . . . Here, Elenochka, do you see what I have with me? Sollertinsky gave me this sturgeon. I don’t know where he got it—
I’ll make up our bed now, Mitya, she said quietly.
But I can’t stay all night. I—
11
Pitying his dear friend Sollertinsky, who was being hounded for his loyalty (and already lay under suspicion in any event, on account of his fluency in more than two dozen foreign languages), Shostakovich gave him permission to vote appropriately. Sollertinsky thanked him in a trembling voice. Thus the resolution of the Leningrad composers to condemn the opera in accordance with the line laid down by Pravda was carried “unanimously” (for they dared not report the abstention of the modernist V. Shcherbachov).
In Moscow, his colleague V. Y. Shebalin was twice “invited” (in accents of the utmost menace) to speak against him. Rising at last, he said: I consider that Shostakovich is the greatest genius among composers of this epoch.—As a result of this, Shebalin’s music could no longer be performed.
Gorki himself petitioned in favor of Shostakovich, but without success. He would soon die mysteriously—poisoned, so they say, by order of Comrade Stalin.
Disregarding the peril to his famous theater, V. E. Meyerhold, who’d employed him back in unconsolidated days, defended the composer publicly and passionately, insisting: Experimentation must never be mistaken for pathology.—Shostakovich hung his head fearfully then, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Doubtless in consequence of this and other crimes that Meyerhold was arrested two years later. He disappeared forever. His wife was found dead at home, with her eyes sliced out.
From these events, Shostakovich was forced to form certain conclusions, one of which had to do with “Lady Macbeth”: Comrade Stalin, it seemed, preferred the musical “Volga-Volga.”
12
At the corner table of a certain glamorous bar on Gorki Street where he used to wait for Elena, there’d once sat a man in smoked glasses and raspberry boots who slowly drank beer and stared into his face. Pretending that he didn’t exist, Shostakovich ordered a vodka. As soon as she came running in, her whole face already smiling with love, the man paid, rose and strode out, gazing over his shoulder at them. And she—no, better not to talk about that! What had it meant? Nothing. She’d been taken, but not then, nor with him; so it couldn’t have been guilt by association. He couldn’t be responsible. Or had her arrest been intended simply to frighten him?
He wondered whether he should avoid her completely from now on, for the sake of his wife and the child in her belly. It was, so to speak, a sad situation, really, one might say almost a desperate one but I, you see, I exaggerate. Once he told Glikman, who was one of the few people not to shun him in those days: The things you love too much perish, my dear Isaak Davidovich. That’s why it’s necessary to, well . . .—Evidently he hadn’t loved this E. E. Konstantinovskya too much, or he would have, you know. Elena, you see how lucky it is that you didn’t marry me. So he didn’t have to worry; she wouldn’t perish if he failed to keep her at arm’s length. He decided to visit her again, just to, you get my drift, but a familiar-looking man boarded the streetcar behind him and got off when he did, so . . . Actually it was just as well, because . . .
13
The cliché runs that there are no atheists in foxholes, but in our Soviet Union, where anyone who refuses to be an atheist is either a counterrevolutionary or an idiot, the inhabitants of pits tend to call upon that living God, Comrade You-Know-Who. Who else could intercede? Summoning his courage, Shostakovich prevailed upon himself to disturb Marshal Tukhachevsky, with whom he’d been acquainted for more than ten years. Scourge of Poland, butcher of Kronstadt and Tambov (his maxim for eradicating anti-Soviet banditry: One should practice large-scale repression and employ incentives), proponent of mechanization, mobility and operational shock, Tukhachevsky had attended four performances of “Lady Macbeth.” His favorite passage is said to have been the bewitching yet snaky string music when Katerina Izmailova promises to live openly with her lover. (Well, Elena, you see how lucky it is that you didn’t marry me.) Rapid-spoken, cleanshaven almost like a schoolboy, our Red Army’s strategic genius was himself an amateur violinist and violin-maker. Moreover, he and Shostakovich both admired the ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya’s legs. What fun they always had together!—The legs, I mean.—Well, Tukhachevsky had fun, anyhow; Shostakovich for his part never got over a certain fear of, well, of Tukhachevsky’s
eyes . . .
He arrived exactly on time, wearing his best suit, in the desperate expectation, which can hardly be named confidence, that if he supplicated punctually and receptively, then this pain which goaded him to rush about as if his very flesh were on fire surely must be put to rights, simply because it felt so terrible that he could continue living only by believing in its imminent cessation. And who hasn’t felt the same way? The punished child, the one whose lover has just kindly, gravely announced that she’s leaving him forever, the Arctic explorer perishing for want of food, how can they not keep faith with the proposition that undeviatingly following a given method will save them? Tukhachevsky, then, was the shaman from whom rain is expected.
In the sitting room, all windows remained flagrantly uncurtained. It was almost like dwelling in the drowned dream-days of Petersburg with her many lamps, ballrooms, mazurkas and gallant cavalrymen. Akhmatova was reciting poems at the Straw Dog; everybody was having orgies, in which poor Mitya was too young and studious to join. Then the red spiral exploded: Boom! A quarter-century from now, he’d represent that explosion in Opus 110. But where was the Marshal’s family? Had Shostakovich become so unclean that they disliked being present, or . . . ? He dared not ask. Jigging his foot and grimacing in a thousand ugly contortions, he gazed down at his clenched hands, ashamed of himself while striving to pretend that Tukhachevsky noticed no sign of it.—I expected you’d get in some fix! the “Red Napoleon” was saying in a pleasant baritone, but Shostakovich felt so asphyxiated by his own terror that he understood nothing.
He had imagined that his host’s official car would be waiting. They’d ride out to the woods, or to the exhibition halls of the Hermitage, and then they’d stroll almost side by side, this tall, ingenuous-eyed patron half a measure ahead, talking to Shostakovich over his shoulder exactly as he always did on their accustomed outings when rattling off his theories about cinema, French impressionism, German prison camps and the most effective way to execute hostages. But the car was not there. Well, the family must have taken it, or . . . This divergence from the score threw Shostakovich off. And Tukhachevsky looked so strong and handsome in that new suit . . .
Play me the first movement of your new symphony, Mitya. I want to hear it again because there’s something in the tempo which (with all respect) deserves criticism. You haven’t been criticized enough yet, they say. What a world!
I—
Why don’t you join the Party?
You see, I—
Don’t be bashful. The piano’s right there. It just got written up in Pravda. Do you know why?
I beg your pardon—
Ha, ha! Because it’s mine! When I was in London last month, a certain music-lover asked me: Marshal Tukhachevsky, if you had to represent the sounds of war by a single musical instrument, which would you choose? And I chose the piano, mainly to annoy him, because he was expecting me to light on something more percussive, but I do stand by the fact that there’s an inhuman quality about the piano, elegant and cold at the same time, like an operational plan which will result in thousands of enemy casualties . . .
Mikhail Nikolayevich, he blurted out, please understand me. I’m not here for myself. I’ve come to realize that I’m not deserving—
No need to feel shy around old friends, Mitya! You know how much I admire your work. Especially since they’re all complimenting you now. I especially like this one: He ignored the demand of Soviet culture that all coarseness and wildness be abolished from every corner of Soviet life. When I read that in Pravda, I laughed so hard my wife almost called the doctor! Will you autograph that one for me? All coarseness and wildness! I’ve memorized it, you see! Remember the time you forced that Elena Whatshername to drink half a liter of vodka? That was wildness, to be sure. Whatever happened to her?
I—
She took a holiday, didn’t she? Well, no harm done. But from now on she’ll have to be more careful in her associations, if you get my drift . . .
I understand, Shostakovich dully whispered.
But of course you want to make Nina Vasiliyevna’s life a trifle easier. That’s natural. How is she, by the way?
Nina? Oh, extremely well, thank you, except that she—
And when is she expecting?
Shostakovich was thinking to himself: No matter what the outcome of all this, even if I’m completely rehabilitated someday, I’ll never be what I was. When Father’s hair turned grey all at once we didn’t understand how that could happen; Mariya kept saying it was like some kind of spell. Why can’t I concentrate? Is he asking me something right now? But I know myself now, and I, well, I don’t like what I know! He’s staring at me! But maybe that’s a normal symptom of youth’s end, to feel that the sky’s greyer and that most of what I used to call beautiful isn’t more than glitter. I . . .
The two men disappeared into the Marshal’s study, to sit beneath a lamp which curved like a medical instrument. (His host shut off the telephones, and they spoke in low voices, just in case.) When Shostakovich emerged, he was smiling. He rushed home, sat down at the piano and began to improvise expressions of his tremulous happiness. For Tukhachevsky had promised to write a letter—direct to Comrade Stalin! Tukhachevsky had said: We’ll solve this question correctly.—Tukhachevsky had assured him: Don’t worry, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. I always get whatever I ask for.
He waited. He aimed to retreat from his apprehensions into his prior innocent state, which Leskov would have called Russian boredom. He rushed off with Glikman to watch another Dynamos game. Peki Dementyiev made a kick which was really . . . Nervously his hands sketched bars on sheets of paper, then gave birth to music-notes which peered from and clung to those bars. Tukhachevsky had said . . . Thus almost before he knew it he’d completed his Fourth Symphony, the one in C Minor (Opus 43), but the unalloyed congratulations of that capitalist lackey Otto Klemperer, then visiting Moscow and Leningrad on a Beethoven tour, only increased his peril. The next day, Nina gave birth to their first child Galina. Klemperer’s name headed the telegram of congratulations. That would surely be remembered against him—none of which is to imply that he didn’t like Klemperer, who’d drunk vodka with him in his flat and for whom he’d played the piano, Klemperer leaning back with a rapturous expression, Mitya dreaming that it was 1932 or ’33 again and he was still the boy genius of our Soviet Union, whose song would be sung more joyfully. So what about Rodchenko? What about Dziga Vertov’s experimental blendings of water-sounds, machine-noise and speech? (Tukhachevsky had clapped his hands and laughed.) What about Akhmatova, Mandelstam, or for that matter a certain D. D. Shostakovich? Dear Marshal Tukhachevsky had brought them all back; for he was one of them—an unnerving man, it’s true (Elena would have used her favorite English word, creepy), but all the same a, a, how should I say, an innovator who admired novelty and brilliance, and didn’t he still get whatever he asked for? Oh, dear, oh, my, Elena, you should most definitely have married me! Because then, you and Ninusha and I could have . . . He cocked his head, offering and receiving confidences about the compositional secrets of Mussorgsky. Klemperer was almost drunk. Mitya was almost ready to confess which chord it was which actually caused him to see rainbow icicles. Soon they’d toast him so loudly that his mother would wake up; V. V. Lebedev would order everybody present to acknowledge the perfection of his own favorite team, which also happened to be the Dynamos; Glikman sat in the corner, nourishing Shostakovich with that hero-worshiper’s gaze; Nina was still in love with him, I mean really in love; he approached the verge of his very first encounter with Elena Konstantinovskaya, not that she would exactly, how should I make myself clear? And then it genuinely became just the way it used to be, with the guests gone (Klemperer had caught the penultimate tram), and he was alone, writing music which was perfect as it came. He believed in himself again. Beneath the piano keys there was a luminous white place with ebony shadows where, you know, and I suspect that right about then someone’s long dark hair kept him warm and someone’s white face outshone
the moon and someone’s red lips spiraled inwards.
In this spirit he reread the score for the Fourth Symphony and found nothing to correct, which was precisely why at rehearsal the scared musicians played badly, fixing on him the sad and angry eyes of Russian icons, for this composition reeked so stiflingly of formalism that their own participation might be considered provocation. And so he was summoned to the director’s office.
What kind of silence could have been silenter than the noiseless fear which oozed out of his orchestra at that moment, the musicians lighting cigarettes alone, shying away from their own instruments as if from something dangerously electrified? When he returned downstairs, sweaty and ashen, he announced that he had made a personal and entirely voluntary decision to withdraw it from the program. It would not be performed until the end of 1961.
He went home to tell Nina. Although she hadn’t changed face when her own mother rode away in a Black Maria, she exploded into tears.
14
He dreamed that he was walking alone down a snowy street in Moscow. Perhaps it was Gorki Street; there was a fancy bar there where he used to drink with Elena Konstantinovskaya. Before him, a heavenly light shone through a windowpane. Suddenly the glass shattered terrifyingly, and light and warmth dribbled into his face.
He and Nina went to the polling place to vote for the candidate for Supreme Soviet. There was only one name on the ballot.
On the sixth of December, during the celebrations in honor of the new Stalin Constitution which guaranteed the rights of all peoples, he whispered to Glikman: If they chop off both my hands, I’ll keep writing music with the pen in my teeth . . .
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