69 The “forty times forty” churches of Moscow—Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems, 3rd ed., trans. Elaine Feinstein (New York: Penguin, 1994 repr. of 1993 ed.), p. 15 (“Verses About Moscow,” 1916, stanza 2); slightly “retranslated” by WTV.
69 The “Carpenter” link of the N. K. Krupskaya Brigade—I have invented these names. A Pioneer brigade of forty-fifty member was subdivided into links of ten members each. Each brigade was named after a revolutionary leader; each link was named after tool or field of production. Pioneers were divided by age into Young Pioneers and Little Octobrists. The Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) kept young people from ages fourteen to twenty-three. Sharpshooting and first aid would indeed have been some of the skills which Elena would have learned there. As mentioned in “Opus 40,” she was expelled from the Komsomol in 1935.
69 Details on the Komsomol and the Pioneers—In part from Samuel Northrup Harper, Civic Training in Soviet Russia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929).
70 “We noticed two black and blue marks on the neck of Elena Konstantinovskaya . . .”—Siegelbaum and Sokolov, loc. cit.; verbatim except that Elena’s name has been substituted for that of another girl, and Liza Ivanova has become Vera Ivanova.
71 “Isolde’s secret song was her marvelous beauty . . .”—Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan; with the Tristan of Thomas, trans. A. T. Hatto (New York: Penguin, 1975 repr. of 1967 rev. ed.; orig. trans. 1960; Strassburg’s poem ca. 1210), p. 148, grossly “retranslated” by WTV.
MAIDEN VOYAGE
76 Epigraph: “What child is there . . .”—Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German WWII Test-Pilot, trans. Lawrence Wilson (London: Greenhill Books, 1991 expanded repr. of 1955 English ed., but [p. 219] “I wrote this book after I had been released from one and a half years as a prisoner in the United States,” hence my approximate dating of 1947).
77 Details on German planes, rocket engines, etc. (most of them exaggerated and distorted by me)—Dear and Foot, entry on V-weapons; Reitsch, various minor details on gliders and flight experiences; Jane’s Fighting Aircraft of World War II (New York: Military Press, 1989 repr. of 1946-47 ed.), entries on German air power and German aero engines.
77 The Geco 7.65 cartridges—Since the plot in part turns on this matter, it may be worth a note. According to Paul (op. cit.), “the Poles” massacred at Katyń “were quickly shot behind the head at close range, probably with a German-made pistol—the light 7.65 mm Walther . . . considered the finest police pistol in the world” (p. 110). “The caliber, Geco 7.65 millimeter, did not fit the Tokarev or Nagan pistols generally carried by the NKVD. It did fit the Walther . . .” (p. 206). Indeed, the Tokarev and the Nagan (often spelled Nagant) were both 7.62 mm in caliber. The table of small arms in I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, ed., The Oxford Companion to World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; p. 1016) lists no Soviet 7.65 mm. weapon whatsoever. Inexplicably, that is also the case for German weapons (ibid., p. 1014). The only two German pistols listed, the Parabellum P08 and the Walther P38, are both 9 mm. It would seem, then, that the 7.65 caliber used at Katyń was hardly a favorite with either side. However, the table “Characteristics of German World War II Service Pistols” in Edward Clinton Ezell’s famous Small Arms of the World: A Basic Manual of Small Arms, 12th ed. (New York: Stackpole Books, 1983; p. 500) has eight entries, the first two being the P08 and the P38 just mentioned, the third being the 7.63 mm Mauser 1932, and the other five all sporting the 7.65 mm caliber. These are: the Mauser 1910, the Mauser HSc, the Sauer 38, the Walther PP and the Walther PPK. (It was with one of these latter two models which Hitler committed suicide in 1945.) In the equivalent Soviet table (p. 696), four models of pistols and revolvers appear, including the two already mentioned in Dear and Foot. The remaining two (the Makarov and the Stechkin) are both 9 mm and seem to be largely postwar in any event. In short, on the information at hand, it would seem that Paul’s statement is correct: The Poles were murdered with German-made bullets. Large quantities of the Geco 7.65 mm. were sold to the Baltic countries and perhaps even to the USSR during the interwar years. The massacre was certainly committed by the Soviets, not the Germans.
77 Heidegger: “The upward glance passes aloft toward the sky, and yet it remains below on the earth”—Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row / Colophon, 1971), p. 220 (“. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . . ,” a lecture given in 1951).
WHEN PARZIVAL KILLED THE RED KNIGHT
81 Epigraph: “‘Twas in olden times when eagles screamed . . .”—Lee M. Hollander, trans., The Poetic Edda, 2nd rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 repr. of 1962 ed.), p. 180 (“Helgakvitha Hundingsbana” I, stanza 1, slightly “retranslated” by WTV).
81 “His new armor, which was so red that it made one’s eyes red just to see it”—This description of the Red Knight’s armor is based on Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival: A Romance of the Middle Ages, trans. Helen M. Mustard and Charles E. Passage (New York: Random House / Vintage, 1961; orig. German poem finished ca. 1210), p. 81 (Book III). The Red Knight was Ither of Kukumerlant.
82 Mein Kampf: “And simultaneous with him stands the victory of the reified Idea, which has ever been, and ever shall be, anti-Semitic”—Meyers Lexikon, vol. 5 (1937), p. 711. (I have compressed and added a “stands” to the eye-glazing original: “. . . und zugleich auch mit ihm den Sieg des Gedankens der schaffenden Arbeit, die selbst ewig antisemitsch war und ewig antisemitsch sein wird.”)
82 The black-and-white plates: Adolf Hitler I and II—Same vol., following p. 1248.
82 Plates on “Garten” and “Germanen”—Ibid.
82 National Socialism entry—Ibid., vol. 8, 1940.
82 Parzival, Galogandres and King Clamidê—Eschenbach, pp. 113-15.
OPUS 40
85 Epigraph: “There is nothing in you which fails to send a wave of joy and fierce passion inside me . . .”—Sofiya Khentova, Udivitelyenui Shostakovich (Saint Petersburg: Variant, 1993), p. 117 (2nd letter of 15 June 1934), slightly “retranslated” by WTV.
85 For early Soviet names for Leningrad landmarks, in this story, in “And I’d Dry My Salty Hair” and in “The Palm Tree of Deborah,” I have made occasional use of A. Radó, comp. [issued by the Society for Cultural Relations of the Soviet Union with Foreign Countries], Guide-Book to the Soviet Union (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1928), pp. 197-364 (entry on Leningrad).
86 Physical appearance of Shostakovich at this time—After the illustration in Detlef Gojowy, Schostakowitsch (Hamburg: Rowohlt, Bildmonographien, 2002 repr. of 1983 ed.), p. 49 (“Porträt Schostakowitschs aus den Jahren 1933 bis 1935”).
87 Shostakovich’s letters to Elena, and various other background details—Based on Khentova, pp. 114-37, 150-59, 168-70, 245-46, trans. for WTV by Sergi Mineyev (16,746 words at 16.777 cents per word, for a total cost of $2,846.82).
88 Composition dates for various movements of Opus 40—Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 80.
88 Relative evenness of two themes from Opus 40—Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern, A Dictionary of Musical Themes (London and Tonbridge: Ernest Benn Limited, 1974 repr. of 1949 ed.), p. 438.
90 S. Khentova: “In contrast to Nina Vasilievna . . .”—Khentova (Mineyev), original, p. 115, Mineyev p. 1.
91 Shostakovich: The First String Quartet is “a particular exercise in the form of a quartet” —Musik und Gesellschaft, vol. 34, no. 9 (September 1981), pp. 549-52 (Ekkehard Ochs, “Das Streichquartett im Schaffen von Dmitri Schostakowitch: Zum 75. Geburtstag des Komponisten am 25. September), p. 549 (trans. by WTV).
91 Shostakovich to T. Glivenko: “I have a very clever wife, oh, yes—very clever . . .” —Khentova, p. 131, Mineyev p. 12; Shostakovich-ized by WTV.
91 Shostakovich: “When a critic for Worker and Theater or for The Evening Red Gazette”. . . —Quoted in Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermen
eutical Essays (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000 rev. repr. of 1977 ed.), pp. 480-81 (from Sovetskaya Muzika, no. 3 [1933], p. 121).
92 E. Mravinsky: “This masquerade imparts the spurious impression that Shostakovich is being emotional . . .”—Khentova (Mineyev), original p. 114, Mineyev p. 1; slightly reworded for contextual clarity by WTV.
92 Shostakovich: “I can’t forgive myself for not kidnapping my golden Elenochka and bringing her to Baku with me” and “As soon as I’m back in my Lyalka’s arms I’ll have the strength to resolve everything”—After Khentova (Mineyev), original p. 116, Mineyev p. 2 (letter from DDS to EEK, 15 June 1934).
93 “The brilliance here is sinister rather than exhibitionistic”—Emanuel Ax, program notes to the CBS “Masterworks” recording of Shostakovich’s Trio (Opus 67) and Piano Sonata (Opus 40); produced by James Mallinson (code MX 44664); p. 3.
94 Distinction between motif, leitmotiv and theme—Based partially on a chat with ethno-musicologist Philip Bohlman in September 2003; after thinking for a moment, Professor Bohlman advised me that “theme” would be the right word to use in connection with Shostakovich.
94 Footnote: Moser’s entries on Shostakovich, Sousa, Serbian music, “Glasunow” et al—H. J. Moser’s Musik Lexikon of 1933 (Berlin-Schöneberg, Max Hesses Verlag, 1935).
95 Ekkehard Ochs on dialectic in Shostakovich—Ochs, p. 551 (trans. by WTV).
95 Shostakovich to Konstantinovskaya: “I try to stop loving you . . .”—Same document, original pp. 119-20; Mineyev p. 4; slightly “retranslated” by WTV.
96 Arrests “by the tens of thousands”—Conquest’s figure, in his chapter on the Kirov affair. Kirov was murdered by Stalin.
96 A. Ferkelman on Shostakovich: “I never succeeded in getting any other pianist to take such fast tempi . . .”—Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, 1995 repr. of 1994 ed.), p. 105 (testimony of Arnold Ferkelman, slightly “retranslated” by WTV.
96 “I don’t believe that I’ll be yours . . .”—pp. 122-23, Mineyev, p. 6 (25 June 1934), slightly “retranslated” by WTV.
98 Shostakovich on Opus 40: “A certain great breakthrough”—Ochs, p. 549 (trans. WTV).
98 Shostakovich to Konstantinovskaya: “Why did I meet you? . . .”—Khentova (Mineyev), original, p. 122, Mineyev, p. 6 (1st, short letter of 25 June 1934).
OPERATION MAGIC FIRE
99 Epigraph—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 94.
Many of my visual descriptions of the Condor Legion and its acts are based on photographs in the Ullstein archive in Berlin.
101 Wotan: “For so goes the god from you; so he kisses your godhead away”—Libretto booklet to the Solti version of Wagner’s “Siegfried” (James King, Régine Crespin et al performing; Wiener Staatsopernchor, Wiener Philharmoniker, 1985), p. 130 (Act III, Scene 3; German text trans. by WTV).
101 How Loki gave birth to ogres—Poetic Edda, p. 139 (“Voluspá hin skamma,” stanza 14).
102 Names and descriptions of various German airplane formations—After a diagram in Meyers Lexikon, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut AG., 1938), pp. 193-94: “Fliegen im Verband.”
104 Meyers Lexikon, 1938: “He is no dictator . . .”—Vol. 5 (1938), p. 1276, trans. and made slightly less ponderous by WTV (end of entry on Adolf Hitler, which then concludes with an encomium from Goebbels).
AND I’D DRY MY SALTY HAIR
105 Epigraph—Combined from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, expanded ed., trans. Judith Hemschemeyer, ed. Roberta Reeder (Boston: Zephyr Press, 1997), p. 521 (“At the Edge of the Sea” 1914), and Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems, trans. D. M. Thomas (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 31 (same poem, trans. as “By the Seashore”), “retranslated” by WTV as “At the Seashore.”
For many of the details in Akhmatova’s life I’ve relied on Roberta Reeder’s irritatingly reverential Anna Akhmatova, Poet and Prophet (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). References to Akhmatova’s heterosexual affairs are in the main based on the truth as I’ve understood it; references to more bizarre sexual practices are the fabrication of my narrator, Comrade Alexandrov.
105 “The equivalent of ten Stalin tanks”—An anachronism; Stalin tanks would not have been available at this juncture. But I wanted to mention Stalin’s name as close to the opening as possible.
106 “One of her postwar odes”: “Where Stalin is, is freedom . . .”—Akhmatova (Hemschemeyer), p. 879 (Appendix, “In Praise of Peace,” 1949), “retranslated” by WTV.
107 Footnote: Punin’s diary—Op. cit., p. 72 (undated entry for 1921, before 28 July).
107 Punin on art casting itself across life “like a shadow”—Ibid, p. 203 (entry for 24 February 1944).
107 Shostakovich: “Basically, I can’t bear having poetry written about my music” —Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 273.
108 N. Berdayev: “The putrefied air of a hothouse”—Quoted in Reeder, p. 25.
111 Gumilyev’s affairs with “Blue Star” (Elena Debouchet) and Tanya Adamovich—Reeder, p. 62.
111 N. Nedobrovo: “Her calmness in confessing pain and weakness”—Ibid., p. 88, slightly abridged.
112 Excerpts from “Poem Without a Hero”—All from Akhmatova (Hemschemeyer), pp. 563-64 (I.4.405, 407-11, 415, 418), “retranslated” by WTV.
113 L. K. Chukovskaya: Akhmatova’s fate was “something even greater than her own person” —Lydia Chukovskaya, The Akhmatova Journals, vol. 1, 1938-1941 (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2002 repr. of 1994 Farrar, Straus & Giroux ed.; orig. Russian ed. 1989), pp. 6-7.
114 Tale of the “Stalin Route”—Von Geldern and Stites, pp. 258-61.
114 Addresses of main places of detention (mentioned here and in “Opus 110”)—Dr. Cronid Lubarsky, ed., USSR News Brief: Human Rights: List of Political Prisoners in the USSR as on 1 May 1982, 4th issue (Brussels: Cahiers du Samizdat, 1982), p. 37.
115 Chukovskaya: “She herself, her words, her deeds . . .”—Op. cit., p. 6.
116 Akhmatova: “How early autumn came this year.”—Ibid., p. 6. 116 Akhmatova: “It’s extremely good that I’ll be dead soon.”—Ibid., p. 14.
117 Masaryk on Dostoyevsky and on Russian atheism—Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1967; original German ed., 1912), vol. 3, pp. 49, 10.
118 Gumilyev’s nightmares—Diary entry quoted in Reeder, p. 61.
119 Gumilyev: “Your cold, slender hands.”—Ibid., p. 61 (trans. of “Iambic Pentameter,” 1913).
CASE WHITE
121 Epigraph—Three Märchen of E. T. A. Hoffmann, trans. Charles E. Passage (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), p. 324 (“Master Flea: A Fairytale in Seven Adventures,” composed 1822, published 1908).
121 “The most spectacular scenario ever written”: “Germany can no longer be a passive onlooker! Every political possibility has been exhausted; we’ve decided on a solution by force!”—Watt, pp. 514 (Hitler to Sir Nevile Henderson, 29 August 1939), 534 (Hitler’s Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War, 31 August 1939).
OPERATION BARBAROSSA
123 Epigraph—Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambala Publications [A C. G. Jung Foundation Book], 1995), p. 45.
Some of the technical terms relating to telephones have been extracted (and, I hope, used correctly) from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 25, p. 476 (entry on telephone communication). These words and information have to a lesser extent also been deployed in “Steel in Motion” and in “The Palm Tree of Deborah”’s description of the Leningrad broadcast of the Seventh Symphony.
125 “Lyalka, you filled my heart until it was ready to explode.”—Closely after Khentova, p. 123, Mineyev p. 6 (letter of 25 June 1934).
THE SLEEPWALKER
126 Epigraph—George Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung’s Ring (New York: Dover Publications, 1967, repr. of 1923 4th ed.), p. 2.
&nbs
p; 126 Gunnar, Hogni and Guthrún—So they are named in the “Greenlandish Lay of Atli” in the Elder Edda, from which the Nibelungenlied in part derives. In the latter version of the tale, Gunnar is Gunther, Hogni becomes the balefully noble Hagen, and Guthrún, who never wanted her brothers to come to their destruction, is now Kriemhild, who lures them to it in order to take revenge for their murder of Siegfried.
127 Göring: “The Czechs, a vile race of dwarfs without any culture . . .”—Quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York: Bantam, 1976), p. 646.
129 Hitler’s interest in the directing at Bayreuth—Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Avon, 1970, trans. of 1969 German ed.), p. 185.
131 “We’re getting old, Kubizek,” &c (conversation at Bayreuth)—After Toland, p. 854 (slightly altered).
131 “Siegfried and Gunnar hadn’t even laid eyes on the princesses they pined for”—So we infer from the Nibelungenlied, in which Gunnar has actually become Gunther, as already noted; I have kept his Norse name to retain consistency with the opening of “The Sleepwalker.”
139 “On the day following the end of the Bayreuth Festival, I’m gripped by a great sadness . . .”—From the “secret conversations,” quoted in William Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 102.
139 The golden figures, the far-famed ones . . .”—Voluspá (The Prophecy of the Seeress”), stanza 60; in The Poetic Edda, p. 12.
THE PALM TREE OF DEBORAH
140 Epigraph: Shostakovich on musical means and ends—Fay, p. 258.
140 Russian casualties of the Leningrad siege—Contemporary Soviet sources estimated around 1,000,000 victims. Western figures were substantially lower; usually they claimed 6-700,000 killed. However, as late as the end of Shostakovich’s life, the American historian William Craig wrote that “more than a million besieged Russian civilians had starved to death during the nightmarish winter of 1941” alone.—Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (New York: Reader’s Digest Press / E. P. Dutton & Co., 1973), p. 18. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia [Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entisklopediia, ed. A. M. Prokhorov, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entisklopediia Publishing House, 1973)], ed. and trans. Jean Paradise et al. (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1976), settled on the following statistics: 641,803 people died of hunger and 17,000 of bombings and shellings. The Germans dropped 150,000 artillery shells on Leningrad during the siege, 100,000 incendiary bombs, 5,000 high explosives (vol. 14, p. 383; entry on Leningrad). I decided to use the higher figures for reasons analogous to my use of Gerstein’s inflated figures on the Holocaust in “Clean Hands” (see note, below); this is what people would have believed at the time.
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