Without conferring, they moved toward the stage door. An old man, candle in hand, reminiscent of a lost character in a Chekhov play, greeted them, led them to the manager’s office. The latter was in the middle of breaking up wood and stoking an iron stove on which a saucepan was warming. He raised an emaciated face to them and his smile stretched the skin on his angular cheekbones. His eyes seemed fixed on a vision of horror. Volsky mentioned the Conservatory, asked if they could be useful…
Suddenly the man thrust him aside and, by moving adroitly, just had time to catch Mila as she passed out. When she came to he murmured, still with that smile that left the expression in his eyes unaltered, “In the old days actors were trained to support heroines who fainted…” He invited them to drink a bowl of soup, which was, in fact, hot water with a little meal floating in it.
Their offer was accepted with a remark Volsky would remember for the rest of his life: “We need voices.” His eyes met Mila’s. Voices… In truth, that was all they had left.
Their lives merged with that of the theater. They assisted in putting up scenery, gave a helping hand to wardrobe, cooked meals for the singers and musicians. And in the evening they went on stage. Volsky believed that by engaging an excess of walk-on actors, the director was seeking to encourage them. But after several performances he realized that this casting related to the frequency with which the actors died. By taking part in the show, the walk-ons were learning all the roles and could thus take over from anyone who, one day, did not return.
Volsky and Mila already knew this Three Musketeers by heart, an operetta written by a certain Louis Varney, the libretto of which had been substantially reworked by a Russian author. The piece had very little in common with the novel by Dumas. Apart from the musketeers, of course. When they got home they lit the fire, rehearsed the songs, and on occasion burst out laughing, as the line about “the hot southern sun” caused a cloud of mist to emerge from Volsky’s mouth… The hardest part was in the first act, when thanks to this “hot southern sun,” Marie, d’Artagnan’s beloved, had to stand there shivering in a pale satin dress.
Everyone strove for the performances to go on as before. But, of course, everything was very different. They acted by candlelight in an auditorium where it was minus twenty degrees. Often the show was interrupted by an air raid siren. The audience would go down into the basement, those who no longer had the strength to do so remaining huddled in their seats, staring at the stage emptied by the sound of bombing… Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.
One evening, just before the performance, one of the musketeers stumbled on the threshold of his dressing room and collapsed, with a surprised smile still on his made-up face… It was not the first death Volsky and Mila had witnessed here at the theater, but this time they were the ones who carried the actor to the cemetery. The road was familiar and along the way the real difference between the performances now staged and the life of the theater before the war was brought home to them. Death was something those singing on stage shared with those listening in the auditorium. A theatrical illusion created so close to extinction acquired the force of a supreme truth.
This truth was even more alive in the concerts the singers gave at the front. Frozen plains, plowed up by shells, makeshift platforms balanced on ammunition boxes, and the faces of soldiers, most of whom would die during the days ahead. Volsky and Mila often found themselves singing songs from The Three Musketeers; this was their “dress rehearsal,” they would say with a smile.
They would not have believed that the front line was so close to Leningrad. When they mounted the platform they could see the frozen oscillogram of spires and domes through the cold gray mist. Their voices seemed to soar up like a fragile screen between this city and the enemy positions. They met the looks of the soldiers, young or older men, some maintaining a certain bold front, others drained, devoid of hope. The songs spoke of sunshine and love. But what could be glimpsed at times in these looks was the terrible brotherhood of the doomed. Yes, the acceptance of death, but also the mad certainty of being more than this body hurled beneath the bombs.
The singers were easy prey now for the machine gun fire from dive-bombing aircraft. And yet it was here, at the front, sharing a meal with the fighting men, that Volsky and Mila regained a little strength. One evening, at the theater Volsky remarked, “Thanks to their mess cooking, I could play d’Artagnan now from start to finish…” In the early days, they recalled, they had had to sit down and catch their breath at the end of each scene.
When Volsky spoke of playing d’Artagnan he was joking, never imagining that one day he could be given a part, albeit a supporting one. However, the allocation of roles was no longer decided by the director but by a silent being, present at every performance. The grim reaper himself, whom the actors used to make the butt of their mockery, to keep their courage up.
The singer who played Marie was fatally wounded in a bombing raid a few yards away from the theater. Mila had to take over for her that same evening. During the interval, while roguish tunes still hung on the air, she ran to the dressing room where the actress, surrounded by singers and musicians, was dying. When she saw Mila, she whispered, “In the second act, when you’re escaping with d’Artagnan, don’t move too fast. Otherwise you’ll be out of breath from running. The first few times, I remember…” Her voice broke off, her eyes fastened on a tall candle flame. The bell announced the start of the next act.
Two days later, Volsky played d’Artagnan. He took over from an actor who had been found lifeless in an apartment with shattered windows.
The show went ahead without mistakes. There were not even any air raid warnings to interrupt it. Only Volsky knew that his performance was hanging by a thread. Halfway through the play his strength deserted him. He did not collapse, however, and continued to brandish his sword and sing lustily. But a split perception took over: his body trudged up the steps to a castle, his voice pealed out in merry runs, while far away from this performance the words of someone at several years’ distance threw out their echo. In the icy darkness of the auditorium, he could see the spectators bowing, apologetic about no longer being able to clap. And onstage a young woman was singing to whom he had just declared his love, following the play’s story line. He sensed that for her their theatrical kiss had been more than a piece of stage business required by the plot. This detail should have amused him, yet he felt an intense sadness that seemed to come from a future in which their stage embrace would have quite a different meaning… He also noticed that the actor playing Porthos was sweating profusely.
Instead of putting him off, this split perception enabled him to carry on right up to the moment when, holding hands, the actors walked forward to greet the audience. Mila was smiling, moved, her face on fire, Porthos was bowing, breathless, brushing the boards with his musketeer’s hat, Volsky could feel the song he had just been singing still throbbing in his throat. It was even possible to imagine the swell of applause and the beautiful bare shoulders of the women in the audience…
His joy then found a selfish rationale, a hunger for admiration which reminded him of that young man drinking his hot chocolate: a summery past that would surely be reborn, life, his young life would resume its course, the nightmare of a starving Leningrad would pass, and the city would not fall!
He went into his dressing room, tossed his plumed hat into an armchair, removed the shoulder belt and sword, peeled away the mustache, wincing into the mirror. And suddenly, in the same reflection, caught sight of Porthos. The man was sitting in a corner, like a punished child, his hands clasped between his knees, his face shining with sweat. Volsky was about to go and clap him on the shoulder, to congratulate him on his performance, when Mila appeared and beckoned to him to come away… The previous night Porthos had managed to get his wife and children onto one of those trucks that evacuated the rare l
ucky ones out of the besieged city. That morning he had learned that the convoy had been bombed and there were no survivors. He had come to the theater, given a performance. The stage was poorly lit, the audience did not see his tears. Even the cast thought he had a fever and was perspiring, in spite of the cold.
They went home in silence, walking along the dark streets where one often came across frozen bodies. In the sky, mingling with the snowflakes, there fluttered sheets of paper that the passersby picked up, read, destroyed. Leaflets dropped by a German aircraft: Moscow had been captured, the army of the Reich had crossed the Volga and was advancing into the Urals, meeting no resistance… It was vitally important not to be tempted to believe this for a second, danger lay in doubt taking root in the mind, undermining all resolve.
No, Moscow could not surrender! They thought about Leningrad, remembered the mud-caked faces of the soldiers hanging on to a narrow strip of frozen plain a few miles from there.
“Those trucks that were bombed in the night,” murmured Mila. “I was told about it just before the show. I didn’t think he’d be able to hold on to the end…” She stooped and picked up several leaflets, “for the fire,” she said with a little smile. They walked on. That man in tears who had sung and laughed on stage became a fragile but strangely irrefutable proof for them: no, the city would not fall.
The next day they learned that further performances were going to be suspended; the mobilization of the remaining men who were not yet at the front had just been decreed.
And in the evening, walking along the embankments beside the Neva, they saw sailors carrying big black crates and loading them onto a tug. Volsky tried to get close, a soldier sent him packing. They did an about-face and walked back beside an old man who, like them, must have seen the loading of the cargo. “I was in the navy myself,” he explained softly. “What they’re doing is mining the harbor. Then they’ll sink all the warships. So as to leave nothing for the Germans. It’s finished. Our city’s lost.”
For several days they gave concerts close to the front line, where death could occur between a couple of remarks exchanged in a trench. The same wind, at minus fifty, which seemed to sheathe their singing in a layer of ice, the same shivering that the actors concealed behind bold gestures. But the looks they encountered in the crowd of soldiers had changed. These men now knew that their deaths could protect no one. To save Moscow, where the resistance was already being broken by the Germans, Leningrad was to be sacrificed. That winter the old rivalry between the two capitals posed an impossible choice.
The singers no longer returned home, they were billeted in a workers’ hostel emptied by the mobilization. From this outlying area it was easier to get to the front. Several times already they had asked to be armed, so they could be sent to a fighting unit. But, curiously enough, the old soldier who used to escort their troupe would always echo the reply given that day by the manager of the Musical Comedy Theater: “We need your voices…”
He said it again one evening, when he told them that the following day their concert would take place at a very exposed site. “You will be singing under fire,” he added. “So only volunteers are to come with me.” The response was a torrent of cheerfully indignant exclamations. “Oh, Captain, do you doubt your musketeers?” one of the actors burst out, the song sung by Porthos. The “captain” hushed them with a gesture. “That’s all I can tell you. The conditions will be really tough. Think about it…”
They set off just before dawn in an army truck: fourteen singers, ten musicians carrying their instruments, no one refused the call. The journey was short (there were no long distances around the besieged city anymore) and the spot where they piled out did not look very different from the places where their concerts generally took place. Except that this time no human presence was visible. The gleaming pinpricks of stars, a white expanse sloping down to a frozen river, then rising up to a ridge above the opposite bank. No sound apart from their whispers (the “captain” had asked them not to speak out loud). No platform, they took up position on a square of packed snow, the singers in front, the musicians a little way behind them, all facing the river, more in response to an instinct than to any order. Over there beyond the ridge, a mysterious listening presence could be sensed…
Their military guide passed among them, shook each one’s hand, sometimes muttering a proverb (“No one dies twice, no one escapes a single death”), sometimes wishing them good luck in words that sounded bizarre coming from an army officer: “Off you go now, with God’s help.” His tones were muffled but the emotion sincere and that was the moment when they realized that this would be a concert quite unlike the previous ones.
“Look, that’s the star you can see from my window…,” Volsky had time to murmur in Mila’s ear. She had time to look up…
The plain, which had looked bare, shivered into life and was covered in tiny dots. The night, caught off guard, remained silent for several seconds, then suddenly erupted into gunfire. The dull sound of a “hurrah!” swelled in the air. The “captain” waved his arm, the music rang out. With the power of their voices the singers drowned the shouting of the soldiers and the first shots.
They sang the “Internationale,” hardly surprised at the “captain’s” choice (their usual repertoire was more lyrical). There were few fervent believers in communism among them, but the words bursting forth from their lips spoke of a truth it was difficult to deny. One appearing right before their eyes. At first the white plain bristling with little black figures running down toward the river. Then the first bodies falling and on the ridge above the opposite bank the German positions revealing themselves, breaking the line of snowy dunes with indentations made for their machine guns. Finally, in the glorious clear light of this winter morning, a long scarlet stain left by a soldier crawling back toward the singers, as if they could have protected him.
All was confusion on both banks. A wave of attackers fell back, decimated, and collided with the next line as it moved into the assault, joined with it, managed to advance several dozen yards, fell beneath the increasingly accurate fire from the Germans. Yet another dotted line of human beings rose up and hurled itself at the icy slope on the far shore. The crackling of the gunfire became continuous, punctuated by explosions, the shouts of the commanding officers, and the cries of the wounded. In particular those of that wounded man still crawling up toward the musicians, emitting a harrowing death rattle and spattering the snow with his blood.
To the anarchy of all these deaths the singing gave a solemn, measured rhythm, which seemed to resonate beyond the battlefield. They were few in number on their stage of compacted snow, but it felt to the soldiers as if the power of the whole country rose behind them.
They were embarking on the anthem for the third time when Volsky noticed the fighting men who had reached the top of the bank opposite. A burst of machine gun fire mowed them down, but their bodies marked the most advanced frontier of the assault. He could see it all, despite the effort the singing demanded On the frozen river men were grappling with a gun carriage, its wheels embedded in a snowdrift. Their movements were both frenzied and painfully slow, like those of someone running in a nightmare.
He also saw what the darkness had hidden: at the bottom of the valley a ruined village, charred roofs and, amazingly intact, one house beneath a very tall tree, miraculously preserved. The quirk of a day of warfare… Another quirk, that young wounded soldier, huddled close to the singers, gazing at them in tears. The logical suffering of that mass of human beings and suddenly this singular suffering, which no logic could justify.
The assault was an act of desperate bravery, a heroic last stand rather than a strategists’ decision. Long years after the war Volsky would come across references to that day in December in two history books. The first would speak of “the participation of the artists of Leningrad in the defense of the city,” without referring to anyone in particular. The second, much more recent, would refer to “a sham counteroffensive dreamed up by
those responsible, seeking to clear their names in Stalin’s eyes.” Neither one nor the other would make any mention of the soldier who had just traced a line of blood in the snow, of the tranquillity of that house, safe beneath its tree, or, least of all, of the lock of dark hair that had escaped from under Mila’s headscarf and was stirred by Volsky’s breath as he sang.
No history, either, would record that line of soldiers who managed to haul themselves up onto the ridge. Their silhouettes were etched against the sky before being felled by bullets, the following wave managed to cling on a little farther up. The singers lost count of the number of times they had struck up the “Internationale,” but, at the sight of these men, as the words about “the final conflict” rang out, they were freshly apposite.
It was then that the explosions began to occur all around them. Later on, in the army, Volsky would learn to recognize this as mortar fire, with its perfidious trajectories straight up into the air, which create the impression that the shells are falling out of the sky. All he noticed at the time was the increasing accuracy of the fire closing in on them. An explosion threw up snow behind the band and, without turning around, he sensed from a jolt in the music that one of the musicians had been hit. The singers reinforced their voices with wild exhilaration, glad to be identified by the enemy and therefore counting for something in this fight.
He fell without being wounded. A singer on his right, who had caught a shell splinter full in the face, toppled backward and brought him down. In the time it took to get up Volsky saw their troupe as they must appear from the water’s edge: two rows of singers, a semicircle of musicians and gaps already left by those who had been killed. Yet the singing had lost none of its intensity. And on the ridge several dozen soldiers were fighting on, hurling grenades, setting up machine guns among the bodies of their dead comrades.
The Life of an Unknown Man Page 10
