The Noise of Time

by Julian Barnes

  On the 5th of January 1948 – twelve years after his abbreviated visit to Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – Stalin and his entourage were at the Bolshoi again, this time for Vano Muradeli’s The Great Friendship. The composer, who was also chairman of the Soviet Music Fund, prided himself on writing music that was melodic, patriotic and socialist-realist. His opera, commissioned to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution, and lavishly produced, had already enjoyed two months of great success. Its theme was the consolidation of Communist power in the Northern Caucasus during the Civil War.

  Muradeli was a Georgian who knew his history; unfortunately for him, Stalin was also a Georgian, and knew his history better. Muradeli had portrayed the Georgians and Ossetians as rising up against the Red Army; whereas Stalin – not least because he had an Ossetian mother – knew that what actually happened in 1918–20 was that the Georgians and Ossetians had joined hands with the Russian Bolsheviks to fight in defence of the Revolution. It had been the Chechens and the Ingush whose counter-revolutionary actions had hindered the forging of the Great Friendship between the many peoples of the future Soviet Union.

  Muradeli had compounded this politico-historical error with an equally gross musical one. He had included in his opera a lezghinka – which, as he doubtless knew, was Stalin’s favourite dance. But instead of choosing an authentic and familiar lezghinka, thereby celebrating the folk traditions of the Caucasian people, the composer had egotistically chosen to invent his own dance ‘in the style of the lezghinka’.

  Five days later, Zhdanov had called a conference of seventy composers and musicologists to discuss the continuing and corrosive influence of formalism; and a few days after this, the Central committee published its Official Decree ‘On V. Muradeli’s Opera The Great Friendship’. The composer learnt that his music, far from being as melodic and patriotic as he had supposed, quacked and grunted with the best of them. He too was pronounced a formalist, one serving up ‘confused neuropathological combinations’ and pandering to ‘a narrow circle of experts and gourmets’. Needing to save his career, if not his skin, Muradeli came up with the best explanation he could: that he had been misled by others. He had been seduced and deceived into taking the wrong path, specifically by Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, and even more specifically by that composer’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

  Zhdanov reminded the nation’s composers yet again that the criticisms embodied in the 1936 Pravda editorial were still valid: Music – harmonious, graceful music – was required, not Muddle. The chief culprits were named as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky and Shebalin. Their music was compared to a piercing road drill, and to the sound made by a ‘musical gas chamber’. The word Zhdanov used was dushegubka, the name for the truck the Fascists used to drive around while inside their victims were being asphyxiated by its exhaust fumes.

  Peace had returned, and so the world was upside down again; Terror had returned, and insanity with it. At a special congress called by the Union of Composers, a musicologist, whose offence had been to write a naively flattering book about Dmitri Dmitrievich, pleaded in desperate mitigation that at least he had never set foot in the composer’s apartment. He called upon the composer Yuri Levitin to corroborate his statement. Levitin affirmed ‘with a clear conscience’ that the musicologist had never once breathed the contaminated air of the formalist’s dwelling.

  At the congress, his Eighth Symphony was targeted, as was Prokofiev’s Sixth. Symphonies whose subject was war; symphonies which knew that war was tragic and terrible. But how little their formalist composers had understood: war was glorious and triumphant, and must be celebrated! Instead, they had indulged in ‘unhealthy individualism’ as well as ‘pessimism’. He had declined to attend the congress. He was ill. In fact, he felt suicidal. He sent his excuses. His excuses were not accepted. Indeed, the congress would remain in session until such time as the great recidivist Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was able to attend: if necessary, they would send doctors to ascertain his medical condition and cure him. ‘There is no escaping one’s destiny’ – and so he attended. He was instructed to make a public recantation. As he made his way to the platform, wondering what he might possibly say, a speech was thrust into his hand. He read it out tonelessly. He promised to follow Party directives in future and write melodic music for the People. In the middle of the official verbiage, he broke off from the text, lifted his head, looked around the hall, and said in a helpless voice, ‘It always seems to me that when I write sincerely and as I truly feel, then my music cannot be “against” the People, and that, after all, I myself am a representative … in some small way … of the People.’

  He had returned from the congress in a state of collapse. He was dismissed from his professorships at both the Moscow and Leningrad conservatoires. He wondered if it would be best to fall silent. Instead, to keep his sanity, he decided to write a series of preludes and fugues, after the example of Bach. Naturally, they were at first condemned: he was told that they sinned against ‘surrounding reality’. Also, he could not forget the words – some his own, others provided for him – which had come out of his mouth in the past weeks. He had not just accepted the criticism of his work but applauded it. He had, in effect, repudiated Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. He remembered what he had once said to a fellow composer about artistic honesty and personal honesty, and how much is allotted to each of us.

  Then, after a year of disgrace, he had his Second Conversation with Power. ‘The thunderclap comes from the heavens, not from a pile of dung,’ as the poet has it. He was sitting at home with Nita and the composer Levitin on the 16th of March 1949 when the telephone rang. He answered it, listened, frowned, then said to the other two,

  ‘Stalin is about to come on the line.’

  Nita immediately ran into the next room and picked up the extension.

  ‘Dmitri Dmitrievich,’ the voice of Power began, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Thank you, Iosif Vissarionovich, everything is fine. Only, I am suffering somewhat from stomach ache.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that. We shall find a doctor for you.’

  ‘No, thank you. I don’t need anything. I have everything I need.’

  ‘That is good.’ There was a pause. Then the strong Georgian tones, the voice of a million radios and tannoys, asked if he was aware of the forthcoming Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York. He said that he was.

  ‘And what do you think of it?’

  ‘I think, Iosif Vissarionovich, that peace is always better than war.’

  ‘Good. So you are happy to attend as one of our representatives.’

  ‘No, I cannot, I am afraid.’

  ‘You cannot?’

  ‘Comrade Molotov asked me. I told him I was not well enough to attend.’

  ‘Then, as I say, we shall send a doctor to make you better.’

  ‘It is not just that. I get air-sick. I cannot fly.’

  ‘That will not be a problem. The doctor will prescribe you some pills.’

  ‘That is kind of you.’

  ‘So you will go?’

  He paused. Part of him was conscious that the slightest wrong syllable might land him in a labour camp, while another part of him, to his surprise, was beyond fear.

  ‘No, I really cannot go, Iosif Vissarionovich. For another reason.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I do not have a tail-suit. I cannot perform in public without a tail-suit. And I am afraid I cannot afford one.’

  ‘This is hardly my immediate business, Dmitri Dmitrievich, but I am sure that the workshop of the administration of the Central Committee will be able to make one that is to your satisfaction.’

  ‘Thank you. But there is, I am afraid, another reason.’

  ‘Which you are also about to tell me.’

  Yes, it was just conceivably possible that Stalin did not know.

  ‘The fact is, you see, that I am in a very difficult position. Over there, in America, my music is
often played, whereas over here it is not played. They would ask me about it. So how am I to behave in such a situation?’

  ‘What do you mean, Dmitri Dmitrievich, that your music is not played?’

  ‘It is forbidden. As is the music of many of my colleagues in the Union of Composers.’

  ‘Forbidden? Forbidden by whom?’

  ‘By the State Commission for Repertoire. From the 14th of February last year. There is a long list of works which cannot be played. But the consequence, as you can imagine, Iosif Vissarionovich, is that concert managers are unwilling to programme any of my other compositions as well. And musicians are afraid to play them. So I am in effect blacklisted. As are my colleagues.’

  ‘And who gave such an order?’

  ‘It must have been one of the leading comrades.’

  ‘No,’ the voice of Power replied. ‘We didn’t give that order.’

  He let Power consider the matter, which it did.

  ‘No, we didn’t give that order. It is a mistake. The mistake will be corrected. None of your works has been forbidden. They can all be freely played. This has always been the case. There will have to be an official reprimand.’

  A few days later, along with other composers, he received a copy of the original banning order. Stapled to the top of it was a document recognising the decree as illegal, and reprimanding the State Commission for Repertoire for having issued it. The correction was signed, ‘Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, I. Stalin.’

  And so he had gone to New York.

  To his mind, rudeness and tyranny were closely connected. It had not escaped his attention that Lenin, when dictating his political will and considering possible successors, judged Stalin’s main fault to be ‘rudeness’. And in his own world, he hated to see conductors described admiringly as ‘dictators’. To be rude to an orchestral player who was doing his best was disgraceful. And these tyrants, these emperors of the baton, revelled in such terminology – as if an orchestra could only play well if whipped and derided and humiliated.

  Toscanini was the worst. He had never seen the conductor in action; only knew him from records. But everything was wrong – tempi, spirit, nuance … Toscanini chopped up music like hash and then smeared a disgusting sauce all over it. This made him very angry. The ‘maestro’ had once sent him a recording of his Seventh Symphony. He had written back, pointing out the distinguished conductor’s many errors. He did not know if Toscanini had received the letter or, if so, understood it. Perhaps he had assumed it must contain only praise, because soon afterwards the glorious news reached Moscow that he, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, had been elected an honorary member of the Toscanini Society! And shortly after that, he began to receive gifts of gramophone records, all conducted by the great slave-driver. He never listened to them, of course, but piled them up as future presents. Not for friends, but for certain kinds of acquaintance, those he could tell in advance would be thrilled.

  It was not just a matter of amour propre; or one that concerned only music. Such conductors screamed and cursed at orchestras, made scenes, threatened to sack the principal clarinet for coming in late. And the orchestra, compelled to put up with it, responded by telling stories behind the conductor’s back – stories which made him out to be a ‘real character’. Then they came to believe what this emperor of the baton himself believed: that they were only playing well because they were being whipped. They huddled together in a masochistic herd, occasionally dropping an ironic remark to one another, but essentially admiring their leader for his nobility and idealism, his sense of purpose, his ability to see more widely than those who just scraped and blew behind their desks. The maestro, harsh though he might of necessity be from time to time, was a great leader who must be followed. Now, who would still deny that an orchestra was a microcosm of society?

  So when such a conductor, impatient of the mere score in front of him, imagined a mistake or a defect, he would always give the polite, ritual response he had long ago perfected.

  And therefore he imagined the following conversation:

  Power: ‘Look, we have made the Revolution!’

  Citizen Second Oboe: ‘Yes, it’s a wonderful revolution, of course. And a great improvement on what was there before. It really is a tremendous achievement. But I just wonder, from time to time … I might be completely wrong, of course, but was it absolutely necessary to shoot all those engineers, generals, scientists, musicologists? To send millions to the camps, to use slave labour and work it to death, to make everyone terrified, to extort false confessions in the name of the Revolution? To set up a system where, even at the edge of it, there are hundreds of men waiting each night to be dragged from their beds and taken to the Big House or the Lubyanka, to be tortured and made to sign their names to complete fabrications, then shot in the back of the head? I’m just wondering, you understand.’

  Power: ‘Yes, yes, I see your point. I’m sure you’re right. But let’s leave it for now. We’ll make that change next time round.’

  For some years, he had always made the same New Year’s toast. For three hundred and sixty-four days of the year the country would have to listen to Power’s insane daily insistence that all was for the best in the best possible of worlds, that Paradise had been created, or would be created quite soon when a few more logs had been chopped and a million more chips had flown, and a few hundred thousand more saboteurs had been shot. That happier times would come – unless they already had. And on the three hundred and sixty-fifth day, he would raise his glass, and say, in his most solemn voice: ‘Let’s drink to this – that things don’t get any better!’

  Of course, Russia had known tyrants before; that was why irony was so well developed here. ‘Russia is the homeland of elephants,’ as the saying went. Russia invented everything because … well, first because it was Russia, where delusions were normal; and second, because it was now Soviet Russia, the most socially advanced nation in history, where it was natural that things were discovered first. So when the Ford Motor Company abandoned its Ford Model A, the Soviet authorities bought the entire manufacturing plant: and behold, an authentic, Soviet-designed twenty-seater bus or light truck was upon the earth! The same with tractor factories: an American production line, imported from America, assembled by American experts, suddenly producing Soviet tractors. Or you copied a Leica camera and it was born afresh as a FED, named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, and thereby all the more Soviet. Who said the age of miracles was past? And all done with words, whose transformative powers were truly revolutionary. So, for instance, French bread. Everyone used to know it as such, and had been calling it such for years. Then one day, French bread disappeared from the shops. Instead, there was ‘city bread’ – exactly the same, of course, but now the patriotic product of a Soviet city.

  When truth-speaking became impossible – because it led to immediate death – it had to be disguised. In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth’s disguise was irony. Because the tyrant’s ear is rarely tuned to hear it. The previous generation – those Old Bolsheviks who had made the Revolution – hadn’t understood this, which was partly why so many of them perished. His generation had grasped it more instinctively. And so, the day after he had agreed to go to New York, he wrote the following letter:

  Dear Iosif Vissarionovich,

  First of all, please accept my heartfelt gratitude for the conversation that took place yesterday. You supported me very much, since the forthcoming trip to America had been worrying me greatly. I cannot but be proud of the confidence that has been placed in me; I will fulfil my duty. To speak on behalf of our great Soviet people in defence of peace is a great honour for me. My indisposition cannot serve as an impediment to the fulfilment of such a responsible mission.

  As he signed it, he doubted the Great Leader and Helmsman would read it himself. Perhaps its contents would be conveyed to him, and then the letter would disappear into some file in some archive. It might stay there for decades, pe
rhaps generations, perhaps 200,000,000,000 years; and then someone might read it, and wonder what exactly – if anything – he had meant by it.

  In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in others, being optimistic, being frank with everyone about everything. And then, as one comes to understand things and people better, to develop a sense of irony. The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism; and a sense of irony helps temper pessimism, helps produce balance, harmony.

  But this was not an ideal world, and so irony grew in sudden and strange ways. Overnight, like a mushroom; disastrously, like a cancer.

  Sarcasm was dangerous to its user, identifiable as the language of the wrecker and the saboteur. But irony – perhaps, sometimes, so he hoped – might enable you to preserve what you valued, even as the noise of time became loud enough to knock out window-panes. What did he value? Music, his family, love. Love, his family, music. The order of importance was liable to change. Could irony protect his music? In so far as music remained a secret language which allowed you to smuggle things past the wrong ears. But it could not exist only as a code: sometimes you ached to say things straightforwardly. Could irony protect his children? Maxim, at school, aged ten, had been obliged publicly to vilify his father in the course of a music exam. In such circumstances, what use was irony to Galya and Maxim?

  As for love – not his own awkward, stumbling, blurting, annoying expressions of it, but love in general: he had always believed that love, as a force of nature, was indestructible; and that, when threatened, it could be protected, blanketed, swaddled in irony. Now he was less convinced. Tyranny had become so expert at destroying that why should it not destroy love as well, intentionally or not? Tyranny demanded that you love the Party, the State, the Great Leader and Helmsman, the People. But individual love – bourgeois and particularist – distracted from such grand, noble, meaningless, unthinking ‘loves’. And in these times, people were always in danger of becoming less than fully themselves. If you terrorised them enough, they became something else, something diminished and reduced: mere techniques for survival. And so, it was not just an anxiety, but often a brute fear that he experienced: the fear that love’s last days had come.