3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  Author’s Note

  Although this novel is based on real events, the majority of its characters and incidents are fictional. In some instances (such as Karl Eliasberg and Nina Bronnikova), where little documentation exists, I have retained real names but have largely fictionalised backgrounds and personalities. I have slightly altered a few facts for dramatic purposes.

  In recent decades, conflicting views have arisen relating to the programmatic interpretation of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. I have chosen to depict the work as a direct response to the invasion of Leningrad for purely novelistic reasons.

  In most cases I have used Anglicised versions of Russian names and place names. I have also simplified the complicated Russian method of personal address; characters are usually referred to by one name only, regardless of their relationship to the speaker.

  Prologue

  I was born without a heart.

  At least, that’s what they believe. I hear what they say about me in rehearsals. They have little enough breath to make music — whether I coax and implore, or shout like thunder, it makes no difference. But when they whisper about me, their voices sound through the hall as loudly as pickaxes on ice.

  Conductors are supposed to stand apart. It’s part of the task, the privilege, the burden. Being separate is only one small step away from being disliked. I don’t mind. To be more specific, I can’t mind. These days, I have no energy for the luxury of taking offence. They may say what they like about my beaked nose, my thin lips, my unfashionable spectacles. They may joke about my insistence on punctuality. Surely, in all my harshness, I must be related to the great leader of our feared regime! (They’ve become used to mouthing such lines behind their hands, fearing that Stalin’s men are listening at the door.) Or perhaps — and this is said more loudly — my inimical nature is more similar to that of Hitler, our country’s greatest enemy. I hear these comparisons, and I find them tedious but unsurprising. Ever since my career began I’ve been accused of being strict, overly exacting, hostile — and, yes, dictatorial.

  What can I not allow my musicians to see? That once, I, Karl Illyyich Eliasberg, was as emotional as any man. That on a long-ago June day, when the bright dust hung in the air like long quivering curtains, and the tall windows stood open, and sunlight filled the marble atrium, I stood for a long time on the curved staircase of the Conservatoire. As I listened, my heart split wide open. With jealousy, with admiration, with love.

  My adversary, my friend. Over the years, I’ve thought of him as both. It’s because of him that I stand here today: talked of, despised, assumed to be a heartless man. Had I the strength to do so, I would laugh at the irony of it. Of course I have no heart! Many years ago, in that Leningrad stairwell, I gave my heart to Shostakovich.

  PART I

  Spring–Summer 1941

  The knock at the door

  It seemed he’d been waiting all his life for the knock at the door. He heard it dimly when he slept, tapping on the surface of his dreams. He heard it when he was working, in the urgent roll of timpani or the sharp plucking of pizzicato strings. And he heard it in the sound of his own footsteps when he walked the streets, so that even when hurrying he could never escape it.

  The dread followed him day and night like a stubborn stray dog.

  Shostakovich! Shostakovich! Was someone calling his name? He struggled to open his eyes. The room was blurred at the edges of his vision, with a bright glare in the centre where he knew the work table to be.

  ‘Nina?’ he called, but his voice was still clogged with half-remembered dreams.

  He reached blindly for his glasses, patting the mattress and then the low stool beside the bed. It was an effort to lift his arm; his fingers felt limp and without their usual strength. He’d worked late and eaten nothing over the past twenty-four hours, except for some hard rye bread soaked in tea. The good thing about hunger and extreme tiredness was that they alleviated fear. The sound that woke him — had it been the knock? If he were taken now, he would almost be relieved.

  His fingers found the steel arms of his glasses, then the reassuring curve of the rims. He pushed aside the rough grey blanket — supposedly a privilege. But even privilege could make your skin itch.

  With his glasses on, the wavering whiteness shrank to nothing. The shabby walls stood back, the room held its breath. Now he wasn’t sure what he’d heard: someone in the street? Or simply the rap rap of the loose window in its frame?

  ‘Nina?’ he called again. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, ran his hand through his hair, shuffled to the door.

  But when he looked cautiously into the outer room, he found it was empty.

  The note

  Downstairs, in the communal kitchen, a naked light bulb. He bumped his head on it, as always, and swore. The reek of cleaning fluid, cabbage and cheap cutlets made him nauseous. He clamped his fingers over his nose, and breathed ostentatiously through his mouth as he mixed his porridge, though there was no one there to watch his theatrics. He was thankful for this. He’d never liked talking much before midday, and hated hearing, even from the stairs, the racket of several spirit stoves going at once, and voices drilling into his early-morning head. (However indifferent Nina seemed, however closed off to his suffering, at least she never sounded like a fishwife!)

  As he leaned on the table, wiping a smear of dust from his glasses, he heard a noise behind him. Small cat-like feet, snuffling breath. Glancing backwards, he saw a cracked pair of overshoes, a skinny pair of ankles.

  He sighed. Whenever he’d let the stove upstairs go out and was forced to venture down here, unless he was as quiet as the spring grass growing, he had to face this ordeal.

  ‘Ahhhh, Mr Shostakovich!’ There was, as usual, unholy satisfaction in the greeting. ‘I could tell from the footsteps bumbling over my ceiling that it was you.’

  ‘Irina Barinova!’ He tried to sound as if he’d been lost in his own world. This was, after all, the behaviour she wanted to see in him: an artistic vagueness rendering him useless as a neighbour and a human being. ‘A very good morning to you.’

  ‘Good morning?’ repeated Irina Barinova, managing to sound both reflective and sharp. ‘Is it still morning?’ Her voice rose, and so did her wizened hand, floating up to the front of her frayed green cardigan (it was far more genteel to patch old clothes than to buy garish new ones). She rummaged inside her dress. ‘Ahhhh,’ she said again, and this time the triumph was unmistakable, cutting a path through the steamy air. ‘In fact, Mr Shostakovich, it is already afternoon.’

  He bit his tongue with irritation and tasted blood. ‘Shit,’ he muttered. He watched silently as old Irina Barinova displayed, with slightly shaking hands, her father’s gold watch, a reminder of better days.

  ‘Goodness!’ he said. ‘Is it really afternoon! No wonder our stove had gone out by the time I woke up.’

  Irina shovelled the heavy watch and chain back into her sprigged cotton dress. The slipping of the links, the slow inexorable disappearing, reminded Shostakovich of a boat casting off its moorings. And again, with a lurch of his stomach, he thought: Where’s Nina?

  ‘You’ve been burning the midnight oil, I expect,’ said Irina. ‘What it must be to have genius.’ Now that she’d exposed him as a shameless bohemian, a no-good father and a husband who let the family stove go cold, she became flattering. It was all part of the routine.

  Get on with the show, thought Shostakovich. He longed to leave, but his stomach was empty and his porridge had not yet boiled.

  Irina looked at him almost coyly from under white eyelashes. ‘To think that Dmitri Shostakovich should be living in my house. Leningrad’s most famous son, living here, under the roof of my dear deceased father.’

  Shostakovich ducked his head. This sort of talk made his stomach twist.

  ‘All this.’ She waved a twig-like arm. ‘Once, it all belonged to my father — from the attic to the basement.’

  ‘Yes, I know. You’ve told me that three hundr
ed and sixty-five days of the year, for as many years as a donkey’s ears are long.’ He stabbed the porridge with the wooden spoon.

  ‘Once we had maids and cooks.’ Irina sighed heavily. ‘Now it’s a house full of strangers.’

  Shostakovich stared at the porridge, willing bubbles to appear.

  ‘Speaking of maids,’ said Irina, swooping swiftly back to the present, ‘where is your Fenya? I haven’t seen her for days.’

  ‘Fenya is visiting her parents.’ He whipped the pan off the stove. Suddenly undercooked oats seemed immensely appealing. ‘Therefore I make my own porridge!’

  ‘Well, what about Nina? How is dear Nina?’

  Shostakovich dropped the spoon, and porridge splattered over his shirt-front.

  ‘I saw her going out early this morning,’ mused Irina. ‘With the children. I believe they were carrying travelling bags. Perhaps they’re also visiting relations?’

  Shostakovich skirted around the table, knocking his head once more on the light bulb. For a small person, Irina Barinova was remarkably adept at blocking escape routes. ‘You really must excuse me.’ He gestured, slightly wildly, with his saucepan. ‘Nothing worse than cold porridge for breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast?’ Irina raised her wizened hand once more to her breast. ‘My father was washed and shaved, and had taken a turn around the park before his breakfast, which was served in the red room at eight o’clock sharp.’

  He took the stairs two at a time. The empty apartment was no longer unsettling; it was bliss. Standing by the old wooden table, he shovelled the porridge straight from the pan into his mouth. He poured cold water onto strong cold tea, and threw in half a spoonful of honey that fell like a stone to the bottom of the glass. God, he was starving. He was thirsty. He had to start thinking about work.

  Halfway through his second bowl, he saw the note lying on the floor. It was smeared with dust from being pushed under the door, but his name was legible, written in a familiar hand. He walked to the window to read it, continuing to shovel lukewarm mush into his mouth. Put down the bowl, the spoon, with twin clatters. Gulped the last dregs of tea. Pulled on his boots, hat with ear-flaps, a patched coat — and left the house.

  The bench

  On the bench at the corner of Zamkovaya and Klenovaya streets sat a large shaggy bear. Shostakovich approached, a little warily, from behind.

  ‘You’re late,’ said the bear. ‘Very late.’

  ‘I overslept,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Then Irina Barinova cornered me in the kitchen. I thought I’d never get away.’ He swallowed unhappily and sat down beside Sollertinsky, who was bundled in a shapeless fur coat fit for a tramp. The undercooked porridge had been too salty, and an ulcer was forming on the inside of his cheek. ‘Brushing up on Language Number Eighteen?’ He looked at the book of Georgian grammar in Sollertinsky’s huge hand. ‘Your loyalty to our leader puts the rest of us to shame.’

  ‘Language Number Three,’ said Sollertinsky, winking. ‘I felt a little malcontent today, experienced a slight frisson at this morning’s news.’

  Shostakovich peered more closely at the book. A light blue cover concealed a dull grey one; inside there was French text. ‘You’re a masterful dissembler.’

  Sollertinsky shrugged, looked around at the high glinting windows, the screen of trees around the park. ‘We both know that dissemblers live longer than dissidents.’

  The sun was as hard as nails, and Shostakovich pulled his collar up around his ears. ‘You’ve always known how to avoid attention.’ His voice emerged in two layers: admiration on top, a kind of envy below. ‘If you’ve got something to tell me, let’s go somewhere less exposed.’

  The drinking house was dark after the white glare outside. Sollertinsky headed for the corner table, and Shostakovich followed, stumbling over a chair.

  ‘You look a little under the weather,’ said Sollertinsky cheerfully. ‘Rough night?’

  ‘A rough three nights. No sleep until dawn.’

  ‘Back to the old regime, then?’ Sollertinsky gestured to the boy at the bar. ‘My poor tortured friend.’

  ‘I only want tea,’ said Shostakovich. ‘I ate breakfast under an hour ago.’

  ‘And what of that?’

  ‘Well, all right. Perhaps just one drink.’

  It was cosy sitting there with his old friend, feeling his hands thaw and the warmth of vodka in his stomach. Cosy, seemingly like any other day — nonetheless, something wasn’t right. ‘I haven’t had a bowel movement for days,’ he reflected. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling strange.’

  ‘Wait till you hear the news,’ said Sollertinsky. ‘That’ll make you shit all right.’

  ‘News?’ Shostakovich had forgotten, what with the cold, and the blinding sun, and the feeling that, back in the apartment, he’d left something unattended to.

  Sollertinsky leaned forward, dwarfing the small round table. Raising his magnificent eyebrows, he took a mouthful of vodka and swished it loudly about in his cheeks. But when he spoke, it was in such a low voice that Shostakovich could hardly hear.

  ‘What? Who is leaving?’

  Sollertinsky touched the side of his nose in a conspiratorial manner. ‘My tailor told me when I went to him this morning. Apparently, last week Herr Lehmann cancelled a large order. The next day, Herr Ziegler did the very same thing.’

  Shostakovich shook his head. ‘Two Germans cancelled orders for suits. So?’

  ‘Two German diplomats,’ corrected Sollertinsky. ‘Two high-profile Germans cancelled long-standing orders with a Leningrad tailor so highly reputed it’s impossible to get an appointment with him this side of the New Year. A tailor so exacting, and so brilliant, he wouldn’t hurry a seam if his wife were about to be put in a poorhouse. Two German diplomats cancelled at short notice with Yuri Davydenko, whose waiting list is as long as the River Volga!’

  ‘You’re sure of this?’ said Shostakovich slowly. ‘Absolutely sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m bloody well sure. I checked it out myself. You don’t think I’d take Davydenko’s word for anything more important than the cut of my trousers, do you?’ Sollertinsky sounded weary, as if Shostakovich were one of his more idiotic musicology students. ‘After we’d ascertained the measurement of my inside leg, I decided the Lehmanns were in need of some freshly baked bread. Right away.’ He paused for a mouthful of vodka. ‘When I got there with their complimentary breakfast, I rang their door bell.’ He paused again, this time for effect. ‘I rang the bell once, twice, three times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’d gone. And I don’t just mean for a Sunday stroll. They’ve upped and left, permanently. The apartment is empty.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I looked through the keyhole, of course.’

  ‘Ivan Sollertinsky! Someone might have seen you. You should think of your position.’

  ‘I listened first, with my ear to the door,’ protested Sollertinsky. ‘And I heard a deep silence. Not a chair scraping, not a brat quarrelling. Only after that did I look through the keyhole. Mainly out of fear that I’d have to eat an entire loaf of new bread by myself. Which, over the course of the morning, I’ve nearly achieved.’ He gave a comfortable belch. Being one of the most highly educated men in Leningrad didn’t stop him revelling in being one of the least refined.

  Shostakovich glanced around. The room was empty, except for the pointy-nosed Mikhail Druskin bent double over his notebook, no doubt slaughtering the Philharmonic’s recent performance of Prokofiev’s orchestral suite. ‘So the Germans are evacuating their own?’

  ‘That’s my interpretation. One can only hope that I’m wrong.’ Unusually for someone whose most common reaction was a laugh, there was anger on Sollertinsky’s face — or was it just the smoke drifting from Druskin’s table that made his eyes narrow?

  ‘I need to piss.’ Shostakovich pushed back his chair and strode to the dingy bathroom. He stood facing the urinals, staring at the long familiar crack across the porcelain. In the past he
’d seen this as a horizon over a wheat field, or the thin grey line from the funnel of a steamer. Now he was so agitated that his glasses steamed up and he saw nothing at all.

  Sollertinsky shuffled up beside him and turned the water on full. ‘Although this is bad news for us,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s not entirely unexpected. There have been rumours for months. From London, from Washington — and also from within.’

  ‘Yet he has chosen not to hear them. And anyone who forces him to unblock his ears will pay dearly.’ Out of the blurry wall, a familiar face emerged, both real and unreal, like the ghost appearing to Hamlet. Almond-shaped grey eyes, white teeth, a strong jaw above a collar emblazoned with Marshal’s stars. ‘Tukhachevsky!’ whispered Shostakovich — but already the image was disintegrating in a red haze, blood running down the wall and into the guttering. The Red Army’s best Marshal, one of Shostakovich’s best friends, shot by Stalin’s henchmen.

  ‘Of course Stalin doesn’t want to hear,’ agreed Sollertinsky. ‘Nor to see. The possibility that he’s been taken for a ride by Hitler doesn’t sit easily with his view of the world.’

  ‘So he shuts his damn eyes.’ Shostakovich closed his own. The water, the early drinking, the apparition: he was beginning to feel queasy. ‘And the German rats run from the sinking ship, and we — well, what are we to do?’

  Sollertinsky shook his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do but wait. I came to your home this morning simply to tell you what I’d found out, not to rouse you to action.’ He sighed. ‘As it turned out, I couldn’t rouse you at all. When Dmitri Shostakovich finally sleeps, he might as well be dead. I knocked so hard the door nearly crumbled. I thought your wife would be out chasing me away with a broom.’

  ‘Nina!’ Shostakovich started. ‘When I woke up, Nina was gone.’ It was all starting to come back to him. ‘She threatened last night that she’d take the children, go to her parents’ for a few days. She was very angry.’