3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  ‘I know him!’ he cried, turning to the officer. ‘He was my student.’ Already Fleishman’s thin back was disappearing into the distance, his shoulders squared inside an overly large jacket. ‘One of my more promising students,’ he added. ‘He was writing an opera.’

  ‘Operas won’t win the war.’

  ‘Neither will sending untrained, unarmed boys to the Front.’ Shostakovich was hot with anger. ‘They’ll never come back alive. They’re doomed, every one of them.’

  The officer stiffened. ‘Just dig the bloody ditch. Finished by nightfall, I said!’ He strode over to the men sitting beside the bushes in their incongruous suits and neat leather shoes. Picking up Possokhov’s books, he threw them in the air. The blue covers spread like wings, releasing a few loose pages which the officer stamped into the dust.

  Miserably, Shostakovich bent to his work. His blistered palms felt as if they would bleed.

  Suddenly there was a rush of air beside him. ‘Mr Shostakovich!’ It was Fleishman, his normally pale cheeks blotched with red. ‘I can’t stay — I’ll be court-martialled, or worse.’ His hands were trembling as he shoved a crushed mess of pages at Shostakovich. ‘Could you look after this? It’s not finished, which is why I was taking it with me. I thought I might have time, in the evenings —’ He stopped. ‘But when I saw you here, it seemed as if it was meant to be. Could you take care of it until I get back? Perhaps have a quick look at it?’

  Shostakovich grasped Fleishman’s thin wrists. ‘Of course I will. In the names of Chekhov and Fleishman!’

  Despair swept over Fleishman’s face. ‘I’m sorry the score’s in such a mess. And there’s a dreadful aria in the second act that you’ll probably pull to pieces. Remember it’s in its early stages, and I have a lot of work to do when I … If I —’ He pulled away. ‘I must catch up with the guard.’

  He was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, a gangly figure with patched boots. Shostakovich sank down in the trench, staring at the notes: hundreds of them running over crooked staves, accompanied by scribbled stage directions and crossings-out and over-scorings. It was like looking into someone else’s brain: a mass of information gathered over years of listening and learning, half-followed threads, half-exposed themes.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Boris sidled up. ‘Rothschild’s Violin. What’s that?’

  ‘None of your business.’ Shostakovich spoke curtly, but he felt like crying. ‘Nor should it be mine. Unfortunately, one result of this war is that we’re all forced to do things for which we’re not even remotely qualified.’

  Although the comment wasn’t directed at him, Boris looked offended. ‘We all know you’re a genius, Dmitri, while the rest of us are merely artisans. But how will your precious talent save us when the Germans come marching in, raping our women and smashing the skulls of our children? Will your symphonies stop the bullets that are already flying in the streets of Moscow?’

  Shostakovich removed his glasses, so that Boris’s face became a round pink blur. He wiped the grit out of his eyes. He was about to tell Boris to get back to the only work for which he was fit, grubbing around in the dirt. But as Boris’s voice hammered on, a tinny tune emerged from the insults. Just as he grasped it (a mindlessly repetitive tune, but there was something there) and was trying to memorise it, annoyingly Boris stopped.

  ‘You were saying?’ Shostakovich gazed away in a casual manner. ‘Something about my worthless opera, its neurotic quality, its excessive number of notes? But surely you’re simply quoting the famous Pravda editorial, Comrade. Have you no views of your own?’

  The ploy worked. Instantly Boris started up again, his voice chipping away like the pickaxes behind them. ‘Your conceited nature obstructs your music … Your ego is larger than what you write …’ And once more Shostakovich heard the tune.

  Pizzicato, that was it! A pizzicato refrain rising from a melancholic E flat melody like a puppet rising from a heap of toys. Unseen hands pulled on the strings (slowly, relentlessly) until the puppet was marching. The wooden tune spread from the strings to the woodwind, and battled repetitively against the snare drums. ‘Idiotic,’ said Boris’s voice from amid the growing din. ‘Arrogant. Imitative.’

  ‘Exactly!’ The words burst out of Shostakovich. ‘You’re right! The themes of fascism. It will be a fascist march.’ As he put his spectacles back on, the Toad’s face leapt into focus.

  ‘What did you say?’ Boris glared. ‘Did you call me a fascist?’

  ‘Not at all, my dear Boris!’ Shostakovich was blazing with excitement. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve never felt more kindly towards you than now. Do you have a pen? I seem to have dropped mine during the digging.’

  Boris stuck a hand into his shapeless trousers and drew out the tiny stub of a pencil. ‘Here. But be sure to give it back. It still has some wear in it.’

  ‘Certainly, my good fellow. In such uncertain times, you’re wise to take care of your belongings. One never knows where the next pencil will come from. Perhaps the pencils of the entire nation will be sequestered for fortifications.’

  Boris, looking nonplussed, trailed away, and Shostakovich glanced around for the officer, who was haranguing a respected music historian for sitting against a handcart, reading. Furtively, he scribbled a few lines on the back of Fleishman’s manuscript. True, the pencil was as blunt as Boris’s wit and it wrote as badly as Boris played the piano — but it was enough. He’d captured it!

  He longed for evening, for the slowly creeping ditch to reach the hospital grounds and for the officer to dismiss his incompetent volunteers. As soon as he got home, he would begin writing.

  Counting down

  Once again, Nikolai was shut out of Sonya’s room. He sat staring at the familiar contours of the door: the crack where Sonya had thrown her overshoe, and the polished handle which warned, Keep out! You’re not wanted here.

  He obeyed, though he was desperately aware of each minute ticking away on the kitchen clock. Sixty minutes. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven. He gnawed at his thumbnail and wiped the blood off on the tablecloth. ‘Sonya! How are you getting on in there?’ He tried for nonchalance, but his voice was ragged.

  No sound came from behind the door. Over the past week, Sonya had become increasingly silent, her chatter drying up like a creek-bed in summer. Wordlessly, she’d watched Nikolai chopping onions, scrutinising him so intently that he became flustered.

  ‘Do you want to crack the eggs?’ he’d asked. ‘You know I’m useless at that.’

  Her black-pebble eyes were inscrutable in her round face. She shook her head and watched him smash the egg, sticking his thumbs in it, mashing shell into the yolk. ‘You see?’ he pointed out. ‘You should have done it while you had the chance!’

  Peering into the bowl, she’d picked up a fork and extracted the splinters. But still she said nothing.

  They sat down for dinner with the politeness of strangers. Sonya moved carefully about on her chair, positioning it so that the seat was lined up exactly with the edge of the table. Finally seeming satisfied, she gave a small nod. ‘It’s a pity Aunt Tanya couldn’t be here,’ she said, moving her water glass one inch to the right.

  ‘She could probably do with a square meal,’ agreed Nikolai. ‘Goodness knows what she’s surviving on. Cabbage and water, I expect.’

  For the past two weeks, Tanya had been working in a fortifications brigade to the south-east of Leningrad, sleeping on straw, working twelve-hour days hacking ditches from the stony ground. The skin on her face had roughened and her hair was harsh, as if her body was taking on the properties of the dry earth. ‘We wash in the stream,’ she said. ‘Sometimes we have to crap in the fields.’ (The Tanya of old would never have undressed in front of other people, nor used a word like ‘crap’. Nikolai had never liked or admired her more.)

  ‘If Auntie were here, she could eat all this.’ Sonya looked at the food on the table with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘More potato? You’ll be glad o
f it tomorrow.’ He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. Quickly, he dumped another lumpy spoonful onto Sonya’s plate.

  Sonya clicked her tongue, the way her mother used to do when annoyed. ‘Not there!’ She pushed the mash away from her tiny portion of stringy pork. ‘The potato should go there.’

  It was then that Nikolai noticed. Sonya had arranged her food in separate portions with clearly delineated edges, ensuring the red beet didn’t bleed into the cucumber, nor the salty cucumber juice seep into the meat. He felt disturbed at the sight. How long had she been doing this? Ever since his medical exam and the vague classification he’d been given (he was fit, he could fight; he was a valued member of the musical elite and therefore not eligible to fight), his head had felt cloudier than ever.

  For dessert there were blueberries, which he’d procured from a secretary at the Conservative in exchange for a ration of sugar. ‘Are you sure, Professor Nikolayev?’ she’d asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be thinking about food that will last? The memory of blueberries won’t be much comfort when the autumn comes.’ Her hand wavered over the twist of sugar, her derision for impractical academics warring with her good heart. ‘Don’t you have a child?’

  ‘I have a daughter,’ said Nikolai. ‘But I’ve provided for her for nine years now, and in spite of my useless ways she’s never gone without bread or potatoes. Blueberries are her favourite, and are now hard to come by. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank my nephew. He’s the one who risks his life getting out to the woods and back through the checkpoints.’ The secretary had headed quickly for the door, before she could be overcome by her better self.

  Nikolai piled the berries into Sonya’s favourite cut-glass bowl, and carried them to the table with a professional flourish. ‘For Miss Sonya Nikolayevska! The kitchen was informed that this is your favourite dessert.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Sonya looked distantly at the bowl. ‘I don’t feel like blueberries.’

  ‘No?’ Nikolai tried to fluff them up with a spoon but instead mashed them to a pulp. ‘Not even berries handpicked from the outskirts of the city and smuggled past many greedy soldiers?’

  ‘Not even then. But thank you all the same.’ Like someone eating in a hotel dining room, Sonya folded her napkin neatly over her smeared cutlery. She surveyed Nikolai’s inept attempts at festivity: a candle wedged in a bottle, a drooping rose filched from a Conservatoire windowsill. ‘I’ll clear away now,’ she said, with a slight frown.

  Once the dishes were done, she suggested that he might like to read while she straightened up the apartment.

  ‘But you straightened up last night,’ he protested. ‘Things couldn’t be straighter.’ This was quite literally true. The high-backed chairs, the rectangular table, the tea trolley with its few pieces of china: everything was positioned at a perfect right angle to the walls. Cushions lay on the sofa in symmetry; curtain-cords were neatly tied. Even Nikolai’s battered music stand stood to attention.

  ‘It’s important to do it every night.’ Sonya patted the end of the sofa as if summoning a dog. ‘Sit here and you’ll be out of the way.’

  He pretended to read the noticeably thinner Pravda while watching Sonya out of the corner of his eye. There was something odd about the way she tackled her tasks, methodically yet somewhat illogically. She dusted each shelf once, then retraced her steps and ran the cloth over them several more times. Cleaning the drinks cabinet, she touched each corner repeatedly, murmuring, ‘Two, four, eight, twelve.’

  ‘Darling?’ He tried to sound casual. ‘What are you counting?’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t watch me, watch your newspaper. It’s your job to keep an eye on the war.’

  He looked disparagingly at the editorial. ‘This paper tells us nothing, because apparently we’re supposed to know nothing.’ Nonetheless, he rustled through the paper as ordered. Between rustles, he could hear Sonya’s small concentrated puffs of breath, which nearly made him cry.

  When she disappeared to dust the bedrooms, he threw the paper aside. Nothing but unconfirmed Soviet victories on vaguely specified fronts, and governmental exhortations to be vigilant against traitors and spies. Indecision swelled inside him, making it hard to breathe. Was he being responsible — or was he simply wrong? After all, Shostakovich was stubbornly staying on in Leningrad, keeping his children by his side. But when it came to matters of principle, Shostakovich was almost obsessively romantic — a lunatic, according to Tanya, who heard tales from Fenya about the disarray in the Shostakovich household (lamps burning all night, bolted study doors, children running wild in the staircase, and Mrs Shostakovich sleeping on the sofa because her husband needed creative space). Yes, Shostakovich had the certainty of the truly selfish, whereas Nikolai was certain of nothing.

  ‘Certain of nothing,’ he muttered, ‘except that tomorrow I’ll be forced to part with the most precious thing in my life.’

  That night he didn’t sleep at all. Instead, he concentrated fiercely on images: Sonya’s round eyes when she heard about the treasures removed from the Hermitage and shipped to Sverdlovsk (‘A thousand miles away? A million?’); the flush on her cheekbones when she laughed; the wispy arrows of hair at the back of her neck. Her rounded forearms when she played the cello, the dents in her right thumb from the bow, the calluses on her left fingers from the strings. He tried to file the pictures in his head, while knowing this was useless.

  ‘How long will it be?’ he whispered. ‘How long until it’s safe to bring her back?’ The window rattled, the clock clacked on towards morning, and he covered his head with his pillow. But he registered the passing of time in his nervous blood and his quick, uncertain heart.

  The morning was much the same as any other. Sounds that had once been strange — marching boots, blaring loudspeakers, the wail of sirens — were already familiar. They blended with the noises of a more ordinary past — clanging dustbins and barking dogs, and the Gessens arguing in the back yard. The warm smell of porridge spread through the apartment, but it provided little comfort. Soon Sonya pushed away her bowl and disappeared back into her room.

  ‘Make sure we haven’t left anything out of the suitcase,’ called Nikolai through the closed door. ‘Did we remember stockings and mittens? I’m sure you’ll be home before the end of summer, but just in case …’ He looked around for something to do, began pouring leftover milk into a flask, adding water to make it last longer. But his hands were shaking so badly the milk ran down the bottle and over the bench.

  He gave up and sat staring at the closed door until the ticking clock could no longer be ignored. ‘Sonya, the train won’t wait! Can I help with anything?’

  ‘I’ll be five minutes.’ Sonya’s voice was distant but very definite.

  Walking softly to the door, he laid his ear against the wood. He could hear her talking — was she saying goodbye to her dolls? Every now and then her voice rose in an enquiry, and then paused as if waiting for an answer. Nervous sweat prickled under Nikolai’s arms. He’d give her sixty seconds, and then he’d go in.

  When the door flew open, he jumped back guiltily. Sonya stood there with her red winter coat around her shoulders. In her right hand she held her small battered suitcase, and in her left was the cello. ‘We’ve got a minute or two to say goodbye to the Gessens,’ she said. ‘It’s only polite, don’t you think?’

  He was so dismayed he could hardly speak. ‘Sonya, you know you can’t take the cello.’

  Her mouth fell open, forming a small shocked circle. ‘But I must! How else can I do my practice?’

  ‘You’re only allowed to take the minimum. Warm clothes, food for the journey, that’s all. Practice isn’t important right now.’

  ‘You’re a musician, how can you say that?’ cried Sonya. ‘Nothing is more important than practising. You sound like a stupid person.’

  Suddenly Nikolai felt furious. ‘Do you think I make the rules for this bloody war? If you carry the cello on the train, it will be taken off you before you’re ten miles ou
t of Leningrad. It’ll be smashed up for firewood, or given to an official as a bribe. How will you feel then?’

  ‘But if I go without the cello, how will Mama find me?’ She swayed in the doorway. ‘I told her that as soon as I reach Pskov, I’ll play, “Song Without Words” so she’ll know exactly where I am.’

  Nikolai’s anger drained away. ‘Mama always knows where you are, with or without the cello. What about before your birthday, before the cello was yours? What about before you even started to play?’

  ‘I won’t go,’ said Sonya, staring at the floor. ‘I won’t go without it.’ Her fingers were stiff and unyielding, gripping so hard to the case that Nikolai had to uncurl them one by one. Glancing desperately at the clock, he shoved the cello inside the bedroom door and picked Sonya up.

  ‘We have to leave now! You’re going to miss the train and it’s your last certain chance to get out.’ He blundered to the door, Sonya’s suitcase banging against his back, and fumbled with the handle.

  ‘Put me down.’ She turned her head away on an unnatural angle, as if she couldn’t stand looking at him. ‘Put me down. I’m not a child.’

  The train station was chaotic, like an overfull stockyard; on every platform there was a crush of bodies. Women with large busts and loud voices shouted out names. Children with parcels of food dangling from their wrists cried and clung to the railings. Old women hovered protectively beside their piles of belongings.

  Nikolai approached the nearest official. ‘Where do the unaccompanied children leave from?’

  The woman glanced at her list. ‘Second platform.’ She wiped a drip off her nose with her sleeve.

  Sonya looked at her with distaste and followed Nikolai to the inner side of the platform, sticking closely to the railings, touching every second bar with her left hand.

  ‘There’s the meeting point,’ he said. ‘I can see it. Hold onto my jacket, now.’ He began forging through the crowd of children; it was like wading through waist-deep water.