3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  Somewhat gingerly, Shostakovich removed the wrappings. For a few seconds he sat and stared, then he sprang up from his stool. ‘Score paper!’ he cried, brandishing it above his head. ‘And so much of it! Where in heaven’s name did you get it? It’s harder to find than the rainbow’s end!’

  Elias’s face burned. ‘I’ve been saving it ever since my composition classes at the Conservatoire. I didn’t need much. Never was much good at composing, you know.’

  ‘This is wonderful! Marvellous! I can’t tell you what a difference this will make. Not having to scrimp and save, especially not having to battle with this —’ He waved something that looked like a large metal spider. ‘How can I ever repay you?’

  ‘There’s no need.’ Elias shuffled his feet under his chair. ‘I’m pleased to be of service.’

  ‘Can you stay a minute longer?’ Shostakovich’s face shone. ‘I finished a work — at least, the first movement of a work — a couple of days ago.’ But he didn’t wait for Elias to answer. He snatched up some pages lying beside the piano, drew in his stool, held his hands above the keyboard for a moment, and began to play.

  As the notes built up into a solid wall, Elias sat perfectly still, watching Shostakovich’s slightly stubbled, concentrated face. The composer’s mouth twitched as he played and he hammered at the keys as if they were made of steel rather than ivory. Sometimes his hands leapt over each other, left hand soaring over right and back again.

  As the march-like theme grew louder, the piano began to shake. Sheets of paper leapt off the rack and sliced through the air. But Shostakovich was no longer looking at the music; his face was almost touching the keyboard and his glasses were suspended at the end of his nose. Then, in the middle of a savagely repeated phrase, he broke off altogether. The only sound was of plates clattering in the main room.

  Shoving his glasses back onto his nose, Shostakovich sat back, breathing hard. ‘The rest of it is to be a bassoon solo. A kind of elegy. But it doesn’t sound effective on the piano.’

  At last Elias could let go of his chair. His fingers were red and grooved from gripping the wood. ‘It’s … Oh, it’s —!’ But the room was blurring; quickly, he wiped his eyes. ‘Is it to be a symphony?’

  ‘Yes, though I didn’t know it at first. I began it in the first weeks of the German advance.’

  ‘A war symphony. For Leningrad.’ Elias’s voice sounded tiny in the aftermath of Shostakovich’s bold, defiant notes. ‘It will be your Eroica.’

  Shostakovich’s flush was fading. Suddenly he looked smaller and thinner, his shirt hanging loosely from his shoulders. ‘Some might say that. If they’re kind. But it’s more likely this will be hailed as my Wellington’s Victory — which, as you know, represented Beethoven at his most simple-minded.’

  ‘The premiere of Wellington’s Victory featured Vienna’s finest performers!’ protested Elias. ‘Salieri, Meyerbeer — the audience loved it! You can’t deny it was extremely popular.’

  ‘Popular, yes.’ Shostakovich shrugged.

  ‘Like Beethoven, you’ve captured the very essence of war. The people of Leningrad can’t help but hear that.’

  ‘A naturalistic portrayal of battle may win popular approval, but, as Beethoven proved, it can also turn out to be an aesthetic embarrassment.’ Shostakovich’s shoulders slumped lower with every word. ‘Do you not think,’ he added, ‘that this movement is somewhat reminiscent of Ravel’s Bolero?’

  ‘That’s it! I couldn’t immediately place it, but yes, it is similar to Bolero — the quiet start, the crescendo, the insistent repetition.’

  Shostakovich began raking up the loose pages at his feet. ‘That’s exactly how the critics will damn me. They’ll say I’ve copied Ravel. Well, let them say it. This is how I hear war.’ He glanced around, then dumped the pages into a large saucepan standing under the piano.

  ‘Not only Ravel,’ said Elias hastily. ‘I heard definite echoes of Ein Heldenleben. And perhaps a nod, too, towards the second movement of Sibelius’s Fifth.’

  ‘Really?’ Shostakovich’s glasses glinted in the filtered light. ‘Strauss, Sibelius — and what about Tchaikovsky? Could you detect elements of him, too?’

  ‘The 1812 did come to mind.’ Elias began to feel as if he were back in the Conservatoire on examination day.

  ‘Another naturalistic battlepiece. Interesting.’

  ‘But of course Tchaikovsky is very much on my mind,’ stammered Elias. ‘In three weeks we’re broadcasting the Fifth to Britain. And the 1812 has already been scheduled as part of our winter programme.’

  ‘The final charge,’ said Shostakovich in a low voice, ‘will be that I’m becoming derivative of my own work. A seventh symphony necessarily carries the other six on its back. Yet how can I avoid this, unless I stop composing?’ He went over to the faded divan and sat with his hands on his knees, staring at the floor. ‘If only Sollertinsky were here. He could help me.’

  Elias’s stomach began to tie itself in painful knots. The atmosphere in the room had become chilly, the conversation sealed over like a pond in winter. Shamefully, he almost longed for the sound of another air-raid siren.

  Instead the rain arrived — a squall that hit the windowpanes and made him jump. Shostakovich sprang up and pulled the saucepan out from under the piano, throwing the manuscript pages onto the floor. ‘We have leaks. The water gathers on the sill and pours in somewhere about here.’ He stood with the pan in his hands, eyeing up the cracked wooden windowframe.

  Elias stood up. He’d been sitting still for so long that his knees clicked like an old man’s. ‘I should go. I insist on punctuality from my orchestra, so I must set an example.’

  ‘What else are conductors for?’ Shostakovich placed the saucepan under the sill and led the way to the door. ‘Thank you for the paper. And thank you, too, for your frank comments on my symphony. It’s rarely pleasant to hear the truth about one’s work, but honesty is always preferable to sycophancy.’

  Elias stopped in his tracks. ‘I wasn’t criticising! I think your symphony is m-m-m —’ He dug his fingernails into his palms. ‘It’s w-w-won —’

  Shostakovich glanced around the main room. ‘Thank God. The children must be napping. Silence at last. Do you need to borrow an umbrella?’

  Nina appeared from the bedroom opposite, closing the door quietly behind her. ‘They’re exhausted. Over-excited by the air raid.’ She turned to Elias. ‘Would you like some tea? It’s been difficult getting hold of provisions recently, but we still have tea.’

  ‘No tea.’ Shostakovich spoke abruptly. ‘He’s in a frightful hurry.’

  ‘Well, at least allow me to pour Mr Eliasberg some water. I fear we’ve been poor hosts.’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s been a wonderful visit.’ Elias tried to smile. ‘I’ve been privileged enough to listen to your husband’s new work. A rare honour, and —’

  ‘Work!’ Shostakovich strode to the table, snatched up Elias’s gloves and thrust them at him somewhat desperately. ‘Yes, you must get to work, and so must I.’

  Nina laid a hand on his arm. ‘Dmitri, are you all right?’

  ‘The scherzo,’ said Shostakovich in a low voice. ‘It’s waiting. It’s always waiting.’

  Nina sighed. ‘Well, goodbye, Mr Eliasberg. Take care. The world outside is becoming an increasingly dangerous place.’

  Elias blundered down the first flight of stairs and paused on the landing. Heavy wooden boards had been nailed across the windows, so that he stood in almost total darkness. He waited for his eyes to adjust, then pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase. In capital letters, much larger than he ordinarily used, he wrote ‘MAGNIFICENT’. Then he folded the paper in half, tiptoed back up the stairs and pushed the note under Shostakovich’s door.

  The night of fire

  The noise was the worst. Usually, Nikolai looked forward to autumn. After the temporary euphoria of summer with its blowsy white nights, the sprawling city closed itself up again and regained its dignity. He prefe
rred Leningrad this way: the streets quiet and empty, footsteps echoing against stone walls, the chilly breath of the marshes hanging on the wind.

  But this year, although the leaves were browning and the evenings were becoming cold, Leningrad was denied peace. The hammering and sawing had been replaced by far worse sounds: the blare of air-raid sirens, the high-pitched scream of artillery shells, the crack of anti-aircraft fire, the whining of fighter planes. When the Junkers appeared, their loud drone was followed by a deafening chaos. Fire roared on rooftops, entire buildings collapsed with a crashing of stone and timber.

  ‘It’s as if the very city is in pain.’ Nikolai huddled against a chimney on the Conservatoire roof. ‘Don’t you hate the constant noise?’

  Shostakovich’s face was a white blur in the darkness. ‘It’s never been quiet in my head. So perhaps it is easier for me.’

  ‘Not easier,’ said Nikolai, resting his head against the bricks. ‘Just different.’ He was so tired that it was all he could do to string two words together. How long could he go on like this? At rehearsals, after sleepless nights, even placing the bow on the strings felt like too great an effort; it was as if his fingers weren’t even attached to his hands. I feel dismembered, he thought.

  ‘Coffee?’ Shostakovich held out a tin cup. ‘You look as if you could do with some.’

  Nikolai shook his head. ‘It gives me the shakes.’

  ‘Not this stuff! It tastes like one part coffee and five parts mud.’

  Nikolai took a swig. ‘Disgusting,’ he agreed, though he could taste nothing at all.

  ‘Isn’t it? Apparently one of our neighbours has started making pancakes using old coffee grounds. Nina found her going through the rubbish.’

  ‘So we’re back to this. Cabbage soup by the gallon, rotten meat in the borscht — if there’s any meat at all.’

  ‘Watered-down porridge, watered-down vodka.’ Shostakovich sighed. ‘Substitute sugar, substitute fat, substitute everything. One would think we’d be used to it, from the earlier days, but how quickly we forget!’ He drained the coffee into his mouth, then spat over the edge of the building. ‘I was about to say we can get used to almost anything, but I refuse to get used to this muck.’

  It was true, Nikolai reflected; human nature was extraordinarily adaptable. What had once seemed strange — putting on a helmet, climbing to a rooftop with a pail of sand — had become routine. People who’d once sewed fine linen coats now threaded fuses into artillery shells. Those who’d suppressed their urge to pray were being officially urged to enter churches. There was only one thing to which Nikolai was unable to adjust: the terrible pain that had been with him ever since he’d prised Sonya’s fingers from around his wrist and handed her into the train carriage, into someone else’s arms. That pain was as raw as it had ever been, and its strength and ferocity surprised him. When he entered his apartment, it leapt upon him; when he dozed off from exhaustion, it was waiting in his dreams. It burned through his numb, sleep-deprived state like frozen metal on skin. He would never get used to her not being there, and he looked for her when he turned every corner and boarded every tram. ‘I’ll never get used to the absence,’ he whispered, scraping his boots on the guttering to cover his words.

  In spite of the vast sweeping arms of the searchlights, it was just possible to make out the delicate points of stars. ‘It’s quiet enough now,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Maybe we’ll be allowed a night of silence.’

  He was right. Even the muffled thud of faraway artillery was stilled. It had been a bad day, with waves of Junkers sweeping in and dropping showers of incendiaries over the city. All evening, fire brigades had been fighting the flaring white flames. Passing a local park, Nikolai had seen children frantically digging up soil and heaping it over a cluster of fires.

  Shostakovich leaned back on a chimney pot, and a loose tile fell on his helmet with a loud crack. ‘The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich,’ he said in a broadcaster’s voice, ‘spent the winter of 1941 preventing incendiaries from falling on his workplace. The only thing to fall on him was a piece of the roof.’

  Nikolai smiled. ‘Perhaps the Germans feel they’ve treated us to sufficient indignities for one day.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. The city can’t take much more heat. Do you want to get some sleep, while the coast is clear?’

  The thought of lying down made Nikolai feel both better and worse. He’d spent the previous night in a chair in Sonya’s room, with a rug over him; by pretending he wasn’t interested in sleep, he’d hoped he might succumb to it. The trick hadn’t worked. Already he knew every detail of the room, had replayed every conversation he and Sonya had ever had, but still his eyes roamed around restlessly, hoping for something new. By the time the dawn crept around the blackout blind, he was sick from nostalgia and grief.

  ‘Well, what about it?’ suggested Shostakovich. ‘You going below?’

  ‘I think I’ll just grab a cat-nap here.’ He pulled his helmet low over his eyes so that he wouldn’t appear duplicitous or ungrateful. For fifteen minutes he tried not to think of Sonya and what might have happened to her; instead, from the small, unrestricted corner of his sight, he watched Shostakovich sitting with his shoulders hunched and his profile set. Was he thinking about his unfinished work, his scattered friends? It was impossible to tell.

  Suddenly Shostakovich gave a loud exclamation. ‘What the hell —?’ He threw off the blanket around his shoulders and leapt up, staring across the city. ‘What the bloody hell is that?’

  Nikolai also sprang to his feet. To the south, the sky had turned a deep, sinister red. Billowing smoke plumed upwards, lit from below by a searing orange light. ‘What can they have hit to cause a bonfire like that?’ he asked, aghast.

  Immediately, as if in reply, shouts rose from the alleyway below. ‘Send for help! The Badayev warehouses are burning! All available men needed!’

  Shostakovich grabbed Nikolai’s arm. ‘If the warehouses have gone up in smoke, we’re lost. The whole city is lost. What happens to sugar when it burns?’

  ‘It melts,’ said Nikolai slowly, ‘and then it solidifies. Leningrad will be left with nothing but four acres of hard candy.’ The immense fire was mesmerising, horrifying, spreading along the horizon like a forest.

  ‘Look at it — it’s like a bloody beacon. It’s going to attract the attention of the Luftwaffe. They’ll soon be here. How can they resist an opportunity like that?’

  Already lorries and handcarts were crawling through the streets, heading towards the long red line on the edge of the city. ‘And what about all the other fires?’ Nikolai felt a new despair.

  ‘They’ll be ignored.’ Shostakovich’s glasses flickered, reflecting the sickly orange light. ‘The Badayev warehouses are made of wood and stuffed with food. They’re the perfect fuel. If the fire brigades can’t put out the flames, there’ll be nothing left by morning but scorched ground.’ He sounded angry, but it was difficult to tell whether his anger was directed at the German bombers or the shortsightedness of the city officials.

  Silently, shoulder to shoulder, they watched as Leningrad’s food supplies — flour, cooking oil, butter, lard, meat — fed the unstoppable fire. Dense black smoke stained the night sky. The sounds of distant panic floated across the city: bells, loudhailers, shouting men and barking dogs.

  Then, as if set off by the chaos, the air-raid sirens shrieked into life.

  ‘Here they come,’ said Nikolai grimly. ‘Moths to a literal flame.’ He looked at Shostakovich’s anxious face, and then at the chaos that lay before them. For the first time, he was almost glad that Sonya was no longer in Leningrad.

  A kind of retreat

  When Shostakovich was a boy, he’d invented an ingenious game called the Pebble. Whenever he wanted to escape household chores he took the sacred pebble from its tin and challenged one of his sisters to guess which hand it was in. Soon he had this down to a fine art, puffing up his empty fist to make it look as if it contained something, or flattening h
is fingers to suggest attempted concealment.

  After some weeks of constantly choosing the wrong hand, Mariya began to complain. Dmitri was cheating! The cleaning forced on her by fate and the Pebble became noisy and obtrusive. She bumped her brother’s chair as she swept, and scrubbed roughly over his feet as he sat reading. She flurried his pencils with her duster and wiped the piano keys when he was playing. The commotion became too disturbing; after all, the whole point of escaping chores was to gain uninterrupted practice time. Thus Shostakovich had learnt to shut himself away, not physically but mentally. A smooth second skin emerged from his spine, crept around his ribcage and sealed itself around his heart. Noise-proof, emotional-blackmail-proof, it blocked him off so he could neither hear Mariya banging the scrubbing brush on the pail, nor smell the strong carbolic soap. In this way, he was able to continue with his important composing (this was the year of his piano piece, ‘Funeral March in Memory of the Victims of the Revolution’) and he heard only the notes in his head.

  Long after the Pebble had disappeared, along with his father (dead and buried) and the piano (sold to pay the rent), Shostakovich’s ability to seal himself off saved him. When, in a narrow white bed in the Gaspra Sanatorium, he’d lost his virginity to Tatyana Glivenko and she’d inexplicably laughed — well, then the cool skin had grown over his uncertain teenage body and saved him from mortification. When, standing at Arkhangelsk Station on an icy morning in 1936, he’d opened Pravda to see the headline ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ (not only the death knell for his opera but his first public fall from grace), again he’d closed himself off. The avalanche of criticism, composed of voices once fervent with praise, now running like dogs after Party opinion — he was a formalist, an anti-socialist, and an enemy of the people! — all this fell around him, but it didn’t seep into his heart.