3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Enough fuel for today!’ gasped Mrs Gessen. ‘Do you live only in the present?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He clutched the wood to his chest. ‘I’ve already made a plan for tomorrow, and that does involve the trees.’

  In his mild-mannered days he’d never have managed to reduce Mrs Gessen to splutters; now, watching her back away and slam the door, he was almost impressed by his achievement. He turned to inspect his handiwork. ‘Not bad,’ he commended himself. There was a gaping rectangular hole where his mailbox had once been, but the surrounding boxes remained intact. ‘Not bad!’ he said again.

  It was while he was dusting the splinters from the remaining boxes with his sleeve (Always the considerate neighbour! commented Shostakovich) that he saw a corner of paper wedged between the back of the lower mailbox and the damp wall behind it. He could just make out a typed last name (his) and the first letters of a street name (also his). He put down his armful of wood, eased the sodden envelope out of the crack and opened it gingerly. A bill for repairs on his violin, dated a whole ten months earlier. He did some rapid calculations. Two weeks after Isaak Erkenov had written this out in his careful handwriting, he’d marched away with a division of the People’s Volunteers — and had never come back from the Front.

  He folded the note and put it in his pocket. Was Erkenov’s widow still alive? He’d have to find out, though how he’d pay the debt was beyond him. How extraordinary that he should find the account after all this time — and only now because of his reckless actions. He looked again at the grimy crevice into which the envelope had fallen. How much more of his mail was lying down there, lost? He fished down the back of the boxes with fingers that, thanks to the wood-chopping, were no longer numb — and felt another corner of paper. As he tried to grasp it, it slipped further down the crack. He cursed and kept trying.

  Behind him he heard Mrs Gessen’s door creaking open once more. ‘You can tell your postal-depot cousin,’ he said without turning around, ‘that I prefer my mail less than a year old.’ Very slowly, very carefully, he slid the envelope up the wall. ‘Got you, you bastard!’ The Gessens’ door slammed shut, sending dust showering off the long-disused light bulb.

  For a third time, Nikolai peered down into the crack. Nothing more. He gathered up his wood and set off up the stairs; he’d had enough of Gessen interrogations for one day.

  Back in the apartment, the chill was waiting. It seeped into him, a familiar and strangely seductive adversary. How easy it would be to lie down and give in. He went to the stove, threw the wood on the floor, and ripped open the second envelope. It had a Sverdlovsk postmark and had been posted — he peered closely at it — last October. Dull news, then, from his distant relatives in Sverdlovsk who, even in wartime, managed to find the weather the most interesting of topics.

  There were two sheets of paper inside but, surprisingly, the top one was typed — unevenly inked and badly aligned. Crouching by the stove, he scanned the page.

  Our first letter seems not to have reached you … We understand the situation in Leningrad is worsening … We have attempted several times to contact you by telephone … It appears your line is no longer working … We wish to reassure you, once again, that your daughter is safe.

  At the bottom of the page was a small smudged stamp: Miusskaya St. Orphanage, Sverdlovsk.

  Nikolai sank to his knees. He was trembling all over, but not from cold. With fumbling fingers, he pulled the second piece of paper out of the envelope. This was not typed but handwritten, and behind its wobbly lines he heard a small, certain voice:

  Dearest Papa,

  I’ve had what Aunt T calls a chapter of accidents. The lady in charge is worried you haven’t answered her first letter but I told her you’re always busy. Please come soon. I miss you so much that I cry every day.

  Your loving Sonya.

  P.S. Could you bring the cello with you? I am very out of practice.

  He tried to stand up, but his legs were shaking so badly he half-fell against the wall. He leaned there, his heart pounding. Sonya was alive. She hadn’t been blown into a thousand pieces, had not lain bleeding by a derailed train until her heart gave out, nor mouldered away in a muddy unknown grave.

  ‘My darling Sonya.’ His throat was full of tears and he could hardly speak. ‘Sonya, hold on, just a bit longer.’

  Suddenly he could see her face again, clearly and whole: her velvet-black eyes full of love, her hopeful smile, the dimple at one side of her mouth. She was saying something, though her voice had become so unfamiliar he strained to hear it. ‘I knew you would come for me! I knew you would.’

  The loneliness that had encased him like a coffin all winter split and fell away from his body. The release felt almost like pain. He crumpled the letter in his hand and held it as hard as he could. Sonya. The light in the room seemed to grow in intensity. As he watched, the stripes of sunlight on the floor wavered and ran together, so that he seemed to be standing ankle-deep in bright shimmering water. And still he repeated her name over and over, Sonya, Sonya, until it rang in his ears like a bell announcing armistice to a relieved and exhausted world.

  Priorities

  Elias sat on the front steps in the evening sunshine, watching two black beetles parade around a pebbled arena.

  ‘They’re useless.’ Valery gave the smaller beetle a disappointed prod. ‘March, why don’t you!’

  ‘Perhaps they need food, like everyone else in Leningrad,’ ventured Elias. ‘My people don’t work very well because they’re hungry. I expect beetles are the same.’

  ‘No offence, but your people are musicians. Mr Shapran says musicians are soft. Whereas these beetles are generals, so they should be able to cope with any amount of hardship.’ Valery nudged the dawdling larger beetle with his finger. ‘That’s General Zhukov. If we’d kept him in Leningrad instead of letting Moscow have him, the Germans would have been pushed back in no time.’

  ‘Really?’ Elias knew little of the military snarl-ups that had occurred in the early stages of the siege. What he mostly remembered about last summer was the heat, so extreme that it felt almost threatening, and his fear when he first awoke to a skyline bristling with guns.

  ‘And this is General Meretskov.’ Valery pushed the other beetle along with a twig. ‘He recaptured Tikhvin for us on the ninth of December last year. Then the rail-links to Novaya Ladoga were re-established, and food could be brought across the lake.’

  This was something Elias did recall. It had been the one fact to cling to in a month when people had begun stealing ration cards from the dead.

  ‘Exactly! We might all have died if it hadn’t been for Meretskov. But look at him now! Bloody useless.’ Valery stared at the beetle lying on its back in the dust. ‘Do you think he needs some water?’

  Elias hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to play this game: were they talking about a beetle needing fluids, or the needs of a Red Army general? ‘How about some vodka?’ he suggested, a little desperately.

  ‘An excellent idea!’ Valery shoved a pebble towards the beetle’s head. ‘Here’s a flask, General. To help you on your way.’

  Elias watched hopefully but the beetle lay still, and Valery frowned.

  ‘Perhaps he needs sleep?’ Averting crises was something Elias did know about. ‘Maybe you should put them in their box — I mean, in their barracks — for the night?’

  ‘Zhukov never sleeps. He ran alongside his own convoy all the way to the Moscow front, just so he’d stay awake.’ Valery glowered at the motionless beetle. ‘That night he was fortified by nothing but a cup of tea.’

  Elias glanced down the quiet street. Was it too early to go to bed? Tomorrow was the pre-recording of his radio broadcast, a terrifying prospect. The day after that was the dress rehearsal — also terrifying — and then, worst of all, the concert itself. He needed sleep to stave off the thought of what lay ahead as much as to gather strength, but he was reluctant to go up to his empty room. Besides, Valery seemed to like having him around. Not
so long ago he’d thought the boy would find him dull, lacking in imagination; even now, when he heard the familiar knocking and opened the door, a muffling shyness descended. But Valery didn’t seem to notice, and he included Elias in his games with the seriousness accorded to an equal.

  In the distance the guns rumbled on like never-ending thunder. A surveillance plane swooped low over the street, making Elias duck his head away from the roaring shadow. ‘What did you say?’ He was dimly aware that Valery had asked him something.

  ‘Do you miss her? Your ma, I mean. She nagged a bit, but she was very generous with her cough lozenges and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Miss her?’ Elias flushed. He and Valery had talked about air raids and the concert to come, about hunger in general and Valery’s specific craving for ice cream — but never once had they spoken of the grey, desolate morning after his mother’s death. The pale floating sky, the bumping journey through the streets, the silent procession of people dragging corpses to the cemetery. ‘Well, she was old, and very sick. Some would say it was a lucky release.’

  ‘But I guess you get lonely.’ Valery balanced a beetle on each thin knee. His legs were covered all over with the fine downy hair of malnutrition.

  Elias’s heart lurched at the sight. ‘Have you had enough to eat today? I’ve still got a bit of my bread ration left. We get extra this week because of the concert.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Valery stoutly. ‘I’m mostly hungry for the things I can’t have. It’s hard getting used to everything being different.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Elias spoke in a heartfelt voice. He still found it hard to believe that life could change so swiftly and completely: not only was the city shattered, but his own routine existence had been splintered apart. The moment when he unlocked the apartment door each day was the hardest of all. Even now, he listened and looked for his mother, only to be shocked anew by the flat bedcovers and the undisturbed air.

  ‘Look!’ Valery was pointing down the street. ‘Someone’s really in a hurry.’

  Elias’s eyesight had become so weak that, even with his glasses on, the world was blurred. But, sure enough, someone was sprinting towards them. It was rare these days to see a person running, except when the air-raid sirens started; most walked slowly and unsteadily, as if unsure they had enough energy to make it to the next lamp-post. ‘I think it’s —’ He stood up, alarmed. ‘Yes, it’s Nikolai.’

  ‘He’s your friend, right?’ Valery sounded as if he wanted to confirm that it was good news approaching, rather than bad.

  ‘Yes, he’s my friend.’ With slight surprise, Elias realised it felt all right to say this: not false or forced.

  ‘I’m so glad to find you here!’ Panting, Nikolai arrived in front of them and bent double, hands on his knees, recovering his breath.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ asked Elias anxiously.

  ‘More than all right!’ When Nikolai straightened up, his eyes were shining and his normally sombre expression was infinitely lighter.

  Elias stared. ‘You’ve shaved! I’ve never seen you without a beard.’

  ‘I did it this evening.’ Nikolai ran his hand over his chin, still marked with the chafing of an unaccustomed blade. ‘The air on my skin feels almost like a kiss!’ Tilting his face to the light summer sky, he closed his eyes, looking rapturous.

  ‘Is he drunk?’ whispered Valery.

  Elias shook his head and waited. At least he knew the news was nothing bad. For a moment, he’d feared that the concert —

  But Nikolai had opened his eyes, and they blazed like the sun. He seized Elias by the shoulders. ‘It’s Sonya. Sonya is alive!’

  ‘She’s alive? But how … where —? That’s absolutely wonderful!’

  ‘It’s beyond wonderful.’ Nikolai sank down on the step as if the elation was too much for him. ‘It’s a miracle. It’s everything I had given up hoping for.’

  ‘Who’s Sonya?’ asked Valery.

  ‘My daughter. My darling daughter, my Sonya! I found a letter, you see, that had been lost for the last ten months.’

  As the familiar wail of the air-raid sirens started up, Nikolai poured out the story: the lost first letter, the long-missing second letter, and the crackling phone call he’d managed to put through from Leningrad’s central post office that afternoon.

  ‘I heard her voice!’ His own voice was full of wonder and disbelief, as if he’d heard someone speaking from beyond the grave.

  ‘Will you go to Sverdlovsk? How will you get there?’ Although the sirens were shrieking, Elias was reluctant to go down to the cellar, out of the sunlight. ‘Is someone able to arrange a flight for you?’

  ‘That’s the reason I came straight here.’ Nikolai paused. ‘There’s a first-aid plane leaving for Moscow tomorrow evening, and Zagorsky has secured a place on it for me. From Moscow I can take the train to Kuibyshev, where Shostakovich will meet me, and he’ll arrange for me to travel on to Sverdlovsk.’

  ‘Moscow? Tomorrow evening? Shostakovich?’ Elias was aware that he sounded like a parrot, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘What about the concert?’

  Nikolai bit his lip. ‘I’m so sorry. I must go immediately. Please believe me, nothing in the world would make me miss the concert, except this one thing. She’s my daughter.’

  Elias looked at the lines on Nikolai’s forehead, the scratches on his hands, the threads trailing from the hem of his trousers. With one glance he took in Nikolai’s exterior, and then he tried, immensely hard, to imagine how it was to be him — what it might be like to love somebody so much that you’d sacrifice anything for them. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Of course you must go. I do understand.’ It was nearly true. Perhaps one day he’d reach that point himself? At that moment, standing in the low sharp sunlight, with the sirens calling, anything seemed possible.

  ‘You do?’ Nikolai stood up and gripped Elias’s hands. ‘To be honest, I thought you’d be angry. I know how much this concert means to you.’

  ‘It’s just a concert,’ said Elias. ‘But if you’re meeting Shostakovich, you might let him know that, even with an incomplete orchestra, we’ll try to do justice to his symphony.’

  ‘Of course.’ Nikolai smiled. ‘Now, I suppose we should go down to the shelter.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ asked Valery.

  Elias hesitated. Since April, most of the shelling attacks had been on the outskirts of the city, and recently there’d been a number of false alarms to remind fatigued Leningraders that, although they were no longer in danger of freezing or starving, they weren’t yet safe. ‘We probably should,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Nikolai. ‘Now I have something very much worth staying alive for.’

  ‘How old is Sonya?’ asked Valery as he picked up his beetle box.

  ‘Nine. No, ten. She’s had a birthday since I last saw her.’ The tinge of regret in Nikolai’s voice was close to bitterness. He’d found Sonya, but there would be other, smaller losses to come to terms with.

  ‘Is she pretty?’ asked Valery casually.

  ‘She’s beautiful! But fathers are biased, of course.’

  ‘Do you think a twelve-year-old is too old for a ten-year-old? If that Sonya of yours was on a bombed train and now she’s a thousand miles away all by herself, she must be quite a girl.’

  ‘She wasn’t very interested in boys when she left. I think she likes cellos better.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a musician, too?’ Valery stumped up the steps to the front door, his disappointment palpable.

  Nikolai laughed. ‘What’s in the matchbox?’

  ‘Generals Zhukov and Meretskov.’ Valery brightened. ‘They’re having a rest before they go back into battle.’

  Elias watched Nikolai and Valery standing at the door, a tall figure in a crumpled jacket and a shorter one in a moth-holed red sweater. At the sight of their heads leaning close over the beetle box, he felt a familiar stab of jealousy. I could stay in the street and no one would notice. A bomb co
uld drop on my head and no one would —

  ‘Mr Elias!’ Valery turned. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I was just telling Valery how grand the Philharmonia Hall is,’ said Nikolai. ‘And that you’ll be rehearsing there in two days’ time.’

  ‘Without you, more’s the pity.’ But Elias was filled with relief and joy; he was included! ‘Though now you’ve cut your beard off,’ he added, ‘perhaps, like Samson, you’ve become mediocre? And the Radio Orchestra already has a plethora of mediocre violinists.’

  ‘Do you know something, Elias?’ Nikolai held open the door. ‘I think you just made a joke.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elias, stepping into the cool dark hallway. ‘I believe I did.’

  Dress rehearsal

  On the day of the dress rehearsal, purple clouds banked up in the west, massing shoulder to shoulder as if waiting for the command to break ranks and disperse across the city. The low mutter of thunder merged with the distant artillery. Elias had woken with earache so, in spite of the August humidity, he crammed on a furry hat before leaving the apartment. By the time he reached the Philharmonia Hall, the first drops of rain had started to fall.

  He was early, but Petrov had arrived even earlier and was pottering about checking the surface of the stage. He’d become so thin that his trousers, winched in with string, would easily have accommodated two of him. ‘Has the rain started yet?’ He wiped the end of his dripping nose. ‘It’s not a good day for the run-through.’

  ‘It’s never a good day for a run-through. Besides, the worse the dress rehearsal is, the better the performance. You ought to know that.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Mr Elias. As always.’

  Apprehensively, Elias looked about the cavernous concert hall. The only certainty about dress rehearsals was that they forced him to spend a good part of the next day in the lavatory, stricken with nervous diarrhoea. Today’s rehearsal would be even more nerve-racking than usual because it was the first time his musicians would play the symphony from beginning to end, all seventy sodding minutes of it. If they collapsed, dropped their instruments, ran out of breath — well, he might as well march to the Neva and hold his head under water until the world dissolved into black.