3 Great Historical Novels (58 page)

Sollertinsky glanced at Elias. ‘More lubrication’s needed!’ he called. ‘Bring us more grog! Grog’s the only known cure for terminal reticence.’

Shostakovich closed his eyes and saw the outline of the chandelier in a sharp red silhouette on the back of his lids. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Elias had moved to the edge of the podium. His neck was scarlet. Shostakovich groaned. Why hadn’t he stopped drinking when he felt the fighting spirit rising up inside? All the same, he’d done what was necessary to save himself.

Dismayed, he looked at Elias’s ramrod back. Nina would have known how to patch things up, but Nina was already at home in bed. ‘Miss Bronnikova!’ he hissed. ‘Do you like dancing?’

Nina Bronnikova laughed. ‘One would assume so, since I’ve centred my life around it.’

‘I haven’t been clear.’ Shostakovich focused on her nose, which seemed to be the only completely still point in the moving room. ‘I meant dancing as these guests are doing.’

‘You look a little worse for wear to dance,’ she said. ‘Besides, as your wife is no longer here, I wonder if it’s appropriate?’

‘Oh, I don’t want you to dance with me. As you’ve noticed, I’m barely
able to stand. Would you consider —’ He gestured towards Elias.

‘Mr Eliasberg? Does he need rescuing?’

‘Exactly that.’ Relieved, Shostakovich sank back in his chair. ‘He needs rescuing.’

What an idiot Sollertinsky was, blurting out details about his work in such a setting, knowing so little about it! Yet as soon as he saw his friend blundering towards him, he couldn’t help but forgive him.

‘So you’re playing the pimp now?’ Sollertinsky didn’t mention what had just happened; he simply proffered a heaped plate of caviar like a peace offering. Together they watched Elias hold out his arm, slightly stiffly, to Nina Bronnikova, and lead her closer to the band.

‘Better a pimp than a man who puts his foot in his mouth.’ Shostakovich sniffed the caviar but the metallic aroma was no longer the smell of luxury. It merely reminded him of the bent shovel he’d wielded that day, as he’d hacked at the dry ground. ‘Besides, I told the truth. I really am working on military music, as well as my own private march, and the combination’s driving me mad.’

‘It’s not the official composing that’s getting you down.’ Sollertinsky put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ve always had to do that, thanks to the … how shall I put it? … the
philanthropic
regime under which we’ve flourished. If you ask me, you’re more worried about the fact that this time next week you may be watching for incendiaries from the Conservatoire roof.’

‘It’ll be preferable to ditch-digging.’ Shostakovich spread his palms to reveal open sores. ‘I’m tired of scrabbling in the dirt.’

‘At least you’ll be back at the Conservatoire. But on top of the building, rather than inside it!’

Shostakovich looked at Sollertinsky’s blunt features: the big nose, the light blue eyes, the vast planes of his cheeks, all of which somehow made up an attractive whole. ‘Yes, I’ll be back there, but you won’t.’ The fiery vodka and the sustaining strength of the beer vanished like a sun falling into cloud. He was left with nothing but foreboding.

‘I won’t be around for a while,’ agreed Sollertinsky. ‘But no war lasts forever, you know. Perhaps we’ll meet again before either of us expects it — if not in Siberia, then back at the club in better days, when you can make amends for your curtness by buying the conductor a drink.’ He glanced down at Shostakovich’s plate. ‘May I? You’re not touching that excellent caviar and tomorrow morning it will be wasted on the pigs.’

Shostakovich passed his plate. ‘I’m fearful. Fearful that I’ll never see you again.’ He looked at his friend long and steadily.

‘Just get on with that secret work of yours,’ said Sollertinsky. ‘Put out a few fires to satisfy your nationalistic conscience, and then meet me in Siberia. It may not be the most attractive of holiday destinations, but I hear the girls are pretty.’

Elias woke to an unfamiliar feeling. His stomach was rumbling like a heavy cart on cobblestones, and his eyelids rasped. There was thick sweat all over his body: forehead, chest, even the backs of his legs. He rolled over and reached out for Nina Bronnikova. She wasn’t there.

The light falling through the thin curtain was too bright, and the hammering and crashing from the street compounded his nausea.
Nina!
Groaning, he closed his eyes again to block out recent reality and his even more recent dream. Taking Nina Bronnikova’s arm and escorting her to the dance floor (reality). Her cool hand in his sticky one, her legs moving close to his (reality). His fingers stroking her face, their lips meeting, his hands running over her bare shoulders and down to her arched lower back, her body shuddering with pleasure.
Dream. Dream.
Dream
. Despising himself, he rammed his head into his pillow.

When his erection had subsided, he turned on his back and stared at the ceiling, at the large boot-shaped stain caused three winters earlier by a burst water pipe. Of course it looked like a boot; he would never escape his upbringing. Perhaps one was allowed only a glimpse into a better possible life, before falling back into the pit where one belonged? God, this nausea, the frustration and guilt — and the new resentment that throbbed like a cut. Sollertinsky had put out the bait; Elias — stupidly confident — had risen to it. And Shostakovich had thrown him back like an unsatisfactory sprat.

Nina Bronnikova
. He repeated it like a mantra.
Nina Bronnikova.
The intimacy he’d felt on waking was caused by nothing more than
lust and a ridiculous sense of romance. ‘Do you care to dance?’ That was all she’d said. He knew even then she was partnering him out of pity, but his tongue had been loosened by alcohol, as well as relief at escaping Shostakovich’s unexpected attack, Mravinsky’s cool stare and Sollertinsky’s jokes. So they’d chatted — about what? About the dacha she owned south of the city, left to her by her grandparents after her parents were killed in a train crash. It was deserted now: dacha owners had been ordered to destroy all crops and food stores, lest they provide sustenance for the enemy. What had Nina done when she left for the last time? She’d locked the door and the garden gate, then cycled back into the city with jam jars and pickles in her basket, and a sack of potatoes on her back. At the checkpoint, the soldiers had searched her belongings and told her she wouldn’t be allowed to pass this way again. ‘A series of lock-ups,’ she said. ‘A series of retreats.’ She’d clamped her mouth shut and her eyes looked sad. Quickly, Elias had told her of a recent rehearsal when Fomenko had struck the kettle drums so hard that the end flew off his drumstick, bouncing smartly off Marchyk’s bald head and into the open mouth of his tuba. Nina had laughed at this, and he’d noticed that her teeth were slightly crooked, and he’d almost kissed her for her beautiful imperfections.

God, he felt ill. He tried to sit up, but the room whirled. He had to get to work. Cautiously, he reached for his watch — and a piercing scream came from the outer room.

‘I won’t go!’ It was his mother, shouting in what sounded like genuine distress.

Just swinging his legs over the edge of the bed made fresh sweat break out on his back. Automatically, he checked the time: barely an hour before he was due at rehearsal.

‘Karl! Karl!’ His mother sounded panicky. ‘For God’s sake, help me!’

He pulled on his coat and blundered out. ‘What is it, Mother? What on earth is happening?’

Olga Shapran stood in the middle of the room. She was bending over Elias’s shrieking mother, pulling at her, half-lifting her out of the chair.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Elias’s head felt as if it would explode.

Olga looked at him disapprovingly, taking in his bare feet and his dishevelled hair. ‘I tried to wake you. You were snoring like a pig. You’ve got to help me — your mother’s due at the station in less than two hours.’

‘Today?’ He glanced at the calendar above the stove. ‘You’ve got it
wrong. The train leaves next week, not today.’

‘The timetable has been changed. Clearly, you’ve been too busy
carousing
to listen to the news.’ Olga began pulling at his mother’s shoulders again. ‘Stand up. Get dressed. Do you want to be sent out of Leningrad in your nightclothes?’

‘Leave her alone!’ Elias’s nausea was made worse by his intense dislike of the interfering Olga. ‘I’ll get her dressed. She doesn’t need to be bullied by you.’

‘Just trying to help.’ Olga’s mouth turned down further until she looked like a large and wily trout. ‘Just looking out for my neighbours. If it weren’t for me, you’d both have slept through your mother’s chance at evacuation. One of you snoring from old age, and the other —’ she eyed Elias suspiciously, as if sensing his lustful dreams — ‘through
over-indulgence
.’

Mrs Eliasberg whimpered and shifted in her chair. ‘This is my home. I won’t be evacuated like a refugee. I wish to stay here, in my
neighbourhood
where I belong.’

‘Mother.’ Elias straightened her woollen shawl. ‘We’ve been through this already. The situation’s becoming more dangerous by the day. Have you looked outside recently? Your street is unrecognisable. There’s a tram filled with sandbags at your intersection. Your park has become a trench. Your trees are shelters for snipers.’ He went to the window and raised the blind, though vomit rose in his throat at the sharpness of the light.

His mother rolled her eyes. ‘I’m too ill to travel.’ She held out a wavering hand. ‘See how it shakes?’

Triumphantly, Olga turned to Elias. ‘You see? She’s becoming infirm. Which is why we have to get her out of the house and onto that train. You weren’t here for the last air-raid practice, so you have no idea what we went through with your mother.’

‘No, I wasn’t here. In that, at least, you’re correct. I was at work, carrying out my duties as a citizen of Leningrad.’ He spoke as coldly as he could, trying to ignore his churning bowels.

‘Had you been here, you’d have witnessed the near-impossibility of carrying an old woman in a chair down four flights of stairs. Fortunately,
some
men were around to help — my husband, for one.’

‘Yes, I understand Mr Shapran has been out of a job for some time now.’ Elias gripped the windowsill. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t volunteered for a labour battalion by now.’

‘He’s duty bound to stay with us as long as possible. He’s been voted warden of this building.’

‘Oh.’ Already Elias was tiring of the fight. ‘I hadn’t realised. I —’

‘You artistic types with your heads in the clouds.’ Olga seemed slightly mollified. ‘Lucky for you you’ve got practical neighbours. When the real air raids start, you’ll be even more grateful we’re looking out for you. Now, where’s your mother’s suitcase?’

‘No!’ Mrs Eliasberg began banging her head against the back of her chair. ‘I won’t go. I — will — not — go.’ There was fear in her eyes, and she clutched her chair so tightly that her knuckles shone white through her skin.

‘You will go!’ Olga’s temper returned. ‘You’re another mouth to feed! Another useless body to carry to the air-raid shelter!’ She rushed across the room and grabbed Mrs Eliasberg by the ankles. ‘See, you can’t even move by yourself. You’re a liability!’

‘That’s enough!’ Elias launched himself away from the windowsill. ‘How dare you touch my mother in such a way!’ Grabbing Olga by the hair, he flung her sideways so she staggered against the table. His jar of batons crashed to the floor. ‘She’s not going. She’ll stay here with me. I’ll be responsible for her. If we have to endure frequent air raids —
if
, for we still don’t know what the Germans are planning — then I’ll carry her to the cellar. If I’m not here, Mr Shapran will do it. Is that clear?’

Olga’s ruddy face was pale; her freckles stood out like crumbs on a white cloth. She nodded but said nothing.

‘What a scene.’ Elias glanced down at his bare bony ankles and then, guiltily, at the sparse handful of hair pulled from Olga’s head. ‘Being at war with barbarians turns us into barbarians ourselves. I apologise.’

Olga shuffled her feet amid the batons and broken glass. She spoke gruffly. ‘Can you still conduct with those?’

‘The orchestra will neither notice nor care. They rarely do what I ask, even when commanded by batons of a full length.’

A smile twitched at the corner of Olga’s trout mouth.

‘We’re still neighbours, eh?’ said Elias. ‘Regardless of what the next few months may bring. We’re still human beings, rather than liabilities or statistics. Now you must excuse me. I have to go to work.’

Protectively, he stood beside his mother until Olga had disappeared, then he, too, stepped out onto the landing. He made his way up the three small stairs to the blue-painted door and rapped on the wooden panels. Mercifully, there was no one in there. Bolting the door behind him, he knelt on the floor and, with his head in the lavatory bowl, was instantly, copiously sick.

Shostakovich’s paper supply was running low. Three mornings in a row, straggling back to Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street in the early morning, he’d detoured to the Composers’ Union. Three mornings in a row, he was met with blank expressions and empty hands. Everything was running out. Even the farcical old plaster replicas had reappeared in the windows of grocery stores, and bread rations had been cut once again.

‘But why has score paper run out?’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Now, of all times? Especially as Prokofiev’s no longer in Leningrad to hog it all.’

The clerk gave an uncertain laugh.

‘I wasn’t joking.’ Shostakovich spoke morosely. He had an increasing and not irrational fear of being stopped in his tracks. Stopped by military developments, as the crucial battle at Mga was still raging and the German lines were coiling closer around Leningrad. Stopped by Nina, demanding they leave the city. Stopped by lapsed concentration, exhaustion or illness. The music he’d written over the past weeks was like a steam train at his back, bearing down, forcing him on. It was bad enough thinking about what he still had to write, without fretting about what he was supposed to write
on
. ‘Can’t you give me something?’

The clerk shuffled through logbooks as if to postpone the bad news. Finally he looked up. ‘It appears our deliveries have been temporarily halted.’

Shostakovich sighed. ‘Please try to get me some, by whatever means you can. It’s extremely important.’

In recent days the clerk, having witnessed the departure of almost all regular Union visitors, had become increasingly gloomy. The building was a ghost-ship with his puny reluctant self at the helm, and outside a fearsome storm was brewing. But now his chin lifted. ‘You mean to say you’re still
composing
? And it’s something
important
? I suppose it’d be impertinent to enquire what it … might be.’ His sentence ended in a nervous squeak.

Shostakovich dropped his fire helmet with a clang. ‘I’m not sure. That is, I can’t speak about it.’ By the time he’d stooped, banged his head on the desk and retrieved his helmet, his dislike of the clerk was complete. His wife and his best friend: these were the only two who’d possibly earned the right to enquire about his work in progress. In fact, due to past experience, neither Sollertinsky nor Nina had asked very much at all. How would a spindly idiot behind a desk have any insight into Shostakovich’s rough black notation?

‘Just move heaven and earth to get me some paper,’ he said curtly.

‘I’ll try, sir. I hear that you’re fire-watching now?’

‘Yes, I’m keeping watch on the roof of the Conservatoire.’

‘How ironic!’ The clerk peered at him deferentially. ‘For so long you’ve nurtured our city from inside that building, and now you’re protecting us from its heights.’

More than ever, Shostakovich wished someone else would enter the room and save him. But the Union, once full of people he wished to avoid, was dismayingly empty. ‘I suppose it’s ironic,’ he muttered.

The clerk was beginning to look elated. Never before had the chance arisen to talk to Shostakovich at such length! ‘I’m hoping to join you at your post, perhaps as early as next week. Now that most of our musical best have departed, my work here has almost disappeared. And physical disabilities prevent me from going to the Front.’ He stuck out a thin leg. ‘Polio. Struck when I was six. My mother feared for my life — but now, perhaps, it’s saved me.’

‘Your limbs, my eyesight.’ Shostakovich spoke with the fearsome civility he reserved for the overly familiar. ‘Any firebombs that fall on our city will be dealt with by crocks and cripples.’

‘Indeed. We, too, have our part to play.’ The clerk’s expression was almost coquettish.

Shostakovich stepped back. The pull of comradeship, so desired by others, aroused in him a kind of physical repulsion. ‘I must go,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve got work to do, though all too little paper on which to do it.’

The streets, bathed in early sunlight, were relatively calm. Tanks lay under tarpaulins and the trams overturned across intersections looked as if they, too, were sleeping. Sandbags were piled around the bases of statues, while boarded-up monuments floated like unwieldy arks on the cobblestones. Shostakovich knelt beside one to retie his bootlace and realised he could no longer remember what was concealed behind the boards. He’d always been in such a hurry, rushing to the Conservatoire, rushing back to the apartment.

A sudden roar made him jump. Fuel trucks with flags fluttering from their roofs — ‘Defend the gains of the October Revolution!’ — were rumbling across the square in the direction of the train station. Glimpsing the faces of the men behind the streaked windscreens, Shostakovich could tell that some of them were no more than seventeen or eighteen. What did the Revolution mean to them? Well, now they’d have their own battle to tell tales about — if they survived. He wiped his eyes and hurried away.

When he got home, the apartment was quiet and dark. Very quietly, he laid his helmet in a corner and pulled off his boots. The bedroom door remained closed.

He tiptoed to the side table. The top drawer was locked: was the key still hanging in the crockery cupboard? He opened the cupboard door little by little and groped along the wall. A cup spun on the edge of the shelf; he caught it in mid-air. Thank God! The door behind him was still closed — and there it was under his fingers, the small iron key, the shape of work to come. His clenched stomach eased.

No sooner had he unlocked the drawer than the bedroom door flew open, and out rushed Maxim, loud and furious in his calico nightgown. ‘I
won’t
stay in bed any more!’

Nina appeared, her hair in a glossy ponytail. ‘Sorry. I tried my best.’ Half-apologetic, half-defiant, she padded across the room and began unhooking the blackout curtains from the top windows.

Next came Galina, her face lighting up at the sight of her father. She twirled in front of him and began singing in a slightly self-conscious way. (Sollertinsky was to blame for this; ever since he’d announced that her voice was promising, she preferred singing to speaking.) ‘Where was Papa all night long?’ she sang. ‘Does he like my morning song?’

Shostakovich tried to smile. ‘Yes, Papa likes it, but he’s very tired. He’s been on a rooftop all night, looking out for fires, and now he has to work on his music.’

‘If I couldn’t find a fire,’ sang Galina, ‘I’d go and join a choir.’

‘I’m hungry,’ growled Maxim. ‘Damn hungry.’

‘Don’t swear,’ said Nina, ‘or you’ll stay hungry all day.’ Simultaneously she boiled water, mixed porridge and combed Galina’s hair. Watching her, Shostakovich thought she looked like a beautiful, severe,
many-handed
Madonna.

‘How did it go last night?’ She looked over one shoulder as she spoke. Her enquiry was sharp-edged, as if she hoped that finally the firebombs had arrived, a bright white shower falling on the Leningrad domes and merging into a running field of fire. For as soon as the Germans began bombing, even pig-headed patriots like her husband would be forced to leave.

He thought back to the night he’d just spent under the velvet August sky. The moon, so low and large he could set it swinging like a pendulum. The familiar streets were transformed into an unfamiliar tableau, fountains and buildings like paper cutouts rimmed with light. Far away on the horizon came the occasional flash of a different light: German gunfire and the Soviet reply. But this, too, had seemed unreal, no more than an operatic effect. On the Conservatoire roof the hours had fallen away, and by the time sunrise stained the eastern sky Shostakovich had lived through several lifetimes.

He stared at Nina, dazed. ‘It was quiet. Yes, extremely quiet. Perhaps our troops will hold Mga after all, and the Germans will be forced to retreat.’ A melodic line hung in his head, somehow connected to the bright moon and the silence, but now it was in danger of disappearing altogether.

‘Do you actually listen to the radio reports?’ Nina placed the pot on the stove with a clang. ‘Or do you mentally rewrite them for your own convenience?’

Galina leaned against Shostakovich’s legs like a cat. ‘What’s that you’re holding?’

Stroking her smooth head, Shostakovich felt the first waves of tiredness breaking over him. Perhaps he should lie down for an hour and gather some energy for the task ahead? ‘It’s something my Da made. He made it when I was a boy and he was working as an engineer.’

‘What’s it for?’ Maxim stared at the spidery gadget, forgetting his hunger.

‘It draws five lines at once. You can make musical paper with it. I need some because the Composers’ Union has run out and I have to finish my march.’ This last sentence was largely for Nina’s benefit: an explanation without any tedious detail.

‘Your march? That boom-boom one we’ve heard on the piano?’

‘It won’t end with a boom, Galya’ He cast a longing glance at the workroom door. ‘It will end with a sigh, and perhaps a few tears. It will end quietly — as long as I can get some quiet time to end it.’

‘Are you really low on paper?’ So Nina had heard his plea! Now perhaps he’d be allowed to leave the kitchen, fighting off the need for sleep, beckoning to the faint sounds he’d heard some hours earlier.

‘Yes, God knows what they’ve been using score paper for. That numbskull Prokofiev probably took a stash to the Caucasus for scribbling his crap on. And Khachaturian took the rest to the Urals. It might as well be used as toilet paper.’ He spoke lightly; winning Nina over, even temporarily, always made him feel better.

She was laying out mugs and spoons on the table. ‘Are you eating with us?’

‘I’m not hungry. I got something at the Union canteen.’

‘Is that so?’ Nina regarded him steadily. ‘What did you get — white lies with onions? You’re getting so thin, you need to eat.’

‘Stop fussing!’ He lost his patience. ‘I’ve got a job to do. And it’s a damn sight more important than perching on a rooftop, watching for non-existent bombers.’

He slammed his way into his workroom and barricaded the door with a chair.
Don’t try to come in
, he prayed, opening the lid of the piano. There was no time for recriminations and apologies.

Much later, he raised his head. He could hear a hammering — not the thudding ground-bass of his strings, as he’d first thought. It was definitely external.

With a sigh, he went out into the main room. It was empty and tidy. The dishes were stacked away. The children’s overshoes had gone from beside the door. The onslaught of knocking continued.

‘Who is it?’

‘Dmitri!’ The voice was familiar. ‘It’s me! Let me in.’

Alarmed, he flung open the door. ‘Nikolai! What in God’s name has happened? Are the Germans inside the city gates?’

Nikolai stumbled past him and sank down in a chair, his chest heaving. He looked as if he’d run all the way from his apartment, some fifteen blocks away. ‘It’s Sonya! It’s … my … Sonya.’

‘No! Tell me she’s safe. Has Pskov been attacked?’

‘She never got there. I’ve just had word from my wife’s sister. The train never arrived. At first they thought it was delayed — nothing unusual, as some trains have stood in sidings for days, waiting for the all-clear. But now —’ Tears ran down his cheeks as silently as rain. ‘Now it’s been a week, and there have been reports of a German attack on the line to Pskov. They can’t say which train was hit, but it’s likely —’ He stopped and laid his head on the table, crying so hard the wood creaked under the weight of his grief.

Shostakovich hovered beside him. ‘You mustn’t give up hope. These reports are often bullshit — ninety per cent rumour, ten per cent hearsay. You’ve been intending to join the Conservatoire in Tashkent, haven’t you? Why not go there as planned, and surely you’ll soon hear good news about Sonya.’ But his head was still ringing with the notes he’d just written; the thudding of the timpani held the authority of a death march, and he found it hard to believe his own words.

‘I can’t go away now,’ said Nikolai, lifting his head. ‘I must stay here, in case she makes her way home.’ He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘I must find something to do while I wait for her to come home. Perhaps I can work in a munitions factory. Or lend my support to the Radio Orchestra.’

‘That will raise the spirits of our melancholic conductor!’ Shostakovich, clumsy from thirty hours without sleep, tried for a joke. ‘If Elias gets one of Russia’s finest violinists to join his ragged band, he’ll smile for the first time in a decade.’

Nikolai’s swallow was painfully loud in the quiet room. ‘I came to you not just because you’re my friend. I hoped you might help me find out the truth.’

‘The truth about what?’

‘About what happened to the train. The Kremlin listens to you, after all. Your name’s known by the top authorities, not only in the cultural department but also in defence.’ He fixed his eyes on Shostakovich. ‘I ask you — I
beg
you. Would you make use of your position to find out the truth about Sonya?’

A light breeze rattled the window frame; Shostakovich took off his glasses and began polishing them with his handkerchief. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said at last.