Great Historical Novels (64 page)

Fish
, he thought.
Got to buy fish. Don’t cry. Fish.

Turning into the Haymarket, he came face to face with none other than Nina Shostakovich. It took all his willpower not to turn and run.
Don’t say it!
he thought desperately.
Don’t say, I hate your husband!

‘Mrs Shostakovich.’ He wiped his free hand on his jacket. ‘How do you do?’

‘Hello, Mr Eliasberg.’ Nina’s grip was cool and smooth. ‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for a very long time.’

‘My mother’s unwell. She’s in what you might call a decline.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ A small straight line appeared between Nina’s brows. ‘Is it serious?’

Elias thought of his mother’s hands pushing him into the kitchen, pulling him away from his work. ‘Let’s say that it’s been serious ever since she decided she no longer wished to cook, clean or queue for food. The decline has already lasted an eternity, it shows no sign of ending, and it often results in me arriving so late at the fish market that there’s nothing left to buy.’

Nina laughed. ‘You’re not so late. At least, not too late for codfish.’ She grimaced at the dry grey curls protruding from her basket.

‘One might say,’ joked Elias a little nervously, ‘that one is never late
enough
when it comes to codfish.’

‘Indeed.’ Nina laughed again. ‘Our domestic help, Fenya, often buys cod, and my husband loathes it. On the days when I come myself, I remember there’s often no other option.’

‘In these deprived times, codfish is as ubiquitous as the common cold,’ agreed Elias, ‘and seemingly as unavoidable.’

‘In fact, I’ve got too much here for one household. You’re welcome to some, if it would help to make you a little more … punctual.’

Elias stiffened. ‘Punctual?’ He’d heard the jokes told at his expense: how the Conservatoire staff watched from their windows, commenting on how fortunate it was that Leningrad had such a stickler for time, considering the unreliable reputation of the civic clock keepers. It was said that Ivan Sollertinsky wouldn’t start gathering up his lecture notes until Elias appeared around the corner of the press building, and that he departed for his 9 a.m. class at the precise moment Elias’s coat-tails disappeared behind the Pushkin fountain.

But there was no gleam of humour in Nina’s brown eyes. She looked as calm as she had in the days when Yelena Konstantinovskaya had usurped her place at Shostakovich’s side, causing opera-goers to stare
and housewives to gossip on their doorsteps. ‘I’ll get some extra paper from the vendor for you,’ she offered.

‘Thank you! But no, thank you!’ As always, Elias became flustered in the face of kindness. ‘However hungry she is, my mother won’t touch codfish. Anything dried creates mayhem with her gums. It gets —’ he stuck his finger in his mouth to demonstrate — ‘schtuck in the holsh.’

‘Well, one evening when there’s something a little tastier than cod on our table, you and your mother must come for supper. I’m sure my husband would like to hear more about where you studied.’

‘Most kind of you.’ Elias flushed. ‘In fact, I studied at the Conservatoire here in Leningrad. With your husband.’

Nina’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Is that so? He often talks about his fellow students from that time, but I’ve never heard him mention you. Surely you didn’t study under Maximilian Steinberg?’

‘Rimsky-Korsakov’s son-in-law? Indeed I did. A little conservative in his methods, but a fine teacher.’

‘I don’t remember you being at the reunion party for Maximilian’s students. Were you there last year, in our Bolshaya Pushkarskaya apartment?’

‘Ah, no.’ He shuffled his feet and looked over the heads of the shoppers with a desperate nonchalance. ‘I must s-s-s- … I must
confess
, I didn’t have the pleasure of attending that party.’

‘I hope you were invited. I thought Dmitri had extended invitations to all his ex-classmates. If you were overlooked, I offer my belated but most sincere apologies.’

‘Overlooked?’ echoed Elias vaguely. ‘Perhaps I was. Or perhaps I received the invitation but had a particularly busy work schedule at that time. Now I come to think of it —’ He clapped his hand to his head in what he hoped was a convincing way. ‘Mother was ill. Yes, that was it. She had a mild dose of pneumonia last summer.’

‘The party wasn’t in the summer, it was in the autumn.’ Nina looked slightly annoyed, although certainly not at Elias. ‘Well, you must come for supper soon. I’ll invite you myself. But now I must get home to my husband. He’s in bed with a bad head-cold.’

‘But I’ve just —’ Elias’s mouth fell open.
Don’t stand there catching flies!
he heard his father shout, and he flinched, waiting for a ringing slap on the ear.

‘Yes?’ enquired Nina.

‘Are you sure he has a cold?’

‘Having Dmitri cooped up in the apartment is no daydream, I assure you,’ said Nina tartly. ‘He’s a nightmare when he’s ill and a nightmare when he’s working on something new, and at present we’re putting up with both. The problem is he doesn’t know how to rest. At times I think he’ll work himself to death.’

‘The burden of genius,’ said Elias in a low voice. ‘The world will never realise how much it owes them.’

‘You think Dmitri is a genius?’ Nina sighed. ‘Time will tell. In private he’s no different from anyone else, apart from being a little more short-tempered and a little less talkative —’ She broke off, waving over the heads of the nearby women haggling over lace. ‘Nina Bronnikova!’

A slim dark woman emerged from the jostling crowds. Nina Shostakovich kissed her on both cheeks, and turned to Elias. ‘May I introduce Miss Nina Bronnikova, a dancer with the Kirov. This is Mr Eliasberg, who leads our Radio Orchestra. Perhaps you already know each other?’

‘I don’t believe so.’ Nina Bronnikova’s black hair gleamed in the late sunlight. She stepped aside for a stall-holder, moving with a sinuous grace that reminded Elias of a fish.
Eel! Dinner! Mother! Shopping!
His thoughts were a jumble. There was an angel in the Haymarket! What did one say when introduced to a beautiful angel in a black shawl? But the moment for saying anything had long gone.

‘We were just discussing my husband,’ said Nina Shostakovich. ‘Mr Eliasberg tells me he is a genius.’

‘Most of Russia would agree.’ Nina Bronnikova smiled. There was a tiny scar above her mouth, running parallel to her lips.

‘Most of Russia doesn’t have to brew tea for a genius with a head cold. Nor explain to a genius why he has to eat codfish four nights in a row. Nor prevent him from attending a football match tomorrow, at which he will shout himself hoarse.’

Elias felt it was time he said something. ‘Oh, of course! Football!’ He’d intended to sound authoritative, but his voice came out more like a croak.

Nina Shostakovich and Nina Bronnikova swivelled, in beautiful unison, to look at him. ‘You’re a football fan?’

Elias cleared his throat. ‘The word “fan” might be overstating it. But I do take an interest. The game tomorrow is shaping up to be a good one.’

‘Are you a Zenith supporter like most of the men I know?’ Nina Bronnikova’s expression was unreadable as the sun blazed behind her.

‘Indeed! I never miss a home match, as long as my work schedule permits.’

‘Is that so?’ Her voice emerged, cool and direct, from the heart of the fiery glare.

‘The Moscow Locomotives don’t stand a chance.’ A new confidence flooded through him. ‘Dementiyev is the one to watch at present.’

Nina Bronnikova pulled her shawl around her shoulders. ‘How sad! It’s now a definitive truth. When it comes to the brutal sport of football, Ivan Sollertinsky is the only man in the world with his senses about him.’

Nina Shostakovich laughed. ‘And that’s despite the fact Dmitri wasted a considerable portion of his youth attempting to persuade Ivan that football is an art.’

Elias flushed. ‘I suppose I’d better get on, or there’ll be no supper tonight.’ But as he stepped back, he stumbled against the stall behind him, put out a hand to steady himself, and felt it sink into a rubbery mass of cheap caviar. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said for the second time that afternoon. ‘Well, goodbye! Please don’t feel obliged to shake hands.’ He tried to laugh. ‘You may have already heard that I’m a bit of a cold fish.’

Nevertheless, the two Ninas shook his hand politely before walking away together. Nina Shostakovich’s feet pointed straight ahead, as if plotting the most direct route home to her husband, and Nina Bronnikova’s toes turned outwards, her shining head tilted to catch what her friend was saying. Elias also strained to hear over the cries of the fishmongers. ‘Nikolai Nikolayev?’ he heard distantly. ‘Yes, a wonderful man. Tragically widowed. Devoted to his daughter.’ It sounded like a recommendation for a job — or an epitaph.

He began wiping his hands clean with some old sacking. ‘Here lies Nikolai, a man devoted to his daughter,’ he recited. ‘Here lies Shostakovich, devoted to work, fame and football. Here lies Eliasberg —’ He prised a fish egg from under his fingernail. ‘Here lies Karl Elias —’ But he couldn’t finish his own epitaph. What was he devoted to?

‘Are you going to buy some of this, now you’ve put your mucky hands in it?’ The stall-holder stood behind the box of caviar, his arms folded.

‘I might as well,’ shrugged Elias. ‘Everything for sale these days tastes like rubber. I suppose your fish roe is no worse than anything else.’

The fisherman scooped up some of the tough yellow balls. ‘You shouldn’t worry.’ His leather skull cap was so tight it pushed his eyebrows low over his eyes, and he peered at Elias through a mass of grey hairs.

‘Worry about what?’ Elias felt worried about everything: his career,
his mother, the hatred of his colleagues, the probability of dying alone — ‘I’m sorry, what did you say? I’m a little distracted today.’

The fishmonger thrust a damp parcel at him. ‘That girl. The black-haired one. She has the same effect on everyone. I’ve seen it before. Even the best man turns into a blundering idiot — you didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Thanks,’ said Elias, without rancour.

‘No offence. It’s just that she’s a real looker, and a ballet dancer into the bargain.’

‘Yes, I know she’s a dancer. That explains the good legs.’ His stomach lurched with surprise. What was he doing discussing women’s legs with a fishmonger?

‘An odd coincidence,’ said the fishmonger, ‘considering Pyotr Dementiyev’s nickname.’

‘Who? What nickname?’

‘Your Zenith footballer.’ The fishmonger started pouring the unsold roe into a sack. ‘He’s so quick on his feet, they call him The Ballerina. Tell the girl that, next time you see her. It might get you a head start with her.’

Elias watched the river of yellow roe disappearing into the dark sacking mouth. ‘I won’t be seeing her again. I don’t move in those sorts of circles.’

‘What d’you do, then?’ The man swung the sack onto the cart behind him.

‘I’m a conductor,’ mumbled Elias.

‘Trams? Or buses? Must get a bit tiring, that.’

‘Tiring? It’s exhausting,’ said Elias in a heartfelt voice. ‘Although most people think it simply involves waving your arms about.’ He gestured with the squishy package. ‘Thanks for the supper.’

‘Nice that you dropped in on my stall, so to speak.’ The man cackled and shoved an extra parcel at Elias. ‘Take this. On the house. Can’t get rid of it.’

‘Cod!’ said Elias weakly. ‘Thank you very much.’

In fact, he meant it. Somehow this cancelled out other things: Alexander and the fight, the collision with Shostakovich, and the realisation that he didn’t know what could possibly be written about him after his death.

‘My mother will be delighted,’ he said. 

The turning point

Nikolai had woken feeling out of sorts. His throat was sore and his eyes smarted. He sat by the open window, a half-drunk cup of coffee in his hand and a half-written pile of reports beside him, listening with half his attention to the Gessen children tormenting a stray dog in the alleyway below.
So I am half a person still
, he thought.
After so many years, I’m still living in a half-hearted way
. Was it this that made his stomach clench? Or the fact that he’d slept badly, with images of war seeping into his dreams?

‘Hold it down!’ The orders drifted up from the alleyway. ‘Tie the string around its tail.’ Nikolai sighed, pushed his reading glasses up on his forehead, and lit a cigarette. Was it a universal instinct, this attacking of the vulnerable and the weak? Recently he’d tried to curb his obsessive reading of the newspapers, his compulsive listening to the radio. It was impossible to ascertain what, exactly, was happening in Europe, but one war was much like another: the toll on ordinary people, the burning and looting, the casual atrocities. It would be easier to stop hunting for facts, but he couldn’t disengage. Avoiding looking the world in the face as he’d done for so long had brought him nothing but pain; now he’d become addicted to knowledge. ‘To be apprised of the worst,’ he told himself, ‘is to be prepared for the worst.’ Yet he wasn’t sure if he fully believed this.

Today there was an ache behind his eyes that took him back to those floating white days with the coffin open in the front room and the baby crying in the back one, while he wanted only to dive into the anonymous city, leaving the mess of his life behind him. And now the whole world
was in a mess. Down in the alleyway the dog yelped frantically, and he was about to shout at the Gessens to leave it alone when Tanya arrived, with bread under her arm.

Nikolai started. He’d hoped to tidy up before she arrived, although he knew this was ridiculous, a misplaced sense of courtesy like trimming his beard before going to the barber. ‘Breakfast?’ he said, in answer to her query. ‘Thanks, but I’ve already eaten.’

‘You’ve eaten nothing.’ There were two days of dirty dishes stacked on the sideboard, but Tanya was practised at assessing domestic chaos and was perfectly able to see that not one of the plates had been used that morning. ‘You’re not starting up all that nonsense again, are you?’

‘Starting a cold, perhaps.’ Nikolai coughed. ‘My throat’s a bit sore.’