Great Historical Novels (71 page)

‘I’m surprised you’re in such a hurry to leave the city that’s offered you such great opportunities. After all, your professional career took root in Leningrad’s Conservatoire and your future is flourishing on its soil.’
Greatly helped
, he felt like adding,
by the fact that you’re a distant cousin of the cultural minister
.

‘But I won’t be leaving the Conservatoire.’ Boris pursed his rubbery lips. ‘At present I am digging
for
it, and soon I will be evacuated
with
it.’

‘The Conservatoire will remain,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Musicians and composers will come and go. But the Conservatoire will live on in its permanence and greatness — exactly, one hopes, as Mother Russia will.’ He spoke as sarcastically as he dared. Opposing the Toad’s appointment had been risky enough, considering the status of his third cousin. Implying that the Red Army might be at a disadvantage — poorly armed and undertrained, lacking in supplies, and especially in expertise after the purge of Tukhachevsky and other experienced generals — well, such an implication might be enough to send Boris bleating to the Kremlin.

‘You speak the truth.’ The Toad chose to interpret his words as complimentary. ‘We’re nothing but bricks and mortar in the great wall of national culture.’

Shostakovich winced. There was no reason in the world to voice such sentiments unless facing a jail sentence or worse. ‘A shabby assortment of bricks,’ he said, glancing at their companions. A few were digging in a desultory way, but most had thrown aside their tools and were sitting in the shade, engaged in earnest discussion. They might as well have been in a lunch restaurant, he thought, or the staffroom of the Conservatoire. The sight of Horowitz waving his puny white arms as if delivering a lecture on nineteenth-century orchestration, and of Possokhov’s skinny ankles protruding from his suit trousers, made his heart sink. Boris was right. These men belonged in concert halls and lecture theatres. As defence workers, they were as useless as babies.

A young officer strode up beside them. ‘What’s going on here? Why are you wasting time gossiping?’ His voice had only a thin veneer of authority. With his smooth chin and round blue eyes, he looked young enough to be one of their sons. ‘Well?’ he snapped.

Boris gave an ingratiating smile. ‘We were discussing Comrade Shostakovich’s musical contribution to this confounded war. He was about to elaborate on his work in progress.’ He glanced sideways at Shostakovich.
Now you have to tell me!
said his treacherous smirk.

The officer gave a start at Shostakovich’s name and his right arm jerked, as if suppressing a salute. But he’d been trained to overlook individual attributes in favour of the wider causes of Party and Country. ‘We’re not here to talk music. We’re here to dig! The ditch has to reach the hospital walls by evening, and we’ll stay here until it does.’

Boris ducked his head deferentially, but once the officer’s back was turned, he winked. ‘We may be hollowing out the ground,’ he whispered. ‘But we’re filling in time, if you get my meaning.’ Slithering into the shallow trench, he jabbed at the rock-hard earth with his shovel. A tiny rivulet of soil, not even enough to fill a thimble, ran over his borrowed boot.

The officer turned back to Shostakovich. He opened his mouth, but any awkward apology was drowned out by a blast of martial music. Around the corner of the Forelli Hospital appeared a long line of men marching in an unsteady way, three abreast. Some were in threadbare uniforms, but most wore their own thick trousers and jackets.

‘Volunteers from the Kuibyshev District. Just look at them.’ Again, the officer’s voice was a tangle of emotions: contempt mixed with what sounded like pity.

Shostakovich stared at the ragged men. ‘They’re scarcely armed! There’s barely one rifle between five of them.’

The young officer remained silent. Perhaps it was more than his life was worth to comment on the decision to send men to the front line armed with home-made hammers and swords made from melted-down printing presses.

The volunteers laboured on, their eyes trained straight ahead. As the final rank approached, Shostakovich dropped his shovel and started forward.

‘Fleishman? Is that you?’

The man at the end of the row turned, and a fleeting smile appeared on his face. He raised his arm in greeting but continued to march.

‘Fleishman! Stop!’ Shostakovich took a useless step forward. The ditch between them was narrow, but the space was uncrossable: one was a civilian, the other had become a soldier.

‘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 of 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.