Great Historical Novels (75 page)

Nikolai looked exhausted, his forehead more lined than ever, his beard more wispy. ‘I thought about staying home, but this may be the last gathering of Leningrad culture for some time. How could I forgive myself for not farewelling my friends?’

Quickly Elias sloshed vodka into three tumblers. ‘A toast to departing friends. By the end of the month you’ll both be gone, and I will remain. But distance has little effect on faithful hearts and minds!’ He’d never spoken so boldly, and with such effusiveness.

Nikolai raised his glass, and then emptied it as if barely aware of what he was drinking.

‘The sentiment’s true, but not the facts,’ said Nina Bronnikova. ‘I’m also staying behind.’

‘You’re staying?’ Elias’s giddy heart leapt.

‘I decided months ago that whatever happened I would stay in Leningrad. The Kirov’s like my family, but Leningrad is my home. Once the company leaves, I’ll be free to work with the other women.’

‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ asked Nikolai. ‘Quite apart from the fact that the authorities won’t like it, who knows what’s going to happen here? Novgorod has already been captured; the Luga line has crumbled and is retreating. If the Germans continue to advance, and if they link up with the Finns — well, Leningrad will be completely surrounded.’

‘Who can say if we’re any better off fleeing to Tashkent?’ said Nina. ‘Or anywhere, for that matter. Hitler seems to be some kind of madman, and he won’t stop until he’s marched across the face of the world.’

‘I wouldn’t talk like that, even here,’ said Elias. ‘My lead clarinettist has neighbours who —’ At the memory of Kholodov’s stricken face, he felt his new confidence faltering. ‘Please excuse me.’ He shoved his empty glass into his pocket and hurried away.

Behind the heavy bathroom door, he found a cool white silence. He stood motionless for a moment, staring at his reflection in the mirror, then pulled out a comb and tried to tidy his hair. ‘You’re a mess,’ he said
to himself in a severe but slightly slurred voice.

‘Pardon?’ An old man shuffled up beside him. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, it’s quite a press! I’ve never seen the place so full.’
That’s because
, the sober part of his mind added,
you’ve never been here before
.

‘A press indeed.’ Meticulously, the old man washed and dried his hands. ‘Sollertinsky always draws the crowds. If he weren’t a musicologist, he’d make a successful ringmaster.’ He peered at Elias. ‘It’s Mr Eliasberg, isn’t it? Conductor of the Radio Orchestra?’ He held out a chapped hand. ‘I’m Professor Lopatkina from the Conservatoire.’

‘How do you do?’ Elias made a conscious effort to focus. ‘I’ve seen you about, of course. Nice to meet you at last.’ Once the professor had politely bid him good evening and he was alone again, he continued to stare into the mirror. Somewhere behind his high forehead and thin cheeks hovered the face of his father: larger, heavier, but with a similarly determined jaw. ‘You may look a mess,’ he said to his wavering reflection, ‘but you belong. For tonight, at least, you’re one of them.’

Shostakovich was feeling happier. He’d eaten some excellent hare seasoned with thyme, and had lost count of the vodkas he’d drunk during a rousing discussion of Stravinsky’s musical merits versus his personal flaws. In addition, Prokofiev had been seen slouching from the restaurant, his face like a wet morning in March. ‘Problems with his wife,’ said Sollertinsky with a knowing nod. ‘They say he’s been dipping his fingers in the neighbouring jam jar.’

‘All the better for Lina Prokofiev,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Who wants to be married to a goose?’ It had been more than six years, but it was hard to forget Prokofiev nosing through the score of
Lady Macbeth
, pronouncing it entertaining but a trifle demented.

‘Now that your wife’s left the party,’ warned Sollertinsky, ‘I trust you’re not considering following in Prokofiev’s wandering footsteps.’

‘Assuredly not. Those days are over. Even that beauty —’ He nodded at Nina Bronnikova, who was talking to Nikolai. ‘Even she couldn’t tempt me. No, indeed.’ He shook his head, feeling virtuous, secure, even happy.
Happy!
How could this be possible, with his best friend about to travel in one direction and other friends in another, and poor young Fleishman … But he couldn’t think of this, not tonight. Leaping off the podium, he landed heavily on the toes of the Radio Orchestra conductor.

‘Oh, I do beg your pardon!’ he said. ‘It seems I’m destined to keep bumping into you — quite literally.’ The conductor (What was his name? Always, it slipped away!) looked different tonight: his shoulders were squarer and his gaze more direct.

‘Perhaps,’ replied the conductor with a half-smile, ‘I’m fated to stand at the feet of the great. And sometimes under them!’

‘If it isn’t Karl Eliasberg!’ interrupted Sollertinsky. ‘Just the man we need. Mravinsky is insisting that when he invests a performance with emotion a sophisticated audience responds accordingly. As an experienced conductor yourself, what’s your opinion?’

Elias looked startled. ‘I must c-c-confess that I believe the opposite. A conductor may channel the emotion of the music — but he must never display it.’ He glanced a little nervously at Mravinsky. ‘I d-don’t mean to contradict you, but such an attitude proves as much of a downfall for musicians as for conductors. We’re none of us there to experience emotion. We’re simply there to convey it.’

‘Just what I’ve always said!’ Shostakovich slapped him approvingly on the back. ‘Musicians and conductors are tools.’

‘Or do you mean fools?’ Looking amused, Sollertinsky turned to Elias. ‘Such is the barely disguised contempt of Dmitri Shostakovich for those who are indispensable to him. Without musicians and conductors, his music remains silent on the page. With their help, it can occasionally approach the sublime.’

‘Contempt is too strong a word,’ protested Shostakovich. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand the sight of musicians swaying to Mahler, looking as if they’re about to burst into tears.’

Elias nodded. ‘I have a flautist whom I call the Human Eggwhisk. As soon as Schumann is placed in front of her, she begins to sway. Head, shoulders, ankles, everything must be moving — including her performance!’

Now Mravinsky, looking more handsome than ever in the warm flickering light, was nodding. ‘I have several of those. Musicians who believe themselves to be the primary experience of the evening. It’s tedious.’

Shostakovich looked at Elias. ‘You should have come to the Conservatoire Club. Debates like this were our daily fodder. And now it’s too late! Who knows when we’ll gather there again?’ His glasses misted over and he clasped Elias’s hand.

‘Perhaps, after the war —?’ Elias looked a trifle overwhelmed.

‘Dmitri,’ said Sollertinsky, ‘you’re quite impossible. You find emotion
repulsive in others, yet you’re one of the most emotional men I know. You preach icy detachment in music, yet you’re currently working on something intended to stir — and perhaps to save — the whole of Russia.’

Shostakovich swayed slightly. ‘I must sit down.’ He gave Mravinsky an ineffectual push on the shoulder.

‘You should have thought of your need for a seat before holding forth on my shortcomings,’ said Mravinsky, sitting immovably in his chair.

Elias fetched another chair and guided Shostakovich into it. ‘Tell me, what is it you’re working on? I’d be honoured to hear more.’

Shostakovich was dimly aware of a flicker of panic.
Too close, too close
. He swallowed some beer. ‘There’s really nothing to hear. I can only presume Sollertinsky’s referring to my recent masterpiece, composed in response to higher orders, entitled “The Fearless Guards’ Regiment Is on the Move”.’

Elias’s hands flew to his face as if he’d been slapped. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

Shostakovich tilted back, staring at the ceiling. ‘It’s a military march, designed to motivate the honourable men of the Red Army,’ he intoned as if reciting a dull lecture to an equally dull class. ‘It sounds passable when heard in the open air from some distance away.’

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.’

She will not go

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.