Great Historical Novels (91 page)

‘We’ll get there!’ said Nikolai, trying to sound confident. But it was impossible to deny that the orchestra was struggling. ‘Perhaps we should try again to find a pianist? It would help no end in supporting the weaker sections.’

‘Coincidentally,’ said a voice from behind him, ‘that’s exactly what I’ve come about.’ A woman stood in the doorway, her slight frame swamped in an overcoat, her hair pulled back under a shabby hat. But there was something familiar about her posture, and the tilt of her head,
that made Nikolai catch his breath.

‘Nina Bronnikova? Is it really you?’ He pushed his chair back, forgetting that his back ached and that the day’s bread ration had been made from mouldy flour and cottonseed. He’d heard that she’d survived the winter, but the sight of her filled him with relief. It was impossible to hide how glad he was; he grasped her thin hands, and kissed her several times on both cheeks.

‘Welcome!’ Elias hovered behind him like an uncertain host. ‘Welcome, indeed.’ For a moment it looked as if he might follow Nikolai’s example but, instead, he shook Nina’s hand and pulled out a rickety chair. ‘Please, have a seat. How are you?’

‘Well, I can’t dance any more, even if there were a company here to dance with.’ She limped forward. ‘But at least I’m alive.’

‘Perhaps when the siege is over, the Kirov doctors will be able to help you?’ said Nikolai. ‘They’re so experienced, and will surely know what to do.’

‘I’m sure with modern medicine,’ ventured Elias, ‘and proper nutrition, and a long rest —’

‘I’m afraid that for me to dance again will require a miracle.’ Nina gave a tired smile. ‘But thank you both for trying. Besides, this war has other victims far worse off than me.’ As she looked at Nikolai, her eyes grew even darker.

Please don’t mention Sonya!
thought Nikolai desperately.
I can’t speak of her! Not today!

Nina seemed to understand. She nodded, a tiny coded message of sympathy, and turned to Elias as if wanting to give Nikolai time to recover. ‘The reason I’m here is because Comrade Babushkin said you may need a pianist.’

‘You can p-p-play the piano?’ Elias’s face lit up.

‘I used to, quite passably, but I’m very rusty now. Still, perhaps even inadequate hands are better than none.’

‘Almost all our musicians are inadequate! I wonder why Babushkin didn’t contact you earlier. We’ve been searching for a pianist for weeks.’

‘He said the idea had only just struck him. They were talking about the Kirov, and someone mentioned me; he remembered I played because my old teacher was a crony of his — you know how these Leningrad connections are. Anyway, he seemed quite pleased with himself for coming up with a solution.’

‘Belatedly! That imbecilic —’ Elias stopped short. ‘What I mean is,
we’d be extremely g-g-grateful for your help. There’s only one problem.’ He glanced over to the huge stack of paper. ‘As yet, we have no part for you to play from. C-c-c —’

Quickly, Nikolai stepped in. ‘Is there any conceivable chance you might help us with this as well? As you see, we’re up to our eyes in copying.’

Nina smiled. ‘My copying is probably better than my piano playing. And I have nowhere to go this afternoon.’ She took off her hat. Her once glossy hair was dull and rough, and her skin had the same greenish tinge as all malnourished Leningraders. But she regarded the world around her with her usual self-possession.

For the next hour, the battered studio was filled with an air of studious industry that made Nikolai feel almost normal. Only when a siren wailed did he remember that everything was far from ordinary, and he himself not fine at all. Within a year, his stable world had been shattered and its inhabitants flung about like dice on a gambling table: Shostakovich packed off to a southern city on the Volga, a place too confined for his restless soul, where he fretted about each successive performance of his symphony. ‘My nerves are playing up,’ he’d written. ‘Thankfully we have a bathroom with a lock on the door, so my tears can flow in peace.’

And what about Sollertinsky, banished to Novosibirsk where the Siberian winds wailed day and night? How was he making use of his quicksilver wit, his knowledge of Shakespeare, his mastery of Sanskrit, ancient Persian and Portuguese?

The pen fell from Nikolai’s hand.
We were a triumvirate and we worked together. We stood for intellect, instinct and integrity
. His longing for ordinary life, for an end to the siege, was so strong he felt he would choke. He turned to his current companions as they bent over their work. The thin, maimed, still beautiful Nina Bronnikova; the emaciated, stubborn Karl Eliasberg. These people hadn’t been his friends before the Germans marched on the city. Where were his real friends?

And then it happened. His defences crumbled, and the small face he’d kept at bay through sheer determination rushed into his mind. As sweet as a mountain stream, as unyielding as a rock-bed. Stern yet infinitely caring; womanly without knowing it, childish without playing on it; dark-eyed, raven-haired, chubby-cheeked, slim-legged Sonya! The loss of his friends was great, but far greater was the loss he’d precipitated on that day last summer. He’d given away the person most precious to him, had handed her to an unknown woman and left before the train
had even pulled out of the station.
Sonya, Sonya
. He couldn’t imagine where she was, didn’t dare to do so, for as soon as he started his body became slick with sweat, his guts churned, and he loathed himself — for sending her off, for letting her go — with such intensity it terrified him.

Pushing aside the stack of paper, he laid his head on the table. His eyes were streaming but he didn’t make a sound. He cried so silently that it was several minutes before he heard exclamations and felt an awkward hand on his shoulder.

‘Nikolai? What’s the matter?’ Elias sounded more worried than ever.

He raised his head, his nose running and his hair soaked through. ‘My eyes. So weak these days. They water for no reason.’

Elias hesitated for a second. ‘Mine, too. Damn inconvenient, isn’t it?’ He blundered away to open a window, muttering about vitamin deficiency, scurvy, and the effect of malnutrition on one’s retinas. ‘Fresh air,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Fresh air will do you good.’

Nina put out her hand and laid it over his. After a while, she passed him a shred of handkerchief.

He’d never been so grateful for reticence. Wiping his nose and eyes, he picked up his pen again. But even though he copied like a man possessed, concentrating on Shostakovich’s maniacally leaping octaves, his heart continued to cry
Sonya, Sonya!
like a gull wheeling above a barge, not knowing where it was headed nor what might be gained from following.

Elias comes home

The sun had been shining for many days, but Elias was feeling increasingly cold. As he left the apartment he realised that he was trembling all over. His fingers were a waxy yellow, his nails as white as plaster. He banged his hands against his thighs but felt nothing; nor could he feel his feet, wrapped in rags and stuffed into his boots. He hobbled around the corner and stood in the sunshine, waiting to thaw.

Nothing happened. His body remained frozen. He felt as if he were looking down on himself, a stick figure in a rag-bag of coats and scarves, leaning against the same wall where once a much better-dressed, nervously correct man had stood, afraid to approach the kiosk standing (if his hazy memory was correct) on the very spot where a steel pillbox squatted. From a great distance, he marvelled at the naivety of the former Karl Eliasberg. Obsessing over the review of a rival who wouldn’t even acknowledge him as such! Being scared to converse with a portly music professor in a rumpled suit!

He willed the sun to thaw him, his heart to pump his blood more effectively and his feet to carry him to the rehearsal room on time.
You’ve never been late in your life
, he told himself,
and you will not be late today.

The previous week he had trudged once again down Nevsky Prospect to the Arts Department headquarters and waited another two hours under the ticking clock before speaking as fervently as he could on behalf of his musicians. They were ill and weak; they could barely sit on their chairs. A flautist named Karelsky had already died from severe
malnutrition, and if the authorities didn’t step in many others would also die. The officials listened impassively as he told them of instruments falling from players’ hands, and of undermining silences instead of loud morale-raising music.

Apparently, he’d convinced them. The very next day Zagorsky had announced that Radio Orchestra rations were to be increased, and would stay at that level until the day of the concert. Furthermore, all musicians would receive badges marking them out as members of Eliasberg’s orchestra, allowing them medical privileges and faster access through checkpoints. But Elias knew it would take far more than extra wheatgerm and watery bean soup to turn back the clock. There was no quick way of transforming a band of walking skeletons into efficient musicians and soldiers.

Sure enough, as he entered that morning — slowly, clumsily, but on time in spite of his frozen feet — the conversation wasn’t about fighting or music but about food. Or, to be precise, the lack of it.

As he limped to the podium, a dutiful silence fell; there was a general tightening of bows and opening of scores. This much, at least, he’d achieved. He signalled for an A and waited for them to tune up — not that pitch was of particular concern to the players in front of him. Any musician trained in an army band placed more emphasis on keeping time than staying in tune. The scraping and dissonance, the ragged sliding chords: not so long ago these would have made Elias wince. Now they scarcely bothered him. If the orchestra managed to play the symphony with nothing more than workmanlike skill, he would have pulled off a miracle.

‘We’ll start with the adagio,’ he said, opening the score.

Today he felt more detached than ever — so much so that it felt like calm. He was nothing more than an observer, surveying the orchestra from afar. The only thing that brought him momentarily closer was the sight of Nikolai helping Nina Bronnikova with the piano stool, cradling his left arm behind her in a movement that was like a caress. Then, for a second, blackness roared up in Elias’s head. But once Nina’s eyes were fixed on the music and Nikolai had returned to his seat, he could retreat once more into his floating state.

After what might have been a few minutes or an hour — it was impossible to tell today — the musicians were ready. The first woodwind chords fell across the room like shadows; the singing violin lines followed with almost unbearable sweetness. The rehearsal room stretched to
accommodate the music, and the music filled the whole city, and the empty fields and desolate woods beyond. It rained down on Russian and German soldiers crouched in their trenches, stripping them of both fear and purpose — and then, surely, everything would be all right again, while much of what had gone before (the grinding winter, the exploding streets, the dragging hunger and the slow deaths) was dissolved by the music. Elias’s eyelids dropped, and he allowed himself to rest. He didn’t need to see the score; he’d read and copied and conducted it so many times, he knew it better than his own body. He felt nothing but immense gratitude to Shostakovich, for saving them all.

Now the music was thinning, like ice at the edge of a lake. This was as it should be. The melody moved downwards, grinding into the uneasy key of C sharp minor. Low woodwind notes hinted at the watery depths: contrabassoon, bass clarinet pulling on the deepest of C sharps like an anchor, yet also releasing, rising, moving up towards the strings. A pizzicato bridge over the water, slipping into E major, leading to —

Something was missing
. Elias jolted back into the present. There was blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue, and panic on the faces of his woodwind players. The shock of the return was too great. His icy core cracked in two, and he rapped on his music stand.

‘What has happened to the flute solo?’ The effort of speaking made his throat feel raw. ‘Where the hell is Vedernikov?’

The strings were straggling to a halt, their bows held at awkward angles. ‘Does anyone know where our lead flautist is?’ demanded Elias.

Someone dared to mutter that perhaps he’d been killed by Shostakovich’s excessive demands, and a few embarrassed titters ran around the room, but mostly the musicians shuffled their feet and said nothing.

The second flute raised a tentative hand. ‘Perhaps I can take the solo, until he turns up?’

But as if on cue, Vedernikov appeared at the door. His chest was heaving, his hair trailed on his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ He blundered towards his seat, cramming his flute together as he went. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Elias was surprised at the level of rage he felt. Had he been holding a gun instead of a baton, he would have put a bullet through the heart of this panting wretch who’d interrupted his reverie and snatched away salvation. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said coldly. ‘Regret is a wasteful emotion.’

Vedernikov looked up, holding the mouthpiece of his flute to his lips. ‘It was unavoidable.’

‘You’ve deprived us of your solo and you, in turn, will be deprived. It has already been established that all latecomers lose their bread rations.’

‘Please don’t do that. The thing is —’ Vedernikov bit his lip so hard that white marks bloomed on the purplish skin. ‘I was at the cemetery. I was waiting to bury my wife.’

Nina Bronnikova gasped, and Petrov half-rose on his shaky legs. The other flautists laid their hands on Vedernikov’s arms, and even the military men coughed with suppressed emotion. But Elias stood like a stone; he could feel neither his toes in his boots, nor the floor beneath his feet.

‘The rules stand,’ he said, staring at the far wall. ‘They can’t be bent for one person. Death is all around us! Who knows which of us will be alive tomorrow? The only certainty is that, by the first week in August, we must be capable of playing the Seventh Symphony. Vedernikov, you lose your rations for today. We’ll begin from the top.’