The Conductor (12 page)
Hovering in the stairwell, he’d imagined only too clearly what would have happened on Nina’s return: the bedroom door flung open, and his wife’s outraged expression at the empty bed and the untouched dandelion tea.
‘Well?’ she’d repeated to the children. ‘Did your father say where he was going?’
‘Say you don’t know,’ murmured Shostakovich, peering in the keyhole. ‘Remember what I told you.’
‘Papa went … to the Radio Hall,’ stammered Galina.
Goddamn it! Shostakovich smacked the wall with his hand. Why couldn’t his children tell a small white lie for the sake of domestic peace?
‘Really?’
Nina had said icily. ‘And did he say why he had to go there?’
There was a short silence as Galina realised she’d put her small patent-leather foot in her mouth. ‘No.’ She was almost certainly shaking her head. No, she didn’t know why Papa had rushed off to the Radio Hall when he was ill and supposed to be resting.
‘Maxim!’ Nina’s voice was even sharper. ‘Why did your father leave you to flood the bathroom and demolish the living room?’
‘Foot!’ piped Maxim, sounding frightened. (This was fully understandable: Shostakovich’s own palms were sweating.) ‘Foot, foot —’
‘Football? He went to pick up football tickets?’
Shostakovich had never seen a volcano but it seemed an appropriate image for this moment: shaking, shuddering, great burning streams of lava and ash pouring forth. Gloomily he realised that a pall would hang over the domestic landscape for some time.
‘That’s right!’ Galina and Maxim spoke in unison. ‘Football!’
It had taken all his courage to walk into the apartment, spreading his
empty hands as if returning without tickets somehow made him less guilty. It had better be a good game, he thought now, staring at the silent phone. A bloody good game to compensate for the trials of yesterday evening. He could still hear the clashing of pans, the roaring crash as Nina poured a box of cutlery onto the table in front of him. ‘You want your dinner?’ She dumped down a pile of plates with such force that the bottom one smashed into long white shards. ‘Here’s your dinner, you poor sick man.’ He’d received a leaking paper parcel on his lap. ‘Cod!’ he said, coughing. ‘Thank you very much.’
At last! The phone was ringing. Nina stood at the bookshelf, ostensibly searching for a textbook, her back rigid. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, snatching up the receiver as she disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door.
‘I’m so sorry.’ It was Nikolai at last, apologising profusely. ‘Truly sorry. My bad memory seems to be getting worse. Senility lurks just around the corner.’
He never made excuses, simply admitted to the mistakes he’d made — a trait that Shostakovich, master of excuses, admired and envied.
Why can’t I be bolder and more honest?
he thought.
More like other people?
He hadn’t done a stroke of work on the new piece for several days, and the guilt and unease were becoming severe. ‘Tell me you have the tickets,’ he said, cutting through Nikolai’s apologies, ‘and all will be forgiven. To be honest, I’m eager not only to see Zenith in action but also to escape —’ he glanced at the bedroom door and lowered his voice — ‘the domestic madhouse.’
‘You too?’ Nikolai laughed. ‘Perhaps it’s the summer solstice. You have my sympathy, and very soon you will have your tickets. Where shall we meet?’
S
onya softened sufficiently to open her door a crack and say goodbye. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have a spare ticket for you,’ said Nikolai, realising he had spent a good part of the morning apologising.
‘You would have taken a cursing hooligan with you?’ She still looked a little dangerous, her chin lifted in a challenging way.
‘I’m always happy to have an extra hooligan with me,’ he assured her. ‘The more hooligans, the merrier.’
‘Even if there were a spare ticket, I’d be too busy to come to the stadium. See the tasks waiting for me?’ She stepped slightly to one side,
displaying teetering stacks of books all over the floor. ‘When you get back, my library will be arranged in alphabetical order.’
Nikolai looked suitably impressed. ‘And your toys?’ he asked, peering at the piles of fur and porcelain.
‘They’ll be housed in the cubbyholes I used to keep my shoes in. I’m putting them under the bed.’
‘You’re putting your toys out of sight?’ He felt a little disturbed at this. ‘Won’t you miss them when you go to sleep?’
‘They need sleep, too. These white nights are really wearing them out.’ She gave him a kiss. ‘Be careful at the match. I’ll see you when you get home.’
As he stepped out into the street, the pain behind his eyes crashed in again, far worse this time. The sun turned the windows into blinding mirrors, and he put his hand over his eyes and swayed. The sound of a radio drifted from the window of the basement.
Out of habit, he strained to listen. Over the last few days he’d heard rumours that only added to his unease. But he must hurry. Shostakovich would be waiting. Running his finger under his collar, checking for the tenth time that the tickets were in his breast pocket, he forced himself to walk away.
From the end of Donskaya Street, he could see the small dark figure of Shostakovich pacing about in his usual manner, circling his favourite bench.
‘I’m so sorry!’ he called, as soon as he was in earshot.
But, far from looking annoyed, Shostakovich’s eyes were bright with anticipation. ‘I feel like a truant!’ His cowlick fell over his forehead, and his face was tinged with pink. ‘I shouldn’t really be here.’
‘Trouble at home?’
But Shostakovich appeared to have forgotten whatever it was that had made him sound so cowed on the phone. ‘No,’ he said, waving his hand, ‘simply that I have a whole stack of composition papers to grade, and I’ve promised Venyamin Fleishman that I’ll look over his working notes before next week.’
‘Fleishman? Is that the skinny blond boy that every female in the Conservatoire is in love with?’
Shostakovich nodded. ‘Not that he notices the girls falling at his feet. Poor innocent that he is.’ For a second, he looked almost wolfish and his eyes glittered; it was easy to see why many of the wealthiest and most beautiful women in Leningrad had fallen under his spell. ‘He’s enormously
talented but overly modest, and sorely lacking in confidence. So I’ve got him started on an opera, based on a Chekhov story I gave him.’
‘Chekhov! Then I hope you’ll also teach him the writer’s riposte to critics.’
‘When you’re served coffee, don’t try to find beer in it!
Yes, he’ll need to develop a thick skin with the Leningrad vultures descending on him. Nevertheless, “Rothschild’s Violin”! It’s the perfect framework for an opera.’ Shostakovich looked torn, as if he wanted to rush back home and immediately begin lecturing his promising student on his favourite writer.
Nikolai glanced up at the sun, already high above them. He thrust the tickets under Shostakovich’s nose. ‘There are times when it’s imperative not to work. And today is one of them.’
‘You’re right. We mustn’t be late! Come along.’ Shostakovich set a cracking pace as they rounded the corner into Mandelstam Street. ‘The highlight of the football season awaits!’
‘Speaking of seasons,’ said Nikolai slightly breathlessly, ‘I’m curious to see what Eliasberg will make of his orchestra this year. I overheard the beginning of their rehearsal yesterday and it sounded like a dog’s dinner.’
‘Eliasberg?’ Shostakovich’s eyes were fixed on the high green roof of the stadium. ‘Oh, the radio conductor? I don’t really know his work. Mravinsky is quite enough for me to handle.’ He shaded his eyes, peering at the main entrance ahead of them. ‘What’s going on there? It looks like chaos.’
‘Dmitri! Nikolai!’ The shout came from behind. It was Sollertinsky, sprinting towards them, his large jacket flying out like a cape.
‘What the hell —?’ Shostakovich stared. ‘Sollertinsky,
running
?’
Gravel flew from Sollertinsky’s feet. His breath came in great rasps, audible even from some distance away.
‘Changed your mind?’ called Shostakovich. ‘Realised at last that Zenith is worth sprinting for?’
But Nikolai seized his arm, his heart hammering as though he were the one running. ‘I fear — oh, God, I fear the worst.’
Then Sollertinsky had reached them, sweat pouring down his face. He bent double, struggling for his breath. ‘I — followed — you,’ he gasped. ‘Knew — you — were — coming — here.’
Shostakovich stiffened. ‘What is it?’
Sollertinsky’s chest heaved as he straightened up and stood to attention. ‘It’s just been announced. Hitler has attacked. Russia is at war with Germany.’
Summer 1941
W
hen Dmitri Shostakovich was eleven, back in 1917, he’d seen a boy killed right in front of him. The city had become a mess, a bad and dangerous place, and his mother had tried to keep him home as much as possible. But for the past year attending music classes had become a routine, and he liked routines: they were the only way to make progress. What he didn’t like, however, was the director of the music school.
‘He treats me with a total lack of respect,’ he complained to Mariya, as she sat on her mattress combing her hair.
‘You’re eleven years old.’ Mariya was fourteen, and annoyingly aware of her superior age. ‘Mr Gliasser is a grown-up and an expert. You should listen to him.’
‘He may be fully grown, but I don’t believe he is an expert.’ Dmitri snatched the saucer of warm candle wax from Mariya, who was preparing to rub it through her hair. (Her inherited frizzy hair was only one of a list of teenage grievances against her mother, Sofia Vasiliyevna Shostakovich.)
One by one, Dmitri stuck his fingers into the molten wax and held up their white tips. ‘Gliasser plays Bach like a moron. Like a machine. Even on my worst days, I play Bach better than that old man.’
Mariya grabbed the saucer back. ‘He’s better than my teacher. He has a great reputation.’
‘He
had
a reputation,’ corrected Dmitri, ‘forty or fifty years ago. He relies too much on the past. It’s always Fux this, Bellermann that and
Yavorsky the other. He takes his music from text books. That’s a deadend.’ He marched over to the piano in the corner of the room. ‘I was playing the opening to my Chopin Prelude like this —’ With sticky wax fingertips, he began picking out the B Flat Minor Prelude. ‘And he said if I continued that way I would fail my exam. Then he told me to play like
this
!’ Sitting up straight on the stool, he shut his eyes so as to better remember Gliasser’s pious expression, and felt his body transform into his teacher’s. His arms became stiff, his fingers turned to wood and, on the pedals, his feet shrivelled to those of a seventy-year-old. Because this was a special knack of his, the keys also changed under his touch, as if responding to a different person.
‘You shouldn’t mock your elders.’ But Mariya was laughing, sounding less annoyingly adult and more like herself.
The door crashed open and Dmitri swivelled on his stool, though his hands continued pounding through the Chopin.
‘Dmitri, what on earth are you doing?’ His mother was in the doorway, her arms folded, her eyebrows lowered. ‘That’s no way to treat Chopin.’
‘I’m being Gliasser, Mother.’
‘He’s being precocious,’ said Mariya, turning traitor once more, and kicking the incriminating saucer of wax behind a chair.
‘You’re lucky to have such a teacher,’ scolded Sofia Shostakovich over her son’s mechanical playing. ‘Your father and I don’t make these sacrifices for you to mock your elders and betters.’
‘Exactly what I said.’ Mariya wandered to the window, hoping for a glimpse of Goga Rimsky-Korsakov, who was sixteen and handsome.
Dmitri stopped playing and began peeling the wax coating off his fingers. ‘Gliasser is a dinosaur. He’s the past, and I’m the future. I’ll give him until next June to prove his merit.’ He looked up to see his mother’s mouth fall open, like a frog waiting for flies. ‘What’s wrong? I’m only speaking the truth.’ He pushed the stool back with a loud squeak. ‘Don’t worry. Gliasser has a perfectly wonderful Bechstein, and I won’t give that up in a hurry.’
So he went on attending lessons throughout the long winter, as the streets of Petrograd descended into chaos. By February, his father was lying ill in the small room at the back of the apartment.
‘Just a little throat trouble,’ his mother told Zoya, who wanted to hear one of her father’s gypsy songs. ‘But there isn’t enough air in his lungs for singing.’
Conditions were bad enough inside; outside, the frozen streets were
being set alight, and shop fronts smashed so the pavements glittered with glass and ice.
‘Don’t go to class, Dmitri.’ Sofia Shostakovich was mending Mariya’s tights, which were more holes than wool. ‘Stay home today.’
Dmitri placed his books on the table with a determined thud. His mother was a fine pianist and a good teacher, but she was an amateur. Already it was clear — she didn’t understand what was needed to get to the top. The only way you could improve at something was to do it every single day. And as heartily as he despised dusty old Gliasser, at present there was no better option. ‘It’s cold today!’ he said, bending to put on his overshoes. This was not simply small talk; his fingers could barely work his feet into the stiff rubber.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ His mother’s voice was more definite, catching at his ankles, hobbling him before he could make it out the door. ‘You’re too young to understand. There are changes afoot. It’s dangerous out there. The city’s no longer safe to walk in.’
‘I won’t walk, I’ll run.’ He avoided her gaze. ‘I’ll run straight to school. How else can I become the b — breadwinner?’ He’d nearly said ‘the best pianist in Petrograd’, but he realised that naked ambition wasn’t the best way to win over his mother. With a gravely ill husband and three hungry children, Sofia Shostakovich’s fear of the financial future seemed his most likely ally.
Zoya ran out of the back room, her creamy cheeks mottled like marble. ‘Da won’t tell me a story, either! No songs, no stories. What’s wrong with him?’ She collapsed on the floor and pushed her face into the folds of her mother’s skirt.