The Conductor (16 page)

‘Sollertinsky could be right.’ Nikolai nodded. ‘He always seems to know what decisions are being made behind closed conference doors. All the same, I’m going through with the medical exam as a kind of … superstitious precaution.’ This was as close as he could come to explain his motives, even to himself.

‘I fully understand. Sometimes intuition is the only voice worth listening to. It’s impossible to know or predict what will happen.’ Shostakovich glanced up at the sky. ‘Although Nina wants us to leave, I feel I have to stay for as long as possible. These are my streets. Leningrad has provided the ground bass to my entire life.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on his sleeve. Unmasked, he looked both vulnerable and determined — much as he might have at the age of nineteen, accepting applause for his First Symphony from an enraptured audience.

‘But can you continue to work? In the midst of all this upheaval?’

‘I’ve finally forced them to take me — a four-eyed bat — into the Home Guard.’ Shostakovich looked satisfied. ‘I intend to hammer and dig and build until there’s no breath left in me. No doubt I’ll still be required to compose rousing tunes for the purpose of raising morale. But twenty-four-hour service is nothing more than I owe. I’d be nothing without Leningrad.’

‘I suspect the feeling’s mutual. The whole of the city takes pride in your achievements.’

For a second, Shostakovich looked testy. ‘It’s nothing. It’s my job.’ He
shuffled his feet. ‘Well, I must be going. There’s no time these days for real conversation. Action — this is how it’ll be from now on. Possibly for a lamentably long time.’

‘I must go, too.’ Sonya pulled up her socks in a decisive manner. ‘My cello’s waiting, and I’ve got a lot of tidying to do.’

‘Tidying?’ Shostakovich looked approving. ‘We could do with you in our household. Things are too often in a state of chaos, especially now we no longer have our domestic help. I suppose you’re completely quiet when tidying?’

‘My quietness is one reason that Papa calls me Mouse,’ agreed Sonya. ‘By the way, who’s the bossy one in your household?’

‘The bossy one?’ Shostakovich considered this. ‘I think you could say that every member of my family is bossy. Myself, certainly, and definitely Mrs Shostakovich — not to mention my mother and Galina. Maxim is probably the least bossy, which is why he’ll make a second-rate conductor. He’s not enough of a dictator to be the best.’

‘He’s three years old,’ laughed Nikolai, clapping Shostakovich on the shoulder. ‘You may yet be spared the agony of having a conductor in the family.’

‘What’s wrong with conductors?’ enquired Sonya.

‘Nothing at all,’ said Nikolai. ‘One of Mr Shostakovich’s best friends is a conductor.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Shostakovich to Sonya, ‘your father’s telling the truth. May I escort you part of the way home?’

‘Thank you.’ She tucked her hand under his arm a little primly, more like a grown woman than a nine-year-old girl. ‘I’ll be holding my thumbs all the way home,’ she promised Nikolai, ‘for good luck with your examination.’

‘Good luck, indeed,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Though I expect you’ll have no problem today. You’ll be pronounced either fit to fight or fit to toil. The difficulty will come later, when they want to remove you from the city altogether, telling you that preserving Leningrad’s culture is more important than preserving Leningrad itself.’

‘One hurdle at a time. At any rate, such conflicts of duty and conscience have dogged us long before this crisis.’ Nikolai spoke smoothly, but he felt a stab of anger at the way Shostakovich seemed to consider himself exempt from such pressure. Did he really believe the authorities would allow one of Russia’s most esteemed composers to stay behind, digging
ditches, while lesser talents were removed to safety?

He watched Sonya parade away on the arm of Dmitri Shostakovich, possibly the most famous man she’d ever encounter. The upward tilt of her face suggested that she was engaging in polite conversation, possibly enquiring about Maxim’s extreme shyness, which seemed to prey on her mind, or Galina’s ambition to become a world-class ballerina. But at the corner of Dominkovskaia Street she turned to check that Nikolai was still watching, and raised her free hand in the air to show him that she was holding her thumb for luck.

The secretive nature of the Elias men

E
lias’s father, although talkative, had been a secretive man. He was a shoemaker who’d hauled himself up by his bootlaces to reach a platform of unshakeable self-satisfaction. If his acquired veneer had chinks in it, if his grammar let him down or his table manners slipped, he refused to acknowledge these things. His armour was one of suppression, hammered out over many years.

An accomplished craftsman, he was an artist in one area only: the art of hiding things. Hiding his background, hiding his weaknesses, hiding remorse, nostalgia and grief. By the time Karl was born, Mr Eliasberg was already adept at ignoring anything that revealed the person he’d once been.

Often he strode about the house naked. The more physically open he was, it seemed, the less emotion he felt obliged to reveal. One of his few pleasures was bathing. As late as October, when the sky was leaden, he’d coerce his wife — who didn’t care for swimming — and his son — who couldn’t swim — into providing an unwilling audience. Karl and his mother would sit on their coats, on a carpet of dank leaves, watching as Mr Eliasberg pulled off his over-shirt and trousers and rushed for the water. After interminable splashing, he’d rise up from the weed-filled shallows, his hairy legs streaming and his pendulous balls hanging behind a penis shrivelled with cold. At this point Karl would avert his eyes and begin talking about anything, anything at all, so he didn’t have to look at him.

‘What’s the problem with Karl Eliasberg? Is he offended by the human body?’

Nearly thirty years later, Elias could still hear the braided emotions in his father’s voice: exhibitionism mixed with self-regard and scorn. It wasn’t the human body that had made his ten-year-old self squirm, simply the fact that it was his father’s body. In full view of his mother! Sitting there on her darned coat, her arms folded against the biting air! The shame of it all had seeped into his soul, just as the chill seeped into his bones.

Elias remembered this now, as he stood self-consciously in a makeshift cubicle, his shirt lying limply over the screen and his braces in shameful loops. ‘You can keep your trousers on,’ the doctor had said, before beginning his barrage of tests. Elias had flushed with relief. He couldn’t remember the last time someone else had seen his legs. He stood sucking in his breath, and avoided looking in the mirror that hung on the cloth wall.

The stethoscope felt icy on his left breast. He couldn’t control his shivering, and he knew this wasn’t entirely from the cold.

‘Try to relax.’ The doctor was well trained in remaining expressionless. ‘We don’t want to push up the heart rate before we’ve recorded it.’

Why, wondered Elias, did he say ‘we’? It wasn’t the doctor who was subjected to indignities, not the doctor who had rough sticks thrust onto his tongue and a light shone in his eyes.

‘We’re very thin, aren’t we.’

The doctor’s comment buzzed against Elias’s ribs, sounding almost like a reproach.
Judgement follows me wherever I go
, he thought. Like a tick burrowing into his skin, it was, and had always been, the bane of his life.

The doctor continued to move the chilly metal mouth over his chest, murmuring and scribbling on his notepad.

‘I’m a conductor,’ announced Elias suddenly. He wasn’t sure why he said this — except, perhaps, that he was beginning to find the silence in the screened-off cell acutely embarrassing. But his information turned out to be not irrelevant after all.

The doctor raised his head with interest. If Elias was a conductor, that accounted for the imbalance of muscles between the two sides of the body, particularly in the biceps and triceps. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘that fellow Mravinsky is a muscular brute all over.’

‘Hmmm.’ Now it was Elias’s turn to murmur. Was he supposed to respond to this?

‘Mravinsky may look angular,’ explained the doctor, ‘but it’s my opinion this has something to do with the length of his head. His skull
is extraordinarily long and narrow, and his high forehead adds to the impression of leanness. In fact, he has the chest of a carthorse, and his arms would do a wrestler proud. My wife has quite a passion for him — as, I believe, do most of the women in Leningrad.’

Elias’s forced laugh turned into a cough. ‘You’re right. Mravinsky is quite the film star. One stands in awe of his physique, not to mention his technique.’

‘Some of us are born to lead,’ agreed the doctor, ‘and some to follow. The important thing is to find your place early in life and accept it. Envy does terrible things to the body. I’ve seen people eaten up by it, like some kind of canker.’ He slid his pen into his top pocket with the confidence of a man who has long known his place in life. ‘Are you resident with an orchestra yourself?’

Elias squared his shoulders and tried to forget that his torso was covered with goose bumps. ‘Yes, I am. The Radio Orchestra.’

The doctor appeared unimpressed. ‘I don’t go to concerts often. It’s more my wife’s thing. When we do go, it’s to the Philharmonic, on account of Mravinsky, of course.’

‘Of course,’ repeated Elias. ‘Why not see the best, especially if it’s a once-a-year occasion?’ He noticed there were small rye crumbs hanging in the doctor’s moustache, as well as what looked like a smear of egg on his shirt.

‘Music will be taking a back seat for a while,’ said the doctor. ‘Along with most of life’s other little pleasures, I’m afraid.’ Yet he didn’t sound particularly regretful.

Elias began buttoning his shirt. If the doctor were a member of the Radio Orchestra, he would tell him to leave. ‘Your presence is no longer required,’ he would say. ‘You may return only when you can prove your diligence is equal to your calling.’ He felt like informing the doctor that he had a total of a hundred and six musicians in his charge.

‘I must go.’ The doctor sounded as if he’d lost interest in Elias and his profession which was important only in times of peace. ‘I’ve got another thirty-five men waiting to be examined.’

‘What now?’ Irrationally, Elias felt abandoned.

‘Your notes will be assessed, and if possible the results presented to you before you leave the hospital.’

Too late, Elias understood that the shape of his future was scribbled on the sheet in the doctor’s left hand. ‘Could you tell me —?’ he began.

But the doctor was gone, hurrying away to his thirty-five waiting men,
or perhaps, en route, to a bowl of cabbage soup in the hospital canteen.

Elias sank onto the hard wooden chair, cursing his pride. Why did he always alienate others, however friendly they were? He was so damned quick to take offence, even when none was intended. And now he’d even fastened his shirt wrongly, so the tails hung unevenly over his knees. Mechanically, he began undoing the buttons.

‘Karl Illyich Eliasberg?’ A stout nurse peered around the screen.

‘Yes, I am Elias!’ He sprang to his feet, crossing his arms over his bare chest.

She barely looked at him. ‘You’re to wait in the main hallway. The health officers will assess your case and call you when they’ve reached a verdict.’

Clumsily, hastily, he launched himself after her, his tie trailing. ‘Can’t you tell me if I’ve passed?’ He cringed, both at his ingratiating tone and his choice of words.
You’re not hoping for top results in a composition exam, you fool!
In fact, if he ‘passed’ this test, his only reward would be a rifle in his hands, boots on his feet, and a terror more complete than anything he’d ever experienced.

Still, he drifted like a child behind the nurse.

‘I can’t say.’ Her feet slapped on the cracked floor. ‘But from what I’ve seen and heard —’ she pushed through the door — ‘you’re not fit for much.’ And with that they emerged into a hallway crowded with men, many of whom turned to stare at the formidable-looking nurse pursued by a half-dressed, bespectacled weakling. ‘I can’t say,’ she repeated, scanning the corridor. ‘It’s not my job.’

Elias trudged to the end of the corridor. His head was down, but he was sure all eyes were on him, pitying him. The war had ripped open the small safe world of Leningrad, but nothing else had changed. Keeping his eyes fixed on the ground, he concentrated on small tasks: re-knotting his tie, straightening his collar. Soon the desultory conversation, the roll-call of names and the clash of the swing doors merged into a muddy shade of grey that was close enough to peace.

After a long time he heard his name being called. His heart tripped and started up again, out of time. This was it. He forced himself to look up — and saw a bearded face, tired eyes, a slightly grubby collar. It was Nikolai.

‘I thought it was you at the end of the line! What a surprise!’

Elias let out his breath. ‘Yes, it’s me, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t apologise.’ Nikolai shook his damp hand. ‘I’m glad to see someone I know. I can’t tell you what an ordeal my day’s been — even before I reached this hellhole.’

Stupidly, Elias stood pumping Nikolai’s arm as if trying to produce water from a well. He found it hard to let go.

‘Have you had your medical yet?’ Casually, Nikolai extracted his hand from Elias’s grip and wiped it on the seat of his trousers.

‘Hours ago. At least, I think it was hours. I seem to have lost track of time.’ Was it this that was making him feel so odd? Normally he could estimate the time of day to the nearest minute.

‘Surely your position will give you exemption from —’ Nikolai looked down the dingy hallway, where men stood leaning on walls or slumped on the floor — ‘from this mayhem and what it will lead to?’

‘I believe so. For a while, at least. But I’ve heard of others — others who haven’t allowed their positions to protect them. I feel I should follow suit.’ It wasn’t usual for Elias to volunteer information, but today his tongue was behaving as unpredictably as his hands. ‘Our musical colleagues, for example. Some of our most esteemed colleagues have tried not once but several times to pass the medical. I find this … inspirational.’