The Conductor (2 page)
O
n the bench at the corner of Zamkovaya and Klenovaya streets sat a large shaggy bear. Shostakovich approached, a little warily, from behind.
‘You’re late,’ said the bear. ‘Very late.’
‘I overslept,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Then Irina Barinova cornered me in the kitchen. I thought I’d never get away.’ He swallowed unhappily and sat down beside Sollertinsky, who was bundled in a shapeless fur coat fit for a tramp. The undercooked porridge had been too salty, and an ulcer was forming on the inside of his cheek. ‘Brushing up on Language Number Eighteen?’ He looked at the book of Georgian grammar in Sollertinsky’s huge hand. ‘Your loyalty to our leader puts the rest of us to shame.’
‘Language Number Three,’ said Sollertinsky, winking. ‘I felt a little
malcontent
today, experienced a slight
frisson
at this morning’s news.’
Shostakovich peered more closely at the book. A light blue cover concealed a dull grey one; inside there was French text. ‘You’re a masterful dissembler.’
Sollertinsky shrugged, looked around at the high glinting windows, the screen of trees around the park. ‘We both know that dissemblers live longer than dissidents.’
The sun was as hard as nails, and Shostakovich pulled his collar up around his ears. ‘You’ve always known how to avoid attention.’ His voice emerged in two layers: admiration on top, a kind of envy below. ‘If you’ve got something to tell me, let’s go somewhere less exposed.’
The drinking house was dark after the white glare outside. Sollertinsky headed for the corner table, and Shostakovich followed, stumbling over a chair.
‘You look a little under the weather,’ said Sollertinsky cheerfully. ‘Rough night?’
‘A rough three nights. No sleep until dawn.’
‘Back to the old regime, then?’ Sollertinsky gestured to the boy at the bar. ‘My poor tortured friend.’
‘I only want tea,’ said Shostakovich. ‘I ate breakfast under an hour ago.’
‘And what of that?’
‘Well, all right. Perhaps just one drink.’
It was cosy sitting there with his old friend, feeling his hands thaw and the warmth of vodka in his stomach. Cosy, seemingly like any other day — nonetheless, something wasn’t right. ‘I haven’t had a bowel movement for days,’ he reflected. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling strange.’
‘Wait till you hear the news,’ said Sollertinsky. ‘That’ll make you shit all right.’
‘News?’ Shostakovich had forgotten, what with the cold, and the blinding sun, and the feeling that, back in the apartment, he’d left something unattended to.
Sollertinsky leaned forward, dwarfing the small round table. Raising his magnificent eyebrows, he took a mouthful of vodka and swished it loudly about in his cheeks. But when he spoke, it was in such a low voice that Shostakovich could hardly hear.
‘What?
Who
is leaving?’
Sollertinsky touched the side of his nose in a conspiratorial manner. ‘My tailor told me when I went to him this morning. Apparently, last week Herr Lehmann cancelled a large order. The next day, Herr Ziegler did the very same thing.’
Shostakovich shook his head. ‘Two Germans cancelled orders for suits. So?’
‘Two
German
diplomats,’ corrected Sollertinsky. ‘Two high-profile Germans cancelled long-standing orders with a Leningrad tailor so highly reputed it’s impossible to get an appointment with him this side of the New Year. A tailor so exacting, and so brilliant, he wouldn’t hurry a seam if his wife were about to be put in a poorhouse. Two German diplomats cancelled at short notice with Yuri Davydenko, whose waiting list is as long as the River Volga!’
‘You’re sure of this?’ said Shostakovich slowly. ‘Absolutely sure?’
‘Of course I’m bloody well sure. I checked it out myself. You don’t think I’d take Davydenko’s word for anything more important than the cut of my trousers, do you?’ Sollertinsky sounded weary, as if Shostakovich were one of his more idiotic musicology students. ‘After we’d ascertained the measurement of my inside leg, I decided the Lehmanns were in need of some freshly baked bread. Right away.’ He paused for a mouthful of vodka. ‘When I got there with their complimentary breakfast, I rang their door bell.’ He paused again, this time for effect. ‘I rang the bell once, twice, three times.’
‘And?’
‘They’d gone. And I don’t just mean for a Sunday stroll. They’ve upped and left, permanently. The apartment is empty.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I looked through the keyhole, of course.’
‘Ivan Sollertinsky! Someone might have seen you. You should think of your position.’
‘I listened first, with my ear to the door,’ protested Sollertinsky. ‘And I heard a deep silence. Not a chair scraping, not a brat quarrelling. Only after that did I look through the keyhole. Mainly out of fear that I’d have to eat an entire loaf of new bread by myself. Which, over the course of the morning, I’ve nearly achieved.’ He gave a comfortable belch. Being one of the most highly educated men in Leningrad didn’t stop him revelling in being one of the least refined.
Shostakovich glanced around. The room was empty, except for the pointy-nosed Mikhail Druskin bent double over his notebook, no doubt slaughtering the Philharmonic’s recent performance of Prokofiev’s orchestral suite. ‘So the Germans are evacuating their own?’
‘That’s my interpretation. One can only hope that I’m wrong.’ Unusually for someone whose most common reaction was a laugh, there was anger on Sollertinsky’s face — or was it just the smoke drifting from Druskin’s table that made his eyes narrow?
‘I need to piss.’ Shostakovich pushed back his chair and strode to the dingy bathroom. He stood facing the urinals, staring at the long familiar crack across the porcelain. In the past he’d seen this as a horizon over a wheat field, or the thin grey line from the funnel of a steamer. Now he was so agitated that his glasses steamed up and he saw nothing at all.
Sollertinsky shuffled up beside him and turned the water on full. ‘Although this is bad news for us,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s not entirely unexpected. There have been rumours for months. From London, from
Washington — and also from within.’
‘Yet
he
has chosen not to hear them. And anyone who forces him to unblock his ears will pay dearly.’ Out of the blurry wall, a familiar face emerged, both real and unreal, like the ghost appearing to Hamlet. Almond-shaped grey eyes, white teeth, a strong jaw above a collar emblazoned with Marshal’s stars. ‘Tukhachevsky!’ whispered Shostakovich — but already the image was disintegrating in a red haze, blood running down the wall and into the guttering. The Red Army’s best Marshal, one of Shostakovich’s best friends, shot by Stalin’s henchmen.
‘Of course Stalin doesn’t want to hear,’ agreed Sollertinsky. ‘Nor to see. The possibility that he’s been taken for a ride by Hitler doesn’t sit easily with his view of the world.’
‘So he shuts his damn eyes.’ Shostakovich closed his own. The water, the early drinking, the apparition: he was beginning to feel queasy. ‘And the German rats run from the sinking ship, and we — well, what are we to do?’
Sollertinsky shook his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do but wait. I came to your home this morning simply to tell you what I’d found out, not to rouse you to action.’ He sighed. ‘As it turned out, I couldn’t rouse you at all. When Dmitri Shostakovich finally sleeps, he might as well be dead. I knocked so hard the door nearly crumbled. I thought your wife would be out chasing me away with a broom.’
‘Nina!’ Shostakovich started. ‘When I woke up, Nina was gone.’ It was all starting to come back to him. ‘She threatened last night that she’d take the children, go to her parents’ for a few days. She was very angry.’
‘No wonder she was angry!’ Sollertinsky turned off the water. ‘How would you like to be married to yourself, day in and day out?’ He led the way back into the now half-full drinking house. ‘No offence, my friend, but even I, with my nerves of steel, would not take on the task of being your spouse.’
Shostakovich signalled to the barkeeper for more vodka. ‘Nina isn’t easy herself,’ he said mutinously. ‘She seems incapable of understanding that sometimes I must be left alone to work.’
‘Sometimes?’ quoted Sollertinsky. ‘Be honest. Have you been working twenty-four-hour or forty-eight-hour stints this week?’
‘The latter.’ Shostakovich flushed. ‘But I can’t stop now, not possibly. Not until I get down the outline.’ He stared into his empty glass and saw the whole of the previous evening there: raised voices, slammed doors, little Galina crying, and the uncertain, insistent melody in his head.
‘The English Poets project? My God, Dmitri! Most men would give their eye-teeth to be married to the beautiful Nina, and you shut her out for Romances of a musical kind — for Raleigh, Burns and Shakespeare?’ Nonetheless, Sollertinsky gave him a reassuring slap on the shoulder. ‘Nina never stays away long. She’ll be back in a couple of days. You know she finds you irresistible.’
‘Like a moth to a flame,’ said Shostakovich gloomily. ‘Only problem is, she’s as fiery as I am. But I must keep working. You know how it is when you get up speed. It’s dangerous, almost fatal, to stop.’
Sollertinsky raised first his eyebrows and then his brimming glass. ‘To music and marital harmony. May they one day co-exist.’
‘To thinking slowly and writing fast,’ countered Shostakovich, gulping his vodka. ‘Well, there’s no one waiting for me at home. If I’m to live like a bachelor for the next day or two, I guess I can have another.’
Three vodkas later, and the room was loud with voices and laughter. Even Druskin, who was rarely happy, had the satisfied look of a critic who’d honed a hatchet job to perfection. As they left, Sollertinsky boomed out a greeting to him, while Shostakovich sneaked a quick glance at the open notebook. ‘
Pretentious
,’ he read. ‘
Angular
. More farce than comedy. Melodies limper than a wet handkerchief.’
Druskin, noticing his interest, slammed the book shut.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Shostakovich. ‘Whatever sins Prokofiev may be accused of, you can’t deny he has a rare gift for melody.’
Druskin shrugged. ‘Unfortunately for Sergey Prokofiev, you’re not the one writing the review.’
Shostakovich stared into his dry grey face. ‘“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”’
Druskin looked nonplussed.
‘Philo of Alexandria,’ said Sollertinsky briskly as he pushed through the door into the chilly bright light. ‘God, it’s cold as a witch’s tit.’
‘Spring’s certainly late this year,’ agreed Shostakovich, hunching into his coat.
Sollertinsky turned up the collar of his suit jacket, bought six months earlier but already looking ten years old, its pockets bulging with keys, threads trailing from its lapels. ‘Are you feeling quite well?’ He pulled on his overcoat. ‘I could have sworn I heard you defending one Mr Prokofiev.’
‘Prokofiev has the soul of a goose and the talent of a turkey,’ shrugged Shostakovich. ‘Nonetheless, he’s one of us, and we composers must unite
against the enemy.’
‘Now you’re using the language of war. Go home now.’ Sollertinsky clasped his hand, kissed him on both cheeks, and warned him to take great care, not only of his marriage but of himself, because he was the best drinking companion in the city, not to mention a reasonably talented composer.
Shostakovich turned to go, and then turned back. ‘Do you know the worst thing about all this German fraternising we’ve had to put up with?’
‘No, what?’ Sollertinsky’s query floated on a vodka breeze.
‘That we’ve had to endure so many years of strategic Wagner,’ said Shostakovich, and he marched away.
K
arl Illyicli Eliasberg, commonly known as Elias, sat counting the times his mother chewed before swallowing. Ten.
Swallow
. Twelve.
Swallow
. A commendable practice, recommended by doctors to aid the digestion. Nevertheless, they were eating only a kind of purée that he’d cooked out of turnips and swede, boiled for hours, reduced to a tasteless grey gruel in deference to his mother’s gapped teeth.
He concentrated on eating his own meal extremely quietly, hoping his mother would follow his example. Even when alone, he ate, drank and moved with as little noise as possible, as if not wanting to disturb the inanimate objects around him. The world ran on one track, he on another. This was the way it had always been.
Fifteen.
Swallow
! How could so few teeth mulching through liquefied root vegetables make so much noise?
‘Mother!’ he said sharply, involuntarily.
His mother looked up. She hadn’t yet done her hair; greyish wisps trailed like lichen over her shoulders. The sight annoyed Elias still further. Whatever the state of the wider world, however quickly Europe might be sliding into chaos, there was no excuse for personal slovenliness, even at eight in the morning.
‘Karl?’ Her eyes were as faded as the envelopes she carried about day and night.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Soundlessly, he spooned up the last of his sludge.
‘I’d hoped we might have fresh rolls this morning.’ His mother prodded at what was left on her plate. ‘Didn’t we have this stuff yesterday for lunch?’
‘Yes, Mother,’ he said expressionlessly.
‘Not that it isn’t nice,’ mused Mrs Eliasberg. ‘But I did feel like a little bread today.’
Elias placed his spoon beside his plate at a precise right angle to the edge of the table. ‘I didn’t have time to queue for bread this morning. Nor did I have time last evening to set dough. Please try to remember this is a busy time for me.’
His mother ducked away from the reproach, bending once more to her food. ‘How light —’ she muttered. ‘And how —’
‘I beg your pardon, Mother?’
Mrs Eliasberg raised her head. Small shreds of turnip swayed in her hair. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Karl. It was merely that I felt for a little bread today.’
‘Yes, yes.’ His eyes strayed towards the work desk by the wall, but he forced his gaze back to his mother.