Europe Central (126 page)

37

Afterwards his life became as calm as the fading sound of a German bomber which has just released its load. His friends prevented him from carrying out his threat involving sleeping pills. He never frightened them in that way again because, well, it would have been, so to speak, ridiculous. Moreover, Shostakovich does not, you know, abandon his children! Why not continue his work? Sooner or later, death would knock on the door anyhow; Comrade Shostakovich already has his suitcase packed . . . That same year, he whom the capitalists had misnamed “the Mozart of modern Russia” composed his Twelfth Symphony, whose subject at last was Lenin—a hateful, grotesque satire of Lenin. Oh, yes, it was, how should I put it, funny in its way, hilarious, really, almost as humorous as when the NKVD acted out the grovelings of Zinoviev on his way to execution (do it again! Comrade Stalin used to shout, his cheeks all dribbled with laughter’s tears). Feculent under-chords tainted the music, which rode over them just the same with businesslike viciousness, like a tank squashing down corpses on the roadside. Lebedinsky talked him out of that suicide attempt, and he completely rewrote it in four days, his normal rate of composition for film scores and other hack work; needless to say, it got praised for its subject (to most of these Soviet critics, music was as obscure as the electrical aspects of bimetallism.)—Dear comrades! he cried in drunken happiness.—Now his Fourth Symphony, which he’d completed in 1936, could finally be performed in public for the very first time. Not long after, our vigilant German allies erected the Berlin Wall.

His old neighbor F. P. Litvinova asked whether his music would have been different without Party guidance, and he replied: You know, my dear Flora Pavlovna, I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm. I could have, I mean, revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage. I could have written more—how to put it?—more
pure
music.

In short, he’d already succeeded in the most crucial sphere of all: His candidate membership in the Communist Party of our USSR had been ratified in September! I’m happy to inform you that the following year we found him worthy of full membership.—Well, well, he chuckled drunkenly. That was the finale I always had in mind. I know somebody who’s very lucky not to have married me!

As for Litvinova, she poured more tea with a bitter smile, straining for the sake of something she would have called decency to conceal her rage, while with spasmodically greedy old hands he spooned more raspberry tea into the cup. Her son, incapable of camouflage, was now in Siberia for having dared to shout that doomed Czech slogan
Socialism with a human face.

Shostakovich coughed and coughed. Why was Flora Pavlovna so silent? Within his skull sounded a burst of luminous sadness which could be most appropriately expressed in his next string quartet. What was pure music, but formalism? His bones were aching; he wanted to double over like a frontline man (stand straight and a sniper will get you), but Flora Pavlovna might not understand, because she hadn’t, which is to say . . . What exactly did she blame him for? It seemed that she blamed him for
something,
and yet he’d always helped her, given her coupons to the GUM department store, listened to her complaints, taught her son music; what did she expect him to do for her son? Comrade Shostakovich was not, so to speak, Comrade Stalin; he couldn’t exactly, you know, pull any
strings
; and suddenly his hand began to jerk, spilling tea on his crotch while he observed it in mournful surprise; Litvinova rose to get a napkin. What did she want of him? Was he supposed to apologize to
her
for, for . . . ?

Come to think of it, he’d never trusted that hag anyway. Once he’d encountered her near the Leningradskaya Hotel, where he used to tryst with Elena Konstantinovskaya; and Flora Pavlovna had pretended not to recognize him, he’d never known why. She’d always acted more or less like a neighbor, a friend, but . . . Not that he would have blamed her if she’d, you know, because in our epoch everybody has to, how should I put it,
cooperate.
Meanwhile, everybody blames everybody for what everybody has done! Not that
I
ever . . . Here ran his own slogan, well learned from the late Comrade Stalin:
Never trust anyone. Never say anything
—except musically, of course. Music is safe because nobody understands it. In other words, only in music is everything clear.

Some time ago, about twenty years ago, in fact, we learned to hang clusters of little sandbags on our tanks for protection against those Nazi hand-rockets called
Faustpatronen,
which resemble plumbers’ tools and can shoot through walls a brick and a half thick, and that is just what he did nowadays against people such as Litvinova; he numbed his hide against her wherever he could, so that her anger couldn’t sting him. If only he could get as deeply, eternally drunk as Mussorgsky! Then he wouldn’t have to, you know. Not that he lived badly; after Opus 110 everything was unreal again. Needless to say, he regretted that Litvinova’s son Pavel, who was musically not, so to speak, un-talented, had been whisked into the mold and ice of a Kolyma isolation cell; but that happened to all of us! His own sister Mariya had once been exiled, after all, not that I want to face her again after what I’ve done—oh, dear, how old she is! Every time I see her now, I think the same thing. Her face is as yellow as the Imperial Senate, as yellow as the Admiralty building! I don’t want to imagine what Elena looks like now. I certainly don’t want to see myself—nor should we omit the case of Akhmatova, and all those, you know; as for E. E. Konstantinovskaya, whom I for one will never call Vigodsky, let’s not mention her ever again; it is surely coincidental that she died the same year as D. D. Shostakovich; and Galina Ustvolskaya was out of reach; Tatyana Nikolayeva was, you know; Nina was dead although he still kept a framed photograph of her from when she was still a young girl and cocked her smiling head at him, wearing her flower-blouse (after he married Margarita, it had to disappear from the best piano, but once he’d married Irina it could come back because Irina was tolerantly kind); Tukhachevsky was skeletonized in a construction trench; Leningrad would never be quite the same; Russia and Germany remained rather, how shall I say; and no matter what Litvinova might have suffered, Opus 110 contained it all, in the second movement alone, whose terrifying sounds outclassed the twelve-inch guns of our Black Sea fleet . . .

38

In 1961, when we defended socialism by constructing the Berlin Wall, “Lady Macbeth” got restaged at last, but with the erotic parts excised. Shostakovich didn’t give a damn.
⁴³
That soprano on the stage, what was her name again? It’s all getting very . . . I can’t hear the high notes anyway; she looks like my idea of, of, let’s say lovely, tall Germania, with her sword and her carrion bird! But Irina wouldn’t like that comparison. She’d . . .

Meanwhile, Yuri Gargarin became the first human being to visit outer space, and he was one of us; he was a Soviet man, so he sang a Shostakovich song as he orbited the world! Shostakovich didn’t care.

Come to think of it, what should Germania look like? This is vexing me! A tall redhaired woman in a robe, with an upright sword in one hand and a banner in the other, or maybe a sheaf of wheat, or something. Needless to say, she’s kicking somebody in the face. What’s that sound? I forgot to put that sound into Opus 110, and now I’ve missed my chance. And that book in the Nevsky that Galisha found, with that horrifying image of death coming for the children, I forgot that, too! But that’s safe from being lost, because it’s art, made by a human being, to say
seed corn must not be ground.
Not that they won’t keep grinding, but at least somebody is . . . And the suffering
Russian
mother, you know, what about her? An
inostranka,
a foreign woman, will surely be the subject of my next quartet. Maybe that joke is getting . . . What else did I forget to preserve? I’m like Akhmatova with her “Requiem”—I can’t let go, because there’s always some new, you know. But I’m overwhelmed. Or let’s just say I’ve done my job. As I once said to Elena, very complex circumstances play a very important role here. Now it’s better just to, I don’t know. I wish I could talk to Irina about this, because she’s my angel, but I’m afraid of making her sad. I failed; I was human; I was incomplete. Now Opus 110 is
over
—nothing to scream about anymore! A victory of the . . . What was that bastard Comrade Alexandrov always advising me? Oh, me!
Drown your grief in Red Army power
—hee, hee! And Germania’s sitting beneath a tree, marking the place in her Bible with her long sword—very nineteenth-century; Glazunov would, you know; Mussorgsky, too—she’s holding a shield adorned with a doubleheaded eagle, with a crown at her feet, and she’s . . . Remember when they cut all the children’s throats when they were retreating? With her long sword; it’s got to be a long sword. They needed blood for their field hospital. Or maybe they used a needle, because Glikman informs me that we saved a few of the children. What’s that sound? From a tonal point of view it lights the way ahead with a
searchlight.
An antiaircraft light, let’s say. Speer used those at the Nuremberg Rally, right when Elena and Roman Lazarevich were first . . . So Germania has got to have red,
red
lips, with Russian blood running down her mouth. That would be . . . Oh, this opera is endless. What a dull, mediocre composer I am! And to think I used to care whether they played it this way or that way, or left all my notes in! More blood in my next symphony. But I’m almost out of symphonies. The doctor says I have to . . . Poor, dear Irina, to be trapped with me! What a selfish old bastard I am! I should have just . . . Even Margarita didn’t deserve what I put her through. If only the plane had crashed! The Fascists could have shot it down. Of course it would have been better if Nina and the children were on another plane. But then . . . A doubleheaded eagle! What’s that sound? And she’s . . .

He invited Glikman to accompany him to a concert by Galina Ustvolskaya, but at the last moment he didn’t have the nerve to, well. Glikman suggested that they attend the premiere of Roman Karmen’s new film about the new order in Cuba; it was called “The Blue Lamp,” and was supposed to be very, you know, but every time I meet dear Roman Lazarevich I can’t help but think of a certain, anyhow, I’m not saying that Shostakovich wasn’t busy. Composer and decomposer, he had to go on
al fine,
to the end.

He lived on to 1962, when word got out that his Thirteenth Symphony was explicitly linked to Yevtushenko’s subversive poem “Babi Yar,”
⁴⁴
and so the district Party secretary cried out: This is outrageous! We let Shostakovich join the Party and then he goes and presents us with a symphony about Jews!—After Yevtushenko caved in and made the changes which the Party required, to deemphasize the Jewish nature of that massacre, Shostakovich got drunk with Lebedinsky, whom he saw less and less these days, and he whispered: I am a Jew! Oh, how I want to be a Jew . . .

Excuse my directness, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, but there’s a solution to your troubles.

Well, naturally we’ll speak privately about the possibility of a solution, a, a, so to speak, political solution. No, please, please don’t smile like that! When I screwed up my courage to divorce Nina, I couldn’t face her; I wrote her a letter, but she didn’t reply, so Ashkenazi delivered another copy to her. He actually went all the way to Detskoe Selo, where Nina and her mother had already, you know. Sometimes I . . .

Dmitri Dmitriyevich, she’s a widow now. I’ve made inquiries.

Opus 40 was almost finished then; poor Elena was waiting by the telephone. Can you believe it? But
then,
you know . . .

This was the year we find him autographing scores for Young Pioneers who didn’t give a shit, the year he married his third wife, Irina, whose smooth round face, round spectacles and glossy hair-knot he loved so well. He secretly apologized to all his friends for her youthful awkwardness. Glikman in particular felt jealous of her. But that’s normal. He informs me—can you believe it?—that Roman Lazarevich has also tied the knot this year! I sincerely wish him happiness. This Maya Ovchinnikova, I don’t know her circumstances. I hope she likes hunting and fast cars, because otherwise . . . The man’s my Doppelgänger! Whatever I do, he copies in his golem-like way. But I only imagine that because of, you know. What would it be like to ring him up and . . . ? Strange to say, although I almost never telephone him, I know his number by heart:
VI, 93, 80.
And if I just said, my dear Roman Lazarevich, come drink vodka with me and we’ll talk about the old days, I’m sure he . . . He’s a much sweeter person than I—not spiteful. And if I said, Roman Lazarevich, please tell me how it was for you and her in Spain and don’t omit anything! I want to know what she said when she first heard that she’d been awarded the Order of the Red Star! I was, you know,
proud.
Whereas I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of my own decorations. How many people must I invite to my wedding? How I dread such affairs! It would almost be better to, you know.

I meant to write everything into Opus 110, except for Elena; but of course I had to write Elena in, on account of those . . . She, you see, kept screaming and
screaming.
But what I’d rather do is compose something in the style of Opus 40, just a, you know, a simple little something which
adores
her, but even more achromatically, blurring and revealing her the way her hair does, oh, my God, her long hair, it must be grey now, or maybe it’s fallen out. What was it she used to, no, I won’t admit that I’ve forgotten her. Just a little something like Opus 40, something which, how should I say, respects her right to
seclude
herself just as the lovely pale pavilion of the Concert Hall veils itself behind the maple leaves of Catherine Park. Should I visit Catherine Park with Irina? She’d surely find that quite, er,
romantic.
Once when I met Elena at the All-Russian Agricultural Museum, we . . .