Europe Central (129 page)

In a grand Hallway of the People with a brass chandelier, he got drunk and whispered into Glikman’s face: They talk about this new, this, this cultural exchange! Well, haven’t we always had it? We have Black Marias and
they
have Green Minnas!

My dear, dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich, what on earth are you saying? Please be careful—

Or did Green Minnas vanish with the Reich? Maybe they transport them in schoolbuses now—

Them?
Whom are you talking about?

Why, I’m talking about all of us. Long live the, so to speak, the, the Fatherland!

Dmitri Dmitriyevich, day and night I worry about your happiness.

Thank you. Thank you!

And I have something important to say to you.

Yes, my friend, said Shostakovich in a panic, his fingers beginning to gallop crazily all over the room. What is it?

Do you remember that many years ago you asked me to—

No, no! Please don’t—

And after I saw you last time, when you burst into tears—

I
did not!

I swear to you—

So you betrayed my confidence, is that what you did?

When you were weeping, you asked me to go to her and—

Did you tell her? How dare you?

She kept asking me, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. So I told her, because—

Because what?

My dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich, I advise you to leave your present situation, because you’re not happy. Even now it’s not too late to—

Please keep your advice to yourself, my
dear, dear
Isaak Davidovich!

With a despairing and humiliated smile, Glikman said softly: That’s how I know you’re in love. Because people in love never take the advice of their friends. First they ask for it and don’t take it, and then they become quite offended when their friends, who only want to help them and who—

Isaak Davidovich, please forgive me! Oh, I’m a bastard, such a, a, a bastard! And that’s why you told her, of course, of course—because I
wanted
you to! How is she? Her hair must be completely white by now. And then I—oh, I’m such a sonofabitch! Galina was right not to marry me!

Never mind her, said Glikman, laying his hand on Shostakovich’s shoulder; and Shostakovich suddenly felt that he loved Glikman more than he had ever loved any man or woman on or under this earth, and Glikman tenderly repeated: Never mind her. It’s not Galina Ustvolskaya that you love.

Shostakovich lived on to 1970, when he published an article entitled “Lenin’s life, an inspiring example to us.” He also composed Opus 139, “March of the Soviet Police.” I mean, why run ahead of progress? It’s better to just, you know. But Irina kept being so kind. The silent tact of the woman who sits on the bench beside the concert pianist, turning pages at just the right moment, and otherwise scarcely existing, that summed up Irinochka, who devoted herself to him so perfectly; how could he possibly deserve her?

He knew that he was ruining her as he’d ruined Tatyana, Elena, Nina and Galina; he was a poisoned bomb who killed all; poor tired Ninusha had suffered the worst, because she’d lived with him the longest. And then he’d . . . Elena, you’re so lucky that you didn’t marry me. Is the page turner any less important than the concert pianist? First of all, she needs to read music, which is no mean feat in our times. More important still, she keeps me company, knowing me and comforting me. She keeps Opus 110’s swarm of sorrows from . . . I, I, the things growing deep within the mass graves! And then . . . From within the great brick arch, the railroad tracks roll toward a stand of trees. I think that’s the gas chamber. Wooden watchtowers, A-framed ocher-bricked barracks in rows and rows and rows, the remains of chimneys in the grass, that’s my music. Long rows of chords, block after pinewood block of them, long and low with steeper, blacker-roofed chords on the right, it all aims at the same kind of feeling—you know, that feeling of . . . But when she holds me in her arms, Operation Barbarossa never happened! Well, aren’t I vile, though, to want to deny . . . ? Do you remember when the American fighter-bombers returned to Dresden for the third raid and began machine-gunning women and children in the grass? Talk about chopping up the melodic lines! The Americans should have, well . . . Some people survived even then. I wonder who was luckier. We can all hope to, to, so to speak, survive. And I myself, although I’m very afraid, I . . .

Time ticked, and he lived on to 1972, when his Fifteenth Symphony premiered; for despite his impairments they still expected him to fulfill his quota of symphonies, just as in the old days they’d demanded that the NKVD chief of some city arrest and shoot ten thousand enemies of the people at once and without fail. Unfortunately, the Fifteenth was no more than a feeble rearguard action, a holding-on behind enemy-occupied lines. Many a chord got borrowed from Wagner, Prokofieff, Mussorgsky and a certain D. D. Shostakovich. On the whole, it was as grey as Tukhachevsky’s eyes, as white as Glikman’s intentions, as clean as Nina’s fingernails, as solitary as Irina’s, you know. Elena, you see how lucky it is that, well. I used to be—how should I put it? Conceited. And now, when I hear someone’s silly laugh, especially a man’s, because women are, you know, I, I can hardly . . . They praised its banality, and his ears kept ringing. He kept expecting to see Comrade Stalin in the back row, or Zhukov, Khrennikov, or anybody else who was unshakably determined
to light the way ahead with a searchlight.
As for our unshakable allies in East Germany, they called it
strangely reserved and introverted.
His attention wandered; his mouth trembled; his coat fell off his lap and Irina picked it for him. The searchlight’s on me; it gives me the creeps! His spectacles were now as big as clockfaces. White light gleamed on them, so that it was sometimes difficult for others to read his eyes—thank you, thank you! He sat stiff and frowning, with his useless hands at his sides. Why not cut them off? Then I’d take up less space in this world! That way I could hide from Comrade Alexandrov, who won’t leave me alone; he’s always around with his . . . Remembering the chord of screams when a German Fascist oil bomb hit a children’s hospital, he realized that he’d forgotten to put that sound into Opus 110. Well, well! Should I rewrite it? It would field-strip as nicely as a Nazi pistol, every movement black and silver. And then that one sound— what’s that sound? Because . . . Struggling painfully to his feet to thank the musicians as usual, he found that several shuddered away from his compromised hand. They jeeringly called him
Comrade
Shostakovich. His heart drummed as hellishly as the second movement of Opus 110. The next day, however, an American admirer invited him to her apartment for an intimate breakfast, not far from where the “Spartak” Children’s Home used to be. What was her name? It was some, so to speak,
American
name. His memory wasn’t always . . . She told him that his Fifteenth was brilliant, and he thought to himself: If I were only fifteen measures younger I could have, I could have, well. Let me calculate it: Fifteen years ago, Nina had just died and Elena would have been forty-three. When did that Vigodsky marry her? After the war; it must have been after the war. She wouldn’t have been too old then to, to, how shall I say, but it’s better not to think about that because, anyway that’s how most meetings go. Besides, for the sake of my so-called “health” . . . He remembered the cries which Elena used to utter: first
appassionato,
almost
con dolore,
then
morendo,
then after a long rigid silence with her face locked away in pleasure,
con brio
for the very finish, not explosively as other women so often did, but as calmly unstoppably as a rocket rising upon its own flame, with superhuman brilliance, really; hence that smooth shrill pass of the cello’s bow in the second movement of Opus 40; that was when he’d first known how far above everyone she truly was. Well, that was over. The waffles which this American had made (she seemed to be suffering from a case of leftwing infantile deviation) reminded him of war-skeletonized buildings. It was all a matter of scale. Instead of charred square concrete pits which had once been rooms, square wells of golden starchiness looked up at him, glimmering with melted butter and maple syrup imported all the way from Canada!

Thank you, thank you, dear lady, he said, and now I need to go, for I’m really not well, you see . . .—And he really wasn’t well. In fact, I’m so feeble that if Elena were mine I’d drop dead for happiness.

Irina had proposed a visit to Leningrad so that he could see it one last time. And probably he should have gone; Leningrad defined him as much as did Opus 110; Glikman’s brother Gavriil, already famous for sculpting the “Apollo Shostakovich,” would soon propose setting little stones from Leningrad on his grave, surrounded by metal bars
(Irina Antonova considered my idea to be better than all the others);
we’re all sure a tour of that metropolis’s socialist reconstruction would have invigorated him. Irina thought it might be nice to promenade on Nevsky Prospect and peer into the shops; somebody had told her (I think it was the singer G. P. Vishnevskaya) that some of the dressmakers there were nearly as clever as the ones in Paris; and there was such a little-girl look in her face when she proposed it, such a smile of anticipated delight, that he realized that she had not been very happy for a long time and so was craving some sort of pleasure, even the most trivial kind; it was that longing for merriment which her eyes so intensely expressed; that was precisely what he found so, how should I say, upsetting, because he was impotent in that department, too. So she wanted to, um, I mean, really, the Nevsky of all places! Not long before the October Revolution, the Symbolist writer Bely proclaimed:
All of Petersburg is an infinity of the Prospect raised to the nth degree. Beyond Petersburg lies nothing.
Nothing but tanks, that is, the T-26s, T- 34s, and sixty-ton TVs . . . Oh, my, he remembered quite well, so very, you know, thank you, all the corpses with back-flung faces which used to blow across Nevsky Prospect like leaves, and the living faces the color of dirt, and that severed arm which hung from the garden gate; I would have thought that my Galisha was too young to remember, but even now she has nightmares; I suppose she’ll be tortured until she dies. And this child he’d married had no idea! She was simply too young. He remembered especially well the great bundle of guns aiming at the sky in R. L. Karmen’s “Leningrad Fights,” the Smolny Institute obscured by smoke. Of course he and the family were in Kuibyshev by that time. One had to admire Karmen for, you know. And now that he had wheezed his way to his feet so that he could stand sternly over her like that statue of Lenin which remained before the raised portico of the Smolny throughout the Nine Hundred Days, Irina began to realize that once again she’d offended him, and her face turned red as he ranted: I, I used to gaze at Nevsky Prospect through a jagged hole! And that sound of those Stukas coming, pure
vibrato,
I, I—

And let me guess, interrupted his wife, likewise rising.
She
was standing beside you.

No! he cried, shocked out of his rage. Don’t worry, don’t worry; that’s all garbage. I wasn’t even—

Naked, I’m sure. Well, you certainly had your romantic moments, back when you could still—

In a hurried rasp he begged: Don’t be cruel, Irina!

I’m sorry! Forgive me, Mitya. I felt jealous for a moment, that was all.

I—

Never mind. Now it’s over. Please do forgive me. We won’t go to Leningrad.

He lived on to 1973, when he signed an open letter in
Pravda
denouncing the human rights activist A. Sakharov. This servile act cost him several of his remaining friends.
⁴⁵
The avant-gardist Y. P. Lyubimov, toward whom he’d always been generous, no longer consented to greet him. So what? Tell it to the the grinning boys of the Condor Legion! His fame was distinct without warmth, like Arctic sunlight on a pavement of soldiers’ helmets.

He lived until 1974, when he wrote the spectacular “Suite on Verses of Michelangelo,” whose songs are as beautiful as a flock of multicolored fighter planes. Now it had been exactly forty years since that international musical festival in Leningrad when he’d played his piano concerto and then a certain twenty-year-old student had slipped him a note signed with her initials, E. E. K. It was actually Nina who’d wanted the divorce. And Irina had certainly also, you know, but Irina was practically the age of his own daughter; she didn’t know what she, anyhow, there were times when she slipped an arm around him and he just laughed to himself: She thinks she’s embracing me but she’s only embracing my coat! Irina laid her hand on his fingers, which were as soft, fat and white as graveyard-berries. And everywhere he turned he was, you know. For example, and this is just one example, every time Irina turned on the television there was another Roman Karmen program about the fraternal struggle in Latin America, and you know how I feel about dear,
dear
Roman Lazarevich! I wonder how often he gets kissed. He’s still in good health, I hear. One’s supposed to get kissed farewell three times by our Russian women when one goes off to the front. He’s in another of his suits, filming the White House in Washington, D.C.; can you imagine? And now here’s Fidel Castro sitting casually in the back seat of a car, chatting with children through the open window (that’s a scene in “Flaming Island”), slim, whitehaired Roman Karmen stands dreamily beside Castro, who looks very revolutionary and dynamic; pan to children, crowds, old women, militants, parades. And Irina’s so gullible; she even thinks these people have now been, you know,
liberated
! Because she saw it on television! She says that just because I’m older doesn’t mean I have the right to tell her what to think; she’s just as intelligent as I am. What can I say to that? I can’t say that Elena would have, well, what do I know? He smiled at Irina; don’t think he wasn’t, to get right down to it,
grateful.
Nina saw all too clearly that he would have been better off with Elena, but he couldn’t go through with it, perhaps exactly because he would have been better off, which he couldn’t bear; he trailed after Nina and got her to take him back. He should have believed his heart. And then Elena had said—what had she said?—Bury me in Leningrad, he told Irina.