The Devil's Mirror

The Test Tube

No ember-eyed debaucher was so fond,

No zealot’s fierce allegiance half so true.

How many hours I watched, tie boyhood trips

I made to movie houses to adore

Your fragile beauty and your crystal pride,

Your power to kill, or kindle what had died.

 

You spared the blushes of the naked blonde,

Hiding with veils of vapour her taboo

Attractions, deftly draping breasts and hips

As she lay, gagged, on
Dime Detective’s
floor

And white-smocked Dr Hooknose grimly tried

To do her harm in ways unspecified.

 

King’s sceptre, bishop’s censer, wizard’s wand,

Mad scientists caressed and fondled you

Till smoke poured thick and creamy from your lips

And instantly you both conceived and bore

Out of your teeming steam—defiant Hyde

Or, to placate the Baron’s brute, a bride.

R.R.

I’m a bloodhound. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I’m a meticulous researcher, an untiring zealot, a ruthless bloodhound when pursuing facts. I’m not a professional musician, granted; not even a gifted amateur; but my fondness for music can’t be disputed and my personal fund of musical and musicological knowledge happens to be huge. All the more remarkable (wouldn’t you say?) that no catalogue, no concert programme, no newspaper file, no encyclopedia, no dictionary, no memoir, no interview, no history of music, no gravemarker has rewarded my efforts by surrendering the name V. I. Cholodenko.

Such a person, it would seem, never existed. Or, if he did exist, became an Orwellian unperson who was whisked from this world as completely as were Ambrose Bierce, Judge Crater, or the passengers and crew of the
Marie Celeste.
I’m well aware of the transliteration problems regarding Russian names, and I’ve doggedly searched under the spellings Kholodenko, Tcholodenko, Tscholodenko, Shcholodenko and even Zholodenko, but to no avail. True, I haven’t had access to archives within the Soviet Union (my letters to Shostakovich and Khachaturian appear to have gone astray) but I’ve queried Russian musicians on tour in the United States, and to none of them is it a familiar name.

Its exclusive appearance is in a ribbon-tied bunch of old letters, crisp and desiccated, purchased last year by me, along with items of furniture and art, at a private auction of the effects of the late Beverly Hills attorney, Francis Cargrave. They had belonged to his grandfather, Sir Robert Cargrave, an eminent London physician, to whom they are addressed, and all were written, in elegant if somewhat epicene prose, by Lord Henry Stanton, a fashionable beau and minor poet of the period.

The curiosity, the enigma, lies in the fact that all the people mentioned in the three pertinent letters are real people, who lived, whose names and achievements are well-known—all, that is, but the name and achievements of Cholodenko. Even the briefly-mentioned Colonel Spalding existed, as will be noted later. Down to the most insignificant details—such as the colour of his famous host’s eyeglasses—Lord Stanton’s letters can be substantiated (the only exceptions, again, being the references to the elusive Cholodenko).

Is the man a fabrication? Was Stanton the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax? If so, I can’t in all honesty understand why. The letters were written to his closest friend, a presumably sober pillar of the medical profession. Both men were no longer youngsters, and undergraduate pranks strike me as uncharacteristic of them.

But if it was not a prank, how can we explain the way Cholodenko has been ripped from history, his music not even a fading echo but a silence, a vacuum, completely forgotten, as totally unknown as the song the Sirens sang?

I don’t presume to solve the mystery. I merely present the three letters ‘for what they’re worth’, and invite other bloodhounds to make what they will of them. Such bloodhounds will sniff out, as I did, a glaring discrepancy, for the very survival of these letters seems to discredit Lord Stanton’s colourful insinuations—but he would probably counter our incredulity, if he were here, by urbanely pointing out that if God proverbially moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, might not His Adversary do the same? For reasons of scholarship and accuracy, I haven’t condensed or edited the letters in any way (except to eliminate the redundant addresses in all but the first), preferring to let even irrelevant or trivial observations stand, in the hope that they may contain clues which eluded me. I’ve also kept Stanton’s not always standard, though phonetically accurate, transliterations. In a few places I’ve inserted short bracketed notes of my own, in italics. The letters bear month and dates, but no year. Stanton being English, I assume these dates conform to the Gregorian calendar familiar to us, rather than to the old Julian calendar which was still in use in Russia at the time. On the basis of internal evidence, such as the first performance of
Eugene Onegin
, I believe the letters to have been written in 1879.

5 April

Sir Robert Cargrave
Harley Street
London, England

My dear Bobbie,

No, do not scold me! I know full well that I have been a renegade and most delinquent comrade. If I seem to have avoided your home these many months; if I have neglected you, your dear Maude, and your brood of cherubim—one of whom, young Jamey, must be quite ripe for Oxford by now!—then ascribe it, I pray you, not to a cooling of our friendship’s fires nor to a crusty bachelor’s disdain for the familial hearthstone, but, rather, to my persistent vice, travel.

I have set foot on divers shores since last I sipped your sherry, old friend, and greatly fear the proper Maude would frown prettily and tap her tiny foot with disapproval to hear some of my adventures—such as a certain scandal attendant upon my holiday in Greece, whither I journeyed to steep myself in the air Orestes breathed and tan my pallid English hide under the sun of Sophocles. Whilst steeping and sunning, it seems I was the agency whereby all three daughters of a prominent family were rendered
enceinte
, a feat of treble indiscretion that led to dreary judicial proceedings, an elaborate but unavailing defence which I delivered entirely in iambic pentameters, a large settlement upon the dishonoured daughters, an official request to absent myself from Graecian soil, and a rather good
mot
of mine which I think will wrench a chuckle from even your tight Harley Street lips. On the train that took me from Greece, I had the misfortune to meet an American cleric of bloodless aspect and the possessor of a pronounced squint, who, catching my name and having snifted the gossip, lugubriously lectured me! This presumptuous parson had the gall to enquire what ‘lesson’ I had learned from the experience! Fancy! Fixing him with the most icy of glances, I replied: ‘Beware of Greeks—bearing Greeks.’

I write to you from St Petersburg. Yes, I am cosily hugged by ‘the rugged Russian bear’, a cryptic creature, I assure you, warm and great-hearted, quick to laugh, and just as quick to plunge into pits of black
toska
—a word that haughtily defies translation, hovering mystically, as it does, somewhere between melancholy and despair. Neither melancholy nor despair, however, have dogged my steps here in this strange land. I have been most cheerful. There are wondrous sights to bend one’s gaze upon; exotic food and drink to quicken and quench the appetite; fascinating people with whom to talk. To your sly and silent question, my reply is Yes!—there are indeed ladies here, lovely ones, with flared bright eyes and sable voices; lambent ladies, recondite and rare. There are amusing soirées, as well (I will tell you of one in a moment) and there are evenings of brilliance at the ballet and the opera.

The opera here would particularly captivate both you and your Maude, I am certain, for I know of your deep love of the form. How enviously, then, will you receive the news that just last month, in Moscow, I attended the premiere of a dazzling new
opus theatricum
by the composer Pyotr Chaikovsky. It was a work of lapidary excellence, entitled
Yevgeny Onyégin
(I transliterate as best I can from the spiky Cyrillic original), derived from a poem of that name by a certain Pushkin, a prosodist now dead for decades, who—my friend. Colonel Spalding, tells me—enjoys a classical reputation here, but of whom I had not hitherto heard, since his works have not been translated into English, an error the Colonel is now busy putting right.
[Lt-Col Henry Spalding’s English translation, transliterated as ‘Eugene Onéguine’, was published in London in 1881. However, other Pushkin poems were published in English translations by George Borrow as early as 1833.]
The opera is a shimmering tapestry of sound, brocaded with waltzes and polonaises.

But St Petersburg, I find, is richer in cultural life than even Moscow: I have been awed by the baroque majesty of the Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, chastened by the mighty gloom of the Peter Paul fortress and properly impressed by the Smolny Monastery and the Winter Palace.
À propos
of winter, I have also been chilled to the marrow by the fiercest cold I have ever known. ‘Winter in April?’ I can hear you say. Yes, the severe season stretches from November to April in this place, and the River Neva, which I can see, moonlit, from my window as I write, is frozen over, and has been thus, I am told, for the past six months! It is a great gleaming broadsword of ice, cleaving the city in two.

As for music: just last night, thanks to a letter of introduction from Spalding, I was received at a famous apartment in the Zagoredny Prospekt—nothing ostentatious, a small drawing-room, a few chairs, a grand piano, a table in the dining room loaded with the simplest food and drink... but what exceptional people were crowded, shoulder to shoulder, in that place. It was the apartment of Rimsky-Korsakov, who, I was pleased to discover, is not only a gifted and amiable gentleman, but speaks excellent English—an accomplishment not shared by many of his compatriots, whose social conversations are customarily couched in (or, at least, liberally laced with) French. The guests, myself excluded, were, to a man, composers and performers, some (I later learned) being members of a
koochka,
or clan, of musicians of which Rimsky-Korsakov is the nucleus.

You will laugh when I tell you that, not five minutes after being welcomed into the salon, I committed a
faux pas.
Wishing to take part in the musical discussion, I minutely described and lavishly praised the Chaikovsky opera I had enjoyed so recently at the Moscow Conservatorium. My tall host’s gentle eyes grew cold behind his blue-tinted spectacles (which he wears because of ailing sight) and I felt a distinct frost. The awkward moment soon passed, however, and a dark young man took me aside to drily inform me that ‘Our esteemed Nikolai Andreyvich considers Chaikovsky’s music to be in abominable taste.’

‘Do you share that opinion?’ I asked.

‘Not precisely, but I feel Chaikovsky is not a truly Russian composer. He has let himself be influenced by bad French models—Massenet, Bizet, Gounod, and so on.’

We were joined by a bloated, wild-haired, red-nosed, bleary-eyed but very courteous fellow who, after addressing me most deferentially, asked eagerly about the Chaikovsky work: ‘It is good, then, you think? Ah! Splendid! An excellent subject,
Onyégin.
I once thought of setting it myself but it’s not my sort of thing—Pyotr Ilyich is the man for it, there’s no doubt. Don’t you agree, Vassily Ivanovich?’ he added, turning to my companion.

That intense young man shrugged. ‘I suppose so—but to tell the truth, I am growing weary of these operatic obeisances to Pushkin. One cannot blame a composer of the old school, such as Glinka, for setting
Ruslan and Lyudmila
, but what are we to think when Dargomizhsky sets not one but three Pushkin subjects—
Russalka, The Triumph of Bacchus
and
The Stone Guest;
when you joined the cortège five years ago with your own opera; and when Chaikovsky now follows the pattern with
Onyégin?
’ He threw up his hands. ‘May that be the last!’ he sighed.

‘There is still
The Queen of Spades
,’ said the unkempt man, mischievously. ‘Perhaps you will undertake that one yourself?’

‘Thank you, no,’ snapped the other (rather irritably, I thought). ‘I leave that to you.’

‘I may just do it,’ was the smiling reply, ‘unless Chaikovsky is too quick for me!’
[He was: Tchaikovsky’s setting of ‘The Queen of Spades’ or ‘Pique-Dame’ was presented in 1890. And, later, Rimsky-Korsakov drew upon Pushkin for his operas ‘Le Coq d’Or’ and ‘Mozart and Salieri’ and Rachmaninoff also turned to Puskhin for his ‘Aleko’.
] Elaborately excusing himself, the wild-haired man left us and began chatting with another group.

Talented,’ my young friend said in appraisal of him after he left, ‘but he lacks technique. His scores are crude, grotesque, his instrumentation a disgrace. Of course, he isn’t well. An epileptic. And, as you may have noted, he drinks heavily. That red nose was
not
caused by frostbite, no matter what he says. We try to help him, but he makes it difficult for us. A group of us offered him eighty roubles a month, on the condition that he would finish a certain opera. He accepted. At the same time, unaware of our assistance, another group of friends offered him a hundred roubles a month if he would finish a certain
other
opera. He accepted that arrangement, as well, and, as a result, has finished neither. Still, somehow, he goes on writing music. There is a tavern in Morskaia Street, called Maly Yaroslavets—any night you will see him there, drinking vodka, scribbling music on napkins, menus, the margins of newspapers, feverishly, almost as if—’ He broke off.

‘As if possessed?’ I said.

‘A somewhat lurid allusion, don’t you think? No, I was about to say, “almost as if his life depended on it”—as I suppose it does, for his interest in music is probably the only thing keeping him alive. To look at him now, Lord Henry, would you ever guess he was once an impeccably groomed Guards officer, of refined breeding, a wit, a ladies’ man?’ He shook his head dolorously. ‘Poor Mussorgsky,’ he sighed.

Looking slowly about the salon, he then said, The
koochka
is not what it was, sir. Do you see that pathetic creature sitting in the corner?’ The gentleman indicated was indeed pathetic, a wraith who looked with glazed eye upon all who passed before him, responding feebly and mechanically to greetings, like an old man (although he was not old), then sinking back into motionless apathy. That is, or was, the
koochka’s
vital force, its spine, its heart, its tingling blood. It was in
his
apartment we were wont to meet, he who held the group together, his hands that firmly gripped the reins, his whip that goaded us to frenzied effort. No man was more steeped in the classical scores, no memory was so vast as his. Now look at him. A coffin. His mind blighted by a mysterious malady. There he sits. His
Tamara
languishes unfinished. Music has ceased to interest him, he who breathed exotic harmonies every minute of the day.’

We had been walking towards this pitiful wreckage, and now my guide leaned close and spoke to him: ‘Mily Alekseyevich! How is it with you?’ The man looked up and blinked vapidly; it was quite obvious he did not recognise the speaker. ‘It is I, Vassily Ivanovich,’ he was forced to add.

‘Vas... sily... ’Van... ovich...’ A small, crooked smile of recognition twisted the poor man’s face for a moment, although the eyes did not kindle.

‘Allow me to present an honoured guest from England, Lord Henry Stanton. Lord Henry, Mily Balakirev.’

The wretched fellow offered me a limp, dead hand, which I briefly shook; and then we left him, staring vacantly into empty air again. ‘Tragic,’ my Virgil murmured, ‘and the final offence is that poor Mily, who once was the most vociferous of scoffers, now mumbles prayers and bends his knee to ikons.’

‘I hope you are not an unbeliever,’ I said lightly.

‘I believe,’ he said—a reply that would have satisfied me, had it not been for its dark colour, which seemed to imply meanings beyond the simple words.

‘Surely,’ I asked him, ‘such ruination of body or mind are not typical of your group?’

‘Mussorgsky and Balakirev are possibly extreme examples,’ he agreed. ‘But there, at the table, stuffing himself with
zakuski,
’ he said, indicating a man in the uniform of a Lieutenant General of Engineers, ‘is Cui, who suffers from the worst disease of all: poverty of talent. And Rimsky, whose soul is corroded by his envy of Chaikovsky. As for Chaikovsky himself—he is not of our
koochka
, of course, being of the Moscow school—his sickness is so vile it scarcely can be spoken of...’

I trust, Bobbie, that if you read my poor scratchings to Maude, you will judiciously elide those passages that you, a man of medicine, may assimilate without discomfiture, but which would not be proper for her unworldly ears. Suffice it to say that the man whose opera so beguiled me in Moscow this past month is, in plain fact, an addict of that shameful vice for which, we are taught, Jehovah smote the Cities of the Plain.

This disclosure was so distasteful to me that I sought to change the subject of our conversation. The music of
Yevgeny Onyégin
still rang in my memory (though tainted now by that gross revelation) and I was therefore reminded of the poet on whose work the opera was founded.

‘You spoke of Pushkin some moments ago,’ I said. ‘I have been told he was an extraordinary poet. Why do you hold him in low esteem?’

‘I do not,’ he replied. ‘Pushkin was a genius. But suppose your English musicians persisted in setting only the plays and verses of Shakespeare, ignoring today’s English writers? This preoccupation with the past is stagnating most of Russian culture, and the music itself is as dated as its subject matter. Even Mussorgsky, whose crudeness is sometimes redeemed by flashes of daring, is being obtunded and made ‘inoffensive’ by Rimsky—a pedant who gets sick to the stomach at the sound of a consecutive fifth!’

Does it strike you, Bobbie, that this chap was annoyingly critical of his illustrious colleagues? It so struck me, and a little later in the evening I had an opportunity to challenge him—but at this precise moment in our conversation, we were joined by our host.

My initial ‘offence’ regarding the music of Chaikovsky was now, happily, forgotten, and Rimsky’s eyes were warm behind the blue lenses. ‘Ah, Lord Henry,’ he said, ‘I see you have met our young firebrand. Has he been telling you what old fogeys we are, the slaves of tradition, and so on? Dear boy, for shame: our English visitor will carry away a bad impression of us.’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘his views are refreshing.’

‘He is our gadfly,’ Rimsky said, with a diplomatic smile. ‘But we must all suspend our conversations—refreshing though they may be—and turn our attention to some music a few of our friends have consented to play for us.’

We all found chairs, and a feast of sound was served. Mussorgsky provided accompaniment for a song sung by a basso they called Fyodr
[Not Chaliapin, of course, who was only six years old at the time; but possibly Fyodr Stravinsky, the singer-father of Igor];
after which a chemist named Borodin played pungent excerpts from an uncompleted opera (‘He’s been at it for fifteen years,’ whispered my young companion. ‘Keeps interrupting it to work on symphonies. A chaotic man, disorganised. Bastard son of a prince.’) Next, Rimsky-Korsakov himself played a lyrical piece I found charming, but which my self-appointed commentator deprecated as ‘conventional, unadventurous’.