Europe Central (124 page)

No, there’d been a misprint in his itinerary. (They saw him shaking.) He wouldn’t be staying in Dresden after all. They’d arranged accommodations for him in the spa town of Goerlitz, which lies in the mountains forty kilometers away. (He was almost ready, his glands secreting music as weird as the steel spiderwebs of the wrecked Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant.) Comrade Shostakovich (Schostakowitsch was how they said it) ought to remember that he belonged to the people; he must take better care of himself. His visit to the Maxim Gorki Home would be postponed. They knew that he was tired; they wished to create the optimum conditions for his work, which . . .

Thank you, dear friends, thank you, he replied uncertainly. I know I’ll have a, so to speak, splendid time—

Above all, he wasn’t to worry, they said. They understood that nervous tension had been besieging his health. He’d be given everything he needed. They valued him; they’d made him a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic, effective as of today. Thank you for that, my
dear, dear,
so to speak, friends. And congratulations on your wonderful Maxim Gorki Home. They’d already arranged a tour of the monuments in Dresden, not to mention the wide
Plätze
and stone lions, the fountains, dead now, the other many-arched old bridges of Dresden (the “Blaues Wunder,” too); and he could interview as many of the Americans’ victims as he liked. Even former
-officers were cooperating with us now, such was their craving for revenge. He’d doubtless find it rewarding to set their stories to music; it was merely a question of time and effort—

But whatever is the matter, Comrade Schostakowitsch?

Well, I, this ringing in my ears, it’s always an annoyance now. I’m not expecting to, to, you know, score any great
victories
on the cultural front! It’s just as you say, a, a matter of time and manpower. But I, by the way, isn’t the dacha of the former German Fascist Field-Marshal Paulus hereabouts? He must have been extremely . . . Yes, yes, I know he just died, three years ago now if I’m not mistaken; I must have read about it in
Pravda
. . .

His interpreter, who was waiting for him in front of an ocher palace, proved to be a darkhaired German beauty, narrow-faced as the Germans often are, who had once been a piano student. Something about the hollow between her shoulderblades reminded him of Elena Konstantinovskaya, I mean Vigodsky, not that he could really, you know. With a modest laugh, she confessed that her teachers had found her devoid of talent. Her brother had fallen on the Ostfront, during Operation Citadel. Her ex-fiancé was in a Soviet prison camp so far as she knew. She’d wisely married someone else. Her mother, father, brothers and sisters had all died shortly before midnight on 13 February 1945. She was there when the Hitler Youth dug away the rubble from their air raid shelter. There was hardly a mark on them, but their skins had been cooked to a golden brown color.

Shostakovich’s pale, tired face began to twitch. As gently as he could, he laid his hand upon the girl’s shoulder.

There were dead people in all the streets, she went on brightly, but I’d imagine that you saw dead people, too, on your side . . .

Yes, yes, yes, yes, my dear, oh yes, but we might as well spare ourselves the pain of this subject, because, you see—

Excuse me, Herr Schostakowitsch—

Oh, call me Dmitri Dmitriyevich, please.

Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch, I’m sorry, but I just wanted to say that when they took all the corpses to the marketplace and cremated them—

Well, that was the best way perhaps. Well, well, well, well. In Leningrad they dug mass graves once the earth had thawed. But, my dear girl—

And now sometimes I wish I could go crazy. At night I hear the sound of the planes coming. The bombers, I mean.

Well, well, well, well. Never mind. Perhaps we need a bite of something. And have you tasted Russian vodka? No, I see you need to talk about it. Well, can you describe this sound that you hear? Do you possess absolute pitch? A surprising number of people do, you know. And perhaps if you . . .

I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a low, vibrating chord in E-flat major.

Why, that’s the opening of Wagner’s
Ring
, isn’t it? “Das Rheingold” begins that way. But I’m not sure that a B-17 wouldn’t sing in a higher register, because . . .

I’m very sorry, Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch, but I don’t have perfect pitch, and as I said I’m almost talentless.

Never believe that, my dear young, shall I say colleague? We musicians always tend to underrate ourselves! But the actual pitch doesn’t matter. The distinguishing feature of Jewish music is the ability to construct a jolly melody on a foundation of sad intonations. And perhaps you Germans do the opposite, which would be, so to speak,
natural
for you, since you don’t like Jews, I’ve heard. Forgive me . . . A major chord, then, shall we call it a major chord? After all, major chords are supposed to be happy. At least that’s what my, my, the commissars are always telling me.

He was supposed to be writing the score for the film “Five Days—Five Nights.” Instead, he began to compose Opus 110.

35

Of this work he remarked to Glikman: I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet which nobody needs. I reflected that if I die someday, it’s hardly likely anyone will compose a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could even write on the cover:
Dedicated to the composer of this quartet.

Officially, of course, he dedicated Opus 110 “to the victims of war and fascism.” Why not? Whatever he did made no difference. He, of course, was nobody’s victim, because he’d agreed to, you know.

According to the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
our planet’s most pronounced topographical features comprise an approximate mirror image of the crust’s underside. The steppes of the Ukraine thus roof the cratonic platform which replicates them, while the Ural Mountains not only project into the sky, but in equal measure stab down like gunbarrels trained upon the magma on which our continents uneasily slither. To me, the thought that this world is doubled within its own red, liquid hell is a profoundly unnerving one. Chaos seethes beneath my feet. The chaos feels stifled; it wants to breathe. But chaos is by its very nature formalist deviation. I still believe in myself, but only in my own ugliness. Damp it down, comrades! Even in the depths of Soviet coal mines we now insist on the flameless explosion of a Hydrox cartridge, for that reduces danger. Our foreman gives the signal. A muffled crash stifles the stifling darkness, unrelieved by any light. On the official side, a certain D. D. Shostakovich excretes new program music for the masses. And on the mirror-side, where all’s presumably flameless (otherwise we’d glimpse red writhings when we gazed down into those bottomless black slits of the piano keys), a counterpart D. D. Shostakovich composes Opus 110.

Roundfaced, staring straight at the piano like an old coachman out of nineteenth-century Saint Petersburg, he watched the sad and angry music ooze out of his fingers. His spectacle-frames had lightened to translucency over the years. Now he was not so much a stern man as a gaping, goggling old fish. His enemies laughed that he’d come to resemble Lenin’s widow Krupskaya, who’d been likewise known for ineffectuality and a bulging gaze. (Ineffectuality! Isn’t that all that music is? Lebedinsky had told him about that petty Nazi, K. Gerstein, who’d joined the
in order to reveal its secrets and halt its crimes; the tribunal condemned him for not getting results.)—Operation Reinhard, that’s written in now; Operation Blau will be present in the second movement. Can we refer to T-4 in the overture? But it’s all got to be
airless.
Akhmatova insists, correctly in my opinion, that whoever doesn’t make continual reference to the torture chambers all around us is a criminal. Under the earth, and then they shoot them! Nina and I used to hear the executions every night. Now Nina’s also under the earth, which must be very . . . And then Elena, no. I couldn’t expect Nina’s sympathy at that time. What’s that sound? What a nasty little
allegro,
like a . . . My Rat Theme at least had humor for those who cared to be amused. And I was going to . . . When the Nine Hundred Days began and Maxim was weeping in the night from hunger, I promised I’d write him into the Seventh. And I did; I wrote that for
him.
Now’s my final chance to make sure I didn’t waste any of his tears, because . . . It was in A-flat minor, I’ll never forget that. And my mother said . . . What about Rodchenko? He was an influence, at least a youthful influence. Now that I’m . . . Rodchenko’s hollow wooden squares within squares, each figure twisted into a different plane from its neighbor, why, those must be prison cells! More abstract sculpture for my, for my so-called “opus.”—Oh, me, oh, dear, I almost forgot Operation Magic Fire! Because that’s where Elena met the gallant knight Roman Lazarevich. (Dmitri Dmitriyevich, the knight had condescended to advise, in my opinion the point is to
use
those screams to keep our antifascist hatred in condition, to reject those awful things in the name of peace. It’s not good to dwell on the dark side.) And Spain, of course. Where she and Roman Lazarevich . . . We prefer our personal tragedies, because we’re all cowards and bastards.

His friends assumed that he was drinking too much. As long as he stayed in East Germany he kept tossing back schnapps, with and without his interpreter. (She smiled at him once, and he remembered the childlike grin of a young woman sniper he’d seen somewhere, maybe in Kuibyshev. Then she stopped smiling. She lowered her softly immaculate face.) Sometimes he drank until he fell asleep. When he awoke, he reached for the tumbler, muttering into the mirror: Generally speaking, I, I’m a degenerate.

It was a cool, humid German summer. He wanted to sit on the grassy bank of the Elbe just to watch the steamboats and to, so to speak, catch his breath, but there wasn’t time because they showed him atrocity films all day. Case White couldn’t be omitted, but he didn’t yet know how to, well, maybe in
largo
form, and if he could squeeze bitterness out of a few more grace notes . . . Then they escorted him back to his hotel. The darkhaired interpreter was ill today. He didn’t know whether or not to refer to Operation Citadel. Since her brother had fallen at Kursk, why not? She was a pretty woman, although not quite plump enough for his taste. Let’s see, what was I doing during Operation Citadel? I remember seeing Roman Lazarevich’s newsreel about it, seventeen years ago it’s already been now, in that Kino Palace where Elena and I used to, to, what had it been called? “The Battle of Orel.” No, it couldn’t have been that Kino Palace, because . . . A Tiger tank snarls through the mud and down into a river; the water sizzles around the treads; it swims like a stately crocodile, grips the mud of the far bank, up-raises its gun, and grinds on, with German Fascists standing calmly astride like whale-riders; then Roman Lazarevich, who no doubt was wearing that oil-stained fur-lined jacket of his, pans to show the crew of one of our hundred-and-twenty-twos: Ready, aim, fire! I don’t mind admitting he was brave. In fact, I’d rather be him. So what? The bastard, you know, although it was actually I who . . . The Tiger tank explodes, accompanied by music which could have been written by a certain D. D. Shostakovich! How, so to speak,
heroic
! Pan to a wheat field with its hidden strongpoint of antitank guns; pan to mine traps; pan to Red Army generals with their leather greatcoats and binoculars. Later on we’ll blow up the evil FREYA network! Had she left him yet? All our planes flying over their tanks, it reminded me even then of a score, but more for orchestra than for a string quartet. So what? I’m going to make sure that Opus 110 contains
everything,
since it’s the last time I’ll still be, so to speak, me. From a strictly musical point of view, Citadel should be the merest interlude. (On likely nightmare axes he positioned his own thought-traps.)
Allegro
would be too easy. That would resemble letting those ass-lickers in raspberry-colored boots tell me to make everything
happy
and in a major key! There are times when doing the right thing might destroy me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing. If Elena were here, or at least Nina . . .