The Conductor (31 page)
‘You’re so beautiful tonight!’ he murmured. ‘And I’m a blind fool.’ He pulled her hair out of its braid so it fell in a smooth black rush. ‘Why do you still love me?’ He led her to the divan then, and slipped her nightgown off over her head. She remained silent, but pulled him to her so closely it felt they would never separate again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, under his breath. ‘I’m sorry for my absences.’
When, much later, he woke in the still-dark morning, under a rough grey blanket, Nina had already gone — but his depression had disappeared, too, so he could fall back into a deep and peaceful sleep.
N
ow, he was at his desk again, the lust and the loving of the previous night almost forgotten, his stomach as empty as his head. At lunch, Nina had suggested that he rest for a day or two, but he’d shaken his head. ‘I must get on.’ He’d pushed away a lukewarm cup of borscht, made with no meat, very little beet and large amounts of cabbage water. ‘Who knows what will happen in the near future?’
For most of the afternoon he’d sat in his study but not written a note. Two trips to the bomb shelter within five hours — and he realised, with dismay, that the interruptions hadn’t been entirely unwelcome. He had no idea how to continue. How could he follow such unearthly, funereal music with anything at all, let alone a fourth movement that might inspire the starving Leningraders and satisfy the clamouring Party officials?
‘What the hell do they expect from me?’ He jabbed his pencil into the desk. ‘What do they want — and, more to the point, what do I want?’ This, he knew, was the whole problem. He’d made the fatal mistake of inviting in an audience before the work was completed. Had become conscious of the way other people might hear it, and now craved further applause — that rapturous applause offered to him on his birthday, as his friends praised his magnificent march and his lyrical scherzo. ‘The movements sing of Leningrad today and of Petrograd in the past!’ Izrail had had tears in his eyes. And Shostakovich had murmured ‘Yes’, though whether his assistant’s words were true was beyond knowing.
‘Between them, they have created a monster,’ he muttered — but the accusation was directed at himself. Now, when he needed encouragement once more, all he could hear was silence.
The longer he sat there staring at his work, the more unbearable it became. He could think of only one person who might help. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll call him.’ He sprang up and went to the door.
Nina was sitting at the table. She wasn’t reading one of her scientific papers, nor was she sewing or counting food coupons. She was simply sitting and staring at the table top, looking as if she, too, were carved from wood.
He sat down at the other end of the table, waiting respectfully, picking
at his thumbnail. Finally he spoke with attempted brightness. ‘What are you thinking about, sitting here all alone?’
‘If you must know, I’m scared.’ When she looked up, her face was so bleak that his heart lurched.
‘But I’ll take care of you. You know that. I’ll take care of you all.’
‘The children are getting so thin. And everyone says rations are going to be cut again. Soon it will be winter — and what will we do for heating?’
‘Nina, it was my decision to stay. So it’s my responsibility to solve our problems.’
She gave a half-smile. ‘You don’t understand. They’re not our problems any more, but the problems of the entire city. We’ve been so lucky until now. Privileged, most of the time, with the dacha, the car, the extra food. Don’t you see that even your position won’t save us now? Leningrad is running out of food and fuel. Already people are dying in the streets. Fame counts for nothing.’
His face began to burn. ‘I’ll call Party Headquarters tomorrow. I’ll see what can be done. I realise I’ve been focused on the symphony, but of course you and the children are more important. Please don’t worry any more!’
Nina said nothing, simply laid her hands on the table in a hopeless gesture. The only sounds were the distant knocking of anti-aircraft guns and the faint splutter of the candles.
After some time, Shostakovich cleared his throat. ‘Just one thing. I need to get hold of the conductor. Do you know if he has a working phone line?’
‘Who, Mravinsky?’ Nina looked puzzled. ‘Or do you mean Samuil Samosud?’
‘Neither. I’m talking of … oh, you know —’ He rapped the table with his knuckles. ‘That tall thin fellow with the Radio Orchestra, quiet man, big glasses, doesn’t speak much.’
‘Karl Eliasberg? Whatever do you need him for?’
Shostakovich picked wax off the candle and fed it back into the flame so the light flared and Nina’s shadow-profile leapt on the wall. ‘With Sollertinsky gone, there’s no one I trust to judge my work. The adagio, for instance — is it too funereal? And the way the symphony is developing overall. I can’t tell if there’s a shred of merit in it.’
‘Judging by the general reaction the other night, I think you can rest assured on that point.’
‘But that’s just it — it was a
general
reaction. A chorus of approval.
And you know what Meyerhold said about that.’
‘No,’ said Nina, ‘I have no idea what Meyerhold said.’
‘That if your work pleases everyone, you must consider it a total failure.’ He slumped in his chair. He could hear the playwright’s voice as clearly as if he were in the room, though it was three years since poor Meyerhold had disappeared, removed for failing to please the ‘Everyone’ who counted.
‘The people who liked your work were hardly ill-educated,’ said Nina. ‘They represent some of the finest musical minds in the city. Didn’t you see Nikolai’s reaction? Even in the midst of his grief, he was uplifted by what he heard.’
Shostakovich shook his head. ‘Nikolai’s an admirable musician. He’s greatly talented, both as a violinist and a teacher. But he expends too much energy on making other people feel good.’
‘Is that such a bad fault?’ asked Nina, slightly reprovingly.
But already his mind had returned to Elias’s visit earlier that month — was it only a few weeks ago? Already it felt like a lifetime. Such an odd tension surrounding the man, such a mix of reserve and resolve in his face. Even as Shostakovich had thundered through the march with his back to the room, he’d known how Elias would be sitting: muscles taut, nerves strained, critical faculties alert. What had happened after Shostakovich had finished playing? He couldn’t remember much of the ensuing discussion, he’d been so keyed up from performing as well as steeling himself for work on the next movement. Nonetheless, there was something about Elias that was implicitly trustworthy. Certainly, he was an oddity, and gauche in the extreme. (That note under the door! Even now, it made Shostakovich smile.) But he had an inner severity about him that Shostakovich identified with. If one didn’t like something, it was one’s duty to say so, whether or not it caused offence.
‘I need the conductor,’ he repeated. ‘He’s the listener I need.’
‘Who knows if he had a telephone before this chaos started?’ said Nina. ‘And even if we could find a number for him, and even if you were able to get a connection — well, it’s far too late for phone calls.’ She came to stand beside him, stroking his hair. ‘Why don’t you try to sleep? You can go to the Radio Hall tomorrow and find him.’
Shostakovich sprang up, away from courtesy and common sense. ‘No. I need him now. Not tomorrow.’
He went back to his workroom and paced about. No music in his head and no help at hand! It was intolerable. He dragged on a third-rate
cigarette, bitter makhorka tobacco sprinkled with nicotine and rolled in wafer-thin newspaper. How could he pass the dragging hours until morning?
‘Dmitri?’ It was Nina, knocking at the door. ‘You have a phone call.’
He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or annoyed. ‘Didn’t you tell them it’s far too late for calls?’ But he ground out the foul-tasting cigarette and went back out into the main room with sudden hope. ‘Is it Sollertinsky?’
Nina shook her head, with an expression that was half apprehensive and half something he couldn’t identify. He picked up the receiver warily. ‘This is Dmitri Shostakovich. With whom am I speaking?’
‘It’s Comrade Kalinnikova.’ The voice was tinny, sharp and unmistakably authoritative. ‘From the Leningrad Party Committee.’
Then he realised what he’d seen on Nina’s face had been hope, as well as nervousness at how he might react.
His conversation with Kalinnikova was brief and largely one-sided. He answered in short unemotional phrases, as he was expected to. ‘Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m willing.’ After a couple of minutes he asked, ‘And is there any chance of taking my mother or sister?’
When he hung up, he turned to look at Nina. It was a long quiet look, implying that she’d got her wish at last, and that he was immensely grateful for the sacrifice she’d made but nonetheless he thought it had been worth it.
Finally he cleared his throat and spoke. ‘You’d better get the children’s things together immediately. We are to leave by plane tomorrow morning, for Moscow.’
Winter 1941– Summer 1942
L
ooking back, Elias thought of the winter as a long tunnel. Darkness so complete there was no rest from it. Cold so intense his bones felt frozen to their very centre. But worst of all was the hunger, for it reduced human beings to animals, fighting in the street for food, grovelling through piles of rubbish for scraps, and dying where they fell.
He could feel himself slipping. The civilised exterior he’d built up so painstakingly over twenty years was crumbling, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The process had begun that day in December, shortly after what had proved to be the final concert, when he’d closed the official orchestral logbook for the last time. Even writing had become an effort. With a hand so cold he couldn’t feel what he was doing, he picked up his pen; its weight felt enormous, dragging down onto the page. Clumsily, he managed a few lines in child-like letters. ‘Rehearsal cancelled from today. Nebolsin dead. Malko dead. Petrov too ill to walk. Orchestra can no longer work.’
And from the moment he’d closed the book, everything became a blur. As long as he’d been in front of the orchestra, it had seemed as if he could fight off starvation and fear. Keeping his musicians motivated, though one by one they were collapsing from malnutrition and disease, had driven him on. But at one point during the performance of the
1812
, he’d known they were in serious trouble. The faces in front of him were deathly pale and covered in welts; many had a greenish tinge. During bars of rest, the players put their heads between their knees, or laid down their instruments as if they were made of lead. Each time he raised
his arms to bring in a section, he feared there would be no response.
After the concert was over, no one said a word. The musicians barely looked at each other as they packed up, their heads bowed with exhaustion. The cloths in which they used to wrap their instruments were now used to bind hands and feet blistered from cold. They left silently: without farewells, without talk of a future. Only Nikolai raised a parting hand to Elias, giving him a weak but encouraging smile. There was no energy left for emotion.
Elias walked down the corridor very slowly, stopping several times to lean against the wall. His shoulders burned, and his teeth chattered from a deep-seated chill. That was it, he thought. After what the sharp-eyed assessors had just witnessed, an official order to abandon rehearsals was only a matter of time. But already he and his orchestra were done for. Tchaikovsky’s victory overture had been played by an orchestra of defeated men.
As he headed home through streets blackened with frost and fire, he felt his little remaining strength leaking away. By the time he got back to his apartment block, he’d lost everything he’d ever struggled for: position, status, respect. He was back where he’d started, and his vision blurred from the shame and tragedy of his loss. He sat in the icy stairwell for some time before he could make it up to his own front door.
‘Have you brought the bread?’ His mother’s voice seemed to be whispering down the years, an echo from a pre-Revolution St Petersburg, when he’d run errands in a world he’d known nothing about.
‘There’s no bread today, Mother,’ he answered like a dutiful boy.
In the long winter weeks that followed, he crawled through the days half-blinded by grief and rage. The frozen city splintered under the German shells, and bodies piled up at the sides of Nevsky Prospect. Stick-thin women stumbled to the Neva and drew water through holes drilled in the ice. Because Elias’s vision was failing, he tried to make sense of the disintegrating world by listening to it. What sounds did he hear? The grating of sled-runners loaded with corpses. Huge explosions as mass burial pits were created with dynamite. The howls of stray dogs and cats, slaughtered by Leningraders desperate for meat.
Most of all, he remembered the sound of his mother’s breath, rasping through the icy apartment. He would pause at the door, exhausted from the long haul of the stairs, and listen for her breathing, terrified that while he’d been gone her heart would have stopped. But then he heard it, hoarse, irregular, sawing the darkness in two. And her voice also
reached him, creeping out from the heap of moth-eaten wool on her bed. ‘Karl Elias? Is that you?’
Sometimes, if he had any energy left, he’d make a joke. No, he would say, it was the delivery man, bringing cod-liver pâté and lingonberry sauce. The first time he’d said this, his mother laughed — the first laugh he’d heard for a long time. But as her flesh melted off her bones and her mind grew cloudier, she stopped hearing what he said. She simply asked, over and over, for food. In fact, there was nothing but soup, usually made from grey cabbage and water boiled on the tiny oil-fuelled stove. The stench from the hard leaves was unbearable; it seeped into the walls and bedding, and when Elias lay down in his clothes to sleep, he smelt it in his hair, and it made him retch.
‘This tastes odd,’ his mother would croak. ‘Did you make it the way I taught you?’
