The Conductor (34 page)

He rubbed his hand over his face. Slowly the glare through the window receded, and he saw fifty or more musicians staring up at him, their faces devoid of expression. And now a hollow-cheeked man in military uniform was getting to his feet, holding his trombone over his shoulder like a rifle. Was he saying something? There was such a ringing in Elias’s ears he could hear nothing at all.

Suddenly, out of the roaring static, emerged a familiar voice.
How can I ever repay you?
For a second Elias saw him as clearly as if he were in the room — Shostakovich, his eyes shining behind his glasses, his hands clutching a sheaf of paper on which the rest of the Seventh Symphony would be written. Relief ran through Elias’s veins and into his fingers, feeling almost like warmth. He had a job to do.

‘I’m sorry if I seem vague.’ He spoke not just to the standing trombonist but to the entire room. ‘I’ve been having trouble with my hearing lately, along with my circulation, digestion, nervous system and general mental well-being — as, perhaps, have most of you.’ As an icebreaker it wasn’t much, but the watching faces relaxed a little, and mouths lifted into what, in better days, would have been smiles.

‘I was asking, sir,’ said the trombonist, with the formality he might use when addressing a senior military officer, ‘where you’d like us to start?’

Elias’s hands tightened around the score. It was thick as a bull’s
neck, it looked impossible to penetrate. But just as panic threatened to overwhelm him, Shostakovich spoke again.
This is how I see war!
Only now did Elias hear the doubt beneath the composer’s defiance and, strangely, it steadied him.

‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said, letting out his breath. ‘What better place to start?’ He signalled for an A, but although the oboist (another unknown military man) pursed his lips and blew, there was no sound. Swaying in his chair, blowing again, at last he produced a note, as thin as a birdcall from the depths of a forest.

So
this is my allotted weapon!
Elias watched the makeshift orchestra tuning up. There was old Petrov, who had somehow recovered and survived the winter, though he was nothing but skin and bone. And Nikolai, lifting his bow as if it were made of concrete — but so many musicians gone! Their replacements, still unknown to Elias, handled their instruments with the jerky mechanical movements of wind-up toys. Within three months, with this roomful of skeletons, he had to produce an inspired rendition of the largest ever Shostakovich symphony! If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it.

Tuning up, warming up: the processes that had once seemed interminable were over in less than a minute. Then the room was quiet once more, while far away the restless mutter of gunfire continued, as familiar and constant as hunger.

Elias raised his arms. Pain flared in his back, and his shoulders trembled. ‘Friends,’ he said, although he knew fewer than a quarter of them. ‘Friends, I know that you’re weak, and you’re starving. But we must force ourselves to work. Let’s begin.’

He brought down his baton. The musicians stirred, seeming ready to play — but nothing happened. It was as if, moving as one body, they were paralysed from nerves, fear, or extreme fatigue. This was as bad as Elias’s very first rehearsals, when he’d been so green and nervous the orchestra resisted his every move. There was no derisive laughter now, just an unnerving silence. Exhaustion seemed to be spreading through the room.

‘Comrades!’ He thought back to the way Shostakovich’s hands had pounded at the piano keys, hammering out the opening to a work he wasn’t yet certain about. ‘Comrades! I command you to raise your instruments. It’s your duty.’

The musicians sat upright; their eyes flickered towards him. He raised his arms again. Over the sea of heads, he caught sight of Nikolai,
gripping his violin with his bony left hand. His eyes were fixed on Elias with the intensity of someone about to go over the top into battle.

Elias looked away before sentiment could weaken him. ‘Let’s begin.’ He brought down his arms.

He’d heard the first chords of the symphony so many times, playing them out in his imagination as he lay in bed, clutching his coat around him. The reality was completely different. A few straggling chords, the inadequate rattle of a snare drum, a tiny tapping of bows on strings. It was the smell of food without taste, or the promise of sustenance without delivery. He was grasping at thin air.

He rapped on his music stand, and the musicians straggled to a halt. Already the mouths of the woodwind and brass players were reddened, their scabby lips bleeding. Some of the faces raised to Elias had the white-green tinge of the dead. Then, as he watched, the lead flautist slid out of his chair and onto the floor.

‘What shall we do with him?’ The second flautist knelt beside the collapsed man, calling his name in a voice high with fear.

‘Take him outside. Lay him in the corridor. Cover him with a coat.’ Was the flautist alive or dead? He had no idea, no energy to find out.

It took three percussionists to drag the man out. The disruption seemed to go on forever; the rest of the orchestra simply sat where they were, many of them with their eyes closed. They were bundled in threadbare scarves and overcoats, and wore woollen gloves with the fingers cut off, but most were shivering. Elias stared fixedly at the page in front of him. The black notes looked like heavy chunks of granite.

It was time to start again. He took a deep breath. ‘This isn’t good enough. You’re making a mockery of our great composer. The music must be barbaric, it must be brilliant. Remember, you’re fighting off the enemy!’

But the musicians before him were neither barbaric nor brilliant; they were close to collapse, incapable of fighting off a horde of mosquitoes, let alone brutal invaders. The symphony crawled instead of marching.

In the bars before the trumpet solo, he closed his eyes and heard the blaring, defiant notes of the symphony’s premiere. Muted by distance, squeezed flat by the radio waves, but magnified a thousand times by the knowledge that, in far-off Kuibyshev, Shostakovich was listening to the performance. Raising himself on his toes, Elias brought in the trumpet with a downward sweep of his arm — and opened his eyes to see the trumpet player sitting with his head bowed and his instrument lying on his knees. The insubstantial strings frayed away into silence.

‘Why the hell aren’t you playing?’ Elias almost shouted from a sense of grievance and loss.

The trumpeter spoke without raising his head. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He spoke in a muffled voice but his exhaustion and despair were clear enough. ‘I can’t play the solo. I don’t have the breath.’

‘If you have the breath to speak, you have the breath to play.’ Yet Elias, too, was a little out of breath. The air seemed too cold to inhale, and once drawn into the lungs was hard to expel. ‘You must try. Shostakovich doesn’t write music to be performed by men who give up.’

Obediently the trumpeter raised his instrument and began. The desperate look in his eyes made Elias feel wretched — but when, after only a few bars, the man fell back in his chair, he felt even worse.
This is what you’re here for
, he told himself.
You’re not here to save individuals, but to save the city!
Even though he was trying to encourage himself, it sounded dismally like Party propaganda.

He lowered his baton. ‘You’re all dismissed. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.’ The rehearsal had taken half an hour to get under-way, and it had lasted less than fifteen minutes. ‘Don’t be late,’ he added.

D
ay after day, the orchestra returned to the chilly, dusty room. ‘From now on,’ announced Elias, ‘rehearsals will run for three hours, beginning at ten and finishing at one.’

‘Three hours! That’s impossible,’ objected Katerina Ginka. Her cheeks were hollow, and all traces of ruddiness had drained from her face, but still she had the strength to argue. ‘We can’t play for even three minutes without fainting — or dying.’

Elias flushed. The flautist who’d collapsed had been taken to a military hospital and no one knew if he’d survive.
It wasn’t my fault
, he protested silently.
The man was skin and bone, he had pleurisy, he’d been giving all his food rations to his wife
. Yet the sharp bite of guilt made him snap at Katerina. ‘There’s one word I won’t tolerate.
Can’t
is no longer a part of the Radio Orchestra vocabulary.’

He waited, expecting protests. Would any of the original members dispute the fact that a mismatched bunch of amateurs was now the Radio Orchestra? But no one said a word; even Katerina looked defeated. ‘And if anyone is late,’ he continued, ‘whatever the reason, they’ll lose their bread ration for the day.’

There was a muted gasp. Petrov’s eyes watered, Katerina opened her mouth and then closed it again.

‘Now, from the top,’ ordered Elias. Even this brief exchange had left him exhausted; raising his baton felt like a monumental effort.

It wasn’t until he heard the first sawing of the strings that it hit him. Under the music he heard the rasping of breath, deep and harsh, the very same sound he’d heard that morning as he’d tried spooning cabbage water into his mother’s mouth. The musicians ploughed on, while he lowered his arms and stared at the score with unseeing eyes. He’d only just realised the truth. His mother was dying.

The missing

J
udging from the infrequent letters that made it over enemy lines, past the censors and into Nikolai’s hands, Shostakovich was safe but not happy. He’d been given a larger apartment, four rooms and a bathroom, thanks to an unusually helpful Comrade Zemlyachka, yet still he felt claustrophobic. His extended family had been evacuated from Leningrad at last, but he’d discovered that they were incapable of discussing anything but food rations. What’s more, Kuibyshev was hellishly provincial: there was no one with whom he could talk about work. ‘I’m surrounded by babies, the bourgeoisie and ballet dancers,’ he wrote. ‘And the dancers aren’t even pretty.’ As Nikolai looked at the fretful inky scrawl, he could imagine Shostakovich clearly: frowning, shoving his pencil behind his ear, while around him assorted womenfolk (mother, sister, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, niece, daughter, wife) chattered about bread, butter, potatoes, confectionery and coffee.

Although Nikolai longed to see him again, he was glad that Shostakovich had avoided the grim slide into winter and its gruesome consequences. Leningrad was no longer the city its exiled citizens had known. It had been ground down to muddy foundations, and the return of light and warmth had done little to restore it.

Shostakovich hadn’t forgotten Nikolai’s own personal burden. ‘We’re praying for good news,’ he wrote at the end of every letter. ‘Don’t give up hope.’ But sustaining hope was becoming increasingly difficult. Every day that passed was another step away from Sonya, and the enormity of losing her became more real. The only relief lay in work. After rehearsal
each day, Nikolai stayed behind to help Elias copy out scores for all the musicians who had to return immediately to their military posts. It was a dull, monotonous task but, for as long as it lasted, it deadened the pain in his heart.

Elias had become more than usually silent. His fingers were callused from hours of holding a pen; his eyes were a mess of red spidery lines. Something seemed to be worrying him — but perhaps it was simply the pressure of having to conduct a symphony whose reputation had already grown to massive proportions.

‘Premiered in Kuibyshev, clamoured for in America, broadcast all over the world. Such a tremendous success already!’ But Elias sounded more anxious than pleased.

‘Nominated for a Stalin Prize, what’s more!’ pointed out Nikolai, trying to bolster Elias’s confidence. ‘You can imagine how pleased Shostakovich is about that.’

‘Yes, that’s an accolade he might choose to do without. But have you any idea how he feels about … about the work itself?’ There was something diffident and indirect about the way Elias spoke, like a cat sidling up to a wall.

‘Actually, from what I’ve gathered, he’s not altogether pleased.’

Elias put down his pen. ‘In what way?’

‘He can’t say much in his letters, of course, for fear of interception. But it seems he’s dissatisfied with the fourth movement — he says it suffered from being written in a different place. And it wasn’t helped by having to break for two months while they were evacuated and then relocated from Moscow to Kuibyshev.’

‘I suppose parts of it are more efficient than inspired,’ Elias admitted. ‘But symphonic finales are notoriously difficult, particularly with a first movement of such power and enormity.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Not that it matters — the quality or otherwise of the finale, I mean. I doubt we’ll make it that far.’ A look of despair swept over his face.

‘We’ll get there!’ said Nikolai, trying to sound confident. But it was impossible to deny that the orchestra was struggling. ‘Perhaps we should try again to find a pianist? It would help no end in supporting the weaker sections.’

‘Coincidentally,’ said a voice from behind him, ‘that’s exactly what I’ve come about.’ A woman stood in the doorway, her slight frame swamped in an overcoat, her hair pulled back under a shabby hat. But there was something familiar about her posture, and the tilt of her head,
that made Nikolai catch his breath.

‘Nina Bronnikova? Is it really you?’ He pushed his chair back, forgetting that his back ached and that the day’s bread ration had been made from mouldy flour and cottonseed. He’d heard that she’d survived the winter, but the sight of her filled him with relief. It was impossible to hide how glad he was; he grasped her thin hands, and kissed her several times on both cheeks.

‘Welcome!’ Elias hovered behind him like an uncertain host. ‘Welcome, indeed.’ For a moment it looked as if he might follow Nikolai’s example but, instead, he shook Nina’s hand and pulled out a rickety chair. ‘Please, have a seat. How are you?’

‘Well, I can’t dance any more, even if there were a company here to dance with.’ She limped forward. ‘But at least I’m alive.’