I must have been in love with, I mean, an illusion, he thought, which sounded so trite that he wondered in which bad novel he’d read it. But it was true. And he still was. He loved her to the point of agony. And it was worse than hopeless; he could never…
Remember, said Glikman, trying to console him, it wasn’t as if she left you. Be logical, Dmitri Dmitriyevich! Why feel abandoned? She offered to marry you, but you went back to Nina. Doesn’t that make it better? Elena never left you.
Grinning malignantly at his dear friend, Shostakovich replied: That makes it worse, you, you, you sonofabitch—no, forgive me, Isaak Davidovich, I… My word, what a rude thing I’ve just said! Put it out of your mind, I beg you; it was just a… You see, I prefer to think she left me, because in that case I had no choice. I didn’t have a, a choice which I—
The telephone rang. It was not Elena Konstantinovskaya.
Our so-called “Allies” had finally launched Operation Overlord against the Fascists; they’d established a beachhead on the French coast, in the locale of Normandy. Can you believe it? We bled ourselves almost to death at Stalingrad, while they, you know. It’s like a parody. Their casualty statistics must be exaggerated; I don’t believe that France could be all that dangerous. Of course we all try hard; we all do what we can. Who am I to, to, say that Americans shouldn’t play second violin? Nina says I don’t know anything. He was trying to read about this development in Pravda, but Maxim, who hadn’t yet left behind that boyhood age of mischief and tricks, kept teasing him by dragging a toothbrush across the wires of the second-best piano; that sound made him melancholy but he didn’t know why. Lebedinsky, who’d been raised strictly, was appalled that he didn’t beat the child, but he just couldn’t.—He’s performing the classics! cried Shostakovich with a hideous attempt at a smile; he was afraid that Lebedinsky looked down on him for his leniency. Truth to tell, when he heard that ghostly, almost erotic sound, which resembled a woman’s moan, it, so to speak, gave him ideas; he wouldn’t mind weaving that chord into his Ninth Symphony, which was almost completed, or perhaps into the Tenth. (Actually, it materialized in the terrifying Fourteenth.)
The telephone failed to ring. Lebedinsky watched him stare at it. Misconstruing vigilance for hatred, Lebedinsky, whose brother-in-law had been taken away after a telephone call summoning him to an important meeting, said: Oh, yes, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, what a pleasure! To wait on the pleasure of that thing, so that—
I know, I know, interrupted the host in alarm. Lebedinsky grew embarrassed, discomfited. A quarter-hour later he’d taken his leave. Shostakovich sat alone, drinking vodka and staring at the telephone.
Galya was at the kitchen table doing her homework. The assignment: Write an essay on the subject “Immortal Heroes of the Great Patriotic War.” Her chosen immortal hero was liaison officer Putilov, who had been stationed at Stalingrad. The tale goes that under heavy enemy fire he crawled out to repair a communication line. The Fascists machine-gunned him. Clenching the two broken strands of wire in his teeth, he completed the circuit and died. Communications were restored.
Papa, do you think it happened just like that?
I think it’s quite interesting, Galisha, and, you know, quite, quite educational. Could it actually have happened? I mean, whether or not the electrons… Ask your mama; she’s a physicist. You’re lucky she… By the way, your hair looks extremely, you know, pretty pulled back like that. How I love you, dear child! Is that a new style? And that red ribbon is very… But it’s not fastened properly. Oh, me! Come here, please, you pretty child, and I’ll…
The days went by. The telephone never rang.
There was a scene from a certain Roman Karmen newsreeclass="underline" A dead street-lamp bulb hangs like a translucent olive from its metal stem; unshoveled snow reaches almost all the way up to heaven. Which one was that? Maybe “The Men of the Sedov.” Curious how that snow made him feel! Because snow, you see, signifies waiting—not that I believe in program music. If only the telephone would, you know, ring! Well, well, and now our busy little German Fascists were launching V-weapons against England. Sometimes he had to laugh—
That night he dreamed about a monstrous idol whose face was a black telephone, then woke up gasping. It was not much after four. Hours to go before dawn, but not enough hours to give him any hope of falling asleep again. Tomorrow he was going to be worthless. Fortunately, the dance music they’d demanded wasn’t complicated; he could score it awake, asleep, or in between. Send me out, and I’ll take the wires in my teeth; who cares what happens after that, as long as their signal goes through? This is my life; this is my life. It’s a very, how should I say, typical situation. And the longer Galya believes it’s wonderful, the better for her.
He was composing his Second String Quartet when the telephone rang. It shrieked with the same brassy shrillness that it had had when it rang last year to announce that Comrade Stalin had rejected the national anthem he’d composed with A. Khatchaturian. This time it was merely the storeman of the NKVD Ensemble, informing him that if he brought a can around it would be filled with jam; Nina had been begging for that, less for Maxim’s sake than for Galya’s. The girl seemed to have stopped growing, although she no longer complained of hunger. He understood that this condition was now prevalent, unfortunately. And Nina had told him (somewhat sharply, in fact) that the least he could do was beg a few grams of something for his children, given all the favors he did for strangers. She refused to believe that he loved Galya as much as Maxim. In fact, every time he laid eyes on that girl he remembered holding her when she was a baby; he remembered the first time she’d said his name; he’d gladly chop himself into pieces if that would in any way, you know. He said to Nina: Maybe they ought to add a trumpet or two, so that—
What on earth are you talking about?
The telephone, you imbecile. So that we really can’t escape it. And then accent the—
I don’t have time for this, Nina said, as she always did. Well, he shouldn’t have called her an imbecile, but on the other hand he frequently felt that he could hardly—
The telephone rang. His heart exploded sickeningly. He lifted the receiver and heard nothing but an evil silence. This was what they sometimes did to make sure you were home, when they, you know. What he really wanted was to find a nice rabbit-fur coat for Galisha while he was still here, because… Very quietly he reinterred the receiver, took up his briefcase, which contained a toothbrush, clean underwear, and a few scraps of music paper, and then he went out to the landing by the elevator, waiting very quietly for an hour, so that the children would not have to see him being arrested.
The day after he’d persuaded the jury to award Rostropovich the first prize in the All-Union Competition, the telephone rang. It was, well, you know. This was the worst, even worse than being arrested. She wanted to know how he was. She was very gentle. He couldn’t speak with her, unfortunately; he actually could barely even, well, I’m sure you get the point. Some things are infinite. Fortunately, Nina and the children weren’t home. Elena would have known that; that was why she’d… He doubled over and burst into tears. ‣