Lying alone on that big empty bed with his hands ice-cold and his heart and throat so tight with the tension of waiting for the black telephone to ring or not ring ever again anymore, he eventually realized that it would not ring, because the darkhaired woman must have finished at the Conservatory hours ago, so he dialed the number without worrying about anybody in raspberry-colored boots, not to mention that other man, Vigodsky; when the other man answered he hung up; an hour later he called again, this time succeeding in hearing her sleep-husky voice, a voice ritenuto, to which he choked out: I want so much to have you on top of me here on this bed, Elena; I need you on top of me, kissing and kissing and kissing me…
Then he turned out the light and lay there beginning to taste blood inside his throat. He switched on the radio, just to, you know. It was Klavdia Sulzhenko singing “The Blue Kerchief”: The machine-gunner fights for the blue kerchief those dear shoulders wore. He silenced her, not that she didn’t have a certain something; it was just that he, anyhow, our life is such a comedy. The next morning he put on a highcollared shirt because his neck was bruised by the kind woman’s fingers, which had been almost as white and perfect as the darkhaired woman’s teeth.
Last October, when they’d met around the corner from the Eliseyev department store three hours before the premiere of his Eleventh Symphony, it had been snowing and they were both late. She had adjusted his necktie just like a wife. He requested her to please leave him gently if she ever left him, to which she replied that they no longer were and never would be together anyway.—Oh, you’re a wise one! he laughed. Give me another English lesson!—Then, overcoming his agony, he insisted, mezzo piano, that of course they were together. He knew what he knew; didn’t she know it, too? Hadn’t she herself admitted that she sometimes kept silent instead of saying whatever it was that she might be feeling? Whenever he came to Leningrad, which was often nowadays, there always being something new to rehearse, she saw him either every day or else almost every day, and when she sat across from him at the hard currency bar she nearly always smiled so tenderly! How could she deny that? Therefore, he explained to her, she probably still loved him, at least to a degree, which was precisely why he had telephoned her so late that night to tell her how much he longed for her to be with him now in this hotel room, lying on top of him, kissing him, kissing him, to which on the next day, after Rostropovich had driven him to Komarovo, she had replied by telephoning him there (he’d given her his itineraries, hotels, residences and numbers, especially his sister Mariya’s) to declare in her soft firm voice that she didn’t want him to whisper any more messages like that into her ear ever again because they were too sad.
The pain which this caused him was nearly beyond expression, but only nearly; musically there’s always a way to, how should I say. He could never “have” her in his intended sense of having her lie down on top of him in an empty room and hold him tight, not even for one hour, let alone for ever and ever. Even at the Philharmonic he didn’t dare to, if you see what I’m saying, take any chances which might, so to speak, make him noticed. He’d sent her a pair of tickets for the premiere last October. It was nice of them to come; Vigodsky bestowed upon him that strangely French smile of his. If only she could have, well, but he himself had to sit next to Margarita, who’d really tarted herself up, the little… Sometimes he hardly knew why he… Akhmatova could inevitably be spotted in the audience, usually in the company of her friend Z. B. Tomashevskaya. Was her son still away? Poor lady; poor lady! She was extremely, well, you know. He steered clear of both those ladies, fearing that Akhmatova in particular might have learned too many of his secrets. There in the fourth row sat the darkhaired one; she smiled at her husband, impersonally he hoped, then, unfortunately, laid down her head on his shoulder. Why couldn’t she at least…? Once upon a time, on a linden alley at Tsarkoe Selo, they’d been kissing on a bench and then she’d rested her head on his shoulder and her hair, oh, my God, her long, dark hair. And now she was doing it with Vigodsky, which he found extremely… When he sat alone at these Leningrad rehearsals he always wished that she were beside him, but of course that would have been especially, so to speak, demonstrative. Perhaps if Glikman could act as go-between once again she might at least sort of, I mean, but even that would be impossible; one aspect of her he especially admired was how quietly and immovably she could say no. Nina had also been like that. On the other hand, in every other sense he did have Elena; he could love her; he could think about her; better yet, just as the gentle arch of the Blue Bridge offers us the way to Saint Isaac’s domes, so Opus 40 helps us over the cold dark waters of reality to the place where Elena is; Lyalka she liked me to call her, when we still… Elena, help me! Elena, I can’t bear this! But you’re the one person who must never comfort me for the same reason that you’re the only one who could. Isn’t that curious? I have represented this dilemma many times with ostinato. Tonight I’ll…