A month after his eleventh birthday, revolution struck. The minds of the losers learned to duck down behind frozen eyes. In the fourth movement of his life, when the Hitlerites arrived, Leningrad would get indrawn still further, within the barrier of the Circle Railroad. Cigarette-smoking, helmeted Fascists would burn villages all around, kicking Russian corpses in disgust. German shells would scream proudly in, and people were more than willing to stand aside for them, but… Boom! An explosion of rapture set the minister’s house ablaze! Boom! The conductor’s baton came sizzling down…—Dmitri Dmitriyevich, you’ve really won a victory on the cultural front!—Thank you, thank you, the young composer whispered. He crossed his legs and uncrossed them. Uneasy grimaces flittered across his cheeks.
Even in the Conservatory, as I’ve implied, he’d excited jealousy. Certain other students (epoch-tuned, let’s call them) sought to strip him of the stipend which armored him against outright hunger. All the same, they didn’t win. His mother tried to fight them when they took away his borrowed piano, but he told her not to worry; he could hear each chord in his head as soon as he wrote it on paper. Beethoven hadn’t let deafness stop him, so Mitya himself could still, well, you know. Ever since his thirteenth birthday he’d consecrated himself in our Revolution’s unheated classrooms. His mother almost starved to feed him; older girl students in threes and fours protected him, fluttering their fingers around long white cigarettes. The worst taunts of his peers (which is to say, their comradely criticisms) hardly ruffled him. It’s easy enough to say that he “believed in himself,” but that means nothing; don’t we each seek our own interest, and dread being crossed? Or, as Mitya would put it, each one composes his own score, and then we all compare versions. Can’t I say that he believed in the power of music? The Civil War meant this to him: Sailors from our Baltic Fleet got serenaded by Beethoven’s Ninth, then sailed directly to the front to fight the Whites! He was there on the quay, aged fifteen; he thought that the orchestra handled its task reasonably well, although the chorus was, well, one must make allowances for hungry people. And the sailors, you see, they were more than interested, because some of them even, how can I begin to tell you? For example, he wouldn’t forget the grizzled pirate who’d clapped his hands like a child. Some of them were so happy that they cried. Their deputies said it was the first time that anyone had ever, you understand. And we had no bread to give them, not even that! All the same, they, they, how can I put this; they thanked us! Then they went off and, I think you can imagine. Many didn’t come back.—In short, Shostakovich scorned practicality. The whole Revolution did, or claimed to; but in this life we find people who, no matter how zestfully they imitate Raskolnikov by murdering the old pawnbroker, only pretend to be, as the Rascal convinced himself he was, one of the gods, the arbiters, the “extraordinary men”; their real motive for murder, as we know quite well, is greedy gain. Shostakovich would never be one of them. Nourished by the melodies he composed, he kept up his fighting strength, such as it was (to look at him, you’d think him far from formidable), his expectations guarded and comforted by the knowledge that should the pressure ever become more than he could bear, the world within the black keys would shelter him.—You’re just a masturbator, sneered one of his rivals. The way your music sounds, I’d bet anything you don’t come from the working class!—Mitya felt hurt by their malice, to be sure, especially since his grandfather had been a revolutionist in Siberia! Regardless, nobody broke through his defenses. Rapidly wiping his glasses, he faced the other boys down in calm awareness of his own worth.
It began to be said of him that he was an individualist. His allegiance to collective life was only a pretense. He could not overcome his addiction to the transgressive harmonies of the chromatic scale.
At about the time that we won the war, shot Kolchak and those scum, and established Soviet power forever, Shostakovich was playing piano for money at the Bright Reel cinema palace, his fingers rushing ahead of the so-called “action” in those silent movies whose mediocrity oppressed him into a fury; when the hero died he’d tinkle out some merrily banal improvisation; when the heroine got kissed he’d pound out a motif or two from Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,” meanwhile trying to stifle his tubercular cough. Oh, he had his fill of playing to order, thank you! It was all the same and it always would be the same, so he’d show them! Sometimes the patrons complained; more often they were so busy groping each other, or so, how should I say, ignorant, that they didn’t notice. At times they even complimented him. One legless ex-colonel who came to each film half a dozen times always shook a finger at him and said: With more feeling, my boy! Make us laugh; make us cry!—But I, yes, yes, yes! replied our high-pitched owl. Next time I’ll get it right! More feeling; let me just write that down, so that I can, um, you know.—Then he’d regurgitate the tale into the projectionist’s ear, laughing and coughing. Every afternoon on the way to work he said to himself: If I’m doing this five years from now, I deserve to be, if you see what I mean, scorned. The tiny bare bulb over the piano almost warmed his hands. Here came Lenin to the rescue! He’d played this part forty-two times. At this point he’d really better pay attention, because if you mock Lenin you might be in for it. All right, all right; now Lenin’s gone I can cut more capers; Dmitri and Elena are parting forever, so let’s play a wedding march! When the management finally let him go, after a whole month, it was a relief.
Before he was even twenty, his First Symphony premiered with the Leningrad Philharmonic. As might be imagined, a faction opposed the debut. Objections of immaturity and grotesquerie he met with his usual implacable courtesy.—A very original approach, said the conductor, N. Malko. From an instrumental point of view, it’s as compressed as chamber music. The Philharmonic would be honored to perform this, Mitya.—Our prodigy squirmed, staring rigidly down at the piano.—One small matter, however, Malko continued. Would you mind playing the finale for me again?… As I thought. You play very precisely, young man, with consideration for the notes. That’s good. But the tempo of the finale is impossibly rapid.—The boy smiled, rolling his owl-eyes.—So you agree to alter that much, at least, Mitya? You see, it’s rehearsal time, and…—Yes, comrade conductor, I promise to take your advice in my next symphony… .—Without difficulty, the musicians played the finale as written.
On the day of the premiere, Mitya did not show any nervousness whatsoever, aside from a tremor in his left leg. He went to the library and read about the sexual habits of insects. To his friend I. Sollertinsky, with that customary half-offensive mischievousness, he proposed orchestrating a “Dance of Shit.” At the Lion Bridge he flirted with a girl named Tatyana Glivenko. To be specific, he informed her that she was a pouting-faced lyre with crab-claws, and that he longed for her to pinch him while he tickled her strings—the correct approach, it would seem, for she kept him company all the way to Nevsky Prospect. After three kisses, he checked his watch. They kissed goodbye; then he permitted her to adjust his scarf for him and button his jacket all the way up to his throat. Then he had to run, and I do mean run, to the Great Hall of the Philharmonia (later to be named after him) in order to avoid being late, which would have hurt his dignity. Tatyana looked after him laughing, not quite forlorn. Needless to say, he arrived right down to the minute. Malko, to whom the boy already considered himself superior, now had to lend him his own belt, and whiten up his shoes with tooth powder. Then Mitya rushed to the mirror. He bulged his cheeks out just for fun. Twenty-seven minutes to spare! Malko kept telling him not to be nervous. Actually he was dwelling on Tatyana Glivenko, who was really, truly, you get the idea. Malko adjusted his tie. Twenty-six minutes. Satisfied with the impression he made, he tried to tease the orchestra by pretending that he wanted to speed up the finale even more. (Well, he certainly knows what he wants, remarked the conductor, smiling. I’d have to say that’s all to the good! Our rehearsals have confirmed the correctness of his conception.) Then it was time for them all to take their positions.—It’s going to be all right, said Malko, and Mitya, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, nodded expressionlessly.