In the sitting room, all windows remained flagrantly uncurtained. It was almost like dwelling in the drowned dream-days of Petersburg with her many lamps, ballrooms, mazurkas and gallant cavalrymen. Akhmatova was reciting poems at the Straw Dog; everybody was having orgies, in which poor Mitya was too young and studious to join. Then the red spiral exploded: Boom! A quarter-century from now, he’d represent that explosion in Opus 110. But where was the Marshal’s family? Had Shostakovich become so unclean that they disliked being present, or…? He dared not ask. Jigging his foot and grimacing in a thousand ugly contortions, he gazed down at his clenched hands, ashamed of himself while striving to pretend that Tukhachevsky noticed no sign of it.—I expected you’d get in some fix! the “Red Napoleon” was saying in a pleasant baritone, but Shostakovich felt so asphyxiated by his own terror that he understood nothing.
He had imagined that his host’s official car would be waiting. They’d ride out to the woods, or to the exhibition halls of the Hermitage, and then they’d stroll almost side by side, this tall, ingenuous-eyed patron half a measure ahead, talking to Shostakovich over his shoulder exactly as he always did on their accustomed outings when rattling off his theories about cinema, French impressionism, German prison camps and the most effective way to execute hostages. But the car was not there. Well, the family must have taken it, or… This divergence from the score threw Shostakovich off. And Tukhachevsky looked so strong and handsome in that new suit…
Play me the first movement of your new symphony, Mitya. I want to hear it again because there’s something in the tempo which (with all respect) deserves criticism. You haven’t been criticized enough yet, they say. What a world!
I—
Why don’t you join the Party?
You see, I—
Don’t be bashful. The piano’s right there. It just got written up in Pravda. Do you know why?
I beg your pardon—
Ha, ha! Because it’s mine! When I was in London last month, a certain music-lover asked me: Marshal Tukhachevsky, if you had to represent the sounds of war by a single musical instrument, which would you choose? And I chose the piano, mainly to annoy him, because he was expecting me to light on something more percussive, but I do stand by the fact that there’s an inhuman quality about the piano, elegant and cold at the same time, like an operational plan which will result in thousands of enemy casualties…
Mikhail Nikolayevich, he blurted out, please understand me. I’m not here for myself. I’ve come to realize that I’m not deserving—
No need to feel shy around old friends, Mitya! You know how much I admire your work. Especially since they’re all complimenting you now. I especially like this one: He ignored the demand of Soviet culture that all coarseness and wildness be abolished from every corner of Soviet life. When I read that in Pravda, I laughed so hard my wife almost called the doctor! Will you autograph that one for me? All coarseness and wildness! I’ve memorized it, you see! Remember the time you forced that Elena Whatshername to drink half a liter of vodka? That was wildness, to be sure. Whatever happened to her?
I—
She took a holiday, didn’t she? Well, no harm done. But from now on she’ll have to be more careful in her associations, if you get my drift…
I understand, Shostakovich dully whispered.
But of course you want to make Nina Vasiliyevna’s life a trifle easier. That’s natural. How is she, by the way?
Nina? Oh, extremely well, thank you, except that she—
And when is she expecting?
Shostakovich was thinking to himself: No matter what the outcome of all this, even if I’m completely rehabilitated someday, I’ll never be what I was. When Father’s hair turned grey all at once we didn’t understand how that could happen; Mariya kept saying it was like some kind of spell. Why can’t I concentrate? Is he asking me something right now? But I know myself now, and I, well, I don’t like what I know! He’s staring at me! But maybe that’s a normal symptom of youth’s end, to feel that the sky’s greyer and that most of what I used to call beautiful isn’t more than glitter. I…
The two men disappeared into the Marshal’s study, to sit beneath a lamp which curved like a medical instrument. (His host shut off the telephones, and they spoke in low voices, just in case.) When Shostakovich emerged, he was smiling. He rushed home, sat down at the piano and began to improvise expressions of his tremulous happiness. For Tukhachevsky had promised to write a letter—direct to Comrade Stalin! Tukhachevsky had said: We’ll solve this question correctly.—Tukhachevsky had assured him: Don’t worry, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. I always get whatever I ask for.
He waited. He aimed to retreat from his apprehensions into his prior innocent state, which Leskov would have called Russian boredom. He rushed off with Glikman to watch another Dynamos game. Peki Dementyiev made a kick which was really… Nervously his hands sketched bars on sheets of paper, then gave birth to music-notes which peered from and clung to those bars. Tukhachevsky had said… Thus almost before he knew it he’d completed his Fourth Symphony, the one in C Minor (Opus 43), but the unalloyed congratulations of that capitalist lackey Otto Klemperer, then visiting Moscow and Leningrad on a Beethoven tour, only increased his peril. The next day, Nina gave birth to their first child Galina. Klemperer’s name headed the telegram of congratulations. That would surely be remembered against him—none of which is to imply that he didn’t like Klemperer, who’d drunk vodka with him in his flat and for whom he’d played the piano, Klemperer leaning back with a rapturous expression, Mitya dreaming that it was 1932 or ’33 again and he was still the boy genius of our Soviet Union, whose song would be sung more joyfully. So what about Rodchenko? What about Dziga Vertov’s experimental blendings of water-sounds, machine-noise and speech? (Tukhachevsky had clapped his hands and laughed.) What about Akhmatova, Mandelstam, or for that matter a certain D. D. Shostakovich? Dear Marshal Tukhachevsky had brought them all back; for he was one of them—an unnerving man, it’s true (Elena would have used her favorite English word, creepy), but all the same a, a, how should I say, an innovator who admired novelty and brilliance, and didn’t he still get whatever he asked for? Oh, dear, oh, my, Elena, you should most definitely have married me! Because then, you and Ninusha and I could have… He cocked his head, offering and receiving confidences about the compositional secrets of Mussorgsky. Klemperer was almost drunk. Mitya was almost ready to confess which chord it was which actually caused him to see rainbow icicles. Soon they’d toast him so loudly that his mother would wake up; V. V. Lebedev would order everybody present to acknowledge the perfection of his own favorite team, which also happened to be the Dynamos; Glikman sat in the corner, nourishing Shostakovich with that hero-worshiper’s gaze; Nina was still in love with him, I mean really in love; he approached the verge of his very first encounter with Elena Konstantinovskaya, not that she would exactly, how should I make myself clear? And then it genuinely became just the way it used to be, with the guests gone (Klemperer had caught the penultimate tram), and he was alone, writing music which was perfect as it came. He believed in himself again. Beneath the piano keys there was a luminous white place with ebony shadows where, you know, and I suspect that right about then someone’s long dark hair kept him warm and someone’s white face outshone the moon and someone’s red lips spiraled inwards.