In this spirit he reread the score for the Fourth Symphony and found nothing to correct, which was precisely why at rehearsal the scared musicians played badly, fixing on him the sad and angry eyes of Russian icons, for this composition reeked so stiflingly of formalism that their own participation might be considered provocation. And so he was summoned to the director’s office.
What kind of silence could have been silenter than the noiseless fear which oozed out of his orchestra at that moment, the musicians lighting cigarettes alone, shying away from their own instruments as if from something dangerously electrified? When he returned downstairs, sweaty and ashen, he announced that he had made a personal and entirely voluntary decision to withdraw it from the program. It would not be performed until the end of 1961.
He went home to tell Nina. Although she hadn’t changed face when her own mother rode away in a Black Maria, she exploded into tears.
He dreamed that he was walking alone down a snowy street in Moscow. Perhaps it was Gorki Street; there was a fancy bar there where he used to drink with Elena Konstantinovskaya. Before him, a heavenly light shone through a windowpane. Suddenly the glass shattered terrifyingly, and light and warmth dribbled into his face.
He and Nina went to the polling place to vote for the candidate for Supreme Soviet. There was only one name on the ballot.
On the sixth of December, during the celebrations in honor of the new Stalin Constitution which guaranteed the rights of all peoples, he whispered to Glikman: If they chop off both my hands, I’ll keep writing music with the pen in my teeth…
He was now in what might be called his life’s first entr’acte, when the orchestra of compulsion laid down its poisoned violin-bows, and the audience, namely Shostakovich himself and all who cared for him, were momentarily permitted to leave their seats for a moment, descend the marble steps, and stand by the open window smoking cigarettes. What would happen next? Comrade Stalin had written the program, but the program was nowhere distributed. Bribe the usher as many rubles you liked; you still couldn’t get a glimpse of what was coming. The bell rang. Everyone rushed back. The monsters resumed singing.
They arrested his brother-in-law. They carried off his NKVD contact V. Dombrovsky and liquidated him. A Black Maria came for one colleague after the next. They exiled his elder sister in Central Asia. He went to the NKVD office on Liteiny Boulevard to plead for her, but without success. He barely had time to buy her warm felt boots…
He toed the line. He went to Lenin Stadium, leaped up and opened his mouth to cheer for the Dynamos, although no sound came out. (What’s that sound? he asked himself. I mean that, that sound that didn’t… Where is it? When I hear it will I scream?) Glikman rang him up to invite him to go see R. L. Karmen’s newsreel “On the Events in Spain,” because that might give him ideas. Poor Glikman—which is to say, what a thought! All the same, he went, just to, to, you know. As a direct result, he wrote an uplifting score for the play “Salute, Spain!” He also wrote music for the movie “The Return of Maxim.”
A Black Maria came for Tukhachevsky. They tortured him and put him on trial. (He is said to have asked one of his desperately self-incriminating co-defendants: Are you dreaming?) In the interests of all peace-loving peoples, they liquidated him and buried him in a construction trench. They also shot his wife, his mother, one of his sisters and both of his brothers. His daughter and the remaining three sisters went straight to prison camps.
Not long after these events, Shostakovich was summoned to the offices of the NKVD to inquire into his connection with the traitor Tukhachevsky.
Our composer was punctual throughout his life. On the rare occasions when he was a minute late, he apologized in anguish. By the same token, if a singer or musician did not show up on time, he grew enraged. What intimidated him the most, therefore, was the way that the secret police kept him waiting hour after hour. It was a large old prewar office, with rococo walls from the time when Leningrad had still been Petersburg, with papers everywhere, even on the floor, and the smell of freshly oiled boots. All the people who had not yet been called were required to stand. Smiling, he mopped at his forehead.
There was a window through which he gazed, just to look at something, at another demonstration, dark-clad people clumped together in a long rectangle beneath the wires and bullhorns, some banners straight and crisp, some sagging. He was almost in sight of the former Army and Navy Club, where Kussevitsky had conducted Scriabin just before the Revolution; his mother had liked the performance; they’d played the “Extase.” Her tastes were, you know. But then two Chekists shoved him, literally shoved him away from the window, and one of them said: Don’t bother jumping, chum. You kill yourself, and we’ll take it out on Nina. We know just what to do with Nina.
He started to faint, I mean really, so they dragged him into a chair and left him there for four more hours.
All right, Shostakovich, wake up and go in that office. Don’t be slow about it, either.
They wanted to know whether it was true that he’d played violin duets together with the enemy of the people Tukhachevsky. He confessed that it was. They inquired into the matter of musical codes. What messages might be transmitted by a violin? (It’s rumored that at the very end, the condemned man had remarked: I would have been better off as a violinist.) The composer replied: Well, comrades, I, I, which is to say, by training I’m not a cryptographer, you know—
Stick to the point, you shit!
Which favors precisely had that enemy of the people done for Citizen Shostakovich? And why was that enemy of the people’s portrait still hanging on the wall in Citizen Shostakovich’s flat?
They asked him what he knew about Tukhachevsky’s plot to kill Comrade Stalin. He said he didn’t know anything. They said to him: Today is Saturday. We’ll sign your pass and let you go home. But on Monday you’d better be here, and you’d better remember something. This is very serious.
He rushed home. Thank God Nina was at work, because if she could see his face right now she’d, you know…
All that saved him was the arrest of his interrogator.
He stayed at home until he had stopped vomiting. (To Nina he whispered: No, no, it’s nothing but a mild case of operational shock.) Then, biting his lip, he returned to Liteiny Boulevard.
In the doorway, the two sentries with fixed bayonets sneered and insulted him yet again. Never mind; he wanted to see what he could do to help his exiled sister.
What the hell do you think you’re doing coming back here? shouted the prosecutor. Watch out, or you’ll be next. I don’t give a rat’s ass for your so-called “musical accomplishments”—
Again he requested a meeting with Comrade Stalin, but received no answer.
Subtitled “A Soviet artist’s creative reply to just criticism,” and ending as it did fortissimo in a major key, the Fifth Symphony premiered to stormy ovations in 1937, but Party investigators accused him of planting applauding stooges among the audience. In Leningrad, the third movement’s largo literally excited tears. People rushed to the stage like accolytes. The conductor Mravinsky waved the score in the air. Shostakovich grew pallid and weak as the defiant applause continued. Such expressions were an insult to Comrade Stalin… In that same year we find him writing a jazz suite part of whose melody was prudently derived from Stalin’s favorite song “Suliko.”