He played utterly by memory, committing no errors. And his friends sat listening and silently weeping. So many tears! And at the end, a man he scarcely knew said to him: Thanks to the war, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, and thanks also to you, for the first time we can cry openly. Not one of us here hasn’t lost somebody, somebody killed by the Fascists or else before—
My God! cried Glikman in terror. Please watch what you’re saying, Ivan Borisovich!
No, I’m sorry, everybody. Of course I didn’t mean it like that. Forgive me, Dmitri Dmitriyevich…
There was a lot of shelling later on that day, and the shells seemed to go right past his ears. Around the corner was a so-called “factory” where pale skinny boys stood shaking and assembling the round magazines of machine-guns; all right, so the Fascists knew about that and were shelling it. It’s a shame that those boys were probably, so to speak, well. He’d advanced the thesis to Glikman that a person owns many different sorts of courage stored up within himself like fats; most of them can be exhausted, at which point a man becomes a coward; one must feed one’s bravery; it’s all a matter of chemicals. His friend gazed at him with huge sad eyes and said: For your own sake, I beg you, try not to get cynical, Dmitri Dmitriyevich!
Oh, I’m not cynical. I merely, I, well, I wonder how all this will affect us in later life. If we’re allowed to have a later life…
He peered over the edge of the Conservatory roof. We were trying to regain command of Pulkovo Heights, and the loudspeakers were shouting. To the left, women with suspicious eyes stood around a lake of blood. To the right, a pretty, baby-faced girl in a woolen cap was wrapping up the head of bleeding boy who kept scratching at his chest, his rifle flung down on the broken bricks beside him. Suddenly he stopped moving. Sighing, the nurse rose and turned away.—Now do you see? Shostakovich muttered to himself, not even really knowing what he was saying.
On 10 September General Voroshilov was removed for “passivity” and General Zhukov arrived in Leningrad with an express directive from Stalin to hold the front line no matter what the cost.—Well, and why not? said the fire warden when he heard. Nina was too tired to reply. He said to her: Come on into the bathroom so I can tell you a joke. Don’t worry; we’ll turn the water up loud…
Go to hell, Mitya.
Our history books will show Zhukov’s solid, close-shaven head sternly tilted as he listens to his strategic Muse: Stalin will be the savior of Europe. That was the day that a shell landed on Liteiny Boulevard, and Shostakovich could hope that the NKVD headquarters had been hit. He was full of optimism, actually, or maybe it wasn’t exactly optimism but some manifestation of concentrated anger such as one frequently hears in the second movement of his Eighth Symphony; it definitely wasn’t optimism, which might well have been impossible under these conditions. On 12 September the bread ration was reduced again. Hunger came as slowly as an adagissimo. Shostakovich had nothing to say about that. But soon people would be wearing gas masks against the cold and eating library paste. And the children, you see, Maxim was already crying in the night because his stomach was empty, well, can I somehow put that into the Rat Theme, so that they’ll…? Nina doesn’t believe in this, but I have to believe, to, to, do you understand? When his son wept, he most frequently uttered a highly specific sound in A-flat minor. Can one do anything with this? It hurts me, of course, not that I have anything to say about it, because, because, but the real point is that if it didn’t hurt me it would be unconscionable to build it into my music, but since I, my God, how can I not weep when my children suffer? And therefore, it would be unconscionable not to use that A-flat minor, when it might somehow, well, it’s important to remember that each one of us has his work.
Glikman had already sampled cottonseed cake. He said that it tasted pretty foul, but with a little vodka, you know, some in the glass and just a splash on the cake itself, anyhow, that was how Glikman’s wife liked it. (She was already getting weak.) Oh, our fine Russian proverb: to make a cake out of shit. That’s what I’m doing with this symphony. And Glikman said… (Nina whispered that she’d heard the Fascists had just taken Kiev; even General Vlasov had barely escaped.) Then someone knocked on the door, two light taps; first he thought it was the NKVD and he vomited, but it was only that maddening Akhmatova coming around again, with her hands melodramatically bleeding from sewing sandbags, as if other people didn’t also, you get the picture; she’d always thought she was really something, and now she was on the radio all the time. I personally prefer to, how should I put, to listen to the metronome. He granted that she was graceful, a genius, and all that. She certainly knew it, too. Anyhow, she promised that she’d use her pull to try to get him out of here, and he replied: My dear Anna Andreyevna, there’s no need. I’m where I should be, so to speak. I draw strength from, I—who was that Greek protagonist who, you know—wait! it’s coming to me; I mean Antaeus! Or do I mean Lenin? The one who, so to speak, got stronger whenever they threw him down to the ground. There’s something about this Russian earth, and when they throw me in it, I’m going to take a big bite… By the way, Anna Andreyevna, you and I had an encounter when I was very small. You probably don’t remember it but…