In November, three thousand inhabitants of that city starved to death from sunrise to sunrise. They’d cut the rations for the fifth time by then. Moscow was badly off too, of course… Haunted by thoughts of his mother cutting a hole in the frozen street to find water, of puffy-eyed children, crazed old ladies shivering, he gorged himself with semi-secret statistics which were meaningless and already obsolete: three hundred barrage balloons, nine hundred tons of burnt sugar. He had thought that music was the most important thing in the world, but now he realized that he would do almost anything, even compromise his talent, to help Leningrad, formerly known as Petrograd, and before that Saint Petersburg, which is to say City of the Periodic Table—city of Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Shostakovich! So what if he wrote bad music? No, he’d never… It could still be his, given sincerely and unstintingly, and also something they could use. In short, if they wanted program music they’d get program music. He’d make it good in spite of itself. Convenient and effective was what they wanted; all right, but he actually, excuse me for saying so, loved Leningrad, so what they were also going to get in that symphony was, you know, Leningrad.
Lev Oborin, who seemed very tired, came by unannounced for an hour of four-handed piano. He was smiling; not only had he tracked down five hundred grams of horsemeat sausage, but we’d just liberated Kalinin! Galya jumped up and down, screaming: Kalinin, Kalinin! It was past her bedtime, actually. And she couldn’t get over that cough, the “Leningrad cough” they called it. Kalinin, so now I’ll have to compose a… What’s that sound? Oh, it’s only… Moreover, said Oborin, at Leningrad we’d now gained an ice-bridge across Lake Ladoga; refugees went out and food came in, a little, not enough, and sometimes the Fascists strafed our trucks, but Shostakovich couldn’t help wondering at the pride and hope he felt, when he read the confirmation in Pravda. Years later, when he returned to Leningrad, just to visit (he never lived there again), his friends told him that on some occasions people had torn bread from each other outside the bakeries, but usually they starved in silence. They didn’t want to compromise either, you see. And when he heard that he, well, he grew emotional.
There were many new common graves now in Piskarevskoye Cemetery. In December it got worse. Some calculated that six thousand perished every day of that month; others said four, or ten. No one had the strength to count. Like ripe pears falling off trees, frozen bodies dropped out of windows into the snowy streets. Cannibals were said to be killing stray children every day; steak-meat was cut from the shoulders, thighs and buttocks of corpses abandoned at the cemetery. On 17 December the radio announced that the Volkhov Front had been formed under General Meretskov, but even the announcer failed to express much hope. Now back to the ticking of a metronome; that was all Leningrad had the strength to broadcast. Children’s sleds kept getting dragged to the cemetery, with dead children on them. Poets collapsed and died from the exertion of standing upright to read their verses on Radio Leningrad. Then came the metronome again. That was why he wanted to build his symphony not out of music, but out of snow and explosions.
It’s almost finished, he told his wife.
Then you’ll have accomplished a great thing. And you’ll tell me everything you’ve been thinking, or at least your music will tell me. You have so much to tell me and you never say anything.
But it’s the war, Ninochka, just the war. And Maxim never lets go of you—
I know, darling. After the war we’ll be freer—
Don’t create illusions.
Leaning out the window, he heard two drunken Red Army men bellowing Blanter’s song “In the Frontline Forest.”
At the beginning of December, the defenders of Moscow regained the offensive and began to drive the enemy back; but the siege of Leningrad went on and on. Thirty degrees of frost was as warm as it got there; so he heard. He tried not to, to, you know. In his heart he could see the Philharmonic’s raspberry, gilt and white. That was where his symphony must be performed, for his sake and he hoped for theirs. Screaming patriotic slogans, wounded Red Army men crouched in their spider-holes, hoping to kill just one more German Fascist. He wrote that into the third movement, beneath the floor, so to speak, where his chords took snipers’ aim and fired before the ear knew they were even there. Cossacks with upcurved sabers threw themselves at bullet-rain. Homes became stage-sets more avant-garde than the long-suppressed theatrical productions of Meyerhold and Shostakovich, walls and bodies getting slashed away from bedrooms in which every knickknack remained in place; women and children hunkered there, waiting for the iron frost to fall on them. (Their men were at the front.) Bundled-up women belly-crawled through the snow between frozen tramcars, hoping to find a frozen rat or a scrap of oilcake which would give them the strength to rise. Shostakovich had nothing to give them except his symphony, whose fourth movement glittered as brilliantly as the nickel-plated door handles of the late Marshal Tukhachevsky’s automobile.
The last note of the Seventh Symphony was written on 29 December 1941, in tired, crowded Kuibyshev. On the radio, Comrade Stalin said slowly: Death to the German Fascist invaders. Death, death, death. And Shostakovich arose from the music bench. A number of his well-wishers, the same who wondered why he hadn’t yet hung Comrade Stalin’s portrait above the piano, advised various mutually contradictory alterations to the finale, all of which he promised to insert in the Eighth Symphony. Nina had to run to the toilet to conceal her laughter; he heard the water come on. Again they urged him to join the Party, because doing so would help the Seventh to be more widely understood. And Comrade Alexandrov said… He agreed to take that under advisement. Maybe after he’d achieved a better comprehension of, of, you know, Leninism… He was a bigshot again; he could stall them forever! Anyhow, they owned a more important triumph to report: The bread ration in Leningrad had just been doubled.
On 5 March 1942 the first performance was broadcast by radio. Although the concert took place in Kuibyshev, the announcer followed orders and pretended to be at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. (Other sources claim that this first performance took place in Novosibirsk.) We see Shostakovich cross-legged and nervous in the sixth row, with his arms tightly folded in, his suit wrapped tight around him, his dark necktie almost hidden. Nothing but reflections can be seen within the lenses of his round spectacles. The music stands of the orchestra appear as dazzling squares of blankness in this photograph; they might as well be bomb-flashes. At home, number 2a Vilonov-sky Street, Nina sits with the children and the neighbors, listening in utter silence. She knows that Glikman and the other members of the Leningrad Conservatory are listening in Tashkent. She supposes that Elena Konstantinovskaya is listening, too. Now here comes the Rat Theme; at the fifth iteration she hears Panzer IIIs surging up riverbanks. Strange to say, on most days, and even most nights, she bears the other woman no ill will. Didn’t she make Mitya happy, and even inspire his music?
Nina knows her husband better than Elena ever could. She knows his selfishness, his ugly spitefulness, his narcissism. Elena only knows his penis. She may believe she knows his genius, but no one does, not even Mitya himself; he doesn’t even know what makes him happy! He’s not very self-aware, actually. (Now he lights up another “Kazbek” cigarette.) For instance, when he used to come home with Elena’s perfume all over him, he had no clue that she noticed anything. And when Nina herself steps out, he doesn’t catch a thing! Once he wore a purple lovebite on the side of his neck; for days he kept scratching at it. Mitya, you idiot child, if only I could keep you safe… In short, he needs her far more than he knows, and that’s why she’s ready for anything. Of course Mitya—for this would be the duty of everyone to society, for the sake of art—disregarding all personal feeling. Then there are the children to consider.