People from the Conservatory stopped in to see him. And someone else—Ilya? Vasily Innokentievich? Then Kolosov came. He sat down in Nuta’s chair. His visit signaled a truce after several conflicts. Sanya had gradually lost the support of his teacher, and had felt more and more distant from him. Now, rather than feeling glad about the visit, he felt indifferent.
It was difficult for Sanya to hold up his end of the conversation.
On the table, Kolosov placed a box of candies that he’d bought at the confectioner’s store opposite the Conservatory, as well as an old book, a splendid German edition. As he was leaving, he said that he had arranged for him to take a month’s leave. If he was sick, there was nothing like a little WTC for cleansing the soul and body, and for healing all one’s ills.
“I brought you a very rare thing. You’ll appreciate it.”
And Sanya did appreciate it. He reached for the volume two days later and discovered it was
The Well-Tempered Clavier,
or
preludes and fugues in all tones and semitones,
in the major as well as the minor modes,
for the benefit and use
of musical youth desirous of knowledge,
as well as those who are already advanced in this study.
For their especial diversion, composed and prepared by
Johann Sebastian Bach,
currently ducal chapelmaster in Anhalt Cöthen
and director of chamber music,
in the year 1722.
Nuta hadn’t forced him to learn German for nothing. He was even able to read the ancient title.
Sanya grew more animated when he opened the volume. It was a marvel—the Urtext, the author’s original. The fourteenth volume of the first complete works of Bach, published at the end of the nineteenth century. All the publications that he had seen up till then had been redacted and edited. They had inserted accents, tempos, even fingerings. Now he was seeing the “bare” text, and this made an astounding impression on him, as though he had suddenly found himself face-to-face with the genius who composed it. Without intermediaries. Like all theoreticians, he had studied The Well-Tempered Clavier, marveling at the transparent simplicity of its construction, in ascending keys from C major, to C minor, to C-sharp major. The third prelude, Sanya recalled, was first written in C major. Then Bach corrected it—he added seven sharps, and it was finished. And so on, with all twenty-four keys. Simplicity itself! A children’s exercise. He had written it for his adolescent son, and said: I trained him in the musical alphabet. No author’s notations, no directions—play it as you wish, musician! Utter freedom …
Modern notation, rectified and regularized by editors, undermined this freedom.
Sanya’s curiosity burned: he knew a number of renditions of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and now he couldn’t wait to listen to them and compare. They had records at home—a wonderful recording by Samuil Feinberg, bought by Nuta ages ago, with all forty-eight preludes and fugues. They also had a recording by Richter, which was marvelous, but the recording was badly scratched and it skipped a lot.
Sanya found the Feinberg and put it on. Kolosov was right—they were purifying, cleansing sounds. He let his entire being pour through the music, or the music pour through him.
For a whole week he either listened, or studied the notes. Feinberg was absolutely magical. Opinions about him differed. Some people extolled Glenn Gould for his Preludes and Fugues; but for others, Richter was king. In Feinberg there was such sorrow, delicacy, and refinement. One sensed that life had already passed, and the only thing that remained were these modulations, the breaths of air under a butterfly’s wings; not the flesh, but the soul of music.
He wasn’t a magnificent man, but an ordinary one with a goatee, who, until recently, had still walked the Conservatory corridors, where people never whispered in his wake: Look, there goes Samuil Feinberg.
Neihaus and Richter were quite another thing. Throughout their lives, wherever they went, people would whisper: Look, there goes …
And Sanya listened to Bach over and over again, until, by the end of the second week, he was completely healed.
On the final prelude and fugue in B minor, Bach had written the words: Ende gut, alles gut.
“Good,” Sanya said. He trusted Bach.
He scrubbed the bathtub, filled it with water, as hot as he could tolerate, and soaked himself for a long time. He trimmed his nails, shaved his stubble (which already qualified as a beard), then put on a new shirt. He had no idea where he was planning to go. He looked at himself in Nuta’s mirror. He had become thinner. He had an interesting pallor, and two nicks on his chin. The telephone rang.
“I’m Evgeny, Pierre’s friend. Finally, I’ve managed to reach you! I want to see you. At the usual spot.”
Sanya had almost forgotten about the usual spot, where Pierre sent all his couriers—with books, jeans, records …
* * *
They met next to the beer garden in Gorky Park. Evgeny turned out to be Eugene, an accredited correspondent for an American newspaper in Moscow. Prompted by Pierre, he offered to arrange a fictitious marriage for Sanya. Sanya, who had barely recovered from his depression, was unenthusiastic: Was that even possible? Eugene assured him that they would have to try, and that Pierre was already sifting through the candidates.
“A blonde or a brunette?” And Sanya laughed for the first time since Mikha’s death.
* * *
The January frosts, which are supposed to arrive either at Christmas or at Epiphany, took hold in the interim, between the two holidays. Eugene Michaels and Sanya Steklov arrived by different routes at the airport: Eugene took the metro to Rechnoi Station, and from there took a taxi. Sanya came on the shuttle van. There weren’t many people there to meet the flight from New York, and Sanya and Eugene pretended not to notice each other.
The plane was an hour late. Finally, they announced that it had landed. The people waiting to meet it surged up to the sacred space where the official state border was about to open up and let through a narrow stream of foreign citizens and a few Russian passengers, diplomats and their KGB brothers-in-arms.
The waiting people had gotten into position too soon—it would be another hour before the arriving passengers had gone through customs and picked up their luggage.
The Soviets differed from the Americans primarily in the amount of luggage they carried and the terrified expressions on their faces. The Americans could be distinguished from the Soviets by their height, their air of inquisitive naïveté, and their clothing. If you looked closely, however, the clothes of the Americans and those of the Soviet officials and their wives were the same: tweed overcoats on the men who occupied higher positions, and hooded anoraks or duffel coats on those of a more modest position. All of them wore muted, dark winter tones; but on the Soviets, the clothes wore a different facial expression.
Among this group, sedate and exhausted after the flight, there was one bright spot: a red gnome hat that stuck out above the crowd, boldly and provocatively. Under the pointed cap were lavishly painted eyes, red cheeks, and a mouth covered in a horrendous shade of lipstick. A typical matryoshka nesting doll—but one of foreign make. A detail for the initiated—she wore a luxurious mink fur and hiking boots. In her hands, along with a woman’s makeup case, she carried a giant plastic sunflower. This was the signal.
A light-haired young man in a black jacket separated himself from the waiting group. A hat with earflaps was sticking out of his pocket. He moved in the direction of the sunflower, just as sunflowers follow the direction of the sun. He stopped in front of the woman in the red gnome cap and reached out for the sunflower …