The Noise of Time (7 page)

He tried to watch the screen above him and play appropriate music. The audience preferred the old romantic tunes which were familiar to them; but often, he would get bored, and then play his own compositions. These did not go down so well. In the cinema, it was the opposite from the concert hall: audiences would applaud when they disapproved of something. One evening, while accompanying a film called
Marsh and Water Birds of Sweden
, he found himself in a more than usually satirical mood. First he began to imitate bird calls on the piano, and then, as the marsh and water birds flew higher and higher, the piano worked itself up into a greater and greater passion. There was loud applause, which in his naivety he took to be aimed at the ridiculous film; and so he played all the harder. Afterwards, the audience had complained to the cinema manager: the pianist must have been drunk, what he played was never music, he had insulted the beautiful film and also its audience. The manager had sacked him.

And that, he now realised, had been his career in miniature: hard work, some success, a failure to respect musical norms, official disapproval, suspension of pay, the sack. Except that now he was in the grown-up world, where the sack meant something much more final.

He imagined his mother sitting in a cinema while pictures of his girlfriends were projected on to the screen. Tanya – his mother applauds. Nina – his mother applauds. Rozaliya – his mother applauds even harder. Cleopatra, the Venus de Milo, the Queen of Sheba – his mother, ever unimpressed, continues to applaud unsmilingly.

His nocturnal vigils lasted for ten days. Nita argued – not from evidence, more from optimism and determination – that the immediate danger had probably passed. Neither of them believed this, but he was weary of standing, of waiting for the lift’s machinery to grind and whirr. He was weary of his own fear. And so he returned to lying in the dark fully clothed, his wife at his side, his overnight bag next to the bed. A few feet away Galya would be sleeping as an infant does, careless about matters of state.

And then, one morning, he picked up his case and opened it. He put his underclothes back in the drawer, his toothbrush and tooth powder in the bathroom cabinet, and his three packets of Kazbeki on his desk.

And he waited for Power to resume its conversation with him. But he never heard from the Big House again.

Not that Power was idle. Many of those around him began to disappear, some to camps, some to execution. His mother-in-law, his brother-in-law, his Old Bolshevik uncle, associates, a former lover. And what of Zakrevsky, who had not come into work that fatal Monday? No one ever heard from him again. Perhaps Zakrevsky had never really existed.

But there is no escaping one’s destiny; and his, for the moment, was apparently to live. To live and to work. There would be no rest. ‘We rest only when we dream,’ as Blok put it; though at this time most people’s dreams were not restful. But life continued; soon Nita was pregnant again, and soon he began adding to the opus numbers he had feared would end with the Fourth Symphony.

His Fifth, which he wrote that summer, was premiered in November 1937 in the Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. An elderly philologist told Glikman that only once before in his lifetime had he witnessed such a vast and insistent ovation: forty-four years previously, when Tchaikovsky had conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony. A journalist – foolish? hopeful? sympathetic? – described the Fifth as ‘A Soviet Artist’s Creative Reply to Just Criticism’. He never repudiated the phrase; and many came to believe it was to be found in his own hand at the head of the score. These words turned out to be the most famous he ever wrote – or rather, never wrote. He allowed them to stand because they protected his music. Let Power have the words, because words cannot stain music. Music escapes from words: that is its purpose, and its majesty.

The phrase also permitted those with asses’ ears to hear in his symphony what they wanted to hear. They missed the screeching irony of the final movement, that mockery of triumph. They heard only triumph itself, some loyal endorsement of Soviet music, Soviet musicology, of life under the sun of Stalin’s constitution. He had ended the symphony fortissimo and in the major. What if he had ended it pianissimo and in the minor? On such things might a life – might several lives – turn. Well, ‘Nothing but nonsense in the world.’

The Fifth Symphony’s success was instant and universal. Such a sudden phenomenon was accordingly analysed by Party bureaucrats and tame musicologists, who came up with an official description of the work, to assist the Soviet public’s understanding. They called his Fifth ‘an optimistic tragedy’.

Two: On the Plane

ALL HE KNEW
was that
this
was the worst time.

One fear drives out another, as one nail drives out another. So, as the climbing plane seemed to hit solid ledges of air, he concentrated on the local, immediate fear: of immolation, disintegration, instant oblivion. Fear normally drives out all other emotions as well; but not shame. Fear and shame swilled happily together in his stomach.

He could see the wing and a churning propeller of the American Overseas Airlines plane; that, and the clouds they were heading into. Other members of the delegation, with better seats and greater curiosity, were pressing against the little windows for a last glimpse of the New York skyline. The six of them were in celebratory mood, he could hear, and eager for the stewardess to come round with the first offer of drinks. They would toast the great success of the congress, and assure one another that it was precisely because they had advanced the cause of Peace so much that the warmongering State Department had revoked their visas and packed them home early. He was just as keen on the stewardess and the drinks, if for different reasons. He wanted to forget everything that had happened. He drew the patterned curtains across the window, as if to blot out the memory. Small chance of that, however much he drank.

‘There is only good vodka and very good vodka – there is no such thing as bad vodka.’ This was the wisdom from Moscow to Leningrad, from Arkhangelsk to Kuibyshev. But there was also American vodka, which, he had now learnt, was ritually improved with fruit flavours, with lemon and ice and tonic water, its taste covered up in cocktails. So perhaps there might be such a thing as bad vodka.

During the war, anxious before a long journey, he would sometimes go for a session of hypnotherapy. He wished he’d had a treatment before the outbound flight, then one each day of their week in New York, and another before the return journey. Or better still, they could have just put him in a wooden crate with a week’s supply of sausage and vodka, dumped it at LaGuardia airport and loaded it back on the plane for their return. So, Dmitri Dmitrievich, how was your trip? Wonderful, thank you, I saw all I wished to see and the company was most agreeable.

On the flight out, the seat beside him had been occupied by his official protector, warder, translator and new best friend as of twenty-four hours previously. Who naturally smoked Belomory. When they were handed menus in English and French, he had asked his companion for a translation. On the right were cocktails and alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. On the left, he had assumed, was food. No, came the reply, these were other things you could order. A bureaucratic forefinger ran down the list. Dominoes, checkers, dice, backgammon. Newspapers, stationery, magazines, postcards. Electric razor, ice bag, sewing kit, medical kit, chewing gum, tooth-brushes, Kleenex.

‘And that?’ he had asked, pointing at the only untranslated item.

A stewardess was called, and a long explanation followed. Eventually, he was told,

‘Benzedrine inhaler.’

‘Benzedrine inhaler?’

‘For drug-addict capitalists who shit themselves on take-off and landing,’ said his new best friend, with a certain ideological smugness.

He himself suffered from non-capitalist fear on take-off and landing. Had he not known it would go immediately into his official file, he might have tried this decadent Western invention.

Fear: what did those who inflicted it know? They knew that it worked, even how it worked, but not what it felt like. ‘The wolf cannot speak of the fear of the sheep,’ as they say. While he had been awaiting orders from the Big House in St Leninsburg, Oistrakh had been expecting arrest in Moscow. The violinist had described to him how, night after night, they came for someone in his apartment block. Never a mass arrest; just one victim, and then the next night another – a system which ramped up the fear for those who remained, who had temporarily survived. Eventually, all the tenants had been taken except for those in his apartment and the one opposite. The next night the police van arrived again, they heard the downstairs door slam, footsteps coming along the corridor … and going to the other apartment. From this exact point, Oistrakh said, he was always afraid; and would be, he knew, for the rest of his life.

Now, on the flight back, his minder left him alone. It would be thirty hours before they reached Moscow, with stops at Newfoundland, Reykjavik, Frankfurt and Berlin. It would be comfortable at least: the seats were good, the noise level bearable, the stewardesses well groomed. They brought food served on china and linen with heavy cutlery. Enormous shrimps, fat and sleek like politicians, swimming in shrimp-cocktail sauce. A steak, almost as tall as it was wide, with mushrooms and potatoes and green beans. Fruit salad. He ate, but mainly he drank. He no longer had the light head of his younger days. One Scotch and soda followed another, but they failed to put him out. No one stopped him, neither the airline nor his companions, who were audibly merry, and probably drinking just as much. Then, after coffee had been served, the cabin seemed to grow warmer, and everyone dropped off to sleep, himself included.

What had he hoped of America? He had hoped to meet Stravinsky. Even though he knew it was a dream, indeed a fantasy. He had always revered Stravinsky’s music. He’d barely missed a performance of
Petrushka
at the Mariinsky. He’d played second piano in the Russian premiere of
Les Noces
, performed the Serenade in A in public, transcribed the
Symphony of Psalms
for four hands. If there was a single composer of the twentieth century who might be called great, it was Stravinsky. The
Symphony of Psalms
was one of the most brilliant works in musical history. All this, without doubt or hesitation, he declared to be the case.

But Stravinsky would not be there. He had sent a snubbing and well-publicised telegram: ‘Regret not being able to join welcomers of Soviet artists coming this country. But all my ethic and esthetic convictions oppose such gesture.’

And what had he expected of America? Certainly not cartoon capitalists in stovepipe hats and Stars and Stripes waistcoats marching down Fifth Avenue and trampling underfoot the starving proletariat. Any more than he expected a trumpeted land of freedom – he doubted such a place existed anywhere. Perhaps he had imagined a combination of technological advancement, social conformity, and the sober manners of a pioneering nation come into wealth. Ilf and Petrov, after taking a road-trip across the country, had written that thinking about America made them melancholy, while having the opposite effect on Americans themselves. They also reported that Americans, contrary to their own propaganda, were very passive by nature, since everything was pre-processed for them, from ideas to food. Even the cows standing motionless in the fields looked like advertisements for condensed milk.

His first surprise had been the behaviour of American journalists. There had been an advance guard of them at Frankfurt airport on the journey out, waiting in ambush. They bawled questions and shoved cameras into his face. There had been a cheerful rudeness about them, an assumption of superior values. The fact that they couldn’t pronounce your name was your name’s fault, not theirs. So they shortened it.

‘Hey, Shosti, look this way! Wave your hat at us!’

That had been later, at LaGuardia airport. Dutifully, he had raised his hat and waved it, as had his fellow delegates.

‘Hey, Shosti, give us a smile!’

‘Hey, Shosti, how do you like America?’

‘Hey, Shosti, do you prefer blondes or brunettes?’

Yes, they had even asked him that. If at home you were spied on by the men who smoked Belomory, here in America you were spied on by the press. After their plane had landed, a journalist had got hold of a stewardess and quizzed her about the behaviour of the Soviet delegation during the flight. She reported that they had chatted to their fellow passengers, and enjoyed drinking dry martinis and Scotch and soda. And such information was duly printed in the
New York Times
as if it were of interest!

Good things first. His suitcase was full of gramophone records and American cigarettes. He had heard the Julliards perform three Bartok quartets and had met them backstage afterwards. He had heard the New York Philharmonic under Stokowski in a programme of Panufnik, Virgil Thomson, Sibelius, Khachaturian and Brahms. He had himself played – with his small, ‘non-pianistic’ hands – the second movement of his Fifth Symphony at Madison Square Garden in front of 15,000 people. Their applause was thunderous, unstoppable, competitive. Well, America was the land of competition, so perhaps they wanted to prove they could clap longer and louder than Russian audiences. It had embarrassed him and – who knew? – perhaps the State Department as well. He had met some American artists who had received him most cordially: Aaron Copland, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, a young writer called Mailer. He had received a large scroll thanking him for his visit, signed by forty-two musicians from Artie Shaw to Bruno Walter. And there the good things ended. These had been his spoonfuls of honey in a barrel of tar.

He had hoped for some obscurity among the hundreds of other participants, but found to his dismay that he was the star name of the Soviet delegation. He had given a short speech on the Friday night and an immense one on the Saturday night. He had answered questions and posed for photographs. He was treated well; it was a public success – and also the greatest humiliation of his life. He felt nothing but self-disgust and self-contempt. It had been the perfect trap, the more so because the two parts of it were not connected. Communists at one end, capitalists at the other, himself in the middle. And nothing to do except scuttle through the brightly lit corridors of some experiment, as a series of doors opened in front of him and closed immediately behind him.