Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  They filled his glass again until he commenced certain stereotyped and futile gestures of resistance, more or less the same as when an old white-shawled babushka throws up her hands in horror once after days of searching she’s finally found her grandson’s corpse, its ankles crossed, its hands upflung like hers as if to stop the Nazi bullet. Well, but vodka’s harmless; it’s even a, you might say, a sort of medicine! Although it does make you, well, you understand—especially in June, because that’s when the “white nights” come to Leningrad. Those were the nights when I first lay in Elena’s arms. Did I say that or just think it? Why do they keep grinning at me? What did I think? Think about it, they said. We can be good friends, but we can also be tough.—I’m thinking; I’m thinking! Should I ring up Glikman? But that would compromise him. How about Lebedinsky? Or even Roman Lazarevich! Is he in Cuba or Indonesia now? Honestly, I can’t keep track; I’m old. I can hardly stand this; it’s going to kill me! But I do have to, um, so please, if you would excuse me for just three measures, prestissimo, I promise! All I want is breathing-space. While he went to the toilet and vomited, they turned over his volume of Dostoyevsky which was lying facedown on the second-best piano and discovered that he’d underlined this passage: Why do even the finest people always seem to be hiding something from others and keeping quiet about it? All they had to do was stand there when he came back; they smiled and pointed at the book.

  After that, he lacked any defensive front. He tried to become as flat as a cockroach so that he could hide between the piano keys, but they gripped him until his fingers commenced palely trembling just like those dancers of the Musical Comedy Theater in Leningrad back in ’41; dear me, he’d never forget how during the rehearsals several of them had dropped dead right there on the stage, due to (how shall I put it?) hunger. He jittered and trembled, jittered and almost broke; then he was lying on the sofa while they bent over him. When he sobered up, he found he’d signed an application for membership in the Communist Party.

  He went to pieces. Had his blunt-speaking Ninotchka still been alive, she would have kept them away! Lebedinsky would have barred the door!

  He boarded the “Red Arrow” midnight train from Moscow to Leningrad, pretending like a child that this stratagem would protect him from them; Maxim and Galya were old enough to care for themselves; he’d never return to Moscow! So he sped deeper into darkness, quipping to himself: All railroads lead to Auschwitz!

  Irina would have kept him company if he’d asked; she was ready to leave her husband, who seemed to be very, how should I say. But right now, just in case he couldn’t hold firm about the Party, the thought of how she’d stare at him with her almost abnormally expressive, hyperintelligent eyes, well . . .—Lebedinsky and Glikman met him at the platform. They promised to secrete him here so that he’d miss the Moscow convocation. He was sick, they’d announced. They’d telephone the Party for him. But this was only a postponement.

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  It was the personal wish of Comrade Khruschev that he join the Party, they’d said. Many changes had been made. He’d find that it was really a very nice Party now, a lovely Party, really.

  He rushed off to his sister Mariya’s flat and hid there. They might not find him here; they’d try the Evropaskaya Hotel. (The worst of it was: What would Elena say?)

  Once he’d joined the Party, they’d explained, his way would be clear to become President of the Russian Federation Union of Composers.

  Mariya sat him down at her kitchen table and brought him a big bowl of soup. She understood the sonsofbitches quite well. It was she whom they’d once exiled to Central Asia, after the Tukhachevsky affair. That experience might also be the reason she’s stayed friends with Elena; those two had a bond; oh, yes.

  Is she really as pleased to see me as she pretends? he wondered, or is she pretending, out of pity? My own sister, and yet I’m so . . . And now the telephone will ring. I, I, it feels as if she only gazes on me from a distance, a great distance. I can only, I should have brought her a present! I couldn’t even remember to do that. How worthless I am! Why don’t they just shoot me? How many years have I kept that spare underwear in the suitcase? Maybe the moths have eaten it. My, oh, me, how old Mariyusha looks! And what if I’m not welcome here? I wonder if her piano’s in tune; I see a speck of dust on it. She always used to tell me that I was too proud. Tomorrow I’d best return to Glikman’s. And I like the way that Vera Vasilyevna smiles at me when I eat her cooking. He was lucky to marry her! If she’d only have looked at me, then I perhaps . . .—Unimportant!—Lebedinsky would have said . . . I may be proud, but I’d give anything to turn into Glikman and not have to think! I can’t help looking down on him, because he loves me. Here at Mariyusha’s, well I’m nothing but a, a, you know, an imposition. I don’t dare ask her about Elena. How I wish I were deep in the ground, deep in the ground, tum ti tum ti tum, with mountains of black dirt on top of me so that I, so that I couldn’t hear anything! I really ought to leave Mariyusha’s tonight, but I just got here—

  You’re not eating your soup, Mitya.

  Please forgive me. I’m an imbecile, just an—

  Shut up and eat.

  He raised his spoon almost to his mouth, then said: Do you think that Glikman ever lies to me?

  How can you think such a thing? He adores you! He trusts you!

  But once you said—

  Mitya, your nerves are making you ill. Now go in there and lie down and go to bed. If anybody telephones, I promise I won’t say you’re here.

  Comrade Pospelov from the Bureau of the Central, so to speak, Committee has already rung at Glikman’s—

  I promise you!

  Mariyusha, you’re an angel! They’ve completely . . . And then there’s a certain Comrade Alexandrov, whom I . . . If only Nina—

  Go to sleep now, and don’t worry about anything.

  But tomorrow I’m going to have to, I, I’m afraid—

  Whatever you like, she said with a compassionately distant smile. But you know you’re welcome here, Mitya.

  Thank you for saying that. And I, you see, do you also think that I should hold out?

  You mean, refrain from . . . I’m going to put on the radio. Why, isn’t that one of your film scores they’re playing? How lucky! I love that song. Now come closer. I’m sure they can’t hear us. Cousin Katerina’s an engineer, and she said—

  But—

  The telephone began to ring.

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  Of course you must hold out, Mitya. That goes without saying. How can you even consider joining them? Even if during all these ghastly decades they’d never harmed anybody, not even you, they’d still be evil! Oh, poor dear Mitya, don’t cry . . .

  34

  After all, he whispered allegro to Glikman, in whose uncritical love he once again trusted, I mean, after all, back in ’36 they voted against me, even Sollertinsky did; only Scherbakov abstained, and they flayed him for that! And the wonder is, my opera didn’t even impress Scherbakov! But he believed in truth. That was really . . . Talk about battles on the cultural front! Speaking of which, have you seen Roman Karmen’s latest film? “Our Friend Indonesia,” that’s what it’s called, I kid you not! Our dear friend! My children insisted on seeing it; it’s really . . . I refused to grovel at that time, but it goes on and on, and I’m not well; when you told them I was sick, it was actually true . . .

  Be brave, Dmitri Dmitriyevich! You don’t have to join!

  You’re correct! But, you see, I, I, well, I’ve become such a bastard . . . My children . . . What’s that envelope?

  A telegram, said Glikman sadly.

  For me?

  I’m afraid so.

  But Maxim’s applying to the Composers’ Union, and if I refuse to . . . No, I’ll hold out. I’m not going, you see! Let’s forget about all this and talk about Tchaikovsky’s sex life! Did you know that he loved one lady who, who, let’s just say he . . . Forever. It’s fantastic, really. She was even willing to, you know. And she would have married
him, too, but he said to her: You’re so lucky that you didn’t marry me! They’ll only get me to Moscow if they tie me up and drag me there, you understand. They’ll have to tie me up—

  Please calm yourself, my dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich!

  I’d rather kill myself! I won’t ever join those murderers—

  In July he went to Dresden. The temperate climate of this new German Democratic Republic agreed with him, especially soothing his bones and joints, which were now as rotten as the ancient wooden pavements which dated from the days when Leningrad was called Saint Petersburg. Would he like to see the Georgji Dimitroff Bridge when he got there? They were already advising him that he ought to see it, for the sake of solidarity. He replied that of course he was extremely eager to, you know, see it.

  He remembered the premiere of R. L. Karmen’s “Comrade Dmitrov in Moscow”; Elena couldn’t keep her hands off him; they started kissing even before the lights went out. And now it’s Comrade Shostakovich in Dresden! But I’ll never be Comrade Shostakovich. I’d rather, you know.

  How strange it feels to be in Germany! It’s very . . . Gazing out the train window at the rich blonde grass of the German plains, he felt a sense of shame and strangeness, as if he had unveiled the nakedness of some dead woman. Over there, looping as lazily wide as Beethoven’s rests and measures, shone the Elbe, where our Allied troops had linked up against the Fascists. Now here came stone arches embellished with figures and rosettes, everything massive yet teeming. Dresden, he’d have to say, felt heavier, less French than Leningrad. Elena wouldn’t most likely have . . . My, what a lot of rubbish he saw! Two arched and broken clamshells facing each other across shattered stones; that was their Frauenkirche. Another music-note burst within his head. He wondered whether he were on the verge of having a stroke; when he got back to Moscow he must learn the symptoms. Hadn’t Lenin’s wife died from something like that? Sometimes it seemed better to just, well.

  The guide explained to him that we were now pickaxing down the old chocolate-striped estates of the Junkers and capitalists, to cannibalize them for collective farms.—Very good! laughed Shostakovich. Defensive preparedness! On the, the, the class front, you know . . .

  It felt very humid. Fences, tan-colored walls, concrete cracked and white-streaked, then those orange-roofed Saxon houses with broken windows, all the bronze belfries slowly going earth-green, the orange tiles turning earth-black and—look at all those ruins! There were quite a lot of vacant lots in Dresden. Everything had been hauled away in those places. Congratulations. They explained that the statuary in the Grosser Garten had survived; it was basically decadent angels and all that claptrap. He could take a look if he liked, just for fun. Next time he came, it just might be gone, because, well, progress, you know! We’re lighting up the way with a searchlight. All these little blond children with their first wheelbarrows, learning the dignity of, well, labor, it makes me want to vomit. Actually, a lot of the comrades wanted to retire in Dresden when the time came. (What’s that sound?) Did he wish to see the spot where R. Wagner had conducted back in the nineteenth century? Unfortunately the American bandits had, you know. And would he care to visit the new Maxim Gorki Home, where East German and North Korean schoolchildren, rescued by us from Anglo-American aggression, had learned to live together in international harmony? To tell the truth, that was exactly what he’d hoped to, er . . . They felt very glad to hear that, because as it happened the schoolchildren were expecting him. He’d be especially gratified to learn that one North Korean boy whose parents had been murdered by the American adventurists wanted to play something on the piano especially for him, a concerto or maybe even a ballad or something, a whatchamacallit. They could guarantee him that it would be uplifting: Art which must fight against what Comrade Ulbricht has wisely termed the poison of skepticism.

  Regarding the war damage (caused by incendiary bombs), he said to himself: Dresden’s wrecked, all right, but I remember how that first shell smashed into the side of the apartments across the street, and then, four-beat rest, and then from that smoking hole, which was about two storeys wide, I’d say, rubble and corpses began hissing out! A snare drum could recapitulate that sound. It was quite . . . That’s what you did to Leningrad. For nine hundred days! You did it. With your eighty-eights, I believe. And then you, so to speak, Germanized the Peterhof Palace into a, a, a skeleton . . .

  No, there’d been a misprint in his itinerary. (They saw him shaking.) He wouldn’t be staying in Dresden after all. They’d arranged accommodations for him in the spa town of Goerlitz, which lies in the mountains forty kilometers away. (He was almost ready, his glands secreting music as weird as the steel spiderwebs of the wrecked Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant.) Comrade Shostakovich (Schostakowitsch was how they said it) ought to remember that he belonged to the people; he must take better care of himself. His visit to the Maxim Gorki Home would be postponed. They knew that he was tired; they wished to create the optimum conditions for his work, which . . .

  Thank you, dear friends, thank you, he replied uncertainly. I know I’ll have a, so to speak, splendid time—

  Above all, he wasn’t to worry, they said. They understood that nervous tension had been besieging his health. He’d be given everything he needed. They valued him; they’d made him a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic, effective as of today. Thank you for that, my dear, dear, so to speak, friends. And congratulations on your wonderful Maxim Gorki Home. They’d already arranged a tour of the monuments in Dresden, not to mention the wide Plätze and stone lions, the fountains, dead now, the other many-arched old bridges of Dresden (the “Blaues Wunder,” too); and he could interview as many of the Americans’ victims as he liked. Even former-officers were cooperating with us now, such was their craving for revenge. He’d doubtless find it rewarding to set their stories to music; it was merely a question of time and effort—

  But whatever is the matter, Comrade Schostakowitsch?

  Well, I, this ringing in my ears, it’s always an annoyance now. I’m not expecting to, to, you know, score any great victories on the cultural front! It’s just as you say, a, a matter of time and manpower. But I, by the way, isn’t the dacha of the former German Fascist Field-Marshal Paulus hereabouts? He must have been extremely . . . Yes, yes, I know he just died, three years ago now if I’m not mistaken; I must have read about it in Pravda . . .

  His interpreter, who was waiting for him in front of an ocher palace, proved to be a darkhaired German beauty, narrow-faced as the Germans often are, who had once been a piano student. Something about the hollow between her shoulderblades reminded him of Elena Konstantinovskaya, I mean Vigodsky, not that he could really, you know. With a modest laugh, she confessed that her teachers had found her devoid of talent. Her brother had fallen on the Ostfront, during Operation Citadel. Her ex-fiancé was in a Soviet prison camp so far as she knew. She’d wisely married someone else. Her mother, father, brothers and sisters had all died shortly before midnight on 13 February 1945. She was there when the Hitler Youth dug away the rubble from their air raid shelter. There was hardly a mark on them, but their skins had been cooked to a golden brown color.

  Shostakovich’s pale, tired face began to twitch. As gently as he could, he laid his hand upon the girl’s shoulder.

  There were dead people in all the streets, she went on brightly, but I’d imagine that you saw dead people, too, on your side . . .

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, my dear, oh yes, but we might as well spare ourselves the pain of this subject, because, you see—

  Excuse me, Herr Schostakowitsch—

  Oh, call me Dmitri Dmitriyevich, please.

  Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch, I’m sorry, but I just wanted to say that when they took all the corpses to the marketplace and cremated them—

  Well, that was the best way perhaps. Well, well, well, well. In Leningrad they dug mass graves once the earth had thawed. But, my dear girl—

  And now sometimes I wish I could go crazy. At night I h
ear the sound of the planes coming. The bombers, I mean.

  Well, well, well, well. Never mind. Perhaps we need a bite of something. And have you tasted Russian vodka? No, I see you need to talk about it. Well, can you describe this sound that you hear? Do you possess absolute pitch? A surprising number of people do, you know. And perhaps if you . . .

  I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a low, vibrating chord in E-flat major.

  Why, that’s the opening of Wagner’s Ring, isn’t it? “Das Rheingold” begins that way. But I’m not sure that a B-17 wouldn’t sing in a higher register, because . . .

  I’m very sorry, Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch, but I don’t have perfect pitch, and as I said I’m almost talentless.

  Never believe that, my dear young, shall I say colleague? We musicians always tend to underrate ourselves! But the actual pitch doesn’t matter. The distinguishing feature of Jewish music is the ability to construct a jolly melody on a foundation of sad intonations. And perhaps you Germans do the opposite, which would be, so to speak, natural for you, since you don’t like Jews, I’ve heard. Forgive me . . . A major chord, then, shall we call it a major chord? After all, major chords are supposed to be happy. At least that’s what my, my, the commissars are always telling me.

  He was supposed to be writing the score for the film “Five Days—Five Nights.” Instead, he began to compose Opus 110.

  35

  Of this work he remarked to Glikman: I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet which nobody needs. I reflected that if I die someday, it’s hardly likely anyone will compose a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could even write on the cover: Dedicated to the composer of this quartet.

  Officially, of course, he dedicated Opus 110 “to the victims of war and fascism.” Why not? Whatever he did made no difference. He, of course, was nobody’s victim, because he’d agreed to, you know.