After the secretary had emerged from the inner chamber for the second time and ordered him to keep waiting, he’d had enough. The week’s meat ration had consisted of sheep’s guts, discovered in an outlying warehouse and processed into a repulsive jelly. It was completely indigestible, and his stomach was roaring. With more than a touch of acerbity, he pointed out that it was now well past midday.
The secretary frowned. Comrade Zagorsky had been a busy man before the war, but now he was busier than ever. Karl Eliasberg would be called once more pressing matters had been dealt with.
How, wondered Elias, could the Head of the Arts Department manage to be busy? The city was wrecked and its people starved, while the only surviving arts institution was the Musical Comedy Theatre, expressly ordered to continue its capering for the benefit of the soldiers. Perhaps Zagorsky was occupied with sticking his fingers in long-distance pies, telling the Opera and Ballet Theatre what to rehearse while they remained in exile in the Ural Mountains.
‘My appointment,’ he said to the secretary, as his stomach rumbled ominously, ‘was for 10 a.m.’
‘A ten o’clock appointment does not guarantee a ten o’clock meeting,’ snapped the secretary. Straightening his uniform, flicking imaginary hairs off his sleeve, he disappeared again.
Yet if I’d turned up now, thought Elias, I would have been sent away on account of my lateness.
As the hands of the clock crawled on, his nervousness grew. He’d been told nothing, except that Yasha Babushkin would also be attending the meeting. What could the Director of the Radio Committee possibly want to discuss four months after the disbanding of the orchestra? Could a conductor be demoted from a non-existent position? Stripped of an orchestra no longer together? For the hundredth time he polished his glasses, and tried not to gnaw on his split, yellowed fingernails.
The secretary emerged like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Comrades Zagorsky and Babushkin will see you now.’
Elias sprang up, discovering too late there was no blood in his feet. He toppled to the floor, nearly landing on the secretary’s well-polished shoes. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, getting up and shoving his glasses back onto his nose. ‘My circ-circ-circulation is no longer what it was.’
The secretary had been trained not to register concern, whatever the circumstances. ‘Please hurry. We mustn’t keep our esteemed comrades waiting.’
‘No, indeed. Wasting any more time would be unpardonable,’ said Elias tartly. In spite of his tingling feet and the carpet threads hanging off his trousers, he managed to enter the inner chamber with a suitably authoritative air.
The meeting was over in less than ten minutes. The huge door clanged shut, and Elias found himself back out on the street under a leaden sky. But for once he barely noticed his surroundings as he ploughed through the slush and the mud, skirting around corpses half-covered in snow.
He dug his fingernails through his threadbare gloves and into his palms. Only through pain could he believe he was awake, that he’d really heard what he thought he had. ‘How about that!’ he repeated to himself. ‘How about that!’
At the top of Nevsky Prospect, his short burst of nervous energy ran out. By the time he reached the Griboyedov Canal, he had to rest every few minutes, and outside the military canteen his legs gave up altogether. He held onto the railings, breathing heavily, his head bowed. He knew he mustn’t linger too long or he’d lose all feeling in his hands and feet, and would never get moving again.
‘Karl Elias? Is that you?’
The voice was familiar but not immediately identifiable. Coughing, Elias raised his head and found himself looking into the pale watery eyes of Alexander, his one-time Principal Oboe.
‘My God, I hardly recognised you,’ said Alexander. ‘You were always on the thin side, but now …’ He trailed off as if not wanting to cause offence, though this was hardly the Alexander of old. He, too, had changed; his hair had been neatly trimmed, and he wore a uniform under his patched leather coat.
‘Have you joined up?’ Elias had heard nothing of Alexander for the past six months. Whether from tact or ignorance, no one had mentioned him since the day he’d stormed, drunk, from the rehearsal room.
‘Yes, the anti-aircraft unit. What about you? You look shot to pieces, if you’ll pardon an all-too-prevalent expression.’
‘I’m over-tired, that’s all,’ said Elias, trying to recover his dignity. ‘I’ve been at Party Headquarters all morning, on Radio C-C-Committee business.’ Suddenly he began shaking violently and his vision blurred. Alexander became nothing but a long thin streak against a hazy background.
‘Stay here,’ said Alexander, striding away.
There was little else Elias could do. He managed to stay upright by holding tightly to the compound railings; the frozen iron burned through his gloves and seared his fingers. You’ve just been handed a future, he tried to remind himself. But in the strangeness of the present moment — his body shutting down on him, his thoughts becoming hazy — this no longer seemed important, or even real.
Then he felt his right hand being uncurled from the fence and wrapped around a tin cup. ‘Bean soup from the canteen.’ It was Alexander. ‘It’s bloody disgusting, but it might help.’
The warmth alone was enough to bring him back to a half-living state. Silently, desperately, he drank the watery soup, scooping out the beans with his fingers and cramming them into his mouth. When he’d finished he took a deep breath. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think you may have just saved my life.’
‘It’s nothing. Here, take this.’ Alexander glanced towards the canteen, and shoved something into Elias’s pocket. ‘I’ll lose my own bread rations if they see me.’ Elias tried to thank him again, but he waved his hand dismissively. ‘You would have collapsed otherwise. And probably never got up again, by the skeletal looks of you.’
Elias ignored this. Sensation had returned to his hands and feet, and with it came a heady relief that made him feel dizzy, expansive — and forgiving. ‘I don’t suppose …’ he began. ‘Is there any chance you want to come back to the orchestra? I could get you exemption from service.’
‘The Radio Orchestra?’ Alexander stared at him. ‘I thought that was all over. Finished. Kaput.’
Should he tell? He hadn’t been forbidden to, exactly. ‘The orchestra’s been ordered to regroup,’ he blurted out. ‘The Arts Department is planning a season of symphonic concerts to raise morale in the city — and we’ve been ordered to perform them.’ He felt the same combination of elation and fear as he had earlier, standing before Zagorsky’s desk. ‘I’ve got no idea how many of our musicians are still alive, but I’d be glad to have you back, if you care to come.’
Alexander gave a fleeting smile. ‘I see. Even drunks and bastards are preferable to dead men.’ But he didn’t speak with venom. Perhaps, thought Elias, this was as close as he could come to an admission of guilt? ‘Even if I didn’t like artillery work,’ said Alexander, ‘which I do, there isn’t any way in the world I could be your First Oboe again.’ He pulled off his glove and held out his right hand. All four fingers were missing, and the back of the hand was a swollen mess of shiny skin. ‘A shell attack in December. But I can still manage the guns.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Elias swallowed hard. ‘As for the orchestra’s sake — well, it’s a pity. I have a feeling we will sorely need you.’ He waited until Alexander had replaced his glove, then shook hands with him a trifle awkwardly. Turning away, he felt the bread Alexander had stolen for him weighing down his pocket. ‘By the way,’ he said, turning back, ‘how’s your sister?’
‘My sister? I don’t —’
‘She was suffering from diphtheria last year. Or was it another illness beginning with D?’
Alexander clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, yes, that sister. You’d hardly believe it but she made a miraculous recovery. She’s the picture of health now. That is —’ He bit his lip. ‘She’s starved like the rest of us, of course. Very thin, not able to get out much.’ He
peered at Elias. ‘You sly dog! You know!’
Elias gave a small smile. ‘Give her my regards.’
Revelations, after snow
Nikolai ran his hand over the ice-cold wall, then looked up at the ceiling. A steel girder had crashed through one corner of the room, revealing a splintered piece of sky. The windows were either cracked or broken, and the chilly spring winds whistled in from every side. ‘They expect us to rehearse in here? And perform that? Did they even listen to the broadcast from Kuibyshev?’
Elias, too, was dismayed by the state of the room. ‘Perhaps they can provide us with some heating,’ he said, trying to focus on practicalities so as not to panic at the thought of the overwhelming task that had been handed to him. He’d managed to pick up the premiere of the Seventh Symphony on his battered radio set, huddled beside the bed where his mother lay unconscious. For over an hour he’d barely moved, filtering out the crackling of the radio, fighting towards the music below. His brain had absorbed every upbeat and dying fall; his fingers longed to pick up a baton. ‘I’ve missed it,’ he confided to his mother, whose breath was rattling in her lungs. ‘Oh, God, I’ve missed it.’ Then — ‘I have missed him.’
Nikolai was looking worried. ‘It’s Shostakovich’s most enormous symphony yet. They must be crazy. What do they think you are, a magician?’ He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, in a parody of the old pre-war caution. But they were alone. The door swung on one hinge, and the corridor was deserted, strewn with glass and dead leaves. ‘I suppose it’s that damn political commissar. If we manage to play the Seventh, we’ll boost not only Leningrad’s morale but Zhdanov’s career into the bargain.’
‘Zhdanov has already got hold of the score. It was flown in from Moscow last week.’
‘Over Nazi lines?’ Nikolai raised his eyebrows. ‘He must be serious, then.’
‘It’s no longer even a subject for debate. It was already a decree before I set foot in the Party office.’ Elias spoke matter-of-factly, but ever since he’d learned of his appointed task he’d been lying awake at night rigid with terror and desire. Never before had he been offered such a chance — and never before had so much been at stake. For a moment he was almost glad that Shostakovich had been forced to leave the city. The thought of the composer sitting in on rehearsals, listening intently to Elias’s interpretation of his Seventh Symphony, made his stomach lurch.
‘At least Dmitri will be a happy man,’ said Nikolai. ‘It’s only right that the Leningrad symphony should be played in Leningrad. If not for the siege, of course, it would have been premiered here by—’
‘By Mravinsky.’ Elias gave a small smile, trying to suppress the old jealousy. ‘By Mravinsky, and the esteemed Philharmonic.’
‘Well, everything’s different now! I know you’ll do a fine job.’ Nikolai began peeling mouldy carpet off a pile of rusted music stands. ‘Do you know how many of the orchestra are still … still with us?’
Elias swallowed hard. On the list of musicians he’d been shown, twenty-five names had been crossed out in black: officially dead. Fifteen were circled in red: the only ones known for a fact to be alive. ‘I’m not sure yet. I’ve asked military headquarters to register anyone capable of playing an instrument.’
‘Men from the Front? At least they’ll be adept at marches.’ In spite of his attempt at a joke, Nikolai looked exceedingly doubtful.
‘We need ten horns. Six or more trombones, six trumpets.’ Elias spread his hands. ‘Even if we can dredge up those numbers, will they be strong enough to play?’
The room was freezing, in spite of the weak sun creeping through the streaked windows. ‘We should go.’ Nikolai was shivering. ‘We’ll be spending all too much time here over the coming weeks.’
‘Yes, and I must report to the Smolny Palace,’ said Elias, ‘to beg the generals for the loan of some of their trumpet players.’
On the steps of the Radio Hall, they paused and looked down at the street. You think we’re buying human meat from the black market? Elias heard Olga Shapran’s voice ringing in his head. You think we’re cannibals? Now that the spring thaw had come, her words had a new and horrifying meaning. Even worse than seeing people killed by bombs or starvation was realising what had happened to them afterwards. As the grubby blanket of snow was drawn away, it became apparent that many of the corpses had been dismembered.
Severed legs with chunks of meat cut out of them, and women’s bodies with the breasts sliced clean away. Torsos with cuts across their backs and stomachs, filleted like sides of beef. Flesh had been stolen from the dead to feed the living. These were the gruesome lengths to which some Leningraders had gone to stay alive.
Surveying the carnage, Elias felt utterly despairing. He covered his face with his hands. What use was art in the face of this? Was Shostakovich’s music nothing but a beautiful mask to disguise the savagery of human nature?
‘Seeing this doesn’t exactly inspire one to perform for Leningrad, does it?’ Nikolai spoke sombrely, as if looking directly into Elias’s divided heart. ‘But what else can we do?’
A new front
Elias blinked and swayed. The April sun — longed for and dreamed of for so many months — was no friend. It did nothing to stop his shivering, and it stung his weak, smarting eyes.
He rubbed his hand over his face. Slowly the glare through the window receded, and he saw fifty or more musicians staring up at him, their faces devoid of expression. And now a hollow-cheeked man in military uniform was getting to his feet, holding his trombone over his shoulder like a rifle. Was he saying something? There was such a ringing in Elias’s ears he could hear nothing at all.
Suddenly, out of the roaring static, emerged a familiar voice. How can I ever repay you? For a second Elias saw him as clearly as if he were in the room — Shostakovich, his eyes shining behind his glasses, his hands clutching a sheaf of paper on which the rest of the Seventh Symphony would be written. Relief ran through Elias’s veins and into his fingers, feeling almost like warmth. He had a job to do.
‘I’m sorry if I seem vague.’ He spoke not just to the standing trombonist but to the entire room. ‘I’ve been having trouble with my hearing lately, along with my circulation, digestion, nervous system and general mental well-being — as, perhaps, have most of you.’ As an icebreaker it wasn’t much, but the watching faces relaxed a little, and mouths lifted into what, in better days, would have been smiles.
‘I was asking, sir,’ said the trombonist, with the formality he might use when addressing a senior military officer, ‘where you’d like us to start?’
Elias’s hands tightened around the score. It was thick as a bull’s neck, it looked impossible to penetrate. But just as panic threatened to overwhelm him, Shostakovich spoke again. This is how I see war! Only now did Elias hear the doubt beneath the composer’s defiance and, strangely, it steadied him.
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said, letting out his breath. ‘What better place to start?’ He signalled for an A, but although the oboist (another unknown military man) pursed his lips and blew, there was no sound. Swaying in his chair, blowing again, at last he produced a note, as thin as a birdcall from the depths of a forest.
So this is my allotted weapon! Elias watched the makeshift orchestra tuning up. There was old Petrov, who had somehow recovered and survived the winter, though he was nothing but skin and bone. And Nikolai, lifting his bow as if it were made of concrete — but so many musicians gone! Their replacements, still unknown to Elias, handled their instruments with the jerky mechanical movements of wind-up toys. Within three months, with this roomful of skeletons, he had to produce an inspired rendition of the largest ever Shostakovich symphony! If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it.
Tuning up, warming up: the processes that had once seemed interminable were over in less than a minute. Then the room was quiet once more, while far away the restless mutter of gunfire continued, as familiar and constant as hunger.
E
lias raised his arms. Pain flared in his back, and his shoulders trembled. ‘Friends,’ he said, although he knew fewer than a quarter of them. ‘Friends, I know that you’re weak, and you’re starving. But we must force ourselves to work. Let’s begin.’
He brought down his baton. The musicians stirred, seeming ready to play — but nothing happened. It was as if, moving as one body, they were paralysed from nerves, fear, or extreme fatigue. This was as bad as Elias’s very first rehearsals, when he’d been so green and nervous the orchestra resisted his every move. There was no derisive laughter now, just an unnerving silence. Exhaustion seemed to be spreading through the room.
‘Comrades!’ He thought back to the way Shostakovich’s hands had pounded at the piano keys, hammering out the opening to a work he wasn’t yet certain about. ‘Comrades! I command you to raise your instruments. It’s your duty.’
The musicians sat upright; their eyes flickered towards him. He raised his arms again. Over the sea of heads, he caught sight of Nikolai, gripping his violin with his bony left hand. His eyes were fixed on Elias with the intensity of someone about to go over the top into battle.
Elias looked away before sentiment could weaken him. ‘Let’s begin.’ He brought down his arms.
He’d heard the first chords of the symphony so many times, playing them out in his imagination as he lay in bed, clutching his coat around him. The reality was completely different. A few straggling chords, the inadequate rattle of a snare drum, a tiny tapping of bows on strings. It was the smell of food without taste, or the promise of sustenance without delivery. He was grasping at thin air.
He rapped on his music stand, and the musicians straggled to a halt. Already the mouths of the woodwind and brass players were reddened, their scabby lips bleeding. Some of the faces raised to Elias had the white-green tinge of the dead. Then, as he watched, the lead flautist slid out of his chair and onto the floor.
The Conductor Page 26