Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

  ‘He looks like a spoiled child.’

  He did not, when the door opened completely, appear spoiled, but he did in fact look somewhat like a child.

  This was due to one of those lightning-quick associations, brought about by a transaction which has long given scientists ready evidence that the human brain is capable of extremely rapid and profoundly advanced cerebral procedures. If they could only be properly harnessed, it would place humans in the very front rank of occupants on planet Earth, despite their dubious performance thus far in geologic time.

  The connection that Butterbugs made was instant: he simultaneously beheld the face of the composer, and just above it, on the living room wall behind, seen by means of the world’s fastest focus (the actor’s eyes), the framed portrait of the composer as sailor-suit-clad kid, pulled off with aplomb by Boris Kustodiev. For the observer, this link provided a complete personality background of Shostakovich, without the man himself having to say one word.

  In any case, Butterbugs’ Russian was sufficient for the two to make more conventional verbal contact from the get-go. The hallway ambience was replaced with the kind of homey warmth that is always restorative on such feeble forenoons as this. And the suite was spacious. Expansive, even.

  After some small talk that did not go far, the composer went over to one of his grand pianos, the one on the right. Without a word he started playing a prelude. Butterbugs could hardly move. He was rooted with awe and intrigue.

  After he finished, he said in a somewhat thin voice:

  ‘I completed it this morning. The last of my ‘Incorporations’, 36 preludes in this album.’

  ‘I am moved, Dmitri Dmitrievich.’

  ‘So! I’ve warmed up now. Have I passed my audition?’

  He laughed without smiling.

  ‘The mood you have created! Where am I, exactly?’

  DDS was pleased.

  ‘Have some tea now. My wife has left it for us over here.’

  The composer moved slowly, but he was able to sit down on a settee right under the Kustodiev portrait, and all was well. Still the boy in the sailor’s suit!

  They had tea in silence. Then the composer spake.

  ‘I wonder, my young friend. Would they mind – would Grigori Mikhailovich (Kozintsev), Sergei Fyodorovich (Bondarchuk), Andrei Arsenyevich (Tarkovsky), Sergei Mikhailovich (Eisenstein), Mlada Ephreumovich (Decembrovich – exec producer) and Yevgeny Aleksandrovich mind – if I asked them about scoring the Ilyich picture?’

  ‘Mind?’ Butterbugs was nonplused.

  ‘Or, in their absence, may I ask you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘If I could score the Ilyich picture: ‘Lenin’.’

  ‘Ask me?’

  ‘You know, would it cause trouble?

  ‘I can’t imagine you, sir, would cause… trouble.’

  The musician gave a wry smile and adjusted his turbo-powered glasses.

  ‘Oh, I suppose I might have caused a bit of dust to fall off the shelf a few times. Just don’t want it to happen again.’

  ‘You mean – I, I mean – Dmitri Dmitrievich, I can’t imagine you not scoring this picture! You are the perfect one to do it! Oh, will you? When can you begin? How long would it take, you think?’

  ‘Well, I’m happy to hear that. But please, I hope you won’t be cross. The score is quite a concoction. I also finished it this morning. On the other piano.’

  Butterbugs was truly thunderstruck. It was a magical moment. The privilege that he felt, and its impact, allowed him to rise to the occasion.

  ‘Dear Maestro. I – This is a momentous thing for me. With all my heart, I am excited.’

  ‘But Butterbugs… if I may address you informally…’

  The composer knew there was no patronymic to be had. (‘Butterbugs Olddadovich’…?)

  ‘Oh, of course!’

  ‘But Butterbugs, you have not even heard said score. How can you approve it?’

  ‘Because of your reputa –’ Butterbugs cut himself off.

  He suddenly realized that he was not being dallied with, but was experiencing a sophisticated protocol based on sensitivity and good manners. Whether it was a cultural manifestation or just characteristic of the man himself, the young actor got the message.

  ‘I would consider it an honor, if you would like to play it, or just a bit, or whatever you care… Yes! I would dearly love to hear it!’

  ‘Good,’ DDS said quietly, then got up with some difficulty, but literally sped over to the grand piano on the left, where a thick sheaf of orchestral score sat on the music stand.

  He played.

  Though it had aspects of the 4th Symphony in its beginning bars, and purposeful hints at his modernist origins, the score was pure, newly-minted, and especially inventive Shostakovich.

  Though he was playing from a fully orchestrated score, his impromptu piano reduction had all the finished quality of his most salient solo works. There was over two and a half hours of music, and when he finished, DDS was visibly chuffed, yet obviously fulfilled.

  ‘It’s good to practice,’ he quipped, willingly accepting Butterbugs’ proffering of still-hot tea from the idling samovar.

  They settled back.

  ‘Your score will be the most important part of this picture,’ said Butterbugs, flattery being the furthest thing from his mind.

  DDS was patient, but firm.

  ‘Pay no attention to what you just said, Butterbugs. My score will of course not be the most important element. It can’t be. All elements will work together. We’ll all pull together. Besides, I agree with what Alfred Newman said on the phone to me once.’

  Butterbugs was surprised he knew Pappy.

  DDS was almost puckish.

  ‘He said, if the score does not conform to the picture, it has no business being a score. Or something like that!’

  For the first time DDS allowed a laugh and a smile to occur at the same time.

  ‘You two are the true professionals,’ said Butterbugs.

  ‘Alfred and I were comparing cinematic notes. We both deal with the same mechanisms. Different editions. Not quite cynical, just realistic.’

  ‘It is difficult, Maestro, to control my praise – for both of you…’

  The composer was silently appreciative of the young actor’s canniness, but the less said about the Industry right now, the better.

  ‘So! My score gets a very pale ‘green light’, perhaps?’

  ‘My honored friend, I take this matter to be settled!’ announced Butterbugs, with a broad smile.

  DDS gave a terse nod and agreed.

  ‘No doubt I will be obliged to add or subtract from the score as it is fitted for its purpose.’

  Butterbugs was keenly aware that, as a pioneer in film scoring, the composer knew implicitly what he was doing.

  ‘Your experienced hand will have us all at ease, Maestro,’ he said, somewhat clumsily.

  Shostakovich was charmed by the young man’s soulfulness, however awkward. Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘Now, you must attend tonight’s premiere with me. In the Hall of Large Columns.’

  ‘Oh! That would be fine. What, may I ask, is the work to be premiered?’

  ‘My 30th. My 30th symphony. That’s right, another decadal number. You will sit with me and my associates. But I may not say much. Everything has to be right, and I have to check everything.’

  ‘In the most simple terms, all I can say is that I would be highly honored, Dmitri Dmitrievich!’

  ‘And oh, forgive me. Please call me Mitya. My childhood moniker, but a comfortable shoe. Probably best not uttered in public, though. Etiquette still rules, no matter the regime. In any case, our ‘era of formality’ has passed.’

  His wife Irina brought in a cold platter for tiffin, and the three of them got to know each other more fully with easygoing smalltalk. The couple were just as enthralled by Butterbugs’ cinematic anecdotes as he was by their insights on the top echelon of the Russian/Soviet/Russian mus
ical world.

  ‘How utterly, utterly extraordinary that I am even here. Here!’ the actor thought, between vodka shots.

  Because of their rapid familiarity, Butterbugs willingly accepted the invitation to assist in the preparations for the gala evening. His sudden role as aide-de-camp was without script, and thus, its genuineness touched him. DDS had his difficulties in getting everything done, and it was clear that his help was appreciated. Normally, of course, a pupil or other devotee would fulfill the duties as needed, but Butterbugs could tell that his presence was desired.

  And in the controlled whirl of a Shostakovich premiere, Butterbugs could note the contrasts between how they did things ‘here’ and how they did things ‘there’. Of course, there was a recognizable soulfulness. If Grauman, Newman, and dozens of others in Hollywood had a certifiably-traceable Russian background, the community, no matter how diaspora-ized, still was joined in spirit. Indeed, Butterbugs felt at home and in concert. And the harmony of DDS’s latest symphony gave him cause to converse knowingly and competently with the composer himself at the reception, after the 37-minute opus was concluded. Happily, it was enthusiastically received.

  When the composer’s son Maxim, who had conducted with distinction, joined them, he was simply bowled over. For the first time that he knew of, his father, after a premiere, had not simply downed his requisite single vodka and rolled off to retirement for the evening. There he was, with a thimbleful instead of a tumbler, chatting animatedly and with obvious ease, with this young American actor and several others. He looked younger, too.

  ‘Ah, Butterbugs, my friend,’ the composer drew him aside. ‘I was remiss in confiding to you an important fact. I have indeed seen several of your pictures. Actually, too many to recount right now. I am currently formulating what I will call ‘A Butterbugs Symphony’. Now that I’ve met you in person, it is coming together swiftly!’

  Butterbugs wanted to start bawling.

  ‘Mitya – I mean, Dmitri Dmitrievich – I am… speechless…!’

  The composer winked wryly. ‘That’s perfectly all right. I’ll provide the music. No words necessary.’

  After DDS kissed him at evening’s end – the last one in the group – Butterbugs regarded him with loving admiration.

  ‘A truly great man,’ he said to himself. ‘My hero.’

  On his way back to the Gagzhoghovsk Hotel, riding in the St. P. Conservatory’s Packard-based Zil limo, Butterbugs rightfully concluded that he had hit it off with the illustrious composer. The remarkableness of the encounter was almost otherworldly to him. If he himself had so far not yet achieved what he had in the cinema world, his credibility would be zero if he told of his Shostakovian encounter.

  Surely, some in the music world would still scoff when they’d hear of his rapport with the famous composer.

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t have let you in like that.’

  Or some such reaction.

  But as a guest, as an actor, as one in town from out of town, he was out to prove nothing. All Butterbugs knew was that the wonder of life sometimes exceeded all expectations. In the growing list of his remarkable experiences, his time with DDS was surely towards the top.

  The next day, as they had tea in a private alcove of a Nevsky Prospekt vodka shoppe, to avoid prying eyes, Yevgeny asked:

  ‘Well, did he do it?’

  ‘Do what – exactly?’

  Butterbugs wasn’t sure what…

  ‘Present a score? A complete score?’

  ‘How did you know? Yevo, how could you have –’

  ‘It’s in his great tradition. Dmitri Dmitrievich has a tendency to respond to things he really likes. He responds with music. Surprise! Yes? But it is a surprise. Years ago, I had written ‘Babi Yar’ and it was a controversy. I knew the poem circulated, and one day I got a phone call. ‘Yevgeny Aleksandrovich. Shostakovich here. I’ve read your poem ‘Babi Yar’ in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. It’s quite a remarkable poem. Will you allow me to set it to music?’… Well, I replied in the next sentence, in case he might change his mind, ‘Of course, please do.’ I didn’t want to appear ingratiating, but I was very young, and here’s DDS, our brightest and most talented, asking permission of me! Without pausing at all, he continued briskly and matter-of-factly: ‘Splendid. Thank God, you don’t mind. The music is ready. Can you come here right away?’’

  ‘You mean…’

  ‘That’s correct. He’d already done it. The composition was complete. And completely orchestrated. On the chance that I would approve! Because he cared that much. I’m sure that if I’d had the slightest hesitation, he would have withdrawn it. He knew what things could be like. But DDS has always had courage, despite what they’ve said to the contrary. And when I heard the composition, which was to become Symphony #13, in exactly the same manner you just did yesterday, one-on-one, in private, and for my benefit, I was carried away by the experience. He changed me as a poet. I’m always grateful.’

  ‘And now he’s done the same thing.’

  ‘Yes, he has. Indeed.’

  ‘It’s one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever experienced. It’s a full-blown score! Weighs a ton. I’m sure it can be adapted to fit.’

  ‘You can be sure it can. It’s going to be a rather lengthy picture, you know. You must realize, my young friend, DDS is a professional! He played piano for silents when he was much younger than yourself. At the Bright Reel picture show. It’s still there. We shall have to see a film in that place. It’s really something. Intact. Probably the original fleas are still working in the pit. Or at least their descendants. DDS and films! I can’t count the number of film scores he’s done. He’s one of the great innovators and one of the great experts, but the concert crowd would hardly ever know.’

  ‘He’s only heard about our picture. Hasn’t seen it –’

  ‘Ah, but now you must know the full story. You are on the tail end of it. That’s because you’re in it. And because you’re in it, that very fact piqued his interest. It wasn’t because there was yet another Ulyanov movie. It was because you were to be in it. DDS keeps up. I lent him script drafts, but he really didn’t need them. The score has been completed for over a week. But he wanted to get permission to use it from you yourself. It was all contingent on you. Now, you may feel that you were tricked, but I would add that –’

  ‘Tricked! If that’s a trick, I would wish for all… I can’t tell you how delighted and honored I am, Yevo! Incidentally, he told me that he’d just finished it that very morning.’

  ‘Upon second, third, fourth readings, playings, he revises regularly.’

  ‘In any case, a phenomenon.’

  ‘Isn’t it so? That’s how the man works. I’ve never gotten over his generosity.’

  Butterbugs could not speak. All he could do was clutch the precious score in its voluminous packet close to his breast.

  As the two left the vodka shoppe, word somehow got out that not only were Yevtushenko and Butterbugs in town, they were delivering a new Shostakovich work to the publisher. Petrograders are so dedicated to art, nothing more needed to be said. As word spread up the busy sidewalk’s route to the publisher at the other end of the Prospekt, a pathway was cleared for them, and applause accompanied their every step, until DDS’s score was safely hand-delivered to Yolga Sposhtekskiiya herself, in charge of engraving at Spiritniov Music Publications.

  Back, back, to Moscow.

  The train ride had naturally been a contemplative time for Butterbugs. Fortunately, everyone else on the train, in his compartment, on his bench, was in the same frame of mind. It was as if they had all had their own sessions with DDS, all with the same impact.

  He needed, and got, some wind-down time. As a result of one DDS phone call to the proper source, he got access to the Kustodiev’s dacha at Modestino. It was there, in those drippy autumnal days, that he came to understand the significance of his Russian experience so far.

  He loved the afternoons, lost in thought, with the samovar steaming a
cross the room, the late sun sometimes breaking through against a deep slate-colored backdrop of inevitable clouds.

  The greatness of the environment added to his confidence in the support from those he’d met and had exchanges with, on this shoot. Why couldn’t he add yet more layers to his perception of what he followed as truth? Was there not infinite room by which to acquire and store such accoutrements, be they bulky as striped mattresses? Was the structure upon which they would rest not hell-for-stout enough? Granted, truths about truth always proved to be lighter than air. There were no burdens picked up on this journey. Only changes as an actor. Growth. Progress. Understanding.

  Butterbugs agreed to meet Yakov at the Pertsov Apartments near the quay at 9:00AM. The morn had become decidedly stormy, full of powerful cobalt skies that promised to deliver either rain or sturm und drang, or all three. The storied façade of the building formed a moody but romantic backdrop to the rendezvous.

  Next a brick pilaster, Yakov appeared, lofty, gaunt, pale, collar of his greatcoat framing his Mosaic beard. With epic geniality, Butterbugs commented on his gloomy mien, and though Yakov thought it splendid, he did not say so.

  Yakov was, despite the gathering storm, serene.

  ‘Butterbugs, if I could only make you understand. This is an ecstatic moment. The skies – look at them! Then, notice the atmosphere below, with its rich, pent-up possibilities! And us – here – now – with this dramatic building looming over us! I can touch it, commune with it, connect it to our greater environment. Is it not glorious? Few, right now in all the world, are in surroundings such as these!’

  Butterbugs, without needing any encouragement, immediately latched onto Yakov’s sentiments. Indeed, he glanced around, at the already steep, obliquely-viewed gable of the building, its theatrical character heightened by its massy profile against the oncoming sky, now spitting atomized precipitation. The deep Nordic coloring of the Apartments, the wildness of some of the obelisk-shaped windows, the growing agitation of the clouds beyond, the attractive dreariness of the little garden past the wall, the appearance of lamp-glow in some of the windows, implying coziness in contrast to the wonderfully unsettled weather without, which surrounded them now, sealed Yakov’s license to acknowledge the joy of the moment.