The Phoenix Song

by John Sinclair

  *

  The evening after the anti-Debussy campaign ended I had my first lesson with Comrade Meretrenko, my new violin teacher. He was a withdrawn and melancholy man of about fifty, a wearer of corduroy trousers and a ribbed woollen jersey with leather patches on the elbows and shoulders, a man given to long sighs that could mean variously criticism or resignation or admiration, or, I began to suspect, some entirely unrelated thought or memory that had come to his mind during my playing, which he would never divulge. At his insistence our lesson took place in his apartment. His wife Ksenia served us tea brewed downstairs in Mitrofan’s samovar, which seemed to have been installed more or less permanently in Pavel and Raya’s apartment. She was a stout-legged woman with a pin-cushion face and yellowy blond hair pulled back aggressively into a bun, secured by a complicated set of brass callipers and a wooden clasp that, had it been several hundred times larger, could have served to hold the hawsers on a suspension bridge. Ksenia sat solidly at the table, one meaty hand clutching her teacup, watching us with cool green eyes, nodding at the things her husband was saying despite it being clear she had little or no Chinese.

  Comrade Meretrenko was the only one of the advisors who spoke Chinese with any confidence, although his vocabulary began to fall away sharply once the conversation moved beyond music. He was of medium build and starting to loosen around the jowls, and he had tufts of black hair like miniature gardens planted at odd places – his ears, his nose, his wrists and along the backs of his fingers. His most prominent feature, however, was a pair of enormous black eyebrows, which would lie flat like obedient dogs when he played the violin, but at other times writhed around like caterpillars beyond his conscious control. They were immensely distracting: their arrangement and movement would seem either to reinforce or to undermine the point he was trying to make, like a pair of unruly court jesters, or they would quiver stiffly, giving me the impression that unnameable forces lurked within him which might burst out at any moment. Only after I learned to ignore his eyebrows completely did I begin to feel comfortable in his presence, and to benefit from his uncompromising exactitude and his enormous reservoir of patience.

  Comrade Meretrenko explained the programme of music he wanted me to work on: works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chausson and Szymanowski. I asked him if I could learn some Russian music, and he gave one of his sighs and started to count off composers on the long bony fingers of one hand. ‘Sadly Tchaikovsky has fallen from favour. There is some Glazunov and Taneyev, if I can get hold of the scores, and I suppose Prokofiev, but one can never be sure of their reputation from day to day. Khachaturian has a violin concerto, but it has little merit, in my opinion. So too Myaskovsky’s concerto, which I can hardly listen to. And of course Stravinsky . . . ah, Stravinsky, he has placed himself beyond our reach.’ I asked about Shostakovich, making sure that I pronounced the name clumsily with a thick Chinese accent. He frowned and said, ‘I have little enthusiasm for the modernists. They have done nothing for the violin, in my opinion. Their main interest seems to be the tuba and the glockenspiel. Besides I know of nothing Shostakovich has written for solo violin. He is a writer of symphonies and motion picture scores. A symphony for every five-year plan – you can see it listed there in the official records: steel – five million tonnes; symphonies – one Shostakovich; table-tennis balls – one hundred thousand. And he will compose extra ones, if required, to mark military victories or a death in the Presidium.’

  Before I left, Comrade Meretrenko commented on my accommodation on the top floor of the building. He warned me that it seemed to lack insulation and would be extremely cold in winter. I asked him whether I was likely to be taught by any of the other advisors, and he said I surely would be, and reeled off names and areas of expertise and one or two personal traits, which I scrupulously committed to memory.

  That night I practiced with Ling Ling and Tian Mei Yun, and again lingered in the dark stairwell of my building listening for scraps of Russian conversation. I heard Pavel and Raya argue briefly over their son, and learned that he was studying physics, but faltering, either due to a romance with an unsuitable young woman who happened to be a cousin on his mother’s side (Pavel’s interpretation) or due to his having inherited his father’s aptitude for self-discipline (Raya’s interpretation). The argument flared briefly, like dry leaves thrown into a fire, and I expected at any moment to hear the sound of a slap or breaking glass; but it quickly subsided into silence. Raya came to the door and leant her shoulder against the frame. She was still wearing the clothes she had worn at the Criticise Debussy campaign, and I reflected on how dissimilar they were to what the Russian women in Harbin would wear, the flowing French styles they had copied from magazines and patterns that had found their way north from the old concessions of Shanghai. Instead, Raya was all faceted and bevelled and pleated and tucked; a skirt of tight broadcloth, colourless in the yellow light from the apartment, and a white blouse ornately-stitched with tight lines of small thread beads, that was tucked into her skirt and billowed outwards generously before tapering into a narrow neck and a scalloped collar with a line of embroidered circles along its edges. Whether by design or not, she was wearing a Criticise Debussy ensemble.

  She produced from her closed palm a match-book and a cigarette which she lit, quickly blowing several smoke kisses towards the ceiling. From the shadows I studied one half of her face: high Slavic cheekbones, a protruding brow that was starting to slip forward over her large, round eyes, a large but shapely nose, and wide lips which she pulled tightly over her teeth and poked at repeatedly with the tip of her little finger. She held the cigarette in front of her face, pointed straight up like a little burning extension of one finger. She flexed one knee and rested her heel on the doorframe behind her, and I noticed that her legs were stockinged but that she had dispensed with her plain brown leather shoes and that while her toes were long and tapered, her ankles were beginning to thicken. Beauty – physical beauty – had visited her during her youth, I thought to myself, had lingered for some time, but had then been called away before its work was complete, promising one day to return before ordinariness engulfed her. And at the time she had not cared whether it came or went, for she had believed in beauty that lay elsewhere.

  ‘Where are you?’ Pavel called from within the apartment. Raya’s brows tightened and she opened her mouth in a wide yawn.

  ‘I am out by the door, it is cooler here,’ Raya replied. Her voice resonated in the dark cavity of the stairwell around me, the tiny shriek still there like a slash across a piece of rich fabric. She took another long puff on her cigarette, hollowing her cheeks as she did so, and then she propelled herself forward, stabbed the cigarette into the opposite doorframe and retreated inside, leaving the door ajar. I stayed in the stairwell another half hour, but heard nothing more save the noise of the pair moving around, avoiding each other as much as was possible in the tiny apartment.

  This became my daily routine over the weeks that followed. School in the morning. Musical education in the afternoon. A lesson with Comrade Meretrenko three times a week in the early evening, alternating with practice with Ling Ling and sometimes with Tian on cello. And then afterwards haunting the stairwell until the Foreign Teachers’ Building settled into silence. Pavel and Raya were by far the most productive of my subjects, due to their hospitable nature, their habit of leaving their door ajar, and the grating tension in their marriage which they made little attempt to conceal. I reported to Madame Huang on snatches of conversation from other rooms and from brief exchanges overheard in the stairwell: some anger at Director Ho over the allocation of offices; grumbling about the food in the faculty dining hall; tears on receiving the news of the death of a sister; plans to return to the Soviet Union; and suspicion of an affair between one of the advisors and a senior student (which Madame Huang, after some discreet investigation, decided was unfounded).

  My nocturnal duties and my studies left me little time to explore the city. On a
few occasions the whole student body walked to the People’s Park for mass demonstrations, and on Sunday afternoons Ling Ling and I would sometimes walk arm in arm along the Bund and admire the façades of the colonial buildings – former banks, headquarters of trading houses, and the former Customs House whose bells still chimed the same tune as Big Ben every hour (until, a year after I arrived, the tune was changed – at great expense – to ‘The East is Red’). Occasionally, we would stray across the bridge into Hong Chew, the traditional ‘Chinese area’ of the old colonial city, now home to the remnants of other communities: the White Russians, the Arabs, and the Sikhs (former employees of colonial trading houses). I was tempted to seek out the Jewish butcher shop, but since I was always in the company of a classmate I dared not.

  I also reported to Madame Huang on the excursions made by Mitrofan into the old parts of the city and the spoils he brought back from its Jewish traders. On one occasion, when Raya had closed the door of the apartment on the third floor, perhaps in anticipation of having particularly sharp words with her husband, I had retreated only a few steps upwards when I heard Mitrofan ascending from below, calling loudly to Pavel and, upon reaching the third floor, pounding on the door until he was admitted.

  ‘Look, my friend,’ he called, and held out a cloth bag to Pavel as he opened the door. ‘I have knydl for you! Ukrainian knydl! As fresh as our girl can make them.’

  Pavel stood sleepily in the doorway and after Mitrofan had strode past him, he carefully placed a boot against the door to keep it open and retreated inside. ‘It is stuffy in here, Raya, so I have opened the door,’ he called.

  ‘Voilà!’ Mitrofan was saying, ‘Look, Raya, pickled cabbage, prianik medoviy made with Siberian honey, I am told, and sorry, no karavay this time, but I have this Jewish bread I have never heard of: mandelakh!’

  ‘You have never heard of mandelakh!’ Raya said. ‘Have you lived your entire life out on the steppes? Have you never been to the Pale of Settlement? Come, Mitrofan, hero of the revolution. See, I was just laying out the cards for a game of patience, but if Pavel agrees we can play a game of three-handed fool and eat knydl and drink tongue-flavoured tea from the samovar.’

  ‘Please, no, I have reading to do,’ complained Pavel. ‘But a thousand thanks for your efforts, Mitrofan. These look like they are straight from the Besarabsky Market. Thank heaven for the Jews, eh Raya? We should summon Fyodor and Ksenia down from above.’

  ‘If not cards, then chess,’ Raya said. ‘Let us have a game of chess. I haven’t played since we arrived in Shanghai. Pavel refuses to play, and besides I always beat him. Here, you set up the pieces and I will pour your tea.’

  ‘Come, Pavel, come, eat the knydl. They are still warm. Take two, Pavel.’

  Pavel muttered his thanks and his shadow on the curtain grew larger until he parted it with his hand and stepped into the vestibule, cradling his food in his palm.

  ‘Hey!’ Mitrofan called from within. ‘I have no queen. Where is the black queen?’

  ‘Pavel,’ Raya shouted. ‘Pavel, where is the queen, the black queen? Don’t tell me . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Pavel called back, without turning his head. ‘Remember it went missing last summer, when we were in Feodosia at your uncle’s place. He thought he had dropped it in the mud bath. That shows how long it is since we played.’

  ‘We will have to improvise,’ Raya said. ‘What can serve as a black queen? Here, use this! . . . And I will begin with pawn to king four.’

  ‘You expect me to touch that thing? I will catch a disease. Here, I will open on the king’s side.’

  ‘Touch what?’ Pavel called.

  ‘A duck’s foot! Your wife has given me a duck’s foot for a queen. Surely this is bad luck!’

  ‘It’s all we have,’ Raya replied. ‘If I had a rabbit’s tail I would give it to you. Good luck is hard to come by. Bad luck is better than no luck at all.’

  ‘What kind of proverb is that?’ Mitrofan laughed. ‘Let me see what I have in my pockets. Here, let’s try this.’

  ‘My God! What could be worse luck than that? Pavel, he wants to use a bullet as a queen.’

  ‘Is it live?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Mitrofan said. ‘And it’s not a bullet, it’s a shotgun cartridge.’

  ‘You have brought a shotgun with you?’

  ‘No, only this cartridge. It’s a stowaway; I found it tucked into one of my spare boots.’

  ‘You must explain these strange trans-Caucasian customs,’ said Raya. ‘Keeping bullets in your boots? Whatever for? Check!’

  ‘You can’t fool me with that opening. That’s a Latvian Gambit, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. Pavel! Come here and tell me if I am playing a Latvian Gambit.’

  Pavel snorted loudly, but did not move from where he stood in the doorway.

  ‘Pavel!’

  ‘Kolya is coming,’ Pavel said, and out of the half-light I saw Nikolai Golden ascending the stairs. He laboured up the final few steps and stood for a moment face to face with Pavel, and then produced a folded paper from his breast pocket.

  ‘Is it true, then?’ Pavel asked softly, with a chuckle of resignation.

  ‘I have the telegram here. My congratulations, Comrade.’ He embraced Pavel around his shoulders. Pavel was unmoved. ‘Come now, Pavel,’ Kolya said. ‘It is an honour. I don’t have one of these. I will tell your wife.’

  ‘No, don’t tell her,’ Pavel said without conviction. Then he grabbed Kolya’s arm and said, without much urgency, ‘Don’t!’

  ‘You are being foolish. It is an honour.’

  ‘You know better than that.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Play along with it. What else can you do?’

  There was a shuffle on the stairs behind them, and Comrade Meretrenko and his wife emerged from the darkness. ‘Come in, come in,’ Kolya said, ‘I have an announcement.’ He herded Pavel and the two newcomers into the apartment, and greeted Raya and Mitrofan. ‘Where is Maria Ivanovna?’ I heard him ask. ‘Teaching still? And Sasha? Curled up in bed with her migraine, is she? Then let us begin. I will pass around this telegram that I received today. You see, our friend and colleague has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for his services to music!’

  For the next half hour the apartment was filled with cheers, rounds of applause, songs, toasts, and the clinking of glasses and bottles and teacups. Mitrofan’s offering of food was devoured quickly, and gusts of laughter resounded into the stairwell every few minutes. I sat in the shadows and was soon overcome with a bout of yawning, but felt I should stay until the party broke up. I could not keep my eyes open, however, and woke with a start as two shapes walked past me on the steps only inches from me. It was Meretrenko and his wife, and if they noticed me neither said anything.

  ‘Second class,’ Ksenia said softly. ‘Did you notice that?’

  ‘Everyone did,’ Meretrenko answered. ‘To be awarded in absentia.’

  ‘So that is where we are, that is where you have brought me: to the Land of Absentia.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Meretrenko tutted, but then added, ‘But I like that, Ksenia: the Land of Absentia. Very droll.’

  Hours later, after the party had broken up and the building had gone silent, and I had ascended to the seventh floor and slipped into bed, I was awakened by the noise of voices nearby. I rose and went to the door and had already opened it a crack when I realised that two people were sitting on the top step, no more than a couple of metres away. I froze, and leant my ear against the door jamb.

  ‘Tell me then, what do I do now?’ It was Raya.

  ‘Do nothing. Carry on as before.’ A man’s voice. Kolya. ‘At least you don’t have to attend any ceremony of presentation. That would be excruciating for you, I’m sure.’

  ‘I can’t do nothing. I am not the kind of person who can do nothing.’

  ‘Learn.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  There was silence for a minute, during which Raya sighed
to herself twice.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Kolya.

  ‘No, don’t,’ said Raya. ‘Please, don’t. Say something else to me. Say anything to me.’

  Kolya was quiet for some time, and then cleared his throat softly.

  ‘Well?’ said Raya.

  ‘You know in Russia today – let me be more precise – in the Soviet Union today, we are on a ladder, all of us, every member of the intelligentsia, a ladder like something out of Dante or the Holy Scripture. And the intelligentsia forms itself into two groups, you see, those who are trying to get to Moscow and those who are being forced out of Moscow into exile in the provinces. Ascent and descent. Whether it is the real city of Moscow I refer to or a Moscow of the mind does not matter.’

  ‘What is your point, Kolya?’

  ‘I suppose, if you insist, there is a third group, of those who are attempting to leave Moscow of their own accord, fools and weaklings who believe that somewhere in Russia’s provinces Nature still protects the weak, like all of those good and weak men in Chekhov.’

  ‘Again, what is your point, Kolya?’

  ‘Let me come to my point, then. We all of us live each day on the same ladder, some of us thrusting ourselves upwards towards Moscow, others just holding on to the rung we are on, trying to keep our balance, others losing our grip and falling from rung to rung, from Moscow to Leningrad or Kharkov or Smolensk and then further, and taking others with us as we fall (so of course on each rung there are many kicks and bruises and much banging of heads against bony arses and desperate clutching and stepping on toes and out-and-out fist-fights for position); but the secret of each struggle – the struggle for an inch of room on each rung of the ladder, the struggle of any two people who seek to occupy the same space on the footpath, the same seat in a train, the same flat, the same job, the same marriage – is to know if we are in a contest with someone travelling in the opposite direction to us or someone travelling in the same direction, and if the latter, are we travelling up or down the ladder, and if down, are we travelling willingly or unwillingly. You see?’