The Phoenix Song

by John Sinclair

  ‘You have merely confused me. What is there to see?’

  ‘Your husband has reached the top of his arc. That is what I am saying. Perhaps he reached it some time ago, when Zhdanov died, or last year when he stepped down from the Standing Committee of the Composers’ Union. Twenty years is a long time to be on a committee. Tikhon Khrennikov now has the ear of Mikoyan and Bulgarin and, it is said, even of Khrushchev, so he has no need of Pavel. You, on the other hand, are still ascending, I am sure of it.’

  The two shapes sat side by side for several minutes without talking. In the distance I heard the clock on the Bund strike the hour and play ‘The East is Red’.

  ‘And even in the distant taiga we hear the Kremlin tower clock,’ Raya mused. ‘Do you know that song, Kolya?’

  ‘Of course, I do. We all know that song. Dreadful piece of shit. We know it by heart.’

  One of the shapes rose and began to descend the stairs.

  ‘Thank you, Kolya,’ the other shape said. ‘You are very kind, and you have answered none of my questions and given me no comfort whatsoever. But thank you all the same.’

  ‘A pleasure.’

  After they had gone, I stepped into the stairwell and took from the top of the window casement the candle, pencil and paper I had hidden there. I lit the candle and by its light wrote down all the new secrets of which I was now custodian. Then I slipped back into my room to be greeted by the soft music of Ling Ling’s breathing. I thought I saw the glistening of her eye watching me as I closed the door and tiptoed to my bed, but Ling Ling did not stir and said nothing.

  *

  A month after my arrival in Shanghai, a letter arrived from my mother, thanking me for notifying her that I had arrived safely, and giving news from home – my father, happily busy at work and as well as could be expected; Kasimir and Piroshka, waiting to hear about prospects for their return to the Soviet Union to visit their son; and my mother herself, shouldering additional duties at the hospital due to a shortage of doctors. It would be several years before I learned the truth: that both of my parents were coming under increasing criticism as ‘rightist elements,’ and that Kasimir and Piroshka were eager to leave Harbin so as to dispel the perception that my parents were harbouring two enemies of socialism.

  The winter came, and although I easily tolerated the icy cold outside in my padded winter clothes, I shivered with my classmates in the Conservatory buildings where there was no heating system at all except for the faculty offices. At night I shivered with Ling Ling in our draughty annex.

  And then on December fifteenth, as happened each year on exactly that date, all the windows in the apartment building were sealed shut with thick masking tape, and the radiators sprang to life with clanging and hissing and a furious knocking that made me think some plumber’s assistant had been trapped inside the pipes and was slowly succumbing to the boiling water. There was no radiator on our floor, but gusts of warmth were released into the stairwell and rose to our room above. Indeed, the heating system was so fierce that the apartments became intolerably hot for the Russian advisors, and most of them left their doors open when they were at home to give them respite from the clammy heat. This created ideal conditions for espionage.

  One day in January 1956 – when there was a spell of unseasonably warm weather, and some of the Soviet advisors broke the sealing on the windows to escape the relentless billows from the radiators – Comrade Meretrenko told me in passing that he had been mistaken, that a Shostakovich violin concerto had been performed in Leningrad by David Oistrakh in October of the previous year. The musical community in the Soviet Union had been enthusiastic and there was talk of it being played in Amsterdam and New York. But the performance had received some indifferent reviews, in particular in Pravda. ‘Their reviewers are more orthodox,’ he explained, ‘and are less likely to get carried away by modernism.’

  That night I overheard him expressing the same views in Kolya’s apartment. Pavel and Raya were also there, Mitrofan arrived bringing vodka, and I heard the deep, unfamiliar gong-like voice of a visitor, a man who I assumed was new to the city from the comments he made about the interesting sights he had seen that day. They had left the door open, and I sat for at least an hour while several bottles of vodka were consumed. The Shostakovich concerto was discussed, and Comrade Meretrenko, fortified with drink, railed against modernism as if it were an occupying force in possession of his homeland. The others laughed, politely at first, as if not wanting to give their visitor the impression that they argued amongst themselves often. Mitrofan began to protest on behalf of modernity, but Kolya quieted him: ‘Let Fyodor say his piece, Mitrofan.’

  When Meretrenko’s complaint subsided, it was the visitor who spoke first. ‘As one with no knowledge of music, I feel it is my duty to lead the defence of this new concerto,’ he said, ‘so that I can express naïve and inane sentiments in favour of modernism and you can politely shoot me down.’

  ‘We have no guns, Comrade,’ Pavel chuckled. ‘And even if we did, we have no bullets, we have only an explosive black queen.’

  ‘Let me say, comrades,’ the visitor continued, ‘this concerto is important, not merely for its musical merits, which you may debate, but as a sign that the times are changing: the era of Georgian ascendancy is passing, and the torch has passed to the Ukraine.’

  ‘Stalin is dead! Long live Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev! Saviour of the Khokol race!’ shouted Pavel, and was immediately shushed by his colleagues.

  ‘Pravda damns the concerto with faint praise,’ Raya said, ‘which must surely be due to its Zionist sympathies.’

  ‘They say it’s full of klezmer tunes,’ said Mitrofan, and he began performing a folk tune, first with a bird-like whistle and then a whining violin sound, accompanied by the rapping of spoons on the table edge.

  ‘Shostakovich is our finest composer,’ Pavel said. ‘Finer even than Tikhon Khrennikov.’

  ‘Surely you jest, Pavel,’ Mitrofan wailed. ‘Your views on Shostakovich are well known.’

  ‘Do not confuse Pavel’s views with those of his colleagues in the Composers’ Union,’ Kolya said.

  ‘Former colleagues,’ said Raya. ‘Former colleagues.’

  ‘Farting!’ Pavel announced. ‘Brilliant farting! Shostakovich is our finest composer, I say, and no one can match him in writing music to be played on the lower bowel!’

  ‘Be quiet, Pavel,’ hissed Kolya. ‘Before our friend here is obliged to arrest us all.’

  ‘On what charge, pray tell? Blasphemy?’

  ‘Bad taste,’ said Kolya. ‘Speaking of which, have another round of Mitrofan’s third-rate vodka.’

  ‘Next time let me provide the vodka,’ the visitor said. ‘But let me rescue you all by changing the subject. I have not brought enough handcuffs for you all, so let us steer away from controversy. Tell me about you work here. Tell me about the Chinese taste in music.’

  ‘Execrable, I’m afraid,’ said Meretrenko. ‘We have our work cut out for us.’

  ‘Old symphonic warhorses,’ Pavel said. ‘That’s all they want to play. Oh yes, and romantic piano music, like the second concerto of Brahms . . .’

  ‘Ba-la-mo, you mean,’ Mitrofan interjected.

  ‘Yes, and, what’s the other one? La-ker . . .’

  ‘La-ker-man-yi-nou-fu!’ Mitrofan announced triumphantly. ‘The last great luo-man-ti-ker!’

  ‘Anything, in other words, that inspires deep and imprecise feelings,’ Pavel said.

  ‘It is sad, but true,’ Raya joined in. ‘I have tried to interest the faculty and the better students in something more sophisticated,’ she said over more clinking of bottles and glasses, ‘Scriabin’ – clink – ‘Prokofiev’ – clink – ‘More, Kirill?’ – clink – ‘even Mahler . . .’

  ‘Or Bartók, or Khrennikov . . .’ Pavel added.

  ‘Ha!’ Mitrofan barked.

  ‘Khrennikov writes perfectly serviceable socialist realism,’ Pavel said. ‘Like a well-oiled tractor.’


  ‘But all to no avail,’ Raya continued. ‘They are fixed on this grand plan they have to perform Beethoven’s Ninth with all-Chinese musicians, as if it were a kind of musical Everest they must climb.’

  ‘God knows what they would see from the top,’ Mitrofan said. ‘Clouds. Frozen Englishmen.’

  ‘The English have succeeded,’ Kolya said. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I played some Mahler to several of the faculty on the gramophone in my office,’ Raya went on. ‘I played them the Eighth Symphony, the choral one, and I even quoted to them Mahler’s claim that he had captured the music of the spheres . . .’

  ‘He claimed that?!’ Pavel interjected. ‘What an imposter that man was!’

  ‘These are no longer human voices, but coursing planets and suns,’ Mitrofan intoned. ‘Isn’t that how it goes, Raya?’

  ‘That’s it exactly; but it was as if they could not absorb it, like water from a duck’s feathers. They had nothing to say about it.’

  ‘I think I understand their reaction,’ Pavel said, sounding more sober. ‘I suspect that in some way they simply do not hear it; it is pure white for them, their ears are not attuned to it and it slides off them.’

  ‘Their ears have walls, you mean?’ said Mitrofan.

  ‘Oh, I like that,’ Raya said. ‘Their ears have walls; that is well said.’

  ‘At the faculty meeting last week,’ Pavel continued, ‘I mentioned in passing that Beethoven’s Ninth was Hitler’s favourite piece of music, and that he had it played at his birthday parties.’

  ‘And the response?’

  ‘Dead silence.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the visitor, ‘but that is understandable. They feel the need of grandeur in their music to match the grandeur in their souls.’

  ‘But what about suffering in their music to match the suffering in their souls?’ Pavel said.

  ‘Spoken like a true European,’ said Raya. ‘You Europeans want music to accompany you in your depression. This does not occur to those of us from the North, and certainly not to the Chinese, for whom music is about liberation, not suffering.’

  I heard the visitor’s voice again, but it was hushed all of sudden, and for several minutes they continued to speak in murmurs I could not pick up. Gradually the alcohol began to reassert itself and their voices were raised. I realised that they were talking about Yu Huiyong, and the Campaign against Debussy. Raya said she had heard that Yu had links to Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, who, she explained to her guest, had been a film actress and opera producer in Shanghai, and still had many close friends in the city. The real purpose of the Campaign, Raya understood, was to destabilise Ho Luting, who was regarded by Jiang Qing as too bourgeois. ‘It is well known that he admires Debussy,’ she said, ‘and that at heart he looks down upon traditional Chinese music. It is rumoured that he invites students to his house to listen to records, and corrupts them with these Frenchmen – not Debussy, of course, but Ravel, Fauré, Poulenc, Franck . . .’

  ‘Belgian,’ Pavel interjected, ‘Franck was Belgian.’

  ‘So was the campaign successful?’ the visitor asked. ‘Will the Director leave in disgrace?’

  ‘It is too early to say, but it seems to me the campaign has been a failure,’ Kolya said. ‘The Director put up a good fight, and may have postponed his downfall. The burning of the scores was the purest theatre, a ritual self-immolation from which he emerged unscathed. And in the meantime all that he has lost is Debussy. This no doubt irritates him, but he is not undermined.’

  ‘He is a friend of Zhou Enlai’s, I understand,’ the visitor said.

  ‘That may be overstating it,’ Raya said. ‘Surely, Kirill, you would know that everyone who has ever met Zhou Enlai believes he is a friend.’

  ‘But he has better reason than most to believe so,’ said Kolya. ‘Have you not seen the photographs he has in his office? Conducting his little orchestra in the caves at Yan’an, with Mao and Zhou and Deng Xiao Ping listening; playing Schubert and Mozart to the cadres while the Kuomintang fly their bombers overhead? I believe Zhou still consults him on cultural policy, which he regards as very important for matters of state.’

  ‘But this does not mean Zhou will defend him,’ Pavel said. ‘One cannot take loyalty too far, you know.’

  ‘Shut up, Pavel!’ Raya hissed. ‘You are drunk again.’

  There was a shuffling noise from the apartment, and Fyodor Meretrenko bade good night to everyone. I stepped into the deep shadows as he passed me and descended the stairs.

  ‘It is late,’ said Pavel. ‘We should go too. But first, Mitrofan, show us what you have in that bag. Comrade Mitrofan is our scavenger. He scouts out food and other oddities in the city. You know he even found . . .’

  ‘Be quiet, Pavel!’ Kolya snapped. ‘Be quiet and let Mitrofan show us what he has.’

  ‘Wonders will never cease!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A bird, of course.’

  ‘Yes, but what kind of bird?’

  ‘Dead, for a start.’

  ‘A seagull, Kolya, a mascot for our little Chekhovian band!’

  ‘But we have no gun,’ Raya said, ‘only a shotgun cartridge.’

  ‘Kirill could get us a gun, I’ll bet.’ Pavel’s voice. ‘What do you say, Comrade? Can you bring us a gun on your next visit?’

  ‘We are diplomats now, remember,’ the visitor said. ‘But I will check the drawers in my new desk in case there is a spare.’

  ‘It is not a seagull,’ Mitrofan said. ‘It’s a sea bird alright, but that beak is too long. When I first saw it in the pawn shop, in the shadows under a pile of old hats, I thought it might be a dodo. It isn’t, sadly, but the shopkeeper couldn’t tell me what it is, and it has no label other than this on the base. Does anyone read English?’

  ‘I do, a little,’ the visitor said. ‘Let me see: “Christ Church”.’

  ‘That narrows it down. It’s a religious bird, then. Some kind of dove, perhaps? Although it’s far too big for that.’

  ‘It is a fine specimen,’ Kolya said. ‘I like the tapering of the beak, and these eyes.’

  ‘They are fake, Kolya, you idiot!’

  ‘Christ Church is a college at Oxford University in England,’ said the visitor, ‘so I imagine our little friend is from the collection of some British ornithologist, one who ran out of money for his expeditions and contracted a disease and died in Shanghai.’

  ‘Of course, that’s it! A phoenix! It’s Director Ho’s phoenix!’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘What it is, Kirill my friend, is a very long story,’ Kolya said. ‘Perhaps some other time.’

  ‘I will put it in my room and wait for it to sing, and when it does I will tune my hurdy-gurdy to it,’ said Mitrofan.

  ‘You are right, perhaps some other time,’ the visitor said. ‘No more vodka, thank you. I must go now. The car has been waiting for me half an hour already.’

  I retreated up the stairwell as the sounds of farewell emerged from the apartment. The visitor, still arranging his coat around his shoulders, came out onto the landing, where he was joined by Kolya.

  ‘What a pleasant surprise to meet up with you again,’ Kolya said. ‘And here, of all places. You have done well for yourself, Kirill.’

  ‘You think so? You thought I would come to nothing, did you not?’

  ‘I was drunk, my friend, and that was many years ago. How is your family? Your wife? Your children?’

  ‘The children are well, I believe; I barely get to see them now. My wife . . . well, she has her life, her circle of friends and family.’

  ‘And some time you must tell me what exactly brings you here,’ Kolya said.

  ‘It is simple: the Seventh Fleet brought me here,’ Kirill said.

  ‘I didn’t know we had a Seventh Fleet.’

  ‘We don’t.’ Kirill clasped Kolya’s shoulders quickly and made his way down the stairs.

  *

  I related this conversation to Madame Huang the
next morning, but withheld from her Raya’s explanation of the anti-Debussy campaign and the arrival of the phoenix bird. I am not sure why I did this. Perhaps I thought the former was idle speculation and the latter no more than harmless mockery. Even so, she was less interested in the disparaging comments about Chinese musical tastes than she was in the visitor Kirill’s reference to his car and the seventh fleet. I asked her if she knew anything about Kirill. ‘He must be the new defence attaché at the consulate,’ she said. ‘He is responsible for liaison with the Southern Command of the People’s Liberation Army. We are very interested in him.’

  The phoenix did not sing to Mitrofan, but it did aggravate his asthma and it was passed around the various apartments until it settled on Pavel and Raya’s sideboard. Kirill from the consulate returned once a week, bringing a bottle of vodka which he consumed over the course of the evening either on the fourth or the sixth floor, most often in the company of Kolya, Pavel and Raya, and sometimes also Mitrofan and Sasha, a garlicky young woman who taught French horn and complained constantly of the twin afflictions of migraines and ladders in her stockings. Fyodor and Ksenia were occasionally present, but always excused themselves early to go to bed. The door was usually left open, but the talk seemed to me unremarkable: world events, new books that had arrived at the consulate, life after Stalin, the difficulties of living in Shanghai, and the growing pains of Pavel and Raya’s son. Months passed, and then a year. A simple routine of music and espionage. Kirill disappeared for weeks at a time, and then altogether. There was an occasional titbit of information about another of the Russian advisors, or a reflection upon a Chinese member of the faculty or the activities of Chen Yun, Liu Shaoqi or (very occasionally) Mao himself. Madame Huang received my briefings impassively, and after a while suggested we meet only once a fortnight, and then not at all, except if anything came up that sounded particularly important.