3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

‘All the better for Lina Prokofiev,’ said Shostakovich. ‘Who wants to be married to a goose?’ It had been more than six years, but it was hard to forget Prokofiev nosing through the score of Lady Macbeth, pronouncing it entertaining but a trifle demented.

  ‘Now that your wife’s left the party,’ warned Sollertinsky, ‘I trust you’re not considering following in Prokofiev’s wandering footsteps.’

  ‘Assuredly not. Those days are over. Even that beauty —’ He nodded at Nina Bronnikova, who was talking to Nikolai. ‘Even she couldn’t tempt me. No, indeed.’ He shook his head, feeling virtuous, secure, even happy. Happy! How could this be possible, with his best friend about to travel in one direction and other friends in another, and poor young Fleishman … But he couldn’t think of this, not tonight. Leaping off the podium, he landed heavily on the toes of the Radio Orchestra conductor.

  ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon!’ he said. ‘It seems I’m destined to keep bumping into you — quite literally.’ The conductor (What was his name? Always, it slipped away!) looked different tonight: his shoulders were squarer and his gaze more direct.

  ‘Perhaps,’ replied the conductor with a half-smile, ‘I’m fated to stand at the feet of the great. And sometimes under them!’

  ‘If it isn’t Karl Eliasberg!’ interrupted Sollertinsky. ‘Just the man we need. Mravinsky is insisting that when he invests a performance with emotion a sophisticated audience responds accordingly. As an experienced conductor yourself, what’s your opinion?’

  Elias looked startled. ‘I must c-c-confess that I believe the opposite. A conductor may channel the emotion of the music — but he must never display it.’ He glanced a little nervously at Mravinsky. ‘I d-don’t mean to contradict you, but such an attitude proves as much of a downfall for musicians as for conductors. We’re none of us there to experience emotion. We’re simply there to convey it.’

  ‘Just what I’ve always said!’ Shostakovich slapped him approvingly on the back. ‘Musicians and conductors are tools.’

  ‘Or do you mean fools?’ Looking amused, Sollertinsky turned to Elias. ‘Such is the barely disguised contempt of Dmitri Shostakovich for those who are indispensable to him. Without musicians and conductors, his music remains silent on the page. With their help, it can occasionally approach the sublime.’

  ‘Contempt is too strong a word,’ protested Shostakovich. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand the sight of musicians swaying to Mahler, looking as if they’re about to burst into tears.’

  Elias nodded. ‘I have a flautist whom I call the Human Eggwhisk. As soon as Schumann is placed in front of her, she begins to sway. Head, shoulders, ankles, everything must be moving — including her performance!’

  Now Mravinsky, looking more handsome than ever in the warm flickering light, was nodding. ‘I have several of those. Musicians who believe themselves to be the primary experience of the evening. It’s tedious.’

  Shostakovich looked at Elias. ‘You should have come to the Conservatoire Club. Debates like this were our daily fodder. And now it’s too late! Who knows when we’ll gather there again?’ His glasses misted over and he clasped Elias’s hand.

  ‘Perhaps, after the war —?’ Elias looked a trifle overwhelmed.

  ‘Dmitri,’ said Sollertinsky, ‘you’re quite impossible. You find emotion repulsive in others, yet you’re one of the most emotional men I know. You preach icy detachment in music, yet you’re currently working on something intended to stir — and perhaps to save — the whole of Russia.’

  Shostakovich swayed slightly. ‘I must sit down.’ He gave Mravinsky an ineffectual push on the shoulder.

  ‘You should have thought of your need for a seat before holding forth on my shortcomings,’ said Mravinsky, sitting immovably in his chair.

  Elias fetched another chair and guided Shostakovich into it. ‘Tell me, what is it you’re working on? I’d be honoured to hear more.’

  Shostakovich was dimly aware of a flicker of panic. Too close, too close. He swallowed some beer. ‘There’s really nothing to hear. I can only presume Sollertinsky’s referring to my recent masterpiece, composed in response to higher orders, entitled “The Fearless Guards’ Regiment Is on the Move”.’

  Elias’s hands flew to his face as if he’d been slapped. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  Shostakovich tilted back, staring at the ceiling. ‘It’s a military march, designed to motivate the honourable men of the Red Army,’ he intoned as if reciting a dull lecture to an equally dull class. ‘It sounds passable when heard in the open air from some distance away.’

  Sollertinsky glanced at Elias. ‘More lubrication’s needed!’ he called. ‘Bring us more grog! Grog’s the only known cure for terminal reticence.’

  Shostakovich closed his eyes and saw the outline of the chandelier in a sharp red silhouette on the back of his lids. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Elias had moved to the edge of the podium. His neck was scarlet. Shostakovich groaned. Why hadn’t he stopped drinking when he felt the fighting spirit rising up inside? All the same, he’d done what was necessary to save himself.

  Dismayed, he looked at Elias’s ramrod back. Nina would have known how to patch things up, but Nina was already at home in bed. ‘Miss Bronnikova!’ he hissed. ‘Do you like dancing?’

  Nina Bronnikova laughed. ‘One would assume so, since I’ve centred my life around it.’

  ‘I haven’t been clear.’ Shostakovich focused on her nose, which seemed to be the only completely still point in the moving room. ‘I meant dancing as these guests are doing.’

  ‘You look a little worse for wear to dance,’ she said. ‘Besides, as your wife is no longer here, I wonder if it’s appropriate?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want you to dance with me. As you’ve noticed, I’m barely able to stand. Would you consider —’ He gestured towards Elias.

  ‘Mr Eliasberg? Does he need rescuing?’

  ‘Exactly that.’ Relieved, Shostakovich sank back in his chair. ‘He needs rescuing.’

  What an idiot Sollertinsky was, blurting out details about his work in such a setting, knowing so little about it! Yet as soon as he saw his friend blundering towards him, he couldn’t help but forgive him.

  ‘So you’re playing the pimp now?’ Sollertinsky didn’t mention what had just happened; he simply proffered a heaped plate of caviar like a peace offering. Together they watched Elias hold out his arm, slightly stiffly, to Nina Bronnikova, and lead her closer to the band.

  ‘Better a pimp than a man who puts his foot in his mouth.’ Shostakovich sniffed the caviar but the metallic aroma was no longer the smell of luxury. It merely reminded him of the bent shovel he’d wielded that day, as he’d hacked at the dry ground. ‘Besides, I told the truth. I really am working on military music, as well as my own private march, and the combination’s driving me mad.’

  ‘It’s not the official composing that’s getting you down.’ Sollertinsky put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ve always had to do that, thanks to the … how shall I put it? … the philanthropic regime under which we’ve flourished. If you ask me, you’re more worried about the fact that this time next week you may be watching for incendiaries from the Conservatoire roof.’

  ‘It’ll be preferable to ditch-digging.’ Shostakovich spread his palms to reveal open sores. ‘I’m tired of scrabbling in the dirt.’

  ‘At least you’ll be back at the Conservatoire. But on top of the building, rather than inside it!’

  Shostakovich looked at Sollertinsky’s blunt features: the big nose, the light blue eyes, the vast planes of his cheeks, all of which somehow made up an attractive whole. ‘Yes, I’ll be back there, but you won’t.’ The fiery vodka and the sustaining strength of the beer vanished like a sun falling into cloud. He was left with nothing but foreboding.

  ‘I won’t be around for a while,’ agreed Sollertinsky. ‘But no war lasts forever, you know. Perhaps we’ll meet again before either of us expects it — if not in Siberia, then back at the club in better days, when
you can make amends for your curtness by buying the conductor a drink.’ He glanced down at Shostakovich’s plate. ‘May I? You’re not touching that excellent caviar and tomorrow morning it will be wasted on the pigs.’

  Shostakovich passed his plate. ‘I’m fearful. Fearful that I’ll never see you again.’ He looked at his friend long and steadily.

  ‘Just get on with that secret work of yours,’ said Sollertinsky. ‘Put out a few fires to satisfy your nationalistic conscience, and then meet me in Siberia. It may not be the most attractive of holiday destinations, but I hear the girls are pretty.’

  She will not go

  Elias woke to an unfamiliar feeling. His stomach was rumbling like a heavy cart on cobblestones, and his eyelids rasped. There was thick sweat all over his body: forehead, chest, even the backs of his legs. He rolled over and reached out for Nina Bronnikova. She wasn’t there.

  The light falling through the thin curtain was too bright, and the hammering and crashing from the street compounded his nausea. Nina! Groaning, he closed his eyes again to block out recent reality and his even more recent dream. Taking Nina Bronnikova’s arm and escorting her to the dance floor (reality). Her cool hand in his sticky one, her legs moving close to his (reality). His fingers stroking her face, their lips meeting, his hands running over her bare shoulders and down to her arched lower back, her body shuddering with pleasure. Dream. Dream. Dream. Despising himself, he rammed his head into his pillow.

  When his erection had subsided, he turned on his back and stared at the ceiling, at the large boot-shaped stain caused three winters earlier by a burst water pipe. Of course it looked like a boot; he would never escape his upbringing. Perhaps one was allowed only a glimpse into a better possible life, before falling back into the pit where one belonged? God, this nausea, the frustration and guilt — and the new resentment that throbbed like a cut. Sollertinsky had put out the bait; Elias — stupidly confident — had risen to it. And Shostakovich had thrown him back like an unsatisfactory sprat.

  Nina Bronnikova. He repeated it like a mantra. Nina Bronnikova. The intimacy he’d felt on waking was caused by nothing more than lust and a ridiculous sense of romance. ‘Do you care to dance?’ That was all she’d said. He knew even then she was partnering him out of pity, but his tongue had been loosened by alcohol, as well as relief at escaping Shostakovich’s unexpected attack, Mravinsky’s cool stare and Sollertinsky’s jokes. So they’d chatted — about what? About the dacha she owned south of the city, left to her by her grandparents after her parents were killed in a train crash. It was deserted now: dacha owners had been ordered to destroy all crops and food stores, lest they provide sustenance for the enemy. What had Nina done when she left for the last time? She’d locked the door and the garden gate, then cycled back into the city with jam jars and pickles in her basket, and a sack of potatoes on her back. At the checkpoint, the soldiers had searched her belongings and told her she wouldn’t be allowed to pass this way again. ‘A series of lock-ups,’ she said. ‘A series of retreats.’ She’d clamped her mouth shut and her eyes looked sad. Quickly, Elias had told her of a recent rehearsal when Fomenko had struck the kettle drums so hard that the end flew off his drumstick, bouncing smartly off Marchyk’s bald head and into the open mouth of his tuba. Nina had laughed at this, and he’d noticed that her teeth were slightly crooked, and he’d almost kissed her for her beautiful imperfections.

  God, he felt ill. He tried to sit up, but the room whirled. He had to get to work. Cautiously, he reached for his watch — and a piercing scream came from the outer room.

  ‘I won’t go!’ It was his mother, shouting in what sounded like genuine distress.

  Just swinging his legs over the edge of the bed made fresh sweat break out on his back. Automatically, he checked the time: barely an hour before he was due at rehearsal.

  ‘Karl! Karl!’ His mother sounded panicky. ‘For God’s sake, help me!’

  He pulled on his coat and blundered out. ‘What is it, Mother? What on earth is happening?’

  Olga Shapran stood in the middle of the room. She was bending over Elias’s shrieking mother, pulling at her, half-lifting her out of the chair.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Elias’s head felt as if it would explode.

  Olga looked at him disapprovingly, taking in his bare feet and his dishevelled hair. ‘I tried to wake you. You were snoring like a pig. You’ve got to help me — your mother’s due at the station in less than two hours.’

  ‘Today?’ He glanced at the calendar above the stove. ‘You’ve got it wrong. The train leaves next week, not today.’

  ‘The timetable has been changed. Clearly, you’ve been too busy carousing to listen to the news.’ Olga began pulling at his mother’s shoulders again. ‘Stand up. Get dressed. Do you want to be sent out of Leningrad in your nightclothes?’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Elias’s nausea was made worse by his intense dislike of the interfering Olga. ‘I’ll get her dressed. She doesn’t need to be bullied by you.’

  ‘Just trying to help.’ Olga’s mouth turned down further until she looked like a large and wily trout. ‘Just looking out for my neighbours. If it weren’t for me, you’d both have slept through your mother’s chance at evacuation. One of you snoring from old age, and the other —’ she eyed Elias suspiciously, as if sensing his lustful dreams — ‘through over-indulgence.’

  Mrs Eliasberg whimpered and shifted in her chair. ‘This is my home. I won’t be evacuated like a refugee. I wish to stay here, in my neighbourhood where I belong.’

  ‘Mother.’ Elias straightened her woollen shawl. ‘We’ve been through this already. The situation’s becoming more dangerous by the day. Have you looked outside recently? Your street is unrecognisable. There’s a tram filled with sandbags at your intersection. Your park has become a trench. Your trees are shelters for snipers.’ He went to the window and raised the blind, though vomit rose in his throat at the sharpness of the light.

  His mother rolled her eyes. ‘I’m too ill to travel.’ She held out a wavering hand. ‘See how it shakes?’

  Triumphantly, Olga turned to Elias. ‘You see? She’s becoming infirm. Which is why we have to get her out of the house and onto that train. You weren’t here for the last air-raid practice, so you have no idea what we went through with your mother.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t here. In that, at least, you’re correct. I was at work, carrying out my duties as a citizen of Leningrad.’ He spoke as coldly as he could, trying to ignore his churning bowels.

  ‘Had you been here, you’d have witnessed the near-impossibility of carrying an old woman in a chair down four flights of stairs. Fortunately, some men were around to help — my husband, for one.’

  ‘Yes, I understand Mr Shapran has been out of a job for some time now.’ Elias gripped the windowsill. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t volunteered for a labour battalion by now.’

  ‘He’s duty bound to stay with us as long as possible. He’s been voted warden of this building.’

  ‘Oh.’ Already Elias was tiring of the fight. ‘I hadn’t realised. I —’

  ‘You artistic types with your heads in the clouds.’ Olga seemed slightly mollified. ‘Lucky for you you’ve got practical neighbours. When the real air raids start, you’ll be even more grateful we’re looking out for you. Now, where’s your mother’s suitcase?’

  ‘No!’ Mrs Eliasberg began banging her head against the back of her chair. ‘I won’t go. I — will — not — go.’ There was fear in her eyes, and she clutched her chair so tightly that her knuckles shone white through her skin.

  ‘You will go!’ Olga’s temper returned. ‘You’re another mouth to feed! Another useless body to carry to the air-raid shelter!’ She rushed across the room and grabbed Mrs Eliasberg by the ankles. ‘See, you can’t even move by yourself. You’re a liability!’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Elias launched himself away from the windowsill. ‘How dare you touch my mother in such a way!’ Grabbing Olga by the hair, he f
lung her sideways so she staggered against the table. His jar of batons crashed to the floor. ‘She’s not going. She’ll stay here with me. I’ll be responsible for her. If we have to endure frequent air raids — if, for we still don’t know what the Germans are planning — then I’ll carry her to the cellar. If I’m not here, Mr Shapran will do it. Is that clear?’

  Olga’s ruddy face was pale; her freckles stood out like crumbs on a white cloth. She nodded but said nothing.

  ‘What a scene.’ Elias glanced down at his bare bony ankles and then, guiltily, at the sparse handful of hair pulled from Olga’s head. ‘Being at war with barbarians turns us into barbarians ourselves. I apologise.’

  Olga shuffled her feet amid the batons and broken glass. She spoke gruffly. ‘Can you still conduct with those?’

  ‘The orchestra will neither notice nor care. They rarely do what I ask, even when commanded by batons of a full length.’

  A smile twitched at the corner of Olga’s trout mouth.

  ‘We’re still neighbours, eh?’ said Elias. ‘Regardless of what the next few months may bring. We’re still human beings, rather than liabilities or statistics. Now you must excuse me. I have to go to work.’

  Protectively, he stood beside his mother until Olga had disappeared, then he, too, stepped out onto the landing. He made his way up the three small stairs to the blue-painted door and rapped on the wooden panels. Mercifully, there was no one in there. Bolting the door behind him, he knelt on the floor and, with his head in the lavatory bowl, was instantly, copiously sick.

  The plea

  Shostakovich’s paper supply was running low. Three mornings in a row, straggling back to Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street in the early morning, he’d detoured to the Composers’ Union. Three mornings in a row, he was met with blank expressions and empty hands. Everything was running out. Even the farcical old plaster replicas had reappeared in the windows of grocery stores, and bread rations had been cut once again.