by Fay Weldon
She’d arrived in a state of indignation and shock, her ginger hair frothing from under her hat. The apartment block in which she lived with her cousin, her cousin’s husband and her cousin’s father-in-law (their home, for so many years!) had had an entire wall blown off by a powerful Luftwaffe bomb.
‘The front wall, too,’ she stressed, as if this were far worse than any other wall. And perhaps it was, for even in normal times the street had been a busy thoroughfare, and now it was used as a regular army route, so the Katsubas’ living quarters were on display to whole battalions. ‘The Germans have hung out our lives like dirty laundry. Anyone might see that the dishes hadn’t been washed, and that Grigori —’ She lowered her voice. ‘That Grigori had been eating out of the tin again.’
Nikolai’s eyes widened. It was hard to believe that, only a month ago, Tanya had been sleeping in straw and washing in streams in front of other defence-line women.
‘Yes, there was the tin with a spoon sticking out of it,’ she said, interpreting his surprise as shock, ‘for all the world to see. Anna’s spent seventeen years training him out of the habit. “There are such things as plates,” she says — but as soon as we’re off at the bread queues, out comes the spoon and in digs Grigori. One might as well try to teach a pig to count oranges.’
Nikolai shuffled towards the door, hoping to escape the rest of the story. But non-verbal cues became invisible to Tanya on extraordinary occasions — and what was more extraordinary than arriving home to find your apartment minus a wall and your furniture spilling into the street?
‘Grigori’s favourite armchair was hanging on by a whisker. We nearly lost it. As for Grigori’s father, where do you think he was?’
Nikolai couldn’t imagine, but knew he wouldn’t be permitted to leave the room before he was told.
‘He was —’ Tanya lowered her voice dramatically — ‘on the lavatory!’
Nikolai suppressed a smile. ‘Poor old fellow.’ He knew Grigori’s father slightly, having played chess with him a few times while the rest of the family squabbled over card games. ‘Is he all right?’
‘All right?’ Tanya pursed her mouth. ‘I suppose so, if you consider it “all right” to be gawked at by an entire neighbourhood with your pants around your ankles and pieces of plaster hanging off your derrière.’
‘Had he not been on the toilet,’ mused Nikolai, ‘he might have fallen into the street along with the dining table. Humiliation’s a small price to pay for a life saved.’
‘I suppose we should thank God for small mercies.’ Now that Tanya was permitted to speak the Lord’s name, due to the Party’s new-found belief that prayer might help a desperate situation, devoutness spilled from her like water from a fountain.
‘I’m sure it seems a large mercy for Grigori’s father.’ It was also merciful, thought Nikolai, that he didn’t have all three Katsubas sleeping on his floor or playing high-volume poker at his table. But it eased his mind a little that Tanya had been handed to him like some kind of universal reckoning. Having her there made things both better and worse. She treated grief like an infectious disease, sweeping it out of corners and wiping it off surfaces — something he remembered from nine years ago. Then, too, he’d felt both gratitude and irritation. But when she put away most of Sonya’s possessions, stacking the dusty books in cartons and cramming the dolls into a cupboard, it was too much.
‘Sonya left them like that for a reason,’ he said furiously, ‘and I’ve been careful not to disturb them. She will return.’
‘Of course she’ll return!’ Tanya flushed. ‘And when she does, she’ll need something to keep her occupied. Such as putting her room in order.’ She eyed the pencils lined up on Sonya’s desk, precisely graded in colour and length. ‘I see she inherited her mother’s obsessive habits. When she comes back, we’ll see what we can do about that.’
The relief of hearing Sonya talked about in the future tense made Nikolai forget his anger. He followed Tanya into the other room and watched her preparing to clean, rolling up her sleeves to reveal still sturdy forearms. Having been transferred out of the voluntary defence unit, she was working at the temporary hospital in the Astoria Hotel. What a formidable sight she’d be in a nurse’s cap, thought Nikolai. Quite enough to make you run in the opposite direction, whether or not you were wounded.
Nonetheless, he admired her. He knew he’d faint if forced to enter the hospital wards, to witness the horrors wreaked by artillery barrages and shells. ‘You’re an admirable person,’ he said. ‘You make my occupation, scraping horsehair over four metal strings, seem somewhat irrelevant.’
Tanya shrugged. ‘Your job is important as well. Keeping up morale and whatnot.’
This was something of a breakthrough; ever since her younger sister had not only become a musician but had married one, Tanya had been at a loss to understand the why — the usefulness — of such a profession. ‘Of course,’ she added with more conviction, ‘you’re also fire-watching.’
Privately, Nikolai found working with the Radio Orchestra far more of an ordeal than battling with fires. When he stumbled from the Radio Hall at the end of each day, his ears rang from Alexander’s curses and Elias’s rebukes, clashing in contrapuntal disharmony with Tchaikovsky’s sublime chords. More than ever he ached for the days before the siege, those ordinary days when he could leave the Conservatoire feeling calm and satisfied, and look forward to seeing Sonya. Now, instead of going home, he would hurry away to replace Tanya in the bread queue, so that she, in turn, could go to her official work, fuelled only by tea and some solidified sugar meted out from the Badayev warehouse disaster.
He dreaded the hair-raising stories she told when she returned to the apartment, sometimes only a minute or two before the ten o’clock curfew. Maimed children with limbs ripped off by shells. Pregnant women on stretchers, their stomachs blown away to reveal dead foetuses. Bleeding men arriving in pairs, using each other as crutches. Tanya described these things matter-of-factly, as she chomped through her small ration of dry bread. There were few things that put her off her food or brought tears to her eyes, whereas Nikolai, listening to her, found his eyes watering compulsively. Usually he lay back in his chair and draped a menthol-drenched handkerchief over his face, citing blocked sinuses from inhaling cinder dust as an excuse.
The day after the bombing of the Gostiny shopping district, Tanya was more than usually keen to talk. ‘Hundreds were caught unawares, you know. The warning came too late.’
Her face looked blurry viewed through the handkerchief. Could he, just this once, ask her to keep her gory stories to herself?
‘You wouldn’t believe the human damage.’ Tanya slurped her tea. ‘One man was brought in with no nose, no eyes, no mouth: just gaping cavities in his face.’
Nikolai inhaled sharply, filling his own nose and mouth with fabric. He sat up, coughing. ‘Our conductor was there, apparently. But he wouldn’t speak of it at rehearsal today. He looked terrible, as if he were still in shock.’ Rearranging the handkerchief over his face, lying back again, he concentrated on tuning out most of Tanya’s voice.
Then, from a great distance, he heard a few words. ‘Dancer. Beautiful. Ruined.’
‘What?’ He sat up too fast. For a dizzying second he saw three or four Tanyas. ‘What did you say?’
‘A dancer was brought in from Gostiny. Shrapnel all through her leg. I talked to her this evening — she was with the Kirov before the war began, you know.’ Tanya’s voice rang with importance: Nikolai wasn’t the only one to brush shoulders with the cultural elite!
‘What did she look like? Black hair, black eyes? A pointed chin?’ Please, he thought desperately, please say no.
‘That’s right. Now, what was her name? The same as the wife of your hoity-toity composer friend, the man with the specs.’
‘Nina.’ Nikolai groaned. ‘Nina Bronnikova. I know her. Was she badly wounded?’
‘Well, she won’t die,’ said Tanya. ‘But it’s safe to say she won’t be
doing much dancing.’
‘Ever?’ He remembered Nina’s strong shoulders and slim hips, her kindness to Sonya, her composed serenity at Sollertinsky’s party.
‘She’s still young.’ Tanya sounded determinedly positive. ‘There are plenty of other things she can do — get married, start a family. Even if she ends up with a limp, at least she’s got a pretty face. She should be able to get a husband.’
‘What a blessing.’ Nikolai’s voice was sharp.
‘Isn’t it,’ agreed Tanya, who’d never been good at detecting sarcasm.
He went to stand by the covered window, feeling suffocated. He longed to pull down the black sheets, rip off the strips of tape and lean out into the cool September night. Ever since Sonya had gone, his lungs had seemed incapable of taking a deep breath. And now — now Nina was hurt, too.
‘Terrible mess they’ve made of the Astoria.’ Tanya clicked her tongue. ‘Soldiers traipsing mud all over the stair carpet, vagrants sleeping in the main entrance, everything scratched and broken. Nothing like a top hotel any more. I don’t know what …’
But Nikolai had stopped listening. His claustrophobia was growing. Trapped in his blacked-out apartment, trapped in the city — and worst of all, trapped in his own mind. Shamefully, alarmingly, he began to long for a violent release.
The gift
Shostakovich woke to the rattle of anti-aircraft fire and an intense feeling of doom. He lay studying the long crack above him that now looked as deep as a crevasse. A few more bombs, and the whole ceiling might split in two. He imagined the upstairs neighbours crashing down into his workroom, and caught himself hoping that the buxom eighteen-year-old daughter would land on his bed, rather than her formidable mother.
Galina came flying into the room. ‘Happy Birthday, Papa! Maxim and I have made up a poem for you! But we’d better tell it to you in the cellar because the bombers are arriving at any minute.’
Shostakovich shuffled after her into the main room. ‘Old age and illness are now officially within sight,’ he said, wincing at the icy air.
Nina was bundling Maxim into his coat and overshoes. ‘Some people would consider you to be in the prime of life,’ she said, giving Shostakovich a kiss.
‘The majority of people know nothing at all about the strain I am under.’ He hitched up his pyjamas and belted his coat firmly around his waist. ‘Writing all day in half-light, with no heating and no rest — an impossible job, even without the Nazis. Before most composers reach my age, they’ve already gone to their graves. Think of Mozart! If I were Mozart, this would be my last birthday.’
‘I hope you’ll cling to life, at least until tonight,’ said Nina. ‘Izrail has gone to a great deal of trouble to get hold of extra vodka.’
Any hopes Shostakovich had had of keeping his birthday low-key, and his mind focused on his work, were dashed as soon as they entered the cellar.
‘Mr Shostakovich!’ Irina Barinova’s voice rang out of the darkness. ‘We’ve heard today is a special day for you. May all your anniversaries be more peaceful than this one!’
Shostakovich sighed. ‘How did you know?’
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Nina. ‘I told her.’
‘How’s the new work going?’ Irina wasn’t allowing Luftwaffe bombs to deter her from gossip. ‘Will your work soon be coming of age, also?’
Shostakovich took Maxim by the hand and groped his way to the long bench against the wall. He clamped his mouth shut and listened to Nina fielding queries. Yes, the first and second movements were completed, and the third was under way. Yes, they were hoping for a premiere performance by Mravinsky and the Philharmonic, in spite of the fact they were currently fifteen hundred miles east in the depths of Siberia.
By breathing in the scent of Maxim’s hair, he remained calm. It was imperative to keep the adagio steady in his head. Although he was a week in, and possibly halfway through, it was by no means secure. Neighbourly exclamations rained down on its surface, muddying the opening woodwind chords and the searing violin melody. He would never have admitted it (except, perhaps, to Sollertinsky), but he was glad when the distant thundering of guns was joined by the loud swishing of incendiaries, drowning out the chatter — and he was even more glad when a crash shook the cellar, releasing showers of plaster and stopping the talk altogether.
‘Will the house fall, Papa?’ Maxim leaned closer, puffing from concern.
‘Not this time,’ reassured Shostakovich, half-listening to the violin that continued to soar far above the bombers and their tilting, lethal wings.
After the roar of the planes had faded, and before the all-clear sounded, the conversation started up again. Now, to his relief, it revolved not around his work or his birthday, but the dire state of affairs in Leningrad. Lack of food, lack of information, the lack of help from Moscow: these issues kept the residents of the Bolshaya Pushkarskaya house occupied for some time. Of all the voices, Irina Barinova’s was the shrillest and most carping; it drove into Shostakovich’s head with a force greater than the loudest bomb blast.
He reached for his notebook, but realised he was wearing only his pyjamas and his overcoat. ‘Galina,’ he whispered urgently, ‘can you remember something for me?’ Galya had the best memory of anyone he knew, which proved useful on those frequent public occasions when he was approached by someone whose name had slipped his mind.
Galina pressed her ear against his mouth. ‘Of course I can.’
‘B and B flat clash, reversed and raised a fifth.’
‘B, B flat clash. Reverse, raise fifth. I’ve got it.’
And with that the all-clear siren blared at last, and the door was pushed open, and they were free to straggle into the grey light and up the stairs for breakfast.
‘Sorry for my silence,’ he said to Nina, swishing his spoon around in porridge that consisted largely of water. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand their gushing.’
‘They’re proud of you, that’s all.’ Nina poured out cups of the thin black liquid that they continued to call coffee. ‘Most of them heard your radio broadcast last week. They want to show their support.’
‘They’d support me better by leaving me in peace. I don’t know how you cope with them all.’
‘Papa, stop talking — it’s time for your presents!’ Galina was bursting with excitement. ‘Now, what would you like most in the whole world?’
Shostakovich surveyed the items in front of him: a saucer of smoked lard, a chunk of hard black bread, and two cigarettes that had to last him all day, procured (not without guilt) by trading in a silk scarf Nina had given him on his 1936 concert tour.
‘What I’d like most is an enormous pork chop carved from the fattest pig in the world, served with porcini mushrooms and a white gooey sauce of imported cheeses.’
Galina’s face fell and Maxim looked concerned. Behind them, Nina gestured widely with her hands.
‘Of course, that’s not what I most want,’ he amended, staring at his wife who was moving her arms in scissor-like movements. ‘What I’d really like for my birthday is … erm, a picture made by you?’
‘Really? Pictures?’ Relieved, Galina rushed to the cupboard and pulled out a roll of newspaper. ‘That’s just what we have. However did you guess?’
Shostakovich spread open the two sheets of newsprint cut into lopsided stars. Between the holes, he saw remnants of his published radio broadcast from the previous week. ‘Dear colleagues and friends … An hour ago I completed the second part … I shall be able to call it the Seventh Symphony … the dangers facing Leningrad … All of us are soldiers today …’
He held the paper up to the dim light. ‘They’re beautiful pictures. Even the paper-cutter who visited our house when I was a child couldn’t do better! Let’s put them on display immediately.’
Galina and Maxim had barely taped their cuttings over the already partially covered windows before they became fretful and tired. These days they had sudden jags of energy, and bursts of confidence followed by fear. Sho
stakovich knew just how they felt. When the symphony was going well he felt invincible; on those days, he refused to go down into the shelter, staying at the piano and listening to the Luftwaffe ripping open the sky. Yet, on less successful days, he dived into the cellar with his stomach churning; then, shaking and covered in sweat, he was more than glad of the darkness.
‘Why don’t we all have a lie-down,’ suggested Nina, sweeping up crumbs and clearing away plates.
However closely Shostakovich watched her, he couldn’t tell how much of a strain it was for her to remain so calm. The Varzars had always had a veneer of assurance, so that even in the most perilous of situations they seemed impervious to harm.
‘But what about your poem!’ Galina turned in the bedroom doorway. ‘Those bombers were too loud for us to tell it to you in the cellar.’ She motioned to Maxim, and they stood with their feet aligned like miniature soldiers. She began reciting in a loud sing-song voice, with Maxim’s tiny hum trailing behind:
Mama says when you were young
That you could be quite naughty.
You’re bigger now, and well behaved,
Because you’re nearly forty.
Forty! Shostakovich couldn’t help but wince. He grabbed for one of his two precious cigarettes.
Galina raised her head from a low, synchronised bow. ‘I know you’re only thirty-five. But forty rhymed.’
‘Of course.’ He laid the cigarette back on the table. ‘Thank you both very much for going to all that trouble. It’s a splendid poem.’
Only after Nina had led the children away for a nap did he realise he’d forgotten to ask Galina for another, quite different recitation. How had it gone? He forced himself to think his way back through the events of the morning. The unwelcome crush of bodies in the cellar, the dry taste of dust. The shuddering walls, the crashing blows, Maxim’s compulsive starts, and Irina Barinova’s voice grinding on about long queues, the flimsiness of ration cards and which parts of his radio broadcast hadn’t been helpful in raising morale.