3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  Pushing aside the stack of paper, he laid his head on the table. His eyes were streaming but he didn’t make a sound. He cried so silently that it was several minutes before he heard exclamations and felt an awkward hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Nikolai? What’s the matter?’ Elias sounded more worried than ever.

  He raised his head, his nose running and his hair soaked through. ‘My eyes. So weak these days. They water for no reason.’

  Elias hesitated for a second. ‘Mine, too. Damn inconvenient, isn’t it?’ He blundered away to open a window, muttering about vitamin deficiency, scurvy, and the effect of malnutrition on one’s retinas. ‘Fresh air,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Fresh air will do you good.’

  Nina put out her hand and laid it over his. After a while, she passed him a shred of handkerchief.

  He’d never been so grateful for reticence. Wiping his nose and eyes, he picked up his pen again. But even though he copied like a man possessed, concentrating on Shostakovich’s maniacally leaping octaves, his heart continued to cry Sonya, Sonya! like a gull wheeling above a barge, not knowing where it was headed nor what might be gained from following.

  Elias comes home

  The sun had been shining for many days, but Elias was feeling increasingly cold. As he left the apartment he realised that he was trembling all over. His fingers were a waxy yellow, his nails as white as plaster. He banged his hands against his thighs but felt nothing; nor could he feel his feet, wrapped in rags and stuffed into his boots. He hobbled around the corner and stood in the sunshine, waiting to thaw.

  Nothing happened. His body remained frozen. He felt as if he were looking down on himself, a stick figure in a rag-bag of coats and scarves, leaning against the same wall where once a much better-dressed, nervously correct man had stood, afraid to approach the kiosk standing (if his hazy memory was correct) on the very spot where a steel pillbox squatted. From a great distance, he marvelled at the naivety of the former Karl Eliasberg. Obsessing over the review of a rival who wouldn’t even acknowledge him as such! Being scared to converse with a portly music professor in a rumpled suit!

  He willed the sun to thaw him, his heart to pump his blood more effectively and his feet to carry him to the rehearsal room on time. You’ve never been late in your life, he told himself, and you will not be late today.

  The previous week he had trudged once again down Nevsky Prospect to the Arts Department headquarters and waited another two hours under the ticking clock before speaking as fervently as he could on behalf of his musicians. They were ill and weak; they could barely sit on their chairs. A flautist named Karelsky had already died from severe malnutrition, and if the authorities didn’t step in many others would also die. The officials listened impassively as he told them of instruments falling from players’ hands, and of undermining silences instead of loud morale-raising music.

  Apparently, he’d convinced them. The very next day Zagorsky had announced that Radio Orchestra rations were to be increased, and would stay at that level until the day of the concert. Furthermore, all musicians would receive badges marking them out as members of Eliasberg’s orchestra, allowing them medical privileges and faster access through checkpoints. But Elias knew it would take far more than extra wheatgerm and watery bean soup to turn back the clock. There was no quick way of transforming a band of walking skeletons into efficient musicians and soldiers.

  Sure enough, as he entered that morning — slowly, clumsily, but on time in spite of his frozen feet — the conversation wasn’t about fighting or music but about food. Or, to be precise, the lack of it.

  As he limped to the podium, a dutiful silence fell; there was a general tightening of bows and opening of scores. This much, at least, he’d achieved. He signalled for an A and waited for them to tune up — not that pitch was of particular concern to the players in front of him. Any musician trained in an army band placed more emphasis on keeping time than staying in tune. The scraping and dissonance, the ragged sliding chords: not so long ago these would have made Elias wince. Now they scarcely bothered him. If the orchestra managed to play the symphony with nothing more than workmanlike skill, he would have pulled off a miracle.

  ‘We’ll start with the adagio,’ he said, opening the score.

  Today he felt more detached than ever — so much so that it felt like calm. He was nothing more than an observer, surveying the orchestra from afar. The only thing that brought him momentarily closer was the sight of Nikolai helping Nina Bronnikova with the piano stool, cradling his left arm behind her in a movement that was like a caress. Then, for a second, blackness roared up in Elias’s head. But once Nina’s eyes were fixed on the music and Nikolai had returned to his seat, he could retreat once more into his floating state.

  After what might have been a few minutes or an hour — it was impossible to tell today — the musicians were ready. The first woodwind chords fell across the room like shadows; the singing violin lines followed with almost unbearable sweetness. The rehearsal room stretched to accommodate the music, and the music filled the whole city, and the empty fields and desolate woods beyond. It rained down on Russian and German soldiers crouched in their trenches, stripping them of both fear and purpose — and then, surely, everything would be all right again, while much of what had gone before (the grinding winter, the exploding streets, the dragging hunger and the slow deaths) was dissolved by the music. Elias’s eyelids dropped, and he allowed himself to rest. He didn’t need to see the score; he’d read and copied and conducted it so many times, he knew it better than his own body. He felt nothing but immense gratitude to Shostakovich, for saving them all.

  Now the music was thinning, like ice at the edge of a lake. This was as it should be. The melody moved downwards, grinding into the uneasy key of C sharp minor. Low woodwind notes hinted at the watery depths: contrabassoon, bass clarinet pulling on the deepest of C sharps like an anchor, yet also releasing, rising, moving up towards the strings. A pizzicato bridge over the water, slipping into E major, leading to —

  Something was missing. Elias jolted back into the present. There was blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue, and panic on the faces of his woodwind players. The shock of the return was too great. His icy core cracked in two, and he rapped on his music stand.

  ‘What has happened to the flute solo?’ The effort of speaking made his throat feel raw. ‘Where the hell is Vedernikov?’

  The strings were straggling to a halt, their bows held at awkward angles. ‘Does anyone know where our lead flautist is?’ demanded Elias.

  Someone dared to mutter that perhaps he’d been killed by Shostakovich’s excessive demands, and a few embarrassed titters ran around the room, but mostly the musicians shuffled their feet and said nothing.

  The second flute raised a tentative hand. ‘Perhaps I can take the solo, until he turns up?’

  But as if on cue, Vedernikov appeared at the door. His chest was heaving, his hair trailed on his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ He blundered towards his seat, cramming his flute together as he went. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Elias was surprised at the level of rage he felt. Had he been holding a gun instead of a baton, he would have put a bullet through the heart of this panting wretch who’d interrupted his reverie and snatched away salvation. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said coldly. ‘Regret is a wasteful emotion.’

  Vedernikov looked up, holding the mouthpiece of his flute to his lips. ‘It was unavoidable.’

  ‘You’ve deprived us of your solo and you, in turn, will be deprived. It has already been established that all latecomers lose their bread rations.’

  ‘Please don’t do that. The thing is —’ Vedernikov bit his lip so hard that white marks bloomed on the purplish skin. ‘I was at the cemetery. I was waiting to bury my wife.’

  Nina Bronnikova gasped, and Petrov half-rose on his shaky legs. The other flautists laid their hands on Vedernikov’s arms, and even the military men coughed with suppressed emotion. But Elias stood like
a stone; he could feel neither his toes in his boots, nor the floor beneath his feet.

  ‘The rules stand,’ he said, staring at the far wall. ‘They can’t be bent for one person. Death is all around us! Who knows which of us will be alive tomorrow? The only certainty is that, by the first week in August, we must be capable of playing the Seventh Symphony. Vedernikov, you lose your rations for today. We’ll begin from the top.’

  He didn’t look at the flautist again, nor at Nina or Nikolai; he wasn’t strong enough to see grief or shock, not today. His head was swimming and there was an unfamiliar burning in his lungs. The orchestra dragged on through the adagio, which was no longer beautiful, and into the finale, which lacked all vigour and conviction. He conducted mechanically, feeling as if, at any moment, he might topple to the floor.

  At the end of the first hour he sank onto a chair and conducted sitting down — something he’d never have dreamed of doing before this nightmare began. But from his chair he had an unimpeded view of Nina Bronnikova’s face. Was there reproach in her curved neck and lowered eyes? He found the possibility unbearable, and stood up again, leaning heavily on the chair and conducting with his right hand only.

  After the musicians had left, some for sentry duty and some for the bread queues, he allowed himself to sit once more. With his head between his knees, coughing and gasping, he began to recite progressions from the symphony: ‘Variation Four, Figure 25, oboe and bassoon. Dynamic: piano. B flat against B natural; C major to C sharp minor. Crescendo to fortissimo. Back to C major.’

  But instead of steadying him, as he’d hoped, the musical equations tumbled into a sea of horrifying images. His father beating a human face with his cobbler’s hammer, Shostakovich throwing manuscript pages from the window of an aeroplane. A row of incendiary bombs scattered down a street, blazing like flowers. And back to C major, he repeated in desperation, but his thoughts were drowned out by the blows of the hammer. The human profile disintegrated into a cloud of white skin, Shostakovich’s face went up in flames, the engines of the aeroplane roared. He was in hell.

  Through the chaos a hand touched his forehead, anchoring him. ‘We have to get him to a hospital,’ someone said.

  He opened his eyes to a world that, somehow, was still intact.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Nikolai’s straggling hair and beard did nothing to hide his concern.

  Yes, I can hear you perfectly, he answered. Only at present, due to unforeseen illness, I’m unable to speak.

  Nina’s face floated behind Nikolai’s like a beautiful pale cloud. ‘I think he can hear but not speak.’

  Even as his lungs rasped for breath, Elias felt enormous gratitude. She could understand him. She knew what he was thinking.

  ‘Try to drink this,’ said Nikolai, putting the rim of a glass to his lips.

  The tepid water made him gag but it was laced with sugar, which seeped a grainy strength into his limbs. He lay where he’d fallen, listening to the voices, succumbing to the loss of power. It was like being a child again — although his parents had never cared so much.

  ‘He’s dreadfully thin.’ Nina seemed to forget that Elias was capable of hearing. ‘And he’s had that cough for weeks. I remember him saying that he’d once had tuberculosis. Do you think —?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s TB. Perhaps a touch of pneumonia? And certainly nervous exhaustion. He’s been working himself to death.’

  ‘Poor Elias.’ Nina sounded upset.

  ‘If we can get him to the Astoria,’ said Nikolai, ‘Tanya will find a bed for him. He has to rest.’

  Elias opened his eyes and spoke with a leaden tongue. ‘Rehearsals. Shostakovich —’

  ‘Less important than your health. Besides, what good will you be to Shostakovich if you’ve worked yourself to death before the performance?’

  Closing his eyes again, Elias listened to Nikolai arranging his future with surprising decisiveness. The door banged, and now only Nina was left beside him, holding the water glass, checking his pulse.

  It seemed rude to lie there silently. Wetting his lips, he practised a couple of phrases in his head — two-tone motif, six repeated Gs — and then he tried speaking out loud. ‘Thank you,’ he managed to croak.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For playing … the piano.’

  ‘But I’m still hopeless. Nowhere near as good as you’d like.’

  ‘Not … hopeless.’ He turned his head to look at her. ‘Not yet …excellent. But not … hopeless.’

  Nina laughed. ‘Someone once described you as brutal. But I think honest is a better word.’

  ‘The two are … easily confused.’ He gave a small nod. He was too tired to say any more, although he wanted to tell her a thousand things: things he’d wanted to say for a long time. Out in the street, the army trucks rumbled on, and through the occasional chink in the noise came the sound of a few birds singing.

  The door banged again and Nikolai was back. ‘Good news!’ he said. ‘You’ll be taken by car to the hospital. They’ll have a bed ready for you there. You’re a more important person than you think!’

  ‘One night only,’ said Elias weakly. ‘Tomorrow we must rehearse.’

  Nikolai ignored this. ‘Now, what about your mother? Is she able to look after herself for a few days, or is she completely bedridden?’

  ‘She is … She is completely —’ Elias turned his head away, and mumbled the last words into the floor.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Nikolai sharply.

  ‘She’s dead. My mother is dead.’

  Nina grasped his hand. ‘When? When did this happen?’

  ‘Two days ago.’ He bit his lip to stop himself crying and heard again the scraping of Valery’s sled as the runners bumped over the dry mud. He saw Valery’s small hands alongside his on the rope, and the half-fearful look on the boy’s face as they reached the cemetery gates.

  ‘God, I’m so sorry.’ Nikolai sounded shocked. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? You worked yesterday, and all day today, without telling us?’

  ‘I … couldn’t. I don’t know why.’ It was no explanation, but it was the truth. He licked the metallic taint of blood off his lip: it tasted of death. He had wrapped his mother’s body in the old crocheted blanket and carried it down the first flight of stairs. As emaciated as she’d been, the weight had almost proved too much for him. Only the fear that Mr Shapran would find him collapsed on the landing, with his dead mother beside him, had forced him on, one stair at a time, his arms burning and his eyes leaking tears.

  ‘No wonder you’re near collapse,’ said Nikolai. ‘Have you been giving all your rations to her?’

  ‘I was trying to stop her disappearing.’ How had her life slipped through his fingers? She was alive when he went to the bathroom to scrape at his face with the blunt blade, yet by the time he’d emerged, raw-chinned, hurrying, she had gone. He knew it instantly. The room was ringing with absence. After checking that her eyes were closed, and pulling the sheet over her face, he’d closed the door and left for rehearsal. All day yesterday, he had said nothing, spoken of nothing but work. Returning to the apartment in the evening had been the hardest and loneliest thing he’d ever done in the whole of his hard, lonely life.

  Nina was still holding his hand. ‘You did everything anyone could.’ She had no way of knowing this, but the characteristic ring of truth in her voice was somehow comforting.

  After coping so long on his own, being in the hospital was curiously soothing. White-clad staff passed by quietly; the ill and the wounded lay still under their covers. Unlit chandeliers hung over the makeshift wards like the canopies of oak trees. Elias was fed, sometimes he was washed; he was treated with no more and no less respect than anyone else. It was only when he stepped shakily back into the real world a few days later and returned to the Radio Hall that he remembered what he’d been through, and what lay ahead.

  Nikolai looked at him in an assessing way. ‘Why don’t you shorten rehearsal time? At least for a couple of da
ys, until you get some strength back.’

  Elias shook his head. ‘We need every minute we can get.’

  ‘You’re a stubborn bastard. You and Shostakovich have a lot in common. In a word, pig-headedness.’

  ‘Speaking of Shostakovich,’ said Elias, ‘do you know how he is?’

  ‘He’s worried. Worried about the war, worried about catching typhus, worried how long Leningrad can survive under siege. Essentially, he’s the same Dmitri we’ve always known and loved.’

  ‘But has he mentioned —’ Elias fiddled with his music stand. ‘The symphony? You told me he was concerned that Toscanini may botch it in America — but what about this performance, our performance?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ admitted Nikolai. ‘But the last letter from him was some time ago. A good deal of post isn’t getting through.’

  ‘Of course.’ Elias tried to sound matter-of-fact. It was unlikely that Shostakovich would expend much thought on a makeshift orchestra in Leningrad, when his symphony was gaining the attention of eminent conductors and critics all over the world. Yet he couldn’t help hoping for — what, a sign? Something to show that Shostakovich believed in what they were doing, and that it mattered. Stifling a sigh, he lowered his music stand. ‘Not very dignified to conduct from a chair, I know, but collapsing mid-rehearsal would be less so.’