Fortunately, Stalin now shook his fist at the sky, fell back into bed and died; and a month afterward Weinberg found himself released.
Shostakovich sat at home. He’d grown as fat as one of the pillars of Saint Isaac’s church. His flesh was bluish-grey like the Neva in the dank days of November, when the gilded dome of Kazan Cathedral pales into irresolution. Many white hands like milk-puddings spilled on his piano. A cluster of souls clung around the score of his symphony, far below V. I. Lenin’s portrait. His good friend Denisov had somehow obtained five hundred grams of pure Caspian caviar, the black variety, whose globules burst between the teeth like ripe grapelets. (Give him nine grams!) Glikman was absent. He’d had to do something with his wife. Shostakovich had always tried to help Glikman. Upon learning of his second marriage, he advised him: If you ignore the feminine, then you’ll, how should I say, well, you yourself will suffer.—Weinberg and Natalya were hovering over Nina, whispering something in her ear as the radio said: a fearless officer and a Communist. Nikolayeva was on the sofa humming sadly to herself. Ustvolskaya had declined to come, but the downstairs neighbors were there. At their request he played one of his preludes, moderato no troppo, his hands sure today, his skill perfect because the music was perfect with that selfsame liquidlike streaming of metal particles from an explosive charge, no melting involved, only controlled superstress which empowers the shockwave to penetrate anything from a ribcage to a steel tank. When he finished, all was silent; two of the women were crying, but Nikolayeva was smiling like a cat who’d just caught a mouse.
Clasping his hands to his knees, looking sportif as he leaned against pretty I. Makharova, he tossed down another vodka while A. Khatchaturian looked on with a gaze whose jealousy was only emphasized by noble renunciation. Was Makharova willing to have her buttock squeezed? The left one, of course, only the left one! Our composer withdrew his hands, both corners of his mouth twitching allegro when the conversation turned political. The guests all seemed hopeful, now that the Stalin chord was at last dissolved back into its arpeggio.
But, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, surely there will be improvements now!
Edik, said Shostakovich, the times are new, but the informers are old.
This new Tenth Symphony of his, which capitalists had the impudence to call his “masterpiece,” was of course attacked in the home country for dissonance and pessimism. Moreover, it contained an offensively erotic element. The second movement teemed with his musical signature intertwined with the musical initials of his latest unrequited love, the young pianist E. M. Nazirova. He hastened to apologize for all this in Sovietskaya Muzyka.
In August we find him writing the loyal Glikman, begging him to find out the whereabouts of a certain G. I. Ustvolskaya, with whom he had many matters to discuss; the next day he wrote: Dear Isaak Davidovich: Please forget my request. I have received a telegram and no longer have any cause for concern.
We see his pale, bespectacled face shining wearily over Prokofieff’s bier. He made many good-faith efforts to get the widow released from the concentration camp where she’d been since 1948. He also intervened for the Leningrad conductor Kurt Sanderling. When Nina, distraught with fear, warned him of the possible consequences, he said: Don’t worry, dear, don’t worry; they won’t do anything to me.
He was willing to denounce Beria in private, but apathetically. He’d been half poisoned by the humiliation of being given all those public librettos to sing. In Pravda, denunciations of class enemies appeared regularly over his signature. At official functions he pretended to write down the insightfully correct remarks of other comrades, so that he could at least refrain from applauding.
It’s said that shortly after Stalin’s death a guest discovered Shostakovich reading the monster’s official biography, but in secret, as if it were shameful. Why, millions had read that book (or at least bought it)! Just as Mein Kampf had been on practically every German family’s bookshelf during a certain period, so in the days of the “cult of personality” Stalin’s life had sold rather well—even better, perhaps, than Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism. No Soviet citizen could get away from it. And now, only now, Shostakovich was reading it—and now he was hiding it! It was all so strange…
Soon afterward he was honored by the Italians.
The brief winter’s day was nearly done. Peering between the curtains of his hotel room, he gazed into the sky, which had turned the dark, warm reddish-black of tea infused with raspberry jam. He remembered the delicious somberness of Tatyana Glivenko’s menstrual blood one morning on the white sheets—well, that had been forty years ago now, which must have been why his recollections were tainted by less erotic crimsonness, like the image he could not forget of that woman right outside the Conservatory who’d lost her face to a German shell. Letting the curtains close, he drummed out a cadence from Opus 40 on the writing-desk. (Never mind; these others would never recognize it.) A subsequent hour found him sitting very silent in his chair with his head bowed, listening to the rhythm of faint footsteps far down the hall. The ringing metronome-like clicking of high heels reassured him, for it was feminine and it hid nothing. It was the muddier sounds of soft squishy boots, or muffled steps, or the steady yet under-obvious drumbeats of men’s heels which pierced him like pins. He could hear speech in the next room. He could hear water running. He heard the weary cadence of a toilet-flush.
Trembling, he opened the door of his hotel room and found the floor lady watching him. He tried to smile at her. Then he rushed to the elevator.
Two men in dark ankle-length coats and shiny boots stood in the lobby, gazing at themselves in the mirror. After awhile one yawned, unfolded his hands from behind his back, and leaned over the counter. Something about those hands reminded Shostakovich of the alabaster inkstand in his room upstairs. The terrified reception girl offered up the register. Meanwhile the other man turned and said: Why, if it isn’t Dmitri Dmitriyevich! Congratulations on your rehabilitation.
Thank you, thank you…
The man with the alabaster hands yawned, let the register fall out of his hands, strolled up to Shostakovich and said: Almost a decade between symphonies, isn’t that so? You’re not exactly a shock worker!
Because my hand gets tired, comrades, even when I… It, so to speak, subverts me. But I’m only a worm, and my symphonies are mere, uh, so it’s no loss to, to… I do apologize.
Take a vodka with us. We’ve been meaning to have a talk with you.
Oh, how very, but my friend, unfortunately, is—
Comrade Ustvolskaya has been delayed. Come over here, you.
They sat at the bar, and Shostakovich clutched the little glass of vodka in his trembling hands.
They asked him if he knew that M. Weinberg had been approached by an agent of British intelligence. They wanted to know when his Lenin Symphony would be finished. They demanded that he join the Communist Party, which is the only true party of the working class. He preferred to be associated with the working class, didn’t he? They kept referring to your obligation to the people.
Yes, yes, yes, he replied with a smile as otherworldly as the gleaming of golden church-domes across a canal.