But you’re so cynical, Mitya! How can you twist yourself around so masochistically like that? It almost makes me sick to hear you—
Don’t worry; don’t worry. It’s, so to speak, irrelevant when the earthworm twists on the hook. And you know what? I don’t care about myself anymore.
What do you mean, you don’t care?
I’d sign anything even if they shoved it at me upside down. All I want is to be left alone…
He switched on the radio, and Comrade Khruschev was demanding to know: Plainly speaking, why do the United States of America, France and the United Kingdom need West Berlin? They need it as a dog needs a fifth leg. By the way, no one encroaches on West Berlin.
Just then the telephone rang. He began to shake; he didn’t want to answer it, but Lebedinsky was looking at him, so he pretended to be brave; and it turned out to be nobody worse than our esteemed Comrade Karmen, who had just won a Lenin Prize for his two gripping films about Caspian oil workers, and was now, I don’t believe this, ringing him up to advise: Perhaps you should join the Party, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. Let us help you! You know, I’ve been a member ever since ’36, and it’s definitely smoothed my way. It makes me very sorry to see all your needless struggles…
Thank you so much for your suggestion, my dear, dear Roman Lazarevich! Perhaps after my next, you know, symphony…
Buttering another slice of thick black bread, Lebedinsky chuckled, not so loudly that the big black telephone could hear: That’s the way, Mitya! Keep stalling the sonsofbitches until you’re dead!
My various needless struggles, he says. And when I think of him, you know, running his hands over Elena… Congratulations on your, so to speak, your fine work, Roman Lazarevich! A Lenin Prize, just imagine! I’m extremely…
You can count on me to put in a good word for you with the Party.
Roman Lazarevich, that’s very… I’ll never forget your kind wishes.
Thank God I got ride of that sonofabitch, not that I believe in God, nor should I completely shut Roman Lazarevich out (Lebedinsky refuses to understand this), because he was there, and for once I don’t mean with her, not at all; I mean Leningrad, oh, yes, my friends, when we… ha, ha! That snow and still more snow and corpses frozen to the sidewalk and Maxim begging me for food, but we didn’t have to go through anything, thanks to the wonders of my, of my so-called “symphony.” The ones we left behind covered up their faces and then they… fortunately, dear Roman Lazarevich recorded that winter for me, so I can feel guilty forever! Galisha’s still not the way she, I mean, a sustained scream, perhaps in the key of B-flat, is what I should, you know. In Opus 110. Those ice-white windows, and then the, the, but those sleds were the worst. With the little dead children on them. And Maxim, I’ve got to do something for Maxim. I wonder how he’s, anyhow, it’s a mercy he gets on better with Irina than he did with Margarita. She’s so good to me! As for Galisha, now that she’s married I can’t, why complete that thought? I need to… What’s that sound? Something under the piano. It must be a (Lebedinsky will like this!), a rat from my Rat Theme.
Lebedinsky had to go soon after that because, well, you know. But Shostakovich didn’t want to be alone! Irina was with her husband, so Nikolayeva was with him, sitting beneath Akhmatova’s portrait. They no longer held hands. Well, it was for the best, because she had a somewhat, how should I say, cowlike appearance; this thought made him crumple up his grey face in a crackle of laughter, not that he could tell Glikman, who… He adored her; she was very… I have my own ideas about Russian women.
Comrade Khruschev was on the radio again. He said to her: Listen to that bully. He denies it now, but of course he was cutting throats right next to Comrade Stalin…
Hush, Mitenka! Are you out of your mind? Why, somebody could be—
You’re right, of course. I mean, you and I are both very well taken care of. But his voice, you know, Shostakovich droned on, well, it’s gone flat, just like mine. Even Comrade Khruschev needs a rest! Tatiana, my little angel, do you remember much about the brass instruments? You see, at the Leningrad Conservatory I learned from Glazunov himself that there are two kinds—
Live bells and dead bells, put in Nikolayeva, who could not bear to have anyone think her stupid.
Exactly. And a live bell—correct me if I’m mistaken, dear girl—well, the heaviness and the temper of its metal give it a, well, which is to say, a ringing tone. I still have a great deal of music to write, but I’m the merest dead bell now, like Nikita Sergeevich there on the radio. Everything I used to compose—
You’re drinking too much, Mitya.
No, no, no, it’s just to warm me up. Dear girl, please why don’t you…? Well, dead bells, you know, they’re made of soft metal. The dark tones they’re capable of, like, like, well, as if somebody were playing a trombone in a catacomb—
The preludes and fugues you wrote for me weren’t at all like that, said Nikolayeva earnestly. They make me happy. I intend to perform them all my life…
There may be a few good notes in those, yes, yes, yes, my dear, said the old man with some satisfaction. And I’m not saying there won’t be more. The allegro molto in the, you know, the D-flat major fugue is rather—well, you know it, and I’m sorry it didn’t quite…
So even that doesn’t make you happy? What about your Seventh Symphony? At least it rallied people. Once you told me how alive you felt then; you said you gave it your all—
Didn’t you learn in school, he demanded in a hateful voice, that Ivan the Terrible, having coaxed his architect into, so to speak, putting the very best of himself into building Polrovsky Cathedral, afterwards put out his eyes? Anyway, things are so much easier in our century. LIFE HAS BECOME MORE JOYFUL! Although Meyerhold’s wife, you see, they cut her eyes out, too, as I recall. With a—ha, ha! That was extremely… She must have been a real anti-Soviet element, don’t you think? Nowadays we’re more enlightened. An extremely beautiful woman, by the way, although she might have been slightly, so to speak, plump, in our Russian fashion. Not that I mean any… Well, once I’m blinded and gelded and all the rest, then I… Do have a little more vodka, Tatianochka. It keeps, you know, it keeps out the chill.
In June he somehow found himself in company with some unknown persons who wore tall shiny boots. They were very friendly and came right into his home so he had to give them vodka. One of them, whom he seemed to have met before, was named Comrade Alexandrov, and he persisted in hoping that on account of this prior acquaintanceship, which he couldn’t quite recollect, they’d go easy on him, that the finale would end on a, so to speak, major key, since by the law of averages he ought to succeed in avoiding further misfortunes, although that notion might simply prove to be (how should I put this?) stupidity on his part. Now the vodka was all gone, but they must have brought vodka of their own, as it seemed, because they kept filling his glass.
They wanted him to play the piano, but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t a, a, you know, a trained seal.
They shoved their chairs right up against his and spoke into his face.—We will open your eyes, they said.—Clenching his fists, he smiled down at his knees. Where was Maxim? If only Maxim would come home right now! Pretty soon they were talking about Mother Russia, and he said: Honestly, I, I, there are times when I just want to get down on my knees and kiss the dirt! at which they chuckled and nudged each other, not at all put off by the loathsome sadness of his eyes. He’d meant every bit of it; he was actually thinking of a phrase he’d heard somewhere—it must have been in that Roman Karmen movie when Vlasov whispers the breasts of zoya and starts to kiss a little snowhill in the forest—but my God, it couldn’t have been Vlasov, because Vlasov had been, you know. Maybe Marina Tsvetaeva had written something about, um, I set my lips to the breast of the great round battling earth, but Tsvetaeva had tied a knot around her throat and, I mean, why go on, it was best to say nothing. They kept looking at him so that he stammered to deprecate himself, longing to be dead so that they couldn’t catch him, although then he’d scarcely see Elena anymore.