They filled his glass again until he commenced certain stereotyped and futile gestures of resistance, more or less the same as when an old white-shawled babushka throws up her hands in horror once after days of searching she’s finally found her grandson’s corpse, its ankles crossed, its hands upflung like hers as if to stop the Nazi bullet. Well, but vodka’s harmless; it’s even a, you might say, a sort of medicine! Although it does make you, well, you understand—especially in June, because that’s when the “white nights” come to Leningrad. Those were the nights when I first lay in Elena’s arms. Did I say that or just think it? Why do they keep grinning at me? What did I think? Think about it, they said. We can be good friends, but we can also be tough.—I’m thinking; I’m thinking! Should I ring up Glikman? But that would compromise him. How about Lebedinsky? Or even Roman Lazarevich! Is he in Cuba or Indonesia now? Honestly, I can’t keep track; I’m old. I can hardly stand this; it’s going to kill me! But I do have to, um, so please, if you would excuse me for just three measures, prestissimo, I promise! All I want is breathing-space. While he went to the toilet and vomited, they turned over his volume of Dostoyevsky which was lying facedown on the second-best piano and discovered that he’d underlined this passage: Why do even the finest people always seem to be hiding something from others and keeping quiet about it? All they had to do was stand there when he came back; they smiled and pointed at the book.
After that, he lacked any defensive front. He tried to become as flat as a cockroach so that he could hide between the piano keys, but they gripped him until his fingers commenced palely trembling just like those dancers of the Musical Comedy Theater in Leningrad back in ’41; dear me, he’d never forget how during the rehearsals several of them had dropped dead right there on the stage, due to (how shall I put it?) hunger. He jittered and trembled, jittered and almost broke; then he was lying on the sofa while they bent over him. When he sobered up, he found he’d signed an application for membership in the Communist Party.
He went to pieces. Had his blunt-speaking Ninotchka still been alive, she would have kept them away! Lebedinsky would have barred the door!
He boarded the “Red Arrow” midnight train from Moscow to Leningrad, pretending like a child that this stratagem would protect him from them; Maxim and Galya were old enough to care for themselves; he’d never return to Moscow! So he sped deeper into darkness, quipping to himself: All railroads lead to Auschwitz!
Irina would have kept him company if he’d asked; she was ready to leave her husband, who seemed to be very, how should I say. But right now, just in case he couldn’t hold firm about the Party, the thought of how she’d stare at him with her almost abnormally expressive, hyperintelligent eyes, well…—Lebedinsky and Glikman met him at the platform. They promised to secrete him here so that he’d miss the Moscow convocation. He was sick, they’d announced. They’d telephone the Party for him. But this was only a postponement.
It was the personal wish of Comrade Khruschev that he join the Party, they’d said. Many changes had been made. He’d find that it was really a very nice Party now, a lovely Party, really.
He rushed off to his sister Mariya’s flat and hid there. They might not find him here; they’d try the Evropaskaya Hotel. (The worst of it was: What would Elena say?)
Once he’d joined the Party, they’d explained, his way would be clear to become President of the Russian Federation Union of Composers.
Mariya sat him down at her kitchen table and brought him a big bowl of soup. She understood the sonsofbitches quite well. It was she whom they’d once exiled to Central Asia, after the Tukhachevsky affair. That experience might also be the reason she’s stayed friends with Elena; those two had a bond; oh, yes.
Is she really as pleased to see me as she pretends? he wondered, or is she pretending, out of pity? My own sister, and yet I’m so… And now the telephone will ring. I, I, it feels as if she only gazes on me from a distance, a great distance. I can only, I should have brought her a present! I couldn’t even remember to do that. How worthless I am! Why don’t they just shoot me? How many years have I kept that spare underwear in the suitcase? Maybe the moths have eaten it. My, oh, me, how old Mariyusha looks! And what if I’m not welcome here? I wonder if her piano’s in tune; I see a speck of dust on it. She always used to tell me that I was too proud. Tomorrow I’d best return to Glikman’s. And I like the way that Vera Vasilyevna smiles at me when I eat her cooking. He was lucky to marry her! If she’d only have looked at me, then I perhaps…—Unimportant!—Lebedinsky would have said… I may be proud, but I’d give anything to turn into Glikman and not have to think! I can’t help looking down on him, because he loves me. Here at Mariyusha’s, well I’m nothing but a, a, you know, an imposition. I don’t dare ask her about Elena. How I wish I were deep in the ground, deep in the ground, tum ti tum ti tum, with mountains of black dirt on top of me so that I, so that I couldn’t hear anything! I really ought to leave Mariyusha’s tonight, but I just got here—
You’re not eating your soup, Mitya.
Please forgive me. I’m an imbecile, just an—
Shut up and eat.
He raised his spoon almost to his mouth, then said: Do you think that Glikman ever lies to me?
How can you think such a thing? He adores you! He trusts you!
But once you said—
Mitya, your nerves are making you ill. Now go in there and lie down and go to bed. If anybody telephones, I promise I won’t say you’re here.
Comrade Pospelov from the Bureau of the Central, so to speak, Committee has already rung at Glikman’s—
I promise you!
Mariyusha, you’re an angel! They’ve completely… And then there’s a certain Comrade Alexandrov, whom I… If only Nina—
Go to sleep now, and don’t worry about anything.
But tomorrow I’m going to have to, I, I’m afraid—
Whatever you like, she said with a compassionately distant smile. But you know you’re welcome here, Mitya.
Thank you for saying that. And I, you see, do you also think that I should hold out?
You mean, refrain from… I’m going to put on the radio. Why, isn’t that one of your film scores they’re playing? How lucky! I love that song. Now come closer. I’m sure they can’t hear us. Cousin Katerina’s an engineer, and she said—
But—
The telephone began to ring.
Of course you must hold out, Mitya. That goes without saying. How can you even consider joining them? Even if during all these ghastly decades they’d never harmed anybody, not even you, they’d still be evil! Oh, poor dear Mitya, don’t cry…