After all, he whispered allegro to Glikman, in whose uncritical love he once again trusted, I mean, after all, back in ’36 they voted against me, even Sollertinsky did; only Scherbakov abstained, and they flayed him for that! And the wonder is, my opera didn’t even impress Scherbakov! But he believed in truth. That was really… Talk about battles on the cultural front! Speaking of which, have you seen Roman Karmen’s latest film? “Our Friend Indonesia,” that’s what it’s called, I kid you not! Our dear friend! My children insisted on seeing it; it’s really… I refused to grovel at that time, but it goes on and on, and I’m not well; when you told them I was sick, it was actually true…
Be brave, Dmitri Dmitriyevich! You don’t have to join!
You’re correct! But, you see, I, I, well, I’ve become such a bastard… My children… What’s that envelope?
A telegram, said Glikman sadly.
For me?
I’m afraid so.
But Maxim’s applying to the Composers’ Union, and if I refuse to… No, I’ll hold out. I’m not going, you see! Let’s forget about all this and talk about Tchaikovsky’s sex life! Did you know that he loved one lady who, who, let’s just say he… Forever. It’s fantastic, really. She was even willing to, you know. And she would have married him, too, but he said to her: You’re so lucky that you didn’t marry me! They’ll only get me to Moscow if they tie me up and drag me there, you understand. They’ll have to tie me up—
Please calm yourself, my dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich!
I’d rather kill myself! I won’t ever join those murderers—
In July he went to Dresden. The temperate climate of this new German Democratic Republic agreed with him, especially soothing his bones and joints, which were now as rotten as the ancient wooden pavements which dated from the days when Leningrad was called Saint Petersburg. Would he like to see the Georgji Dimitroff Bridge when he got there? They were already advising him that he ought to see it, for the sake of solidarity. He replied that of course he was extremely eager to, you know, see it.
He remembered the premiere of R. L. Karmen’s “Comrade Dmitrov in Moscow”; Elena couldn’t keep her hands off him; they started kissing even before the lights went out. And now it’s Comrade Shostakovich in Dresden! But I’ll never be Comrade Shostakovich. I’d rather, you know.
How strange it feels to be in Germany! It’s very… Gazing out the train window at the rich blonde grass of the German plains, he felt a sense of shame and strangeness, as if he had unveiled the nakedness of some dead woman. Over there, looping as lazily wide as Beethoven’s rests and measures, shone the Elbe, where our Allied troops had linked up against the Fascists. Now here came stone arches embellished with figures and rosettes, everything massive yet teeming. Dresden, he’d have to say, felt heavier, less French than Leningrad. Elena wouldn’t most likely have… My, what a lot of rubbish he saw! Two arched and broken clamshells facing each other across shattered stones; that was their Frauenkirche. Another music-note burst within his head. He wondered whether he were on the verge of having a stroke; when he got back to Moscow he must learn the symptoms. Hadn’t Lenin’s wife died from something like that? Sometimes it seemed better to just, well.
The guide explained to him that we were now pickaxing down the old chocolate-striped estates of the Junkers and capitalists, to cannibalize them for collective farms.—Very good! laughed Shostakovich. Defensive preparedness! On the, the, the class front, you know…
It felt very humid. Fences, tan-colored walls, concrete cracked and white-streaked, then those orange-roofed Saxon houses with broken windows, all the bronze belfries slowly going earth-green, the orange tiles turning earth-black and—look at all those ruins! There were quite a lot of vacant lots in Dresden. Everything had been hauled away in those places. Congratulations. They explained that the statuary in the Grosser Garten had survived; it was basically decadent angels and all that claptrap. He could take a look if he liked, just for fun. Next time he came, it just might be gone, because, well, progress, you know! We’re lighting up the way with a searchlight. All these little blond children with their first wheelbarrows, learning the dignity of, well, labor, it makes me want to vomit. Actually, a lot of the comrades wanted to retire in Dresden when the time came. (What’s that sound?) Did he wish to see the spot where R. Wagner had conducted back in the nineteenth century? Unfortunately the American bandits had, you know. And would he care to visit the new Maxim Gorki Home, where East German and North Korean schoolchildren, rescued by us from Anglo-American aggression, had learned to live together in international harmony? To tell the truth, that was exactly what he’d hoped to, er… They felt very glad to hear that, because as it happened the schoolchildren were expecting him. He’d be especially gratified to learn that one North Korean boy whose parents had been murdered by the American adventurists wanted to play something on the piano especially for him, a concerto or maybe even a ballad or something, a whatchamacallit. They could guarantee him that it would be uplifting: Art which must fight against what Comrade Ulbricht has wisely termed the poison of skepticism.
Regarding the war damage (caused by incendiary bombs), he said to himself: Dresden’s wrecked, all right, but I remember how that first shell smashed into the side of the apartments across the street, and then, four-beat rest, and then from that smoking hole, which was about two storeys wide, I’d say, rubble and corpses began hissing out! A snare drum could recapitulate that sound. It was quite… That’s what you did to Leningrad. For nine hundred days! You did it. With your eighty-eights, I believe. And then you, so to speak, Germanized the Peterhof Palace into a, a, a skeleton…
No, there’d been a misprint in his itinerary. (They saw him shaking.) He wouldn’t be staying in Dresden after all. They’d arranged accommodations for him in the spa town of Goerlitz, which lies in the mountains forty kilometers away. (He was almost ready, his glands secreting music as weird as the steel spiderwebs of the wrecked Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant.) Comrade Shostakovich (Schostakowitsch was how they said it) ought to remember that he belonged to the people; he must take better care of himself. His visit to the Maxim Gorki Home would be postponed. They knew that he was tired; they wished to create the optimum conditions for his work, which…
Thank you, dear friends, thank you, he replied uncertainly. I know I’ll have a, so to speak, splendid time—
Above all, he wasn’t to worry, they said. They understood that nervous tension had been besieging his health. He’d be given everything he needed. They valued him; they’d made him a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic, effective as of today. Thank you for that, my dear, dear, so to speak, friends. And congratulations on your wonderful Maxim Gorki Home. They’d already arranged a tour of the monuments in Dresden, not to mention the wide Plätze and stone lions, the fountains, dead now, the other many-arched old bridges of Dresden (the “Blaues Wunder,” too); and he could interview as many of the Americans’ victims as he liked. Even former 
-officers were cooperating with us now, such was their craving for revenge. He’d doubtless find it rewarding to set their stories to music; it was merely a question of time and effort—