Staring down at the piano keys to which his aching ancient claws of hands couldn’t make love anymore, he thanked us for their comradely criticism; oh, yes, he thanked us in words as lucent as the icily sparkling corpses which had once adorned Leningrad.—And in fact, I, well, there’s simply no question about it. In my next symphony I’m going to change everything exactly as you advise! If we’re fainthearted about carrying out those measures, the 
will step in. That violin section you dislike, I’ll tell the orchestra to play it quickly so that the audience won’t even hear it! Moreover, I’m going to, er, there’ll be dialectical resolution in every measure, I guarantee it! Like a searchlight!—But, as usual, he was, how should I say, teasing them. After all, isn’t nocturnal antiaircraft fire likewise a song of darkness engraved in pure and delicate lines of light, akin to the rays of twenty-four-carat gold which a bookbinder’s heated stylus, if drawn with sufficiently errorless spontaneity across the measured strip of foil, engraves forever in the black leather covers of the Book of Night?
In a grand Hallway of the People with a brass chandelier, he got drunk and whispered into Glikman’s face: They talk about this new, this, this cultural exchange! Well, haven’t we always had it? We have Black Marias and they have Green Minnas!
My dear, dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich, what on earth are you saying? Please be careful—
Or did Green Minnas vanish with the Reich? Maybe they transport them in schoolbuses now—
Them? Whom are you talking about?
Why, I’m talking about all of us. Long live the, so to speak, the, the Fatherland!
Dmitri Dmitriyevich, day and night I worry about your happiness.
Thank you. Thank you!
And I have something important to say to you.
Yes, my friend, said Shostakovich in a panic, his fingers beginning to gallop crazily all over the room. What is it?
Do you remember that many years ago you asked me to—
No, no! Please don’t—
And after I saw you last time, when you burst into tears—
I did not!
I swear to you—
So you betrayed my confidence, is that what you did?
When you were weeping, you asked me to go to her and—
Did you tell her? How dare you?
She kept asking me, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. So I told her, because—
Because what?
My dear Dmitri Dmitriyevich, I advise you to leave your present situation, because you’re not happy. Even now it’s not too late to—
Please keep your advice to yourself, my dear, dear Isaak Davidovich!
With a despairing and humiliated smile, Glikman said softly: That’s how I know you’re in love. Because people in love never take the advice of their friends. First they ask for it and don’t take it, and then they become quite offended when their friends, who only want to help them and who—
Isaak Davidovich, please forgive me! Oh, I’m a bastard, such a, a, a bastard! And that’s why you told her, of course, of course—because I wanted you to! How is she? Her hair must be completely white by now. And then I—oh, I’m such a sonofabitch! Galina was right not to marry me!
Never mind her, said Glikman, laying his hand on Shostakovich’s shoulder; and Shostakovich suddenly felt that he loved Glikman more than he had ever loved any man or woman on or under this earth, and Glikman tenderly repeated: Never mind her. It’s not Galina Ustvolskaya that you love.
Shostakovich lived on to 1970, when he published an article entitled “Lenin’s life, an inspiring example to us.” He also composed Opus 139, “March of the Soviet Police.” I mean, why run ahead of progress? It’s better to just, you know. But Irina kept being so kind. The silent tact of the woman who sits on the bench beside the concert pianist, turning pages at just the right moment, and otherwise scarcely existing, that summed up Irinochka, who devoted herself to him so perfectly; how could he possibly deserve her?
He knew that he was ruining her as he’d ruined Tatyana, Elena, Nina and Galina; he was a poisoned bomb who killed all; poor tired Ninusha had suffered the worst, because she’d lived with him the longest. And then he’d… Elena, you’re so lucky that you didn’t marry me. Is the page turner any less important than the concert pianist? First of all, she needs to read music, which is no mean feat in our times. More important still, she keeps me company, knowing me and comforting me. She keeps Opus 110’s swarm of sorrows from… I, I, the things growing deep within the mass graves! And then… From within the great brick arch, the railroad tracks roll toward a stand of trees. I think that’s the gas chamber. Wooden watchtowers, A-framed ocher-bricked barracks in rows and rows and rows, the remains of chimneys in the grass, that’s my music. Long rows of chords, block after pinewood block of them, long and low with steeper, blacker-roofed chords on the right, it all aims at the same kind of feeling—you know, that feeling of… But when she holds me in her arms, Operation Barbarossa never happened! Well, aren’t I vile, though, to want to deny…? Do you remember when the American fighter-bombers returned to Dresden for the third raid and began machine-gunning women and children in the grass? Talk about chopping up the melodic lines! The Americans should have, well… Some people survived even then. I wonder who was luckier. We can all hope to, to, so to speak, survive. And I myself, although I’m very afraid, I…
Time ticked, and he lived on to 1972, when his Fifteenth Symphony premiered; for despite his impairments they still expected him to fulfill his quota of symphonies, just as in the old days they’d demanded that the NKVD chief of some city arrest and shoot ten thousand enemies of the people at once and without fail. Unfortunately, the Fifteenth was no more than a feeble rearguard action, a holding-on behind enemy-occupied lines. Many a chord got borrowed from Wagner, Prokofieff, Mussorgsky and a certain D. D. Shostakovich. On the whole, it was as grey as Tukhachevsky’s eyes, as white as Glikman’s intentions, as clean as Nina’s fingernails, as solitary as Irina’s, you know. Elena, you see how lucky it is that, well. I used to be—how should I put it? Conceited. And now, when I hear someone’s silly laugh, especially a man’s, because women are, you know, I, I can hardly… They praised its banality, and his ears kept ringing. He kept expecting to see Comrade Stalin in the back row, or Zhukov, Khrennikov, or anybody else who was unshakably determined to light the way ahead with a searchlight. As for our unshakable allies in East Germany, they called it strangely reserved and introverted. His attention wandered; his mouth trembled; his coat fell off his lap and Irina picked it for him. The searchlight’s on me; it gives me the creeps! His spectacles were now as big as clockfaces. White light gleamed on them, so that it was sometimes difficult for others to read his eyes—thank you, thank you! He sat stiff and frowning, with his useless hands at his sides. Why not cut them off? Then I’d take up less space in this world! That way I could hide from Comrade Alexandrov, who won’t leave me alone; he’s always around with his… Remembering the chord of screams when a German Fascist oil bomb hit a children’s hospital, he realized that he’d forgotten to put that sound into Opus 110. Well, well! Should I rewrite it? It would field-strip as nicely as a Nazi pistol, every movement black and silver. And then that one sound— what’s that sound? Because… Struggling painfully to his feet to thank the musicians as usual, he found that several shuddered away from his compromised hand. They jeeringly called him Comrade Shostakovich. His heart drummed as hellishly as the second movement of Opus 110. The next day, however, an American admirer invited him to her apartment for an intimate breakfast, not far from where the “Spartak” Children’s Home used to be. What was her name? It was some, so to speak, American name. His memory wasn’t always… She told him that his Fifteenth was brilliant, and he thought to himself: If I were only fifteen measures younger I could have, I could have, well. Let me calculate it: Fifteen years ago, Nina had just died and Elena would have been forty-three. When did that Vigodsky marry her? After the war; it must have been after the war. She wouldn’t have been too old then to, to, how shall I say, but it’s better not to think about that because, anyway that’s how most meetings go. Besides, for the sake of my so-called “health”… He remembered the cries which Elena used to utter: first appassionato, almost con dolore, then morendo, then after a long rigid silence with her face locked away in pleasure, con brio for the very finish, not explosively as other women so often did, but as calmly unstoppably as a rocket rising upon its own flame, with superhuman brilliance, really; hence that smooth shrill pass of the cello’s bow in the second movement of Opus 40; that was when he’d first known how far above everyone she truly was. Well, that was over. The waffles which this American had made (she seemed to be suffering from a case of leftwing infantile deviation) reminded him of war-skeletonized buildings. It was all a matter of scale. Instead of charred square concrete pits which had once been rooms, square wells of golden starchiness looked up at him, glimmering with melted butter and maple syrup imported all the way from Canada!