They’d given Van Cliburn an interpreter of almost intimidating beauty. But Shostakovich noticed that those two scarcely gazed at each other. She kept tapping her hands on the banquet table. (It actually seemed to Cliburn that she was indifferent to him, which gave him a strange feeling, but after all, this was another country, a dangerous country, a Slavic enemy country.)
Mr. Shostakovich, I’d be right honored if you’d call me Van.
But you’re too kind! cried the old man anxiously. Dear me! Well, Van, thank you, thank you, thank you; and feel free to call me Mitya…
He felt almost sorry for Cliburn. The boy was too guileless.
From the next table, the sad young composer S. Gubaidulina was making eyes at him. He knew that as soon as the banquet broke up she’d back him into a corner and begin all over again: Dmitri Dmitriyevich, you’re the person our generation depends on to give us answers. Please, I beg of you, don’t let them talk you into joining the Party. You can’t imagine how many people are counting on you to hold firm…
The American boy’s blond curls enraged him, he hardly knew why.
Do you know, Van, I myself was once the soloist for this very same Tchaikovsky concerto! It was in Kharkov, in the summer of 1926. Long before all the, the, you know. Hitler took it three times and we took it back twice, after which they… three and two, now, how does that work out? But I don’t suppose there’s much left of the old city. Field-Marshal Paulus had a lot of tanks at first, before we… Tree-lined streets. Anyway, nothing lasts. Perhaps a few bricks, or… For instance, I was actually young once! You can hardly imagine…
He was trying to be kind. As a matter of fact, the nineteenth-century predictability of the composition pained him now. Oborin was correct; Tchaikovsky’s music deserved to be parodied.
The boy smiled and started to say something, but Shostakovich, embarrassed and anxious, rushed on with the story, longing to put them both at ease, trying to make it funny: Perhaps you haven’t heard of him, Van, but the conductor was, was, he was Nikolai Malko, who’s with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra now. He did his best to look after me. Ha! We used to play billiards together when we should have been practicing! In 1926 I would have been, excuse me, about the age you are now. Do you play billiards, Van?
Gosh, Mitya, I’ve never had the time. If you want to teach me, maybe we could try a game…
Oborin was already claiming that the only reason the audience had wept at Van Cliburn’s performance was mass hysteria
Another Russian girl came with flowers for Vanyitchka. He thanked her shyly, sitting tall and slightly bowed. He didn’t seem to know whether or not to rise when he accepted the bouquet. She invited him to escort her to the premiere of “Far and Wide My Country Stretches.” Definitely he was blushing now. Everybody looked away, feeling sorry for him. For what reason did his appearance stain Shostakovich with a feeling of peculiarity, almost of horror? He felt as if he’d half forgotten some secret. Then it came to him: the front page of Izvestiya, with that portrait gallery of the heroic generals who’d saved Moscow, and among them the favorite of Comrade Stalin (so it was said), tall, thin, anxious Vlasov, who’d peered down at fame through harsh black-rimmed spectacles. Why had Vlasov made such an impression on Shostakovich? No, the impression must have been made later, at the war’s end, when the man got hanged for treason and cowardice. There had been no Izvestiya photograph then. They’d never met. Nor was Vlasov’s fate unusual. But that one image of him, his face already bent as if in anxiety and misery, although the true case must simply have been that he was taller than the photographer, well, there Shostakovich could see himself. As for the American Vanyitchka, he looked nothing like General Vlasov. He was tall, to be sure, and he hunched nervously but…
Mitya, I’ll tell you something, Oborin had said. Once when I was preparing a concert at the front we drove over a German mine. Everybody except me got killed. In my case it was really just luck, and I… Well, anyway, what I remember from that instant is two sharp reports—not particularly loud, you understand, but sharp. And sometimes, even now, the sound of a backfiring engine…
But Vlasov and this kid, I, there’s, there’s no—
Look, said Oborin. There’s no logical connection between the sputtering of a truck and two land mine explosions. But when you’re in danger, you don’t have time for logic. Your heart pounds, and you try to save yourself, that’s all.
So you’re saying that because I might have identified with Vlasov—
Mitya, are you crazy? Don’t keep mentioning that name. Who knows if somebody’s in the hallway right now…?
Well, Van, it was a remarkable performance, I must say. You ought to feel, how should I say, very proud. I understand that your mother—
My mother was my best teacher. And I played clarinet at Kilgore High, said the boy in a confiding tone.
My mother also taught me well.
I’d be proud to meet her, Mitya.
Unfortunately, she’s dead, laughed Shostakovich, fiddling with his glasses. And your mother, is she, I mean, is she in good health?
Oh, pretty good, thanks. Mitya, I want to ask you something. Do you think I played the Rachmaninoff too fast? I felt a little nervous—
No, no, no, in my opinion your choice of tempo was entirely correct. (Please tell your mother to look after her health.) It was a splendid performance, really, very very talented, and that moderato in the first movement, well, the way you played it, it had a steady, you know, tenderness—
Thanks for saying that, Mitya, because I’ve always been crazy about your Seventh Symphony. When I was playing the moderato, as soon as I got through the fast part I tried to slow down into something that would sound like your third movement—
Yes, yes, I think I’m, you might say, familiar with that music, said Shostakovich with a wink. How does it go now, Van? The third movement, I mean. Can you carry a tune? Maybe you could—
It always inspired me, continued the boy a little desperately. The part that’s called the “Open Spaces of the Heartland”—
Oh, dear, well, perhaps you overrate me. But you certainly put on a fine performance.
Blushing, Van Cliburn listened in his head to the crucial bars of the second movement, the adagio sostenuto, just as he had played it. To him this was the most romantic music of all, the piano upholding the sweetness of the strings, then growing as reflective as a Chopin nocturne. Whenever he played it, he felt as though he were walking through a summer pavilion. And the great Shostakovich approved of his performance! He could hardly breathe for joy.
But how’s the life for you over there? Oborin wanted to know. Do you serve in your country’s armed forces, Van?
They inducted me last year, but I had a blood condition…
An East German pianist approached to present his congratulations, and as soon as he was out of earshot, Shostakovich, clutching his vodka-glass, chuckled to Van Cliburn: You know what Comrade Stalin said at the twenty-sixth anniversary parade? I think it was the twenty-sixth. Or was it the twenty-fifth? Never mind. How did he put it? Wait a moment. No, no, now it comes to me! He said, Comrades, long live the, so to speak, victorious Anglo-Soviet-American fighting alliance. Death to the, if you get my drift, German invaders.
Cliburn blinked and said: Well, thanks for saying that, Mitya. I sure appreciate it.