When the men get the bear back to the town, they train it for the circus, and the music represented the coaxing and the blows, the bear’s misery and his clumsy steps as he begins to rumble round the circus, obedient to their will. It was full of pathos and humour. The children would clap and laugh.
But would it be approved?
Dimitri paused in his work for a moment. Outside, he could see over the roofs of the nearby buildings. A moon, nearly full, rode high in the autumn sky. And three miles away, he knew, in his study deep in the Kremlin, another figure would certainly be working at this hour.
It was remarkable what Stalin had achieved: there was no question. In the early twenties, after the ruin of the Civil War, how uncertain the course of the revolution had seemed. The leadership had even had to tolerate, with the New Economic Policy, a measure of capitalism for a time. But then Stalin had imposed his wilclass="underline" what Lenin had begun, he would complete. And the transformation had been astounding: the entire countryside turned into state farms and collectives; the independent peasants of the Ukraine deported en masse. The first, stupendous Five Year Plan for industry completed in just over four. Russia was now, truly, a world industrial power. Yet at what cost? How many had perished? He did not like to think how many.
Russia had risen like a great bear: that was it. There was nothing, it seemed, the mighty bear could not accomplish with its huge strength, if properly directed.
Yet he missed those earlier days. Things had been livelier then. Writers like Bulgakov and Pasternak had been free to say what they liked. Eisenstein had burst upon the world with his astonishing film work. Painting had still been the province of the avant-garde, before the present doctrine of Socialist realism had condemned all painting to a dreary depiction of idealized proletarian life.
Nowadays one had to be more careful. A friend of his who had foolishly recited a poem mocking Stalin back in ’32 – and done so only in the privacy of a friend’s apartment – had disappeared within the week. Eisenstein’s films were made under Stalin’s personal supervision now; all the history books were being rewritten.
‘I can only thank God,’ Dimitri would say to his wife, ‘that no one’s found a way to control music yet.’ His work, like that of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, was not much interfered with.
For several more minutes Dimitri wrote intensely: the coda was taking shape. The apartment was silent as his little family slept. Dimitri completed the first section of the final entrance of the bear.
It was the latest piece of foolish legislation which had really depressed him. To educate children for a Socialist world was one thing. Dimitri would sometimes smile at Stalin’s passion for Peter the Great. Peter, too, had seen all men as nothing more than creatures whose purpose was to serve the state. But even Peter the Great never dreamed of legislation like Stalin’s. To turn ordinary children into enemies of their own parents – everything in him revolted against that. The new Children’s Law was very clear, though. Any child who discovered counter-revolutionary tendencies in either of its parents should report them. He had grinned at the time. ‘Your mother’s a scientist and I’m a musician,’ he had said to young Peter, ‘so I don’t think you need to worry about that.’ And the little boy had laughed. He was only nine but already Dimitri recognized a studious, thoughtful look in his dark eyes. ‘Perhaps you’ll be a scholar, or an artist,’ Dimitri liked to say to him.
In the second section of the Suite, one of the hunters manages to catch the firebird just long enough to pull out one of its feathers, and he brings it to the circus. How the feather sparkles and crackles with light. It is as though the fellow has just discovered the power and wonder of electricity, and the music became charged with chromatic energy as the wondrous feather appeared.
It had been foolish of him, of course, to have made the remarks he had, even in private. Yet how could one not be irritated? The previous year the régime had actually declared that a number of scientific disciplines were to be abolished: paediatrics; genetics; sociology; psychoanalysis. The reason – Stalin’s great Constitution had just been published, which declared Russia to be a perfect democratic state. How then could there be sciences which spoke of poor children, inherited differences, social problems or troubled people?
And one evening, at home with some friends, Dimitri had turned to little Peter and said: ‘You realize, don’t you, that this Constitution is a flagrant lie?’ That was all he had said; but it was enough.
It was a week later that he had known. It was a look in the boy’s eyes that had told him. He had been working at the kitchen table one afternoon and suddenly seen little Peter gazing at him with a steady, accusing stare. Then, when he had instinctively drawn the boy to him, and put his arm round him, he had felt Peter suddenly draw back, then look at him guiltily and in evident confusion. He had known at once, and understood. And the boy guessed he knew. And neither had said a word.
It was a pity, though.
Would they let the Suite be performed? It seemed innocuous enough – just some circus scenes, based on fairy tales. He supposed they would, but perhaps he should hide the music somewhere, give it to someone. Just in case.
He worked on swiftly.
The coda depicted a remarkable scene. The firebird comes out of the forest – something it has never done before – and bursts into the circus. Swooping and wheeling around, the firebird terrifies everyone – the audience, the hunters, the bear-trainer. Sparks fill the air. The electric lights flash on and off wildly. And in this pandemonium, the bear, for so long cowed, breaks free, and begins his own, lumbering, tragi-comic dance.
Would it be played? Would he be allowed to finish it? Three miles away, deep in the Kremlin’s great stone heart, Stalin was working now. At just this time of night, it was said, the lists of those to be purged were placed before him. So many had gone already. Names, names without number, names without faces. Did they vanish from the universe, or only from the earth?
Slowly the coda formed, its syncopated rhythms coming together, then parting, as the crowds shouted and the firebird and the bear contrived their wild dance of ever mounting joy, and freedom, until they burst out of the circus into the night, and rushed towards the forest.
Midnight passed. One o’clock.
A knock on the door.
Still the firebird was flying high, brushing the top of the tent as the lights flashed madly. And the bear was hugging his trainer, not in rage but in love, while the foolish fellow howled with fright.
The knocks at the door grew louder.
His wife in the kitchen now, staring with frightened, uncomprehending eyes. ‘NKVD. What have we done?’ His little daughter, awakened and crying. His son, looking pale as a ghost, behind them.
The firebird was swooping now, calling to the bear. She had her stolen feather in her claws. The bear was lumbering towards the entrance. A minute more and they would be free.
The men were hammering on the door now. Their voices echoed angrily. Little Peter was turning into the hall. In a moment he would let them in.
And now the flaps of the circus tent flew apart and with a last, huge crash from the percussion, they rushed, the firebird and the bear, out into the huge embracing freedom of the forest where, for a second or two more, their timeless, joyous melodies were heard to echo.
Dimitri turned. There were three of them. They let him kiss his wife and little girl. The music rested on the table. They turned to go.
The little boy was there in the hall. Whatever they had told him at school had not been enough. Now, seeing his father being taken away, he had suddenly broken down.
Dimitri picked him up in his arms and held him. He hugged him close.