The spectators didn’t seem to notice. Indeed, they appeared to enjoy the piece more than the sophisticated New York audiences for whom Karen had often played. Russians, it seemed, really did love music, even bad music.
She noticed Petr smiling and unconsciously tapping his hand against his knee, trying to find the beat. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” he whispered when he noticed her watching him.
Karen was aghast. “Seriously?” she whispered back.
Petr looked at her, surprised. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything. It’s not supposed to sound like this.”
Petr was mystified. “What is it supposed to sound like?”
At that point Karen realized she was ruining the experience for him. He was happy, and she was spoiling that happiness. So she consciously softened her expression and her tone. “Never mind,” she reassured him. “You’re right. It is wonderful.”
She sat back in her metal folding chair, one of many set out to accommodate the audience, and tried to listen with new ears.
Petr was right. The music was wonderful. Not because it was melodic; it was not. And not because it was well performed; it was not. The music was wonderful because it was being performed at all, here in a beautiful park in the center of Moscow, in the middle of war, with the enemy only miles away.
If she’d been listening by herself, she would have hated it. She would have inwardly stewed and mentally criticized everything that was wrong. But thanks to Petr, she abandoned her cynicism and found a way to enjoy the experience. She was happy for that. She took Petr’s hand and squeezed it in gratitude.
When the concert ended, Karen stood and applauded with the rest of the audience, genuine in her appreciation. The schoolmarm conductor stepped forward and smiled in acknowledgment of the standing ovation. She gave it time to quiet before making what she described as an important announcement. The youth orchestra was traveling to Chelyabinsk, a city she described as the “new heart of Russia.” There, they would perform for Josef Stalin, who was hosting a summit with American officials. It was important to show the Americans the industrial might of Russia, as personified by the overnight growth of Chelyabinsk into the munitions factory for the entire nation. But it was also important to show the Americans that Russian culture still prospered, that the Russian spirit had not been crushed. It was for this second task that the youth orchestra had been chosen to perform.
But they needed help. The conductor assured the audience that any donations given her orchestra would be money well spent. Meanwhile, young members of her orchestra began handing out flyers advertising where to send donations.
Karen waited patiently for the woman to stop speaking and for the crowd to disperse. She then asked Petr to wait for her a moment. She was going to speak to the conductor personally. She had barely left her chair when Duck leaped to his feet, practically knocking her over, and scrambled through the assembled chairs, barking joyously.
“Duck!” she heard someone exclaim behind her.
It wasn’t Petr. The voice belonged to a boy about eight years old. He rolled around with Duck on the grass, wrestling and petting him despite the fact that the dog weighed twice as much as he did. Duck licked him all over. A man and a woman, in their thirties and dressed in fine clothes, crouched beside dog and boy with broad smiles on their faces, petting Duck whenever he rolled within their reach.
Petr ran up to the family and caught his breath. “I take it this dog belongs to you?” he said with a smile.
The woman, presumably the boy’s mother, nodded and laughed. “I didn’t think we’d ever see him again!”
Then she noticed Petr’s army uniform, and her smile faded. “Are you going to take him away?”
Petr shook his head. “No, no. I’ve been looking for you. I brought him back.”
The woman smiled again, but this time in wonder. “Brought him back? But doesn’t he belong to the army now?”
“He’s been discharged,” Petr lied, “for heroics.”
“Heroics?” asked the son, looking up. “Duck’s a hero?”
“Of course he is,” Petr replied.
The man, presumably the father, was the only one not smiling. He looked at Petr and at Karen and then at Petr again. Then he looked around nervously. “Why don’t we get Duck home, and you can tell us all about his heroics?” he suggested to Petr.
Petr nodded. “I think that would be wise.”
CHAPTER 34
THE SUBVERSIVE
Danil Epinger had never believed he could fall in love with an animal. And yet a dog, a puppy he’d received as a gift, had stolen his heart. His son had named the dog “Duck,” and the animal had become part of their family.
Danil was not an ambitious man. And yet he had prospered in a land where prosperity was eschewed, and he had grown wealthy in a country where wealth was essentially illegal. In part, he was wealthy and prosperous precisely because he was not ambitious. Danil was a patriot. He loved his country and was glad for the Communist government.
His father had been a factory worker, his grandfather a farmhand. In the old czarist economy of nobleman and peasant, he would never have been allowed to go to school, to become educated, and to pursue his passion for medicine. Communism, for all its flaws, had allowed Danil to become a doctor, and for that he would always be grateful.
Danil loved children. He loved children because he loved innocence. He himself was a simple and innocent man. But he was no simpleton. On the contrary, he had proven to be an intellectual giant. Danil had been drawn to medicine like a moth to a flame. It was both unambiguous and intellectually challenging. The puzzles were biological, not philosophical. And the goal was saving lives. No one—not even the most paranoid dictator—could find fault with that, especially when the lives Danil was saving were those of children, for he was a pediatrician.
But he knew what was happening around him. He recognized the excesses of Lenin and Stalin; he couldn’t help but notice the bloody way they held on to power. He had personally witnessed political prisoners, the so-called Gulag labor, forced to reconstruct Moscow’s Red Square, knocking down historic landmarks in order to clear a path for Josef Stalin’s military parades. Danil had seen how thin the political prisoners had been, how weak they were, and how they were forced to work despite that weakness and malnutrition. Danil knew that those prisoners were being worked to death. His physician’s eye was not fooled. These prisoners’ assignments to Gulag labor were in itself a death sentence. And although Danil hadn’t seen it for himself, he could guess at worse horrors occurring beyond the secret doors of NKVD interrogation rooms.
But he also knew that the masters of his country, the leaders of his government, and even the officers of State security weren’t utter psychopaths. The NKVD’s victims weren’t chosen at random. Neither were the Gulag political prisoners. There was a reason they were arrested. Their crimes of disobedience might not have been crimes in other countries, or in other times. But here and now, they were crimes.
Danil had no interest in crime. He was not a rebel, an agitator, or a resister. He didn’t want to be a politician, nor did he want to overthrow the current regime. He had no ambition whatsoever, and therefore no interest in politics. And, he reasoned, he was not alone. Every government—no matter how corrupt, no matter how totalitarian, no matter how terrifying—ultimately ruled at the will of its citizens. Even the czar, most controlling of all of Europe’s dictators, had ultimately been overthrown. If the czar could be overthrown, so could Stalin. Especially now, with the enemy at the gates, and defeat at the hands of the Nazis almost a certainty. But clearly, most Russians had no desire to overthrow Stalin. They did not rebel, despite the Gulags, despite the NKVD, despite everything. In fact, they had never been so united as now, in defending their homes, their land, and their country from the Nazis.