Julian Barnes - The Noise of Time

The Fifth Symphony’s success was instant and universal. Such a sudden phenomenon was accordingly analysed by Party bureaucrats and tame musicologists, who came up with an official description of the work, to assist the Soviet public’s understanding. They called his Fifth ‘an optimistic tragedy’.

ALL HE KNEW was that this was the worst time.

One fear drives out another, as one nail drives out another. So, as the climbing plane seemed to hit solid ledges of air, he concentrated on the local, immediate fear: of immolation, disintegration, instant oblivion. Fear normally drives out all other emotions as well; but not shame. Fear and shame swilled happily together in his stomach.

He could see the wing and a churning propeller of the American Overseas Airlines plane; that, and the clouds they were heading into. Other members of the delegation, with better seats and greater curiosity, were pressing against the little windows for a last glimpse of the New York skyline. The six of them were in celebratory mood, he could hear, and eager for the stewardess to come round with the first offer of drinks. They would toast the great success of the congress, and assure one another that it was precisely because they had advanced the cause of Peace so much that the warmongering State Department had revoked their visas and packed them home early. He was just as keen on the stewardess and the drinks, if for different reasons. He wanted to forget everything that had happened. He drew the patterned curtains across the window, as if to blot out the memory. Small chance of that, however much he drank.

‘There is only good vodka and very good vodka — there is no such thing as bad vodka.’ This was the wisdom from Moscow to Leningrad, from Arkhangelsk to Kuibyshev. But there was also American vodka, which, he had now learnt, was ritually improved with fruit flavours, with lemon and ice and tonic water, its taste covered up in cocktails. So perhaps there might be such a thing as bad vodka.

During the war, anxious before a long journey, he would sometimes go for a session of hypnotherapy. He wished he’d had a treatment before the outbound flight, then one each day of their week in New York, and another before the return journey. Or better still, they could have just put him in a wooden crate with a week’s supply of sausage and vodka, dumped it at LaGuardia airport and loaded it back on the plane for their return. So, Dmitri Dmitrievich, how was your trip? Wonderful, thank you, I saw all I wished to see and the company was most agreeable.

On the flight out, the seat beside him had been occupied by his official protector, warder, translator and new best friend as of twenty-four hours previously. Who naturally smoked Belomory. When they were handed menus in English and French, he had asked his companion for a translation. On the right were cocktails and alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. On the left, he had assumed, was food. No, came the reply, these were other things you could order. A bureaucratic forefinger ran down the list. Dominoes, checkers, dice, backgammon. Newspapers, stationery, magazines, postcards. Electric razor, ice bag, sewing kit, medical kit, chewing gum, tooth-brushes, Kleenex.

‘And that?’ he had asked, pointing at the only untranslated item.

A stewardess was called, and a long explanation followed. Eventually, he was told,

‘Benzedrine inhaler.’

‘Benzedrine inhaler?’

‘For drug-addict capitalists who shit themselves on take-off and landing,’ said his new best friend, with a certain ideological smugness.

He himself suffered from non-capitalist fear on take-off and landing. Had he not known it would go immediately into his official file, he might have tried this decadent Western invention.

Fear: what did those who inflicted it know? They knew that it worked, even how it worked, but not what it felt like. ‘The wolf cannot speak of the fear of the sheep,’ as they say. While he had been awaiting orders from the Big House in St Leninsburg, Oistrakh had been expecting arrest in Moscow. The violinist had described to him how, night after night, they came for someone in his apartment block. Never a mass arrest; just one victim, and then the next night another — a system which ramped up the fear for those who remained, who had temporarily survived. Eventually, all the tenants had been taken except for those in his apartment and the one opposite. The next night the police van arrived again, they heard the downstairs door slam, footsteps coming along the corridor … and going to the other apartment. From this exact point, Oistrakh said, he was always afraid; and would be, he knew, for the rest of his life.

Now, on the flight back, his minder left him alone. It would be thirty hours before they reached Moscow, with stops at Newfoundland, Reykjavik, Frankfurt and Berlin. It would be comfortable at least: the seats were good, the noise level bearable, the stewardesses well groomed. They brought food served on china and linen with heavy cutlery. Enormous shrimps, fat and sleek like politicians, swimming in shrimp-cocktail sauce. A steak, almost as tall as it was wide, with mushrooms and potatoes and green beans. Fruit salad. He ate, but mainly he drank. He no longer had the light head of his younger days. One Scotch and soda followed another, but they failed to put him out. No one stopped him, neither the airline nor his companions, who were audibly merry, and probably drinking just as much. Then, after coffee had been served, the cabin seemed to grow warmer, and everyone dropped off to sleep, himself included.

What had he hoped of America? He had hoped to meet Stravinsky. Even though he knew it was a dream, indeed a fantasy. He had always revered Stravinsky’s music. He’d barely missed a performance of Petrushka at the Mariinsky. He’d played second piano in the Russian premiere of Les Noces , performed the Serenade in A in public, transcribed the Symphony of Psalms for four hands. If there was a single composer of the twentieth century who might be called great, it was Stravinsky. The Symphony of Psalms was one of the most brilliant works in musical history. All this, without doubt or hesitation, he declared to be the case.

But Stravinsky would not be there. He had sent a snubbing and well-publicised telegram: ‘Regret not being able to join welcomers of Soviet artists coming this country. But all my ethic and esthetic convictions oppose such gesture.’

And what had he expected of America? Certainly not cartoon capitalists in stovepipe hats and Stars and Stripes waistcoats marching down Fifth Avenue and trampling underfoot the starving proletariat. Any more than he expected a trumpeted land of freedom — he doubted such a place existed anywhere. Perhaps he had imagined a combination of technological advancement, social conformity, and the sober manners of a pioneering nation come into wealth. Ilf and Petrov, after taking a road-trip across the country, had written that thinking about America made them melancholy, while having the opposite effect on Americans themselves. They also reported that Americans, contrary to their own propaganda, were very passive by nature, since everything was pre-processed for them, from ideas to food. Even the cows standing motionless in the fields looked like advertisements for condensed milk.

His first surprise had been the behaviour of American journalists. There had been an advance guard of them at Frankfurt airport on the journey out, waiting in ambush. They bawled questions and shoved cameras into his face. There had been a cheerful rudeness about them, an assumption of superior values. The fact that they couldn’t pronounce your name was your name’s fault, not theirs. So they shortened it.