Julian Barnes - The Noise of Time

Scenting a way out, he asked, ‘What plans? I have read nothing about his plans for music.’

‘Of course not. Because you will be invited to help the appropriate committee formulate them.’

‘I cannot join a party which has banned my music.’

‘What music of yours is banned, Dmitri Dmitrievich? Forgive me for not …’

‘ Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk . It was banned first under the Cult of Personality, and banned again after the Cult of Personality was overthrown.’

‘Yes,’ replied Pospelov soothingly, ‘I can see how that might appear to be a difficulty. But let me speak to you as one practical man to another. The best way, the likeliest way, for you to get your opera performed is for you to join the Party. You have to give something to get something in this world.’

The man’s slipperiness enraged him. And so he reached for his final argument.

‘Then let me reply to you as one practical man to another. I have always said, and it has been one of the fundamental principles of my life, that I would never join a party which kills.’

Pospelov did not miss a beat. ‘But that is precisely my point, Dmitri Dmitrievich. We — the Party — have changed. No one is being killed nowadays. Can you name me one person you know who has been killed under Nikita Sergeyevich? One single person? On the contrary, victims of the Cult of Personality are returning to normal life. The names of those who were purged are being rehabilitated. We need such work to continue. The forces of the camp of reaction are ever-present, and should not be underestimated. That is why we ask for your help — by joining the camp of progress.’

He left the encounter exhausted. Then, there was another meeting. And another. It seemed that, wherever he turned, he saw Pospelov, glass in hand, coming towards him. The man even began to inhabit his dreams, always speaking in a calm, rational voice, and yet one driving him to madness. What had he ever wanted except to be left alone? He confided in Glikman, but not in his family. He drank, he was unable to work, his nerves were shredded. There was only so much a man could bear in his life.

1936; 1948; 1960. They had come for him every twelve years. And each of them, of course, a leap year.

‘He could not live with himself.’ It was just a phrase, but an exact one. Under the pressure of Power, the self cracks and splits. The public coward lives with the private hero. Or vice versa. Or, more usually, the public coward lives with the private coward. But that was too simple: the idea of a man split into two by a dividing axe. Better: a man crushed into a hundred pieces of rubble, vainly trying to remember how they — he — had once fitted together.

His friend Slava Rostropovich maintained that the greater the artistic talent, the better able it was to withstand persecution. Maybe that was true of others — certainly it was of Slava, who had in any case such an optimistic disposition. And who was younger, and did not know how it had been in earlier decades. Or what it was like to have your spirit, your nerve, broken. Once that nerve was gone, you couldn’t replace it like a violin string. Something deep in your soul was missing, and all you had left was — what? — a certain tactical cunning, an ability to play the unworldly artist, and a determination to protect your music and your family at any price. Well, he finally thought — in a mood so drained of colour and resolution that it could scarcely be called a mood — perhaps this is today’s price.

And so, he submitted to Pospelov, as a dying man submits to a priest. Or as a traitor, his mind numb with vodka, submits to a firing squad. He thought of suicide, of course, when he signed the paper put in front of him; but since he was already committing moral suicide, what would be the point of physical suicide? It wasn’t even a question of lacking the courage to buy and hide and swallow the pills. It was rather that now, at this juncture, he lacked even the self-respect that suicide required.

But he was enough of a coward to run away, like the little boy slipping from his mother’s grasp as they neared Jurgensen’s hut. He signed the application form to join the Party, then fled to Leningrad and holed up with his sister. They could have his soul but not his body. They could announce that the distinguished composer had proved himself a true worm and joined the Party in order to help Nikita the Corncob develop his wonderful, if as yet perfectly unformed, ideas about the future of Soviet music. But they could announce his moral death without him. He would stay with his sister until it was all over.

Then the telegrams began to arrive. The official announcement would take place in Moscow on such-and-such a date. His presence was not just requested but required. No matter, he thought, I shall stay in Leningrad and if they want me in Moscow they will have to tie me up and drag me there. Let the world see how they recruit new Party members, by trussing them up and transporting them like sacks of onions.

Naive, as naive as any terrified rabbit. He sent a telegram saying he was unwell and regrettably unable to attend his own execution. They replied that the announcement would therefore wait until he was better. And in the meantime, of course, the news had slipped out and was all over Moscow. Friends telephoned, journalists telephoned: of which was he the more scared? And so, there is no escaping one’s fate. And so, he returned to Moscow and read out yet another prepared statement, to the effect that he had applied to join the Party and that his petition had been granted. It seemed that Soviet power had finally decided to love him; and he had never felt a clammier embrace.

When he had married Nina Vasilievna, he had been too scared to tell his mother beforehand. When he had joined the Party, he had been too scared to tell his children beforehand. The line of cowardice in his life was the one thing that ran straight and true.

Maxim only ever saw his father weep twice: when Nina died, and when he joined the Party.

And so, he was a coward. And so, one spins around like a squirrel on a wheel. And so, he would put all his remaining courage into his music, and his cowardice into his life. No, that was all too … comforting. To say: Oh, excuse me, but you see I am a coward, there’s really nothing I can do about it, Your Excellency, comrade, Great Leader, old friend, wife, daughter, son. That would make it uncomplicated, and life always refused simplicity. For instance, he had been afraid of Stalin’s power, but not of Stalin himself: neither on the telephone, nor in person. For instance, he was capable of interceding for others where he would never dare intercede for himself. He surprised himself at times. So perhaps he was not entirely hopeless.

But it was not easy being a coward. Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment — when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and with yourself as well. But to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your own fallen, abject character. Being a coward required pertinacity, persistence, a refusal to change — which made it, in a way, a kind of courage. He smiled to himself and lit another cigarette. The pleasures of irony had not yet deserted him.

Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich has joined the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It can’t be, because it couldn’t ever be, as the major said when he saw the giraffe. But it could be, and it was.

He had always loved football, all through his life. He had long dreamt of composing an anthem for the game. He was a qualified referee. He kept a special notebook in which he recorded the season’s results. In his younger days he had supported Dinamo, and once flew thousands of miles to Tbilisi just to watch a game. That was the point: you had to be there when it happened, surrounded by crowds of people all going mad and screaming. Nowadays, people watched football on television. To him, this was like drinking mineral water instead of Stolichnaya vodka, export strength.