Julian Barnes - The Noise of Time

He had been given an appointment for a Saturday morning. He maintained to family and friends that it was doubtless all a formality, perhaps an automatic consequence of the continuing articles against him in Pravda . He barely believed this himself, and doubted they did. Not many were summoned to the Big House to discuss musical theory. He was, of course, punctual. And Power was at first correct and polite. Zakrevsky asked about his work, how his professional affairs were proceeding, what he intended to compose next. In reply, he mentioned, almost as a reflex, that he was preparing a symphony on the subject of Lenin — which might conceivably have been the case. He then thought it sensible to refer to the press campaign against him, and was encouraged by the interrogator’s almost perfunctory dismissal of such matters. Next he was asked about his friends, and whom he saw on a regular basis. He did not know how to answer such questions. Zakrevsky helped him along.

‘You are, I understand, acquainted with Marshal Tukhachevsky?’

‘Yes, I know him.’

‘Tell me about how you made his acquaintance.’

He recalled the meeting backstage at the Small Hall in Moscow. He explained that the Marshal was a well-known music lover who had attended many of his concerts, who played the violin, and even made violins as a hobby. The Marshal had invited him to his apartment; they had even played music together. He was a good amateur violinist. Did he mean ‘good’? Capable, certainly. And, yes, capable of improvement.

But Zakrevsky was uninterested in how far the Marshal’s fingering and bow technique had progressed.

‘You went to his home on many occasions?’

‘From time to time, yes.’

‘From time to time over a period of how many years? Eight, nine, ten?’

‘Yes, that is probably the case.’

‘So, let us say, four or five visits a year? Forty or fifty in total?’

‘Fewer, I would say. I have never counted. But fewer.’

‘But you are an intimate friend of Marshal Tukhachevsky?’

He paused for thought. ‘No, not an intimate friend, but a good friend.’

He did not mention the Marshal arranging financial support for him; advising him; writing to Stalin on his behalf. Either Zakrevsky would know this, or he wouldn’t.

‘And who else was present at these forty or fifty occasions at the home of your good friend?’

‘Not so many. Only members of the family.’

‘Only members of the family?’ The interrogator’s tone was rightly sceptical.

‘And musicians. And musicologists.’

‘Any politicians there, by any chance?’

‘No, no politicians.’

‘You are quite sure about that?’

‘Well, you see, they were sometimes rather crowded gatherings. And I did not exactly … In point of fact, I was often playing the piano …’

‘And what did you talk about?’

‘About music.’

‘And politics.’

‘No.’

‘Come, come, how could anyone fail to talk about politics with Marshal Tukhachevsky of all people?’

‘He was, shall we say, off duty. Among friends and musicians.’

‘And were there any other off-duty politicians present?’

‘No, never. There was never any talk of politics in my presence.’

The interrogator looked at him for a long while. Then came a change of voice, as if to prepare him for the seriousness and menace of his position.

‘Now, I think you should try to shake your memory. It cannot be that you were at the home of Marshal Tukhachevsky, in your capacity as a “good friend” as you put it, on a regular basis over the last ten years and that you did not talk about politics. For instance, the plot to assassinate Comrade Stalin. What did you hear about that?’

At which point, he knew that he was a dead man. ‘And yet another’s hour is near at hand’ — and this time it was his. He reiterated, as plainly as he could, that there had never been any talk of politics at Marshal Tukhachevsky’s; they were purely musical evenings; matters of state were left at the door with hats and coats. He was not sure if this was the best phrase. But Zakrevsky was barely listening.

‘Then I suggest you think a little harder,’ the interrogator told him. ‘Some of the other guests have verified the plot already.’

He realised that Tukhachevsky must have been arrested, that the Marshal’s career was over, and his life as well; that the investigation was just beginning, and that all those around the Marshal would soon vanish from the face of the earth. His own innocence was irrelevant. The truth of his answers was irrelevant. What had been decided had been decided. And if they needed to show that the conspiracy which they had either just discovered or just invented was so perniciously widespread that even the country’s most famous — if recently disgraced — composer was involved, then that was what they would show. Which explained the matter-of-factness in Zakrevsky’s tone as he brought the interview to a close.

‘Very well. Today is Saturday. It is twelve o’clock now, and you can go. But I will only give you forty-eight hours. On Monday at twelve o’clock you will without fail remember everything. You must recall every detail of all the discussions regarding the plot against Comrade Stalin, of which you were one of the chief witnesses.’

He was a dead man. He told Nita all that had been said, and he saw beneath her reassurances that she agreed he was a dead man. He knew he must protect those closest around him, and to do so needed to be calm, but could only be frantic. He burnt anything that might be incriminating — except that once you had been labelled an enemy of the people and the associate of a known assassin, everything around you became incriminating. He might as well burn the whole apartment. He feared for Nita, for his mother, for Galya, for anyone who had ever entered or left his apartment.

‘There is no escaping one’s destiny.’ And so, he would be dead at thirty. Older than Pergolesi, true, but younger even than Schubert. And Pushkin himself, for that matter. His name and his music would be obliterated. Not only would he not exist, he would never have existed. He had been a mistake, swiftly corrected; a face in a photograph that went missing the next time that photograph was printed. And even if, at some point in the future, he was disinterred, what would they find? Four symphonies, one piano concerto, some orchestral suites, two pieces for string quartet but not a single finished quartet, some piano music, a cello sonata, two operas, some film and ballet music. He would be remembered by what? The opera which had brought him disgrace, the symphony he had wisely withdrawn? Perhaps his First Symphony would make the cheerful prelude to concerts of mature works by composers lucky enough to outlive him.

But even this was false comfort, he realised. What he himself thought was irrelevant. The future would decide what the future would decide. For instance, that his music was quite unimportant. That he might have come to something as a composer if he had not, through vanity, involved himself in a treasonous plot against the head of state. Who could tell what the future would believe? We expect too much of the future — hoping that it will quarrel with the present. And who could tell what shadow his death would cast on his family. He imagined Galya emerging at sixteen from her Siberian orphanage, believing that her parents had heartlessly abandoned her, unaware that her father had written even a single note of music.

When the threats against him had first begun, he told friends: ‘Even if they cut off both my hands, I shall continue to write music with a pen in my mouth.’ They had been words of defiance intended to keep up everyone’s spirits, his own included. But they did not want to cut off his hands, his small, ‘non-pianistic’ hands. They might want to torture him, and he would agree to everything they said immediately, as he had no capacity for bearing pain. Names would be put in front of him, and he would implicate all of them. No, he would say briefly, which would quickly change to Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. Yes, I was there at the time in the Marshal’s apartment; Yes I heard him say whatever you suggest he might have said; Yes this general and that politician were involved in the plot, I saw and heard it for myself. But there would be no melodramatic cutting-off of his hands, just a businesslike bullet to the back of the head.