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Authors: Sarah Quigley
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was other , and therefore less likely to be tainted or influenced.
Not until he saw the first dirty streaks of dawn over the railway station did he know what to do. ‘The dilettantes were right to fear,’ hesaid slowly. What he intended to achieve could not be bought by the wealthy or pulled down by philistines; it existed above social status and scorn. It was the only untouchable thing — and the only way to become untouchable.
When he emerged, bleary-eyed, from his room, his mother was in the hallway, her eyes and nose streaming. His father had died. Karl Elias was the new head of the family.
He stood there impassively, feeling her body shake against his. Should he announce his new-found resolve? It seemed neither the time nor place. But as he stared over his mother’s head, he saw a clear-cut future before him.
The road to professionalism wasn’t easy. He attended classes on days when the air inside the Conservatoire felt too cold to breathe, or when Professor Steinberg turned up an hour late and all the other students had left, grumbling. Stubbornly, he sat on, playing two hands of a four-handed transcription to keep himself warm. Occasionally he was joined by Dmitri Shostakovich, who took the melodic part as a matter of course, playing fast, loudly and with flair. Rather than looking at the sheet music, he seemed to look past it, into a cavernous place behind the written notes that Elias could only guess at.
‘A professional?’ repeated Shostakovich, on one of the rare occasions when they exchanged more than a basic greeting. ‘Of course! I’ve been a professional since I began playing. Since the age of nine.’ He buttoned his thin coat around his thin torso and marched away to the library. Elias watched him go with an odd feeling in his stomach: an envy so strong it almost amounted to anger.
When Elias was knocked from his bicycle, cracking three vertebrae and suffering nerve damage to the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, his mother wept for days. His brilliant career as an instrumentalist was over! He was washed up before he had begun! Elias had no time to lament; he was too preoccupied with recovering, and then he was too busy reassessing his career. After lying on his back for three and a half weeks, he limped into Professor Ferkelman’s office, and emerged an hour later with a new major.
Some would consider it making the best of a bad situation but, looking back, Elias saw it as a turning point. Standing on the podium was like facing the world alone, which was, after all, what he was used to. Years later, stepping in front of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra for his firstrehearsal, he wished with equal measures of scorn and regret that his father could see him. The grinding years of hardship, apprenticeship and the utmost loneliness had paid off. He was a real conductor, with his own musicians. The orchestra stretched before him, a sea of restless movements and indistinct noise. When he tapped the side of his music stand with his brand new baton, he felt as if the small noise might shatter his body.
Night watch
U nsettled by the news of the German evacuation, exhausted from teaching, Shostakovich was unable to sleep. He twisted over and over in his bed until he was wound tightly in the sheet like an Egyptian mummy.
The treachery of the body! On nights like these he wanted Nina, her long toes twined in his and her cool rounded stomach against his back. He bitterly resented her — for not being there, and for making him need her.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck two. Two and a half minutes later came the tinny chime from the church on Kovenskiy Pereulok, and one minute later a more commanding clang from Kazan Cathedral. He threw the pillow off his head and onto the floor. Why in God’s name was it impossible for Russians to fix anything? For three years, since the night of Maxim’s birth when he’d first noticed it, these clocks had been predictably out of time.
‘I’m bored.’
Not until he saw the first dirty streaks of dawn over the railway station did he know what to do. ‘The dilettantes were right to fear,’ hesaid slowly. What he intended to achieve could not be bought by the wealthy or pulled down by philistines; it existed above social status and scorn. It was the only untouchable thing — and the only way to become untouchable.
When he emerged, bleary-eyed, from his room, his mother was in the hallway, her eyes and nose streaming. His father had died. Karl Elias was the new head of the family.
He stood there impassively, feeling her body shake against his. Should he announce his new-found resolve? It seemed neither the time nor place. But as he stared over his mother’s head, he saw a clear-cut future before him.
The road to professionalism wasn’t easy. He attended classes on days when the air inside the Conservatoire felt too cold to breathe, or when Professor Steinberg turned up an hour late and all the other students had left, grumbling. Stubbornly, he sat on, playing two hands of a four-handed transcription to keep himself warm. Occasionally he was joined by Dmitri Shostakovich, who took the melodic part as a matter of course, playing fast, loudly and with flair. Rather than looking at the sheet music, he seemed to look past it, into a cavernous place behind the written notes that Elias could only guess at.
‘A professional?’ repeated Shostakovich, on one of the rare occasions when they exchanged more than a basic greeting. ‘Of course! I’ve been a professional since I began playing. Since the age of nine.’ He buttoned his thin coat around his thin torso and marched away to the library. Elias watched him go with an odd feeling in his stomach: an envy so strong it almost amounted to anger.
When Elias was knocked from his bicycle, cracking three vertebrae and suffering nerve damage to the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, his mother wept for days. His brilliant career as an instrumentalist was over! He was washed up before he had begun! Elias had no time to lament; he was too preoccupied with recovering, and then he was too busy reassessing his career. After lying on his back for three and a half weeks, he limped into Professor Ferkelman’s office, and emerged an hour later with a new major.
Some would consider it making the best of a bad situation but, looking back, Elias saw it as a turning point. Standing on the podium was like facing the world alone, which was, after all, what he was used to. Years later, stepping in front of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra for his firstrehearsal, he wished with equal measures of scorn and regret that his father could see him. The grinding years of hardship, apprenticeship and the utmost loneliness had paid off. He was a real conductor, with his own musicians. The orchestra stretched before him, a sea of restless movements and indistinct noise. When he tapped the side of his music stand with his brand new baton, he felt as if the small noise might shatter his body.
Night watch
U nsettled by the news of the German evacuation, exhausted from teaching, Shostakovich was unable to sleep. He twisted over and over in his bed until he was wound tightly in the sheet like an Egyptian mummy.
The treachery of the body! On nights like these he wanted Nina, her long toes twined in his and her cool rounded stomach against his back. He bitterly resented her — for not being there, and for making him need her.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck two. Two and a half minutes later came the tinny chime from the church on Kovenskiy Pereulok, and one minute later a more commanding clang from Kazan Cathedral. He threw the pillow off his head and onto the floor. Why in God’s name was it impossible for Russians to fix anything? For three years, since the night of Maxim’s birth when he’d first noticed it, these clocks had been predictably out of time.
‘I’m bored.’
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