Excerpt 4: The Concert (Jan. 1)
This is an excerpt from my new book, The Concert. Based on a true story from World War II, The Concert traces the efforts of a group of musicians, writers and artists to defy Hitler’s invasion of their beloved city of Leningrad and attempts to starve them to death. Channeling creativity, showcasing hope, they summoned their strength, against the odds, to perform a symphony written by Dmitri Shostakovich, about the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
If you like this excerpt, please buy the book here. Audio book soon.
I woke from another nightmare. In the dream, my words had dissolved into liquid, then taken shape as candies in a jar, like peppermints spinning in an ice cream glass. They were white candies with swirls of color— some red, others green, others blue. I kept reaching out, trying to catch the sweets. I wanted to eat them. When I woke I realized I had been trying to eat my words.
Frightened, I sent word to the Poets Circle that I needed to talk, summoning them to a meeting at my apartment the next night. It was dangerous to meet too often, to provoke envy or resentment from the floor monitor, or the neighbors, some only too eager to please Communist Party officials by informing on this strange band of intellectuals. But I knew they would come. They always had. They were my friends, my confidants, my sister poets, musicians, dancers and artists. They were the only ones who would understand my fear, who would know how to quiet it.
Anna was the first to arrive.
“Ah, my friend, the Muse of Sobbing,” I said, using the town’s nickname for Anna, known for her melodramatic musings on Leningrad’s history, as she had delivered on the day of the invasion.
“You should talk,” Anna quipped. “For goodness sake, I, the monkeys as metaphors for people? You can do better. And by the way, the British call me Tragic Queen, which I much prefer.”
I smiled. On the air, I explained the vast extent of the Nazis’ villainy by reporting they were even bombing the zoo, leaving the monkeys traumatized, much like Leningrad. Apparently Anna thought that was beneath my literary standards.
At 52, Anna was twenty years older than me, but somehow we had always connected. Having both lived through Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, we shared firsthand the pain of being cancelled for the crime of thinking, or thinking differently. In the face of persecution, with her son imprisoned in Siberia and her poetry censored, Anna had declined repeated offers to defect to the West. She made ends meet by taking a job as a translator of Victor Hugo and a memoirist of Alexander Blok. She also found time for an affair with Boris Pasternak, while both were still married to other partners. All the while I worked on her poetry, privately. I felt sure that when it was finally published, Requiem, her elegy to the Soviet Union under tyranny, would become a classic.
Katarina came next, fresh from rehearsals, her cheeks flush.
“So how is it to practice amid war?” asked Anna.
“It is bittersweet,” Katarina said, “to practice amid the bombs, to aspire to artistic perfection while all around people suffer. I am sweating a lot and enjoying it immensely. But I am sad too.”
“Why sad?” said Anna.
A cloud passed over Katrina’s eyes.
“In normal times, this would be my moment of personal redemption, a time when I could regain my professional standing. If life were normal, I might have had another decade to perform, to hone the status I’ve worked all my life to achieve. Especially in a Communist country, where women are held as equals to men, at least in the eyes of the law. I could have taken my maternity leave, steered my children on their way, and then returned to the stage, to pursue my love of ballet. But now, because of the war, it will become my swansong, the end of my career.”
“We don’t know that yet,” I said.
But the truth was the war had changed the trajectory of all our lives, and we all saw it, in each other’s eyes. Also, I knew something few others did. Katarina had not taken a parental leave. After she got pregnant with her son, Dima the Tyrant had fired her.
“Oh I think we do,” said Katarina. “I am now dancing to the beat of war. The two things have merged so in my mind – the ballet and the bombs – that whenever I hear an air raid siren, my legs revert to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.”
“That must be a treat for the German pilots,” said Lyubov Shaporina as she walked in. At 72, Luby, as we called her, was the senior of our group. She had grown up during the time of the Romanovs, when intellectuals thought in Russian, spoke in French and attended cultural events en masse. Later, she founded the beloved St. Petersburg Puppet Theater. Married to a composer, she, like me, had lost a daughter in childhood. Since her husband’s death, she had lived alone in a charming apartment – full of overstuffed furniture, whimsical paintings and family heirlooms. I always wondered how she had managed to hold on to them amid the Soviet confiscation of all things personal, but she had. Witty and expressive, Luby was like a second mother to me, soothing my fears.
“But I know what you mean,” Luby said, seeing the hurt cross Katarina’s face. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m living inside Vesuvius, just before it blew, witnessing volcanic eruptions from the interior.”
We all pondered this for a moment. It was easy to imagine what a rumbling earth would feel like – all those bombs the Nazis were dropping on Leningrad had prepared us for that. I never really understood why, though Yuri assured me that Adolf Hitler thought all intellectuals, Communists and ethnic Slavs were beneath the Aryan race. It still made no sense to me – was the Fuhrer really intent on killing everyone he didn’t like? So, world domination by mass murder?
My sister Maria arrived then, breaking these sobering thoughts with a theatrical greeting, a cheery song and an offering of some wine she had discovered on a shelf at home. “How divine,” she said, “a party of women in the wake of war!” We all smiled. Maria was an actress, who loved a party, no matter what the occasion. I hoped our mother’s death would not tilt her to drink too much.
“It is women who will save Leningrad from war,” said Anna. “You’ll see, the women will prevail.”
Just then Viktoria swept in, dressed in combat gear, her face smeared with silver paint.
“Have you signed up for the Red Army?” asked Luby.
“It’s been a rough day, Luby, but thanks for making me laugh,” said Viktoria.
At 27, Viktoria was the youngest of us. But I knew she felt comfortable in our company. We all had jobs we loved as much as she did hers, as art scholar at the Hermitage Museum. And Katarina and I were navigating the road she hoped one day to travel – balancing work and marriage. No doubt, she was a great ambassador for Russia – professional and charming – but what I liked best about Viktoria was her mind. Most people were driven by emotion. Viktoria was a strategic thinker.
“So why the painted face?” asked Luby.
“All I am authorized to say,” Viktoria began. She gazed at me, with that “not for public consumption” look. I nodded, smiling. I had already heard what I thought Viktoria was about to tell us. In Leningrad, gossip was plentiful, even when food was not.
“German bombers know the outline of the Hermitage from photos – we are Target No. 9. So today a team climbed to the roof -- led by the architect Natasha Usvolskaya – to disguise the spires, turning the domes a battleship gray and draping the turrets in black sail cloth. It is dangerous work, but they are nimble. Today I joined them, and I was not so nimble, hence the paint splatter.”
“I told you the women would win the war!” said Anna. “Was this your idea?”
Viktoria smiled, coyly.
“How ingenious,” Anna said. “This is the best news I’ve had in days.”
I had heard they were disguising museums so German planes would be diverted, but had no idea it was Viktoria’s doing. I had great respect for the conductor of the Radio Orchestra of Leningrad, but was glad when Viktoria told me she and Karl Eliasberg were only friends, even though she had appeared with him at the company picnic. A brilliant and beautiful woman, Viktoria deserved better. I poured wine and served chocolates, an indulgence I had been saving for a special occasion.
“To women,” I said, hoisting my glass, “and Soviet ingenuity.”
If you like this excerpt, please buy the book here.