Val Hall, page 8
Garvin stared at Marya Morozova. “She survived that?”
“She survived that,” Eddie said grimly. “She was not yet fourteen when the siege was lifted, but she was alone in the world – it was just he and her father who were left, and her father died sometime in December of 1942. She survived the rest of it on her own, alone, barely. She, who heard the music of the city and pushed Shostakovich into writing...”
Garvin glanced at Eddie, whose voice had broken. Eddie, intercepting the look, dragged a hand over his face as though he was trying to wipe something off it.
“We don’t know – we can’t know – what it was that made them endure it, and survive, and refuse to surrender,” he said quietly. “But at least part of it... might have been that spirit. The spirit that made them perform that symphony. The one Shostakovich wrote. The one that Masha woke. The one that might not have been born, or might have been born different, or too late, if she had not been there, if she had not crossed Dimitri Shostakovich’s path at precisely the right moment, and said to him... the words you say she uttered to you.”
Garvin’s jaw was clenched tight, a tic working in his cheek. “Tell me about it.”
LENINGRAD 1942
Masha had wanted to come to the first rehearsal with her father but he demurred, saying it would be bad luck if he couldn’t even make it to a rehearsal by himself. He warned her that it was supposed to be at least a couple of hours long, but he returned to the apartment less than an hour after he had left, his face split by a skull-like death-head grin.
“Thirty people came,” he said. “Thirty musicians, including Eliasberg himself who is suffering from dystrophy and is barely able to stand. As for the rest of us... the strings are reasonably able to perform even if we cannot muster up much of a forte, never mind a fortissimo. But at least one of the brass instruments was pretty much unable to produce any sound at all...”
“So they’re giving up?” Masha gasped.
“Oh no. Well, but there’ s bigger problems than that – only about fourteen of us from the Radio Orchestra came – the rest couldn’t be found in time for the rehearsal, or are dead – there’s a search out for them now, Eliasberg said he would go door to door himself if he needed to, dystrophy or no dystrophy, even if he has to be dragged there. They’re looking for any musicians. But even if they find everyone, Masha, I’ve seen the score – they airlifted it from Kuybushev, and it wants a full orchestra, more than one hundred players, eight horns – eight! – six trombones, two harps – I don’t know if they can make it work...”
“I can help,” Masha said. “I know where some of them lived. Send me. I’ll go look.”
Vassily hesitated, but just for a moment. And then he lifted his hand, in a gesture of blessing.
“Go,” he said. “Go, Mashenka, and may God go with you.”
Masha found an oboist, a flute player, another violinist who had long since lost his instrument but agreed to come to take part in the performance if an instrument could be procured. She came to rehearsals, after, no matter what her father said. Posters went up in the city, requesting all musicians who were able to report to the Radio Committee for incorporation into the orchestra. People responded – Masha saw them come, some of them stumbling as they walked, so thin, so thin and frail, so fragile – one of them brought his concert clothes, which he still had, so that his fellows could laugh at them because they looked like he was a child who had borrowed grown-up clothes six times too big for him. But they came, responding to the call. When it became obvious that the ragtag orchestra would need more, the city organizers appealed to the Soviet authorities – and the message went out, into the battle lines, calling any musicians to report to rehearsals. Men were reassigned from military bands, or turned up from military camps, to what rehearsals they could attend in between assignments.
Rehearsals were punishing they were held at the Pushkin Theatre, still standing, from ten in the morning to one in the afternoon, six days a week. They were frequently interrupted by air-raid sirens, and sometimes the musicians were pulled away to their civic duties like firefighting or anti-aircraft action. Players were given additional rations, donated by music enthusiasts in the city, food taken from their own mouths, in the hope of bolstering the orchestra’s strength – but even so, it proved too much for some. Masha’s father kept a tally, telling her that the first violin (he had a habit of referring to his fellow musicians by the instrument they played) was dying, the French Horn was one foot through death’s door, and the drum – ah, that was a story – he had been found dead in his apartment after he failed to turn up for one rehearsal and they went looking for him but Eliasberg, who was desperate enough for anything, went to the morgue just to make sure, and, having miraculously discovered the suppsoed ‘corpse’ still breathing, recruited him back to the orchestra where he was the heartbeat of the entire first movement. People playing brass instruments tried valiantly to perform what the score asked of them, but it frequently proved too much for them, and several collapsed during rehearsals. Eliasberg himself was in a sorry state, his first attempts at conducting making him look like a starveling sparrow fluttering wings that were barely able to move. And there were other problems, underlying ones – it wasn’t only the players who were in disrepair, the instruments hadn’t fared too well in the interim period, either, and those that needed to be repaired found few in the city who were still able to do so adequately. One of them demanded, as payment, a cat – Masha knew it was destined for the dinner table, but she herself helped hunt one down, even if she wept when she saw it bundled into a sack to be taken to the repairman, whether from envy that he would have food to eat where she herself had to make do without or whether because she still retained a sense of fellow feeling for the creature. Either way, the cat was accepted, the damaged instrument was repaired to an adequate degree, and rehearsals went on, in the face of almost impossible odds.
Eliasberg – despite his physically fragile state – proved to be a steel taskmaster. Not knowing if the makeshift orchestra was fully ready for a complex new work, he had them rehearse familiar traditional symphonic works by composers such as Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, even putting on a public concert of the Tchaikovsky excerpts in April. He quelled those musicians who protested at having to tackle the new Shostakovich by threatening to rescind the additional rations – for this, and for any other misdemeanours like missing rehearsals or failed to perform to what Eliasberg considered their full abilities; that quickly brought any stray dissenters into line. He ruled the orchestra with an iron hand. Rehearsals were moved to the Philharmonia Hall in June, and by July they were increased to up to six hours a day. Vassily Morozov alternated between running on pure adrenalin and prostrated with utter physical exhaustion; Masha did what she could to keep him going, him, and his fellows. This was her symphony as much as Shostakovich’s – she had been the one to hear its first trembling notes coalesce around the composer from thin air. Her whole being yearned to hear it played – but the orchestra had its limits, and the symphony was rehearsed in pieces, making sure that it did not overtax the players.
The performance was set for 9 August – but the first and only time the orchestra played the full symphony through from beginning to end was at dress rehearsal, three days before. Masha was there for that, listening, rapt, not even realizing that she was crying, feeling as though something had broken inside of her, as though something else had been made whole. It was the music she had heard, it was the music of Leningrad, and it was here, and it was real, and she was wrapped in a dream of it from which she woke only when Vassily touched her shoulder.
“Well, dushenka, how was it?” he asked, with his starveling gargoyle smile.
“Wonderful,” Masha said, laughing through her tears. “Terrible. Terrible. The brass...”
“Oh, Masha. We may have one more performance in us. But we’re empty now – we’re giving it everything... all of us...”
“I know, Papa. I know.”
“Your mother would have...”
Masha reached out to lightly touch the violin he cradled. “Mama is here, too. She’s here. You’re both playing in that orchestra, Papa.”
Vassily gathered her into a tight embrace. “Oh, my little girl,” he said. “How I wish...”
“Papa, it’s all right, it will all be all right,” Masha whispered. “It will be all right now.”
She hovered outside the concert hall when the audience began to gather for the performance, on the ninth of August. She’d been inside the hall – it was immaculate, the chandeliers still intact and sparkling, the electric lights above the stage turned on for the first time since rehearsals had begun. The audience – led by military personnel in dress uniform and the city’s political and cultural elite, the Party leaders in the city and their families clad in whatever finery they could muster and presenting themselves as though there was no war out there at all, no death, no starvation, no blockade at all. The packed hall was filled out by those civilians who could manage to gain entry; others, who could not fit inside the hall, gathered outside, around open windows, or around loudspeakers set up in the city through which the concert would be broadcast – there were even speakers set up that could reach right out to the besieging Germans, a defiant counteroffensive by the beleaguered city. The Germans had been silenced – at least for a little while – by a military offensive designed to ensure at the very least an uninterrupted concert. Masha slipped out into this strange silence, into the summer day, too brim-ful of something she could not name to endure a concert performance of that music inside the concert hall – there were plenty of loudspeakers, she would be able to hear it outside.
But first Eliasberg broadcast a short fiery speech – the usual political stuff, the usual political crutchwords, but all Masha heard was that this would be the first performance, in the city where it was born, of the Seventh Symphony of Leningrad’s own Dimitri Shostakovich. Europe believed that Leningrad was done, Eliasberg declared, but then exhorted the people to listen – to listen – because this performance would be a voice given to the city’s spirit, the city’s courage, the city’s defiance. “Listen, Comrades!” Eliasberg cried.
A silence fell, and Masha paused where she stood, seeing in her mind’s eye the musicians on the stage, dressed in layers, wrapped up like cabbages to prevent shivering during the performance, her own father cradling her mother’s violin, waiting for his cue. She heard it begin, she felt the tears start, and she wandered into one of the parks, lost, instinctively gathering up a posy of flowers, not even aware of what she was doing – right until the moment that she realized exactly what the flowers were for.
She was at the Hall when the performance came to an end. She heard the silence that greeted it. And then she heard the applause begin.
Nobody stopped her as she slipped inside, and paced right down the middle aisle, gravely, carrying a posy of flowers clutched in both hands. She saw the audience standing, smiling, clapping, she heard someone sob, she saw the musicians, those who still could, standing on the stage in acknowledgment of the ovation.
She walked right up to the stage and stood, waiting to be noticed.
When frail Eliasberg, his face fierce, glanced down and noticed her standing there with her flowers, she simply extended her hand with the posy in it. He leaned down, took it. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them could have found the words. There were none. She wanted to say so much; he needed to come up with words of grace or acceptance or triumph; but instead there was the silence between them, and a groundswell of applause beyond, and the posy of garden flowers gathered in the midst of a besieged city that said it all.
VAL HALL 2018
“That symphony had been performed in New York in July of that year – before the Leningrad premiere in August – and of course there was the Kuybushev concert, before that – but they all knew – this was the true first time. The only first time that mattered,” Eddie said thoughtfully. “I actually spoke to someone once, a German, someone who had been there outside of Leningrad when this thing was being played at them through loudspeakers, and he remembers it, clearly. He called it the ‘symphony of heroes’. Some of those survivors met up with Eliasberg, after the war, and they told him that the performance of the Seventh in Leningrad that August was what made the German besieging troops realize one thing...”
“What was that?”
“They knew they were performing a piece of psychological warfare,” Eddie said. “But even Eliasberg didn’t know, at the time, just how well it succeeded. The Germans said that it was the music that made them wonder just who it was that they were bombing, and why they were there at all – because it was then that they knew that they could reduce this city to rubble and its people to corpses but they could never take Leningrad, only destroy it, and destroying it... suddenly seemed almost like flying in the face of God.”
“They managed the whole performance – without interruption, without bombs, without air raids, without sirens?”
“That, and the ovation after it,” Eddie said. “Of the audience inside the Hall, not one left or fled; neither did the people gathered outside, around the loudspeakers. The war stopped, and there was silence, and there was music in that silence. They all listened to it, both sides –‘them’ and ‘us’ became merged, the lines erased, because Shostakovich wrote the spirit of a city, wrote a symphony for humanity, for all the people who needed music. In the aftermath...”
Garvin waited in silence, looking at Eddie expectantly, and Eddie gave him a self-conscious little smile.
“Sorry. There are sometimes things you... remember. That symphony – performers who had survived the war, musicians who had played it then, came together for reunion concerts, after the war. From the same seats, in the same hall. In memoriam. Twice. Once in 1964, and once in 1992. Shostakovich himself attended the 1964 concert. It was January. Cold. It was...”
“You sound as though you saw him there.”
“I... “ Eddie caught himself, and smiled. “I did. There were photos.” He paused, his eyes growing misty, unfocused. “Twenty two survivors performed the ceremony, and Eliasberg conducted it. There were... instruments placed on the other chairs in the orchestra, in the memory of those who were gone. The second time... in 1992... there were fourteen survivors left.”
Garvin cleared his throat, obviously moved. And then his eyes went back to Marya Morozova. Eddie’s gaze followed.
“All because she heard it begin,” Eddie said softly, “and she said... write it.”
“What of her?” Garvin asked, clearing his throat again, his voice sounding rough and harsh. “After all that – after surviving all that – how did she end up here?”
“She left Leningrad, after it was over, and drifted – alone and without anyone to call her own – she eventually ended up as human flotsam in a place where an American soldier still lingering in Europe found her, and married her, and brought her back here to the States. We – from Val Hall – we kept an eye on her. Especially when...” Eddie sighed. “You do realize why she doesn’t talk much to anyone, don’t you?”
“She does speak English,” Garvin said hesitantly.
“Of course. But that isn’t the reason. That woman, Mr. Grant – that woman, who made an immortal symphony coalesce inside a man’s mind – she did the same when she came out here – to people whose names you might well recognize. At least one composer who ended up writing for the movies, whose music spread much wider than Shostakovich’s did because of the millions who saw those movies, and Muzka brought that music out, too. She heard things, around certain people, and she would tell them to write it – to write it – and if they listened to her, and obeyed, they always produced something astonishing. She can hear it – she can always hear it – but Mr. Grant...she hears it in here. And in here.” Eddie tapped his chest, and his temple. “In her heart. In her mind. She has not heard music – ” he laid a finger on his ear. “She’s deaf, Mr Grant. She has not heard music or even a human voice for decades.”
“So even if I listened – even if I ‘wrote’ whatever it is that she thinks she ‘heard’ when I walked by her – ”
“She’ll never hear it,” Eddie said softly. “But she’ll know. Oh, she’ll know. If you wrote a song... and you sang it to her... she may not hear the tune. But she will hear the melody. And it would live... in the same place where she keeps the symphony she once brought out, to be the face of a city.”
“What she is asking...”
“Yes,” Eddie said. “She gave you a gift. Now it’s up to you.”
Garvin cleared his throat again. “It won’t be a symphony,” he said.
Eddie rose, laying his hand gently on Garvin’s shoulder. “It’s always a symphony,” he said. “Such things always matter. To someone who hears the music at the right moment. You may never even know, Mr. Grant. But there’s a song in you. She knows it. You know it now. It’s simple, just do what she said.” He paused, smiling. “Write it.”
The One About Radiant Shadows (1945)
VAL HALL 2018
Summer was always hard for Hikaru Hanada. In the years that he had been a resident of Val Hall, he was known to shun the sun; that was no surprise, for even though his moniker was known amongst the residents – Hikaru Kagenai, the Shadowless – it was well enough to know the name but seeing a man walk in sunlight without casting a shadow was an entirely different thing, and it was something that people instinctively recoiled from, even if they had not ever meant to do so, as though it were witchcraft.
Hikaru spent sunny days indoors, sometimes brooding beside windows and looking out, or carefully tucked away under the deep shade of the verandah, where no shadows fell, shying away from any encounter with light. He kept to himself – he seemed to prefer being solitary, avoiding whenever he could the need to speak to anybody, sometimes to the point of conveniently ‘forgetting’ his English. He had no small talk, no social chitchat. His venerable age was used as a shield; his scars didn’t help. To look at, he was a very monster to scare small children with. There was the shiny burn scar to the side of his face, which pulled at the corner of his eye and gave him a permanent expression of cynical disapproval; the not physically visible but unmissable sensation of something vivid and dangerous and still unhealed carefully concealed behind the dark eyes themselves; the withered right arm with its knotted keloid scars, hanging almost useless by his side, always covered by shirts with sleeves long enough to fall past his wrist – an arm few people had seen uncovered, and those that did blanched at it and wondered how a human body survived that kind of wound. But Hikaru had been a hero, a superhero, and superheroes could get hurt too. He put everything that he had between himself and a lethal danger to something that he loved. That had cost him – and the price had been high. But for Hikaru the physical cost had not been the worst of it. Not even the loss of his shadow had been the very worst of it, because that, at least, had bought a life. The worst thing that he carried with him was the shame, and the loss of honor. His physical wounds came from his having succeeded in accomplishing something that was huge – but the shame came from the knowledge that somehow, twice before, he had failed.
