The Conductor by Sarah Quigley Read Free Book Online

to hear himself condemned.
    A few small boys ran across the avenue, kicking a ball, sand flying up behind their feet. Nikolai leaned back on the bench and felt the slats dig into his back. He was skin and bone, as Tanya was always telling him when she removed his untouched soup and bread.
    At last Shostakovich spoke. ‘You can’t choose whether or not to love.’
    ‘What?’ Nikolai, lost in a spinning world of memory, had forgotten everything: where he was, what they were talking about. He stared at the leafy trees and the tall blowing grass, turned his face to the sun wheeling high in the pale-blue sky, tried to remember what season it was.
    ‘It’s impossible to choose, when it comes to love. I tried it once myself.’ Shostakovich spoke decidedly, like a sixty-year-old man rather than one not yet thirty.
    ‘You did?’ Nikolai knew a little about Shostakovich’s stormy past, but he wasn’t sure if it was seemly to admit this.
    Shostakovich sighed. ‘As a teenager, I loved a girl called Tatyana Glivenko, and she loved me. Then she began loving me more than I loved her. She wanted to live with me, but I wouldn’t let her, because by then I had met Nina Varzar. The die, to speak in gambler’s terms, was cast.’
    Nikolai stared. He hadn’t expected the story to begin so far back, when Leningrad was still Petrograd and the fiery Nina wasn’t even on the scene.
    ‘Do you think I wanted that?’ Shostakovich looked a little defiant. ‘Do you think I wanted to fall out of love with Tatyana and in love with Nina Varzar?’
    Nikolai scuffed his feet.
    ‘Of course I didn’t.’ Shostakovich answered himself. ‘Especially because I never intended to marry so young. There was still plenty of living to do,but how could I go on fishing when I was well and truly caught myself?’
    Nikolai shrugged and opened his mouth, but Shostakovich held up his hand. ‘I loved Nina. That was it. And then, as you may have heard —’
    Nikolai gave a tactful, non-committal shake of his head.
    ‘As you may have heard,’ repeated Shostakovich, staring into the middle distance, ‘I stopped loving Nina. For quite a time. Yelena Konstantinovskaya came on the scene. My God, she was something.’ He whistled under his breath. ‘Take my advice, Nikolai. Never get involved with a woman able to speak twelve languages, and each one of them with the tongue of an angel. When you’re in bed with her, it will drive you wild, and when you’re in an argument, it drives you crazy.’
    Nikolai remembered that summer well: he’d just taken up his own appointment at the Conservatoire, and his new intimacy with the city’s musical circles meant he was more than usually aware of what was going on around him. Everyone had known of the affair, but no one mentioned it, for Nina Varzar was well liked. Yelena would glide up the stairs of the Maryinsky Theatre, her hair piled high, exposing the white nape of her neck that invited kissing — or biting. People whispered in the foyer below, and Shostakovich waited at the top of the stairs, pale-faced, expressionless. Only the way in which he took Yelena’s elbow, so their hips brushed against each other, suggested the intimacy between them.
    ‘After that particular storm,’ continued Shostakovich, as if relating an epic tale passed down through generations, ‘there was once more a port of calm. Miraculously, I fell in love with Nina again; fortunately, she agreed to have me back. For a second time our love blossomed, and so it was on with the show!’
    Dizzying circles of midges swam on the evening air, but Nikolai sat motionless. He hadn’t expected such confessions — nor had he expected to feel so much lighter inside.
    ‘My point is this.’ Shostakovich returned to the present. ‘You love, or you don’t love. You can’t order the weight of that love, as you can a packet of tea. Nor can you decide on its temperature: hot, cold, mild, indifferent. If you love your child — and I’m almost