It’s late, the union offices otherwise deserted for the weekend. Its stairwells and corridors are silent and dark. Remizov’s office is the very model of austerity. On the walls, the obligatory portraits of Lenin, Stalin and Kirov. Doesn’t have a telephone. Nothing on his desk except a lamp, a notepad and pen, a box of cigarettes and the message Sergey received almost an hour ago.
Герой тура отменен.
Hero tour cancelled.
Even before Sergey speaks, Remizov’s expression is one of weary impatience, as though they’ve been having this discussion for hours on end, as if he anticipates everything Sergey is about to say and hasn’t the time for it.
“Why is it cancelled?”
“Does it really need spelling out to you?” says Remizov. “The subject matter was deemed inappropriate.”
“What do you mean, ‘inappropriate’?”
“The subject matter. The tone. You took a single chapter from a pre-revolutionary work about the bourgeoisie. What were you thinking?”
“It wasn’t inappropriate when I first proposed it. It wasn’t inappropriate when we performed at the Kirov. Why is it suddenly inappropriate?”
Remizov sighs. “People can get awfully excited about a new work. But when that excitement dies down, well… sometimes we’re forced to see the work for what it is. Now, there isn’t much we can say or do to Comrade Lermontov about the vulgarity of his novel. But this ballet, on the other hand…”
“Vulgarity? How is it vulgar?”
“How is it not, Sergey Andreievich? Look at it from our point of view. Pechorin is a nobleman, an individualist, who gallivants around behaving as he wishes. What sort of a hero is that?”
“The title is ironic.”
“And that’s another problem. Irony. You see, irony plays well among the intelligentsia in, say, Paris or Vienna, but if we’re creating music for the proletariat, that sort of thing can be mistaken for sincerity, can it not?”
“If you say so.”
“You know I’m right.”
Sergey braces himself with both hands against the back of a chair. He can’t bring himself to sit. The room is smaller than when he entered it. Remizov opens the wooden cigarette box and takes one. He turns the box toward Sergey.
“No, thank you.”
“Please. It’ll calm your nerves.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You should be.”
Hesitantly, Sergey takes a cigarette, and Remizov lights it for him.
“So. Is that it? Is my career over?”
“Stalled, perhaps,” says Remizov. “But not beyond redemption.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Well, first you must renounce the thing itself.”
“Renounce my work?”
“Of course. It has left rather a sour taste on the Soviet palate, which you must cleanse; first by renouncing your more recent work, then by eclipsing all memory of it with something more appropriate. There may be an interregnum, of course, but I’m sure you’ll find work. A few months writing film music, for instance. Lenfilm are always looking for composers, and they’re really not that fussy about former indiscretions.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s really not so different to writing for ballet, or –”
“I mean I can’t renounce my work.”
Remizov leans back and laughs, the cigarette bouncing in the corner of his mouth, raining grey ash down his shirtfront.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, brushing the ash away with his knuckles. “You make it sound as if renouncing your work is a physical impossibility, when all you have to do is say the words. ‘I renounce my work wholeheartedly. I am ashamed of what I’ve done, and I promise never to do it again.’ That’s all. What’s so difficult about that?”
“It’s my work,” says Sergey. “And I’m proud of it. Really, I am.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go bragging about that. Listen. Frankly, Seryozha, I don’t care what you think or how you feel about your work. It really doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that publicly you are ashamed, and that you demonstrate your shame. That’s all.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You can. You’ve done it before.”
Sergey draws the chair away from Remizov’s desk, and slumps into it before he can fall.
“I saw your file,” says Remizov. “From when you were at the academy. I read the notes about your visit from the GUGB, or the OGPU, or…” He waives his hand dismissively. “…Whatever they were calling themselves back then.”
Something catches in Sergey’s throat, as if he’s choking on a peach stone. With little effort, he can smell the bleached grey linoleum of the academy’s corridors and see the winter light creeping in through its high windows. The long walk from his classroom to the principal’s office. The agents waiting for him. The paperwork, the denunciation, on the desk, waiting for his signature. He was fifteen years old. They told him to sit. The principal got up and placed his hand briefly, sympathetically on Sergey’s shoulder before leaving the room.
“Unfortunate business, all that,” says Remizov. “What is it they say? You can choose your friends, but not your family?”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Your point being? The files still exist. And they’re worryingly prescient, given the nature of your work. I wouldn’t want people to link the two unnecessarily. You know what I mean. ‘Oh, his family were kulaks, therefore he was bound to produce a work like this sooner or later.’ That sort of thing.”
“You think they would say that?”
“Of course. You know how people are. They’d forget how you washed your hands of them. Or they’d say you were simply saving your own skin. What was your brother’s name? Mikhail, wasn’t it?”
“Misha.”
“Not very old, if I remember rightly. But then, that was the difference between you. He stayed with your father, carried on being influenced by him, you came to the city. Don’t get me wrong, the zealousness of those officials was regrettable. I mean, your brother was practically a child…”
“He was a child.”
“But a child raised as a kulak. A very unfortunate business, all round. You must feel very lucky to have come to the academy, to have missed out on all that.”
Sergey says nothing. His hands are shaking and he hides them beneath the desk. He wants to hurt Remizov, to get up and hit him from his chair, and when he’s on the floor and curled up in a ball, to start kicking him until he hears the sound of breaking bones. Instead, Sergey takes a deep breath and holds it till it feels as if it’s boiling in his lungs.
“Still,” says Remizov. “It was a wise move, distancing yourself. To have done otherwise would have ruined your life, not to mention your career. Instant dismissal from the academy. Exiled to somewhere up north, or out in the east. You’d have been lucky to get a job teaching piano to schoolchildren after that. But now look at you. The world, Seryozha, is yours. If you want it. This whole business with the Lermontov ballet, it could be a minor setback if you do things properly.”
Sergey stubs out his cigarette when he’s smoked only half of it, and brings his hands together, cracking the knuckles.
“I won’t renounce it,” he says. “I don’t care what you say, what anyone says. I won’t renounce it. Not that. It’s the best work I’ve done.”
Remizov laughs. “You say this as if you’re the elder statesman of Soviet music. How old are you? Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Good grief, we really did spoil you, didn’t we? Putting your first ballet on at the Kirov. Trust me. Everyone thinks they’re a genius at twenty-five, but very few are. Forget about Lermontov and Pechorin and Princess fucking Mary, and all that nonsense. Write something else. Something better.”
“Very well,” says Sergey. “I’ll write something else. But I will not renounce A Hero of Our Time. I can’t.”
Remizov sighs, flinging up his hands in showy despair. “What am I to do with you?” he says. “There is a tried, tested and time-honoured route to rehabilitation in this country, and I’ve spelled it out to you quite clearly. That said, if you’re adamant…”
“I am.”
“Well, if you’re adamant, there is one alternative.”
“Which is?”
“I can have a word with the union. My star is in the ascendency there, I feel. I can speak to them, perhaps persuade them that while A Hero of Our Time isn’t in line with current tastes, it may one day become so. When the work of the revolution is complete and we can better appreciate its irony. That sort of thing. And perhaps, with that in mind, it shouldn’t be denounced altogether. How does that sound?”
Sergey nods. “That’s better.”
“Better?” says Remizov. “I’d say that’s an excellent offer. Should they agree to it, of course. However, I will need some guarantee that I can trust you to work in a more suitable vein from now on.”
“You have my word.”
“That isn’t good enough, I’m afraid. I’m not calling you a liar. Far from it. But you are an artist, and artists are fickle, unpredictable. I want some means by which I can know that we are bonded in our discretion.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come now.”
Remizov smiles, and draws another cigarette from the open box. He holds it to his lips, and pauses before lighting it, never once breaking eye contact. That single look, dark and mocking, is all the explanation he has to give.
Sergey leaves Remizov’s office without giving him an answer, telling him instead that he would like to sleep on it. If the arrival of the note sobered him up, his walk back to his rooms tips him back into a heavy, sluggish stupor. This is bad. No mistaking it. He’d thought he was immune, invincible, and that the worst days were behind them. The revolution’s work was complete, they said. But now it seems the revolution will never be over, and that no-one, least of all Sergey, will ever be safe again.