The prologue: A man, who had gone to fight for his homeland in some senseless war and came back with his legs truncated, “in reality, only half a man” is pulling himself along a train station platform, pitiably begging but “impervious to insult” (p1), “Below a certain point, that was what all men became: techniques for survival” (p1) Two men descend from a train and share a drink of vodka with the beggar, then they climb back on the train. “By the time the two men were in their seats again, the one who heard had almost forgotten what he had said. But the one who remembered was only at the start of his remembering” (p3). Even from these three short pages, Barnes’ distinctive style of thought and writing are beautifully represented.
The book is about a man who sits, night after night, on the 5th floor of a building outside his own apartment, waiting for the lift. He is awaiting arrest and likely execution, and wants to be taken away out of sight of his wife and daughter, to spare them that spectacle. He is all packed and ready, with a small briefcase. If someone takes the lift and exits on the 5th floor, he will go in as the other person exits, as if he was waiting for the lift, go down a couple of floors and then come back up to resume his vigil. He knows being prepared to be arrested and dressed and packed is not going to make a difference to the arrest or subsequent torture/treatment, but he does not want to be dragged out of bed in his nightclothes and taken away that way. This assertion of his way of doing things, small flare of defiance in the face of or full knowledge of its futility given the forces (the Power) ranged against him, is in fact core to his personality and to this novel. And yet, as the book repeatedly hammers home, “the one simple fact about the Soviet Union: that it is impossible to tell the truth here and live” (p107).
Our protagonist, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, is a composer, a famous one, who has fallen foul of the regime. Once celebrated, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (performed internationally) is now condemned. Formalists are decried because art must be for the masses, not art for art’s sake. He reads a damning review of his opera in the newspaper, with a story titled “Muddle instead of Music”, which demonstrates how dangerous life is in the Communist state, and how precarious one’s livelihood and freedom may be:
“‘The composer apparently never considered the problem of what the Soviet audience looks for and expects in music.’ That was enough to take away his membership of the Union of Composers. ‘The danger of this trend to Soviet music is clear.’ That was enough to take away his ability to compose and perform. And finally: ‘It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.’ That was enough to take away his life’” (p29).
The novel goes on to tell the story of how futile and impossible it is to defy the tyranny of the regime. Even when sent to New York and given a world stage, Shastakovich is not free and has to speak the pre-prepared words of the regime as his own, even as he tries to deny they are his own, without an outright denial. Playing this dangerous double game is run of the mill, apparently. He cannot even kill himself,
“because then they would steal his story and rewrite it. He needed, if only in his own helpless, hysterical way, to have some charge of his life, of his story” (p97).
The novel is about the terrible bind the composer – and supposedly everyone living in the Soviet – is in, trying to be true to themselves while toeing the accepted party line. Although not an especially brave man, Shastakovich frets at the hypocrisy he is made to perform in his life, in his compositions, in his publicly declared convictions. He dare not rebel openly, but does not then wish he had greater courage. He is conflicted, and as critical of ‘western Humanitarians’ coming from the USA, as he is of his country’s regime. As he ages, he finds the fear of execution seems to have rolled back, but not the State compulsion to conform. He learns how to accept his own hypocrisy, sometimes applying irony to make it more palatable to himself, but always knowing his own failings:
“Before, they had tested the extent of his courage; now, they tested the extent of his cowardice” (p131).
The title of the book refers to how life grinds a man down,
“Now that he had seen more of life, and had been deafened by the noise of time” (p164).
Barnes crams so many beautifully pointed lines into this short book, for example,
“To be Russian was to be pessimistic; to be Soviet was to be optimistic. That’s why the words Soviet Russia were a contradiction in terms” (p71).
The book is so well written the reader is quite plunged into Shastakovich’s wretched world, caught in a perpetual bind which causes people to simultaneously want to lash out, while feeling paralysed with fear. It however hammers home the point so hard, that the uninformed reader such as yours truly, cannot help but wonder, can any State or Power genuinely be so obtuse? Can they be simultaneously as vapid and villainous as they are so skilfully depicted and skewered as being in this book? But without having lived under the regime, one is perhaps not in a position to judge, and will have to defer to the self-condemnatory and yet complacent take of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, foremost musician in his country, as acclaimed by the State, and therefore, what exactly does that make/leave him?
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