The Noise of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

when he passed an open church, he would light a candle for his family. And he knew his Bible well. So he was familiar with the notion of sin; also with its public mechanism. The offence, the full confession of the offence, the priest’s judgement on the matter, the act of contrition, the forgiveness. Though there were occasions when the sin was too great and not even a priest could forgive it. Yes, he knew the formulae and the protocols, whatever name the church might go by.
    His second call was on Marshal Tukhachevsky. The Red Napoleon was still in his forties, a stern, handsome man with a pronounced widow’s peak. He listened to all that had happened, cogently analysed his protégé’s position, and came up with a strategic proposal which was simple, bold and generous. He, Marshal Tukhachevsky, would write a personal letter of intercession to Comrade Stalin. Dmitri Dmitrievich’s relief was intense. He felt light-headed and light-hearted as the Marshal sat down at his desk and straightened a sheet of paper in front of him. But as soon as the man in uniform gripped his pen and started writing, a change came over him. Sweat began to pour from his hair, from his widow’s peak down on to his forehead, and from the back of his head down into his collar. One hand made flurrying darts with a handkerchief, the other halting movements with a pen. Such unsoldierly apprehension was not encouraging.
    The sweat had poured off them at Anapa. It was hot in the Caucasus, and he had never liked the heat. They had gazed at Low Bay beach but he felt no inclination to cool off by taking a swim. They walked in the shade of the forest above the town, and he was bitten by mosquitoes. Then they were cornered by a pack of dogs and almost eaten alive. None of this mattered. They inspected the resort’s lighthouse, but while Tanya craned her head upwards, his concentration was on the sweet fold of skin it made at the base of her neck. They visited the old stone gate which was all that remained of the Ottoman fortress, but he was thinking about her calves, and the way their muscles moved as she walked. There was nothing in his life for those weeks except love, music and mosquito bites. The love in his heart, the music in his head, the bites on his skin. Not even paradise was free of insects. But he could hardly resent them. Their bites were ingeniously made in places inaccessible to him; the lotion was based on an extract of carnation flowers. If a mosquito was the cause of her fingers touching his skin and making him smell of carnations, how could he possibly hold anything against the insect?
    They were nineteen and they believed in Free Love: keener tourists of each other’s bodies than of the resort’s attractions. They had thrown off the fossilised dictates of church, of society, of family, and gone away to live as man and wife without being man and wife. This excited them almost as much as the sexual act itself; or was, perhaps, inextricable from it.
    But then came all the time they were not in bed together. Free Love may have solved the primary problem, but had not done away with the others. Of course they loved one another; but being all the time in one another’s company – even with his 300 roubles and his young fame – was not straightforward. When he was composing, he always knew exactly what to do; he made the right decisions about what the music – his music – required. And when conductors or soloists wondered politely if this might be better, or that might be better, he would always reply, ‘I’m sure you’re right. But let’s leave it for now. I’ll make that change next time round.’ And they were satisfied, and he was too, since he never had any intention of implementing their suggestions. Because his decisions, and his instinct, had been correct.
    But away from music … that was so different. He became nervous, things blurred in his mind, and he would sometimes make a decision simply in order to have the matter