The Noise of Time Read Online Free PDF

settled rather than because he knew what he wanted. Perhaps his artistic precocity meant that he had avoided those useful years of ordinary growing up. But whatever the cause, he was bad at the practicalities of life, which included, of course, the practicalities of the heart. And so, at Anapa, alongside the exaltations of love and the heady self-satisfaction of sex, he found himself entering a whole new world, one full of unwanted silences, misunderstood hints and scatter-brained planning.
    They had returned again to their separate cities, he to Leningrad, she to Moscow. But they would visit one another. One day, he was finishing a piece and asked her to sit with him: her presence made him feel secure. After a while, his mother came in. Looking straight at Tanya, she had said,
    ‘Go out and leave Mitya to finish his work.’
    And he had replied, ‘No, I want Tanya to stay here. It helps me.’
    This was one of the rare occasions when he had stood up to his mother. Perhaps if he had done so more, his life would have been different. Or perhaps not – who could tell? If the Red Napoleon had been outmanoeuvred by Sofya Vasilyevna, what chance did he ever have?
    Their time at Anapa had been an idyll. But an idyll, by definition, only becomes an idyll once it has ended. He had discovered love; but he had also begun to discover that love, far from making him ‘what he was’, far from spreading deep content all over him like carnation oil, would make him self-conscious and indecisive. He loved Tanya most clearly when he was away from her. When they were together, there were expectations on both sides which he was either unable to identify or couldn’t respond to. So, for instance, they had gone away to the Caucasus specifically not as man and wife, specifically as free equals. Was the purpose of such an adventure to end up as real man and real wife? That seemed illogical.
    No, this was not being honest. One of their incompatibilites was that – whatever the equality of words spoken on either side – he had loved her more than she had loved him. He tried to stir her into jealousy, describing flirtations with other women – even seductions, real or imaginary – but this seemed to make her cross rather than jealous. He had also threatened suicide, more than once. He even announced that he had married a ballet dancer, which might conceivably have been the case. But Tanya had laughed it all off. And then she had got married herself. Which only made him love her the more. He implored her to divorce her husband and marry him; again, he threatened suicide. None of this had any effect.
    Early on, she had told him, tenderly, that she had been attracted to him because he was pure and open. But if this didn’t make her love him as much as he loved her, then he wished it were otherwise. Not that he felt pure and open. They sounded like words designed to keep him in a box.
    He found himself reflecting on questions of honesty. Personal honesty, artistic honesty. How they were connected, if indeed they were. And how much of this virtue anyone had, and how long that store would last. He had told friends that if ever he repudiated Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , they were to conclude that he had run out of honesty.
    He thought of himself as someone with strong emotions who was unskilled at conveying them. But that was letting himself off too easily; that was still not being honest. In truth, he was a neurotic. He thought he knew what he wanted, he got what he wanted, he didn’t want it any more, it went away from him, he wanted it back again. Of course he was indulged, because he was a mother’s boy, and a brother with two sisters; also, an artist, who was expected to have an ‘artistic temperament’; also, a success, which allowed him to behave with the sudden arrogance of fame. Malko had already accused him to his face of ‘growing vanity’. But his underlying condition was one of high anxiety. He was a thorough-going neurotic. No, again