Шум времени

In the imaginary conversations he sometimes had with these disappointed supporters, he would begin by explaining one small, basic fact of which they were almost certainly ignorant: that it was impossible in the Soviet Union to buy manuscript paper unless you were a member of the Union of Composers. Did they know that? Of course not. But Dmitri Dmitrievich, they would doubtless reply, if that is the case, surely you can buy blank paper, and with a ruler and pencil make your own? Surely you are not so easily put off practising your art?

But Dmitri Dmitrievich, you are being pessimistic. Music is immortal, music will always last and always be needed, music can say anything, music … and so on. He stopped his ears while they explained to him the nature of his own art. He applauded their idealism. And yes, music might be immortal, but composers alas are not. They are easily silenced, and even more easily killed. As for the accusation of pessimism — this was hardly the first time it had been voiced. And they would protest: No, no, you do not understand, we are just trying to help. So the next time they came, from their safe, rich lands, they would bring him vast batches of ready-printed manuscript paper.

In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in others, being optimistic, being frank with everyone about everything. And then, as one comes to understand things and people better, to develop a sense of irony. The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism; and a sense of irony helps temper pessimism, helps produce balance, harmony.

But this was not an ideal world, and so irony grew in sudden and strange ways. Overnight, like a mushroom; disastrously, like a cancer.

Sarcasm was dangerous to its user, identifiable as the language of the wrecker and the saboteur. But irony — perhaps, sometimes, so he hoped — might enable you to preserve what you valued, even as the noise of time became loud enough to knock out window-panes.

Of course, Russia had known tyrants before; that was why irony was so well developed here. ‘Russia is the homeland of elephants,’ as the saying went. Russia invented everything because … well, first because it was Russia, where delusions were normal; and second, because it was now Soviet Russia, the most socially advanced nation in history, where it was natural that things were discovered first. So when the Ford Motor Company abandoned its Ford Model A, the Soviet authorities bought the entire manufacturing plant: and behold, an authentic, Soviet-designed twenty-seater bus or light truck was upon the earth! The same with tractor factories: an American production line, imported from America, assembled by American experts, suddenly producing Soviet tractors. Or you copied a Leica camera and it was born afresh as a FED, named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, and thereby all the more Soviet. Who said the age of miracles was past? And all done with words, whose transformative powers were truly revolutionary. So, for instance, French bread. Everyone used to know it as such, and had been calling it such for years. Then one day, French bread disappeared from the shops. Instead, there was ‘city bread’ — exactly the same, of course, but now the patriotic product of a Soviet city.

When truth-speaking became impossible — because it led to immediate death — it had to be disguised. In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth’s disguise was irony. Because the tyrant’s ear is rarely tuned to hear it. The previous generation — those Old Bolsheviks who had made the Revolution — hadn’t understood this, which was partly why so many of them perished. His generation had grasped it more instinctively.