Recently I have been thinking of this subject. In some way we all have our no-man’s-land. Within the territory of this other life, the invisible one which is ours only and in which we live in complete freedom, unusual things can happen. Two attuned souls can meet; a person who is reading a book or listening to music can reach an extraordinary degree of depth. Certain moments, lived in our no-man’s-land, either complement some aspect of our “real” life or they have a meaning that is all their own. This inner life can be a pleasure or a necessity.
Nina B.
September, 1952
Dear Igor Mikhailovich,
You ask me if I have got used to living in America. Yes, I’m fine here. I try to understand America. I keep on discovering more and more. I admire America, its youth, and its dynamism. But deep down, you know . . . It makes no difference to me whether I live in one place or another. I like to have new impressions; they help me to cope with the pain I carry inside me. But in the end, isn’t it everybody’s wish to snuff out their most intimate pain with a blanket of new, different, strong, crazy experiences? What we wouldn’t do to be relieved of ourselves!
Greetings from
your Nina
In an undated letter I received ten years or so after the earlier brief ones, she wrote:
In the program there was a concert dedicated to the memory of Dmitri Shostakovich. I was sitting next to Alexandra in the first row of the circle and was listening to the art of Vsevolod Pastukhov’s piano. All the other instruments are unnecessary, she told me; he alone is a whole orchestra that fills the concert hall. I observed the pianist submerged in the universe of the music where nothing of the outside world could reach. But perhaps something could: the pianist’s face took on from time to time an illuminated resplendent expression, like the one I had seen on him for the first time a few months ago in Alexandra’s house by the sea, he brought us some glasses full of golden vermouth with ice cubes that knocked against each other like bumper cars. I thought that musicians were happy beings: in music they have their no-man’s-land, which fills them completely and which acts as a refuge. Both Vsevolod Pastukhov and Dmitri Shostakovich did. Before them, Schubert, Mozart, Bach. Neither the Inquisition nor the totalitarian states would ever permit anyone his no-man’s-land, this other life. But with music it is possible to preserve one’s inner life even under a dictatorship. It is true that Shostakovich had serious problems with the totalitarian government, but nobody, not even Stalin, could take away the music that was echoing in his head.
Applause, a storm of applause. The audience gave a standing ovation.
In the wings there was a long line of people who wanted to shake hands with Vsevolod Pastukhov. Alexandra and I were the last in line. Pastukhov saw us and offered us the place next to him. He presented Alexandra to his friends and then me as “my friend.” I was stupefied; I felt my face grow severe, inaccessible. But no one was paying any attention to me, the evening belonged to Vsevolod Pastukhov. Alexandra excused herself, saying she still had work to do. We accompanied her out onto the street; she went off in her red sports car, which shrank until it melted into the flood of lights. Pastukhov called a taxi to Central Park.
On the way he told me of his first meeting with Shostakovich in the 1920s. He continued while we looked for a place on the terrace of a cafe in the middle of the park; he told stories while the waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne effortlessly, noiselessly. Then he played for a moment with his glass, expecting me to suggest a toast. After all, today he today had had the kind of success that comes only once in a lifetime, if it comes at all! But I sipped my champagne without saying a word, so that he clinked his glass against mine, in silence, before tasting the liquid full of tiny bubbles.
“Do you still work as a quadrilingual secretary for that old witch? And you handle her correspondence with Albert Schweitzer, Gary Cooper, and Kurt Furtwängler?”
“Mrs. Toom’s latest whim: she now wants me to grow roses instead of writing her letters.”
“And you’ve refused.”
“I certainly have. So she told me to grow tulips. And if I don’t want to,