Free The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

How ironic was that? The fact that it was not even his opera, but Muradeli’s, made absolutely no difference, neither at the end, nor indeed from the beginning. Naturally enough, it had been a leap year: 1948.
    It was a commonplace to say that tyranny turned the world upside down; and yet it was true. In the twelve years between 1936 and 1948, he had never felt safer than during the Great Patriotic War. A disaster to the rescue, as they say. Millions upon millions died, but at least suffering became more general, and in that lay his temporary salvation. Because, though tyranny might be paranoid, it was not necessarily stupid. If it were stupid, it would not survive; just as if it had principles, it would not survive. Tyranny understood how some parts – the weak parts – of most people worked. It had spent years killing priests and closing churches, but if soldiers fought more stubbornly under the blessing of priests, then priests would be brought back for their short-term usefulness. And if in wartime people needed music to keep their spirits up, then composers would be put to work as well.
    If the state made concessions, so did its citizens. He made political speeches written for him by others, but – so upside down had the world become – they were speeches whose sentiments, if not whose language, he could actually endorse. He spoke at an anti-Fascist meeting of artists about ‘our gigantic battle with German vandalism’, and ‘the mission to liberate mankind from the brown plague’. ‘Everything for the Front,’ he had urged, sounding like Power itself. He was confident, fluent, convincing. ‘Soon, happier times will come,’ he promised his fellow-artists, parroting Stalin.
    The brown plague included Wagner – a composer who had always been put to work by Power. In and out of fashion all century, according to the politics of the day. When the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Mother Russia had embraced its new Fascist ally as a middle-aged widow embraces a husky young neighbour, the more enthusiastically for the passion coming late, and against all reason. Wagner became a great composer again, and Eisenstein was ordered to direct The Valkyrie at the Bolshoi. Less than two years later, Hitler invaded Russia, and Wagner reverted to being a vile Fascist, a piece of brown scum.
    All of which had been a dark comedy; though one which obscured the more important question. Pushkin had put the words into Mozart’s mouth:
    Genius and evil
    Are two things incompatible. You agree?
    For himself, he agreed. Wagner had a mean soul, and it showed. He was evil in his anti-Semitism and his other racial attitudes. Therefore he could not be a genius, for all the burnish and glitter of his music.
    He had spent much of the war in Kuibyshev with his family. They were safe there, and once his mother was out of Leningrad and able to join them, he became less anxious. Also, there were fewer cats sharpening their claws on his soul. Of course, as a patriotic member of the Union of Composers, he was often required in Moscow. He would pack enough garlic sausage and vodka to last the journey. ‘The best bird is the sausage,’ as they said in the Ukraine. The trains would stop for hours, sometimes days; you never knew when sudden troop movements or a lack of coal would interrupt your journey.
    He travelled soft class, which was just as well, as the carriages of hard class were like wards of potential typhus cases. To prevent infection, he wore an amulet of garlic around his neck, and another around each wrist. ‘The smell will put off girls,’ he would explain, ‘but such sacrifices have to be made in wartime.’
    Once, he had been travelling back from Moscow with … no, he couldn’t recall. A couple of days out, the train had stopped on some long, dusty platform. They had opened the window and poked their heads out. The early-morning sun was in their eyes and the filthy song of some raucous beggar in their ears. Had they given