A Life's Music [Paperback]

This chance meeting of two strangers in the night frames like a picture the extraordinary and deeply moving story of Alexeï Berg, the pianist. Alexeï grew up during the years of arbitrary detentions and executions of Stalin's reign of terror. His parents, suspects for a while, seem to have averted the worst. The old violin, played sometimes by a family friend, since executed as a traitor, is thrown into the fire by the father in the hope of avoiding a similar fate. For Alexeï's ears, the exploding strings are like staccato played on a harp. This sound is engraved in his memory forever. Yet, on the eve of his debut concert, their time has run out and he must flee to escape his own certain arrest. To survive he follows the road west, hides, and, as last resort, takes on a dead soldier's identity. Creating an imagined personality, always conscious of dangers to his double life, he joins "his" unit on the frontlines in the war against the Germans.... Not surprisingly, Alexei's attempts to drown his previous self, that of the high-spirited young pianist on the verge of success in Moscow, only succeeds so far. After the war ends, memories of the past start re-emerging. He can no longer pretend without difficulty. What happened to his parents? Visions of a life not lived lead him to confront his two realities. In the end, it is the piano and the music that heals and at the same time exposes him. By accepting the consequences of his "crime" he recovers the connection to his former life and his inner voice of music.

Makine does not need many words to convey the intricacies of his hero's experiences. Using the precise, yet detached, language of an observer, he succeeds in conveying the reality of the Stalin purges, the horrors of war... the challenges of a generation, represented by Alexeï, that is caught in a life beyond its control. His intention is not to give his readers a grand epic of the man and his time. Rather, like a sculptor crafting a relief, Makine chisels out small pieces, highlighting minute details in some parts and using broad strokes in others to create his masterpiece. It succeeds also by drawing on the reader's understanding of the context, his empathy and power of imagination to visualize what is hinted at but not spelled out.

"You can never describe the life of another person" Makine said in a recent interview, each observer will interpret it based on his own understanding. The "perfect novel" is beyond description, he asserts, the reader should loose himself in it, observe and contemplate its meaning and, at the end, emerge transformed. Music can have that same quality as it carries the listener beyond the present reality. With "Music of a Life" Makine is living up to his own definition.

The relative brevity of the story should not be seen as a disadvantage. On the contrary, this is a highly charged and emotional story. A thin layer of "objective" reporting by the narrator only obscures for a short time the underlying intensity and the author's deep concerns for his country and its people. This is a treasure of a book, to be read more than once. This review refers to the original French version. Others have commented on the excellent translation into English. [Friederike Knabe] Read more ›

A Life's Music is set up as the re-telling of a conversation had between two strangers on a train moving slowly west from Siberia sometime around 1958, the year many thousands finally won their release from the labor camps that dotted the Soviet Far East. Two men sit together. One older man, wearing clothes that mark him as someone just released from the Gulag strikes up a conversation with his fellow passenger. The story is set out in the voice of the other passenger. As the train moves on the older passenger and the narrator exchange slowly. At some point the older passenger, Alexei Berg, slowly sets out his life story.

In 1940, the young Alexei, son of prominent artists and himself a classically trained pianist of great talent and promise, was preparing for his debut recital. On approaching his family flat after the dress rehearsal he sees a pre-arranged symbol indicating that his parents, supposedly dangerous members of the intelligentsia, had been swept up by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB). Alexei makes his escape and finds himself hiding out in the Ukraine in 1941.... The devastation of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June of that year engulfs the Urkaine. Alexei comes upon the body of a dead Soviet solider, a peasant, and assumes the dead soldier's identify. Although this provides him some protection from those who might still seek his arrest, Alexei realizes quickly that he must maintain this identity at all costs.

Alexei makes it through the war in one piece and, in fact, finds favor with a Soviet general, who keeps him at his side as an aide de camp during the rest of the war. Alexei's survival remains dependent upon his being thought of as a simple peasant. After the war, Alexei finds work as the general's driver. The general's daughter takes a liking to the young 'peasant' soldier. Alexei becomes enamored of the daughter. The daughter, whose piano-playing skills are somewhat limited, if earnest, decides to teach the young peasant Alexei a few simple tunes on the piano. These lessons lead, inexorably, to the book's climactic moments.

The book leaves the reader (or at least it left me) contemplating the choices and compromises we sometimes make with life. It left me contemplating the question as to how much of myself would I compromise, how much of myself would I keep hidden in order to maintain some small amount of freedom in an unfree world.

As I noted at the beginning, this is a simple story, simply told. Yet, as with music, sometimes even simple combinations of notes creates a beautiful mosaic of sound. Makine has done this with the graceful combination of notes that makes up his Life's Music. Read more ›