# Anton: Chapter 23



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Anton continued writing letters to Katerina, but her tone had suddenly changed in her correspondence. She became more reserved and wrote less often.
And then, it all stopped. Nothing for a whole 3 months.
"No doubt her husband caught her," he thought to himself. "I shall continue writing back nonetheless, she may get some of them if he doesn't destroy them."
And so he continued sending letter to her, asking how things were. But he had no responses, and he became very upset.
Years passed, and he continued composing, and everything he was doing, but a gloom returned to him. Although he had depression off and on, things could cheer him up. But now nothing seemed to.
"I shouldn't have left," he would moan to himself. "Leaving Moscow was the last thing I should have done! Now I can never see her, and whenever I've gone back to Moscow to visit, I can never find her." Thus, he became restless and even desperate to leave his conducting position, not to mention alcohol was taking over his life.
"If she saw me for who am I today, would she love me just the same?" he looked in the mirror to see a very haggard, unhealthy face. He once was truly handsome, but he had succeeded in masking his features with exhaustion and depression. Anton had been living alone on his own for a very long time, and so it didn't matter.
"Can I possibly go back to the man I once was?"
For all his doubt, some things didn't change though. His music was a light-hearted as it always was. To cheer himself up, mostly. And the hope it would cheer Katerina up too.

One cold winter day, Sergei Vasilievich came to his door. It had been almost a year since he last saw him. He was not in as good shape either, though he hadn't been for 4 years. Sergei Vasilievich's face was drawn and extremely gloomy, and yet, not conquered.
Anton was quite well aware of his recent set-backs that Seryozha had: a failure of his first Symphony, and a loss of inspiration. But Sergei wasn't here to talk about that.
"Anton Stepanovich I'm glad I've been able to find you, I bear some news from abroad."
"Do you? What is it?"
"That Vasily Sergeyevich is dead. Do you remember him?"
Anton stared for a moment. That name was vaguely familiar.
"We had met, hadn't we?"
"Yes, long ago, but you see, he became so ill that he moved to Crimea, and spent his life to the end of his days there. He had tuberculosis."
"I do remember him now. He was very good-hearted."
"Yes, and he remembered you too. That's why I'm here. He gave me a message."
Anton furrowed his brow. "What did he say?"
"He said, thank you for your support, and he wished God's blessing on you."
Almost in a blaze of thought, it struck Anton what this was about. He sat back in his chair in stunned silence.
"Anyways," Sergei continued warily, "I brought a number of his compositions back from Crimea, and I'm going to get Jurgenson to publish them. He got a few of his works performed, some even in Moscow, but I guess you were not in town for those performances. Do you want to see them?"
"I would," Anton said gravely.
He was awestruck to see a great number of orchestral and vocal works with Sergei. Certainly these all would have to be performed! Anton was particularly interested in one work by Vasily Sergeyevich.
"This poem here," he beckoned Sergei to see its title, "_'Do Not Ask Why I Smile in Thought'_. This is Pushkin. But extremely rare Pushkin! When did he write this?"
"Oh! Would you even imagine, just a few days before his death."
Anton stared at Sergei in shock, and then back at the manuscript.
"Isn't Pushkin so wonderful?" Sergei commented. "I think it's thanks to you that I fell in love with him. Of all the concerts we had about 2 years ago to celebrate his cententary, I think your choral concert was the most wonderful. People can make music _for _Pushkin, but nothing speaks more fondly of him than putting music to his _own _words." He smiled with genuine warmth.
"Yes, he is after all... the soul's last respite..." Anton's voice drifted away.

That winter was Anton's last with the Imperial Chapel Choir. He performed a concert where he performed one of Vasily Sergeyevich's works, and many were delighted to hear it. Upon giving his resignation, some were sad to hear it, but even then they knew it was time for him to leave, for the great despair that seemed to come over him in the last years and even months.
Anton got a nice pension after he resigned, 6,000 roubles a year since he had been technically a civil servant for the government. But he continued composing performing as a pianist. He took up a small tour with his old pianist friend from Moscow to play his newest works, particularly his 4th Suite for 2 Pianos. He loved his 4th Suite more than almost any of his other works, since it was one of his most personal self-expressions. Anton looked for Katerina in every audience, but she was never to be found.
"If she were to hear this new Suite, she would remember me. The past would come back to her, and we will renew! All will be well!"
How he had come to start believing this delusion he had no idea, nor was he aware it was a delusion. Katerina was likely still married, and nothing would change.
But he wouldn't, and couldn't, believe otherwise.
So Anton continued using his nights for gambling and drinking. His "friends" were simply people he got drunk with regularly, or pick-pocketed him at cards, which he was still terrible at. Waking up the next day, he would be alarmed at the loss of almost all of his money in his pockets, and so would go through the same cycle the next night to try to earn the money back. And the fact he came back so often stunned and even worried the club managers. On top of that, half of what he was starting to say made no sense to anybody, always talking about some dreamed woman and quoting Pushkin poems from memory like it was nothing, even when he was drunk.
He began to have a certain reputation in some of the more sketchy clubs in St. Petersburg.
Anton Stepanovich, Сновидец.
_The Dreamer._


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