Andrei Makine - The Crime Of Olga Arbyelina

The readers came in, leaned their elbows on the display shelves, commented on the books they were returning, asked for advice and embarked ineluctably on their own stories… Not all, however. One of them, for example, was discreet and swift. Olga called him the "doctor-just-between-ourselves" in memory of their first encounter: one day he had treated her son, but as he left he had murmured, "I should like this to remain just between ourselves. You know, practicing illegally in this country…"

Shortly before closing time Olga had a visit from the pretty young woman, who two years previously had married an elderly art collector, the owner of several galleries. For a woman who had spent her youth in the poverty of the Caravanserai, had worked there as a waitress in the canteen, and had the banal name of Masha, this marriage seemed like the arrival of the handsome prince, even though her husband was neither handsome nor a prince but ugly and morose. The Russians of Villiers-la-Forêt tried to turn a blind eye to that side of things, knowing how rare miracles, even imperfect ones, were in this world… Masha's tale consisted of a catalog of Parisian personalities whom she had met in her husband's galleries. The all-too-visible effort she had made to memorize all their names, often classy aristocratic names, was as great as the one she was making now to refer to them with worldly indifference. It seemed clear that if she came back to Villiers-la-Forêt and to the Caravanserai from time to time, it was to relish her wonderful deliverance from such places, and from her wretched past; to stroll about among all these people, as if through a bad dream, but one from which she could awaken at any time, by going back to Paris…

The director of the retirement home was the last one to come that day. She had to wait patiently for Masha to finish her list of celebrities. When the latter had finally left the room, she exhaled a noisy sigh of relief.

"Phew! And I thought it was people of our generation who couldn't stop talking. Looking forward to old age when there's nothing else to do… But you heard that chatterbox. I'm sure it would take the two of us a week to get through as much gossip as that."

The director's words turned into a whispering inside Olga's head that nagged at her all evening. "People of our generation… looking forward to old age…" It is in such trivial conversations, thanks to a chance remark, that the truth can be laid bare and wound us mortally. Of those two women, Masha and the director, she naturally felt she was closer to the former, who was thirty-five or thirty-six. Yet here was the latter, who had long since passed fifty hustling her along, she who was only on the brink of forty-six, toward this "looking forward to old age."…

In the bathroom she spent a moment studying the mirror. "In fact it's very simple," she told herself. "Hair like mine turns gray quite early. I should explain to everybody: you see, I have hair of this type but I'm not as old as my hair looks…" Then she shook her head to banish the stupid vision of a woman pleading that she had unusual hair.

As she went into the kitchen she saw her infusion cooling in the little copper saucepan and suddenly experienced a gentle sense of relief that came from resignation. Yes, to resign oneself, to settle down into "looking forward to old age," with little, slightly eccentric rituals. To grind down one's former desires into tiny particles, very light, readily accessible-live these evening moments of vagueness in the soul, like the slender trickle of liquid she will shortly pour into the bowl…

Olga herself did not understand what it was that suddenly rebelled in her. She acted with the zest of the very first, still unconsidered impulse. The infusion was poured down the sink, the sediment of petals gathered into a lump and tossed through the open window. She thought of Li and said to herself that it was thinking of her that had provoked her rebellion: "She's older than me (again that arithmetic: three years older!) and yet she's embarking on a crazy project. On a new life!"

She was seized with the slightly nervous gaiety of someone who would have liked to thumb her nose at sober citizens. "Li really is a hell of a woman! She sure has guts," she kept repeating, pacing up and down her room. Then she stopped, snatched up an object, rubbed it, as if to remove the dust, adjusted the little cloth on the pedestal table, tugged hard on the corners of the pillow. "That Li!" Suddenly the great leatherbound volume caught her eye. The camera! The spy camera Li had lent her, forgotten since then, had almost been transformed, through the habit of looking at it, into a quite ordinary book in the row of other books. As her fingers manipulated the nickel-plated mechanism of the fake book Olga felt them tingling with gleeful excitement. She switched out the light, put the camera on the shelf, and pressed the smooth catch on the top as her friend had instructed her…

She only remembered about it three days later when her rebellion, the night she threw away the infusion, already seemed remote and futile, as is often the case with big exalted decisions taken late at night about which you feel embarrassed next morning.

That day she had to go to Paris: someone had promised to introduce her to a leading specialist in diseases of the blood who could probably… Thus it was, going from pillar to post via slight acquaintances, that she continued her search for the miracle doctor that parents of doomed children never despair of finding… She knew she would be calling on Li and decided to take the opportunity to return her spy camera to her.

A week later she was extremely surprised to receive a little note that came with three black-and-white snapshots. "The first two didn't come out; there wasn't enough light," Li commented.

Olga spread them out on the windowsill and saw a vision of her own body that for several seconds took her breath away.

On the first photograph, in point of fact, she was not seen. The space was lit from the side and in the part that had come out you could see the cat, which generally slept in the kitchen. This time it was awake and seemed to have been caught red-handed in some mysterious nocturnal activity. Its ears were pricked up, on the alert for sounds, its eyes with pupils like razor blades were outlined against the weak light shining on it. Its whole body was tensed in preparation for a velvety, leaping escape… Olga was forced to utter a little laugh in order to rid herself of the disturbing impression left, for some unknown reason, by the attentive watchfulness of the cat.

As she examined the other two photos she remembered that on the night of her exuberant rebellion, when she had set the spy camera, she had had to get up to remove her nightgown and open the window, so warm was the September night. At that moment she had completely forgotten the camera hidden on the shelf. And yet the tiny lens had been activated and with perfect discretion had taken five pictures, at three-second intervals.

On the next photo Olga saw herself from behind, seated on the edge of the bed, her arm raised, her head swathed in the turban of the unwanted nightgown… On the last she was standing up in front of the French door, her body leaning forward, one hand surrounding her breasts, as if to shield them from onlookers, the other resting on the handle. The features of her face were not clear. Of her eyes the snapshot had only retained a triangle of shadow. But you felt that her gaze was filled with the airy silence of the night and that along the white curve of her arm there flowed almost palpable coolness.

This naked woman in front of the open door seemed very different from herself, a stranger to her. She could easily perceive the beauty of this body, its youthfulness, even; when she caught sight of the photo, it had taken her breath away. And something else, a singular element she could not define, a secret beyond words, the taste of which, like that of mint, froze her nostrils, made her gorge rise…