Andrei Makine - The Earth And Sky Of Jacques Dorme

An official in a dark suit suddenly climbed onto the steps of the coach and uttered a kind of whispered shout: "Quick! Get out! They're coming. Quickly! Fall in!" He had a red face, seemed panic-struck.

They led us on the double up to a broad terrain at the top of a hill that was already surrounded by several detachments of young extras. One corner of this living frame appeared to be empty; they filled the breach with our troops. When we were installed there I glanced behind us. In the distance, the empty window frames of a half-finished building were clearly visible. So we were there to hide it from the visitors… What we had to do now, as we all knew from past experience, was to sink as rapidly as possible into a torpid state that would make us impervious to the burning heat of the sun, thirst, and the absurd duration of the ceremony. To concentrate on the shape of a cloud that was gradually, very gradually, growing longer…

Suddenly a swift tensing of muscles around me jerked me out of my drowsy state. Thanks to our communal existence, we had synchronized reflexes. I brought my eyes into focus, observed the open space. A crowd of notables, doubtless the town's administrators, was already present, looking toward the other end of the field, where there was a break in the surrounding line of white shirts, leaving a broad way in. All my comrades' eyes were fixed on this opening. Quite a large group of people was approaching at a steady pace, as always happened in ceremonies of this kind; so far there was nothing extraordinary about this procession…

All at once I saw what was extraordinary.

My first impression was the most unlikely and yet the most accurate: "The Lilliputians leading the captured Gulliver…" The man walking at the center of the group was at least a head taller than all the others. Or rather, his head and shoulders were visible above the bobbing motion of the faces surrounding him. I looked for the glint of a general's gold braid, a cap with the kind of insignia I imagined from the generals' uniforms in our army. But the giant who, from the very first moment, was at the heart of the ceremony, wore a dark suit devoid of any hint of rank. Only perhaps in his gait, in his rather stiff way of planting his feet on the ground, in the firm carriage of his body, was there something military about him. Moreover, as he drew closer, I perceived that it was not his exceptional height that gave him his central position, but his way of shaping the space around him.

I could already see his face, with an expression reminiscent of a wise and disenchanted old elephant, and eyelids that lifted slowly to reveal a penetrating gaze of surprising vitality. Very close to me I suddenly heard someone murmur with admiring apprehension: "Did you see the nose on him?" This powerful eminence was a source of fascination in the land of the steppes, where the flat faces of Asia prevailed. But the enthusiastic whisper in fact portended something else: the arrival of such a man was bound to give rise to something of a sensation.

And the sensation was forthcoming. A man with a kolkhoz director's banal features emerged from the group of town notables and walked toward the old giant, who had stopped with his entourage in the middle of the space. Although we were standing at attention I had a sense of a slight creaking of vertebrae: all necks were being craned toward an incredible spectacle.

For the director of the kolkhoz, or the man who looked like one, was carrying an enormous sturgeon, holding it by its gills. It looked rather as if he were dancing with the monstrous fish, whose mouth was poking into his face and whose tail was trying to wrap itself around the calves of his legs. The creature's weight compelled the dancer to lean his body backward and walk with jerky steps, as if in a strange, swaying tango. He was already drawing close to the giant. Everyone held their breath.

When they were a few paces apart, an optical illusion occurred. The sturgeon began to shrink, to seem less long, less heavy. Finally, when the gift took its place in the guest's hands, the silvery body of the fish seemed almost slender. It was displayed to the audience as a fine fishing trophy, held aloft without apparent effort. The beaming giant's strength was applauded. Then a top administrator, all the way from Moscow, stepped up to the microphone and began speaking, his eyes fixed on the typewritten sheets.

I saw neither the speaker nor the crowd of notables. I had just solved the tall old man's real mystery. At that moment, having entrusted the fish to one of his aides, he had taken advantage of the noise of the ovation, and with a conjuror's dexterity, all the while approving with his head the words his entourage were addressing to him, which he was not listening to, he had slipped his right hand into his jacket pocket, taken out a handkerchief, and rapidly wiped his fingertips, which were no doubt sticky from the sturgeon's slime. I was possibly the only person to have observed his action, and this detail, once noted, gave me the feeling that I had discovered his secret: it was his solitude. He was surrounded, acclaimed, lent himself with grace to all these diplomatic games, he even accepted the slimy monster and knew, by instinct, for how many seconds he should show the gift before handing it to his aide-de-camp. He was utterly present. And yet very much apart, in a profound, pensive solitude.

Now he was listening to the speech, with one ear cocked toward the interpreter, who had to stand on tiptoe. The more pompous the words became, the more remote was his expression. At intervals a look flashed out from beneath his heavy eyelids. Like a tracer it would target the crowd of notables, reach the ranks of the white shirts, land upon the speaker. At one moment his eyes rested on our square, and his eyebrows went up slightly, as if speculating about something that he would like to have had confirmed. But already the speaker was folding up his papers to the sound of obedient applause from the audience. With a measured tread, his head bowed in a gesture of concentration, the old giant made his way over to the microphone, which a technician hastily adjusted upward. He produced no sheet of paper and among the Party officials there was a little flutter of anxiety: words spoken off the cuff were by their very nature subversive.

He spoke. And I was certain I was the only one who understood the language he gave voice to. It was the one I had believed dead. French.

The impression I had of being his only audience was not, by and large, false. The notables were incapable of listening to speeches not written down. The giant's entourage thought they knew in advance what was going to be said. The young extras with their red neckerchiefs were aware of the fine, powerful, occasionally somewhat strident music of his sentences, but not of their meaning. The interpreters were concentrating on the syntax.

He said what had to be said at such a ceremony, in the ponderous presence of a concrete monument upon soil heavy with steel and the mortal remains of fighting men. But now, initiated into his secret, I believed I could hear a silent voice, hidden behind the ringing tones of his speech. He spoke of thousands of heroes, but the hidden voice brought to mind not these nameless, faceless thousands but the one who, perhaps, lay beneath our feet. He spoke of the gratitude of peoples, but a perceptible bitterness made it possible to sense that he knew how ungrateful a people can reveal itself to be toward those who have given their lives to it…

At one moment there was a brief stirring among his entourage. A mouth whispering in an ear, a discreet glance at a watch… The diplomats had no doubt noticed that things were running behind schedule for the visit. Like a hardened orator, the giant ignored this distraction, merely turning his head a little in the direction of their confabulations, with one eyebrow arched, as if to say: "Silence in the ranks!" The sight of these people in their elegant suits irritated him. The rhythm of his words did not change. But his silent voice suddenly became even more audible to me, perceptible as he spoke. "Look at them, these bureaucrats! Already counting the time until the banquet. But do they know how much time it took a company to secure this hill? And how many lives it cost to hold it? Do you know how many eternities each second lasts as you force yourself up from the ground and run out under fire?"