Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

In my short sheepskin coat, drawn in at the waist by a soldier's belt of thick leather, with a bronze buckle that bore a well-polished star, I looked like any young logger. This garb, common to all the men in those parts, made my age undetectable. Furthermore, I had a wolf's eyes, gray, tilted back slightly toward the temples. Those of a child born with the eyes of an adult…

I took one more look at the departure time of some useless train. I turned. All my anxiety and all the frenzy of my desire were concentrated on the handle of the glass door into the little room. Beyond it was a space filled to overflowing by the rosy glitter of her necklace…

I pulled the handle. This time I went straight toward the red-haired woman without turning aside… I was two steps from her when the light went out. There were several squawks of alarm from passengers in the main hall, several curses, the footfalls of a railroad worker sweeping the darkness with his lamp.

We found ourselves on the platform, she and I, under the white tide of the storm. It was the only place that was more or less Ht. By the lights of the Transsiberian, ponderously strung out now, as it flowed into the station. Panting and all covered in snow, the locomotive threw a long beam of light through the white blizzard from its front spotlight. The windows of the coaches cast rectangles of soft light onto the platform. The snowy eddies hurtled toward these yellow rectangles, like moths toward the halo of a streetlamp.

Soon the few passengers due to board the train at this station had climbed into their coaches. Those due to get off had already plunged out into the storm, into the winding streets of Kazhdai… We were left alone, she and I. Travelers without luggage, poised to leap onto the footboard when we heard the whistle? Or improbable relatives determined to wait until the end… until the very last glimpse of the face of a dear one as it was carried away into the night?

At our backs we sensed the gaze of Sorokin, the formidable militiaman, who was pacing up and down on the snow-covered platform, with his nose buried in the broad collar of his sheepskin coat. He, too, was waiting for the departure whistle. He seemed to be hesitating: Should he go and corner the Redhead and extort three rubles from her, his usual tax? Or nab the young peasant, me, drag him off into a little smoke-filled office and have some fun scaring him for part of the night? What disconcerted this obtuse, dull man was us as a couple. Conscious of the menacing presence of this dubious guardian of the peace, we had gradually drawn closer to each other. Together, we were becoming strangely unassailable. In particular, I was protecting her. Yes, I was protecting this tall woman clad in an autumn coat that scarcely covered her knees. With my hand on my belt buckle, I stuck out my chest and fixed my eyes on the lighted square from the window that she, too, was staring at. The militiaman could not quite dissociate the two of us: what if this young village boy were some nephew or cousin of the Redhead?

The fresh snow held the imprint of our footsteps, which had drawn imperceptibly closer to one another. And behind the window, in a snug compartment, the silhouette of a woman could be made out. The calm gestures of the evening; the great glass of hot tea that you have to blow on for a long time; the absent gaze into the white storm rattling against the window. The gaze settles distractedly on two shadowy figures in the middle of the empty platform. What on earth could they be waiting for there?

Aroused by the whistle, the train moved off and withdrew the illuminated square from under our feet. The station was still in complete darkness. We could exist as a couple for only a few more seconds…

It was by the light of the last coach that I abruptly produced my five rubles. She saw my gesture, smiled a little disdainfully (no doubt she had guessed the point of my comings and goings in the waiting room), and inclined her head slightly. I did not know whether this was a refusal or an invitation. I followed her anyway.

We walked for a long time along narrow alleys, beside fences covered in snow. The blizzard had by now spread its wings with unbridled force, hurling volleys of snow against our faces and taking our breath away. I walked behind the red-haired woman, who was holding the woolen head scarf knotted under her chin with one hand and, with the other, beating down the panels of her coat. Every so often I saw her legs uncovered, and then my mind went blank, stunned as I was by the whistling of the wind and drained by the sharpness of my desire.

"Where are we going?" said a strange, heavy voice inside me. "And what hidden meaning do these powerful legs have, with their broad thighs and their full calves squeezed into black leather boots? And this body with its flimsy coat? What connects it to me?" This body beneath its thin covering of fabric. Its warmth, which I felt had already profoundly entered into me… "Why this warm and vital density, under this cold sky, amid these dead streets?"

We tramped for a long time through the dark, white town. Advancing through a storm, confronting the snow flurries, makes you weary. The crunch of footsteps; the whispering of the wind sliding in under the fur of your shapka and murmuring into your ear the lament of the snowflakes melting on your face… At one moment I smelled the scent of burning cedarwood, of a fire, floating in the wind. I raised my head. I looked at the woman walking in front of me. I saw her quite differently. It suddenly seemed as if she were taking me to a house that had been waiting for me for a long time, that was my real home; and as if this woman was the being closest to me. A being I had miraculously rediscovered in this snowstorm.

It was an izba at the very edge of the town, a building tucked away at the bottom of a little snow-covered yard. The red-haired woman – who had not spoken a word to me since the station – all of a sudden smiled and exclaimed almost cheerfully, as she mounted the wooden steps: "Here we are. Welcome to the mariner!"

Her voice had a strange resonance at this frontier between the white fury of the storm and the dark interior of the izba. A phrase from some ritual she made a point of performing once the frontier was crossed. Here was where I became her man, her client.

We passed through the shadowy entrance hall and climbed several stairs, which groaned under our feet. She pushed open the door, patted the wall, trying to find the switch, and pressed it several times. Then uttered a forced giggle: "Oh, silly me! The whole town's playing blindman's buff, and there's me saying: Come on, dynamo – get turning!"

I heard her opening a drawer and striking a match. The room was Ht up by the diffuse halo of a candle. No doubt it was this flickering flame that fragmented my perception. Gestures, words, and smells began to materialize out of the wavering darkness. One by one, randomly. And they cast their own shadows – of gestures, words, and smells.

Her profile appeared sharply on the wall – black on yellow. So did the glass whose brown contents she poured between her lips, lapping them up avidly. She filled the same glass, held it out to me. I recognized the local brew: alcohol mixed with cranberry jam. It flooded into me, like one of the shadows flitting across the bare wall of the izba. It burned, flayed my palate, filled me with darkness. As before, I could see only fragments. But the candle had remained in the room next door, and these shards were fading, becoming dull. Everything was splitting up. One piece: her torso rearing up before my eyes, strongly, terrifyingly white. (One could never have imagined how broad it would be!) The whiteness tinged with yellow shadow. This bright patch was suddenly drowned in the darkness that erupted, causing an explosion of metallic creaks from the bed. Another fragment: her hand, large and red, pulling the blanket over my bare shoulder. With an absurd solicitude and insistence. And then a china statuette on the shelves by the bed: a slender ballerina with her partner. I saw their smooth faces, their unmoving eyes, very close to me.