Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

Yes, it was she. But what a difference! The student in the Parisian rain seemed like an abortive double for the antelope of the tropical nights.

And it was by comparing this drab replica with the original that we glimpsed the secret of Western man's fantasies. Or rather those of the Western husband… The gorgeous antelope, the original – endowed with all possible physical charms – was his mistress, real or imagined. And the copy, devoid of all the sensual extras, was his wife…

And how perspicacious our juvenile discovery was! Twenty years later, wandering through the capitals of the West, we would rediscover this erotic ambiguity that Belmondo had suggested to us. The women of male fantasies – on the covers of magazines or in red-light districts – would have breasts capable of tempting any sadistic publisher, and full golden thighs, like those of our fabulous antelope. While the wives would go on show with the bony angles of their shoulders, their nonexistent hips, and their flat chests. People would talk to us about the fashion, the style of the times, the puritan ideal, the equality of the sexes. But we would not be fooled. For we had explored that Western World of ours down to its murky subconscious depths!

Why Belmondo? Why in those long ago days at the time of the mild spell? In the blue dusk of February? At the six-thirty performance, when they generally showed long war films? In the Red October cinema, half buried in the snow?

What occurred was a veritable epidemic of Belmondophilia. A Belmondomania that had nothing in common with a passing infatuation for some Italian comedy or a fleeting craze for a Hollywood western. After the second performance the management of the Red October was compelled to put in an extra row of seats. We even saw one spectator sitting on a stool he had brought from home… And the charm did not fade!

In the long waiting line, which almost matched that of the visitors to Lenin's tomb, we saw more and more unlikely people appearing. Two brothers Nerestov, renowned sable hunters who rarely came to the city – and then only to pour a fluid stream of furs from their bags… It was so strange to see them lining up in front of the ticket window among the citizens in their Sunday best. Their faces tanned by the icy wind; their enormous silver-fox fur shapkas; their curly beards: everything about them evoked their solitary life in the heart of the taiga…

And then the legendary home distiller Sova, a robust and intrepid old woman, whom the militia had never managed to catch in flagrante delicto. She carried out her criminal activities, according to some people, in an abandoned mine, whose exit, half caved in, was hidden amid the gooseberry bushes in her garden. We always pictured her in the vaults of this gold mine, beneath the wooden supports, ht by the uncertain light of an oil lamp. A witch busy at her stills… This dark mine was only a step removed from the underground chamber with the beauty in chains, rescued by our hero. Old Sova took that step, her head held high, and came and sat down in the front row one day, dressed in her full brown sheepskin coat, with a monumental fox-fur hat on her head.

Yes, soon Belmondomania seemed like a powerful ground swell that brought surprising human species to the surface of our life. It was a surge that ran through the most remote villages, seeped into foresters' lodges, and, visibly, even shook the icy calm of the watchtowers. Each performance brought its surprises…

One day I noticed that the seat next to me was empty. We always sat in the front row. No longer because we had arrived late, but in order to be alone face-to-face with Belmondo, to be able to make our way onto the sunlit promenade without having to step over heads and fox-fur hats… The empty seat on my left did not surprise me unduly at first. Someone had decided to come in after the newsreel, I thought, making use of those ten minutes of Kremlinian news to smoke a cigarette in the foyer. However, the newsreel – on this occasion, apart from the inevitable presentation of medals, we saw some marine fishermen who had overfulfilled the fishing plan by thirty percent – yes, the newsreel came to an end, the lights came on for a moment and then went off again, but the seat remained unoccupied. I was already preparing to move, as the empty seat seemed to me more centered…

It was at that moment that the huge silhouette of a stooping man slipped across the screen, which was already ablaze with the brilliance of the south, and I felt one of his heavy boots stumbling against my feet in the darkness. The tardy spectator settled in his seat. Before the arrival of the helicopter above the telephone booth, I glanced at my neighbor…

Recognizing him, I began slowly shrinking down between the armrests. I wanted to make myself very small, invisible, nonexistent.

For it was Gera. Gerassim Tugai was his real name. A name pronounced by all the inhabitants of the region in tones of nervous respect. He was the one who was "stealing gold from the state," in the opinion of my aunt and her friends. The one who was being frantically sought after by the militia and whom we had passed one summer's day in the heart of the taiga. The one who, hidden away in the wild and inaccessible depths, washed the gold-bearing sand of a little clear, fast-flowing river amid the silence of the centenarian cedar trees.

Overcoming my fear, I stared at him discreetly. His broad bearskin coat smelled of the fresh wind of the snowy spaces. His shapka, with earflaps tied at the back of his neck, was reminiscent of a great Nordic warrior's helmet. He sat in a proudly independent posture, his huge silhouette towering above the whole row of spectators.

The more I examined his profile by the changing and multicolored light of the screen, the more a strange resemblance emerged in his features. Yes, he reminded me of someone I knew very well… But who? On his brow, a lock of hair escaped from below the shapka… A flattened nose, the result of some brawl, no doubt. A determined set to his lips, a slightly carnivorous smile. A powerful, massive jaw. And that lively brown eye…

Dumbfounded and not daring to trust my intuition, I looked at the screen. Belmondo was emerging from the glittering azure of a swimming pool and settling into a deck chair beside the glamorous spy. I studied his profile. The lock of hair he tossed back from his wet brow, his nose, his lips. His eyes… I turned toward my neighbor. Then toward the screen. And once again toward the man in the bearskin…

Yes, it was he. There are no explanations for magic. Nor did I try to understand. I remained in a strange zone between-two-worlds, between these two perfectly similar faces, brought together within the alchemist's distilling flask that the dark space of the Red October cinema had become. In the midst of a slow transmutation of the real into something more true and more beautiful…

I came to my senses with a start. My neighbor's great boots had caught on my feet in passing. He was leaving the auditorium one or two minutes before the end. The glass flask was shattered. I almost ran after him, whispering: "Wait, you're going to miss the best scene in the film!" It was the one in which the lovely neighbor was asleep outside the hero's door, revealing her long thigh that was the eighth color of the rainbow…

I did not run. I did not call out. We could hear the side door softly closing. The man in the bearskin had disappeared…

When the lights came on among the slow-moving, dazzled, and smiling crowd we could see two uniformed officers. Their epaulets were colored crimson, the distinctive insignia of the units that guarded the camp. The spectators gave them amused, furtive looks, as much as to say: "Aha! You, too…"

Yes, they, too, had spent time in the magic flask. Alongside the redoubtable Gera…