Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

Yes, the leap into the abyss of love was also an element in his storming of Siberia. And so that there should be no doubt on this subject, he had come and sat down beside me, disguised as Gerassim Tugai, in the front row of the Red October cinema…

The thaw lasted only a few days. The winter took its revenge on this luminous interlude and brought a stinging polar wind, froze the stars in the black crystal of the sky.

But Belmondo fought back. On every free day or, as often as not, missing our classes at school, we woke up before sunrise and set off for the city. For the fourteenth time, the fifteenth, the sixteenth… We did not tire.

In the forest it was still night. The snow was sometimes gilded by the moon, sometimes intensely blue. Every young pine tree seemed like an animal lying in wait, every shadow was alive and watching us. We spoke little, not daring to break the solemn silence of this sleeping kingdom. From time to time a pine branch shook off a great white cap of snow. We heard the muffled rustling, then the stifled sound of it falling. And for a long time afterward crystals would flutter down beneath this awakened branch, iridescent green, blue, and mauve spangles. And everything became still again in the dreamy silver light of the moon… Sometimes we heard a light rustling, while all the branches remained motionless. We pricked up our ears: "Wolves?" And above the clearing we saw the shadow of an owl passing. The silence was so pure that we seemed to feel the density and the suppleness of the icy air as the great gray wings of the bird cut into it.

It was during those still-shadowy hours of night that I liked to return to my secret…

My companions were traveling through the forest to go and see a comedy, to learn some more dialogue by heart, to laugh. If I was on my way to the Red October, it was to participate in a miraculous transfiguration: soon I was going to have another body, another soul; and the bird in my breast was going to dance around my heart, fluffing out its feathers. But for the moment it did not stir. And with mournful relish I bore my adult grief within me – the house of the red-haired woman.

I believed my sorrow to be unique, just like the transfiguration that awaited me in the promised land of the Western World. And I would have been quite astonished to learn that Samurai and Utkin, as they slipped through the sleeping taiga, also carried beneath their sheepskin coats a grief and a hope. An enigma. A mysterious past. I was not the only member of the elect…

The mystery surrounding Samurai was harsh and simple. He confided it to me one winter's evening a month before the arrival of our hero. We were in our little izba bathhouse, he in his copper tub, I stretched out on the hot, humid wood of the bench. Gusts of wind were peppering the tiny window with the dry snow that the great frosts bring. Samurai remained silent for a long time, then he began talking in a tone of assumed jocularity. As you do when recounting some childhood escapade. But it was palpable that at any moment his nonchalant voice was in danger of lurching into a stifled cry of pain…

He must have been ten years old at the time. On a hot day in July, one of those scorching days in the continental summer, Samurai – who had not yet been nicknamed Samurai – came running out of the water. Quite naked, shivering under the baking sun. The river never became any warmer during those few weeks of midsummer heat.

He came out and ran toward the bushes where he had hung his clothes. Suddenly, stumbling against a stone or a thick root, he fell. He had no time to grasp that it was not a root: he had been cunningly tripped. Two hands gripped his waist. On all fours, he made an attempt to get away, still suspecting nothing. At the same moment he saw leather boots in front of him, felt the weight of a hand seizing his wet hair. He let out a cry. Then the one who had been squeezing his haunches began to punch him in the kidneys. Samurai arched his back, groaned, tried to escape again. But the heavy hand that was gripping his hair now fastened itself around his face like a muzzle. Two fingers with flat yellow nails were thrust into the base of his eye sockets – it was a threat: "One more shout and I'll poke your eyes out." However, he had time to notice that the man in front of him had knelt down. He heard several oaths and some rather nervous sniggering. Samurai did not understand why, if they wanted to kill him, they were so slow in producing a knife or a pike… It seemed as if the one who was behind him was trying to tear his naked body in two by pulling his wet legs apart. Samurai cried out in pain, and in a momentary glimpse, which would remain with him, he saw that one of his attackers was starting to unbutton his pants…

When danger threatens, a child reverts more readily to being the animal that is not yet wholly dormant within it. Only the agility of this animal saved Samurai. His body performed a series of movements of a rapidity beyond human perception. They were not so much actions as an electric vibration that ran through his body from his head to his feet. His arm threw off the hand muzzling him at the very instant when he raised his head slightly to weaken the pressure of the fingers in his eyes. His foot, abruptly lifted, went into the belly of his aggressor. His shoulder touched the grass, dragging his vibrating body toward the river…

But his transformation into a young animal caught in a trap had not been quite complete. At the last moment something in his back seemed to give way. A searing pain ran through it to the base of his skull. Samurai thought he would not be able to move another step. Once he had plunged into the water, however, the pain left him. As if the cold and supple stream had put everything back in place in his tortured young body…

He found himself on the opposite bank. He stared at the river with stupefaction. He had never before swum the Olyei. Too wide, too fast. He could not feel his body, could not distinguish between his own breathing and the respiration of the cedar trees. His soaked head was humming, melting into the luminous sky. And somewhere in the midst of this organism, without beginning or end, dissipated within the immensity of the taiga, could be heard the repeated, resonant calling of a cuckoo…

On the opposite bank Samurai saw nobody. He waited until evening before returning. This time he swam holding on to a floating tree trunk. The Olyei was once more becoming impossible to cross. His clothes had not been touched. There were several cigarette butts scattered on the trampled ground…

From that day forth Samurai became obsessed by strength.

Before that the world had been good. And simple. Like the tranquil luminosity of those white clouds in the sky and their reflection in the living mirror of the Olyei. But now there was this viscous stuff that lay stagnating in the dark pores of life, which were masked by words, by smiles. This was strength. At any moment it could overwhelm you, crush you against the ground, break you in half.

Samurai started to hate the strong. And in order to be able to resist them, he decided to harden his body. He wanted the animal agility that had saved him to become completely natural…

By the autumn he could cross the river and back without resting. Hurling ourselves stark naked into the snow on emerging from the baths under the icy sky was his idea. In the beginning it was simply a military exercise… He also knew that one must harden the edge of the hand. As the Japanese did. Soon he was breaking thick dry branches at the first blow. At the age of thirteen he had the strength of an adult man. He did not yet have the endurance. He often arrived at school with his face covered in bruises, his finger joints raw. But he was smiling. He was no longer afraid of the strong.