Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

And then one day – he was already thirteen, two years into his new life – his grandfather gave him a story to read. His grandfather, that taciturn and solitary polar bear, had been a journalist. His text, two and a half typewritten pages, bore the indelible stamp of the journalistic style, almost as tenacious as the letter k in his typescript, which always jumped up higher than the others. But Utkin did not even notice these details in the text, he was so overwhelmed by the story. And yet in this story there was nothing unusual.

Like a reporter in the country of his youth, his grandfather conjured up a column of soldiers lost in the mire somewhere on the roads of the war in the icy November rain. Their army beaten, scattered, retreating before the advance of the German divisions, seeking refuge closer to the heart of Russia… The bare forests, the dead villages, the mud…

"Each soldier carried within him the memory of some beloved face, but I had no one. No girlfriend: I believed I was ugly and was very shy. No fiancée: I was also very young. No parents: destiny had wanted it that way. No one I could think about. I was as alone as you can be under the low, gray sky. From time to time a farm cart overtook our column. A thin horse, a pile of trunks, several frightened faces. For them we were the soldiers of defeat. One day we met a farm wagon in open country. A rainy dusk, wind, the road churned up. I was walking behind the others. There was no longer any order in our ranks. A woman with a baby in her arms lifted her face as if to bid us good-bye. Her eyes met mine for a moment… Night fell and we were still marching. I did not yet know that I would remember for the rest of my life the look she gave me. In the war. Then in the camp for seven long years. And even today… Marching along in the dusk, I said to myself: 'At night to each of them comes a memory within him. And now I have the look she gave me.'… An illusion? A fantasy? Maybe… But thanks to that illusion I have come through hell. Yes, if I am alive, it is thanks to that look. That haven where the bullets could not touch me, where the boots of the guards bruising my ribs could not reach my heart…"

Utkin read and reread this tale, recounted it to himself several times. And one day, returning to his own simple story, he thought: But if what happened to me hadn't happened, I should never have understood what it meant, that look a soldier carried in his eyes all through the long night of the war…

Utkin was sure of his luminous autumn day. But a man was already awakening within this adolescent's body, within this frail, crippled shell. The world was exuding its sweet-tasting springtime poison, the mortal amber of love, the lava of female bodies. Utkin would have liked to take wing and join us, those of us who were already soaring in these intoxicating emanations. But his upthrust was shattered, his takeoff hurled him down toward the ground.

He was the same age as me, fourteen, during that memorable winter. At the time of his calamity and for some time afterward the female part of the school had paid a particular attention to him. The maternal instinct toward an injured child. But very soon his condition was accepted as normal, therefore of no interest. These little girls, from being future mothers who could love him as a sick doll, were turning into future fiancées. Utkin no longer interested them.

It was then that I began to intercept the look that he focused on my face: a mixture of jealousy, hatred, and despair. A silent but harrowing interrogation. And when, on the occasion of our swim, the two young women strangers observed us naked, Samurai and me, particularly me, through the dance of the flames, I understood that the intensity of this interrogation could one day be the death of Utkin.

But then came Belmondo… and as we went to see his film for the sixteenth time and Utkin emerged from the purplish shadow of the taiga, he took several steps toward me, regarding me with a dreamy smile, as if he had just awakened in the midst of this snowy plain lit by the mauve haze of the morning sun. And in his eyes I could find no unhealthy hostility. His faint smile seemed to be his response to the earlier interrogation. He waved his arm, gesturing at Samurai, who was pressing on a hundred yards ahead of us. He laughed softly: "What's got into him? Does he want to see more female spies than the rest of us?"

We speeded up a bit, to catch up with Samurai…

Yes, one day came Belmondo… And Utkin saw that his suffering and the interrogation that went unanswered had long since found classic expression in the Western World: the dreariness of so-called real life versus the pyrotechnics of fantasy; ordinary life and dreams. And Utkin fell in love with the poor slave to the typewriter. This was the Belmondo he felt close to. The one who climbed the stairs painfully, pumping his broken-winded lungs, ravaged by tobacco. In short, that very vulnerable being. Now hurt by his own son's boorishness; now by the unintended betrayal of his lovely young neighbor…

Yet it was enough for there to be a sheet of white paper in his machine, and reality was transfigured. The tropical night, thanks to the magic philter of its scents, made him strong; as swift as the bullets from his revolver; irresistible. And he never tired of moving back and forth between his two worlds, so as to unite them, in the end, with his titanic energy. The pages of typescript fluttered over the courtyard, and the lovely neighbor embraced this rather unheroic hero. In this happy ending Utkin saw a hope beyond words.

Now when he was climbing the high staircase at school, painfully dragging his foot, he pictured himself as that writer dogged by the misfortunes of daily life, that Belmondo of the rainy days. In the film, however, at the top of the staircase there was the pretty neighbor brimming with friendly concern. Whereas at school, in the passing throng of mocking faces, nobody was waiting for Utkin on the landing. "Life is stupid," a bitter voice said inside him, "stupid and cruel." "But there's always Belmondo," murmured another…

Halfway on our journey, in the midst of the highway, bathed in sunshine, we stopped to have a bite to eat. The wind blowing along the valley was bitter. We looked for shelter and settled ourselves under the lee of a snow dune shaped by the storm. The icy blast passed right over its sharp-edged cornice. The day seemed still, without the slightest movement of the air. Sunshine, the dazzling glitter of the snow, perfect calm. You would have said it was already spring. From time to time Utkin or I would lay a palm on the leather of Samurai's sheepskin coat. His short coat, dyed black, was hot. Our friend smiled: "Hey, I've got a real solar battery there, haven't I?"

We were through March; it was still fully winter. But we had never felt so intensely aware of the covert presence of spring. It was there. You simply had to know the places where it was hiding while waiting for its time to come.

The cold wind, a little food, and the hot light intoxicated us, plunged us into a blissful drowsiness… But suddenly a gust of wind broke over the cornice of the dune with a sharp hiss and scattered fine snow crystals across our provisions – hunks of buttered bread, hard-boiled eggs. It was time to finish the meal and move on. We put our snowshoes on again and climbed up the white slope, leaving our shelter behind. The icy blast sent long snakes of powder snow to meet us…

At sunset we lapsed into the stillness of the morning. We conversed less and less and were soon completely silent. Out of the bluish mist on the horizon the silhouette of the city was slowly beginning to appear. We were concentrating before the film…

It was in the course of this sixteenth journey that I became aware of an astonishing truth: we were each going to see a different Belmondo! And an hour later, in the darkness of the auditorium, I observed the faces of Utkin and Samurai discreetly. I believed I could understand why Utkin did not join in the audience's uproarious laughter when the gasping writer was struggling up the steep steps of the staircase. And why Samurai's face remained hard and closed when the preposterous publisher was approaching the chained beauty in order to remove one of her breasts…