Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

In one instance this unrewarding role was particularly harsh. The stuntman had to fall several times from the top of a staircase to dodge a hail of bullets from an automatic rifle. The director, who possessed all the sadistic ways of the publisher in the previous film, made him repeat the exercise relentlessly. Climbing back up again became more and more painful, the fall more agonizing. And each time, a female voice yelled in tragicomic despair: "My God! They've killed him!"

But the hero got up after his terrible fall and announced: "No. I haven't yet smoked my last cigar!"

This Une, repeated four or five times, struck a surprising chord in the hearts of the spectators at the Red October cinema. Utkin and I thought at once of Samurai's cigars and those of his former idol in Havana. But the resonance of that exclamation went deeper. The line condensed within it what many of the spectators had been trying to express for a long time. "No, no," a good many of them wanted to say. "I haven't yet…" And they could not find the right words to explain that even after ten years in the camps, you could try to make a new start. That even though widowed since the war, you could still have hope. That even in the very depths of Siberia, spring still existed and that this year, make no mistake, there would be a spring bursting with joy and happy encounters.

"No. I haven't yet smoked my last cigar!"

The expression had been found.

And heaven knows how many inhabitants of Nerlug, at the blackest moments of their lives, have since then mentally formulated that response, as they gave themselves a wink of encouragement.

It was after that performance that, for the first time, we spent the night, not with Utkin's grandfather, but in a railroad car…

Samurai took us to the station at Nerlug, and there, striding across the rails, he headed for the farthest of the tracks, half covered with snow… We approached a train standing beside a patch of wasteland. Several trains were asleep in the sidings. Samurai seemed to know what he was looking for. Walking between two freight trains, he suddenly dived under a coach, signaling to us to follow…

We found ourselves in front of a passenger train with dark windows. The city, the sounds and the lights of the station, had vanished. Samurai took a fine steel rod from his pocket and inserted it into the lock. A faint click could be heard, the door opened…

An hour later we were comfortably installed in a compartment. There was no light, but the distant glow of a streetlamp and reflected light from the snow was enough for us. Samurai, who had lit the stove at the end of the corridor, brewed real tea for us – the only real tea there is, the kind they serve on trains on winter evenings. We spread out on the table all the provisions we had not eaten at noon. The scent of the fire and the tea floated into our compartment. The scent of long journeys across the empire… Later, stretched out on our berths, we talked about Belmondo for a long time. This time there were no shouts or big gestures. He was too close to us that evening for us to need to imitate him…

That night I dreamed about our hero's new companion. The ravishing stuntwoman. My sleep was transparent, like the snow that had started to fall outside the dark window. I woke frequently and fell asleep again a few moments later. She did not abandon me but settled for a few seconds in the compartment next door. My eyes filled with darkness, I sensed her silent presence behind the thin partition that separated us. I knew I must get up, go out into the corridor and wait for her there. I was sure of meeting her – it was she, the mysterious passenger on the Transsiberian. But each time this dream was ready to take shape, I heard the noise of a train going by on a track next to ours. I had the illusion that it was we who were flying through the night. I fell asleep. And she returned, she was there once more. Our coach hurtled westward. Braving the cold and the snow. Toward the Western World.

So it was not the end of the world. And Nerlug saw two or three more Belmondo films. As if, after a great time lag, these comedies had gone astray, been washed up by the flow of days onto some deserted shore, and waited for long years to come sailing along at last, one after the other.

Belmondo aged slightly, then grew younger again, changed partners, countries, continents, revolvers, degrees of suntan… But that seemed quite natural to us. We believed him to possess a very special kind of immortality, the most inspiring: one that allows you to journey through time – to backtrack or go forward to the brink of decline – only to enjoy the taste of youth more fully.

It was hardly surprising that this time-travel involved so many superb female bodies, so many torrid nights, so much sun and wind.

Belmondo settled in, established his headquarters at the Red October, just halfway between the squat building of the local militia and KGB and the Communard factory, where they manufactured the barbed wire that went to all the camps in that region of Siberia…

He occupied the large billboard, and what people noticed now as they walked along Lenin Avenue was neither the gray uniforms of the militiamen nor the giant skeins of barbed wire being taken away by trucks; it was his smile.

Without admitting it to themselves, the inhabitants of Nerlug were convinced that the authorities had committed an enormous blunder in allowing that man, with that smile, to move in on the avenue. Without being able to explain their intuition, they sensed that this smile was going to play a hell of a trick on the city authorities one day… For already, to their surprise, the filmgoers no longer shuddered at the sight of those gray uniforms, or felt any unease before the horrible trucks with their vile hedgehogs of steel. They saw that smile at the end of Lenin Avenue, next door to the cinema, and they smiled themselves, feeling a boost to their confidence amid the frozen fog.

And on the steps of the liquor store, for the first time in our lives, we witnessed not a brawl but an outburst of laughter… Yes, all those coarse men with ruddy faces were laughing uproariously: they were doubling up, not from the effects of blows smartly delivered to the solar plexus, but from merriment. They banged their thighs with their iron fists, they wiped away their tears, they swore; they laughed! And in their gestures, in their shouts, we recognized the latest Belmondo. He was there among those Siberians, those gold prospectors, those sable hunters, those loggers…

Once again the inhabitants passing the store said to themselves with secret glee: "You know, they were real idiots, those apparatchiks, sticking him up there on the avenue!"

Imperturbable, Belmondo smiled at us from afar.

In our dazzled infatuation we attributed every change to his presence. Everything was closely or distantly linked to him. Like the thunder and lightning at the beginning of April, in the still-wintry sky above the snow-covered city.

We heard a violent storm in the night, as we lay on the berths in our compartment after one performance. A flash froze our astonished faces. The thunder rumbled. We heard it through our dream-stuffed sleep. The motionless train seemed to be hurtling off on a journey in which a marvelous disarray of seasons, climates, and weather reigned. A tropical storm above the kingdom of the snows.

We were eager to go back to sleep, hoping for particularly sumptuous dreams. But what I saw on that trip turned out to be of an unexpected simplicity…

It was a little station, much more modest than the one at Nerlug, a house lost amid silent pine trees. A waiting room feebly ht by an invisible lamp. The muffled sound of a very few people, they, too, invisible, the stifled yawns of a railroad worker. The smell of a stove where birch logs were burning. And at the center of the room, in front of a timetable that showed only a few lines, a woman. She was attentively examining the arrival times, looking occasionally at the big clock on the wall. In my dream I sensed that for once her wait was not in vain, that someone was definitely coming any minute now. Coming on a strange train whose arrival was not announced on any timetable…