Andrei Makine - Once Upon The River Love

Yes, I had decided to flee as quickly as possible. I wanted to tear myself away from the liana that penetrated further into my body every night. Flee my love. My mute love. My beautiful Nivkh upturned onto me the starry sky that flashed in her slanting eyes, she drew me in a giddy tumble through the wind of the steppes. Her love mingled our cries with the bellowing of the stags in the moonlit forest skirts; our bodies with the wild flow of the resin on the cedar trunks; the beating of our hearts with the throbbing of the stars. But…

But this love was mute. It did without words. It was impenetrable to thought. And I had already had my European education. I had already tasted the terrible Western temptation of the word. "What is not said does not exist!" this tempting voice whispered to me. And what could I say about my Nivkh's face with its Buddha's smile? How could I focus my mind on that fusion of our desire with the mighty respiration of the taiga and the waves on the Olyei without carving everything up into words? And killing the living harmony?

I aspired to a love story. Told with all the complexity of Western novels. I dreamed of breathless confessions, love letters, seduction strategies, pangs of jealousy, intrigue. I dreamed of "words of love." I dreamed of words…

And one day when we were walking in the taiga, my Nivkh suddenly went down on her knees and carefully parted the tangle of leaves and the tufted layer of moss. I saw a plump brown bulb, from which grew, balanced on a short, pale stem, a flower of an unspeakable delicacy and beauty. Its oblong body, transparent mauve, seemed to be gently quivering in the half shadow of the undergrowth. And as always, Nivkh said nothing. Her hands thrust into the moss seemed to be faintly illumined by the calyx of the flower…

I had made up my mind. And as the intensity of our longings logically gives rise to coincidences that do not occur at normal times, I soon received apparent encouragement…

When I got back from Kazhdai I took a crumpled newspaper out of my shopping bag. It was a rare newspaper, impossible to find even on the newsstands of Nerlug. One of the papers we were always so pleased to pick up off the seat of a bus or in a station waiting room. A Leningrad Evening News, left behind, no doubt, by some traveler whom a bizarre chance had brought to our doomed territories.

I read all four pages straight through, leaving out neither the Leningrad television programs nor the weather reports. It was odd to learn that two weeks previously, in that fabulously distant city, it had rained and the wind had blown from the northeast. It was on the fourth page, between the help wanted and the advertisements for the sale of pets (poodle puppy, Siamese cats…), that my eye lit upon these few lines surrounded by a decorative border:

THE LENINGRAD COLLEGE

OF CINEMA TECHNICIANS IS

OPENING ITS RECRUITMENT OF

STUDENTS FORTHE FOLLOWING

SPECIALTIES: ELECTRICIAN,

EDITOR, SOUND ENGINEER,

CAMERAMAN…

My aunt came back into the room. With a rapid gesture, I hid the newspaper, as if she could have guessed the grand project that was setting me alight. It was no longer a simple desire to escape but a precise objective. Leningrad, a misty city at the other end of the world, was becoming a great step in the direction of Belmondo. A springboard that would project me – I was sure of it – into a meeting with him.

Toward the end of the month of August, on a very bright evening, which already smelled of autumnal freshness, my aunt called me into the kitchen in a voice that struck me as strange. She was sitting, very upright, at the table, wearing a dress she put on only for holidays, when her friends were coming. Her big hands, with their firm, bony fingers, were absently rubbing the corner of the tablecloth. She was silent.

Finally, taking the plunge, she spoke without looking at me: "It's like this, Mitya. I must tell you… Verbin and I, we have thought about this for a long time and… and we're going to get married next week. We're old, it will make people laugh, maybe. But that's the way it is…"

Her voice broke off. She coughed, put her hand to her mouth, and added: "Wait a moment. He should be coming. He wanted to meet you…"

But we know each other very well! I was on the point of exclaiming. But I held my peace, realizing that it was more a question of a ritual than of a simple introduction…

The ferryman appeared almost at once. He must have been waiting in the courtyard. He had put on a light-colored shirt, with a collar that was very wide for his wrinkled neck. He came in with an awkward gait and gave me an embarrassed smile as he held out his only hand to me. I shook it with a lot of warmth. I really wanted to say something encouraging, something friendly, to them, but the words would not come. Verbin, still with his awkward gait, went up to my aunt and placed himself beside her, as if standing to attention rather indecisively.

"There you are," he said, moving his arm slightly, as if to say: What's done is done.

And when I saw them like that, one next to the other, those two lives so different but so close in their long and calm suffering, when I recognized on their simple and anxious faces the outward show of that timid tenderness that had brought them together, I ran out of the room. I felt a salt lump constricting my throat. I went down the steps outside our izba, removed the plank at the bottom, which was overgrown with wild plants, and took out a tin box. I went back into the room, and before the amazed eyes of my aunt and Verbin, I emptied out the contents of the box. The gold shone. Some sand, some tiny nuggets, and even some small yellow pebbles. All that I had accumulated over the years. Without a word, I turned and fled outside.

I walked along beside the Olyei; then, when I came to the ferry, I sat down on the thick planks of the raft…

What had just happened only convinced me more: I had to leave. These people, who were, I now understood, so dear to me, had their own destiny. The destiny of that enormous empire that had crushed them, mutilated them, bruised them. Only at the end of their lives were they managing to make a new start. They had come to realize that the war was well and truly over. That their memories no longer interested anyone. That the snow crystals that landed on the sleeves of their sheepskin coats still had the same sparkling delicacy. That the spring wind still brought the perfumed exhalation of the steppes… And at that very moment they had seen a remarkable, radiant smile appearing at the end of Lenin Avenue. A smile that seemed to warm the frozen air within a radius of a hundred yards. And they felt this breath of warmth. In the spring they rediscovered the veiled beauty of the first leaves. They learned to hear again the rustling of those transparent canopies, to notice the flowers, to breathe. Their destiny, like an enormous wound, was healing at last…

But I had no place in this life of convalescence. I had to leave.

The day I left, in September, was a real autumn day. The ferry carrying me across to the other shore was empty. Unhurried, Verbin pulled on the cable with his paddle. I helped him. The surface of the water shivered with gray wavelets. The timbers of the ferry glistened, soaked by the drizzle…

"One week more and I'll put it to bed," said Verbin, smiling, when the ferry came to a standstill beside the small wooden landing stage.

I picked up my little suitcase and stepped out onto the sand. Verbin followed me, lit a cigarette, and offered me one as well.

We talked about this and that. Already like two close relatives. He did not notice my emotion. Everyone thought I was going to Nerlug to sign on as an apprentice mechanic with a truck company.