Andrei Makine: Once Upon The River Love

"Huh! I've had her, that little Yakut…"

"You know that Maria on the cash till? I've had her." We hoped at least for some details: What was she like, that young Yakut woman? Beneath her fur coat hardened by the fierce hoarfrosts, her body must have seemed particularly warm and smooth. And her hair must have had the scent of cedar smoke; and her strong, slightly curved legs and her muscular thighs doubtless made her groin a veritable trap that closed in on her lover's body… We awaited just one of these revelations so feverishly! But the men had already started talking about cubic meters of wood, or a tube that needed to be extended so that the nuggets could be dislodged more readily… We swallowed the soft fruits in our stew noisily, we cracked the apricot stones with the heavy handles of our knives. And chewing on the kernels, we went out into the icy wind, with a bitter taste on our lips.

Love seemed to us to be something carved from the gray dusk of a dreary district center, where all the streets led out into wastelands covered by wet sawdust.

And then one day we had this encounter in the heart of the taiga. It was the same summer that Utkin's injured foot had unearthed the love root. I was just fourteen, and I still did not know whether I was ugly or handsome, or whether there was any more to love than "I've had her."

On the bank of a river, on a hot August afternoon, we had lit a wood fire. Casting off our clothes, we hurled ourselves into the water. Despite the sun, it was icy cold. A few moments later we were already warming ourselves by the fire. Then once more a dive and quickly the burning caress of the flames. It was the only way to spend all day in the water. Utkin – he never bathed because of his leg – kept the fire going, and we two, Samurai and I, stark naked, would pit ourselves against the rapid current of the Olyei. Then, our teeth chattering, we rushed back toward the fire, jostling each other but never forgetting to bring a little water in the hollow of our palms. We hurled it at Utkin so that he could share in our pleasure. Dragging his leg, he would try clumsily to dodge these cascades that flashed in the air like fleeting rainbows. The drops of water scattered over the fire. Utkin's cries of outrage were mingled with the furious hissing of the flames.

Then came the moment of great silence. Our frozen bodies were gradually impregnated with the heat. The smoke enveloped us, tickled our nostrils. We stood stock-still, in the contented torpor of basking lizards. With the transparent dance of the flames. The plenitude of the sun caressing our wet hair. The piercing cold of the river, its rippling, lulling melody. And around us the infinite quiet of the taiga. Its slow breathing, its blue-tinted immensity, dense and profound…

It was the throbbing of the engine that shattered our blissful trance. We did not even have time to pick up our clothes. A four-wheel-drive loomed up on the riverbank, turned in a rapid curve, and stopped a few paces from our wood fire.

Samurai and I had barely enough time to cross our hands over our crotches; then we froze, caught off guard in our languid nakedness.

The vehicle had its top down. Apart from the driver, there were two passengers, two young women. One of them in the parked vehicle held out a large plastic bottle to the driver. The man opened his door and set off toward the river.

Dumbfounded, keeping our genitals covered, we stared at the two strangers. The women got up from their seats and perched themselves on the folded top. As if to get a better look at us. Seated on the ground at the other side of the fire, Utkin awaited the outcome of the scene with a mischievous smile, meanwhile stuffing blueberries into his mouth.

The two young women were, no doubt, fledgling geologists; their companion too. Probably students who had come for a period of training on the terrain. Their relaxed air, as of city dwellers, fascinated us.

They stared at us with little sign of embarrassment over our nudity. With the curiosity one has for wild animals at the zoo. They were blond. Our eyes, unaccustomed to differentiating women's taces with precision, took them for twin sisters…

At length one of them, whose stare was more insistent, said to her colleague with a grin: "That little one, he looks like a real angel."

And she gave a slight nudge with her shoulder, glancing at her companion roguishly.

The other one stared at me, but without smiling. I noticed a subtle fluttering of her long eyelashes.

"Yes, an angel, but with little horns," she replied with slight irritation, and without paying us any further attention, she slid down onto her seat.

The driver returned, the full bottle in his hand. The first blond woman, before settling down in her turn, continued to look at me with a persistent smile. And I felt the touch of her look on my lips, on my eyebrows, on my chest, almost physically… At that moment the twin sisters became two totally different women to me. One of them, reserved and sensitive, who seemed as if she had a tense string within her, was a fragile blonde, reminiscent of the splinters of crystal we found in the rocks. The other was amber, warm, enveloping, sensual. So women, too, could be different!

Samurai jerked me out of my reverie by splashing my back with long cold gushes. He was already in the water.

"Utkin," he shouted. "Push him in the drink! I'm going to drown this bare-assed Don Juan!"

"Who's that?" I asked, taking the name for some swear word that was unknown to me.

But Samurai did not reply. He was already swimming toward the opposite bank… We often heard such strange words on his lips. They were doubtless all part of the Olga mystery.

Utkin, instead of pushing me, came up to me and muttered in a dull, broken voice: "Go on, then, swim! What are you waiting for?"

He looked at me. And for the first time I noticed that sorrowful, questioning glint: that effort to fathom the sense of the mosaic of beauty… Then, turning away, he started throwing fresh branches on the fire.

On the way home, I noticed that even Samurai had been affected by the encounter alongside the wood fire. He was trying to find an excuse to talk about the two strangers.

"They must be on the faculty at Novosibirsk," he declared, not finding a better opening gambit.

Novosibirsk, the capital city of Siberia, was almost as unreal to us as the Crimea. Anything that was located to the west of Lake Baikal was already redolent of the Western World.

Samurai was silent. Then, giving me a coarsely flippant look, he remarked: "I'll bet he has those two every day, that driver!"

"Sure, he has them," I said, eager to echo his opinion, as well as his man-of-the-world tone of voice.

The conversational exchange stopped there. We sensed something deeply false in our words. It should have been said differently. But how? Should I speak of the tense string, the crystal, the amber? Samurai would certainly have taken me for a madman…

Utkin only caught up with us close to the ferry. In the taiga, as always, he dragged his foot a hundred yards behind us. But for once we had not heard any of his usual shouts. It was we, in turn, who tried anxiously to make out his figure among the dark tree trunks, as we yelled: "Hey, Utkin! The wolves haven't eaten you up, have they? Ow-ooo!"

The ferry over the Olyei – a great raft of blackened logs – provided a shuttle in summer three times a day. The left bank was us, Svetlaya, the East. The right bank was Nerlug, with its brick houses and the Red October cinema. In short, a more or less civilized city, antechamber to the Western World…

The passengers on the ferry were for the most part returning from the city. Their shopping bags were crammed "with paper-wrapped packages of provisions that could not be found in the village.