Andrei Makine: Once Upon The River Love

The one-armed ferryman, Verbin, grasped a great paddle with a special groove in it and began to pull on the steel cable, jamming it adroitly. Passing through iron rings on the handrail of the ferry, the cable guided us toward the opposite bank. Samurai took the auxiliary paddle to assist the ferryman.

I sat on the planks that covered the raft. I listened to the soft lapping of the water and absentmindedly watched the village drawing nearer, with its low izbas surrounded by gardens, the maze of paths and fences, the blue smoke rising from a chimney.

The sun was setting above the right bank, on the city side, that of the distant Lake Baikal, that of the Western World. And our village was completely bathed in its coppery light.

When we reached the middle of the river, Utkin nudged me with his elbow, indicating something in the distance with a swift movement of his chin.

I followed his gaze. On the bank where we were to land I saw the figure of a woman. I recognized her easily. She was standing at the water's edge, shading her eyes with her hand and watching the ferry as it slipped slowly across the orange flood of the setting sun.

It was Vera. She lived in a little izba at the edge of the village. Everyone said she was mad. We knew she would stand like that until all the passengers had alighted on the bank and started climbing toward the village. Then she would approach the ferryman and ask him a question in a low voice. Nobody knew either what she said to him or what Verbin replied to her.

For years and years she had been making her way down to the riverbank, waiting for someone who could come only in summer, in the evening, with the dreamlike slowness of this old ferry blackened by time. She watched, certain that one day she would make out his face in the midst of the crowd in its Sunday best.

When the ferry was close to shore, Samurai abandoned his paddle and came to join us. Like us, he was watching the woman waiting for the ferry to arrive.

"Hey! She must really have loved him!" he said, shaking his head with conviction.

We were the first to jump out onto the sand. And as we passed close to Vera, what we saw in her somber eyes was the death of hope for that day…

The sun, now stranded on top of the taiga on the western bank, might have been the gilded disk of that immobilized pendulum. Time had stood still. The vast swings of days gone by had narrowed down to the back and forth of an old ferry guided by a rusty cable…

When I reached the izba, I took a mirror with an oval frame out of my aunt's chest of drawers and studied myself in it, taking advantage of the pale luminosity of the summer twilight. This study, I knew, was unworthy of a real man. I did not dare to imagine all the taunts of Samurai and Utkin if they had chanced to catch me at this occupation for ladies. But the words of the two blond women were still ringing in my ears: "An angel"… "but with little horns." The dull oval, which was slowly growing dim, was crammed with many secrets. So the features it reflected could be loved… and make a woman mad… and bring her back to the riverbank over long years, with an impossible hope…

A strange confirmation of my first intimations of love came to me on the anniversary of the Revolution.

My aunt had invited three of her best friends, two of whom, like her, worked on the railroad as switch operators; the third worked as a sales clerk in a food store in Kazhdai. They were all single women.

On the table, on a great china dish, there was a block of pork in aspic, looking like a cube of grayish, shiny ice; cold sauerkraut, reasoned with oil and garnished with cranberries; gherkins, of course; stroganina, the fish gelatinized and cut into transparent slices that you eat raw; potatoes with fresh cream; beef rissoles grilled in the stove. And vodka, which they mixed with blueberry syrup.

The sales clerk had brought pancakes, little biscuits, and chocolates, otherwise impossible to find, that she had saved up.

The women drank; as their voices grew soft, it was as if one could hear the chink of the ice breaking, melting. Long live the Revolution! Despite the rivers of blood, it had given birth to this fleeting moment of happiness… Don't think about all the rest! It's too hard; don't think about it anymore! Not this evening, at least… It won't bring back their dear faces; or that handful of happy days; or those kisses redolent of the first snows – or was it the last? It's hard to remember now. Or the eyes in which you could see the clouds hurrying toward Lake Baikal, toward the Urals, toward siege-struck Moscow. They set off in pursuit of those clouds, caught up with them at the walls of Moscow, in the frozen fields gutted by the tanks. And they stopped them with their wide-open eyes, staring at them forever as they floated lightly westward. Lying in a frozen rut, their faces buried in the black sky…

But let's not speak of it. The first snows, the last snows…

Hold on, Tanya, let me give you this piece; it's not so burned… I had a couple of letters from him, and then… Don't think about it… Two letters in two years… Let's not think about it…

Perched on the broad, warm surface of the great stone stove, on top of which were piled old felt boots, a woolen blanket, and two limp pillows, I was drowsing. I knew them by heart, these conversations that were forever slipping off into their wartime past. They tried to get away from it and began to talk about the latest village news. Apparently, they said, the headmistress had been seen again with… now, what is his name?

It was the singing that came and rescued them from the clouds frozen in the eyes of their fleeting lovers and the gossip several years old. Their voices grew bright, soared. And I was always surprised to see the extent to which these women, these shadowy figures from another era, could suddenly become grave and remote… They sang, and in the haze of my sleep I could picture the horseman battling through a snowstorm and his fair one waiting for him at the dark window. And that other lovesick damsel, begging the wild geese to carry her words to her true love, who has gone "beyond the steppes, beyond the blue sea." And I began to dream of all that might he hidden beyond this blue sea that had suddenly surged up in our snowbound izba…

My aunt always checked to see if I had gone to sleep before they began to talk about the headmistress's imaginary cavortings. "Mitya!" she would call, turning her head toward the stove. "Are you asleep?" I did not reply. And for good reason. I was absolutely determined not to miss the recital of the latest adventures of the only woman deemed to be capable of having any. I remained silent. I was listening.

This time I heard my aunt's question once again. And then her sigh.

"And there's another worry," she said in a low voice. "As if I didn't have enough on my plate. The girls are soon going to start clinging to him like burrs to a dog's tail. I can see it coming already…"

"That's right," agreed the sales clerk. "With his good looks, Petrovna, you'll have more fiancees than you know what to do with…"

"Oh yes, they'll soon spoil him for you, your Dmitri," put in another friend.

I raised myself on one elbow, listening avidly. Spoil me! I was desperate for a set of instructions for this appalling activity, which I sensed must be intensely voluptuous. But they had already begun to talk about a good recipe for salted mushrooms…

And I was left feeling that even the limp pillow beneath my cheek concealed, within the warmth of its stuffing, a strange disguised concupiscence. The promise of some fabulous night when the hours, the darkness… and even the air would have the consistency of flesh and the taste of desire. I saw myself on the banks of the Olyei. Standing stark naked in front of a wood fire. My body pierced through with the icy cold of the water. And one of the blond strangers – crystal or amber: I no longer knew which – was standing on the other side of the flames, naked as well. And she smiled at me, bathed in sunlight, in the rich scent of cedar resin, in the bottomless silence of the taiga. I entered ever more deeply into that moment. I stretched out my hand across the fire to touch that of the stranger… The bank suddenly became white, the silence of the taiga wintry. And the slow eddying of the snowflakes enveloped our bodies in muted sunlight.