Andrei Makine - A Hero's Daughter

After that he got used to this innocent untruth, which suited the journalists very well, for at that time Stalin was coming back into fashion and " Stalingrad " had a good ring to it. Sometimes Ivan was surprised to realize that even he was increasingly forgetful about the war. He could no longer distinguish between his old memories and the well-worn tales told to the schoolchildren and the interviews given to journalists. And when one day he was speaking of a detail that fascinated the boys: "Oh yes, our seventy-six-millimeter gun was powerful but it couldn't pierce the Tiger tank's frontal armor…" he would think: "But was it really like that? Maybe it's something I read in Marshal Zhukov's memoirs…"

The Demidovs' daughter, Olya, was growing up and going to school. She already knew the ancient story of the little mirror. To her it seemed legendary and alarming – her father lying in a frozen field, his head all bloody; her mother, whom she could not manage even to picture, choosing him from among hundreds of soldiers lying all around. She knew that once upon a time there had been a battle, for which he had received his Star – thanks to which he could buy train tickets without having to stand in line.

They had also told her about her mother's injury, which meant she was not supposed to carry heavy loads. But this did not stop her mother from lugging heavy wooden panels around, and Olya's father used to scold her for her lack of concern.

When Olya took her entrance exams for the Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages she experienced the reality of this legendary wartime past in a quite specific way. The friend with whom she had come to Moscow said to her with ill-concealed jealousy: "You're bound to pass, of course. They'll take you just because of your civil status. It's a foregone conclusion. You're the daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union…"

During the summer of 1980 Moscow was unrecognizable. People who lived in the rest of the country were not allowed into the capital. Most of the children were sent off to Pioneer camps. Long before the summer a serious «purge had been carried out, in which all "antisocial elements" had been expelled. There was no sign now of lines in the shops, nor of jostling on the buses, nor of the glum throng of people from the provinces coming in with their big bags to do their shopping.

The cupolas of ancient churches had been hastily whitewashed, and members of the militia had been taught to smile and say a few words in English.

And the Moscow Olympic Games began. Everywhere buses could be seen coming and going, carrying the athletes to the events, while foreign tourists idly called out to one another in the deserted streets, busying themselves with guides and interpreters.

From this summer, from these games, from this influx of foreigners, everyone expected something extraordinary, a breath of fresh air, some kind of upheaval, almost a revolution. For the space of a few weeks Brezhnev's Moscow, like a vast, spongy slab of floating ice at the time of the spring floods, nestled up to this colorful Western life, grinding its gray sides against it, and then drifted off bombastically on its way. The revolution did not take place.

Olya Demidova was totally caught up in this Olympic bustle, allowing herself to fall into a frenzy of happy exhilaration. She had completed her third year at the Institute and had reached that stage in English and French where you are suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to converse. She already spoke with the hesitant freedom of a child who is just learning to run and enjoying the ability to keep her balance.

The interpreters hardly slept now. But their youth and their feverish excitement kept them on their feet. It was such fun in the morning to leap onto the platform of a bus, to see the athletes' young faces, to respond to their jokes and then go flying through Moscow 's resonant streets. In the evening the atmosphere was quite different. Inside the bus, heated up during the day by the burning sun, there hovered the acrid smell of "Western deodorants and muscular male bodies exhausted by their efforts. The streets slipped past and the cool evening twilight swept in at the windows of the bus. The men, slumped in their seats, exchanged idle remarks.

Sitting next to the driver on a seat that swiveled round, Olya glanced at them from time to time. They made her think of gladiators, resting after the fight.

One of them, Jean-Claude, a typically Mediterranean young man (she was working with a French team), sat there with his head thrown back and his eyes half closed. She guessed he was watching her through lowered eyelids. He smiled as he watched her, and when the coach stopped at the Olympic Village he was the last to get off. Olya stood beside the bus door, taking leave of the athletes and wishing each of them a good night. Jean-Claude shook her hand and remarked carelessly, but loud enough for this to be heard by the keeper who escorted them: "I've got something that needs translating. Could you help me? It's urgent."

Olya found herself in his room, surrounded by all those beautiful coveted objects that for her symbolized the Western world. She understood at once that the translation was only a pretext and that something was going to happen which, only a short time before, had still seemed unthinkable. To quell her fear she repeated like an incantation: "I couldn't care less. It's all the same to me. If it happens, it happens…"

When Jean-Claude came out of the shower she was already in bed. Stark naked and swathed in a pungent cloud of eau de cologne, he crossed the room in darkness, and tossed a sports shirt or a terry towel onto the edge of the balustrade. Then he stopped before a tall, dark mirror and, as if lost in thought, ran his fingers several times through his damp hair, on which the blue light of a street lamp glinted. His skin also shone, with a dark, luminous glow. He closed the door to the balcony, and made his way toward the bed. It felt to Ol as if the ceiling were gently caving in on her, in a chamber made of synthetic foam.

After the third night, she had just emerged from the building in the early hours of the morning when the man who oversaw the interpreters loomed up in front of her. Without greeting her, he barked: "I see you know how to mix business with pleasure! Do I have to drag you out of bed to send you to work? What's going on? Is this the Olympic Games or a brothel? Report to the Organizing Committee. They'll soon deal with you!"

During those three days Olya had been so wildly happy she had not even given a moment's thought to seeking any justification or to preparing a plausible story. On their last night together Jean-Claude was intoxicated with happiness. He had come in second and won a silver medal. He drank, talked a lot, and looked at her with rather crazed eyes. It all involved a firm he had a contract with and a sports complex he would now be able to open. He talked about money without any embarrassment. He became so excited as he talked about all this that Olya said to him, laughing: "Just listen to you, Jean-Claude, you sound as if you were on drugs!" Pretending to take fright, he put his hand over her mouth, pointing to the radio: "They're listening to all this." Then he put his arms around her and pressed her back on the pillows. Recovering his breath, immersed in silent exhaustion, he murmured in her ear: "Yes, I am on drugs… you're my drug!"

At the Organizing Committee, it all began with shouting. A shriveled old official of the Komsomol, with a clammy bald head, dressed in a suit with bulging pockets, methodically tore into their three days of happiness. "It's not just us you're dragging through the mire," he yelled. "You bring shame on the whole country. What are they going to think of the USSR in the West now? Well, what do you suppose? That all the Communist Youth are prostitutes, like you? Is that it? Don't interrupt. And the daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union, what's more! Your father gave his blood… And what if this incident reached the ears of the Central Committee? Have you thought of that? The daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union! Coming from such stock, to soil yourself like that! Well, we have no intention of covering up for you. Make no mistake about that. They'll kick you out of the Institute and the Komsomol. As they say among your young friends: 'Pleasure has to be paid for.' There's no point in crying now. You should have thought of it before."