Andrei Makine - A Hero's Daughter

Then, half stretched out on the divan, glancing ab-sentmindedly at the screen from time to time, she went on in a dreamy voice: "You know, I sometimes get fed up with all this myself, too. The feeling that I've had enough. It all wells up inside me. You're in bed with this wretched capitalist and every time he exhales he breathes right in your ear… What a pain! You tell yourself: 'I was a schoolgirl in a white smock, I was waiting for Prince Charming in a star-spangled cloak…' Oh and talking of princes, how's your prince from the World Youth Organizations Committee? You realize what a fiance I've introduced you to! And here you are, always complaining… A gift from the gods, a fiance like that! Parents at COMECON, a four-room apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt! You need to hold on to him tight. Don't let him fly away. You won't find yourself another one like that. A future diplomat!"

The weather forecast came on.

"Oh lordy!" groaned Svetka. "Down to minus twenty-five. Tomorrow I'm going out to buy some mustard plasters."

"Everything's fine," thought Olya. "I did well to talk to Svetka. She's right, I think too much. Too much food spoils my appetite…"

She had gotten to know this prince from the World Youth Organizations Committee, Alexei Babov, during the autumn. Svetka had invited him to their noisy parties. Since then Olya often went to meet him and sometimes he spent the night at her place. Occasionally she visited him at his apartment. In his room there was a violin in its case on top of the wardrobe.

"Do you play?" she asked him one day.

"No, it was a youthful whim," he remarked carelessly

He tried to seem older than he was. His parents had rushed him into a career and this rapid ascent did not match his age. He dressed stylishly, mixing and matching imported clothes with one another as if in a mosaic; he sought out everything, down to his cuff links. He had black hair, blue eyes, and extremely soft skin on his cheeks. In their lovemaking Olya was at first surprised by the methodical nature and complexity of the positions he dreamed up. It was erotic acrobatics. One day, when looking through his library, she found a book on the very top shelf, between a volume of international law and Youth Organizations in France. It was in French: Le savoir-faire amoureux. It went through the most improbable couplings with a succession of diagrams, like wrestling techniques. The door banged, Alexei was returning. Olya quickly put the book back and jumped down off the chair…

Yes, truly, everything was going well. A lively job, a constant stream of faces and names, the upheavals that were a prelude to the new year. It felt good to give pleasure, to see this in the way well-groomed, self-confident men eyed her. Good to be aware of her young, firm body, to picture her own face, her eyes, amid all this human activity in the capital. And to feel herself to be adult, independent, and even a little aggressive.

Olya was unaware that, seen in profile and against the light, the glow of her face appeared almost transparent and juvenile in its delicacy, evocative of her mother's face at the same age. But that was something only her father saw. And even when he saw it his perception was filtered through such bitterness about the past that, in spite of himself, he would shake his head, as if to banish the fragile resemblance.

" 'No further retreat is possible,' he says. 'Behind us lies Moscow.' And also behind us, for God's sake, was that line of machine guns! Ha! Ha! Ha! And now Gorbachev's going to screw the lot of them. You've read what it says about Brezhnev in Izvestia! 'Stagnation,' it says. 'The mafia…' In the old days they talked of 'developed socialism.' Now that's what I'd call an about-face! And on Stalin, too. Did you read it, Vanya? Khrushchev's Memoirs… Nikita writes that when the war came Stalin was so scared he did it in his pants. He barricaded himself in his dacha and wouldn't let anyone in. He thought his number was up. They told us such fibs: 'He organized the struggle… He drew up the strategy for victory…' Some goddamn generalis-simo!

Ivan nodded his head gently, making the connection with some difficulty between the voice and the pale patch of a face hovering amid the pearly clouds of tobacco smoke. Waiters with the build of gorillas and the faces of bouncers threaded their way between the tables. Their fingers fanned out, carrying bunches of beer tankards.

By now Ivan was understanding almost nothing of what his neighbor was saying to him – the one who had served in the signal corps during the war. All he heard was: "Stalin… Stalin…" And in a confused fashion this brought back an image from the past: the frozen expanse of Red Square, on November 7, 1941, the anniversary of the revolution, the endless tide of soldiers chilled to the bone and finally himself amid these frozen ranks. The Mausoleum came into view, nearer and nearer. And already a whispering among the soldiers, like the murmuring of waves, runs through the ranks: "Stalin… Stalin…" Suddenly he catches sight of him on the platform by the Mausoleum, amid clouds of frozen breath. Stalin! Calm, motionless, unshakable. At the sight of him something almost animal thrills in each one of them. Each one of them believes Stalin is looking deeply into his eyes.

"Following this parade the soldiers went straight to the front," the confident voice of the commentator on the contemporary film footage would explain after the war. "And each of them carried in his heart the unforgettable words of the Supreme Commander of the armies: 'Our cause is just! Victory will be ours!' '

And they were marching, still marching, regiment upon regiment; with their eyes staring wide, and reflected in them the crenellated walls of the Kremlin, the Mausoleum swathed in hoarfrost, looking as if it were made of white suede, and a man of average height, whose mustache was covered in silvery droplets…

A colossus appeared beside their table, a white napkin over his arm, gave the three drunken veterans a blasé look and sang out: "All right, old-timers, shall I fill 'em up or do you want to pay?"

"Go ahead, young man. We'll have one more for the road," Ivan's neighbor bellowed. "You see, we've just met here. We're almost all from the same regiment. We were on the same front in the war. But I was in the signal corps, Vanya was a gunner and Nikolai…" Amid hiccups he started relating his war experiences with sweeping gestures across the table. The waiter picked up the empty glasses and walked away, yawning, to get their beer.

What Ivan pictured now was not Red Square but a courtyard covered in mud petrified by the cold and the dry snow, surrounded by huts or barracks. They have penned in the soldiers there and kept them out in the icy wind for several hours. They have also brought in uncouth lads from the countryside on big farm carts. Clad in padded jackets, disheveled shapkas, and down-at-the-heel felt boots. No one knows what is going to happen next – if they will be sent straight to the front line or left there and fed, or stuck in the barracks to sleep on bunks. And the blue of the low winter sky slowly hardens. Dusk descends. It snows and still they are standing there, sunk in a drowsy, silent numbness. And suddenly, somewhere near the farm carts, the strident cry of a garmoshka, a little concertina, blares forth. One of the country boys is playing it, bareheaded, with a mane of golden curls, not yet shorn, and a worn, unbuttoned sheepskin jacket… He is playing "Yahlochko," little apple, a sailors' song; he plays with desperate passion, tugging furiously on his garmoshka. His unseeing gaze is lost in the distance, somewhere above the heads. In the midst of the soldiers who surround him a sailor dances with the same reckless passion, stamping his heels fiercely on the frozen earth. He is of middling height, stocky, with a craggy face. Sailor's jersey, black marine jacket. He dances violently, baring his teeth in a wild fixed grin, and ha, too, stares at the gray horizon in blind ecstasy. The accordionist plays faster and faster, biting his lips and shaking his head in frenzy. The sailor stamps harder and harder upon the ground. Spellbound, the soldiers watch his face distorted with blissful agony. They no longer know where they are, they are no longer thinking about food, or sleep, or the front. The officer, who has come over to put an end to this merriment with one ear-splitting yell, stops and watches in silence. The sailor's boots are as heavy as if they were made of cast iron. They are laced up with lengths of telephone wire.