Andrei Makine - A Hero's Daughter

Sometimes a longing overcame her, pathetic in its unreality: like a child who has broken a cup, she wanted to go back, to play the scene over again, so that the cup didn't slip from her hands, so that there should not be this resounding and irremediable silence. But even this pathetic regret vanished.

To her amazement, she saw that she was beginning to get used to a situation, which, a little while previously, would have seemed to her inconceivable. She was getting used to this orange flower bed, to this thin old man emerging from the dull fog of his room to meet her, to the inquisitive and merciless stares in the corridors of the Center. And the fact that nothing had radically changed seemed to her disturbing.

It was very hot in Moscow at the end of May. Sometimes through the open windows of the Center the long, slow siren of a ship could be heard, coming from the Moskva River. It even seemed as if you could smell the warm, muddy smell, the smell of the wet planks of the landing stage in the heat of the sun. And when evening came the streetlights already cast a blue radiance over the thick foliage as they did in summer. In the restaurant, amid the dense aroma of spiced dishes and perfumes, the tinkling of a little spoon or a knife had an agreeably cool resonance.

Svetka consoled Olya as best she could. But she was so happy herself at that time that she went about it clumsily. A little while earlier, her Volodya had sent her a smiling photograph of himself and a letter in which he promised he would be coming home on furlough for a whole month. In the photo two big stars could be seen very clearly on his epaulettes.

"So long as Gorbachev doesn't call it off in Afghanistan," she commented, "Volodya's sure to come back with his three colonel's stars. Of course, it's not much fun for him over there. But are things any better here? Apparently he's been in some garrison miles from anywhere for a long time, somewhere in Chukotka… Oh! I can't wait for August! We'll pop over to the Crimea and rent a little beach house by the sea. At least he'll get a decent tan. Last time he came back, you know, his face was like a Negro's, with just his teeth shining… and the rest of him all white!"

She checked herself, ashamed of her happiness. "Listen, Olya, you mustn't worry. Your father, what can they accuse him of? Only a brawl and maybe they'll throw in that he was drunk. He'll get a year at the end of the world with a suspended sentence… And as for your diplomat, don't worry. With men it's always like that, you know. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Look, when he comes back, Volodya will introduce you to one of his friends from the regiment. And maybe your diplomat will come back to you anyway. Obviously his father and mother have turned him against you. But it'll all calm down and be forgotten. And if he doesn't come back, to hell with him! Listen, you remember Katyukha, who worked with the Americans. She married a guy like that. And he bugged her all the time. 'You've got no aesthetic intuition,' he used to say. 'No grasp of style. You can't tell the difference between Bonnard and Vuillard…' That whole artistic elite used to gather at their place, lounging around in armchairs, knocking back Veuve Clicquot and 'telling the difference.' And you know, she's a plain, straightforward girl. One day she'd had enough of all these stuck-up art historian bitches and guys with shrill voices. They were talking about Picasso at the time. And suddenly she came out with this riddle, which is a real scream: 'What's the difference between Picasso and the Queen of England?' It's a hoary old chestnut, of course. You must have heard it a hundred times. 'Picasso only had one blue period in his life and the Queen has them once a month… On account of her blue blood!' You can just imagine the faces they pulled, all those intellectuals! Her husband exploded: 'That's not only an obscenity – I'm used to that. It's sacrilege!' The idiots. They'd have done better to laugh instead of acting like constipated cows. Katyukha wouldn't put up with it. 'They're just daubs, your Picasso!' she shouted. 'He was a salesman, that's all. He got the message that there was a market for this kind of vomit – it's what you all like – so he vomited…' What a hullaballoo! The women all charge out into the corridor and get their mink coats mixed up. The men squeal: 'It's the Attila Complex!' Her dear husband goes into hysterics… He's already opened divorce proceedings, the bastard. He was always lecturing her: 'Life is an aesthetic act.' And all the time he was injecting himself against impotence. What an aesthete!"

They chattered on till dusk, as in the good old days. And, as in the old days, Ninka the Hungarian came to see them from time to time. She, too, set about consoling Olya, relating melancholy tales of her own life hitting the, rocks many times, of disappointed hopes and other people's black ingratitude… But she, too, found it hard to conceal her own happiness. In June she was to make her last visit to the Black Sea coast. In October she would marry and would found what she herself laughingly called "a model Soviet family."

Yes, everything remained as before. Nothing changed. Just one thing, perhaps. When Olya came home from work now she was vexed to notice that it was as if her face were covered by a sticky mask. She hastened to the bathroom to rid herself of it, scrubbing her cheeks. She tried to reassure herself: "I'm running around like a madwoman at the moment. And in all this heat…" She remembered how after work Svetka always used to hurry to the bathroom, calling out to her, without stopping: "Hang on, Olyechka. We'll have a word in a minute. Just let me put on a new face." Olya realized it was not just the tiredness and the heat she was talking about.

Prior to the summer vacation there was a great deal of work at the Center. On occasion Olya did not return home for three days in a row. During the day she attended trade meetings and in the evening put on her usual performance at the restaurant. During these three days she had not had a single minute to go see her father in hospital.

One morning, when she was able to get there, he was waiting with cheerful and nervous impatience. They took their places on their usual bench, in front of the flower bed. Ivan lit a cigarette. Then, rapidly stubbing it out, he spoke in a low voice. When Olya heard these muted tones a shiver ran down her spine. She thought her father was going to ask her questions about her work, about her life or – worse still – try to justify himself. Ivan had something else to say.

"You know, Olyuch, it's a very good thing you've come today. Tomorrow they're giving me my discharge and transferring me into preventive detention.

I want to hand something over to you. Keep it and hide it somewhere. I'm afraid they'll take it away from me when they search me."

Ivan unclenched his fingers – in the hollow of his hand shone the Gold Star.

Olya returned home in a rickety, half-empty bus. It was traveling along the beltway. On one side could be seen the new concrete apartment buildings, stuck there amid churned-up clay On the other side open fields, misted over with transparent greenery. Olya sat with her face turned toward the window, so that her tears should not be seen. She had begun crying when she opened her bag and caught sight of the Gold Star, right at the bottom, where normally either her keys or her lipstick would be hiding. "This is still his life," she thought with tender bitterness. "He thinks there are still people around who remember that war long ago, all that comradeship at the front… They're all just like children. A whole generation of grown-up children who've been betrayed. I only hope he doesn't know anything about me! I just hope he doesn't!"

She was still crying as she climbed the stairs to the seventh floor. She did not want to take the elevator for fear of meeting someone she knew. But when she got to the sixth floor she could already hear Svetka's laughter and merry shouts. "Aha," thought Olya. "Ninka's there and they're having a good time." And at once she felt a little comforted. She pictured them already bustling around her, cheering her up, putting the kettle on to boil. No doubt Ninka had come to say good-bye before setting off for the south. With her fund of stories she would be unstoppable. Olya turned the key and went in.