Andrei Makine - A Hero's Daughter

Ivan talked about the war, about Stalin, about the Victory. He stuttered a little, alarmed by the silence that arose between his words, trying to break through the dense sleepiness of the afternoon. For no good reason he mentioned the Bolshoi, Afghanistan (here the judge began tapping on the desk with her pencil again), and the one-legged Semyonov. People pricked up their ears at first, then relapsed into uncomprehending indifference. Gorbachev had already allowed all this to be discussed in the newspapers. The women looked at their watches and the men, anticipating the suspension of the hearing, fiddled with their cigarettes. The ones in the back row, as before, paid no attention to anyone and were whispering. The judge said something in the ear of the assessor next to her. The prosecutor, picking at his sleeves, was removing little pieces of fluff from them.

At length Ivan fell abruptly silent. He embraced the courtroom with a slightly mad look and, addressing no one in particular, cried out with an old man's hiss: "You have turned my daughter into a prostitute!"

At that moment he caught Olya's eye. He no longer heard the hubbub arising from the public nor the judge's voice announcing that the hearing was suspended. He grasped that what had just occurred was something utterly monstrous, compared with which his drunkenness and the brawl at the Beriozka were but trifles. His daughter's face was hidden from him by someone getting up to go. He turned his gaze toward the windows and was astonished to see that the win-dowsill was gleaming in the sunlight with a strange iridescent glow. Then this light swelled, became dazzling and painful and suddenly the sill turned black. Ivan sat down heavily and his head fell onto the wooden handrail, marked with old dates and unknown names.

It was with some difficulty that the van pulled clear of Moscow in mid-festival, picked up speed, as if in relief, and plunged onto the freeway to Riazan. The driver and his colleague came from Riazan themselves. They did not know Moscow well and were apprehensive of running into the traffic police, who were in evidence at every crossroads on account of the festival. But everything passed off all right.

Olya was seated in the dark interior of the van. With her lightly shod foot she steadied the coffin draped in red cloth as it slithered about at each bend in the road. The van was open at the back and above the tailgate there was a bright rectangle of light. As they drove through Moscow there were glimpses, sometimes of a street Olya knew well, sometimes of a group of tourists in garish clothes. Coaches bearing the emblems of the festival scurried up and down the streets and here and there one could often make out the white jackets and blue pants of the interpreters. All this reminded Olya of the Olympic Games and that summer, now so long ago. Then open fields began to slip past in the rectangle of light, the gray freeway, the first villages.

Miraculously, after two days of fruitless searching, Olya had found this vehicle and succeeded in persuading the driver to take her. He had agreed simply because they were going in the same direction. Olya had given him almost all the money she had left.

Halfway there the driver turned off into a side road and stopped. The van doors slammed and his colleague's head appeared at the back above the tailgate.

"Not too shaken? We'll be there in an hour. Wait a while; we're just going to call in at a store. Everywhere's dry in Moscow, you know, especially now that the festival's on…"

Olya heard the footsteps moving off. In the sunny rectangle could be seen part of an izba, a fence, a garden in which an old woman was stooping down to pull something out of the ground. It was hot. Little rays of sunlight filtered in through the cracks. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked lazily.

Olya was convinced that at Borissov, once they learned of her arrival, everyone would rally around to arrange the funeral and find the musicians. She even imagined a procession of local dignitaries in their grotesque dark suits, the tinny grinding of the band, the condolences to which she would have to respond with meaningless set phrases.

But it all turned out differently. The driver and his colleague, sweating and panting in an exaggerated manner, let the coffin drop on the table and made off, after extracting another ten rubles from her on account of it being on the third floor. Olya was left all alone facing this long red box, fearsome in its silence.

In the morning she went to the motor pool where her father had worked. She was received by the new boss in jeans that were baggy at the knees. Once he had grasped what this was about, he began talking rapidly, without letting her get a word in edgewise. All the vehicles were requisitioned for summer work at the kolkhoz, the only two remaining ones lacked wheels, and half the personnel were away on holiday. And, in self-justification, he showed her the deserted yard, spotted with black patches of oil, and a truck, into whose engine a disheveled lad was plunged up to the waist. "And in any case," added the boss, "we're operating a self-financing regime now."

"But I'll pay," Olya hastened to say, to calm him down. "Just give me a vehicle and some men."

"But I've just told you, I can't," groaned the boss, spreading out his arms in a gesture of helplessness.

At the Military Committee the officer on duty asked her to fill in a form, then went off in search of orders on the far side of a padded door, covered in glittering studs. On his return he opened the safe, took out the Hero's certificate, and handed it to Olya.

"Now we're all square with you. As for the funeral, you'll have to apply to the Veterans' Council. It's not our responsibility."

Olya took out the photo of her father on the certificate and examined it with astonishment. It was a young lad with a round, shaven head, almost an adolescent, looking out at her. "He wasn't yet twenty," she thought in sheer amazement. The courtyard at the Military Committee was empty and silent. There was just one lanky soldier sweeping an asphalt path. The dust arose in a light cloud and settled back in the same place.

At the Veterans' Council there was no one. A sheet of cardboard bearing faded red lettering dangled on the notice board: "Veterans' Day Parade to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Victory will take place on May 9 at 10:00 a.m. Assemble in Lenin Square. The participation of all members of the Council is strictly compulsory."

"It's the summer," said the caretaker dreamily. "In summer it's only by chance that anyone shows up around here."

The Party's District Committee also seemed to be deserted.

"He's gone off at the head of a commission inspecting the region," said the female secretary. "He won't be back tomorrow, either. In any case it's nothing to do with the District Committee. You need to apply to his former place of work."

The next day Olya went around the circuit again. She demanded, implored, tried to telephone Moscow. That evening she dreaded going home. It was already the fourth day of her ordeal with the red coffin. Coming into the room where it had been set down, she was afraid to breathe, afraid of detecting a smell and losing her sanity At night the coffin appeared to her in a dream, not long and red, as it was, but small, luxurious, varnished, and painted like a lacquered box from Palekh. She kept trying to put it into a bag storage locker. But sometimes she forgot to dial the code, sometimes she was prevented by passersby. In the end, unable to bear it any longer, she decided to retrieve the contents and throw it away. She tried to open it, to separate its two halves, as one pries apart the two halves of a shellfish. And indeed the coffin suddenly resembled a finely modeled black shell, covered in mucous varnish. When she finally managed to open this bivalve, breaking her nails in the process, what she found inside was the celluloid doll she had had as a child, staring at her with strangely alive and moist eyes, like those of a human being.