The thaw lasted only a few days. The winter took its revenge on this luminous interlude and brought a stinging polar wind, froze the stars in the black crystal of the sky.
But Belmondo fought back. On every free day or, as often as not, missing our classes at school, we woke up before sunrise and set off for the city. For the fourteenth time, the fifteenth, the sixteenth… We did not tire.
10
In the forest it was still night. The snow was sometimes gilded by the moon, sometimes intensely blue. Every young pine tree seemed like an animal lying in wait, every shadow was alive and watching us. We spoke little, not daring to break the solemn silence of this sleeping kingdom. From time to time a pine branch shook off a great white cap of snow. We heard the muffled rustling, then the stifled sound of it falling. And for a long time afterward crystals would flutter down beneath this awakened branch, iridescent green, blue, and mauve spangles. And everything became still again in the dreamy silver light of the moon… Sometimes we heard a light rustling, while all the branches remained motionless. We pricked up our ears: "Wolves?" And above the clearing we saw the shadow of an owl passing. The silence was so pure that we seemed to feel the density and the suppleness of the icy air as the great gray wings of the bird cut into it.
It was during those still-shadowy hours of night that I liked to return to my secret…
My companions were traveling through the forest to go and see a comedy, to learn some more dialogue by heart, to laugh. If I was on my way to the Red October, it was to participate in a miraculous transfiguration: soon I was going to have another body, another soul; and the bird in my breast was going to dance around my heart, fluffing out its feathers. But for the moment it did not stir. And with mournful relish I bore my adult grief within me – the house of the red-haired woman.
I believed my sorrow to be unique, just like the transfiguration that awaited me in the promised land of the Western World. And I would have been quite astonished to learn that Samurai and Utkin, as they slipped through the sleeping taiga, also carried beneath their sheepskin coats a grief and a hope. An enigma. A mysterious past. I was not the only member of the elect…
The mystery surrounding Samurai was harsh and simple. He confided it to me one winter's evening a month before the arrival of our hero. We were in our little izba bathhouse, he in his copper tub, I stretched out on the hot, humid wood of the bench. Gusts of wind were peppering the tiny window with the dry snow that the great frosts bring. Samurai remained silent for a long time, then he began talking in a tone of assumed jocularity. As you do when recounting some childhood escapade. But it was palpable that at any moment his nonchalant voice was in danger of lurching into a stifled cry of pain…
He must have been ten years old at the time. On a hot day in July, one of those scorching days in the continental summer, Samurai – who had not yet been nicknamed Samurai – came running out of the water. Quite naked, shivering under the baking sun. The river never became any warmer during those few weeks of midsummer heat.
He came out and ran toward the bushes where he had hung his clothes. Suddenly, stumbling against a stone or a thick root, he fell. He had no time to grasp that it was not a root: he had been cunningly tripped. Two hands gripped his waist. On all fours, he made an attempt to get away, still suspecting nothing. At the same moment he saw leather boots in front of him, felt the weight of a hand seizing his wet hair. He let out a cry. Then the one who had been squeezing his haunches began to punch him in the kidneys. Samurai arched his back, groaned, tried to escape again. But the heavy hand that was gripping his hair now fastened itself around his face like a muzzle. Two fingers with flat yellow nails were thrust into the base of his eye sockets – it was a threat: "One more shout and I'll poke your eyes out." However, he had time to notice that the man in front of him had knelt down. He heard several oaths and some rather nervous sniggering. Samurai did not understand why, if they wanted to kill him, they were so slow in producing a knife or a pike… It seemed as if the one who was behind him was trying to tear his naked body in two by pulling his wet legs apart. Samurai cried out in pain, and in a momentary glimpse, which would remain with him, he saw that one of his attackers was starting to unbutton his pants…
When danger threatens, a child reverts more readily to being the animal that is not yet wholly dormant within it. Only the agility of this animal saved Samurai. His body performed a series of movements of a rapidity beyond human perception. They were not so much actions as an electric vibration that ran through his body from his head to his feet. His arm threw off the hand muzzling him at the very instant when he raised his head slightly to weaken the pressure of the fingers in his eyes. His foot, abruptly lifted, went into the belly of his aggressor. His shoulder touched the grass, dragging his vibrating body toward the river…
But his transformation into a young animal caught in a trap had not been quite complete. At the last moment something in his back seemed to give way. A searing pain ran through it to the base of his skull. Samurai thought he would not be able to move another step. Once he had plunged into the water, however, the pain left him. As if the cold and supple stream had put everything back in place in his tortured young body…
He found himself on the opposite bank. He stared at the river with stupefaction. He had never before swum the Olyei. Too wide, too fast. He could not feel his body, could not distinguish between his own breathing and the respiration of the cedar trees. His soaked head was humming, melting into the luminous sky. And somewhere in the midst of this organism, without beginning or end, dissipated within the immensity of the taiga, could be heard the repeated, resonant calling of a cuckoo…
On the opposite bank Samurai saw nobody. He waited until evening before returning. This time he swam holding on to a floating tree trunk. The Olyei was once more becoming impossible to cross. His clothes had not been touched. There were several cigarette butts scattered on the trampled ground…
From that day forth Samurai became obsessed by strength.
Before that the world had been good. And simple. Like the tranquil luminosity of those white clouds in the sky and their reflection in the living mirror of the Olyei. But now there was this viscous stuff that lay stagnating in the dark pores of life, which were masked by words, by smiles. This was strength. At any moment it could overwhelm you, crush you against the ground, break you in half.
Samurai started to hate the strong. And in order to be able to resist them, he decided to harden his body. He wanted the animal agility that had saved him to become completely natural…
By the autumn he could cross the river and back without resting. Hurling ourselves stark naked into the snow on emerging from the baths under the icy sky was his idea. In the beginning it was simply a military exercise… He also knew that one must harden the edge of the hand. As the Japanese did. Soon he was breaking thick dry branches at the first blow. At the age of thirteen he had the strength of an adult man. He did not yet have the endurance. He often arrived at school with his face covered in bruises, his finger joints raw. But he was smiling. He was no longer afraid of the strong.
Then one day he swapped a tiny gold nugget (we all had a few nuggets) for a colorful foreign postcard. The glossy picture showed a blue sea, an avenue lined with palm trees and white houses with big windows. This was Cuba. The newspapers were constantly speaking of this country and of its people, who had the courage to resist the might of the United States. His hatred of the strong found its global target: Samurai fell in love with the little island and detested the Americans. His romantic attachment was embodied in a feminine figure he dreamed of: a beautiful companion in arms, a young woman fighter with Creole comeliness, who wore a combat uniform with rolled-up sleeves…
But this love, just like the hatred, came too late. Revolutionary fervor was a thing of the past, and even in the depths of our Siberia they were beginning to make open fun of our old bearded friend. Likewise of Samurai, whose passion was known to everyone. The boys at school often s
ang for his benefit a jingle that had become very popular. It went to the tune of Castro's heroic "Barbudos" song, but the words were all different, tampered with:
Cuba , give us back our wheat. Give us back our vodka too. Your sugar's wet - and not too sweet. Fidel, take it back, fuck you!
Samurai looked at them with disdain. The insolence of the weak was a puzzle: these mockers knew that he would not condescend to give them a hiding… But deep inside, Samurai was troubled by a lot of embarrassing questions. Especially after the day when he received the ultimate blow below the belt from History.
It came at the end of a geography lesson. That day the teacher was talking about Central America. When the bell rang and the classroom emptied, Samurai walked up to the desk and took the colorful postcard with the view of Havana out of his bag. The azure sea, the palm trees, the white villas, the tanned strollers. The teacher studied it, then, turning it over, read the caption.
"Ah, of course," he confirmed. "But that was before the revolution! I was wondering…"
He fell silent, then handed the card back to Samurai and explained, turning away: "You know, they are in a rather difficult economic situation… Without our aid it would be really tough. An old friend of mine worked there as a volunteer. He says that even socks are rationed, one pair a year per person… Of course, it's the imperialist blockade that causes that…"
Samurai was stunned. So one must picture the bold "bar-budos," their automatic rifles in their hands, waiting in line to get a new pair of socks!
When Belmondo arrived, Samurai was sixteen. All the wretched questions provoked by his disillusioned love were in the process of turning into a trauma that prevented him from seeing, breathing, smiling. He had become strong, but the evil that he set out to combat renewed itself like the heads of the Hydra. With the arrival of a new team of loggers; with a new drunken brawl on the steps of the liquor store. At the very most, all he had managed to conquer was a narrow zone of security around his own person. Life did not change. And the fair companion in arms, in her khaki pants and her combat jacket with rolled-up sleeves, had not yet shown up.
While the Yankee blue jeans that had made their appearance on the chubby legs of a local apparatchik's son were wreaking havoc among the hearts of the local Siberian maidens…
So should he go on breaking branches with the edge of his hand? Crossing the river while holding an iron bar above his head, a substitute for a future automatic rifle? Rebuking drunken loggers? Cutting off the Hydra's heads and doubling the evil? Living as if on a blockaded island? Defending weak people, who then hurl their perfidious mockery at your back?
It was then that Samurai encountered Belmondo. He witnessed his pointless feats, his fight for fight's sake. He discovered that to take up arms could be beautiful. That landing a blow could have its elegance. That the gesture was often worth more than the effort's objective. That what counted was panache.
Samurai was discovering the bitter aesthetic of the desperate struggle against evil. He saw it as the only way out of the labyrinth of awkward questions. Yes, to take up arms, thinking only of the beauty of the combat! To hurl oneself as a single trooper into the action sequence of war. And to quit the field of battle before the grateful weak can come and praise you to the skies or reproach you for any excesses. Yes, to fight, knowing that victory would be short-lived. Like in the film… Though the publisher was vanquished, turned into a laughingstock, and lost his wig, he would soon return to his inaccessible office. But the beauty of those last few moments would be the hero's best reward. Embracing his lovely neighbor – now won back – he leans over the balcony and hurls the pages of his manuscript at the retreating publisher and his clique. What madness, but what a gesture!
A week after the first showing Samurai had a fight with two drunken truckers in the workers' canteen. All the conventions were respected in this classic barroom scenario. The strident shrieking of the canteen woman; the silence of the human herd gripped both by fear and by the reflex "It's got nothing to do with me." And the young male lead who rises to his feet at the end of the room and walks toward the two aggressors. The truckers were newcomers; they did not know that this young man's hand broke thick branches at the first blow. Two or three lunges from his hand-sword sufficed to evict them. But Samurai could no longer be content for the scene to end like that. He went back into the canteen. Watched by the diners, rigid in front of their plates, he put down a crumpled ruble note in front of the cashier, as she cowered behind her counter, and remarked: "Those miserable wretches forgot to pay for their soup."
Then he strode out into the icy wind, accompanied by a buzz of admiration…
Back home, he sat down in front of a mirror and stared at himself for a long time. A lock of dark hair fell across his brow; his nose was slightly squashed – the relic of some unequal combat; his lips were tensed in a determined Une; a heavy lower jaw was accustomed to taking cannonball blows from the weighty fists of men. He gave a friendly wink at the face looking back at him out of the mirror. He had recognized him. He had recognized himself… Never had our fabled Western World seemed so close!
11
The sun was rising as we came out of the taiga, heading for the valley of the Olyei. As if we were leaving the night behind us deep inside that sleeping kingdom of pine trees, where the great owl glided through the silvery shadows, seeking a refuge for the daylight hours.
The red disk appeared from behind a cold veil and slowly replaced the gray and blue tones with shades of pink. Shaking off our nocturnal torpor, we began to talk, to exchange impressions of the last performance. But above all, to the point of exhaustion and of losing our voices, to imitate Belmondo…
This time, on our sixteenth trip to see the film, Samurai went ahead of us a little, striking out with long strides over the plain, whose smooth mauve surface was so inviting. I stopped to wait for Utkin. As he left the shadows of the forest and emerged onto this great, luminous space, he swung around the tip of a small pine tree buried under the snow and came to join me.
His gaze always used to make me feel a bit uneasy. The mixture of jealousy, despair, and resignation with which he surveyed my face…
This time there was none of it. Dragging his injured leg, he came up to me, his right shoulder pointing toward the sky, and smiled. He looked at me squarely like an equal, with neither bitterness nor jealousy. His duckling's gait seemed no longer to preoccupy him. I was struck by the serenity of his face. As I set off again, I told myself that I had been seeing these calm and somehow wiser eyes for some time now. I slowed my speed somewhat, allowing myself to be overtaken. Replying absentmindedly to the remarks of my companions, I began to think about the mystery surrounding Utkin.
For he, too, saw the six-thirty performance as much more than a simple burlesque comedy…
On that spring day long ago when his body had been crushed by the ice floes in the thaw, his child's eyes had undergone a change of vision. In that instant Utkin had acquired a particular view of things such as only extreme pain or pleasure can bestow. At these moments we can observe ourselves – from a distance – as a stranger. A stranger unrecognizable in his overwhelming pain or in the spasms of extreme pleasure. For a few seconds we sustain this division into two…
Utkin had seen himself that way. Against the pale wall of a hospital room. His suffering was so great that he was on the brink of asking himself: "But who is he, this thin little fellow, moaning and shivering in his plaster shell?" Yes, it was very early, at the age of eleven, that he experienced this perception. The maimed body crying out, suffering; and alongside it, it's hard to know exactly where, the detached, calm scrutiny. A bitter and serene presence. Like a bright autumn day, with the penetrating smell of dead leaves. Utkin knew this presence was also himself: a part of him. Perhaps the most important part. In any case, the most free. He could not have expressed the significance to himself of this division into two. But intuitively he perceived within him the tonality of that imaginary autumn moment…
Utkin loved to enter into that day which he had never seen, to dwell there amid the unknown trees with broad indented leaves, yellow and red, such as were not to be found in the taiga. To peer through this sun-drenched foliage at the little fellow as he limped along, his head bowed under the snow squalls…
The mystery of Utkin… The crux of it was that the huge triangle of ice that had suddenly become detached from the banks of the mighty river had left him enough time to realize what was happening. He had time to be aware of the gawking crowd, which drew back when they detected the ominous creaking; time to hear their shouts. And to be afraid. And to understand that he was afraid. And to try to save himself without making the human herd laugh at him as he jumped. And to realize that it was stupid to care about the laughter of the others. And to think: This is me, yes, this really is me; I am alone on this ice, which is breaking up, overturning into the flood; this is me; that's the sun; it is spring; I'm afraid.
Like a crystal that is marked with the incrustations of impurities, his grief would always retain this patina of feverish and banal thoughts. They would be engraved in the crystal, in its transparency of frozen tears.
The river was too powerful, its breathing was too slow, even at the moment of breakup, for the calamity to be sudden. The boy's eyes experienced it as if in slow motion. The man who risked being crushed by the ice himself and grabbed Utkin cried out cheerfully: "Just look at this drowned duckling! A bit further and he'd have gone in the drink… Look, he's a regular duckling!"
Once Upon The River Love Page 10