A Woman Loved

by Andrei Makine

  Gospodin, dollars … Twelve years—a yawning gap, teeming with political upheavals, hatred, hope, lies. Twelve years ago this gospodin would have provoked a guffaw, like a horse-drawn carriage arriving at the airport. As for a bribe, and, what’s more, in dollars—unthinkable! But, most of all, they would never have left that old man battling all alone against the maddening pain he’s attempting to silence by biting on a threadbare sheet.

  The name of the country has changed and so have its boundaries, Leningrad has become St. Petersburg once more, and an “Assembly of Nobles” is restoring titles and arranging balls at which counts and princesses are among the dancers. And here at the hospital, the patients, who lack drugs, and who were once “comrades,” are getting used to forms of address that were employed by their great-grandparents.

  “Would you have found that likely?” Oleg remembers Eva Sander’s voice. Their trip to the Crimea … That night the snow had swirled over the track, it had seemed as if the world were taking flight. And indeed it did take flight, blending present and past, destroying lives, breaking ties. Without leaving anyone a moment to make sense of the cataclysm. Oleg realizes that now, at last, he has time to think about it. “Thanks to the knife blade that cut a hole in my stomach …”

  … A week before, a gang of men had burst into the offices of the magazine he was working for. Six hooded men beating up the journalists and ransacking the premises. One of the attackers noticed Mila, a young typist. He grabbed her by the neck, forced her to kneel, unbuttoned himself … Oleg bounded toward the man, but before he could seize him, received a punch in the face. His glasses broken and his lips bleeding, he returned to the assault. A sharp stabbing pain burned his stomach …

  Closing his eyes, Oleg tries to forget the old man’s moaning … Figures cross his mind, both familiar and unrecognizable. Lessya, whom he has only seen twice in twelve years. The first time: he is just back from the Crimea. Laid off. Lessya doesn’t know this yet and in her eyes the status of artistic assistant still carries a certain prestige. “I’d like to interview Kozin for my magazine,” she says. “But that old bear never talks. So how about you?” An invitation verging on the seductive. She promises to call Oleg but then, on learning that he’s nothing anymore, forgets him … The second encounter is more recent. Hearing him talking about the little magazine on which he collaborates, Lessya heaves a sigh: “Poor Erdmann! Who’s going to read your wretched rag now? The Berlin Wall’s coming down. A fine time to be tilting at windmills …” A gentle note has entered her voice. She breaks off, annoyed with herself for this weakness. Oleg changes the subject. “And what about you? What are you planning to do, now things are falling apart?” A certain sharp frankness lights up the look Lessya gives him: “Me, I’m planning to lead the life all Russian women dream of: a house, barbecues, travel to exotic countries. I’ve just married a Swede … Do you have another scenario in mind for me?” Oleg stammers: “No, no … To live in Sweden, well that’s …” And he remembers the remark Lessya once made: think about the moments when Catherine lived what she was not …

  He has also caught up with his former rival, Valentin Zyamtsev: in a broadcast devoted to the last Soviet Cinematographic Congress. A gathering that proclaims itself to be revolutionary, in response to the new ethos proposed by Gorbachev. The speakers declare that the only films that matter now are those previously banned by the Communist regime. Zyamtsev draws up a list of “enemies of free cinema.” The malefactors are named, one by one. Oleg hears Bassov’s name mentioned and then, a few seconds later, that of Kozin! Enemies …

  The old man’s cries fade away into shrill moaning, like a child’s whimpering. Someone needs to “grease a doctor’s palm,” obtain a sedative … “I could sell my watch,” thinks Oleg. “But no one would want it. Everyone’s eager for brand names, pretty toys with several dials …”

  So what other ghost was haunting him? Yes, of course, Kozin … The release of “their” film, at a festival in Moscow, which Oleg goes to at his own expense. The bitterness, the humiliation, and the suppressed sobs in the train on the way back to Leningrad—Oleg still remembers this. And the posters quickly warped by the rain. Travels Around an Alcove … Neither on the posters nor in the film credits was his name mentioned. His memory skips over several years and he feels the shock of a very recent sorrow: a subway station entrance, warm wafts of air mixed with the cold in the street, a bearded man, drunk, his overcoat shiny with filth: Kozin! Oleg puts up with this bum’s bad breath, as he talks loudly, breaking off to take a swig from the bottle, then grabbing him by the lapel. “You, Erdmann, your hands are clean, you goddamned German. But I made that filthy film, a drop of truth in a barrel of crap! I sold my soul to win applause at their fucking festival! Catherine the Great … Travels around an alcove … Who are you kidding? All they want to see is how she fucked. As for the rest, they couldn’t give a good goddamn! But the worst of it is, Erdmann … because of that crappy movie I didn’t get to see my wife when she was dying. I, I …” He starts stammering, grimaces, whispering through his tears. Oleg thrusts all the money he has on him into his pocket, promises to come back the next day at the same time. But on the next day and the day after that Kozin is no longer there …

  Who else? Dina. The “young Catherine” … There was a time when he began to loathe this face wreathed in little blond curls. Dina used to appear on TV ten times a day. She was the very first actor to be featured in commercials, a great novelty in Russia. This young woman embodied the sweetly bland aspirations of the period: the time when the last days of socialism still guaranteed a certain economic security and the capitalism people dreamed of seemed like a cost-free Disneyland. One day he ran into Dina and started to mimic her: “‘Summer Time brings sunshine to your sheets’; ‘Magic Carpet toilet tissue, softer than a cloud,’” he recited. “So, was playing the part of Catherine good preparation for all this stupid detergent and diapers garbage? Kozin may choose to live like a bum, but he won’t prostitute himself …” At these words she took a deep breath, as if after weeping, then said softly: “Do you have a little time? I’d like to show you something …” They went to the outskirts of Leningrad (no, already St. Petersburg) and arrived in front of a long, gray brick building. Children wearing thick jackets, all the same, were just at that moment emerging. “When I was a little girl I was like them,” explained Dina. “I was brought up in this orphanage … Now all these ‘educational institutions’ are collapsing, I try to help them, as best I can. By prostituting myself in commercials. And, just so that you can despise me even more, you should know that I live with my boss …”

  Oleg turns over on his bed, trying not to crush the tube from the drip. Remembering Dina is painful. Reaching into his memory again, he comes up with a merry face, wreathed in russet hair—Zhurbin informing him, with the self-assurance of a big businessman (this was three years ago): “I’m the president of an airline.” Oleg assumes the vacuous admiration of a simpleton: “So, tell me, Gospodin President, how many planes do you have on the line?” Zhurbin laughs, once more becoming his good friend of long ago. “To tell the truth, only three, and two of them are under repair. But what matters is that I’ve already managed to get a share of the market. To think there were times when you and I would be happy to steal a couple of pounds of tripe down at the slaughterhouse!” On another occasion they meet on a suburban train: the president of a company on a scruffy local train! And what’s more, Zhurbin is wearing a dirty padded jacket and rubber boots and, oddly, a fine mink hat. “No, I’m finished with planes. Too much trouble. Regulations, spare parts. And the cost of the fuel, ruinous! No, I’ve got a mink farm now. It’s a gold mine! I’m even exporting to India. What do you mean, that’s the tropics? They’ve got the Himalayas down there as well …” Suddenly he begins yelling: “But what about you, Erdmann? What the hell are you doing here? The Berlin Wall’s come down, haven’t you heard? They’re rolling out the red carpet for Germans who want to return to their historic fatherland … Nach der
Heimat!” People on the train turn around, his words in German are reminiscent of orders barked out by Nazis in the war films of the 1950s. Oleg manages to shut his friend up, tells him the purpose of his journey: he’s going to see Bassov. Zhurbin exclaims: “Ah, Bassov! Our master, our idol! My mentor … Though I have to admit I skipped quite a lot of his classes. I had my job. At the slaughterhouse, as you know. Yes. ‘Three carcasses to go to exit two!’ And now my mink farm, do you know what I’m going to use that for? A garment factory? Oh, you poor, unimaginative Prussian! No, the mink are my start-up capital and then I’m going to make films! A film studio. So it’s in your interests not to forget about me the way you generally do …”

  He’d be happy to stay in Zhurbin’s company. But, in memory now, he must leave the train and catch a bus, that takes him on a long, rocking, laborious journey to the estate of dachas where their old teacher lives …

  He can no longer contrive to recall Bassov’s face without thinking about his death. A body discovered in a half-frozen pond. Murder? Suicide? More likely one of the “real estate” crimes that are increasingly common in this new country. The victims: elderly people whose homes in the city somebody covets, or else a house in the country that one of the new rich will raze to the ground in order to build himself a hideous mansion with turrets and a perimeter fence eighteen feet high … Oleg screws up his eyelids, tries to picture Bassov alive, as he was two years ago at the end of March, the snow weary, the cawing of rooks in the trees, and this old man on the steps of his house, inhaling the damp, sharp air, elated by the nascent aromas, smiling at the birds’ raucous squabbling … And now Oleg can see him and hear his words.

  “Now that I’m older than Catherine, I understand her better. In Kozin’s film, your film, there is the scene of Pugachev’s execution: they cut off his head first, then his arms and legs, a method more humane than the quartering of Damiens in France under Louis the Fifteenth. Catherine is well informed about Damiens’s trial. She even receives this staggering piece of information: the French public prosecutor is approached by three citizens of Paris who’ve dreamed up highly sophisticated methods of execution. The first suggests inserting wooden splinters covered in sulphur under Damiens’s fingernails and toenails and setting fire to them. The second would like them to flay the condemned man’s muscles and burn them with acid. The third has fashioned a blade on a spring which makes it possible to enucleate the tortured man’s eyeballs, so that they pop out of his head ‘like frogs,’ as he puts it. Catherine confesses herself to be perplexed. Granted, one must strike down those who endanger the kingdom. But whence comes this infinite meticulousness, with which man is ready to torment his fellow man? She makes a similar observation on the subject of love. Her agents keep her informed about fashionable Paris society, the orgies and the whole circus of bed-hopping at the court, the sexual rivalries … Thanks to Damiens, she has learned that for man killing is not enough. Thanks to Versailles, she has discovered that loving is not enough, either. In cruelty, as in pleasure, human beings seek complexity, plot and counterplot. A whole performance. Yes, the ‘theater’ she refers to in her letters. This performance becomes their only goal. Inventing a thousand ways of killing makes it possible not to think about the pain you’re inflicting. Pirouetting your way through a thousand ingenious erotic games makes it possible to avoid loving … Now, if you could say that in a film one day!”

  Bassov has never criticized Kozin’s film. He simply talked about what he had not found in it. A life that is apart from the ingenious farce human beings devise for themselves …

  Oleg sits up in bed, surprised by the silence—the old man is no longer moaning! No doubt the other patients, appalled, have made a collection to pay for painkillers. They had done that the previous week and when Oleg offered his store of rubles, he had learned that, since he came into the hospital, inflation had eaten half of their value away … The newspapers talk about Russia being on the skids, hospitals that can no longer treat patients, factories no longer paying their workers, criminality corrupting society, alcohol carrying off millions of lives … Previously Oleg would read such things with the detached curiosity one has for statistics. Now here’s that old man who has received his dose of cloud nine. And Kozin huddled in a filthy corner by the subway. And Bassov’s body stretched out on the ice of a pond.

  Twelve years before, at the film’s premiere, Oleg’s vanity, his sense of himself as a director had distracted him too much: he was noting his own inventions. When he watched the film later in Leningrad he had focused especially on Dina’s and Eva Sander’s performances …

  The third time he saw it he finally concentrated on Kozin’s art … Rafts surmounted by gallows float down the Volga: after the crushing of the Pugachev rebellion they set these gibbets adrift to frighten the last of the rioters. A child is fishing beside the river—suddenly a cluster of hanged men looms up above the willow groves …

  Another scene has been added after Oleg left. One of the favorites dies—it is Lanskoy. Catherine is devastated. She refuses food, sinking into a kind of madness. The frailty of this woman of fifty-five is harrowing—her body shrinks like that of a rag doll. And it is this neglected body that Potemkin possesses brutally, reclaiming his Catherine, who had almost escaped him.

  Oleg also notes which sequences were cut during the editing. Having lost his crown, Peter III asks to be allowed to depart, his only luggage being his violin … Ivan VI, imprisoned as a child, has never known anything but the walls of his cell. Catherine grants him fifteen minutes of freedom: on top of the prison watchtower. For the first time in twenty years he sees the sky. For the first time in his life he sees the sea. He inhales until he feels giddy. Catherine lowers her eyelids as the tears flow. She has just given the order for Ivan to be executed if ever he tries to escape …

  Oleg wakes up: these sights had been mingled with his dreams. The bottle for the drip is empty. What may happen? An air bubble traveling along the tube and causing an embolism? Would that be a painful death? Or liberating, like the moments he has been thinking about?

  When they get their morning call he learns that the old man whose moaning he could no longer hear had died at about 3:00 a.m.

  The books are arranged in piles along his bed—a slab paved with bindings, reminiscent of a sarcophagus.

  He is back in his old room, where he has not lived for several months. He had rented a space with his girlfriend, Tanya. But after the operation she called him. If he wanted to see her again, she said, he would first of all have to “work out his problems.” In plain terms, no more getting on the wrong side of the people who had nearly disemboweled him …

  This expression, “work out your problems,” is currently in frequent use; it can cover anything from having to change a lightbulb to a pressing need to liquidate a competitor. Tanya does not want to encounter that hooded gang on her doorstep one day. “You know St. Petersburg holds the record for the number of murders. And by the way, I’ve already changed the lock …”

  She is a young, beautiful woman, not prepared to die for the freedom of expression championed by the fly-by-night magazine Oleg works for. And he can understand her.

  His return to the communal beehive helps him to take stock of the course Russia has now embarked on. Previously the apartment was lived in by people who were certainly of modest means but who all had a job or a pension. Among them, too, were artists who had come to take Leningrad by storm, divorced people hoping to find something better quite soon. Now social rejects are crowding in, the losers in the sifting out of the strong from the weak, the only way of life now in this new country. Their poverty can be seen from the laundry they hang out to dry, from the meals cooking on the stove.

  Year five, following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  To be ranked among the defeated is unpleasant. He, too, has had his good years! Not an airline, but good jobs and therefore good salaries. During the first years of liberalization a simple cigarette salesman in a plywood kiosk became a “bu
sinessman” … Oleg has written radio plays, made short films, worked for a theater, even ventured into the field of selling used cars … And on Saturdays he filmed weddings: the emerging middle class needed to immortalize the brilliance of their family celebrations. From this nuptial merry-go-round he has moved on to making commissioned documentaries, tracing the rise of oligarchs. Always the same scenario: impoverished youth under the Soviets, first steps taken into the harsh world of business, the awakening of the entrepreneur of genius, and, at the end, a luxurious gilt-and-marble office, where this self-made man was telling his story … Some of these tycoons would be murdered shortly afterward (“I’m not in this for nothing,” Oleg joked). The times Russia was living through pulsated with a frenzy that was pathological. Fortunes were made in a matter of months and lost in a matter of hours. Seeing a man lying in a pool of blood out in the street was as commonplace an occurrence as stepping over a drunkard asleep on the sidewalk had been in the old days. On one occasion Oleg filmed a limousine, the gleaming symbol of a successful career. The next day all that was left of it was a pile of scrap iron with the smell of explosives hanging over it and the police gathering up what remained of its owner into plastic sacks.

  He knew he was capable of adapting to this obstacle race. Changing jobs. Hardening his heart. Forgetting his dreams of cinema. Making the videos that gave him a living. And he lived well. He was able to rent fine premises, while still keeping his room in the communal apartment—“my junk room,” he called it. At one point he had two girlfriends, and, to crown it all, they looked like one another! In fact, they both looked like Lessya …

  It was the death of his old teacher, Bassov, that gave him doubts about this new life. He pictured the old man having fallen over at the edge of a frozen pond—a body lying there as passersby skirted around it. The world made no sense if a man could disappear like that: without deserving an inquest into the causes of his death, without so much as a sigh being uttered, beneath the gray sky that heralded the spring.