The Crime of Olga Arbyelina

by Andrei Makine

  The words she heard herself whispering surprised her less than the little cloud of her breath shining in a moonbeam: “They are the ones living in complete madness. They, down there, on their globe …” She stooped and began to pick up the pieces of the broken branch…. Beyond the last trees in the wood she saw the house: the moon appeared around the wall of the Caravanserai, shone down on the snow-covered front steps, and turned one of the windows blue. She still saw it from that distant perspective, toppling down from the vertical flight of the clouds. Still saw the planet as a whole and on the dark, nocturnal side of it a long dwelling, leaned up against a wall. And that couple forgotten by the world. A woman and a youth. A mother and her son … A slight cloud arose from her lips once more. The murmur of her words melted into the frozen air. … A strange couple. A youth who will die. His last winter, perhaps. Last spring. He thinks about it. And the woman’s body that he loves, the first body in his life. And the last…

  The faint cloudiness about her lips from these words was dispersed. Now there was only the blue of the moonlight on the snow-covered steps. And a trace of snow, too, on that branch above the footpath. The footprints beneath the trees, her own, those of another. The silence. The night when he had come, stayed, and left. A night so agonizingly alive, so close to death.

  That was precisely how it must be, she now understood: the woman; the youth; their unspeakable intimacy in the house poised on the brink of a winter’s night, on the brink of a void, quite foreign to the globe that seethed with human lives, hasty and cruel. She experienced it as a supreme truth. A truth made manifest through the bluish translucency on the steps, through the trembling of a constellation just above the wall of the Caravanserai, through her solitude under this sky. Nobody in the world, in the universe, knew she was standing there, her body limpid with cold, her eyes wide open…. She understood that, if expressed in words, this truth would signify madness. But this was a moment when words were being transformed into white vapor and their only message was their brief gleaming in the stellar light….

  She planned to burn her trophies in the kitchen range to make some tea and at the same time to wait for the dawn, when looking for firewood would be easier. She could not believe her eyes when she saw all the branches stacked together beside the range. There were still some drops of melted snow glistening on the bark…. She remembered the glance he had directed at the dying fire in the stove as he fled the room. So, an hour or two before her he had been wandering about in the darkness among the trees. The footprints she had seen in the snow were his…. What amazed her most was knowing that they had both looked at the same night sky, seen the same mists escaping from their mouths. Some unfathomable minutes apart.

  She did not write a fresh letter to L.M. but sent him the old one, that laborious letter breaking things off. She even forgot to correct the date on it.

  THE LIFE SHE LIVED NOW was no longer divided into days or hours, nor into coming and going; nor into actions; nor into fears; nor into expectations; nor into causes and their effects. There was suddenly a particular light (like the calm pallor above an abandoned railroad track that she had been obliged to follow, one afternoon of milder weather); her eyes took in everything, discerning all the nuances in the air (the silvery tint of the fields, the unexpected gold of the sun shining on the rooftops of the already distant town); and she experienced this light, these subtle colorations of the air as profound events in her life.

  It was to avoid her usual path, now awash under the porous snow of the thaw, that on her way home that day she had walked around the station and approached the Caravanserai from the opposite direction. A train went by; she continued on her way, stepping from one tie to the next, listening for a long time to the fading vibration of the rails. Then the track branched into two. This one, the old one, that in days gone by used to serve the brewery, soon ended in a buffer stop…. In the distance the roofs of the town clustered about the church were bathed in a golden radiance that shone through a fleeting rift in the clouds. Over here, beside the buffer stop, it was almost dark. Leaning her elbows on the barrier, she remained stock still for a moment, her gaze lost in the expanse of the fields, which in this pale light had the softness of suede. The patch of sunlight on the town faded…. She was alone at the end of this forgotten track. She felt secretly at one with the misty distances, and close to this bare shrub that grew between the rails. The rain began to fall, merging her still further with the low sky and the soft snow that gave off a vivid, heady coolness….

  That evening there was another moment that absorbed her into its profound harmony. The rain continued to pour down heavily, but its torrents were arrested by the return of the cold that put an end to a day and a half of mild weather. The earth hardened and the streams of water seemed to freeze in midflight. They crashed against the ground, against the layer of ice on the fields, against the roof, in the branches of the trees—and the night rang with an infinite variety of ceaseless tinklings. This crystalline cascade drowned all other sounds, crushed any shadow of a thought with its glass beads, permeated her body with its delicate flow.

  She could hardly hear the crackling of the fire any longer above this headache-inducing din. Only the tallest flames that rose above the tangle of the wood could pierce through the incessant roar of the icy torrent. Its deafening rattle had the fluidity of rain, while the ferocity of its noise kept her awake. And the flames surged up in that nocturnal bedroom besieged by an icy downpour, now on this side of sleep, now in her dreams, amid countless warm, supple, aromatic spurts of resin….

  When he came in, shielding the candle with his hand, his footsteps, his movements, the whiteness of his body that she could sense without lifting her eyelids, all these things hovered between the two nights, sometimes deep in her dream, then suddenly breaking the boundary of it with an incredibly vibrant caress. The hesitant hand seemed to be making its way between long rivulets of sound to enfold her breast, to find peace upon it, while they awaited an ebb tide back into the dream. There, where their bodies would be nothing but the same endless wave, a shadow with the scent of snow, the flickering amber of fire.

  He remained in her without moving, his breath suspended, his body weightless. A motionless flight above a sleeping lake … She could still feel the weight of him in her groin, in her belly when he was no longer there, as she slowly returned across the tides of fire and crystal and again found herself in a room surrounded by a rainy winter’s night.

  … In the morning the treads of the front steps rang out underfoot like glass. She walked down them and made her way across the upside-down sky, a looking glass colored pink by the day’s dawning. The trees, the windows of the house, the wall of the Caravanserai were all reflected in it with the clarity of an engraving. The bushes laden with thousands of frozen drops of water looked like strange crystal candelabra abandoned here and there in the snow. She took several steps and lost her balance but had time to realize that she was going to fall and anticipated her tumble by letting herself slide. Half stretched out, she pressed against the ground to raise herself and suddenly encountered her own face reflected in the ice, so calm and so distant that, once on her feet, she turned back with an unconscious urge to see that calm expression in the same place again….

  There was a day when everything swirled in a hypnotic flurry of snowflakes. The roofs of the town, the Caravanserai, the willows along the riverbank—everything disappeared piece by piece, as if delicately coated in white with a paintbrush….

  Then another day when the color was extraordinary. A pale violet, very faint, scarcely mauve out in the whiteness of the fields; denser, dark blue beneath the wall and in the alleys of the lower town; and more vibrant, almost palpable in a broad, plum colored sweep above the horizon …

  And another day, when in the evening she was intoxicated by suddenly discovering the various scents given off by the branches thrown down beside the stove—a whole forest, with different essences, some acid, some heady, with the coolness of the fro
st that emitted shrill whistles in the flames as it melted. The aroma of moss, of wet bark, of the life asleep in all the trees.

  Each of these moments carried within itself a mystery ready to be revealed, ripe to be experienced, but which was still hidden, making their abundance painful, like some mountain landscapes that are too beautiful, too awesome, for our lungs, which begin to struggle for air….

  On the day of the dancing blizzard the long overcoat he took off when he came into the room was white with snowflakes. His hair as well. She felt several drops of melted snow trickling onto her breast…. On the day of the amazing violet light they ran into each other in the upper town, he returning from school, she with her shopping bag. There was no embarrassment, no forced words. In that mauve, blue, and violet light everything became at once unreal and natural: the street, an inhabitant of the Caravanserai greeting them, the two of them together. They walked along, looked at each other from time to time, recognized each other as people recognize each other in dreams, with a clairvoyance sharpened by reality, but in a fantastic setting. At one moment, as she crossed a long strip of bare ice beside the bombed-out pharmacy, she leaned on his arm….

  And it was thanks to him that she discovered the different scents of the flesh of trees. One night, as he left the room, he crouched down and touched one of the branches drying beside the stove. She repeated this gesture an hour later as she put more wood on the fire. And also out of curiosity. A mossy shape reminded her of a moth. She touched it, as he had just done, and suddenly inhaled a complex mixture of scents. Kneeling there with her eyes closed, she smelled their elusive range. She sensed the coolness of a body, of the body that, before joining her (she knew it now), had been impregnated with cold in a frenzied coining and going on the frozen slope between the house and the river. He had just left her and his presence was slowly awakening within her, in her groin, in her belly, and mingling with the slightly bitter or acid tastes of the branches, with the perfumed warmth of the fire, with the silence. And what she was living through became so full then, so painfully close to the revelation of a mystery, that she opened the French door, filled her hands with snow, and buried her face in it, as if in an ether mask.

  * * *

  This elation was broken some nights later when once again he remained in her for long, still minutes. It was at that moment that the dilated suspense at the base of her belly trapped her. For a fraction of a second she felt it like a caress and for a moment lost the regularity of breathing she had taught herself. On previous nights this suspense had represented an ordeal that must be passed through in a transient death of all her senses, skimming silently over the void. This time it was a caress, a dense, titillating gust that snaked upward toward her chest and exploded in her throat…. Two other nights the same spasm was repeated, the same flaring up of the air she was breathing. Her surprise diminished and during the third night it became a kind of inadmissible anticipation that prepared her breathing and shaped her body…. She no longer had to die in order to give herself to him.

  BY MIDDAY THE BROAD HALO around the pale sun was already visible—a sign of great frosts. The air rang out with sharp, dry rustling. At nightfall the windows were covered with hoarfrost patterns…. That evening she examined the infusion, threw it away, went to her room and stopped for a moment, holding the candle, to contemplate the fragile beauty of the curlicues of ice: chiseled stems, crystalline corollas….

  That night he got up in such haste that she stiffened, believing she must have unconsciously given herself away. A little light filtered between her lashes. She saw him standing between the door and the window, his body tensely arched, his head and shoulders thrown back, his eyes tightly shut…. No longer hiding in sleep, she watched him, her breath held in pity, in distress. He was pounding the base of his belly with his hands; which were closed, as if over a prey, and shook with rapid tremors. Now his uplifted face, with the same grimace of brutal pain, expressed a kind of prayer, a supplication addressed to someone whom only his own closed eyes could see. His mouth, gasping, swallowed air with a rictus that laid bare his teeth. His hands, crossing over one another, tensed more violently, a convulsion and then another ran through his body—he looked like a butterfly beating against a windowpane…. But already, slowly, the muscles were relaxing. A clarity of repose softened his features, then, very quickly gave way to bitterness, weariness. With a clumsy gait, as if he needed to learn how to walk all over again, he went to pick up his long overcoat, took out a handkerchief, applied it to his stomach, crumpled it, put it away….

  It was as he was going out that he tripped, stumbled, and rocked back on his heels. As he sought to steady himself, he placed the flat of his hand against the window for a moment. This light touch was enough. He straightened himself up and left the room. In the darkness she thought she could hear his young heart, arrested by fear, starting to beat again….

  She got up often that night. Put wood on the fire, went back to bed again. No word, not even the beginnings of a thought, interrupted the silence that reigned within her. The visions that exploded silently before her eyes were inaccessible to words. She saw again the young face with its tortured and blissful rictus, the eyes closed but dazzled with light. The body assaulted by violent spurts of pleasure. But above all the knee that remained bent back, though the body was tensed like an arrow, a knee bulkier than the other, an interruption in the pure white line of his nakedness.

  No, it would have been impossible to put that into words. This fusion of love with death lent itself only to mute fascination, to absolute incomprehension, more penetrating than any thought…. She got up, thrust a fragment of wood into the embers, and noticed the phosphorescence of the hoarfrost on the dark window. The suppleness of her own movements astonished her. There was something almost joyful in the agility with which her body stood up, crouched beside the stove, skimmed across the room in a few steps. Without trying to put it into words, she sensed that a new bond was being formed between her own life and this death so close, so freighted with love….

  That night she could still see no more in this bond than the quite physical simplicity with which, on the days that followed, she would learn how to hold within her groin this young body assaulted by waves of pleasure. He would no longer be the butterfly beating against a windowpane. He would not flee. He would remain in her until the end, until the bitterness, that would spread like the shadow of a loving hand across his face, now at peace.

  In the morning the window covered in hoarfrost was ablaze with a thousand sparks of sunlight and resembled a fault in granular quartz. The rekindled fire appeared pale in these red rays that split the facets of the ice. No sound, not one birdcall, came from outside. The peace and the cold of that winters Sunday surrounded their house just as an immense snow-covered pine forest would have done.

  She spent several long minutes at the frozen window all streaked with sun. Her gaze distractedly picked out the stems and fronds that the ice had woven on the glass…. Suddenly amid this capricious tapestry she noticed an astonishing contour. A hand! Yes, the print he had left the previous evening when he leaned lightly on the glass to stop himself falling. The outline of his fingers that the night had covered in delicate tendrils of frost. She brought her face closer, intending to study this crystalline design in more detail. A cold breath intoxicated her. All she had experienced since the fall was mysteriously concentrated in that chill, a single sensation of pain and joy beyond her strength. Everything, the past night, even those days buried in periods of her life she no longer ever thought about, everything returned in a single inspiration. A draft that inhaled all those nights that could not be spoken of. A gust that also breathed in the snowy scent of the immense forest surrounding their house, a forest that did not exist, but whose wintry calm was already entering her breast, dilating it still more, to infinity …

  She regained consciousness several seconds later. Got up, feeling a strange heaviness in her movements, saw reflected in the mirror a long scratch fil
ling with blood that traced a fine curve from her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth. Taking confused, dull steps, she stood a small round table upright that had been knocked over, picked up a little ceramic vase that had lost its handle but was not broken…. While she did this she was living intensely elsewhere. She was walking into a great wooden mansion, a great silent house surrounded by snow-laden trees. She walked along corridors, whose walls were crowded with portraits that followed her with suspicious looks; and slipped into a tiny room tucked away on the top floor…. There at a narrow window decorated with hoarfrost patterns she forgets herself for a long time. She, the growing girl, who is elated to the point of giddiness by these crystal flowers and fronds. Bringing her lips close to the windowpane she blows lightly. Through the little melted hole she sees a forest burdened with snow as far as the eye can see….

  Without detaching her eyes from that moment, she wiped the blood from her cheek; chopped some wood; prepared the meal and later spoke to the people at the library; lived other nights and other days. Her gaze forever focused on the endless forest in the snow. She no longer remembered having lived any other way.

  Five

  THE DOCTOR, AS EVER, said little, but after long weeks of solitude these few sentences seemed to her like an elaborate, almost overwhelming speech. Nor was she listening to him properly. It was an old habit of hers: the doctor’s observations caused pages to appear in her memory with the description of the illness, the symptoms, and the treatments, pages she knew right down to the very arrangement of paragraphs. The doctor spoke as he wrote out the prescription, breaking off to reread it, and it was into these pauses that fragments of the pages learned by heart would insert themselves: “… the softened bone began to cavitate; small pockets of dead tissue formed cysts. The bony extremities became deformed, and adopted unaccustomed postures. The joint gave rise to a progressive chronic disability….