Above the camp, the low sky ceaselessly spat out its gray fluff.
Hadzoböl Münzberg felt his heart swell in joy. The wandering had ended. A few more hours of maneuvers, of administrative formalities, and it would be over.
• He wiped away the snow icing his face and he walked around the switch stand to examine it before pushing down on it.
At that moment, he had a feeling in his stomach that something was wrong.
He looked up into the snow, saw a handful of snowflakes that fell directly into his eyes, then he turned back to the convoy stopped behind him, fifty meters back. Noumak Ashariyev was still pressed up against the locomotive’s window and, inside the cabin, he was waiting for the signal to start again and go down the side rails. Everything was frozen in the ground’s whiteness and the air’s yellowish grayness. Nothing seemed odd, or maybe yes, something did in the sudden immobility everywhere. The windshield wipers no longer moved in front of the conductor’s face. The snowflakes kept falling, but with such slowness that they seemed to hang as they fell. Hadzoböl Münzberg turned toward the switch stand with its bulging counterweight, painted yellow and black, as if it was meant to reproduce the basic colors of a steppe hornet. He still hadn’t touched anything, and yet the counterweight was moving and drifting toward the sky, massive and floating. And then, no, the counterweight wasn’t changing, it was he, Hadzoböl Münzberg, who had begun to turn toward the sky and lose his balance. And only at that moment did he hear the explosion. It took him a second to realize that a gunshot had been fired from the nearest watchtower and that he had been hit with a projectile in the stomach. He had taken a bullet. Doubtlessly to the liver or the heart.
He spun, his arms outstretched, and collapsed at the foot of the switch stand. And didn’t move.
The echoes of gunfire hit the line of larches. They came back weakly and died against the old cars with their doors still stubbornly shut. Then the scene was quiet.
• The silence of a wintry scene.
The white ground shining. Aside from the ground, everything is dark.
Gray ridges, innumerable gray piles.
The invisible sky.
The diesel locomotive breathing softly, its steps covered in snow.
The unmoving train, its four cars closed, so nobody could tell immediately whether they held goods, deportees, or worse still.
Far on its left, all around the landscape, the impenetrable black boundary of the taiga.
On the right, not as far away from the rails as the forest, the sentry walk, the wooden towers, the metal brambles.
Then the rails encased in snow, those that went toward the unknown and those that turned toward the door of the camp. White swells on the earth. Inverted furrows.
The watchtowers framing the door.
No solemn inscription over the door, no pompous, welcoming slogan, no name, no number.
If there are soldiers in the watchtowers, they do their best not to be seen.
Hadzoböl Münzberg lying by the switch stand, already dusted, as if in rigor mortis although there hasn’t been time yet, no longer breathing, no longer responding to anything.
A misplaced crow perches near his head then lets out a caw before flying off immediately, disappearing over the camp.
Then nothing.
Nothingness lasting several minutes.
The snow falling.
The immobility.
The white silence. Nobody even knows if the locomotive engine keeps grunting back there or not.
• A little later Noumak Ashariyev came out of the torpor that had overwhelmed him and stopped contemplating Hadzoböl Münzberg’s outstretched form, now becoming white, more and more white with every minute. He took a felt hat from the nook, put on wool gloves, and went down the steps on the side opposite the camp. He hadn’t seen any smoke, any soldier, but he was sure that the shot had come from one of the watchtowers standing by the door. The forest was much too far away and the idea of a sniper hidden among the trees made no sense.
He went down the ladder and jumped onto the snow. He slipped, caught the side of the locomotive. He hadn’t shut off the engine and the wall was warm enough to keep the snow from sticking. The odor of diesel fuel permeated the air. For no reason, it gave him courage, which he needed after having watched his comrade die.
He went past the locomotive and bent down and sped up when he crossed the open space between the tractor and the first car. It was better not to expose himself to gunfire, even if the distance, the shortness of the oath, and the veil of snow made for reliable protection.
The first car’s door slid open half a meter and, breathless and eyes shut, on his knees because he hadn’t come up with another way to get off the straw he had been lying on, Ilyushenko appeared in the doorway. He looked every bit like he was deathly ill. He asked what was happening. Noumak Ashariyev explained it all.
Incredulity was evident on the captain’s face.
—They’ve mistaken us for others, he ventured.
His voice lacked all conviction.
—Have to clear up this misunderstanding, he finished.
• Little transpired that morning. Because of the low temperatures, the train passengers took time to gain enough energy and a mental state sufficient for understanding language. The conductor and the captain took turns delivering the same message to them all: We finally came to a camp, but there’s still a problem to solve before we’re welcomed behind the barbed wire, we may have to force our entry so that the misunderstandings are resolved, sometimes things go well and everything happens without a hitch and sometimes they go wrong, Hadzoböl Münzberg was shot dead by a guard, everybody get in position, guns will be distributed once everyone is on their feet, if you want to sleep tonight or tomorrow in warm barracks we have to replace the administrative admissions formalities with military formalities. Detainees and soldiers nodded their heads and blinked. The other parts of their bodies were still numb and it was useless to rush them.
At the beginning of the afternoon, Ilyushenko collected the men within the second car. Three of them were still lying in the shadow, stiff and peaceful, still not out of the Bardo where the regular ups and downs and the cold had plunged them. Schliffko Armanadji, Tristram Bokanowski, Olfan Nunes. The commander wanted everybody in the troupe to hear his instructions, the living as well as the dead, and he wouldn’t sideline these three. He had no intention of letting these courageous men feel that they had been excluded from the collective for superficial, bodily reasons. Once the instructions had been given in detail, the men went back to their cars and carried the dead to the caboose, which had always been the storehouse and eventually the morgue from the beginning of the trip, and where Aldolay Schulhoff would watch over them. Considering his state of confusion, he couldn’t really be equipped with a rifle. However, it wasn’t a problem for him to give moral support to the departed, to grumble stories over them, and be present for them since the rest of the troupe were unable to do so.
Ilyushenko had assigned each member of the troupe to battle positions, reminding them to open heavy fire only if dialogue with the camp authorities had deteriorated irrevocably. Such a shootout was not to be followed by an attack, since our poor knowledge of the place would guarantee a catastrophe. The fire would signify our desire to be heard, it would be a testament to our determination, a cry. They would have to wait a moment after the salvos, a reasonable moment, at least a day, and if by bad luck this despairing fire wasn’t understood, we would go back on our way to find a more welcoming camp.
Right before leaving to negotiate with Matthias Boyol in his company, Ilyushenko settled his affairs as if he was certainly going to be shot in front of the camp. To run the operation in his absence, he encouraged the men to approve Shamno Driff’s nomination. He would stay in the convoy during the negotiations, and he would take over his responsibilities and his title if things went wrong.
• Matthias Boyol had been chosen for his ease in manipulating words.
&nb
sp; He and Ilyushenko went along the train up to the front of the machine, then, after taking a breath, they began to walk on the open ground.
They knew that at any moment they could be the target of a sniper and they went slowly and silently, each of them appraising his existence up to his death and revisiting what had followed, the gloomy trip, the bumps over the weeks, months, and years, the drowsy camaraderie around the campfires, the interminable wait. They had a feeling of tightness in their chests, shortness of breath. At the same time they were calling up their pasts, they focused on living every second as intensely as possible. The sharp air. The whir of snowflakes hurtling against one another as they fell or hit the thick layer, this quiet, continual, and invariable crystalline clinking. The snow grinding beneath their treads. The half-darkness bathing the landscape. The somewhat hazy but very tidy silhouette of the barbed fences, the wooden towers. The impression that they had come to the end of the world.
They went to the switch and turned onto the auxiliary tracks. Without stopping at Hadzoböl Münzberg’s body, which had become a mass that was now imprecise in all its contours, they went toward the camp’s door. They didn’t set foot on the rails so as not to slip. The ballast was tidy, with cinders making up most of it. As the crossties were at regular, predictable intervals, they didn’t stumble, and instead stepped over them. Ilyushenko, looking sullen, clenched his jaw. Matthias Boyol couldn’t keep his head straight. He didn’t look at either the white plain or the increasingly close barrier. He panted and seemed to be closely examining the fifty centimeters of snow in front of them, the long tubes of snow indicating the presence of the rails, the toes of his shoes.
Ten meters from the door, they stopped. The rails went on ahead and slipped under the metal panels painted in camouflage green. There was nobody in the space separating the two walls, no guard at the entrance, no shadow behind the second barbed-wire enclosure, or on the unloading platform that could be made out between the protective screens and the barbs, and, if soldiers kept guard in the watchtowers, they had managed to remain unseen. Everything was abandoned and closed.
Ilyushenko raised his arms over his head, in a pose of humble and total surrender. Matthias Boyol imitated him.
—Captain Ilyushenko has come to the door, Ilyushenko suddenly bellowed, he asks to be received by the authorities!
In his coat pocket, he had only found one glove. His uncovered hand was suffering from the small pricks of the icy snowflakes. The fingers of the other throbbed painfully due to his extreme nervousness.
Matthias Boyol decided to bellow something in turn.
—The detainee Matthias Boyol accompanies his captain and awaits with him the orders of the camp’s management! he cried.
• He or I, doesn’t matter. Snow or absence of snow, wholly equivalent. Tunnels of flames, taiga, kolkhoz, or steppe landscape, all the same. Here or elsewhere, a same oneiric texture. Thick or fluid, doesn’t matter. Same for immobility and agitation, the near present or the distant present. Same of course for life after death or death lived in dreams, or life full stop and death full stop. A single and identical blaze. Either it devours quickly or doesn’t, doesn’t matter. Either the flames burn or cause shivers, doesn’t matter. In all cases one and the same narrative ember. There are only words to set down to brighten or diminish the landscape. The living or the dead equal actors in a theater. Theater or poorly directed dream, doesn’t matter. Theater of survivors or strange agitprop session, doesn’t matter. Either I go or come, the spots where I tread or perch don’t change. Either the speaker is quiet or declaiming, the audience doesn’t exist or is the same. Either it’s about evil mysteries or silly charades, nobody will hear but himself or herself. Sometimes he put on a blackened mask to better speak the impossible present. Sometimes he screams fire into the nuclear core to better revive those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are dreaming. Men or women. Despite holding all the power, he doesn’t always come to his end and despairs. Either he despairs or rejoices, doesn’t matter. For a moment, only his daughters count, then he goes. Sometimes he groans in an uproar at the depths of the fire to try to revive those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are dreaming. Then he goes. His daughters are countless, he visits them within and often over the centuries, he forgets their names. Girls or women have a same oneiric consistency that satisfies his body or his masks. Either his body is covered with feathers or scales or human skin, doesn’t matter. Either he resembles a demonic wind, a bird, or a frightening muzhik, doesn’t matter. Either the flames destroy or build me, doesn’t matter.
• The detainee Matthias Boyol waits in front of the door, his hands in the air and a lump in his throat at the idea of imminent death. My daughters go about their business in the Levanidovo, stupidly turning around this fool Kronauer. He’ll get what’s coming to him. I have the feeling his death will last one thousand seven hundred forty-seven years or even twice that if I’m patient enough. The Levanidovo is ready for snow, like here, but the first flakes are still taking their time. The wind smells of larches covered in frost. This idiot soldier Kronauer doesn’t even know that he’s already dead and his body has been rotting for weeks in a clump of grasses in the steppe, bloated with radiation and ants. He struts around Radiant Terminus like that moron before him, Aldolay Schulhoff, as if he had been adopted forever by the kolkhozniks. I see it as if everything happened at the same moment, from the top of the pine where I’m perched to better see the things in the world and even see you, you too. To see them or imagine them or imagine you, doesn’t matter, and to speak them. A minute hasn’t gone by since the train disappeared over the horizon and there are already several corpses.
Pedron Dardaf, Babour Malone, and Douglas Flanagan, several meters from the group of pines, already the object of attention for several vultures circling beneath the clouds, and also eight or nine crows hopping in the grass and shouting noisily next to me, as if they too were waiting for instructions to begin skinning.
Schliffko Armanadji, Tristram Bokanowski, Olfan Nunes, lying in the second car, and on top of them mute, tense, watchful soldiers, trying to make out through the car’s planks and through the snow what the two silhouettes stopped in front of the door are doing, the silhouettes of their comrades, of our comrades, our silhouettes or theirs, doesn’t matter.
Hadzoböl Münzberg, near the switch, already disappearing beneath the white thicknesses.
All those or all the others, detainees, soldiers, doesn’t matter. I know that I can revive them when I have any need to. Either they’re alive or dead or something else, doesn’t matter. These are empty bodies in my theater. At my request they can come to life if I wish it, or fall silent or crawl for two thousand six hundred and three years and then some, beneath the trees until their crawling bores me.
I caw, and he does as well at the same time, down to the thousandth of a second. He caws among the crows. He joins them for a minute, pecks several times at Pedron Dardaf’s head, near the eyes. That one, he’ll need later. He’ll revive him. No matter whether the birds have or haven’t nibbled at what for now serves as his flesh. Then he goes back to his perch, cawing. He prefers to stay high to see almost everything. The camp, the old forest, or the Levanidovo, doesn’t matter. And indeed, everything’s the same. Everything is in the same place, as in some kind of book, if you want to go to the trouble of thinking about it. That’s the ambiguity of ubiquity and achronia.
• Let’s take Kronauer, for example. Once again he tried to fix the fire hydrant leak and he was in a bad mood, because the seal continued to drip. When the frost had come, the puddle in the street had iced over more and more often and lost its muddy nature, but its size didn’t decrease. As he was now the only one in charge of this malfunction, his clumsiness and lack of plumbing prowess turned into a running joke for the villagers, and, despite being humiliated, he laughed with Solovyei’s daughters. He gathered up the tools, wrapped them in a rag, and set them on the doorstep of Barguzin and Myriam Umarik’s
house; then he crossed the street, went into the prison, and returned to his room.
When he opened the door, he caught Myriam Umarik by surprise as she was shaking and flipping through one of the books that Samiya Schmidt had selected for him in the Pioneers’ House library. She was clearly looking through the pages for a letter, a photograph, or some paper with notes.
—What now, Kronauer exclaimed, are you spying on me for the intelligence agencies?
Caught in the act, Myriam Umarik turned with a cajoling smile. She didn’t seem embarrassed. She delicately set the book on the table, smoothing out the cover with the back of her hand, as if she and the object had had an intimate conversation that Kronauer had interrupted, and which had nothing to do with espionage.
—Wait, she said, it’s true, there was a time when we, Barguzin and I, were thinking about submitting our application. We wanted to leave the Levanidovo. But we ended up staying.
—Your application to join the Organs?
—Yes. To join the Organs and get out of here.
Kronauer nodded. No response came to mind. He himself had worked for the Organs, once. Nobody had known, not even Irina Echenguyen, from whom he’d barely kept any secrets. He’d sworn to his officers that he would never speak of it, even after his death, and he wasn’t the sort to fall into the trap of a harmless conversation to betray himself so stupidly, especially not on this topic. The memory of his collaboration with the Organs was buried and unexcavable.
Myriam Umarik went back to the small pile of books and opened a second one, as if she was fundamentally interested in Kronauer’s reading more than in the documents he might have slipped inside. It was one of Maria Kwoll’s romånces, The Pokrovsk Beggar, every bit as radical and anti-male as her other writings, where, of sexuality, or at least sexuality between humans, only obscene ashes persisted.
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