A Hero's Daughter

by Andrei Makine

  Ivan walked along slowly, dazed by the noise from the streets, the scorching sun, the red patches of the slogans, flags, and banners. The words of the passersby, the honking of the cars and, above all, the blinding glare of the sun caused him acute pain. It seemed to him that it would take only a word, or a little laugh, and his head would explode. He tried not to look at the bustling pedestrians. He had an impulse to stop and shout at them: “Shut up, won’t you?” or to hit someone, so that for a moment, at least, the noise splitting his brain might cease.

  In his suit and raincoat he was horribly hot. He felt his shirt and pants sticking to his skin and his throat smarted from a dry tickle. But he walked on like an automaton, without taking off his raincoat, in the hope that at the next turning a cool breeze would at last be blowing and these noisy outbursts of merriment would fade away.

  The night came back to him in confused snatches, with the hallucinatory insistence of that bare bulb at the ceiling. As soon as he began to remember, the light from it swelled, became ever brighter, even harsher, and burned his eyes even more than the May sunshine. With his eyes half closed, Ivan pressed on.

  He remembered how, after returning to Semy-onov’s room the night before, they had pulled out the suitcase, with its store of liquor, from under the bed and begun to drink. Ivan drank without saying a word, ferociously, constantly fixing Semyonov with his heavy, hate-filled stare. This look frightened Semyonov, who blurted out in a low voice: “What do you expect, Vanya …? We’ve been taken for a ride like filthy pigs in a farmyard! Good God! They stuck all those medals on our chests and we were complete assholes. We were happy. Hero! Just you try showing your face in that bar where the Fritzes drink. They’ll sweep you away with a yard broom. Even if you were a Hero three times over.

  Then through the mists of the alcohol, without being able to hear himself any more, Ivan was shouting something at Semyonov and thumping on the table with his fist. This thumping was suddenly echoed by a furious banging on the door and the shrill voice of the woman in the next room: “Semyonov! I’m going to phone the militia. They’ll take you away, you and your drunken pal! You’re waking the whole house with your din.

  Semyonov went out into the corridor to do some explaining. Ivan remained alone. There was complete silence now. From the ceiling the lemon-yellow bulb threw stark shadows: the bottles on the table, Semy-onov’s crutches at the head of the bed. Somewhere above the rooftops the strokes of three o’clock rang out….

  Coming toward Ivan were retired army officers who had put on their full dress uniforms in honor of the celebrations. They were decked out in the armor plating of their decorations. Ivan stared almost in horror at their swollen necks, their cheeks pink from shaving, their monumental torsos, tightly swathed in belts and cross straps. From a gigantic banner a soldier, a sailor, and an airman beamed formidable smiles beneath a fluorescent inscription: “Long live the fortieth anniversary of the Great Victory!” Ivan wanted to stop and to shout out: “This is all rubbish. It’s a great big con!” He’d have liked one of the passersby to shove him or insult him, or a fat army officer to puff out his scarlet neck and start spitting out something threatening at him. Oh, how he would have responded to them! Reminded them of how all these bloated ex-officers had been lurking to the rear of the lines, pointed out the American trademarks sported by the arrogant young whippersnappers walking past him.

  But no one shoved him. On the contrary, at the sight of his Star shining on the lapel of his jacket, people stepped aside to let him pass. Indeed, when Ivan crossed the road where it was not allowed, the militiaman refrained from blowing his whistle, averted his head and looked the other way. With his energy flagging, Ivan turned down an alley and saw a cluster of trees at the bottom of it. But when he got to the end he found himself in a noisy and cheerfully animated avenue. Once again a vivid banner caught his eye: “1945-1985. Glory to the Victorious Soviet People!” Ivan stopped, screwed up his eyes, and groaned. His brow and eyelids became damp, he felt weak at the knees. A water cart drove by, enveloping him in a smell of wet dust: a huge Intourist coach sailed past with smoked-glass windows, behind which well-groomed ladies with silvery hair could be seen. Ivan retraced his footsteps.

  At that moment above the glass door of a store he sensed, rather than read, in bulbous black lettering: “Beriozka.” Without thinking, guided by an intuition about what would happen and anticipating it with spiteful glee, he went in.

  A pleasant half light prevailed in the store. The cool temperature produced by the air conditioning was disorientating. Lightly clad tourists were talking among themselves beside a counter. A shower of shrill, discordant notes rang out, followed by a shout of laughter: one of them was buying a balalaika.

  Ivan stopped near the counter. His gaze, scarcely taking in objects, slid over Palekh lacquer boxes, bottles of scotch whiskey, brightly colored album covers. Two salesclerks watched him attentively. Finally one of them, unable to hold back, said softly but very distinctly and without even looking in his direction: “This store, Citizen, is reserved for foreign visitors. Payment here is only in hard currency.” And to show him that the conversation was at an end and that he had no more business there, she said to her colleague: “I think those Swedes have made their choice. Stay here, I’ll go serve them.”

  Ivan knew very well that it was a Beriozka. He also knew what a despicable peasant he was in the eyes of these two dolls in their elegant makeup. But that, precisely, was fine. Yes it was fine that his head was exploding, his shirt sticking to his skin, that the foreigners — these extraterrestrials in their light T-shirts — should be buying things, laughing, their blue eyes staring straight through him into the distance.

  “Go ahead, my girl. Go and serve them,” mocked Ivan. “That’s all we’re good for. Serving them. Some in bed, some behind the counter….”

  The salesclerk stopped, exchanged brief glances with her colleague and rapped out: “I repeat: rubles are not accepted here. Vacate the premises or I’ll call the militia. And take your hands off that glass case.” And in a lower voice she added: “Any old country bumpkin thinks he can come in here. And then we have to wash the glass.”

  Ivan clenched his teeth and leaned with all his weight on the glass of the counter. There was a sound of the glass breaking and at the same time the sales-clerk’s cry: “Lyuda, call the duty militiaman!”

  “You see these hands,” shouted Ivan. “I loaded a whole mountain of shells into the guns with them. With these hands

  He said nothing more and erupted into laughter like a barking dog. The agony tore at his eyes. But through the morass of his confusion suddenly everything became clear to him: “All this is bullshit. To them I’m just a Neanderthal. Why am I telling them about those goddamned shells?” And, still laughing, he yelled out to the bemused foreigners: “Now just you listen to me! I spilled gallons of blood for you, you bastards! I saved you from the brown plague, ha! ha! ha … !”

  The militiaman came in. Thickset, a dull face, a damp red mark on his forehead left by his cap.

  “Your papers, please, Citizen.”

  “Here are my papers.”

  Ivan tapped on his Gold Star. There was a smear of blood on his raincoat. The palm of his hand had been cut by a fragment of glass.

  The militiaman tried to grasp him by the elbow.

  “You’ll have to come to the station.”

  Ivan jerked his arm free with a sudden movement. The militiaman stumbled; the crunch of glass could be heard beneath his shoes. The balalaika slipped from the grasp of one of the Swedes, who were watching the scene in amazement. It fell onto the marble paving and emitted a pitiful groan. Everyone was rooted to the spot in a mute, uncertain pose.

  “Just a minute, Lyosha,” the sales assistant murmured to the militiaman. “First let me show the foreign visitors out.”

  At this moment two Japanese men came into the Beriozka, almost identically dressed. Had not one of them been slightly taller, they could have been taken for twins. D
ark official suits, ties that glittered slightly.

  Smiling, they walked up to the counter and, as if they noticed neither the broken glass nor the militiaman, nor even the old man with a bloodied hand, they began speaking in melodious English. Pulling herself together, the salesclerk offered them a long black leather case. Ivan stared at them, almost spellbound. He sensed that life, like duckweed displaced by a stone, was about to settle back into the well-ordered equilibrium that was so alien to him.

  The Japanese, having made their purchase, headed for the exit; the militiaman took a step toward Ivan, crunching a fragment of glass underfoot. Then Ivan seized a statuette that was standing on the counter and hurled himself in pursuit of them. The Japanese turned. One of them had time to dodge the blow. The other, hit by Ivan, collapsed onto the pavement.

  Ivan lashed out blindly, without really managing to harm them. What was more alarming was his yell and his bloodstained raincoat. The Swedes scurried toward the door, yelping and pushing one another. As Ivans fingers struck out, they knocked over a bronze figurine of a bear cub, an Olympic souvenir, which shattered the glass storefront into fragments. Commemorative items of this kind had not sold well at the time of the Games, no one wanted to weigh themselves down with such a burden. The whole series had been shipped out to the provinces: only this one had remained. The salesclerks kept it on the counter as a paperweight….

  Almendinger came to the Beriozka shortly before closing time. He was glad he knew Moscow so well that he could make his way there not along Gorky Street but following little shady alleys. One of them pleased him particularly. It was quiet, almost deserted. You walked along beside the old brick building of a tobacco factory. Behind its walls could be heard the low, regular hum of machinery. The slightly bitter smell of tobacco hovered all along the alley.

  “Little by little I’m going to forget it all,” thought Almendinger. “All those figures, all those Moscow telephone numbers, all these winding alleys … And this smell, too. Now that’s something to keep me busy until I die — forgetting.

  The side window at the Beriozka store was cordoned off with a rope stretched between two chairs. The sales-clerks were talking in whispers. All Almendinger could hear was: “Mad … completely mad …” A glazier was at work behind the counter. Bowed over the table, he scored a long groove with his diamond, making a dry, grinding sound. Then with a brief musical tinkling, he snapped the glass.

  Almendinger smiled and asked the salesclerk to show him a small gold watch for a woman. “Or maybe it would be better to buy a necklace or a bracelet, this silver one with amethysts and emeralds? Of course, it would be much simpler to ask her what she would prefer. But what can you do? I’m getting old…. It’s tempting to play Santa Claus — or rather the Count of Monte Cristo of the third age….”

  After a fine morning the sun was in hiding and the evening was gray, but, as always at that time of year, luminous and strangely airy. When he emerged, Almendinger turned left and entered a well-tended square in an open space that was rather provincial in style. At the center of the square a huge bronze column towered upward, covered with a tracery of writing in Russian and Georgian — the monument in honor of the friendship between the two peoples. He sat down on a bench, and, with a pleasure he could not quite understand, began watching the people and the long buses that drove around the square with weary dexterity. He caught gestures and snatches of conversation that were quite without significance for him and were for this reason utterly engaging.

  Not far away there was a shoe store. People came by with their cardboard boxes, still flushed from the pushing and shoving and the joy of purchase. A woman sat down on the edge of the bench beside him, took off her old down-at-heel pumps and put on those she had just bought. She turned her foot this way and that, studying it from all angles, then stood up, took a few paces on the spot — are they too narrow? — and made off for the bus. The toes of the old abandoned shoes were left sticking out from under the bench.

  Almendinger realized he was still holding the little parcel from the Beriozka store in his hand. He opened his briefcase and slipped his purchase into a small leather pocket. He saw the wads of paper there, the neatly arranged files and smiled. A tipsy passerby came up and asked him: “Tell me, friend, you don’t happen to have any matches, do you?”

  Still smiling, Almendinger held out a lighter to him. When after several attempts the man managed to light his cigarette and mumbled: “Thanks for coming to the rescue, friend,” and tried to return the lighter, Almendinger was no longer there. He was already strolling toward the alley that smelled of bitter tobacco.

  Ivan remained in the hospital for a long time, recovering from the heart attack he had suffered in the militia van. The inquiry took its course. No serious charges were brought against him. The Embassy sent a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An article appeared in a Swedish newspaper: “Failed Hold-Up in Moscow Beriozka Store.” The following day “Radio Liberty,” broadcasting from Munich, gave the facts, mentioning the full names of all the participants correctly. Everyone knew that the story would soon evolve into one of those piquant anecdotes that are related at diplomatic cocktail parties: “It actually happened at the Be-riozka, you know. And a Hero of the Soviet Union, what’s more! A Gold Star on his chest … Oh no, he’s had his psychiatric assessment. A man of perfectly sound mind … You’re right. Maybe it’s what they call the Old Guard syndrome. Have you heard what that fellow Petrov says about it? Quite priceless! He’s supposed to have stamped out all that kind of thing. When they told him about it he nodded and growled: ‘Yes, the veterans stay young at heart for a long time….’ And by the way, the veterans daughter … Yes, yes … And there’s another quite fascinating detail.

  At the beginning of June Ivan was to be transferred into preventive detention. While he was in the hospital Olya had been to see him every day They did not have much to say to each other. Olya would produce the latest newspapers and fruit and food from her bag, and ask after his health. Then they would go down and sit on a bench in front of a flower bed that gave off the bitter smell of marigolds.

  In the course of these two weeks, by borrowing money left and right and exchanging foreign currency, she settled accounts with the Beriozka. She telephoned Alexei…. It was sometimes his father, sometimes his mother, who picked up the phone and each time they replied politely that Alexei was not there. His mother added: “You know, Olyechka, he’s preparing for the Youth Festival at the moment. He’s gone to France to sort out some problems to do with the makeup of the delegation.” Olya thanked her and hung up.

  Sometimes a longing overcame her, pathetic in its unreality: like a child who has broken a cup, she wanted to go back, to play the scene over again, so that the cup didn’t slip from her hands, so that there should not be this resounding and irremediable silence. But even this pathetic regret vanished.

  To her amazement, she saw that she was beginning to get used to a situation, which, a little while previously, would have seemed to her inconceivable. She was getting used to this orange flower bed, to this thin old man emerging from the dull fog of his room to meet her, to the inquisitive and merciless stares in the corridors of the Center. And the fact that nothing had radically changed seemed to her disturbing.

  It was very hot in Moscow at the end of May. Sometimes through the open windows of the Center the long, slow siren of a ship could be heard, coming from the Moskva River. It even seemed as if you could smell the warm, muddy smell, the smell of the wet planks of the landing stage in the heat of the sun. And when evening came the streetlights already cast a blue radiance over the thick foliage as they did in summer. In the restaurant, amid the dense aroma of spiced dishes and perfumes, the tinkling of a little spoon or a knife had an agreeably cool resonance.

  * * *

  Svetka consoled Olya as best she could. But she was so happy herself at that time that she went about it clumsily. A little while earlier, her Volodya had sent her a smiling photograph of himself and a
letter in which he promised he would be coming home on furlough for a whole month. In the photo two big stars could be seen very clearly on his epaulettes.

  “So long as Gorbachev doesn’t call it off in Afghanistan,” she commented, “Volodya’s sure to come back with his three colonel’s stars. Of course, it’s not much fun for him over there. But are things any better here? Apparently he’s been in some garrison miles from anywhere for a long time, somewhere in Chukotka…. Oh! I can’t wait for August! We’ll pop over to the Crimea and rent a little beach house by the sea. At least he’ll get a decent tan. Last time he came back, you know, his face was like a Negro’s, with just his teeth shining … and the rest of him all white!”

  She checked herself, ashamed of her happiness. “Listen, Olya, you mustn’t worry Your father, what can they accuse him of? Only a brawl and maybe they’ll throw in that he was drunk. He’ll get a year at the end of the world with a suspended sentence…. And as for your diplomat, don’t worry. With men it’s always like that, you know. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Look, when he comes back, Volodya will introduce you to one of his friends from the regiment. And maybe your diplomat will come back to you anyway. Obviously his father and mother have turned him against you. But it’ll all calm down and be forgotten. And if he doesn’t come back, to hell with him! Listen, you remember Katyukha, who worked with the Americans. She married a guy like that. And he bugged her all the time. ‘You’ve got no aesthetic intuition,’ he used to say. ‘No grasp of style. You can’t tell the difference between Bonnard and Vuillard….’ That whole artistic elite used to gather at their place, lounging around in armchairs, knocking back Veuve Clicquot and ‘telling the difference.’ And you know, she’s a plain, straightforward girl. One day she’d had enough of all these stuck-up art historian bitches and guys with shrill voices. They were talking about Picasso at the time. And suddenly she came out with this riddle, which is a real scream: ‘What’s the difference between Picasso and the Queen of England?’ It’s a hoary old chestnut, of course. You must have heard it a hundred times. ‘Picasso only had one blue period in his life and the Queen has them once a month…. On account of her blue blood!’ You can just imagine the faces they pulled, all those intellectuals! Her husband exploded: ‘That’s not only an obscenity — I’m used to that. It’s sacrilege!’ The idiots. They’d have done better to laugh instead of acting like constipated cows. Katyukha wouldn’t put up with it. ‘They’re just daubs, your Picasso!’ she shouted. ‘He was a salesman, that’s all. He got the message that there was a market for this kind of vomit — it’s what you all like — so he vomited….’ What a hullaballoo! The women all charge out into the corridor and get their mink coats mixed up. The men squeal: ‘It’s the Attila Complex!’ Her dear husband goes into hysterics…. He’s already opened divorce proceedings, the bastard. He was always lecturing her: ‘Life is an aesthetic act.’ And all the time he was injecting himself against impotence. What an aesthete!”