The shark and the apolitical thighs prepared the way for the appearance of our hero.
He came in many guises, like some Hindu divinity in its infinite incarnations. Now at the wheel of an endless white automobile hurtling into the sea, now making waves in a swimming pool with powerful butterfly strokes, attracting lustful looks from bathing beauties. He demolished his enemies in a thousand ways, fought his way out of the nets they flung over him, rescued his companions in arms. But above all, he seduced unremittingly.
Enthralled, I melted into the multicolored cloud of the screen. So, the woman was not unique!
With unconscious force, I was still gripping the fistful of sunflower seeds. They had become hot, and the blood throbbed in my clenched fist. As if it were my heart I was holding in my hand, so that it should not explode from too much emotion.
It was quite a different heart. Henceforth there was nothing final about the tragic night it had lived through. The red-haired woman's izba was being swiftly transformed, before my very eyes, into just an episode, an experience, one amorous adventure (the first) among many. Under cover of the darkness I turned my head slightly and, furtively, examined Samurai's and Utkin's profiles. This time I was observing them with a discreet and indulgent smile. With an air of worldly superiority. I felt so much closer to Belmondo than the two of them were, so much better informed about the secrets of feminine sensuality!
And on the screen, in a highly acrobatic but elegant manner, our hero was toppling a superb female spy, in an amorous clinch, onto some piece of furniture that looked quite unsuitable for love… And the tropical night drew a conniving veil over their entwined bodies…
With half-closed eyes, I inhaled deeply exotic scents that tickled the nostrils and made the eyes go misty.
I was saved.
On the whole, we understood little of the universe of Belmondo at the time of that first showing. I do not believe all the plot twists of this farcical parody of spy films could have been accessible to us. Nor the constant shuttling back and forth between the hero, a writer of adventure novels, and his double, the invincible secret agent, thanks to whom the novelist sublimates the miseries and frustrations of his personal life.
We had not grasped this rather obvious device at all. But we perceived the essential: the surprising freedom of this multiple world, where people seemed to escape those implacable laws that ruled our own lives, from the humblest workers' canteen to the imperial hall of the Kremlin, not forgetting the silhouettes of the watchtowers fixed over the camp.
Of course, these extraordinary people had their sufferings and their setbacks too. But the sufferings were not without remedy, and the setbacks stimulated fresh boldness. Their whole lives became an exuberant overreaching of themselves. Muscles were tensed and broke chains, the steely look rebuffed the aggressor; bullets were always delayed for a moment as they nailed the shadows of these leaping beings to the ground.
And Belmondo-the-novelist took this combative freedom to its symbolic apogee: the secret agent's car missed a turn and fell from a clifftop; but the unbridled imagination retrieved it at once by making it go into reverse. In this universe even the step over the brink was not terminal.
Generally the crowd of spectators dispersed quickly after evening performances. They would be in a hurry to dive into a dark alley, go home, get into bed.
This time it was quite different. People emerged slowly, at a sleepwalker's pace, a faint smile on their lips. Spilling out onto a little patch of waste ground behind the cinema, they spent a moment marking time, blinded, deafened. Intoxicated. They exchanged smiles. Strangers paired off, formed unaccustomed, fleeting circles, as in a very slow, agreeably irregular dance. And the stars in the milder sky seemed larger, closer.
It was under this light, less cold than before, that we walked along those little twisting alleys that had been reduced to narrow passageways between mountains of snow. We were on our way to the house of Utkin's grandfather, who let us stay in his big izba on our visits to the city.
Walking along Indian file in the depths of this maze of snow, we were silent. The universe we had just been exposed to remained, for the moment, beyond words. All there was to express it was the languid beauty of the night of the thaw, the quiet breathing of the taiga, these close stars, the denser color of the sky and the more vivid tones of the snows. But we could still only sense it in our flesh, in the quivering of our nostrils, in our young bodies, which drank in both the starry sky and the scents of the taiga. Filled to the brim with this new universe, we carried it in silence, afraid of spilling its magical contents. Only a repressed sigh escaped occasionally to convey this overload of emotions: "Belmondo…"
It was in Utkin's grandfather's izba that the eruption took place. We ll began shouting at the same time, waving our arms and leaping around, each eager to portray the film in the most lively manner. We roared, as we struggled in the nets flung by our enemies; we snatched the glamorous creature from the sadistic clutches of the executioners as they prepared to cut off one of her breasts; we machine-gunned the walls before rolling onto a divan. We were at one and the same time the spy in the telephone booth and the shark pointing its aggressive snout, and even the can of fish soup!
We were transformed into a pyrotechnic display of gestures, grimaces, and yells. We were discovering the ineffable language of our new universe. That of Belmondo!
In any other circumstance, Utkin's grandfather, a man with the corpulence of a weary and melancholy giant, whose slow gait and white hair made him reminiscent of a polar bear, would have quickly rebuked us. But on this occasion he watched our triple performance in silence. The three of us together must have succeeded in re-creating the atmosphere of the film. Yes, he must have pictured the underground labyrinth Ht by the dismal flames of torches, and the wall to which the glamorous martyr was chained. He saw a monstrous figure, squat and shriveled, cackling with perverse and impotent lust, as he drew closer to his scantily clad victim and raised a pitilessly glittering blade over her delectable breast. But a mingled roar came from our three outraged throats. The hero, triple in his strength and beauty, flexed his muscles, broke the chains, and flew to the aid of the gorgeous prisoner…
The polar bear screwed up his eyes mischievously and left the room.
Samurai and I broke off our theatricals, thinking we had really offended Grandfather too much. Only Utkin remained in his actor's trance, shuddering as if it were he who risked losing a breast.
Grandfather reappeared in the room, grasping the neck of a bottle of champagne with his great knotty fingers. My eyes opened wide. Samurai uttered a resounding "Aha!" And Utkin emerged from his epileptic fit and summed up all our emotions in a single exclamation, still talking about the film: "Well, that's the West for you!
Grandfather put three chipped china cups and a thick glass tumbler on the table.
"I've been saving this bottle for a friend," he explained, liberating the cork from the wire top. "But he, poor fellow, had the odd idea of dying in the meantime. He was a friend from the front…"
We hardly heard his explanations. The cork leaped out with a joyful crack, there was a moment of cheerful urgency – abundant froth, fierce popping of bubbles, a white surge spilling onto the tablecloth. And finally the first mouthful of champagne, the very first in our lives…
It was only years later, thanks to that bitter clarification of the past that comes with age, that we would remember the friend from the front… But on that evening of the thaw long ago there was only this icy tickling inside our scorched throats, which caused tears of joy to well up. A happy weariness like that of actors after a first night. And Utkin's summary, still ringing in our ears: "Well, that's the West for you!"
Yes, the Western World was born in the sparkle of Crimean champagne, in the middle of a big izba buried in the snow after a French film several years old.
It was the Western World at its most authentic, because engendered in vitro. In that thick glass tumbler that had been washe
d by whole waves of vodka. And also in our virgin imaginations. In the crystalline purity of the air of the taiga.
It was there, the West. And that night we dreamed of it with open eyes in the bluish darkness of the izba… And three shadowy figures appeared on that southern promenade, whom the summer visitors certainly will not have noticed. These three figures walked around a telephone booth, strolled past a café terrace, and, with their timid gaze, followed two young creatures with beautiful tanned legs…
Our first steps in the Western World.
We were flying through the taiga, stretched out along the trunks of cedar trees on the trailer of a powerful tractor, like those that carried rockets in the army. The rough bark under our backs, the sky sparkling above our eyes, the silvery shadows of the forest on either side of the road. The sunny air inflated our sheepskin coats like sails and shot us through with the smell of resin.
It was strictly forbidden to transport people on trailers, especially when loaded. But the driver had accepted us with cheerful nonchalance. It was the first sign of the changes brought into our existence by Belmondo…
The window of the cabin was lowered, so soft did the air seem that morning. And all along the road we could hear the driver telling the story of the film to his passenger, the foreman of the loggers. Lying flat out on the trees, we followed his narration, delivered with exclamations, oaths, and broad gestures, as his hands perilously left the steering wheel.
From time to time he uttered a particularly ringing cry. "He's got his first tooth, my boy! Ha ha ha! You know what I mean? That's it. My wife wrote to me…"
And he resumed his narrative: "So then he pulls on the chains with all his strength, like that… Sure thing, you could hear his bones cracking. Wow! And bingo! he chucks them in the air. And the other one, with his blade, was just a couple of steps away from the girl. And she – I can't tell you what a great pair of tits she's got. And this bastard wants to cut one of them off. You know what I mean? So the guy goes in right under him and ker-pow! No, no, don't worry. I'm holding the wheel."
And again he interrupted his story to proclaim his fatherly pride: "Hey, the little rascal! His first tooth… Milka writes: 'I can't feed him anymore – he bites my breast till it bleeds' Ha ha ha! He's just like his dad."
The world seemed wonderfully transfigured. All we needed was a miracle to be finally convinced of it. And the miracle came. It was close to the Devil's Bend, even more dangerous under the drifts from the snowstorm. At the place where we should have been moving cautiously, making a slow descent to the bank of the Olyei. But the story was reaching its culmination…
The tractor with its heavy trailer hurtled down the slope, without even slowing down, and plunged out over the thin ice undermined by warm springs…
There was a yell, quickly stifled, from inside the cabin; an oath uttered by Samurai. And then several apocalyptic and interminable seconds, filled with the creaking of the ice giving way under the wheels…
We came to ourselves a hundred yards farther along, already on the other bank. The driver stopped the engine and jumped out into the snow. His passenger followed him. The white surface of the river was incised by two black tracks that were slowly filling with water…
In the absolute silence, nothing could be heard but a faint whistling coming from the engine. The sky had quite a new sparkle to it.
Later, no doubt, the driver and the foreman would talk about a crazy stroke of luck. Or about the speed of the tractor, which had been flying along, scarcely touching the ground. But without their admitting it to themselves, the ruins of the church on the highest part of the riverbank would come into their minds. And without knowing how to think about it, let alone talk about it, they would muse on that remote childish presence (the first tooth!). Maybe this had mysteriously sustained the heavy machine as it crossed the fragile ice…
But we preferred to believe in a simple miracle; from now on this would be so natural in our lives.
On my return, everything in our izba seemed strange to me. It was the strangeness of familiar objects staring at me with curiosity; they seemed to be waiting for my first move. The day before yesterday I had left that room in the morning, to go to school. Since then there had been the switch operator's shanty; the station waiting room; the snowstorm; the house of the red-haired woman; the bridge; the truckdriver… I shook my head, overcome with a singular dizziness. Yes, then my return across the snow-filled valley, the rusty nails of the hanged men…
My aunt came in, carrying the big kettle.
"I've made some pancakes, but some of them are burned; you can leave those," she said in her most normal voice, putting on the table a plate with a pile of golden pancakes.
I looked at this woman in perplexity. There she was entering the room, and she was coming from quite a different era. From before the snowstorm… Suddenly I remembered that there had been the sunny promenade beside the sea, the shark, the underground chamber with the chained beauty… I felt myself reeling. Without explaining anything to my aunt, I left the room and pushed open the front door.
The evening sun was drowsing behind the castellated skyline of the taiga, caught in the watchtowers' invisible trap. Thanks to the purplish haze from the mild spell, you could stare at the coppery disk without screwing up your eyes. And the disk, I was sure, was swaying slightly above the barbed wire…
Next day when Samurai knocked on our door and said to me with a wink: "Let's go!" there was no mistaking what he proposed.
We put on our snowshoes, collected Utkin close by his izba, and left Svetlaya…
The city, twenty-three miles by road, was nineteen if you cut through the taiga. Eight hours on the march, plus a couple of stops to have a bite to eat and especially to give Utkin a breather. An entire day's journey. At the end of it: a sunset and the mists of the city that lay between two arms of the taiga, where it opened out gradually. And closer and closer came the hour, which each time became more magical: six-thirty P.M. The evening performance. Belmondo's.
Already the dense taiga was opening out; our snowy road was leading us straight to that promenade beside the sea and into the midst of that tanned crowd of extraterrestrials in the Western World…
The first time, we had understood little. And indeed, there were things in the film it was hard for us to comprehend. The character of the publisher, for example. His relationship with our hero was an absolute mystery to us. Why was Belmondo afraid of this obese, inelegant man who hid his baldness under a wig? What dominion could he exercise over our superman and by what right? How dared he carelessly cast aside the manuscript that our hero brought him in his office?
For want of any credible explanation, we concluded it was sexual rivalry. And indeed, the hero's lovely neighbor was the target of repeated assaults by this monstrous literary bureaucrat. The whole audience held its breath when, drooling with lust, he feasted his prying eyes on the delectable backside of the young woman as she rashly leaned a little too far over the desk. And it was he who later pounced on the unfortunate woman, scattering his thick-lipped kisses all over her body when her defenses were down as a result of a treacherous drugged cigarette…
Many of the nuances in this film escaped us. But thanks to our sixth sense, as young savages from the taiga, we could perceive intuitively what intellectually we could not know about the lives of Westerners. And we had decided to see the film ten or twenty times over if need be, but to understand everything! Everything down to the detail that tortured us for several days: when the lovely creature called on our hero, who was evidently a most welcoming host, why did she refuse his offer of a glass of whiskey?
9
We saw the film seventeen times. In fact, we no longer watched it, we lived in it. Having once tiptoed our way warily onto the sunny promenade, we now set about exploring the most intimate nooks and crannies of this secret world. The plot was learned by heart. Now we could allow ourselves to study its surroundings and its backdrops: A piece of furniture in the hero's apar
tment – some little cupboard whose use was unknown, which the director himself very likely never noticed. A bend in the road, which the cameraman had framed without attaching the least importance to it. Or the reflection of a gray Parisian spring morning on the long thigh of the lovely neighbor, asleep half naked in front of our hero's door. Oh, that reflection! For us it became the eighth color of the rainbow; the one most necessary to the chromatic harmony of the world.
But above all, Belmondo… He embodied this whole complex repertoire of adventures, colors, passionate embraces, roars, leaps, kisses, breaking waves, musky scents, brushes with death. He was the key to this magic universe, its fulcrum, its engine. Its god…
We grasped the reason for his quicksilver performance. Indeed. He lived at this furious pace, embarking on a new action sequence before he had finished the last one, because he strove to achieve divine omnipresence. To bring together through his muscular and supple body all the elements of the universe. To become the very substance of their fusion. Like a human blender, he mixed an intoxicating cocktail from the dazzling spray of the waves, the sensual pulp of feminine bodies, lovers' panting, war cries, tropical languor, triumphant biceps, and a host of characters created with the titanic fecundity of the pagan gods: good, evil, droll, sensitive, eccentric, falsely tender, perverse, myth-omaniac…
Once Upon The River Love Page 8
