All at once we saw orange among the trees… Yes, a patch of color like the fragments of bark scattered over the snow between the black trunks and branches. It was Samurai – he was far-sighted – who cried: "Look, it's a tiger!"
And as soon as the word was spoken, the fragments of bark assembled themselves into the body of a powerful cat.
"A Manchurian tiger," breathed Utkin with admiration.
The tiger was there, two hundred yards from the train, and seemed to be staring at us calmly. It probably crossed the track at this time every morning, and it must have been very surprised to see our spanking-new train upsetting its habits as master of the taiga.
The train moved off, and we thought we could discern the instant tension in the muscles of this royal body, ready to make a long leap to avoid danger…
There was no other stop until the end. We gave up worrying, for we realized that some time back, our journey had turned from a harmless escapade into a real adventure. We must live it as such. Maybe this crazy train would never stop…?
Utkin's compass was now indicating a southerly direction. The sky gradually clouded over, the outlines of the hills became blurred. And the taste of the breeze pouring in at the lowered window escaped all definition: tepid? humid? free? crazy?
Its singular tang became stronger, thicker. And as if the locomotive had finally wearied of struggling against this increasingly dense flux, as if the new coaches were becoming engulfed in this scented stream, the train slowed down, rolled along past some insignificant suburb, then beside a long platform, and finally stopped.
We stepped down from the train into the heart of an unknown city. With the instinct of savages, we followed an avenue that brimmed with the powerful breeze we had already detected in our coach. Now we wanted to reach its source. First came a cluster of ugly low buildings, warehouses with gaping doors, then the dark spires of the cranes…
And suddenly it was the end of the world!
The horizon vanished into soft mist. The land ended a few steps in front of us. The sky began at our feet.
We had stopped on the Pacific shore. It was its powerful breeze that had brought our train to a halt…
We had followed the same legendary route as the Cossacks of old. And, like them, we remained in silence for a long moment, inhaling the iodine scent of the seaweed, trying to grasp the inconceivable.
Now the point of our journey became clear to us. Unable to reach the Western World of our dreams, we had employed cunning. We had headed eastward, to the extreme limit. Yes, all the way to that Far East where the east and the west meet in the misty abyss of the ocean. Unconsciously we had employed the Asiatic trickery of Manchurian tigers: to outwit a hunter following their tracks, they move through the taiga in a great circle, until at a certain moment they are behind their pursuer…
It was thus that, pretending to run away from the unattainable West, we now found ourselves at its back.
We stretched our hands out into the waves lapping below the pebbles. The water had a harsh, salty taste. We laughed, licking our fingers…
Facing the immensity of the ocean, the city seemed almost small. It resembled all the medium-sized cities of the empire. Nerlug, for example: the same rows of prefabricated houses, the same street names – Lenin Avenue, October Square – the same slogans on strips of red calico. But there was also the port and the neighboring district…
It was here that the presence of the West could best be detected. First of all, the ships. With their great white masses, they towered over the bustle on the quays, the mountains of crates, the warehouse buildings. We tilted our heads back to read their names, to admire the fluttering of their many-colored pennants.
The crowd on the streets of the port bore no relation to the gloomy parade of faces that you encountered at Nerlug. The bright coats of the young, smiling women; the black jackets of the sailors, whose lively eyes, wearied by the misty desert wastes of the ocean, hungrily devoured the feast of things and people. From time to time one heard snatches of talk in a foreign language. We would turn. Sometimes we saw the face, with slanting eyes, of a Japanese; sometimes the blond beard of a Scandinavian. It is true that it was quite common to see billboards calling on the people to increase the productivity of their labor or to advance toward the final victory of communism. But here they carried no more weight than that of a splash of color in the panorama of the port district…
Among these women who walked bareheaded, these sailors dressed in short jackets and berets with black ribbons fluttering in the wind; among these foreigners with their light, elegant clothes, we felt like real extraterrestrials. Our sheepskin coats, our great tousled fur shapkas, and our thick felt boots showed that we came from the depths of the Siberian winter. But strangely, we did not feel any unease. We had sensed at once the hospitable character of these streets. They played host to people from the most exotic corners of the globe, people whom nothing could surprise. We walked along in the middle of the animated crowd, breathing in the iodine-scented wind of the mighty deep… And we were no longer ourselves!
We were our dream doubles: Lover, Warrior, Poet.
My gaze, like that of a sparrow hawk, intercepted on the wing the rapid glances of women thrown in our direction. Samurai advanced proudly, a light smile playing on his lips, a glint of tiredness in his eyes – a soldier after a temporary victory in an endless war. As for Utkin, he realized that for the first time nobody noticed the way he walked. For one could not proceed any other way in these streets: the wind threw open the front panels of the women's bright coats, flapped the sailors' broad pants, made foreigners reel. Utkin pointed his shoulder up at the sky, and it was very natural: all the passersby felt as if they were taking off, carried away by the Pacific wind. Furthermore, there was so much to see that we kept stopping all the time. Utkin already knew how to enjoy these pauses, where his limping gait disappeared… but in these streets it was pointless to hide it; quite the reverse: his injured foot became the token of a unique personal past in the theatrical melting pot of the crowd.
"It would be good to buy something to eat," the Poet finally dared to suggest.
"All I've got is fourteen kopecks," said the Lover. "A loaf of bread for three, that will be enough."
The Warrior was silent. Then, without explaining anything to us, he headed for one of the human whirlpools in the middle of the little square. We could see people exchanging packages, examining clothes, shoes. A dockside market. Samurai disappeared into the crowd for several minutes, then reappeared, smiling.
"We're going to eat lunch in a restaurant," he announced.
Questions were useless. We knew that Samurai had just sold his "rhinoceros," a gold nugget with a bump reminiscent of the animal's horn – a big nugget, the size of a thumbnail. He had always told us that he would save it for a special occasion…
The waiters looked at us uncertainly, no doubt wondering whether to throw us out or put up with us. Samurai's resolute air and his masterful tone overwhelmed them. They presented us with the menu.
At lunch we talked about Belmondo. Without mentioning his name, we referred to his adventures as if they had been experienced by close acquaintances of ours – or by ourselves. The conversation, somewhere between worldly gossip and a dialogue among secret agents, got under way.
"He was wrong to get himself involved in that business with the theft of the picture," began Samurai in an argumentative tone of voice, as he cut up his steak.
"Yes, especially in Venice!" elaborated Utkin, joining in the game with relish.
"Or at least he ought to have got rid of his mistress first," I added, with assumed indignation. "Because, let's face it, having a girl like that on your hands, stark naked and flaunting her fanny, with a husband as furious as a mad dog… for a spy, that's suicidal."
The occupants of the neighboring tables had fallen silent and were turning their heads our way. It was clear that our conversation intrigued them. The three waiters maintained their sullen and scornfu
l expressions. They could not figure out if we were young farmworkers in a fit of delirium or three boy seamen who really had been around the world.
Finally one of them, the one most allergic to fantasies, came over and with a disagreeable grimace muttered: "Okay you kids, pay up quick, and back to school! Everyone's had enough of your idle stories."
We saw several curious smiles spreading over the faces at the neighboring tables. The trio we made was too unusual, even in this restaurant near the docks.
Samurai treated the waiter to a look of mocking indulgence and announced, raising his voice slightly, so as to be heard by everybody: "A little patience. I haven't yet smoked my last cigar!"
And in a leisurely fashion he took out an elegant tube of fine aluminum, from which he removed a real Havana cigar at least eight inches long. With a precise gesture, he cut off a little piece and lit it.
As he blew out the first cloud of aromatic smoke, he said to the petrified waiter: "You have forgotten to bring us an ashtray, young man…"
The effect was sensational. Those at the neighboring tables stubbed out their miserable little cigarettes; the waiters, dumbstruck, vanished into the kitchen. Samurai leaned back in his chair and began to savor his cigar, half closing his eyes, his gaze lost in a far-off dream world. From it Belmondo sent us his warm smile…
That is how we ate Samurai's gold "rhinoceros." He had sold it quickly and therefore cheaply. With the rubles left to him he paid for three third-class seats on a night train. Unreserved seats in a jam-packed coach, piled high with the ill-assorted luggage of travelers who demanded little with regard to comfort, whose humdrum faces and thick clothes were ht by a dim bulb in the ceiling. And that evening's news was broadcast by the radio built into the wall: "… in celebration of the seventieth anniversary… the Collective has decided to increase by eleven percent…"
The locomotive bellowed, and the tonality of its farewell cry gave us a final taste of the Pacific air's misty chill…
The passengers, for their part, uttered a sigh of relief- at last! – and began to take out of their bags provisions wrapped in paper spotted with patches of oil. The carriage was filled with the smell of roast chicken, smoked sausage, melted cheese. Unable to tolerate these alimentary emanations, we climbed all the way up onto the luggage racks. The buzz of all the conversations, muffled by the drumming of the wheels, floated right up to us. It was a nonstop flow, a mixture of everything: alarming anecdotes of legendary delays to this train caused by cataclysmic snowstorms; fears lest their frozen fish might start to melt and drip on their neighbors' coats; hunters' tales; tirades against the Japanese, "who are stripping our taiga bare"; and, of course, inevitable memories of the war, interspersed with the refrain "Mind you, things were better organized under Stalin."
Amid this cacophony, dulled by the thunder from the track, there filtered through clearly the voice of a man of small stature, ageless, a kind of Russified Chinese, whose round face had narrow fissures in it, dark and glistening, out of which his gaze shone. He was sitting in his corner, unremittingly telling stories linked to his life on the banks of the mighty river. His narratives led into one another and formed an epic saga addressed to heaven knows whom. At all events, it was he who proved to be the most resistant to the fatigue of the night. All the other passengers had long since fallen silent, wedged together on the hard benches, trying to find the best position between their neighbors' feet and elbows. But the tale told by the old Chinese was still not at an end. The monotonous and somehow childlike voice of this ageless man filled the darkness. "… It was already June, and suddenly the snow began to fall. I had potatoes: they froze. I had carrots: they froze. I had three apple trees: they froze. The river swelled even more. No fish. Then Nikolai said to me: 'In the city, at the game inspectorate, they're giving fifty rubles for every wolf you kill.' And I said to him: 'But first you have to kill it.' And he said: 'Well, those wolves, we're going to plant them.' And I said: 'How d'you mean, plant them?' 'Just like potatoes,' he says to me. And that's what he did. We went into the taiga and found their den. The mother wolf wasn't there. And in the hole, six little cubs. But the inspectorate doesn't give anything for little ones. So Nikolai fixed wire around their paws. And we left them. He said to me: 'That she-wolf will never abandon her young. And the wolves will grow. But they won't be able to walk.' In the autumn we went back. And Nikolai killed them all, with a club, so as not to waste cartridges. I helped him carry them to the cart and then bring them into town. At the inspectorate they gave him three hundred rubles. Nikolai bought eight bottles of vodka, to celebrate. And he drank too much; the doctor said he'd burned his stomach. And then we buried him, and with what was left of the money his wife ordered a good black granite headstone. But the workmen carrying it got drunk and…"
I could not bear to hear that voice anymore. I blocked my ears. But the story seemed to seep into my head without words – I could only too easily guess what came next, having heard so much of it. And they got drunk, and the stone fell and broke…
Unable to stand it any longer, I toppled down from my narrow plank and began hurrying along the corridor, blocked with luggage and the feet of sleeping passengers. I passed through two coaches similar to our own, filled with the same food smells and the same dull murmur of people crammed in and shaken about, as the passengers in the rear coaches always are. Then there were several second-class coaches, in which the passengers were asleep on berths and obstructing the narrow corridor with their feet, either bare or clad in thick woolen socks. One had to be nimble to avoid them… Finally I came to an empty corridor. The doors to all the compartments were closed. The passengers in this coach were already asleep…
I made my way along three or four more corridors, clean and deserted, redolent of toilet soap. I sensed that the goal of my journey was nigh… that mysterious sleeping-car dream car: the one in which a few rare Westerners traveled, venturing into the wild spaces of our fatherland.
I pushed open the door, I sniffed the air, and at that moment I saw her!
She was standing at the window in that narrow space between the long corridor and the platform by the exit doors. She was there, her gaze lost in the darkness of the Siberian night. She was smoking. A slender cigarette, very long and brown in color, which I instantly recognized as the feminine equivalent of Samurai's Havana cigar. A fur cape, light and gleaming, was thrown around her shoulders. Her face, seen in profile by the hazy light of this luxury coach, had nothing dazzling about it. Her delicate features were tinged with the serene pallor of return journeys…
I stopped short a few yards from her, as if I had come up against the invisible aura that her whole person radiated. I feasted my eyes on her… that hand holding the cigarette and slightly turning back a lapel of her cape; that foot clad in a short ankle boot, resting on a little ledge against the wall. Her knee beneath the dark transparency of her stocking fascinated me. That delicate knee allowed one to picture a leg that had none of the tanned roundness of the antelopes in our films. No, a slender and vigorous thigh with a fine, golden, velvety skin.
Young savage that I was, I sensed the intimate mystery of this face, this body. In my mind I could never have conceived of it. Nor even have described whom I had encountered. But the savor of her long cigarette and the gleam of her knee were enough for my intuition. As I looked at her, I sensed that her protective aura was slowly dissipating. And it seemed to me less and less impossible that I might hurl myself at this knee, kiss it, bite it, tear the stocking, thrust my unseeing face ever higher…
The nocturnal traveler must have suspected my agony. The ghost of a smile played over her face. She knew her aura was inviolable. To see this young barbarian a couple of steps from her, a savage dressed in a sheepskin and a shapka that smelled of wood smoke and cedar resin, amused her. But where has he come from, this young bear? she must have wondered, smiling. He looks as if he'd like to eat me…
The torture of my contemplation was becoming unbearable. The blood throbbed i
n my temples, and the words that echoed it were meaningless and yet said it all: "Western Woman! She's a Western Woman!… I have seen a real live Western Woman!"
It was then that the train slowed down and began to cross an interminable bridge. It was moving heavily along a track that had become more resonant. Huge steel crosspieces began to march past the window. I rushed to the exit door, I grasped the handle and pushed it violently. The force of the draft and the depth of the black abyss beneath my feet flung me backward.
We were crossing the river Amur.
The breakup that was taking place in its dark immensity was quite different from that symbolic procession of ice blocks that always accompanied the "raising of the revolutionary consciousness of the people" in propaganda films. Symbols like that disgusted us with their tawdry sterility: some aimlessly drifting intellectual contemplating the gutted ice on the river Neva and deciding to commit himself to the Revolution on the spot…
No, the Amur had no interest in contemplative intellectuals. It seemed to be motionless, so slow was its nocturnal gestation. What you saw was an expanse of snow opening up like gigantic eyelids. The black pupil – the water – appeared, expanded, became another sky, a sky upside down. It was a legendary dragon awakening, slowly shedding its old skin, its scales of ice, tearing them from its body. This worn skin, porous, with greenish fissures, formed into folds, broke, hurled fragments against the pillars of the bridge. You could hear the noise of the powerful impact as the current made the walls of the coach vibrate. The dragon uttered a long dull hiss, scraping up against the granite of the pillars, tearing away the smooth snow from the banks with its claws. And the wind carried in the mists of the Pacific – toward which the dragon's head was flowing – and the breath of the icy steppes, where its tail was still lost…
Once Upon The River Love Page 13
