The Crime of Olga Arbyelina

by Andrei Makine

  Next morning a bleak wind was blowing with inhuman, menacing power. It tore at a number of long, dry strands of hops on the walls of the Caravanserai, brandishing them in its rainy squalls like a monstrous topknot of snakes. As she went into the building through the porch, she heard the sound of an unusual tumult, the slamming of shutters in one of the empty apartments, but, in particular, a slow, distant, metallic creaking, like the noise of rusty hinges. Along the corridor that led to the main library hall this creaking increased in volume, becoming a ponderous, rhythmical crashing. The sounds of voices, on the other hand, became fainter and fainter, then faded away; and it was amid a crowd of dumbfounded spectators that this scene met her eyes.

  High up near the ceiling the huge gearwheel for the pulley, mounted on girders fixed into the wall, was revolving with a mesmerizing slowness. Had the wind dislodged some locking wedge in the machinery, stopped for long decades? Or had the electrician who came to repair a breakdown in the current the previous day made a mistake over the cable? A cleaner had noticed the wheel moving that morning and alerted the others…. Now the gearwheel was continuing to rotate steadily and inexorably in its blind power. The chain that ran around it could be seen traveling down, inch by inch, through a hole in the floor that had been hidden by a square of plywood. And, having disappeared, it rose again from the depths of the cellar…. Suddenly, with a brief grinding, the plywood gave way, and there, welded to the chain, a bucket covered in rust and slime could be seen surging up, slowly bringing to the surface what must once have been water from a deep well that supplied the brewery…. A bitter, earthy smell, an odor, it seemed, of flesh and death, invaded the room. Another bucket appeared, then another and yet another. The first one was already at the top of the chain and tipped, spilling out its viscous liquid where once, no doubt, there was a large vessel. The odor became more pungent, with its sweetish base of grain rotting in the bowels of the earth, with its disturbing, wild savor of fermentation. The subterranean mud from a fresh bucket was already decanting itself over its tilting rim…. As if suddenly roused from sleep, a man rushed into the corridor to switch off the current.

  THERE WAS AN ABUNDANCE OF LIGHT, almost too much for eyes accustomed to the fog; an abundance of sparkling sky; an abundance of damp, glistening watercolor tones. The meadow that the river had gradually uncovered as it receded looked like a broad russet-and-yellow pelt, all ruffled, drying in the sun.

  She perceived this surge of light with the sensibility of an invalid. Each ray of sun, each new color was simultaneously a joy and a torture. One day she told herself she must dig the ground in the narrow bed beneath the windows and plant the first flowers. Her heart stood still: she had a vision of herself the previous autumn on a fine September evening, pulling up the dead stalks at that same spot…. On another occasion, returning late from the Caravanserai, she went down as far as the little expanse of water at the bottom of the meadow. The moon was shining on it and in the distance the tiny pond looked as if it were frozen. She went up to it and touched the surface with the sole of her shoe. Lazy rings rippled across the moons liquid gold. As on that unimaginable Christmas night when they had broken the ice and rescued the fish …

  Each evening was imperceptibly gaining a few more moments of light. And that evening it was particularly noticeable, for a narrow ray of coppery sunlight came streaming in obliquely at the kitchen win dow; from now on it was going to return, less unexpectedly and a little wider, each day.

  It was by this already springlike light that she noticed a fine white film on the brown flowers of the infusion. She emptied it automatically on returning from the bathroom; went into the bedroom and froze, stunned. The bedroom, too, was bathed in light and had nothing nocturnal about it. And yet he could come in from one minute to the next!

  She quickly drew the curtains (they were too narrow and always left a gap), threw some fragments of wood into the stove (they had stopped having fires more than a week before), and decided to put a lamp on her bedside table, the heavy lamp with the silk shade that generally stood on the shelves. Once switched on, it reduced the brilliance of the sun that was tangled in the branches of the willows and seemed determined not to set….

  It was one of those clumsy and vague gestures that are made in the act of love. A hand suddenly forgetting how to move in the real world. She felt this hand, these cool, gentle fingers, touching her shoulder, folding round her breast….

  Then the hand flitted away, describing a hesitant circle, unnecessarily broad (was he trying to move the lampshade that was too big, too close; to switch off the light?). With her eyes closed she sensed the movement and a second later came the noise. The start of the noise …

  What happened was so swift and so irremediable that several hours later and even some days later she went on living in that instant just before the noise. She would come to the Caravanserai, meet the residents, and listen to them, but in the innermost part of herself the same scene continued to unfold; it could not end, once it ended life would have become impossible.

  … From beneath her closed eyelids she was aware of a hand flitting about, as clumsy as a nocturnal bird obliged to fly in broad daylight. Feeling its way in the void, the hand knocked against the lampshade…. The start of the noise came from the grinding of the lamp’s china base against the wood of the little bedside table. Through her eyelashes she sensed the beginnings of a fall. Her reflex—china, breakage, cut hand, blood—forestalled all thought. She stretched out her arm. Realized immediately. Froze. The lamp fell. He tore himself away from this woman’s body that had suddenly come to life, hurled himself from the room.

  An elderly resident was talking to her about how the days were warm now but the nights still chilly. She agreed, echoing the trivial remarks made to her, but her own life was condensed into the vision of those few gestures: a hand reaches out aimlessly into the half light; a lampshade tilts; an arm is flung out; freezes….

  And the scene explodes under the violent lighting of horror: a youth mired in a woman’s groin. A mother and her son

  HER MIND’S EYE REMAINED IMPRISONED in that room, in the “endless repetition of a suspended gesture. And also in that terrifying reflection in the mirror: a woman lying on her back, her knees apart, her belly offered, one arm outstretched, petrified.

  And when she glanced outside, the flood tide of spring blinded her with its headlong joy. Everything in the world was changing before one’s eyes—the trees, still bare the day before, became covered with the bluish veil of the first leaves; the tall stem of a wild plant thrust up toward the sun between the planks of the front steps; people emerged from their snug dens at the Caravanserai as if at a prearranged signal. The throng of them oppressed her. They were incredibly numerous and noisy, full of familiarity and a coarse appetite for life. Their remarks (she had the impression that they always shouted when they addressed one another) left her perplexed. In the library hall one day they were commenting enthusiastically on the announcement that the bridge would be rebuilt. They acclaimed the new bridge as if a new era in their lives were promised. “A direct road link with Paris!” bellowed an old army officer who went to Paris once a year. They were also rubbing their hands over the decision of the authorities to “clear the scrub from both banks.” She was stunned to realize that by scrub they meant the woodland behind the Caravanserai. She intervened, trying to say that the trees there, even those that were too old or stunted, had a magic on icy mornings, or at night, covered in hoarfrost…. But her words made no impact, as if spoken in a totally different conversation.

  The days had become so warm that the residents often left their windows open, which was how, one day when she was walking around the building, she involuntarily overheard a remark. Without difficulty she recognized the voice of the nurse; not her usual voice, however, she sounded almost gleeful.

  “And this shawl,” she was saying. “She presents it to me like a queen giving it to her servant. A lot of use it’ll be to me in this hot weather, that’s for
sure….”

  Another voice, that of the director, was acquiescing less distinctly…. Olga quickened her step for fear of being seen; dumbfounded and appalled, with an unconscious murmur on her lips: “But it’s not true! I gave her that shawl in the depths of winter….” Then she calmed down, recalling the nurse’s animated and excited voice, and told herself that, strangely enough, people can readily derive immediate and much more varied satisfaction from malice and evil than from good….

  Some days later as she closed the library door she heard a hissing cry at the end of the corridor: “S-s-shlim! S-s-shlim!”

  Everything blinded her, numbed her, jostled her in this world of light and noise. Numbing too was the opinion of the “doctor-just-between-ourselves” whom she met one day in the town. He spoke boldly, smiling and staring at her without concealing his curiosity. According to him (“in the first place” he said, crooking his little finger) her son’s condition was not that serious; furthermore, all French doctors (he crooked the fourth finger) were scaremongers; but, above all (the middle finger and an emphatic smile), one must not lose one’s joie de vivre. His tone astonished her. She glimpsed a fleeting meaning in these encouraging words. He was dressed with an elegance that struck her as aggressive and almost deranged in this modest street (his bow tie, the tight-fitting suit over a squat body, his pointed black shoes). But everything seemed aggressive and strange to her now in this renewed life. And, after all, he did have a habit of joking, even when operating.

  Her son changed greatly. His existence as a self-effacing adolescent was transformed into a conspicuous absence, a manifest state of siege, which she would not have dared to break in any case…. One evening he was in the kitchen when she came home from the Caravanserai. In the kitchen … He must have known what that signified for the two of them. He heard her footfall on the front steps and made such a frenzied headlong dash to his room, flew down the long corridor with such desperate speed, that in the movement of air created by his flight she seemed to sense a breath from the deep abyss he carried within him.

  THIS ABYSS OPENED UP in the middle of a hot day in May, almost like high summer….

  Even the first days of May were incredible. The month arrived suddenly, while she felt she was still in February or, at most, March; it was burning hot and the residents of the Caravanserai, who only the day before had been speaking of an unprecedented winter, now began quoting from the newspapers that promised “an early, scorching summer. …”

  More incredible still was the obsessive, tortured watch she found herself keeping behind the branches of the willow trees, near the ruined bridge. There she waited, her eyes bruised by what she saw through the swaying branches. On one of the steel girders, several yards from the bank, stood three young bodies in bathing suits. One by one they plunged into the water, diving in among concrete blocks bristling with their rusty armature…. She recognized the figure of her son by the violent aura of fragility that emanated from this very pale, slim body, so different from the other two—sturdy, reddened by the sun, with rather short, curved legs, bodies that already prefigured ordinary, male stockiness. When he swayed slightly on the beam before diving he looked like a tall plaster statue, tilting dangerously and falling. “He’s the most handsome!” clamored the voice within her that she could no longer control. At that moment she saw him heaving himself up onto a higher girder. His companions seemed to be hesitating, then deciding against. He stood all alone, above their heads. She saw his face, indifferent and almost sad; his arms held behind him, like a birds wings; and suddenly his knee, disproportionately swollen, shining in the harsh light, like a ball of ivory. Without thinking she waved her hand, on the brink of calling to him….

  But her cry froze on her lips. On the bank, near the half ruined pillar, stood a group of very young girls who were going through a complete performance, switching from squeals of admiration after a dive to somewhat disdainful indifference—which was even more provocative to the three divers.

  He pushed off from the girder, bending his knees briefly, turned a somersault in the air, split the waters, and vanished into darkness— she had screwed up her eyelids tight. The young female audience applauded when they saw him surfacing. He did not so much as glance at them and went to climb up the derelict shell once more. This time he climbed a little bit higher, standing with his feet on a narrow ledge. The mood in the small group changed to one that children display spontaneously when a game becomes too dangerous. There were a few cries of merriment, but it was clearly put on; then they exchanged uneasy looks, wrongfooted, as they watched his climb, his stillness before the plunge, his flight….

  When he reappeared on the surface their voices were almost frightened and discordant, as if they had discovered the existence of a secret, insane reason behind his courage.

  He climbed up once more, swayed for a moment on the top girder (one of the girls shouted out a shrill “No!” and sobbed), then regained his balance, opened his arms, flew.

  She opened her eyes, became aware of the twigs brushing against her face, the sun causing the smell of hot mud to hover above the glittering water. Her son was alone down there, sitting on a concrete slab. Already dressed, he was lacing up his shoes (that pair he had dreamed of wearing when spring came …). The little group of colorful dresses and his two companions were far away. They were walking along the bank: the boys throwing stones, trying to skim them over the water; their girlfriends shouting as they counted, arguing. Moods change quickly when you’re young, observed a voice within her head that she was not listening to…. He smoothed down his hair, tucked his shirt into his trousers, threw a glance in the direction of the young people as they walked away, then set off toward the Caravanserai…. She did not stir, both hoping and fearing that he might turn and see her and that then by magic, all would be resolved and filled with light, would become simple, like the swaying of these long leaves in front of her eyelashes…. But he walked on, his head bowed, without looking behind him. He limped; he seemed used to walking like this.

  That night she saw his silhouette once more standing up on the steel shelf before diving. At this stage she found the recollection still heart-stopping but bearable; beneath his fine skin she thought she could detect the pulsing of his heart. He hurled himself from the girder, flew, and in that instant his body became perfect—a shaft of light amid the blackened concrete and the rust….

  One by one she pictured the faces of the adolescent girls who had egged on the divers. Those long plunges into a rectangle of water surrounded by ironwork were for the benefit of one of them. (And it was she, perhaps, who had let out a hysterical cry.) Or perhaps it was for the one who, on the contrary, displayed the most complete indifference to the spectacle. The caprices of these youthful attractions are always unpredictable. With all its sentimental banality, this thought suddenly made her feel better, releasing the tension in her body which, since the scene on the riverbank, had been reduced to a stifling, clammy spasm. “Yes, it’s the age he’s at,” she thought, buoyed along by this inner relaxation. “His age and the fine spring weather.” She recalled the brightly colored dresses and the naive, innocent cut of them, the stroll beside the water…. And nature’s sweet daily progress toward the joy and idleness of summer. Her son was simply being drawn into the wholly seasonal tide of first loves, and late sunsets. Important too, was the cheerful assurance the doctor-just-between-ourselves had given her: everything was not all that serious. A momentary vision flashed before her eyes, the ghost of a dream— one of those little dresses walking beside the painfully recognizable figure of her son….

  With a start she broke free from this reverie, got up, and switched on the lamp whose base had been stuck together again with strips of paper. The lamp. The bed. The dark, cold stove. The curtains with the narrow strip of night. And in her mind’s eye that couple, two young people in love on a summer’s evening … The discord was agonizing. All that had happened in that room during the winter nights was accepted and acceptable, par
donable and pardoned on this one condition: that afterward there would be nothing, a void, a bottomless nothingness … death. But now this springtime, the summer evening stroll she had pictured, that seemed so likely; this puppy love so stupidly natural and legitimate; all this naive and sunny healthiness of life was banishing their winter into the realms of the unspeakable. In his eyes, after all, what could this room be to him now?

  Her thoughts flitted among a thousand things, seeking the solace of a memory, the ghost of a day; but the summer sun hounded her, hounded her on the riverbank, toward sounds, toward voices. “How easy it is,” she said to herself with sudden bitterness. “A little cotton print dress, a little coquetry, and presto, he’s ready to do anything for you….” She stopped herself, this jealousy seemed too absurd. And, above all: “No, no, he didn’t give a hoot for any of their dresses…. He was diving to … to …”

  To kill himself… She could not check the racing of her thoughts—accurate, trivial, serious, futile, essential…. She needed to hit upon some idea that was logical and perfectly obvious; one that would offer her a respite. “Wait, wait. The bridge. Yes, the bridge … Well, the bridge was not as high as all that. The topmost girder was probably only six feet above the water….”

  Then a surprising visual change took place. The giddy height she had observed in terror during those suicidal dives subsided in her memory, and was now scarcely as tall as a human figure. She no longer knew if she had really seen that girder poised, as it had seemed to her, high against the sky. Indeed, she was now sure that it had all been almost harmless sport, a few perfectly safe dives. She remembered the young spectators on the bank. She thought she could clearly see one of them holding hands with her son and coming back to the Caravanserai with him….