Now he watches the bottom of the hill, less than half a kilometer off. The bustle isn’t great. The engineer has gone out along the locomotive—an engine manufactured at the beginning of the Second Soviet Union—but he has gone down the small steps and, after having walked about twenty meters in the grass, he has lain down on the ground. And there, he has clearly already fallen asleep or passed out.
Then the cars’ doors had opened one by one.
Soldiers had come out of the second and third cars. Foot soldiers in rags, walking and gesturing like drunk or sick men. Kronauer counted four. After taking several staggering steps, they leaned against the wood door, their heads lolling or turned toward the clouds. Barely moving, not talking. Then they passed around a cigarette. Once the tobacco was used up, three of the men dragged themselves back to their respective cars. The fourth went off to satisfy his natural urge. He’s descended about twenty meters down the path into a huge thicket of sage. The growth swallowed him up completely. He hasn’t reappeared since.
It seems like the convoy has come to a halt in front of the ruins of the Red Star, as if it was an important railroad stop or even a station where passengers had planned to embark or debark. The locomotive motor has been switched off, and nothing suggests that the conductor will start it again anytime soon.
—Maybe they’re out of fuel, Ilyushenko suggests.
• Ilyushenko, Kronauer, and Vassilissa Marachvili composed a harmonious trio, bound together by durable ties that felt much like old, unbreakable sentiments of camaraderie. But when they came into the empty lands together for a communal march toward death, they had only known each other for a few days. More specifically, Kronauer was a new figure to Ilyushenko and Vassilissa Marachvili. Given the circumstances of the Orbise’s fall, forty-eight hours was certainly as good as a year, and several days a full decade. When they snuck under the barbed-wire fence of no return, it was as if they had lived together a long time and shared everything—joys and regrets, beliefs, disillusionments, and fights for egalitarianism. The Orbise’s last redoubts had been taken by the enemy and they had ended up together in a small rearguard formation taking in survivors who still wanted to fight. Unfortunately, their commander had gone crazy and, after a week of hiding, the formation was no longer what they had hoped it would be when they had joined it. Their group was no longer the germ of a future resistance army, but rather an assortment of disoriented deserters, driven toward nothingness by a suicidal visionary. The commander apparently wanted to recapture the Orbise by calling on demonic, alien, and kamikaze forces. They moved around the capital’s periphery without any strategy, submitting to his senseless but iron will. The commander gave absurd orders, sent men on suicide bombings where there were no victims aside from civilians and themselves. When he pointed his gun at a recalcitrant man, rebels disarmed him and then shot him before heading off in all directions. Kronauer, Vassilissa Marachvili, and Ilyushenko hadn’t shirked when they had to fire at their leader, but after doing justice, they said good-bye to their futures and went toward the irradiated no-man’s-lands, the empty territories, far from enemies and far from any hope.
• Ilyushenko. A tanned fortysomething, faithful like us to the party since his adolescence, and also enthusiastic enough during his membership in the Komsomol to have a crest with a sickle, a hammer, and a rifle and rising sun in the background tattooed on his neck. The crest had been burned into his skin by an artist no doubt equally as enthusiastic, but who hadn’t mastered his art, so that the drawing didn’t seem to refer to the culture of the proletarian revolution—it looked like a tangled mess on which a sort of spider sat. Ilyushenko had been forced to carry this ruined image upon his neck, but he hid it under his shirt collar or a scarf. In an encyclopedia of capitalist universes, he had seen reproductions of punk tattoos with tarantulas and repulsive webs and, even though these were images from a world destroyed two hundred years earlier, he didn’t want to be mistaken for having nostalgia for neo-fascist nihilism. He was a man of average height, with robust muscles, who didn’t like idle talk and knew how to fight. He had formerly been a truck driver, then he had been a garbage collector, then, when the Orbise’s future had taken a bad turn, he had fought for three years with the famous Ninth Division, first as a mechanic and then as a member of the tank crew and now, as the commune of the Orbise had given up the ghost, he was in old rags and depressed, thereby resembling everyone else in that part of the world and even elsewhere.
—Give me the binoculars, Kronauer demanded and held out his hand.
The binoculars had been taken from the commander after the discomfiting firing-squad episode. He’d had to scrub the glass to get rid of the organic debris—a yellowish chunk, some dried blood.
Now Kronauer looked through the lenses and he felt on his nose the thing bringing back so many memories of wounded bodies and military insanity. In the foreground, the convoy had taken on troubling colors: camouflage green, dusty brown, dark rust. The focus knob had been damaged and he couldn’t zoom in on any faces—besides, there weren’t any faces visible right then. Once again, no bodies were visible. The ones who were lying or sitting amid the great ogronts and kvoinas hadn’t gotten up. The others didn’t even lift their heads in the doorframes. He could make out a pair of legs in the shadow of a car, but that was it.
—If they don’t have diesel fuel, I wonder where they’re going to find more, Ilyushenko said, kneeling next to Kronauer. I’d be surprised if there was any left in the sovkhoz.
By Kronauer’s right leg, the dying woman moaned.
Around the train the plants rippled once again, the degenerate rye, and then became calm. A clump of whitish plumes was still moving around by itself, as if it had a life of its own. Some Jeanne-of-the-Communists.
—Eh, Kronauer said. Who knows what’s going on in their heads.
Ilyushenko motioned uncomprehendingly. He shook his head, sat on the ground, and didn’t pay any more attention to what was happening down below.
• They didn’t move for a while, invisible within their hideaway of long leaves and stalks, which had started turning yellow and even black in the wake of the first night frosts. About fifteen meters off, a mass of plants spiced the air. Vornies-cinq-misères, Kronauer thought. Mixed with bouralayans, caincers. A bit closer there were mint-scented sarviettes.
The dying woman was reinvigorated by these scents, got up on her elbow, and touched Kronauer’s calf.
—Did they get out of the train? she asked.
Vassilissa Marachvili was a brave girl and although her friends had taken turns carrying her on their backs for more than a week, they had never felt like they were weighed down by a weakling. She was impervious to pain and she accepted adversity gracefully. When they had to eliminate their crazy commander, for example, she didn’t bat an eye as she joined the firing squad. And when they’d entered the world that nuclear accidents had made unlivable for ten millennia to come, she had put on a brave face despite the bleak prospect. Nobody had heard her prophesying any horrors that might await them. And later on, when radiation’s earliest ravages had started to do her in, she hadn’t complained. On the contrary, she had laughed with them, with Kronauer and Ilyushenko, once it was clear that all three of them were coming apart, physically and mentally, and that they were headed toward their ends. Her two comrades admired her refusal to consider everything a tragedy, even the defeat, even their impending doom, and they felt a mute but great tenderness for her. She was naturally happy; she had lived that way for thirty years—obstinate but also wryly detached—no matter the circumstances. After high school, she had worked at a brasserie in the capital, and then joined a gang of robbers, then enlisted in a She-Wolves regiment battling for the Orbise’s survival. And now she was sick; she was vomiting blood and didn’t have any more strength.
Kronauer set aside the binoculars and rubbed her hand, her wrist.
—Every so often one of them comes out, he said. They’ll make their way through the plants to do their bu
siness. Sometimes I’ll see one come back. Sometimes they stay in the plants. I can’t really tell what they’re doing.
—Who are they? Vassilissa Marachvili asked.
—I’m not sure, said Kronauer.
—There’s a locomotive and four cars, Ilyushenko said. They’re deportees or soldiers. Or a few of both. For now, there’s almost nobody to be seen. They’re waiting.
The dying woman slumped back down. She hadn’t opened her eyes.
—Why? she asked.
—Why are they still waiting? Kronauer asked.
—Yes, said Vassilissa. Why are they waiting to go out, if they’ve opened the doors?
—I don’t know, Kronauer said. It’s odd.
—Maybe I’m sleeping and I’m dreaming, the dying woman mused.
—Yes, said Kronauer wearily.
He had already heard her babbling deliriously, and he suspected she was headed in that direction again, toward this delirium, these words coming out of her fever or out of nowhere.
—Yes, Vassilissa Marachvili whispered. Or maybe they’re the ones sleeping and we’re seeing their dream.
A new brume of aromatic herbs wafted through.
—That might explain it, said Ilyushenko sympathetically.
—Eh, Kronauer said.
—Maybe what we’re seeing is their dream, Vassilissa Marachvili insisted.
—You think so? Ilyushenko said.
—Yes, said Vassilissa Marachvili. Maybe we’re already dead, all three of us, and what we’re seeing is their dream.
Then she was quiet, and so were they.
• Sky. Silence. Rippling plants. Whispering plants. Rustling plants. Murmuring mauvegarde, chugda, marche-sept-lieues, epernielle, old-captives, saquebrille, lucemingot, quick-bleeds, Saint-Valiyans, Valiyan-harelips, sottefraise, iglitsa. Rasping odilie-des-foins, grand-odilie, chauvegrille, or calvegrillette. Uniformly sighing prance-the-ruins. The plants were of many colors, and each one even had its own way of bending under the wind or twisting around. Some resisted. Others slumped gracefully and waited a good while after the gust before returning to their original position. Plants whispering in their passive movements, in their resistance.
Time flowed.
Time took its time flowing, but it flowed.
• Vassilissa Marachvili’s state worsened around four in the afternoon. Her hands convulsed, her ruined face was covered with droplets, the skin on her protruding cheekbones had turned pale. She couldn’t muster the energy to open her eyes anymore. On her chin were flakes of dried blood. Fetid breath came from her half-open mouth. She was no longer speaking intelligibly.
Kroner flicked away a fly that had landed close to the dying woman’s lips. He was watching over Vassilissa Marachvili, with his sleeve he dabbed at Vassilissa Marachvili’s forehead to get rid of this deathly dew that was seeping out, with his fingertips he wiped under Vassilissa Marachvili’s eyes, at the roots of her hair, around her huge and downy ears. He remembered what had bound them together these last few weeks, an intense friendship murky enough to turn almost immediately into a romantic adventure or, rather, a strong and discreet alliance among the three of them, augmented by bravery, self-sacrifice, and tenderness. On a physical or sexual level, the love Kronauer and Ilyushenko had for Vassilissa Marachvili hadn’t come to anything. She seemed to share her love between them both with the clear but unspoken desire that neither of them have a chiefly sexual relationship with her. All three of them knew that if a couple formed in their small group, things would only get worse.
And so this danger had gone away all by itself, quickly and easily considering their shared deterioration and exhaustion. They had ended up living like brothers and sisters, without fearing intimacy and touching, without fearing a whiff of incest or romance.
He reached for her hands and rubbed them, taking care not to hurt her. Her hand was dirty, clammy, and unusually hot.
—She needs water, Ilyushenko said.
—I don’t have any more, Kronauer said, tilting his head toward the bottle that had been his flask for the past few days.
—Me neither, said Ilyushenko. We drank it all when we got here.
—I thought we’d have found some in the sovkhoz, Kronauer said regretfully.
—We’ve been stupid, said Ilyushenko.
—Yes, we have, Kronauer confirmed.
• Silence.
Immense sky.
Plants. Immense expanse of plants and, along the horizon, to the east, the forest’s edge. Above the trees, its origin an unknown distance away, was thin gray smoke. It rose straight up and then dissolved into a cloud.
—We could go to them, Kronauer suggested.
—Who are you talking about? asked Ilyushenko.
—The men on the train, Kronauer said. They probably have water.
—They’re soldiers, said Ilyushenko.
—We could tell them there’s a wounded woman, maybe they’ll fill a bottle for us.
—We don’t even know which faction they belong to, Ilyushenko said. What do they care about a wounded woman? Instead of giving us water, they could shoot us.
—Doubt it, Kronauer said. They’re probably not enemies.
—Who knows. They’re probably counterrevolutionaries.
—Or crazies.
—That, too. Crazies. And besides, women, they probably haven’t seen any in a while. Better not tell them there’s one around here.
• Silence. Sky. It was nearly five in the afternoon. The clouds had thinned, but were no longer blinding. Behind them, the sun flung pale rays. It was already October. The day wouldn’t last much longer.
—The smoke over there, did you see it? Kronauer asked.
He pointed toward the faint trail above the trees.
Ilyushenko got up a little to see which way he was pointing.
—A village, he hazarded. Or a fire burning on its own.
—More likely a village, Kronauer said.
—It’s pretty far off, said Ilyushenko.
—I could make it to the forest before nightfall, Kronauer said.
—You’d have to walk fast, Ilyushenko remarked.
—Then, tomorrow morning, I’d go look for help in the village, Kronauer said.
Ilyushenko shrugged.
—Once you’re in the woods, you won’t have anything to point the way. You could get lost, he said.
—I’m not afraid of going into the forest, Kronauer lied. I’ll manage.
—That’s the beginning of the taiga, Ilyushenko countered. It might not be too thick for the first few kilometers, but then it stretches out in all directions. There’s only one chance in ten that you’ll get to a village.
—Have to take the risk, Kronauer said. There’s no other solution.
—We could wait for the convoy to start again, Ilyushenko suggested.
—Sure, and what happens if it doesn’t?
The dying woman let out a groan. She wanted to say something. Kronauer leaned over her, as if to place a kiss on her lips. He looked at her mouth carefully. Sounds came out. He didn’t understand anything.
He kissed her forehead, put out his hand to wipe the damp away once again. His nostrils took in the scent of her deterioration, under his palm he felt the unusual heat of her face.
—Vassia, he whispered. Don’t be afraid. The soldiers haven’t seen us. We’re safe in the plants. I’m going to find water. It’ll get better.
A gust of wind interrupted him. The plants bent, trembled. The wind passed over Vassilissa Marachvili, it calmed Vassilissa Marachvili a little, it caressed Vassilissa Marachvili, it helped her to breathe.
—There’s a village, Kronauer said. I’m going over there. I’ll come back with water.
Vassilissa Marachvili wasn’t trying to talk anymore. She seemed unconscious.
For a good fifteen minutes, Kronauer stayed on his knees by her. He held her hand, he watched her face, which was a beautiful and energetic young girl’s and now dying. Remnants of blood soiled her lips
, and cracks had appeared on her cheeks.
It was hard for him to leave her. The three of them all considered themselves already dead, but he feared the worst for her.
• Ilyushenko had picked up the binoculars. He looked at the railroad tracks once again. He stayed half upright for a couple of minutes, his head hidden under a strong bunch of fausse-malmequaire.
—They’re settling down for the night, he finally said. All the cars are open. I can see about twenty of them. Soldiers, prisoners. There’s six or seven of them exploring the ruins of the Red Star. Probably looking for water or something to burn. They’re going to make a campfire.
—All right, well, I’ll go now, Kronauer said.
—Be careful, Ilyushenko said. They’ve positioned a watchman on one of the car roofs. Walk in the valley for now. That way, if he sees you, you’ll be too far away for him to gun you down.
—Why would they want to gun me down? Kronauer asked.
—They’re soldiers, Ilyushenko said. They have to obey the orders they’re given. They know that nobody normal will be in the area. They’ve likely been told to shoot at enemies and deserters.
—Have to admit that makes sense, Kronauer said. If we still had our guns, we’d do the same.
• After having crossed the valley, Kronauer kept a quick pace toward the forest and, although exhaustion was turning his legs to jelly, he didn’t relent. At this point the landscape behind him had changed. The unmoving convoy and the sovkhoz were no longer visible. Nor was the hill on which Ilyushenko and Vassilissa Marachvili were hiding. Aside from the distant black line marking the beginning of the forest, there were no points of reference. The sun had disappeared, and in any case Kronauer didn’t know how to read the sky like a map, he’d never been raised like a farmer or a trapper.
Radiant Terminus Page 2
