Radiant Terminus

by Antoine Volodine

  It was beautiful out, but the sunlight was barely warm. Around the train hung a strong stench of diesel fuel. The conductor hadn’t turned off the engine yet. He walked up the small steps and, without lifting the protective panels, he listened to the rumble in satisfaction. Then he went back into the cabin and shut it off. Then silence reigned over the countryside, the cloud of diesel fuel dissipated, and everyone took in the scents of wilted foxgloves, icy earth, and gravel.

  Ilyushenko helped unload some wood for the evening’s campfire. Then he stretched his legs by walking along the rails, behind the train. Now that he fit in the collective, he could understand its functioning more clearly. There were thirty-two people there, who at first had been split up into two distinct groups, the prisoners and the soldiers, and then they had lost their original character and completely set aside their status within the convoy. They all thought about one thing: getting to a camp quickly, harshly regimented or not, to be together forever behind barbed wire.

  After an exchange of ideas with his travel companions, Ilyushenko knew a little more about this peregrination he was part of. This search on the rails for a concentration haven had already lasted months, if not some incalculable bardic time. The diesel tractor never broke, fuel supply problems never cropped up, and, as in a nightmare where everything repeated endlessly, the convoy slowly devoured kilometers, week after week, shaking and jolting and roughing up its human cargo day and night. Stops made the journey less horribly monotonous, moments of relaxation, usually Saturday nights. The tradition had been established to halt the train and organize an all-nighter around the fire. It was a chance to close ranks, reestablish discipline when it had slackened, and, if the captain decided it was necessary, to remind everyone of the indestructible ideological foundations undergirding the trip, our terminal trip to the camp. The men listened obediently to the instructions and the discourses, and they expressed their intent to put them into action as best as possible. But above all they waited for the end of the evening, the performance that groups of them in turn improvised after nightfall, when the flames burnished and oiled faces. The time did come when those who had the talent declaimed epic chants, invented poetic or comedic monologues, or recited propaganda texts that had stuck with them in their earlier life, or parts of communist, post-exotic, or feminist romånces. The audience accompanied them by approving or voicing speeches, as we did in the old days during Korean pansori performances, when Korea still existed and we still believed in beauty, the future, and the impossibility of death.

  • After the meticulously egalitarian distribution of pemmican flakes from his block, Ilyushenko rose in notoriety and also in popularity. Umrug Batyushin had handed over the captainship to a prisoner named Pedron Dardaf, who immediately took on his hierarchal responsibilities, sent out sentries to increase the security perimeter to the cairns behind which prospective attackers could have hidden, and went to see Ilyushenko to say that he would most likely succeed him the next week.

  —Eh, Ilyushenko said.

  —Everyone knows you’d be a good captain, Pedron Dardaf said.

  —Why would they think that? Ilyushenko asked.

  —Because you distribute food impartially, and also because you took good care of your daughter, Pedron Dardaf said.

  —That wasn’t my daughter, Ilyushenko responded. That was Vassilissa Marachvili.

  —Was she your wife?

  Solovyei, Ilyushenko thought immediately. Physically and socially, Pedron Dardaf didn’t resemble the president of the kolkhoz, but he seemed to have the same incestuous confusion between girl-daughter and woman-wife. This sensation of déjà vu, of having both seen and heard it before, rather than fading away like an insubstantial veil, overwhelmed Ilyushenko. The veil of light weighed on him like lead. This Solovyei slipped inside me and he’s following me, he thought. He left a trace of himself in me right when I lost consciousness in the little Red Star reactor. He focused on hiding his unease from the other man. He suddenly had the suspicion that he was being observed from within by Solovyei. Then he revolted against such a wholly irrational intuition. What was this situation with Solovyei, he wondered. I shouldn’t stray that way. I shouldn’t believe that. Marxism-Leninism forbids it. That’s just an idiot’s nonsense.

  He forced himself to answer Pedron Dardaf. He wanted to hear the words come out of his mouth, rather than confide his thoughts to an interior voice.

  —Sure, he said, Not my daughter. My wife.

  —For me, wife or daughter, it doesn’t matter, the new captain said in a glum voice.

  Ilyushenko peered into Pedron Dardaf’s eyes. He couldn’t make out any golden streaks, any yellow leer like a bird of prey or a magician, and yet Pedron Dardaf had repeated, word for word, the strange sentence that Solovyei had pronounced in the nuclear reactor room. It can’t be a coincidence, he thought with a twinge in his heart. The captain’s reusing those words because they’re dictated by Solovyei. Maybe, once people left the Red Star sovkhoz, we all became bodies inhabited by Solovyei. Who knows whether this magic muzhik hasn’t taken advantage of us being dead, and if we aren’t all puppets within a theater where the manager, the actors, and the audience are all one and the same person.

  But no, he thought. Inhabited bodies, a tiny hermetic theater. Someone who had fun with corpses, who manipulated corpses to see what happened with them. Those things that couldn’t ever exist.

  Ilyushenko rubbed his hand on his neck, over his tattoos. He knew right to the millimeter where exactly the sickle, the hammer, and the unfortunate frieze of submachine guns massacring the image were. He acted like he was wiping away some sweat, but he was actually trying to reassure himself with these simple and solid symbols. He hung onto these familiar lifelines so as not to drown in the mysterious darknesses of the world. Workers, countrymen, and soldiers united so that humanity could escape the abyss. That’s concrete, he thought. That’s not vague imaginings, Solovyei’s dreams, or something else entirely.

  Fortunately there was still Marxism-Leninism, he thought. Otherwise we’d be in a filthy, shitty nightmare. Who knew if we’d be able to differentiate between classes, and even between the living, the dead, and even the dogs or that kind of thing.

  • When night fell, everybody gathered around the fire, except for the sentries keeping the group safe.

  Two detainees and a soldier had decided to perform that evening. The soldier had a harmonica that had suffered considerable damage, but he was able to get three chords out of it, which, according to the other performers, would be enough to keep the orchestral background going until midnight. The soldier was named Idfuk Sobibian. The detainees bore the names of Matthias Boyol and Schliffko Armanadji. Before being brought into the convoy they were in a transit camp for bad elements and rightists. Their camp had been attacked by the enemy and they had escaped the massacre by sheer miracle. Matthias Boyol was a remarkable storyteller, had belonged to a theatrical troupe, had perfect enunciation, and, when he declaimed particular passages while singing, sang perfectly. Schliffko Armanadji willingly ended up singing the bass notes and beginning the harmonics that would accompany the solo.

  —We’ll perform a tragicomic threnody for you, Matthias Boyol announced.

  For a minute, there was just the silence of wood burning, with an old plank’s hissing groan, a quick spluttering, some crackling, and then Idfuk Sobibian began to blow out and inhale through his harmonica. The chords were melancholy and the musician kept repeating them in the same order. Schliffko Armanadji waited for Matthias Boyol to begin speaking before accompanying him with a throat song. This went on for the first few minutes.

  Then Matthias Boyol, who had stood up, pronounced the beginning of his monologue.

  He turned toward the fire and said:

  —The ode to the camps unfurls on the tongue, no matter the tongue, no matter the time of day or night, and no matter the moment of crossing or collapse.

  We listened to him while breathing as quietly as possible.

&n
bsp; The night was thick.

  The night was cold and thick.

  —No matter the moment of death, of crossing death, or collapse of death, Matthias Boyol concluded. The ode to the camps unfurls.

  Schliffko Armanadji had begun to emit a throat song. From time to time he punctuated it with a breath that ended on a deep note, then he went on. The strange sounds coming out of his throat merged with the harmonica’s skeletal melody.

  —Nothing can replace the camp, Matthias Boyol continued, nothing is as necessary as the camp. Nobody can deny that the camp is the highest grade of dignity and organization that a society of free men and women can aspire to, or, at least, already sufficiently unfettered from their animal condition to endeavor to construct freedom, moral progress, and history. No matter what we say or assay, nothing will ever equal the camp, no collective architecture of the human species or its like will ever achieve the degree of coherence and perfection and tranquility compared to the prospect that the camp offers to those who live there and die there. Everyone knows that the camp doesn’t suddenly come out of nowhere. We must understand how it is the result of our long history, how it’s a final stage of the history that entire generations have made possible by their sacrifices. The camp doesn’t suddenly come out of nowhere, it ultimately comes once the animal darkness somewhere begins to brighten with someone’s earliest enthusiasms, and then when this dawn intensifies thanks to the generosity and the self-sacrifice of the majority. Then we are on the way. Touched by this light, the distant descendants of the pioneers finally begin to concretely form the camp, they skin their hands on barbed wire, they willingly deprive themselves of food and sleep to go more quickly and, finally, they build to the last detail the camp. But, even if we don’t keep in mind this aspect of capping a thousand years of construction, which gives the reality of the camp all its extraordinary and moving significance, we must recognize that nothing is more justified, whatever the point of view you hold, than for everyone to stay definitively and generally inside or outside the camp. Even the most obtuse philosophers now admit that cloistering oneself in the camp has become the most beautiful gesture of freedom that can be accomplished as a human female or a human male on this planet.

  Matthias Boyol fell silent. Schliffko Armanadji did so as well. Only the harmonica continued its monotonous musical setting, which, now that the discourse had broken off, seemed to be a musical setting for nothing.

  We thought of the camps.

  We all had in our heads images of camps.

  Once we are there, we thought, all shall be well.

  We had in our heads the vague hope of finally being welcomed forever within the camps.

  As long as we came before we were forced to live outside, in this rotten world, we thought.

  The fire had died down. Our captain took out a plank lying nearby and used it to poke at the heart of the fire, stirring up several sparks and glimmers. The fire started back up. Everyone pensively watched it blossom.

  Once again, Schliffko Armanadji began a throat song. The melody was harrowingly simple. Schliffko Armanadji’s voice wasn’t audibly feminine or masculine. It escaped all characterization of this sort. It was neither human nor alive. For two or three minutes, maybe more, the harmonica combined with Schliffko Armanadji’s strange vocalizations.

  The deep black, barely starry night.

  The fire, its flames flickering, its tar-tinged scent.

  The sparse ground. Beside us, screes. The idea that a mountainous landscape lay beyond.

  The echoes of the fire on the nearby outcrops.

  Reflections moving over our faces furrowed with exhaustion.

  Schliffko Armanadji’s metallic modulations.

  The harmonica. Three minor chords.

  Then Matthias Boyol started speaking again.

  —Nothing is more desirable, especially for someone born in the camp, than life in the camp. This isn’t a matter of scenery, or of air quality, or of the quality of adventures to experience before death. It’s only a question of a respectful contract between fate and oneself. There, everyone has an advantage that none of the preceding attempts at an ideal society had managed to achieve. Once everyone can claim a place in the camp and once nobody is ever refused entry or goes back out, the camp will become the only place in the world where fate deceives nobody, because it conforms concretely to what anyone can expect to await him or her.

  Without looking at us, Matthias Boyol sat back down and held his hands toward the flames.

  His accompanists were silent.

  For several minutes, Matthias Boyol warmed his hands by putting them near the flames, without expressing anything other than the wish to be less cold.

  Someone, from the depths of the night, asked him if that was all, if he had finished his discourse.

  —Yes, he said.

  Then he repeated in a less assured tone, as if asleep:

  —The ode to the camps unfurls on the tongue, no matter the tongue, no matter the time of day or night, and no matter the moment of crossing or collapse.

  • Matthias Boyol had been a comedian in an agitprop troupe. He had gone to spread the message on the front, in the factories, in the evacuation zones, there where simple newspaper articles or speeches broadcast on radio weren’t enough to convince the population that it was on its way to collective happiness, or, at the least, toward the end of its unhappiness. They were called the 343 troupe, and it comprised girls and boys loyal to the Orbise and deeply passionate about their theatrical activity. Unconcerned about the precarious conditions in which they mounted their performances, they always gave their best. They staged playlettes with themes that for the most part had to do partly with defeat, hell on earth, the end of humanity, and partly with the most effective ways to transform defeat into resounding victory. Lines of dialogue and outrageously black situations resulted in a joyous atmosphere that was wonderfully optimistic, and the crowds that watched these farcical performances of the apocalypse were often swept by waves of laughter. They were fleeing from fatal radiation, their homeland had been wiped off the map, their sole prospect was a communal grave, but, in front of Matthias Boyol and his comrades, they burst out laughing.

  The troupe had been authorized by the capital’s authorities, however the local branches of the party didn’t particularly appreciate his humor, and they perceived ulterior and counterrevolutionary motives. After two trimesters of activity in tent cities where the refugees awaited their departure for elsewhere, the authorities had asked the troupe to dissolve itself. Matthias Boyol, who was 343’s founder, and invested body and soul in his theatrical work, had taken this request as a demand from uncultured brutes, but also and especially as a personal disaster. And, indeed, from there he had lost control a bit, socially and intellectually speaking. The members of his small group had scattered and were no longer in touch, but he was determined to keep the 343 troupe going against all odds, paying no heed to the hostility he had aroused in the official organs. He wandered on the periphery by dormitories or in the seemingly infinite avenues edged with army tents, and he kept on giving performances, even impromptu ones for just one person. His repertory was limited to madmen’s monologues and post-exotic meditations in free verse. He blended in with the street singers and fortune tellers, but every so often he was stopped and reprimanded, as always happened with the bad elements. These interrogations exasperated him, the interviews with the corrections officials depressed him. Soon he foundered completely. He made several suicide attempts during his monologues. Then one of them was successful and he was taken to a neighborhood morgue run by Buddhists, pompously called Future for All. Unable to deal with the flood of corpses, the Buddhists were overwhelmed and let the dead take care of things themselves. If the Bardo Thödol was read somewhere, it was in a distant room, and Matthias Boyol didn’t hear anything. After several days of waiting in a jam-packed corridor, he was transferred. He found himself detained in a transit camp for rightists, self-harmers, suicides, and representatives
of the fourth stinking category. There was nothing for him to do but wait for a favorable opportunity. Once the camp was hit by an enemy attack that had razed the next city over with bombs, he didn’t wait and got in a convoy on its way to a better world, an ideal camp—for anywhere.

  13

  • Clack clack, clack-clack. The convoy moved forward slowly. Clack clack, clack-clack, clack clack, clack-clack. After wending through a mountainous area, the rails rediscovered the hilly monotony of the steppes. On the horizon, strips of birches and distant clumps of pines rose and fell. Sometimes the rails also crossed a terribly unwelcoming and black stretch of forest. For hours, the train advanced in a straight line, clamped between two compact rows of hundred-year-old trees. On the right and on the left for several meters was a grass that was still very green. Despite the autumn chill, it had retained an aggressive greenness. It made up a carpet of unusual thickness, so primeval as to be frightening. Immediately beyond that, the larches rose up. Ilyushenko looked at this image through the gap of the sliding door. The wall of trees was impenetrable. Ilyushenko didn’t feel the same repressed disgust for the taiga that his comrade Kronauer did, but, in the long run, this curtain seemed dreary, ill-suited to human life, and he shut his eyes to daydream. He only opened them again when the light had changed, whether night had fallen, or the convoy had finally left behind the botanical thicknesses.

  Without regard to the calendar that set the convoy’s regular Saturday stops, the conductor occasionally took the initiative to stop near hamlets or little abandoned kolkhozes. Most often they were units too small to have been given reactor cores. Their inhabitants had nonetheless fled for safer regions, or they had died and didn’t come forward. They opened the doors wide, a sentry climbed on the roof of the first car, the captain staggered by the rails, leaned on a wheel, and waited for his body to regain a bit of energy. The locomotive driver became invisible, likely plunged into a deep sleep after the strain of driving. Soldiers and detainees took hours to wake up, sometimes more than a night. When they had regained enough strength, they divided up responsibilities without planning, heading out to do their business or what served for such, meandering along the tracks. The ruins weren’t always unvisitable, and they began to look for wood to burn, for tobacco, for useful things. They sometimes found books, and those they brought to the captain. He exercised his inborn privilege as arbiter of ideology and decided, after a cursory look, whether they had to serve as kindling for fire or deserved to be added to the itinerant library in the fourth car. The captain sorted them wholly arbitrarily, guided by such considerations as the thickness and the quality of the paper rather than the literary value of the volume. And so burned, illuminating the night, brilliant post-exotic works such as Grasses and Golems by Manuela Draeger, We Are Twenty Years Old by Ellen Dawkes, Autopsy of a Korean Woman by the Petra Kim collective, and others.