Radiant Terminus

by Antoine Volodine

  Schulhoff scowled and asked for a cigarette. Hadzoböl Münzberg, the second conductor, gave him one and lit it. He had a heavy scout’s lighter from the Red Army that he’d found in a dead man’s pocket.

  The trembling steppes.

  The sun’s last rays.

  The rusty smell of the train wheels.

  The diesel engine that, despite being turned off, still stank of diesel fuel.

  A raptor’s shriek high above.

  A blast of almost icy wind, then a lull, then a second gust, then calm on the surrounding steppes.

  The smoke escaping from the lips of Schulhoff, Ilyushenko, Hadzoböl Münzberg, Umrug Batyushin, Noumak Ashariyev, and several other detainees and soldiers.

  A long moment of silence.

  • —We’re not leaving right away, Ilyushenko decided. We’ll bivouac here.

  As the captain responsible for everyone, he gave instructions to position sentries, prepare a fire, and take those who hadn’t survived out of the cars and take their bodies a respectable distance away. And so Pedron Dardaf, Babur Malone, and Douglas Flanagan were placed behind the pines, and the necessary incisions were made on their bodies to attract the vultures and hasten their sky burials.

  Then the interrogation resumed.

  New passengers had come out of their torpor, come down to the ballast, and come over to the spot to watch the performance in which Aldolay Schulhoff was starring. Now there was a little crowd in front of the locomotive. The men were mostly apathetic, but they got ready to hear what he had to say. Some were wallowing in the ditch and had their backs to Schulhoff and Ilyushenko, but most of them waited for the suicidal beggar to unburden himself of his story and conjure up images in their heads.

  Aldolay Schulhoff asked for another cigarette. He tasted the first puffs without closing his eyes, but with a dreamy air and without saying anything. Then he continued his story.

  • He described his arrival at the Levanidovo. The Radiant Terminus kolkhoz had seemed strange, but welcoming.

  —What did it look like? Ilyushenko asked.

  —I’d say it looked like a village from the Second Soviet Union, Schulhoff said. Small farmhouses throughout a tiny valley surrounded by a forest, a main road with the faux-classical style soviet building, a horrible hangar at the top of a slope for storing irradiated objects, and the feeling that, aside from a handful of tough nuts, nobody had survived. The feeling that most of the houses were uninhabited. And besides, it was just a feeling. There weren’t even a dozen kolkhozniks still alive, as far as I could tell. Maybe there were still intermediary humans, neither dead nor alive, able to get up and take a few steps, without much thinking or talking, but they stayed in their houses. They didn’t show themselves. Those, I can’t say how many of them there were. Maybe they didn’t even exist. Still, among all the kolkhozniks who were also plenty odd themselves, there was an engineer between life and death, peasants who were barely worth more, an ancient woman more than a hundred years old and covered with medals because she had been a heroic liquidator, and the three daughters of the kolkhoz president. The daughters were all evidently crazy and mutant. They were bald but you couldn’t tell, unless you spent the night with them. They wore very elaborate, effective wigs that made them look normal and attractive, with long hair that was fine and very black. Well, normal, yes and no. At first glance, maybe, but you could certainly see before long that something wasn’t right. Their eyes, their mannerisms. They seemed happy enough, but something was off. There was immediately no question that they were enjoying a supernatural existence, whether they had genetic predispositions that allowed them not to be affected by radiation, or whether they had magic helping them out. At first I thought that the magic came from the old granny living at the top of the village, in the hangar for nuclear junk. She spent her time by a well that the reactor core had dug, when the plant broke down. So, maybe she was adding a bit of magic to the kolkhoz’s machinery. But it was actually the kolkhoz president who did it all with his magical powers. The one named Solovyei. He’s the one who kept the kolkhoz apart from the rest of the world and he’s the one who kept its inhabitants from sinking into nothingness. He had this power. He had to hatch one of his dream visions down there and he grafted it onto a village that existed before him, or maybe the village was created out of nowhere by him. I have no idea. One of his daughters, the youngest one, claimed that he lived inside a nest of flames and that from there he steered the world of the village and its surroundings. She hated him. What’s for sure is that he was the complete master of Radiant Terminus. Nobody was permitted to exist in the kolkhoz unless he’d gotten control over them in the heart of their dreams. No one was allowed to struggle in his or her own future unless he was part of it and directing it as he wished. He transformed everyone into something like puppets, and, so as not to be bored, he created puppets that resisted him or who could deceive him or cause problems, but, in the end, he was the one with the final say on everything. Radiant Terminus wasn’t really a kolkhoz, it was more a theater to keep him from spending eternity yawning and waiting for the world to break down and, for those who lived in the village, it was a filthy dream they could never escape. But it took me a long time to understand all that. I understood it later. Much later. In there I met one of his daughters. Like I said, they were all crazy and mutant. They were also very beautiful. The one I met had an eye like her father’s, glittering yellow, and the other was deep black, wonderfully deep. I was enchanted by her gaze, and she was also a cautious daughter, a bit reserved, a bit cold at first, but she turned out to be sensual, intimately generous, I’m telling you. We fell into each other’s arms and got married. But her father didn’t grant his blessing. Her father was jealous, possessive, he wanted her all to himself. And that was why everything turned into a nightmare.

  —What was her name? Ilyushenko asked.

  Schulhoff looked down and groaned.

  —I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. Her father took the name out of my head, right before expelling me from the Levanidovo, right at the beginning of my journey. He soiled my memory so I couldn’t take refuge in it during my journey.

  —What do you mean, he took the name out of your head? Umrug Batyushin asked.

  —I’m going to tell you, Schulhoff said.

  Silence fell.

  Soldiers and detainees alike watched him, some indifferently, others pitying him.

  Schulhoff didn’t say anything else.

  He stayed there, sitting, filthy and tattered, vaguely inhuman, his face gaunt and dirty, and he breathed heavily, with irregular inhalations, as if he were crying.

  • Ilyushenko rubbed his neck, harshly caressing the etching that expressed his loyalty to the Orbise. Making contact with these talismans didn’t inspire him. He had listened attentively to Schulhoff, but he had trouble determining his honesty, the amount of fabulation and slyness that could have crept into the story, and he hadn’t really rejected the possibility that he might be a creature commissioned by the enemy, a human or almost-human decoy intended to keep the convoy from reaching its goal.

  Dusk hung over the steppes.

  Three or four crows had settled on the pine branches and, looking sidelong, mistrustfully, they examined the corpses of Pedron Dardaf, Babur Malone, and Douglas Flanagan. They didn’t caw. They had to be thinking about what they would do the next day, when the progress of the sky burials would depend entirely on their initiative.

  The sky wasn’t already gray or black.

  Ilyushenko ordered the group to move and set up about twenty meters away from the rails, at the spot chosen for a campfire. He touched Schulhoff on the shoulder to invite him to get up and Schulhoff, who until then had refused to leave the tracks, did so without protesting and followed Ilyushenko toward the grassy indentation in the earth where the interview would continue. He walked unhesitatingly, without really staying in a straight line, like he was sick to his stomach, and every two steps Ilyushenko caught him and helped him regain his
balance. He smelled cowpats, rotting hay, irradiated horsemeat, cloth bandages, nights spent waiting for death, stone altars, solitude.

  • The smoke from the first burning planks.

  For kindling they had several small clumps of wood, but mostly material the detainees had picked from the itinerant library: pages of post-exotic romånces that light up easily, an essay on Altaic languages, propaganda pamphlets on hygiene in extreme Siberian conditions, on modalities of proletarian dictatorship in case the entire working class disappeared, on the persistence of music, art, religious and magical beliefs after death. The bittersweet smell of carbon from all these texts.

  Then the uncertain smoke of the first planks.

  A bit of varnish caramelizing on a board taken from who knew what ruin.

  Gas escaping from blisters hidden beneath the exterior.

  Fibers that catch, already burning without flames, but with a visible heat shimmer that dissipates the smoke.

  Then the fire crackles and turns red.

  Finally it turns magnificently red, and already nobody thinks about its miraculous birth.

  • Sitting by the fire pit, we soldiers and detainees focused on the golden yellow of the flames. We barely moved, we allowed the night to gain ground both above the steppes and within our bodies. As if numbed, we admired the ephemeral spirals, the twists toward the sky, streaked for a very brief second with coppery red, and then evaporating, and then reappearing in the same place, not exactly identical, wonderfully different, endlessly lively and beautiful. As always, the dance was as surprising as it was repetitive and, as always, we had the feeling that it was speaking mysteriously to us, or rather to each of us individually, and that with a language that didn’t use words it awoke within us old images, images buried in our animality, images of submission, of fear, and of wonder that persuaded us to loyalty to the fire. We didn’t blink our eyes enough, and, after a moment, our ocular globes were stinging and feverish. To be honest, even as our personal exchange with the fire rallied us oneirically, we didn’t lose a bit of the conversation that was going on between our captain and the suicidal beggar. Every so often we brought our hands closer to the fire to light our cigarettes. Our faces were roasting and our backs were icy. Lethargy overcame our muscles. Our intelligence wasn’t far from nodding off, either.

  —You were talking about being expelled from the kolkhoz, Ilyushenko said. The father of the daughter removed your memory after the expulsion.

  —Not all my memory, Schulhoff corrected. Just a part.

  He gave a concert in the former Pioneers’ House. The Soviet Assembly Room benefited from good acoustics. Most of the Levanidovo’s mobile inhabitants had come to listen to him and seemed moved by his songs and his narration. Even the president of the kolkhoz had shown interest in the performance and clapped loudly. Then, when everyone had left and he was lighting a cigarette, one of the kolkhozniks had invited him to cross the street and enter the Soviet, in order, he claimed, to “receive his reward.” He went in without any suspicion. Barely had he crossed the doorstep when he found himself already under Solovyei’s power. Behind him the door had shut without a noise, as if instead of wood it was a mattress fitting into a quilted rectangle. He took three steps into the darkness of the entrance hall and already he was walking someplace without walls, already he was moving through a black hallway that led into the infernal realms of Solovyei. Dread gripped him. He tried to retrace his steps, but the path was void of all markers and, no matter which way he went, he went deeper into a shadowy trap. The farther he walked the closer he drew to the president of Radiant Terminus. He was waiting for him at the end of the path. He was calm and gigantic, with an ax. His hair flew around him as if electrified, his beard looked like a ruff of hirsute lava. Incandescent and hirsute. He welcomed Schulhoff unsmilingly, but his terrible, rapacious, yellow gaze sparkled with satisfied malice. They were facing each other, close enough for a duel, in a space lit by a spotlight that blinded Schulhoff even when he shut his eyes or turned to avoid the light. “Whether you have eyelids or not,” Solovyei announced in a deep, mocking voice, “you’ll never see anything through your eyes independently ever again. You’ll see what I want you to see, and only that until the end.” They stayed for a long moment without talking. Solovyei took his time and Schulhoff knew he was screwed. The place resembled a lunar crater, or the inside of a gigantic cauldron that was filthy, or a gas station after being bombed with phosphorus. It was filled with disparate objects, charred farming machines and small bowls, basins and buckets in which embers were constantly stirring and sputtering. Drops of black oil fell from above. Schulhoff thought of an oneiric variant on the Gramma Udgul’s warehouse, and he also thought that Solovyei had lured him underground, to the bottom of the well that the nuclear core had dug in its stupid fury, after breaking the chains that had imprisoned it. “You’re not entirely wrong,” Solovyei said in response, although Schulhoff hadn’t spoken out loud. “In reality, we’re in my house, which is to say everywhere. We’re in the old forest, in the dreams of my lovers, and in the heart of the flames. We’re before and after, even if there’s neither before nor after, just a present with no beginning or end. We’re in my nest. You can’t understand, you can’t even imagine it, you have no idea of ubiquity and paradoxical lengths. But, even though you can’t understand, you’ll endure. It’s a mystery you’ll never get used to. And I’m not going to hide that it will make you suffer, Schulhoff. You’ll never get used to it. Even in forty-nine times forty-nine years you still won’t have gotten used to it. Two thousand four hundred and one years, if I’ve done it right. You’ll find the time long, Schulhoff. Understanding nothing is very, very difficult. For you, this will be painful and endless.” While he talked in this frightening way, Solovyei drew back several meters and then came right back up to Schulhoff with a phonograph and some cylinders. He set it all on a wobbly table, its legs warped by fire.

  —Go faster, Schulhoff, Ilyushenko cut in. You’re annoying us with all these details. We’re not at a festive evening, with songs and musical accompaniment. We’re in an interrogation. The embellishments don’t matter. If we’re listening to you, if we’re losing our time to sleep by listening to your twaddle, it’s just to know whether or not you should be shot.

  —I know, said Schulhoff.

  —So how did he supposedly take away your memory? Ilyushenko asked.

  —Just a part, Schulhoff clarified once again.

  —Yes, Ilyushenko said irritatedly. You already said that.

  —He did it with the phonograph and the ax, Schulhoff muttered. But first he told me what would happen to me. Wandering through the steppes and the taiga without ever being able to die. “Never being able to die, never being able to console yourself with the idea of a glorious future, never remembering the treasures of the past.” That was what he insisted. A muddled walk, monotonous and joyless, for thousands of years. A murky and stupid eternity. He promised me that I would never find his daughter again, neither in dreams nor in my memories. That I would think of her without being able to remember the moments of happiness I’d had with her, not even her name. He also told me that, during the periods of drowsiness or rest, when I was tempted by forgetfulness, he would make me hear his poems or his whistling. It would appear within myself without my understanding, just so I could remember that I had caused him harm. “And what harm did I cause you?” I asked him then. “My daughters belong to me,” Solovyei said. “You hurt them. You interposed yourself between them and me. You married one of them. You were free to do so or not. Now you’re starting to pay the price. Don’t believe that you can own what belongs to me without impunity. You took one of my daughters. You put your filthy cock in her belly and, even if she didn’t complain, you hurt her. Today is the first day of your expiation. There will be tens of thousands more like it to start with, and then hundreds of thousands. Days of misery. Nights of fear and weariness. Do you understand, Schulhoff? Today is the beginning of your hell. You will stay there until
your death, except you will never die.”

  • Schulhoff focused on detailing the manipulation Solovyei had made him endure. The president of Radiant Terminus hadn’t imposed a particular physical suffering on him, but at the end of his warning speech he had frozen him, or rather petrified his flesh to the marrow of his bones. In a second, Schulhoff had become a block of hardened wax. Solovyei detached the articulated arm of the phonograph to write on him with the needle, poems on his forehead, on his mouth, on his eyes. Every so often, the president of the kolkhoz took his ax and used the flat of the blade to erase what he had engraved. He smoothed the surface that he had just scraped, then he attacked with another poem or another set of magical instructions. The enigmatic phrases carved grooves into Schulhoff one after another, embedded magical signposts that would guide and poison his journey for centuries and centuries after. “It was long,” Schulhoff explained. “It took place in a black and timeless space, but it was very long.” Sometimes Solovyei wrote, sometimes he whistled in a deafening way, horribly, or sometimes he was quiet and rocked back and forth, always keeping the same rhythm. Or sometimes he went to set the point and membrane of the phonograph back in place on the apparatus, and he inserted a wax roll. While the horn produced one of the strange verbal compositions he had authored, he watched Schulhoff malevolently and beat the measure with his colossal feet. Time was malleable and stretched out terribly, there were no longer any lights or shadows, and all around, in the various receptacles, small flames crackled and sent off sparks, flares bloomed, became orange curtains, went out with a roar, revived. They certainly emitted fumes, radiation, and toxic gas, but Schulhoff was no longer breathing and the aggressive odors no longer concerned him. He was already immunized against all that was fatal. Drops of black oil fell from nobody knew what vault and splattered slimily on the ground. The phonograph continued its soliloquy in a voice that was sometimes charming, sometimes unbearably pedantic and authoritarian. Often Solovyei spoke in the text that the roll reproduced. He embellished it with additional syllables or approving exclamations, or he reinforced it with a buzzing that underscored the fundamental nature of shamanic singing. The spotlight continued to blind Schulhoff, who had long since ceased to blink, even when Solovyei chiseled words and sentences directly on his corneas. It became part of the image bound to his consciousness from the beginning of the operation, and which nothing would change. However, within this image, and chiefly at its forefront, Solovyei moved, came and went, and frequently changed his appearance. Sometimes he was a hairy and sooty shadow, sometimes a silhouette sculpted in the fire, sometimes a festively dressed peasant.